It may be hoped that this side issue has lost its interest, and that a hearing may now be obtained for a simple attempt to use the two legislations for mutual understanding. When on the appearance of the Code in its first edition I lectured upon it at Queens’ College, Cambridge, it was solely as a new document of human history. When a month or two later I was privileged to point out its ‘significance for comparison with the Hebrew legislation’ in a paper read before the Cambridge Theological Society,[5] of which an abstract appeared in the _Journal of Theological Studies_ (Jan. 1903), it is probable enough that the contrasts to the Mosaic Law were more apparent than the likenesses. In the next few months there was ready for press an extensive work on the Code, illustrating its meaning from the innumerable legal documents, most of them contemporary, which had been my study for years. As bearing on this comparison I soon found that a baldly literal translation of the Code gave a most Biblical turn to its phraseology which the easy, lucid, but peraphrastic renderings given by others perpetually disguised. The general likenesses, Semitic characteristics, and apparent cases of adaptation were separately classed and those most suggestive of dependence insisted upon. The index of subjects compiled from the Code and contemporary legal documents appeared to constitute a substantial advance in the knowledge of ancient law. Of all this work, prepared in 1904, it was not possible to publish more than the translation, under the title _The Oldest Code of Laws in the World_ (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh), with a selection from the index. The other results were freely communicated to various scholars, but it was not without some pangs that I saw most of them attained in time independently. Later an article on the _Code of Hammurabi_ in the Supplementary Volume of Hastings’s _Bible Dictionary_ and one on _Babylonian Law_ in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ afforded me the chance of setting out some results of my research upon the Code in its relation to the ancient civilization of Babylonia, with a rapid glance at its relations to Israelite Law. When writing a work for the American public on _Assyrian and Babylonian Laws, Contracts, and Letters_, I expanded some parts of this treatment. I trust that I may be pardoned for thus simply stating why, when the British Academy conferred upon me the great honour of inviting me to deliver the Schweich Lectures for 1912, I selected the subject of _Babylonian Law in its relation to the Laws of Moses_. It was a subject in which I had taken an interest for some years, and I was anxious to seize an opportunity of making public the work done in 1903-4.