So our question must be put differently. It should be: Was the writer of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis of opinion that Abraham was a contemporary of Hammurabi? I am not sure that he ever heard of Hammurabi or knew who he was. The whole story, if reliable, may apply to some other kings than those usually supposed, and this would suit what little we know of chronology much better. It is precisely the identification of Amraphel with Hammurabi which professedly rehabilitates the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, but at the expense of other Biblical statements equally important. It is always well to distinguish the statements of archaeologists and Assyriologists on unrelated subjects from the results of science. No matter how distinguished an Assyriologist may be, his opinion on other matters than Assyriology cannot be laid to the charge of that branch of knowledge. The statements made in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis may yet be shown to be affected by Assyriological research, but most of the recent speculations about them deserve neither the name of Archaeology or Assyriology. The effect of modern criticism is to make us cautious in another direction. I have hitherto spoken of the Laws of Moses, and I shall continue to do so throughout my lectures. But I trust you will not misunderstand my position. To speak of the Laws of Moses is simply to use the title which was given to them before the rise of modern criticism and by which they are still most widely known. It does not necessarily assume that any one ever existed at all like the Moses described in the Old Testament. Some regard Moses as the name of a mythical hero—a national ideal into whose personification were run all the mythological material which the Hebrew writers deemed appropriate. This need not be the same thing as to deny absolutely the personality of Moses; for another great conqueror of men, Alexander the Great, most assuredly lived, and one clear proof of it, if we had no other, is that his deeds so impressed men that the Arabic historians ascribe to him just as many mythical stories as they know. You have only to read A. JEREMIAS’S _Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East_ to see how almost every incident in the life of Moses may be paralleled by some astral _motif_ in the mythical story of other ancient heroes or demigods. But the effect of modern criticism, astral theory, comparative mythology, &c., on the history of Moses leave him much like a lump of sugar in a cup of tea. We know it was there because the tea is sweet, but details as to size or shape are now very unreliable. Nor does Assyriology help us much, for it never mentions or refers to Moses any more than it does to Abraham, or to Israel even until the days of Shalmaneser, 859-825 B.C.