The Laws of Moses were once, and in some quarters still are, supposed to be all contemporary with that great national hero and lawgiver, and to form a complete body of law imparted to men by Divine inspiration. The Jewish commentators, however, of old treated this view with considerable freedom. Modern scholars, who have devoted two centuries to a critical study of the Pentateuch, have lately gravitated towards a fairly definite theory implying the existence of several codes, so to speak, and those of very different dates, all much later than the time of Moses. As experience shows there is very little permanence about the critical views, we had best confine ourselves to the latest presentation. We need not trouble to inquire into the merits of the earlier critical theories, and may leave their refutation to the last writer on the subject. We may take two good examples for our purpose. Mr. S. A. COOK in his excellent work _The Laws of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi_ assumed the critical view of the Pentateuch as then presented, and made the most successful defence of the originality of the Mosaic Law yet attempted. It will be noted that one of the so-called ‘destructive’ critics made a most vigorous defence of the uninfluenced character of the Mosaic fragments adjudged by that school to be early. Naturally so; for such critics it is vital to maintain the exclusion of external influence. There is no criterion of date for them if the orderly continuous evolution along well-known lines can be supposed to be overwhelmed by a catastrophic influence from without. The history of the development being unknown or rejected in favour of a theoretical reconstruction upon lines evolved out of the supposed results of comparative law, religion, or the like, it was delightful and easy to build up a purely imaginary self-consistent view of the order in which ideas developed or evolved. The consistence of the view impressed its authors as proof of reality. There was no history to test the reconstruction by except such as could be brushed aside as unreliable because inconsistent with the view. But some late things, dated as late upon this theory, turned out to be a thousand years older than the early ones, and so the almost forgotten maxim ‘what is primitive need not be old’ had to be revived. For the evidence of the Hammurabi Code had to be rebutted anyhow. It is most remarkable that the champions of the traditional view never seized upon the Code as a weapon to beat the critics with, while the Rationalists made a good show of learning and even indulged in argument on the matter. But after the dust of controversy cleared off it was perceived that the Code was a new fact to be reckoned with, neither attacked nor minimized nor exploited, but studied and respected. As it had surprised and even disconcerted the lawyers, so it had gradually compelled divines to reconsider.