A work which freely accepts the critical division of the Hebrew laws is PROFESSOR C. F. KENT’S book—_Israel’s Laws and Legal Precedents_ in the _Old Testament Student Series_. If any modification of critical views may have been thought necessary as a result of the new material provided by the Code of Hammurabi, it is here tacitly but fully allowed for. Further study may be expended on the comparison and somewhat modified views may have to be taken, but the nature of the questions involved is clearly and concisely shown in this work. Were it possible to institute the comparison between the Code of Hammurabi and the whole Hebrew legislation treated as one indivisible body of laws, it would be much less difficult than when a set of regulations are picked out as early and treated as the only rules which deserve to be regarded as in the remotest sense Mosaic, while all else is treated as later and scarcely to be regarded as law at all, but merely pious wishes or aspirations. By such a careful selection there is not only very little to compare, but the very things ruled out as late or unhistorical aspiration on account of their relatively high tone are just those most like the Babylonian. On such principles with criteria so carefully selected to rule out all disagreeing evidence a verdict is easy to attain. It is the fact that these criteria were invented before the Code of Hammurabi was dreamt of, but it does afford a very strong test of them and should lead to some revision. The critical theory is now so firmly rooted in the minds of all scholars who are not allowed in youth to imagine any alternative that we too must accept it or be lost in a perfect morass of unintelligibility. Only we ought to remember that in so doing we make the comparison as difficult and complicated as possible. Accepting the present division of the Hebrew laws it is possible to divide the periods of Babylonian influence on Israel correspondingly. The conclusion to be drawn is that Babylonian influence was strong in the case of the earliest Israelite law perhaps through common Semitic custom, recalling that Abraham traditionally came from Ur of the Chaldees through Haran, a Babylonian Province, to settle there under strong Babylonian influence where Babylonian language and writing were still used down to the time of the Exodus. The impression of Babylonian is said to be less prominent in later codes until after the Assyrians, whose civilization was specifically of Babylonian origin and type, had held Palestine vassal for two centuries. The Exile was to Babylon itself, and Babylonian influence is naturally strongest after the Return from the Exile, and even more powerful on the Jewish doctors of later days, many of whom continued to live in Babylonia.