Chapter C: F. KENT in his excellent work on Israel’s Laws and Legal Precedents

(London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1907) makes considerable use of a division of Hebrew laws into groups of five or ten, of which the Ten Commandments forms a well-known example. Whether or no these divisions command general assent, we should notice that D. G. LYON finds repeated evidence of the same grouping in the Code of Hammurabi. This naturally cannot be pressed too far as evidence of dependence. But it is surely non-essential that laws should be arranged in pentads unless we are to suppose that a reference to five fingers as a method of recalling the separate clauses is involved, and would be natural to expect in such cases. But that Israelite fondness for the number seven, shown in their seven-day week as against the Babylonian week of five days, or their partiality for other sacred numbers, did not affect the numbering of the laws may well be significant. If it turn out that these groups of five also correspond in contents, even though they show traces of change, we have a strong argument for dependence which supports any others pointing in the same direction.

THE PLACE OF THE CODE IN COMPARATIVE LAW.

As early as October and November, 1902, there appeared _Le Code Babylonien d’Hammourabi_ in the _Journal des Savants_ (Paris, Hachette), by R. DARESTE, giving a luminous account of the subject-matter of the Code, illustrating it by comparison with a number of ancient legislations. He, of course, based his conclusions entirely upon SCHEIL’S translation, but his work still remains most valuable. In 1903 appeared SCHMERSAHL’S _Das älteste Gesetzbuch der Welt: Die Gesetze Hammurabis_ in the _Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung_, pp. 111 ff. R. DARESTE also published _Le Code Babylonien d’Hammourabi_ in the _Nouvelle Revue historique de droit français et étranger_ (Paris, Larose, January and February, 1903). _Hammurapi und das Salische Recht_, by H. FEHR (Bonn, Marcus & Weber, 1910), is a very remarkable study.

A first-rate work was G. COHN’S lecture, _Die Gesetze Hammurabis_ (Zürich, Füssli, 1903). KOHLER and MÜLLER (see pp. 67, 69) have to be weighed.