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Introduction

This study proposes a profoundly new understanding of the composition and nature of the Covenant Code (Exodus 20:23?23:19).1 It contends that this law collection, the pinnacle of the revelation at Mount Sinai according to the story of Exodus 19?24, is directly, primarily, and throughout dependent upon the Laws of Hammurabi. The biblical text imitated the structure of this Akkadian text and drew upon its content to create the central casuistic laws of Exodus 21:2?22:19, as well as the outer sections of apodictic law in Exodus 20:23?26 (along with the introduction of 21:1) and 22:20?23:19.2 This primary use of the Laws of Hammurabi was supplemented with the occasional use of material from other cuneiform law collections and from native Israelite-Judean sources and traditions. The time for this textual borrowing was most likely during the Neo-Assyrian period, specifically sometime between 740 and 640 BCE, when Mesopotamia exerted strong and relatively continuous political control and cultural sway over the

kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and a time when the Laws of Hammurabi were actively copied in Mesopotamia as a literary-canonical text. The Covenant Code also appears to be a unified composition, given the influence of Hammurabi抯 laws throughout, the thematic integrity resulting from this, the unique scribal talents and interests necessary for the text抯 composition, and its temporal proximity to the basic laws of Deuteronomy, which depend on the Covenant Code抯 laws and date not much later, probably to the latter half of the seventh century. Moreover, because the Covenant Code is largely a creative rewriting of Mesopotamian sources, it is to be viewed as an academic abstraction rather than a digest of laws practiced by Israelites and Judeans over the course of centuries. Its selective character and the manner in which it reshapes the political and theological landscape of the Laws of Hammurabi, in fact, make it appear to be preeminently an ideological document, a response to Assyrian political and cultural

domination.

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