Unit 1: The Beginnings of Civilization
Chapter 2: The First Civilizations
6. Thu, Sep 19, 2013
The Code of Hammurabi. Paris, Musée du Louvre.
Simply keeping straight the sequence of peoples who move through this region and establish temporary dominance here — where "temporary" may be as long-lasting as the United States has been — is no trivial task. Make a chart or a list of how these various groups and peoples succeeded one another. What ethnic/language groups did they represent? What influence was handed on from one to another? What discontinuities were there here? This is not at all simple to figure out, but once you do, you will have a much better picture of the organic reality underlying this list of names and places.
It's worth noting that while the textbook here is basically a secular book, it does occasionally contain certain presuppositions that are not shared by all modern secular scholars, many of whom strongly dispute the Exodus narrative — though there may be a number of ways to account for the discrepancies. If, however, you're trying to keep track of the biases in this textbook, you might want to throw this into the hopper. At the same time, it's not clear that the authors (who are they?) know what to make of various pieces of the Biblical narrative. They devote the better part of one page to a colorful but profoundly uninformative (modern) painting of the Hebrews blowing their trumpets outside Jericho. They don't talk about this anywhere in the larger text, nor do they say why the Hebrews were blowing their trumpets — was it to serenade the inhabitants of Jericho? (Jericho still exists, for what it’s worth, and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.)
One of the things to consider, and start tracking through the various civilizations we’ll encounter, is the concept of law. We have two very important examples this week: both the ancient Code of Hammurabi and of course the vast Mosaic Law that we can still find in the Biblical books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. We’ll see more ideas about law coming out with the Indians, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans in particular, and yet others when we look at the Germanic tribes in the Middle Ages. Here are a few things to consider:
- On whose authority is the law imposed?
- How is the law derived? What is meant by “positive law”? What other kinds are there?
- What's the relationship of law and morality? Are they overlapping domains? Virtually the same? Completely different? In other words, what is the relationship of law and justice?
- What is the role of the law-giver?
- On whom is the law binding? Is it defined by populations or territory, or something else?
- Are there people who are above the law? Are there those who are beneath it?
- How does law empower a culture and the people within it?
- What is the relationship of law and power?
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