Hebrew Life and Times | Page 7

records and written
laws and histories were thus made possible and in time a varied
literature was created. Whole libraries of these baked clay tablets have
been unearthed and deciphered by modern investigators.
=Evidences of ancient culture.=--By B.C. 4000 there flourished on the
plains of Babylonia a splendid civilization in many ways similar to ours
to-day. The people raised enormous crops of grain and exported it by
ship and caravan to distant lands. They had developed to a high point
the arts of the weaver, the dyer, the potter, the metal worker, and the

carpenter. They had devised a system of geometry for the measuring of
their wheat fields and city streets. Through astronomy they had worked
out the calendar of days, weeks, months, and years which with
modifications we still use. They had erected magnificent temples to
their gods. From translations of the inscriptions on their clay tablets we
can gain a clear knowledge of their life and customs. Here, for example,
is a translation of part of a letter from a son to a father asking for more
money: "My father, you said, 'When I shall go to Dur-Ammi-Zaduga, I
will send you a sheep and five minas of silver.' But you have not sent.
Let my father send and let not my heart be vexed.... To the gods
Shamash and Marduk I pray for my father." If we forget the
outlandish-sounding names, how natural this seems! How like our boys
was this boy who wrote the queer-looking characters on this bit of clay
which we may hold in our hand!
THE FAULTS OF THE BABYLONIAN CIVILIZATION
With all their gifts and achievements there were certain great evils in
Babylonian life. For one thing they were inclined to be greedy and
covetous. They lived on a soil almost incredibly rich, and they were
constantly increasing their wealth by trade. Babylonian merchants or
their agents were to be found in almost every city and town of western
Asia and perhaps even as far east as China. Of the vast mass of their
written records which have been collected in our museums, the
majority are business documents and records of contracts. Many of
them tell the story of hard bargains. Professor Maspero declares that
these records "reveal to us a people greedy of gain, exacting, and
almost exclusively absorbed by material concerns."
=Slavery.=--Moreover, the wealth of the nation was not fairly
distributed but was more and more in the hands of the favored few, the
great nobles, and their friends. The fields were not tilled by
independent farmers. There were, instead, a few great estates which
were rented out to tenants. The actual work, both on the fields and in
the towns, was more and more performed by slaves. Some of these
were captives who had been taken in war. Others were native
Babylonians who had been sold into slavery for debt. So it had come

about that Babylonian society had set like plaster into a hard mold with
the king and the wealthy nobles on top and the poor peasants and slaves
below. This state of things was fastened all the more firmly on the
people by strong kings such as Hammurabi, who lived about B.C. 2000
and who unified the country under a powerful central government with
his own city, Babylon, as the capital.
A SHEPHERD WITH IDEALS
About the time of Hammurabi's reign, if we follow the account related
in the book of Genesis, there lived among the nomads on the plains
west of the city of Ur a man named Abraham. If Hammurabi ever heard
of him, which is improbable, he looked down upon him as of no
account. Yet Abraham wielded a greater influence for the future
welfare of humanity than all the princes of Babylon. For, discontented
with Babylonian life, he was the earliest pioneer in a movement toward
a civilization of a different and better type. And the sons of Hammurabi
have yet to reckon with Abraham and his ambitions.
=Discontent among the shepherds.=--Many of Abraham's people, no
doubt, were discontented in Babylonia. A shepherd's life is monotonous
and hard. When they went to market they saw comforts and luxuries on
every hand. Yet the money they received from the wool merchants of
Ur gave no promise of larger opportunities in life for any shepherd boy.
So, at length when Abraham said to them, "Come, let us leave this
country," they were ready to answer, "Lead on, and we will follow!" So
it came to pass that Abraham's clan set out northwest, toward Haran, in
what is now called Mesopotamia, and finally after some years of
migration found themselves camping on the hillsides of Canaan,
southeast of the Mediterranean Sea.
=Ideals represented in Abraham.=--But it is not as a leader of fortune
hunters that Abraham