Comparative ancient Near Eastern Law

Part Four, “A Phalanx of Lies: How Fundamentalists Bedevil Peace in the Middle East”

Legal Systems in the Ancient Middle East: A Comparison

Written law attended the birth of civilization, and respect for the rule of law is a feature of Middle Eastern life right up till today. Even the lawless nomadic raiders had their unwritten codes. These traditions go back to the Neolithic (8,000-6,000 BCE), when farmers, nomads and traders worked out cooperative arrangements, to make trade possible, even long distance trade.

The Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Assyrians, the Hurrians, the Canaanites and the Hittites had evolved legal codes, a millennium before Israel and Greeks. They were inscribed on stone and on clay tablets. Obsolete Western 'educated experts' have long taught their minions, us, that the legal tradition put forth by the writers of the Old Testament, was more progressive, more humane than any before it. That is simply not true.

Remember, the Hebrews were nomads over several thousands of years, and were found from Egypt to Persia, from Anatolia to the Yemen, either raiding villages or working for them, as mercenaries, traders. Around 2,300 BC, some Hebrews found a place to settle down - the Canaanite hill country of Palestine; then they, a small group of priests and officials, needed a unique God, a compelling myth, sacred rites and rituals and a priestly hierarchy identified with (or against) the ruling dynasty.

The various names for God or the gods in the Old Testament reflect the very diverse strains that were knit together in the 24 books of the Torah. Yet they needed a legal system that was unified, clear, just, and for this, they turned not to their own cult rules, but to their civilized neighbors. Their construction of the temple is typical of Near Eastern cities.

Surrounded by old venerable cultures, armed empires now resurgent, the Canaanite Hebrews resolved to evolve their own legal system, aiming to make it as elegant and as utilitarian as the Assyrian, Hittite, Babylonian, Elamite and Egyptian codes. But the cultists wrested control. So the bible contains many injunctions having nothing to do with human perfection – the development of conscience and consciousness.

The examples we cite as authentic, practical, deal with real issues and problems faced by people in the Near East environment; not included with these are the cult laws having no relevance to real issues and problems. Yahweh was the new anthropomorphic God, part storm god, possessing a face, hands, feet, a lap, a beard, robes. It's the standard East Mediterranean type, like Zeus, a storm-god in a storm cloud, flashing lightning and promising rain. The Canaanite Hebrews were pushing a henotheism which was also characteristic of Near Eastern societies.

Archaeology reveals what the bible sought to shut up: the Canaanite Hebrews worshiped a male Yahweh always with a female consort – Asheroth, or Astarte. Surviving are little dioramas that people made out of clay, little altars featuring the Divine Family or the Divine Council (of the Godhead). The word Shekinah in Hebrew, Sakinah in Arabic, refers to the imminence of the God, an Aspect feminine in nature. Rediscovered by the Kabbalists and by Muslim mystical writers, the trope is perennial.

As we explained elsewhere, the religion of the Canaanite Hebrews (Judaeans, Samarians, Israelites) was not the first monotheism. It was not a monotheism at all: the religion of Israel is a henotheism: one God dominating all others. It was in Persia, probably, that our modern monotheistic beliefs derive, as the Persian believed in a benevolent God who loved all his children.

Nor can we say that the bible is the basis of our morality.  Altruism is in-bred: 6-month old babies can present it. Our own law system of course derives from pagan sources: from British common law back through the Anglo-Saxon code to the ancient In the case of the Canaanite Hebrews, God-state injunctions that were tacked on to the real law code, which remained largely unwritten. These cult regulations have persisted till today. I myself keep one – the Sabbath. But the laws that engage us, are those that actually assist a society in surviving in the region's rough neighborhoods, in spreading wealth, and in educating their youth not to hate.

Let us look more closely at the Torah. We begin at Exodus 20. Here the Ten Commandments are explained and applied. But only after mentioning God's number one injunction: That is Exodus 20:7, my favorite verse in the Torah: “Do not use my name to cause harm. If you do, I'll punish you most severely.” The whole ensuing section is lucid. This is clear, relevant legal system continues from Exodus 20 to Exodus 23:20. It compares well with the older civilized codes and no doubt derives from them.

Then everything changes. The text becomes deadly, as if a genocidal maniac had taken up the pen. “My Israelite angel will go to all of your enemies and send you into the land of Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will kill them all.”(Ex.23:23). This is suicidal rant, a mania. Then Yahweh says not to worry about the costs of war: “If you worship me, the Lord your God, I will bless you with food and water and cure you of your illness and wounds In your land no woman will have miscarriages or lack children. What I will give you lives extra-long.”(Ex: 23:27.)

This is writing from a genocidal maniac, a group of them, trying to steal power. Can one imagine a policy more fatal to Israel itself? It is suicide and genocide, at once a pathology and a sociopathy. Yahweh is most crazy and suicidal, inimical, inhumane, because all of the above kingdoms are more powerful than Israel (or expired centuries before) and the Israelites never went up there, into northern Syria, southeast Anatolia. So why the genocide? The grandiose suicidal military injunction to commit genocide? Why does Exodus suddenly change, from a humane, relevant system of laws, reflecting a great Near Eastern tradition, to a series of laws and regulations having no benefits to anyone, yet highly dangerous, leading to militarism, impossible tasks, aggression and mass warfare? Were they after land? Did they see themselves as a mercenary force for some New Age Egyptian pharaoh? Or is it just sickness, an inhumane streak? Was the Old Testament used to dominate other kinds of Jews and Israelites? For sure.

Other legal passages in the OT are just like this: a few lucid prohibitions, like touching a corpse (Numbers 19:10), followed by endless cult laws and ritual prescriptions, leading to a genocidal outbursts, in song if not in deed. See for example Numbers 24:20, Balam's prophecies.

There must be some thirty explicit genocidal passages. As an archaeologist who has worked in Israel, I strongly doubt that those wars of extermination against the peaceful Edomites, Perizzites, Midianites, Sodomites, Philistines, Canaanites and the Jebusites (natives of Jerusalem), ever happened. But some Christians, Muslims and modern Jews do use these writings as 'God-given unique revelations.' And of course the record is abysmal: the popes planned, supplied and executed some 63 'crusades,'

and those popes had no problem justifying their genocidal adventures in the Old Testament. Yahweh commands genocide too many times.

Yahweh was the anthropomorphic god who led the Jews into a big change: the Rise of the Old Male God. Were they imitating Assyrian? From 735 to 722 Israel and Judah were parts of Assyria. In jact, Israel's relation with the Assyrians was deep, persistent and intimate. Assur too was a dominant alpha male, intervening in human history. No Isis, no Ishtar, no Astarte, no Ashteroth. This bible-based exclusion of women from the holy of holies was copied by the Christian clergy, and by the Muslims (after Muhammad). But it was, as it is, an issue, of excluding women, along the power of the Goddess of intuition and mercy. All other ancient Near Eastern cultures featured a co-equal feminine half of the Godhead (except Assyria and Israel).

A too-human Yahweh incites the Israelites to follow Him into war, but the angry god ends up cursing the Hebrews. The Old Testament is not uncritical of the Hebrews and their prophets. One might expect this self-criticism might be taken on by the humans, to help them evolve humane laws.

Like the Qur'an, and the New Testament, the Torah gives instructions not to make graven images – not just statues and pictures of the Holy, but abstractions, thoughts about God, as well. The sacred books become worshiped alongside God by the ignorant. That's shirk (association), a sin. But God cannot be known with the ordinary conceptual mind. It is a living God. That's the essence of any real religion.

Archaeology does not support the biblical stories. There is no evidence for any 'coming into the land.' Archaeology would have revealed that long ago. All that war and destruction, ca. 1,125 BCE, the genocidal violence which is such a feature of the Hebrew bible, never happened.

Not only were the Canaanite Hebrews few in number (maybe around 40,000at most) they were in fact divided among themselves from the start, right up to the present day. In fact, both Judah and Israel became client states and it is archaeologically-proven that is was during these long periods of being a province in a greater empire, that prosperity returned to Palestine.

Looking at the authentic, humane section of the Torah, it is possible to find many parallels in Assyrian, Hittite, Egyptian, Babylonian and late Sumerian legal texts. Even back then, at the end of the second millennium BCE, most Israelites, Samarians and Judaeans, preferred uniform secular law. But a noisy faction of fundamentalists enforced a mock mono-theism, using a new unknown name of God to commit genocide, even against the Jews themselves.

From the beginning of civilization in the ancient Near East, the big effort was to replace revenge with restitution. But with murder, this was a hard ideal to enforce. Whereas morally precocious civilizations like the Hittite, might have had trials by jury, with the right to appeal, many later judges, including Greeks and Hebrews, handed murderer suspects over to the village of the victim, and let them decide. “The dead man's nearest relative has the task of putting the suspect to death.” (Numbers 25:19.)That usually went one way. The standard death was by stoning. Lex talionis – 'an eye for an eye' – came to replace the monetary payments that the oldest systems prescribed. The Canaanite Hebrews were told to create 'cities of refuge' where innocent men (not women) can flee.

The relevant section in the Torah is Numbers 35:16-21. Note the role of hatred in indicting the suspect on capital crimes, its role as a psychological principle, indicating guilt. In verse 22, the innocent man is defended: “But suppose a man accidentally kills someone he does not hate...” Even in brawls causing death, there is no capital crime if there is no hate between the unarmed consensual fighters.

Every Near East society back then had detailed rituals and cult proscriptions, so the Canaanite Hebrews just carried forward this dimension of tribal worship. As for being special, the chosen ones, that is a common sentiment amongst pastoral nomads living in close proximity to civilization (walled towns).

If you have a computer, log on to massada2000.org to see very mean and vicious Jewish American fascists, listing, with photos, all those American Jews, who have been advocating for peace with the Arabs.

This talk of Israel and its bizarre anthropomorphic God-before-the other gods, is highly relevant because the Likud party, backed by ultra-conservative rabbis, is making a bid to 'restore' ancient Israel, as the bible defines its widest borders. The passage they use is Exodus: 23:28-33. “... I will drive them out little by little (gradually) until there are enough of you to take possession of the whole land, from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Euphrates River, from the Mediterranean sea to the desert. I will give you power over the inhabitants of the land, and you will drive out the residents as you advance. Do not make any agreement with them, or with their gods..” (Ex.23:28-30)

True, both the Americans and the Israelis believe they really are 'exceptional,' that is, not bound to international law; but their destiny is to become nations amongst nations, not to lord over them, rousting them, taking over their land. God forbid!

The main players in the contemporary Middle East are all controlled by clerical hierarchies. Gaza, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, are ruled by men with very close ties to fundamentalist clerics. Other nations taking scripture as a blueprint are Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Serbia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some ignorant Americans, too, should be included, for they insist on being actors, while calling themselves arbiters. Most Americans went to Sunday school and still maintain 'a living connection with the bible,' particularly the colored illustrations, still afloat deep in their psyches, but with very little research into the ancient Near East. So the whole bible becomes one book, read out of context, with no context.

All this discussion of symbolic identification is highly pertinent, because we know that politics in the Middle East matured to become a series of multi-ethnic empires, based on written law, trading widely and afar, featuring a concentration of technical expertise due to tolerance of people with different skin colors, languages and gods.

The earliest written legal texts so far recovered date from 1952 BCE and 1965 BCE, promulgated by Ur-nammu, the first king of the Third Dynasty of Ur, in southern Iraq. Curiously, he tells us he had to take care of some security issues before he could focus on economic abuses. These law-givers were all reforming kings, proactive in implementing them, enforcing them, often rolling back established practice. It was a constant effort to prevent freemen and their families from falling into slavery because unpaid debts were punished. It was an effort to replace revenge with restitution. As we will see, the crime of murder was so inflammatory that the state (including Israel's) had no choice but leave that to the villages where the crime occurred. Even today, revenge distorts thinking on all sides, the Americans included.

The common view is that the Old Testament conformed with ancient Near Eastern traditions in the law of lex talionis: 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' But the earliest legal systems of the Sumerians, found in Ur, home and school of Abraham, did not go that way, but assessed payment in 'coin' i.e. precious metals, chiefly silver, as restitution for damage to property, injury of person or animal, or slander. False witness was punished. Oaths were taken. Witnesses sworn in. This arrangement was adopted by many other ancient 'primitive' people, in an effort to curb tribal blood feuds.

In the late third millennium BCE, we have the Laws of Lipit-ishtar, King of Isin, the spiritual center of Old Sumeria (centered on Nippur). He carries forward the Neolithic achievement. Only fragments remain, but one can see that, in some ways it is superior to our own codes. Here's just one example: “if a man's wife has borne him no children, but a prostitute from the street has borne him children, he, the man, shall provide corn, oil and clothing for that prostitute. She should not dwell in a house with your wife but she should have a place of her own.”

Not surprisingly the Qur'an delineates the exact same law, adding that the man must provide an independent shelter for the mother of his child, even if a prostitute. As for Abraham, he was caught out on just this issue.

In the Akkadian language, the earliest laws date to 1947 BCE, found at Tell Harmal, just outside Baghdad. These are known today as the Laws of Eshnunna. They begin with a list of maximum prices for a variety of common commodities and tasks, followed by 48 sections. Here's just one sample: “If a man becomes insolvent so that he sells his house, when the buyer resells it, the original owner shall be entitled to redeem it, as first buyer.”

Many educated people have heard of the laws of Hammurabi, but again, they believe they are inferior to the Jewish scriptures. But that is untrue, a self-serving myth. First of all, one might wonder if these legal systems were ever enforced. The answer is yes. Hammurabi, we know, was proactive, moving aggressively to roll back abuses. He also reformed and ordered Akkadian/Babylonian language and alphabet. In fact, all literate ancient Near Eastern kings (and the people) seemed to subscribe to the primacy of justice. Law was seen to meet the demands of justice, social and personal, particularly in times of transition.

Here is a section relevant to today: “If a builder has built a house for a man and has not made his work sound, so that the house he has made falls down and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death.” That's a bit harsh but no doubt saved more lives than it took. It's the way they protected themselves against earthquakes.

Hammurabi ruled from 1795 to 1750 BCE, the same time that we first hear about the Hebrews. It was generally accepted that the author of Exodus 20-23:19 was well versed in Near Eastern traditions, particularly those of the Hittites, the Canaanites, the Assyrians, as well as the earlier Sumerian and Babylonian traditions of Hammurabi.

The most humane and lucid of these codes seem to be the Hittite codes. Several survive, discovered in Bogazkoy, in north central Anatolia. Piecing these together, the scholar O.R. Gurney writes: “Evidently the Hittites avoided the tendency towards stagnation inherent in the process of codification, and did not hesitate to reform their laws in accordance with changing needs.”

The Hittite method conforms to the tradition of Mesopotamia, offering first a hypothetical case, then the ruling, with optional reference to precedent. The Hittites followed this format. Here the scholar Gurney sums it up: “An outstanding feature of the Hittite legal procedures is the immense trouble taken to ascertain the facts.” In the Middle East today, facts are not crucial, not determinative. So we've fallen a long way from the Hittites.

Reformation and adaptation of the establish written codes was most advanced among the Hittites. “Retribution plays an inconsequential part in comparison with the principle of restitution.” They had a complex feudal system: everybody knew his or her responsibilities. The Hittites used negotiation to manage the many petty kingdoms of southern and western Anatolia, including Troy. Almost always when they conquered a new territory, they tried to keep the sitting king and his administration in place.

Curiously, murder was not discussed in these old codes, except the murder of a merchant, which the state protected, demanding hard cash (silver) and property, as restitution. The Israelites mention murder, but support an extrajudicial solution: hand the guy over to the relatives and friends of the murdered victim, which usually meant a horrible death (stoning) with no trial. See Deuteronomy 19:11-13. All Mideast law codes stumble on this impulse towards vengeance - till a reform Jewish sect became popular during the fall of the Roman empire.

Christ says he carries forward the Law, but of course, he reforms it. He says “all food is sacred” and “love your enemy” and “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He does not call himself the Son of God but the Son of Man (both are old Near Eastern expressions). His plea for love and mercy proved sacred and was adopted by many people who were not-Jewish.

Both Judaism and Christianity owe much to Zoroastrianism. Eternal life, angels and archangels, the devil, an apocalypse – a showdown between the good and the evil, black robes for the clergy, a more rigorous monotheism, a belief in a benevolent God who loves all his people – these are all Zarathushtri ideas and precepts.

The Christian New Testament features genocide in its last book, the Revelation of St. John. A very angry Yahweh destroys the earth, taking his chosen few, and condemning everyone else to painful oblivion.

As a student of Gnosticism, I'm used to such lurid imagery in scripture, but the modern Christians have only the Book of Revelation. They think ikt is unique when it is not. Foolishly, they think it is a blueprint for people of the earth in the 21st Century. Many US presidents, leaders, officers, believe in the coming Apocalypse. Some believe they may have a role in it. I only hope my government not be so utterly penetrated by the Iranians.

We could partake of the spirit if only we could cut off all the inner talking, that banal commentary, always after the fact, the source of worry, schemes, et al. Speech and reading have so colonized our heads that we think thinking is seeing. A whole range of hidden capabilities (powers) remain just outside our ordinary view of ourselves.

Economic law was as critical in ancient times as it is now. In the ancient empires, the temple and the palace, priest and king, constituted a diode through which labor was divided. The secular-religious divide goes back at to 3000 BCE. Capitalism began in the Middle East, during the Neolithic, though I should add that long-range trading goes back to the Paleolithic. The empires usually published prices for essential commodities, but these were not so much controls as benchmark maximum prices.

Christ expressed how he thought by trashing the money-changers at the temple. That a message for today, as both Europe and North America have been grievously damaged by a small group of very rich men, who were allowed to do what they did (crimes) for a decade before the housing bubble burst and the leading investment banks could neither pay their creditors (clients, depositors and other banks) nor borrow themselves. Strangely, the president sought 'to cause no harm' to the confidence of the markets, so he failed to restructure the financial industry. Meanwhile, the big banks took their bailout (to the tune of some $2.7 trillion), but, because the mistrust was so institutionalized, the banks and investment houses, big private share-holders, failed and fail to invest in America, in new jobs, new infrastructure and new companies, to meet a vast emerging global demand.

Christianity was a healthy religion while in minority. The Gospels teach how to work on oneself, how to perfect one's Self, once deciphered. But that ended when it became a state religion, in Rome and Constantinople. We are taught it was essential to our history and progress. Yet there occurred some 63 crusades, genocidal wars instigated and planned by popes in Rome. Violence was repeatedly used against non-Christians, and like the ancient Hebrews, the Christians saw themselves as a movement against matriarchy, the Family of Gods, and also against human sacrifice (in those northern areas not ruled by Rome).

Christianity could have been the best of the 200 real religions on earth. Jesus' moral injunction 'Love your enemy' could have been instituted, amplified, explored, to great effect and affect. Medieval and modern history would have been different, with flowers everywhere. For the ethical code – love your enemy - conforms with genetic reality – were are brothers and sisters all - and also releases groups and individuals from their fears, their grudges, their murderous identities. Such a high moral path would have cleared the decks so that the human earthlings could have focused on larger challenges: poverty, education, long-distance trade, climate change, environmental degradation, human exploitation. Though Christ's injunction seems impossibly idealistic, it is actually a practical tip, a key, scientifically based: we all come from the same source. It would have muzzled demonization, the meaning of the inner commandment: 'thou shalt not kill.'

This is highly relevant today. Such has been internecine killing, and trans-national conflict in recent decades that even scientists see warfare as being built in genetically. Not so. Human craniums are unusually thin. There were too few people long ago, to need to compete. Indeed, other people were relatives who helped keep very dangerous animals from eating children. All those war-loving genes are actually genes developed for hunting. If warfare was really built-in, humans would have destroyed themselves long ago.

But the human brain has weaknesses in neuronal architecture. We have fight or flight circuits, deep in the hippocampus. The brain tends to see everything in black and white, 'us or them.' The brain also trusts people dressed in white more than people dressed in black. Yet certainly such weaknesses can be

seen through and neutralized. Rather than judge others (and be judged), find ways of talking. Give gifts. If we followed our brains, we would have never out-migrated, and the humans would have evolved in another animal. Humans are self-creating organisms, as neuroscience emphasizes, and that is played out not just in subjective experience, but objectively, socially, politically, as well.

In discussion of the history of law, we started with the Sumerians. They were the ones who originated our own method: first, the statement of a hypothetical case, then the ruling, its reasons, with explicit reference to precedent. Over two millennia, this tradition was handed down to the Akkadians, the Assyrians, the Elamites and the Persians, Ugarit and the Hittites.

Codifying laws suggests stagnation: a decent law system is one which is constantly being amended. That's not easy if you carve the laws in stone. But the Hittite changed their laws according to need. “Hittite law was a growing organism, and the different versions of the 'code' probably represent successive stages in its development.”

Curiously, there is a document from the time of Hattusilis III, where the king and his court, study an incident occurring a half century before, when the young Mursilis II banished the Queen Mother to another city, where she died. Was Mursilis guilty of murder? Was such a move ethical?

This shows the force of conscience amongst the Hittites. In primitive countries, revenge rules. Civilization has sought to distinguish between civil and criminal codes and strive for restitution, not revenge. Neither the gods or the state pursue revenge, at least ideally. Unlike the Egyptians and the Jews, the Hittites even made murder a crime with a big fine. Here's a translation of a bit of cuneiform Hittite: “If anyone kills a man or a woman in a quarrel, he makes amends for him or her by giving four persons (slaves or family members) and the victim's heir, gets the murderer's house.” (from The Hittites by O.R. Gurney, p/ 93). In summing up Hittite law, Mr. Gurney says “...the text shows a spirit of careful and unbiased investigation which may perhaps be taken as typical of Hittite administration as a whole.”

The Hittites also composed annals – records of the king. Again we see the probing, the self-questioning. History is full of lessons, and must be read. A few centuries after the Hittites went down, Herodotus, who lived in former Hittite territory, opened to the West the study of history and other cultures – anthropology.

Hittite civilization had always been multi-ethnic. They had a many god and goddesses as they had towns and tribes. They saw their gods everywhere. The home might have a hundred gods and goddesses: a god for the pots and pans, another for water; a goddess of fire, and another for weapons. In this, they resembled the Sumerians. Instead of demanding subservience to one God above others, a kind of monolatry, as in Assyria and Israel, the Hittites collected the (statues of) all gods and goddesses in their kingdom, and stood them up in the temple. This how they dealt with fanaticism. The bible has these primitive Gentile people worshiping the painted clay, idols, but indigenous people do not think the statue is the God itself. The statue was just a thing. But the Abrahamic religions all prosecute people who possess sacred icons. Genocide occurred over this issue.

The Hittite Empire arose in Anatolia in the Bronze Age, around the time Abraham was preparing to migrate from Ur. Right down to 640 BCE, the Hittites were revered. The battle of Kadesh in 1288 BCE was a draw, but Hittites migrated south nonetheless. Abraham purchased the cave of Malapach from two Hittites. The Jews wanted to marry inside the clan, but Esau, Jacob and Solomon all had Hittite wives. 

The Hittites were crack warriors, introducing iron for armor and points.The Greeks, originally nomads from the Caspian region, carried forward this iron-killing tradition. They forgot about the Hittites who, like the Sumerians, were overrun several times, extinguishing their polity buit not their culture. The Hittites never forgot the Sumerians: Gilgamesh was a big hit for them. The Israelites never forgot the Hittites, ev en though they come on stage just as the Hittite kings leave it. In Hittite-controlled lands, capital-punishment existed for only those guilty of heinous treachery against the state, rape and sex with animals. Woman got a fair shake, as they did in early Sumer. Female gods were included in the all-inclusive Hittite pantheon.

Everyone thinks he or she possesses conscience, like everybody thinks he can do. “We love, possess individuality and consciousness.” That is not true for most: these attributes are hard-won, after decades of self-confrontation. What we see in the Middle East today is a collapse of conscience. In this light it is requisite to remember our proper Anatolian heritage, an analytical view of humanity which did not discriminate between gods but was open to all faiths, as long as the people obeyed the law.

This study is part five of “A Phalanx of Lies: How Fundamentalists Bedevil Middle East Peace.” We wish to slay no one's sacred cow. If you bought into the Judaean-Christian tradition, you should be delightfully surprised that religion, revealed religion, need not be tied to war and genocide.

Because the Hittites were so humane, they attracted the gratitude of Egypt. Always ready to negotiate, they were often invited in to regions, in and around Anatolia and in North Syria. Hittites traveled freely, with little fear. They sided with nobody. Such a people cannot last. By the year 650, everybody, even the Greeks, had forgotten about them.

This might be be disturbing to Jews and Christians who thought they represented the advanced nations. But the Hittite gift is more profound: the study of history, an openness to all gods, a non-genocidal mythology and an impartial rule, where men and women are held equal. Even the slave has definite rights, the violation of which is punishable by law, no matter how wealthy one is.

The Hittites did not practice genocide. They usually conducted their foreign affairs through negotiation. Political treaties read like broker's bets. Even the Hittite and Egyptian queens exchanged letters. Peace reined for decades, and new towns grew up like mushrooms.

Our purpose is not to deny the bible but to restore it to its context, and to see it for what it is. Genesis is a collection of Near Eastern stories, written perhaps in Babylon, and/or received through the common Canaanite high culture, in the 530s to 540s BCE. The Torah is a collection of historical narratives, written centuries after the fact (a few passages from the prophets excepted). There is some reason to believe the Pentateuch was composed during exile in Babylon. In any case, it was seemingly used by returning rabbis to wrest back control over temple sites and community synagogues throughout Palestine, from poorer Canaanite Hebrews of Judah who had avoided deportation.

For purposes of understanding genocide, this exercise in comparative law holds the promise of neutralizing the innumerable atrocities committed by 'the children of Abraham.' Though most priests, pastors, rabbis and mullahs do not plot genocide, or echo wanton demonization, almost all clerics do use their position in a hierarchy, a latter-day organized religion, to reinforce, embroider and rarify their egos. Many dehumanize other Abrahamic religions, or secular folk. Some plot genocide.

The way to stop it is to shed light on it. That is what “A Phalanx of Lies” aims to do.

-by John Paul Maynard

Harvard University

The author is moderator/instructor of the online discussion group 'Islamic Civilization' hosted by the Graduate Alumni association of Harvard University.