The Code of Hammurabi

Nearly three hundred case-laws inscribed on a black stone pillar, set up by King Hammurabi of Babylon and topped with a carving of the king receiving the laws from the sun-god Shamash. Johns's 1903 translation gives the laws only; the 700-line prologue and epilogue (titles, and curses on anyone who defaces the stone) he left out as 'unintelligible without copious comment'.

The form — 'If a man does X, the penalty is Y' — is exactly the form of the case-law in Exodus 21–23. Several individual laws track the Torah closely: the goring ox whose owner is liable if he was warned (§§250–252 ↔ Exodus 21:28–36), and 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' (§§196–201 ↔ Exodus 21:23–25, Leviticus 24:19–20), though Hammurabi scales the penalty by the victim's class where the Torah does not. The differences are as pointed as the likenesses: no Israelite king issues the law, and there is no death penalty for property crime.