Another critical presupposition made about Israel was that they could not possibly have developed in their day the moral legal system the Torah reveals. It was claimed that this moral legal system in Israel did not reach this stage of development until 800 to 1,000 years after Moses’ death. The tablets, however, found at Tell Mardikh, reveal that Ebla had comparable laws 700 years before Moses.^233/25 One should also consider that Moses was raised a prince of Egypt in all of the learning and sciences of Egypt. Knowing this fact, to say that Moses did not know how to write is ridiculous.

As we have already dealt with, Biblical scholars have for years claimed that the Torah had several authors, not just the one, Moses, because several names are used for God like Elohim and Yehovah. Reverend Mitchell Dahood, Dean of the Pontifical Biblical Institute’s oriental Faculty and a renowned authority on the languages of the ancient Middle East shares that they discovered in the Ebla Tablets the names "Il" (El short for Elohim) and "Yah" (short for Yehovah) combined with Northwest Semitic personal names showing clearly that the name Yehovah was known a 1,000 years before Moses. Some of the compound names discovered were Mi-ka-il, our modern "Michael", meaning "who is like El?"; and "Mi-ka-ya", meaning "who is like Yah?".^231/737-738

There are many other examples in Archaeology which provides an answer for the use of the compound name Yehovah-Elohim. Cyrus Gordon found at Ugarit (1400-1350 BC) deities with compound names. For example: Qadish-Amrar is the name of one and Ibb-Nikkal another. Thus it was discovered that it was common in ancient civilizations to use compound names for a god.^234/132-133

Amon-Re, the most famous god with a compound name, was a deity that resulted from the Egyptian conquest under the 18th dynasty. Amon was the god of the city of Thebes where the political power existed, while Re was the universal sun god. These two gods were combined because of the political leadership in Thebes and the universalism of Re. But Amon-Re is one god. This sheds light on the combination of Yehovah-Elohim. Yehovah refers to the specifics of the deity, while Elohim is more of a general or universal designation of the deity. This consolidation of Yehovah-Elohim demonstrates that Yehovah equals Elohim, which can be restated "Yehovah is God." Yet the documentarians tell us that Yehovah-Elohim is the result of combining the two documents J and E. This is as unfounded as using an A document and R document to explain the compound deity Amon-Re.

Documentarians assume that the evolution of moral laws was not high enough in Moses day for him to have written the moral laws in the Torah. Our modern day witnesses to the fact that when man does not have God’s revealed moral law as given in the Bible, he does not progress to higher moral law, but does away with it all together, but concerning this argument of Moses’ time, Millar Burrows in his book, What Mean These Stones?, documents that the standards in ancient law codes of the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites, as well as the high ideals found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the early Wisdom Literature of the Egyptians, completely refute these arguments.^247/46 It was not Israel’s moral standards that were raised by the surrounding cultures, but rather Israel who when they entered Canaan and encountered their pagan worship replaced it with their One God, Yehovah, and with Yehovah’s severe codes of ethics.

Concerning "The Priestly code," of the Torah the Documentarian Pfeiffer postulates: "Like all legislation, notwithstanding its deliberate timelessness and fictitious Mosaic background, bears the earmarks of its age, the first half of the Persian period (538-331 BC)."^245/257 The science of Archaeology, however, again completely refutes this argument. Archaeology has shown that there is no valid reason for dating the Levitical sacrificial laws late. Many of these laws appear in the Ugaritic material from the fourteenth century BC^246/33 The Israelites before the Exodus lived amongst the most advanced civilization in the world at that time: Egypt. Therefore they would naturally show forth more advanced concepts of jurisprudence than tribes they encountered in the desert.

The Code of Hammurabi, that was written between 2000-1700 BC, was found by a French archaeological expedition (1901-1902) under M. Jacques de Morgans direction at an ancient Susa site to the east of the region of Mesopotamia This code was written on a piece of black diorite. It stood eight feet high and contained two hundred and eighty two paragraphs. This was written several hundred years before Moses (1450 BC) yet contains some laws which are similar to those recorded by Moses.^249/121 This completely refutes the Documentarians hypothesis that the laws of the Torah were too advanced for Moses to have written them.

Some try to argue that because their are similar laws in the Code of Hammurabi to the laws in the Torah that Moses did not receive them from Yehovah but actually borrowed them from this code. Concerning this, J.P. Free in his book, Archaeology and Bible History, states the following:

"No real connection between the Mosaic laws and the Code of Hammurabi. Such an acknowledgment was made by G.A. Barton, liberal professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who said, ‘a comparison of the Code of Hammurabi as a whole with the Torah laws as a whole, while it reveals certain similarities, convinces the student that the laws of the Old Testament are in no essential way dependent upon the Babylonian laws. . . .’ The Code contains many laws peculiar to itself, including those relating to soldiers, tax-collectors, and wine-merchants."^249/121

The Ugarit, another archaeological find dating back to 1400 BC, also shows several similarities in their laws to the book of Leviticus. These tablets came from Ras Shamra a Canaanite city located on the Syro-Palestinian coast just opposite of the tip of Cyprus.^{247/234, 249/112}

Another archaeological discovery is the Lipit-Ishtar Code which date back to 1850 BC which extends the history of codified law by more than three centuries.^439/164 It also antedates the Hammurabi Code by more than a century and a half.^237/1

The same can be said of the Eshnunna law code of the Old Babylon period (1830-1550 BC). Hammurabi apparently incorporated some of this code into his own system. Two tablets found in 1945 and 1947 near Baghdad contain these ancient laws. Reunen Yaron points out that archaeology confirms that these tablets could not be dated after the reign of King Dadusha. The last year of Dadusha’s reign is set in the seventh year of Hammurabi. However, archaeology cannot set the date of its composition. The usual date given to the Eshnunna Law Codes is about 200 years before Hammurabi.^257/1-2

The kingdom of Eshnunna was a victim to expansionist policies that were also pursued with success by Hammurabi of Babylon during the fourth decade of his reign.^257/1 The discovery of the above two tablets adds additional evidence that the Hammurabi Codes were not the only source of an early codified law. The Laws of Eshnunna, written during the twentieth century BC in the Akkadian language, contains sixty paragraphs of law dealing with topics like the price of commodities, the hire of wagons and boats, the wages of laborers, marriage, divorce and adultery, assault and battery, and the placing of responsibility for the ox that gores a man and the mad dog that bites a man.^237/1

Then there is the Egyptian Execration Texts which date back to 2,000 BC These documents are statuettes and vases inscribed in Egyptian hieratic script with the names of potential enemies of the Pharaoh. If Pharaoh felt threatened by a rebellion, he would break the vase or statuette with the names of those involved in the rebellion written on it with a magical ceremony and as a result would somehow bring grief upon them. The group of vases from Berlin, published by Kurt Sethe (1926), date from the end of the twentieth century BC, while the collection of statuettes from Brussels, published by G. Posener (1940), date from the late nineteenth century.^253/127

Next there is the Nuzi Tablets dating back to 1500 BC In Nuzi, located in the northeastern part of Iraq and southeast of Nineveh. These tablets contained a whole archive of legal and social texts. What they found in these texts showed that the recorded details of the social and legal background of the patriarchs in the Old Testament was reflected accurately to the times in which they lived.^251/14 The Nuzians were formerly thought to be Hurrians, Biblical Horites, cave dwellers; but are now understood as Armenoid, non-Indo-Europeans of North Mesopotamia who prospered in the 1500-1400's BC. Though the patriarchs were not Nuzians, both cultures had many similarities due to the fact that they were contemporary and located in the same area geographically. for this reason the Nuzi Tablets help us to understand Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.^250/2 The Nuzi Tablets clarified many customs typical of the patriarchal age in the second millennium, but not of the Israelites in the first millennium BC.^254/87 These facts confirm to us the historical accuracy and authenticity of the Torah written in 1450 BC, not the social customs of 700 BC.^250/9

An example of how the Nuzi Tablets help us to understand Genesis are like the account in Genesis 16 where Sarah, Abraham’s wife, because she was seemingly unable to have children, gave Hagar her servant to Abraham to have children through. Later Jacob’s two wives, Rachel and Leah, did the same. Because of finds like the Nuzi Tablets, we now realize this was a common practice of that time and is mentioned in the laws and marriage contracts of that time. This custom is not found practiced in any other time other than the patriarchal period.^251/14

These many Historical documents and Archaeological facts show that the social institutions of the patriarchs are not made up but are genuine and definitely before Moses time, not after. They cannot possibly have taken place after Moses time because historical documents and archaeological discoveries after Moses time show completely different laws and customs. Also historical documents after Moses time do not support in any way the presuppositions of the Documentary Hypothesis.