The Penological Study of Hammurabi, Torah and Vandidad Codes

Vandidad is considered to be one of the last parts of new Avesta. Investigators have argued that this book is written in the time of Zoroaster (1200-1000 B.C). However, they have not agreed aboutthe precise date. About 1850 B.C in Mesopotamia, Hammurabi became the king of the Babylonian Empire. His orders, one of the oldest codes of the world, are presumed to be one of the onehundred great events which changed the world. Judaism is unique in that it considers religion as the basis of law and moral codes in the second millennium BC. This article compares criminal laws inHammurabi, Judaism and Vendidad codes from legal perspectives. Similarities, differences and adaptations of these three codes are indicated. Topics such as Medical ethics, asking for judgment of the unseen, repentance, exceptions of liability, environment, divorce, dowry, usury, slavery, punishment of animals have been examined through descriptive, comparative and analytical method. The findings of this study shows although the capital of Sasanian was Mesopotamia and thus their official codes (Vendidad) were supposed to correlate with codes of Hammurabi, unexpectedly, codes of Hammurabi are more similar to codes of Torah than those of Vendidad. Even some words of Torah were similar to those in Hammurabi.