Context and Presentism in a Hammurabi's Code Seminar
Mr. Brenner teaches seventh-grade world history. His class of 22 students is studying early river valley civilizations and has read five excerpts from Hammurabi's Code covering irrigation damage, debt, family law, physical injury, and wages. In a seminar, 8 students said the code was 'unfair' because the punishments were harsh, 3 said 'it was ancient, so we cannot judge it,' and only 5 referenced social class or the code's purpose of public order. The state standard requires students to source a document and place it in historical context. The principal observes in three days, and the department is pushing document-based questions. Mr. Brenner is considering a debate on whether Hammurabi was just, but he is worried it will harden the same two positions. He has one class period before the observation.
1. Reframe the central question so that it preserves moral inquiry while reducing presentism. Explain why your reframing is better than a yes-or-no debate on whether Hammurabi was just.
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A better question is: 'What problems was this code trying to solve, for whom did it work, and whose interests are visible or absent?' That question requires students to reconstruct the social world of the code before they evaluate it. It preserves moral inquiry because it asks about interests and consequences, but it does not permit the shortcut of declaring a 3,800-year-old document unfair by modern standards.
A yes-or-no debate invites exactly the two moves already in the room. The 'unfair' group can win by asserting a modern standard, and the 'cannot judge' group can win by refusing to analyze. Neither move requires evidence from the excerpts. The reframed question forces students back into the text: they must identify a problem, such as irrigation disputes or debt, and then show how a specific law addresses it. Once that is on the table, Mr. Brenner can legitimately ask students to evaluate the code by its own stated aims and by its consequences for different groups. That sequence produces contextualized judgment rather than presentism.
2. Describe a scaffold that uses the five excerpts to teach sourcing and contextualization, including what students should notice in at least two specific excerpts.
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Use a three-column chart for each excerpt: 'What the law says,' 'What problem it addresses,' and 'Who benefits or bears the cost.' Before reading, provide a short sourcing frame: who wrote it, when, for whom, and why. Hammurabi's stele claims divine authority and public order, which is itself a claim to be examined, not a neutral fact.
With the injury excerpt, students should notice that the principle of retaliation is stated for equals but that the penalty changes by social class: a noble who injures a commoner pays a fine, while injury to a noble is punished more severely. That contrast lets students infer that the code is not a neutral rulebook; it encodes a hierarchy. With the irrigation excerpt, students should notice that negligence is treated as a property offense with compensation, which reveals an agricultural economy dependent on canals and a concern with restoring productive capacity. With the debt excerpt, they can see protection for debtors alongside enforcement of obligations. The chart keeps students anchored in evidence while the sourcing frame supplies context. The seminar question then becomes empirical: which laws protect the weak, and which protect the position of the strong?
3. Two students make opposite errors: one says the code is simply 'unfair,' the other says 'we cannot judge anything about it.' How should Mr. Brenner respond to each, and what should a strong written response look like?
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To the first student, he should not deny the moral reaction but should ask for evidence and an alternative: 'Unfair by what standard, and what would a fairer rule have looked like in an agricultural city with no police force?' That moves the student from assertion to criteria, and it may reveal that some protections in the code, such as limits on debt, are more complicated than the label suggests. To the second student, he should distinguish explanation from evaluation: 'We can reconstruct what the code was for without endorsing it. What did it try to do, and did it do that?' The 'cannot judge' position often protects students from the risk of getting history wrong, but it also permits them to stop reading.
A strong written response has two moves. First, it contextualizes: the code addressed disputes in a stratified agricultural society, claimed divine authority, and assigned different penalties by class. Second, it evaluates: by its own aim of public order, it may have stabilized obligations, but it also entrenched hierarchy, and some penalties are disproportionate by almost any standard. The response should cite at least two excerpts and avoid both presentism and refusal. Mr. Brenner can model this with a two-column paragraph frame: 'In its context, ___; judged by ___, ___.'