Quote:
Originally posted by sgtclub
Why? What is the basis for this?
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"Do not return evil to your adversary;
Requite with kindness the one who does evil to you,
Maintain justice for your enemy,
Be friendly to your enemy."
So says a 3rd millennium BCE text, "Counsels of Wisdom," (1) a sort of Ann Landers column from the Mesopotamian (Iraqi) land of Akkad. If it sounds familiar, read Matt. 5:38-41 ( "... if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also ..."), Matt. 5:44 ("Love your enemies,"), Luke 6:27-30, and in a similar vein Lev. 19:18. Any similarities between the pagan and later Biblical passages are probably no coincidence.
One of the most pervasive claims of the Judeo-Christian tradition is that morality comes from the Biblical god and belongs only to Jews and/or Christians. It's like a mantra for some religious fundamentalists.
The very phrase "Judeo-Christian morality" explicitly takes credit for modern moral concepts, implying that non-believers are essentially incapable of moral virtue. (2) Jewish scripture has Moses introducing morality into a pagan, immoral world when he purportedly brought the 10 commandments and a long list of other laws down off Mt. Sinai. (3) Christians add Jesus as the final arbiter of moral issues.
I hope this sampling of parallels between Biblical and Bronze Age, pre-Biblical literature - by no means comprehensive - will show that claim is a myth. The Bible's moral ideas, both those that modern society still accepts and those it has rejected, are the products of pre-Biblical societies, which stressed virtue in an abstract sense and offered practical advice on everyday ethics.
The Iron Age Bible (1st millennium BCE,) is but an anthology of older beliefs and attitudes. There is no single collection of Bronze Age (3rd and 2nd millenniums BCE) moral principles, but the concerns of pre-Biblical peoples are scattered throughout their literature.
I use the term morality in its broader senses, for a society's general principles of right and wrong touching a variety of human affairs, such as our concepts of legal justice or ethics in human relations.
The passage from "Counsels of Wisdom" urged people to forgo vengefulness over offenses, preventing the kind of endless, tit-for-tat feuds that have bloodied many lands. As a Mesopotamian proverb warns with practical simplicity: "You go and take the field of the enemy; the enemy comes and takes your field." (4) And from Egypt: "A blow is repaid by its like, To every action there is a response." (5)
It didn't require a god to instill the `turn the other cheek' idea in people, only a pragmatic observation of human nature and a desire to maintain peace in the land.
For those who felt themselves too wronged to forgive, ancient societies offered legal methods of revenge, the same as we do today. We abjure violence and theft as immoral, and punish in various ways those who violate our moral standards, both criminal and civil. Law is ultimately an expression of moral ideas, and conflicts over changes in law often embody conflicting moral values (consider the disputes over abortion, censorship and the death penalty.)
So note these declarations from ancient Egypt.
Powerful viziers were urged:
"See equally the man you know and the man you don't know, the man who is near you and the man who is far away." (6)
An Early Bronze Age pharaoh (3rd millennium BCE) told his son, Prince Merikare:
"Make no difference between a man of position and a commoner; but engage for yourself a man because of what he does ... Act justly, that you may endure on earth. Quieten him who weeps; do not dispossess the widow; do not deprive a man of his father's property. Do not put down high officials from their offices. Avoid punishing wrongfully." (7)
A 3rd millennium BCE nobleman proclaims on his tomb:
"I gave bread to the hungry and clothing to him who had no clothes. I never made a judgment between two litigants in such a way that I allowed a man to be deprived of his father's inheritance." (8)
And from another tomb text:
"I judged between two so as to content them,
I rescued the weak from one stronger than he,
As much as was in my power." (9)
A New Kingdom Egyptian (2nd millennium BCE) hymn, copied by students as a text in school, says:
"Amen-Re who first was king,
The god of earliest time,
The vizier of the poor.
He does not take bribes from the guilty ..." (10)
Jewish scripture proclaims in Deut. 10:17 that:
"God, who is not partial and takes no bribe."
From Late Bronze Age Canaan, "The Legend of King Keret" describes an ailing king reprimanded by his son for failing to fulfill his royal duties. Among a Canaanite king's obligations:
"Thou dost not judge the case of the widow
Nor adjudicate the cause of the broken in spirit
Nor drive away those who oppress the poor
Before thee thou dost not feed the fatherless
Nor behind thy back the widow." (11)
In the Canaanite "Tale of Aqhat," a passage suggests a similar moral concern when King Daniel "decides the case of the widow, he judges the suit of the orphan." (12)
Deut. 10:18 says of the Jewish god that:
"He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow."
We've got mean-spirited politicians today who would be considered too barbaric to rule a Canaanite society. Note that the Egyptian nobleman also proclaimed his charity. The Egyptian and Canaanite moral proclamations appear centuries before the Bible expresses similar attitudes. (13)
The Sumerian King Shulgi boasts in the 3rd millennium BCE:
"Like my heroship, like my might,
I am accomplished in wisdom,
I vie with (wisdom's) true word,
I love justice,
do not love evil,
I hate the evil word." (14)
Compare this to Rom. 12:9: "Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good."
A later Sumerian king, Ur-Nammu of the Third Dynasty of the city of Ur, stated his basic principles at the beginning of a code of laws in the 21st century:
"The orphan was not given over to the rich man; the widow was not given over to the powerful man; the man of one shekel was not given over to the man of one mina." (That is, the rich were not allowed to abuse the poor.) (15)
An Early Bronze Age Sumerian hymn to the goddess Inanna/Ishtar pronounces:
"You render a cruel judgment against the evildoer;
You destroy the wicked.
You look with kindly eyes on the straightforward;
You give that one your blessing." (16)
Finally, in the Hittite empire of Late Bronze Age Anatolia, local officials were under the following imperial orders:
"He must not decide [the case in hand] in favor of his superior; he must not decide it in favor of his brother, his wife, or his friend; no one shall be shown any favor. He must not make a just case unjust; he must not make an unjust case just. Whatever is right, that he shall do." (17)
Did ancient peoples uphold these ideals in real life?
Piles of ancient legal records have been recovered. Some show that incidents of favoritism, bribery and malfeasance were known.
A 15th-14th century BCE Mesopotamian town complains to a king about a gang of corrupt officials (including the mayor) committing various acts of theft, assault and battery, adultery (or rape), and kidnapping. One gangster, apparently a lawyer, is even accused of taking payments to represent people in legal matters, and then skipping out on his duties. The result of this complaint (or indictment) is unknown, but the mere fact that people filed it indicates they must have had some expectation of justice. (18)
Bronze Age records show civil or criminal trials with a familiar format: Witnesses testify after taking an oath of truthfulness, sworn upon a god of justice, and panels of judges render decisions. For example, an infantryman is fined for assaulting a citizen. (19) And judges debate the guilt or innocence of a woman who failed to turn in her husband's killers, ultimately condemning her to execution along with them. (20) Once a slave girl even won a lawsuit against her owner over the question of whom the slave may marry. (21) (Not all ancient societies were as liberal in giving rights to slaves, though.)
Although Bronze Age laws discriminated against women in some ways (including often severe restrictions on married women), women generally seem to have stood equally in court with men and to have had equal rights in economic matters, and generally stood higher in law than in later Iron Age societies. (22)
The potpourri of recovered Bronze Age legal and economic documents shows societies that lived in reasonable expectation of justice in courts. Furthermore, people must have been confident enough in each other's good characters generally to be willing to engage in sometimes complex financial and mercantile operations - backing up verbal commitments with contracts and contract law to enforce agreements and settle disputes.
Honesty was a prized trait, as documents indicate. None of the great Bronze Age civilizations could have carried out systemic commerce in networks stretching hundreds of miles, year after year, unless their citizens expected certain minimum standards of moral conduct from each other. (23)
Some Bronze Age ideas would be generally condemned today on moral grounds. Societies accepted slavery, a social class structure and related legal inequities, the gradual restriction of women's rights, and human sacrifice in at least some proven cases.
Passages in the scriptures also speak approvingly of slavery (24) and the oppression of women (25), although they also sometimes offers a spirit of egalitarianism that many today may find more appealing than the aristocratic assumptions of Bronze Age societies.
But even as Israelites reined in their would-be nobility, they practiced human sacrifice extensively in the apparent belief that their gods (Yahweh, most likely) demanded it. (26) The repeated condemnations of human sacrifice in the Bible are welcome, but also the strongest proof of its frequent practice, which in other cultures is often alluded to only in a mythological context. (A Hittite text is a rare exception.) (27)
Whether the Israelites - and their Phoenician cousins and possibly their Canaanite ancestors - were the primary practitioners of human sacrifice in the ancient world or merely discussed it more is uncertain. The pre-Biblical literature of the Near East doesn't talk much about it - although archaeology offers evidence for the practice in some cultures - so the Israelites may have repudiated the killing of their firstborn sons long after the Egyptians and Mesopotamians had done so. (28)
As noted earlier about the Canaanites, charity was extolled in Bronze Age societies. Two Old Kingdom Egyptian tomb texts state:
"I gave bread to the hungry, clothing [to the naked] ..." (29)
One text asks that the nobleman be honored by Osiris - the judge of the dead - and enter the Egyptian heaven. (30)
A 1,000 years later, in Chapter 125 of the Egyptian "Book of the Dead," the deceased spirit seeking heaven must proclaim to Osiris:
"I have given bread to the hungry,
Water to the thirsty,
Clothing to the naked ..." (31)
A contemporary prayer to the Egyptian high god Amen used as a school text says he is one "Who gives bread to him who has none." (32)
And in Mesopotamia's "Counsels of Wisdom": "Give food to eat, beer to drink, Grant what is requested, provide for and treat with honor. At this one's god takes pleasure. It is pleasing to Shamash, who will repay him with favor. Do good things, be kind all your days." (33)
Compare these to Matt. 25:35-40, in which the Christian god, on judgment day, announces to the righteous: "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink ... I was naked and you clothed me ... As you did it to one of the least of these my brethern, you did it to me." Those who failed these duties are purportedly denied heaven by both the Egyptian and Christian gods.
The spirit of the Christian "Beatitudes" (Matt. 5:5-11, Luke 6:20-22) is distinctly Egyptian. The list of virtues is a condensed set of characteristics extolled in more-verbose Egyptian texts.
For instance, the 3rd millennium BCE "Instruction of Ptahhotep" (34) offers long accounts of good conduct. Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim (35) comments: "The cardinal virtues are self-control, moderation, kindness, generosity, and truthfulness tempered by discretion. These virtues are to be practiced alike toward all people. No martial virtues are mentioned. The ideal man is a man of peace."
"Ptahhotep" includes such advice as: "Don't be proud of your knowledge, Consult the ignorant and the wise;" and "If you are mighty, gain respect through knowledge, And through gentleness of speech;" and "If you are a man who leads, Who controls the affairs of many, Seek out every beneficent deed;" and "He who hears is beloved of god, He whom god hates does ..........
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