Did the Jews Introduce Morality to the Ancient World?

timf said:

If one considers ethics to an an agreed upon set of rules for conduct such as the code of Hammurabi and other ancient laws, one might consider "morality" as going beyond conduct to motives for behavior such as the danger of "coveting". One might even ask if philosophies such as Stoicism were influenced by Jewish law.

There are elements of ethics in Jewish law as well as proscriptions for activities to remind them of the God they were supposed to remember. However, one can find elements of morality beyond don't steal because you might be punished to don't steal because it is wrong to hurt someone else.

One might even say that God used Israel to introduce morality such that people would start doing less harm to others. One might then see in Christianity and advance in that the idea of even doing good for others is introduced.

Interesting possibilities.

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Meowzltov said:

We Jews did not introduce morality to the world, but we did something equally interesting. We were the first to connect morality to the worship of a deity. It was such a successful idea that it spread around the world. Today people assume that religions teach you right from wrong. We have forgotten that thhis was not always so. Zeus and Thor and Baal didn't give a hoot if you cheated someone.

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Meowzltov said:

We Jews did not introduce morality to the world, but we did something equally interesting. We were the first to connect morality to the worship of a deity. It was such a successful idea that it spread around the world. Today people assume that religions teach you right from wrong. We have forgotten that thhis was not always so. Zeus and Thor and Baal didn't give a hoot if you cheated someone.

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Meowzltov said:

We were the first to connect morality to the worship of a deity.

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partinobodycular said:

I've been running this over and over in my head and I can't figure out whether this is actually a good thing or not. I mean when the same deity tells you to go out and slaughter all the Amalekites, then I'm thinking that this 'morals giver' isn't the best place to be getting moral guidance from.

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Meowzltov said:

We Jews did not introduce morality to the world, but we did something equally interesting. We were the first to connect morality to the worship of a deity. It was such a successful idea that it spread around the world. Today people assume that religions teach you right from wrong. We have forgotten that thhis was not always so. Zeus and Thor and Baal didn't give a hoot if you cheated someone.

Click to expand...

timf said:

If one considers ethics to an an agreed upon set of rules for conduct such as the code of Hammurabi and other ancient laws, one might consider "morality" as going beyond conduct to motives for behavior such as the danger of "coveting". One might even ask if philosophies such as Stoicism were influenced by Jewish law.

There are elements of ethics in Jewish law as well as proscriptions for activities to remind them of the God they were supposed to remember. However, one can find elements of morality beyond don't steal because you might be punished to don't steal because it is wrong to hurt someone else.

One might even say that God used Israel to introduce morality such that people would start doing less harm to others. One might then see in Christianity and advance in that the idea of even doing good for others is introduced.

Interesting possibilities.

Click to expand...

Robban said:

Morality as a concept is hard to pin down, it changes all the time, back and forth.

Integrity is far more important.

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fhansen said:

Are the two separable? Or, can one's definition of integrity change as well?

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Nithavela said:

There were plenty of ancient gods that represented law, justice, morality, mercy. But in polytheistic worldviews, you got gods for all things, instead of just one god that represents everything "good" and an opponent that represents everything "bad".

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Meowzltov said:

As you said, it is the nature of polytheism that prevents a single ethical code on a spiritual level. It makes no sense to abide by the ethics of the god of war one week, and then the ethics of the goddess of love the next. Morals were civilly enforced by the government or the elders of the tribe.

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