It should be noted as well that when the Greeks and Romans were confronted with ethical issues, they turned, not to the priests, but to the philosophers - Socrates, Aristotle Epicurus, and Epictetus.
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The religions of the Greeks and Romans were not moral religions.
Judaism was uniquely a moral religion. The law was all. The pursuit of justice (or “righteousness”) was commanded by it. Unfortunately, as we say in “Articles of Reason” on our website, “Justice is elusive, but judgment is inescapable.”
Then Christianity came along and is also a moral religion. It substituted love for justice as the supreme value. (“Resist not evil,” Jesus is reported as commanding.) Christianity’s history shows how hard it is for people to treat their fellow human beings lovingly.
Islam, though called a moral religion, is no such thing!
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Judaism may lay claim to being a moral religion, but examples of its morality in the Hebrew Bible are horrific. The penalty of death for disobedience to one’s parents, death for homosexuals, death for working on the Sabbath, death for blasphemy, and death for pre-marital sex.
Yes, Christian morality is equally risible and ghastly. The concept of Original Sin, its denigration of sexual joy, its acceptance of slavery, to name only three.
Islam is beyond contemptible.
The enlightenment changed all this, thankfully. But we are slipping into a new Dark Age dominated by Islam and wokism.
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My reply to Cogito:
Yes. In Judaism, the law did prescribe death as punishment for blasphemy, homosexuality, Sabbath-breaking, and rebelling against parents. And other offenses too including murder and bestiality.
Pre-marital sex was not forbidden as long as neither party was married. If one or both were married, or engaged to be married, then the charge was adultery.
Interestingly, in ancient times rape was a punishable offense if it was committed in the country, but not in a town. The reasoning was that in the country it would be useless for the victim to cry for help because there is unlikely to be anybody within earshot, but in a town there were many close enough to hear and someone was likely to come to the rescue!
Judaism was/is a “moral religion” not in the sense that it is moral but because it is concerned with moral behavior - i.e. with how every person must behave well in relation to other people (and God) as an end in itself (and not, as in some Oriental religions, in order to perfect one’s own nature and so cease being re-incarnated into this world of toil, trouble and tears). In this sense, it was the only moral religion. Also, in its being concerned chiefly with “righteousness” - moral law - and its conception of an abstract god not to be represented in an image, it was revolutionary at its inception and unique until the invention of Christianity.
It is also interesting to note that the death penalty was seldom and reluctantly imposed.
I’m not writing in defense of the religion or the abstract god (though I do think he’s preferable to the old man on a cloud), but to explain how Judaism differed essentially from other classical religions.
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“…how every person must behave well in relation to other people…as an end in itself…”
That’s a good point. In that sense, we can agree with the relevance given to the “Judeo-Christian tradition”. Of course, the concept was arrived at by reason, even if decreed under the auspices of religion, so that is the part we would disagree with.
But we can still honor this tradition and its Biblical source for enshrining concepts such as this.
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I take your point, Jillian. It may be true that Judaism was the first religion to be concerned with moral values. I think though that it is fair game to assess what those promulgated moral values were.
I simply cannot take seriously the notion that Judaism is concerned with justice and the law and moral values. The Hebrew Bible is filled with moral monstrosities enshrined in the Law. There are certainly a few worthwhile notions in the Decalogue, but surely there should be some condemnation of slavery and torture.
I’m reminded of Dawkins’ celebrated quote about Yahweh:
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Clearly, the pagan gods hold no monopoly on whimsical cruelties.
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Yes. He’s a real swine. Human, all too human.
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Slavery was common and ubiquitous. It wasn’t all like US slavery. Slaves were teachers, advisers to men of power, philosophers. Some slaves owned slaves. (Actually, that was true in the U.S. too!)
Burning by pouring molten metal down the throat of the condemned is hard even to think about. But at least there’s this:
"The burning under the sentence of the Law took place after the death of the criminal by stoning, or strangling. (Joshua 7:25)
“It is to be understood, that, whenever mention is made that the offender was “to be put to death” without describing the mode, stoning is meant. The only instance of another form of capital punishment occurs in Leviticus 20:14, that of being burnt with fire; and yet it is probable that even here death was first inflicted by stoning, and the body of the criminal afterwards consumed by fire. (Joshua 7:15)”
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As Jillian points out, slavery was ubiquitous then.
Just as it’s wrong now to condemn the Founding Fathers as “racist white supremacists” just because they owned slaves, the same would apply to them.
And if all their other “moral monstrosities” were equally ubiquitous, we can’t blame them.
Dawkins description of “God” makes a good case against his existence, since, if he existed, he would be perfect, rather than a reflection of the average human ruler of the time, which is obviously what they modeled him after.
But the Hebrews did advance over the pagans of the time by regarding human sacrifice as a great sin and abomination.
The Christians went further by nullifying punishments like stoning for adultery, and their replacement for the Hebrew god (his son) was much less vengeful and cruel (theoretically, at least).
I think advancements such as these in scripture reflect the advancement of human reason that was occurring at the same time.
But the Muslims, rather than following the advancements of reason reflected by the Hebrews and Christians, took religion in a “retrograde” direction by replacing both gods with one modeled after their “prophet”, who was not only vengeful and cruel, but savagely hateful, especially toward his rivals for religious supremacy.
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But wasn’t Zoroastrianism also a religion of good and evil, of moral struggle against the demonic Angra Mainyu on behalf of the divine Ahura Mazda? I’ve seen it that the Persian religion had a strong influence on Judaism during the exile until Cyrus granted repatriation.
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Yes, you are right. But is it known what moral laws, if any, were taught to the religion’s followers?
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This is from an 1896 article by A V Williams Jackson, The Moral and Ethical Teachings of the Ancient Zoroastrian Religion in International Journal of Ethics
“Space does not permit of cataloguing the virtues and duties that are inculcated and enjoined, or the vices and faults which are denounced as to be shunned. The virtues may be comprised, in general terms, as purity alike of body and soul, up- rightness, charity, generosity, and benevolence; and no people are more renowned, perhaps, for their princely generosity to- day than are the Parsis or Modern Zoroastrians of Bombay. In addition to these good qualities, the ancient creed laid particular stress upon the faithful keeping of one’s word and pledge, the avoidance of all deceit, especially of lying, and the importance of keeping out of debt, as well as of shunning theft and robbery. According to Herodotus, the Persians taught their sons three things,-these were " to ride horse- back, to use the bow, and to speak the truth." And next to the sin of lying they considered it the greatest disgrace to be in debt, because, beside incurring many other evils, this fault implied also an additional evil, the necessity of telling lies, " for a man who is in debt," says Herodotus, " must of necessity tell lies." In the magnificent Old Persian rock-inscription of the great king Darius, there is hardly a line that does not emphasize this mighty monarch as the foe to duplicity and the lover of truth.”
Though he writes “Space does not permit of cataloguing…”, he goes on to provide more detail on the morality and some other teachings over the next five pages, concluding,
“Taken for all in all, it may be said that no better proof of the real merit of the Zoroastrian creed as a working hypothesis can be found than is illustrated in the character of those who profess the faith to-day. These are the community of the Parsis in India, religious exiles from Iran since the days of the Mohammedan invasion, and the small remnant of Zoroastrians that still survives in Persia. Together they number hardly one hundred thousand souls, and of these nearly ninety thousand reside not in the land of their birth but in the neighborhood of Bombay. They are the living exemplification of the true worth of the doctrines taught by the ancient Bactrian sage. They piously uphold the best of the tenets of the old faith with regard to religious observances; they live in love and charity with their neighbors; their life is marked by temperance, soberness, and chastity, and their fame for acts of liberality and generosity is world-wide. Among them there is no practice of polygamy; they are strict monogamists; unfaithfulness to the marriage vow is almost un- known; and prostitution among Parsi women is hardly to be found. The horror of falsehood, duplicity, and of debt is as keenly felt by the Parsis to-day as it was over two thousand years ago. Or to conclude, if we take the Zoroastrian religion in its entirety, and view it in the light of the early period to which it belongs, we shall come to the conviction that outside of the light of biblical revelation it would be hard to find among the Gentile nations a higher standard of morality, a nobler code of ethics, than that set up by Zoroaster to be maintained by the ancient people of the Land of the Lion and the Sun.”
I also found a longer article, the introductory chapter of a book edited by S A Kapadia, from 1905, written the editor. I’ve only started into it.
The Moral and Ethical Teachings of the Ancient Zoroastrian Religion (uchicago.edu)
Zoroaster’s Teachings | Online Library of Liberty (libertyfund.org)
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“But is it known what moral laws, if any…”
I replied, but somehow the software did not direct it to you. I’ve seen that happen before.
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Fascinating! Much there that I did not know. Many thanks, Zerothruster.
The dating of Zarathrustra’s life remains theoretical. Some scholars believe he pre-dated Moses (who is dated variously between 1300 and 1200 B.C.E.) by about half a millennium; others - including Kapadia it appears - that he was born hundreds of years after Moses.
Whichever it is, Zarathustra’s monotheism most probably came after Abraham’s (variously dated between 2000 and 1700 B.C.E.). But it is quite likely that Judaism’s moral law, ascribed to Moses when much of the Bible was being written down after the Babylonian captivity, was influenced by Zarathustra’s.
In which case I was wrong about Judaism being the first moral religion, and wrong about its being unique.
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I was aware of Zarathustra’s monotheism, but always assumed it followed Judaism. Thank you.
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Stoning was the usual method of execution then. I have seen a video of a recent moslem stoning. It is unfathomably cruel.
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Very interesting articles about Zoroastrianism!
It adds another dimension to the big picture of civilization’s development through the ages.
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