[B&I] Are There Ethics in the Hebrew Bible?

Philip Davies asks a very old question of the relationship of religion to ethics (and politics) in the article below and makes a very questionable assertion:

Theocracy or totalitarianism actually triumphed. It is found first with Alexander, then the Caesars, and then the Roman Catholic Church.

The Medieval Catholic Church found that it needed Charles the Great, and the opposition of human totalitarianism to that of God seems to create space for human freedom both for the Christian and Islamic worlds: In Re: [Mona Eltahawy] A Book Burner for Unesco?

In 1927 the Time Magazine article Religion: Handmaiden's Wisdom poses the same question as Davies somewhat more concretely with a connection to more modern politics and discusses the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, which was almost rejected from the Biblical canon of Judaism for heretical content.

Greeks of the golden age passed the question to Hellenistic Judaism and thence to Greek-speaking Christianity.

Mishnaic and Talmudic Judaism struggle with questions of ethics while they scorn Greek philosophy.

In the Middle Ages, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish thinkers put a massive intellectual effort into understanding the relationship between religion and philosophy, politics or ethics, and we still worry about the issue today.

Are There Ethics in the Hebrew Bible?

By Emeritus Professor Philip Davies
University Of Sheffield, England
September 2009

There seems to have been much debate recently in the media about atheism. Perhaps Professor Dawkins and other vociferous authors have to be thanked for this. But it’s a good thing, if only to counter some really ignorant prejudices about the values of those who do not believe in supernatural beings that influence their life. We can start by noting that atheism has little to do with secularism: most Western nations are both religious and secular. Democracy requires both: religion is one of those beliefs that secular society permits because gods are not registered voters and do not offer themselves at the ballot box and cannot speak in public. Next, the horrible phrase “people of faith” (like “people of color”) implies that atheists have no faith, whereas they do; in fact, they put their faith in certain human values—individual liberty, reason, toleration, human autonomy, science. I don’t see that an atheist’s belief in these is much different in kind from a belief in an invisible and sovereign being (or whatever) that ultimately determines the nature and destiny of everything. Except that it is always open to verification. If it’s wrong, we expect to find out some time. Meanwhile, we should believe in something…..

But what about ethics? After all, religion is not about whether you believe in gods. This is merely metaphysics. What defines religion is the belief that these beings require you to do something about it rather than leave them in peace (and allow them to do the same to you). I repeatedly hear advocates of religion asserting that it is religion that gives humans ethics that bestow value on human life. I have rarely heard anything so ridiculous in my life. So let’s look at ethics in the (Hebrew) Bible.

[To read the entire article, click here.]

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