Absolute Bible Morality Is A Myth!by Bernard Katz
We have a bulldog of an enemy: those who are convinced that since the Bible is God's Word and not man's, it is to be acted upon literally. They accept every book, every paragraph, every sentence, every word-and even the punctuation-as revealed by God. As you well know, they have been pounding away at the rest of us great unwashed through the airwaves, the printing presses and the legislative halls. Their mission? To get us to see the light that the Bible contains a storehouse of moral injunctions to be followed exactly, until the Last Times when the kingdom of Heaven will be inaugurated and all evil will-like the class system in Marxist eschatology-wither away. Until then, however, woe to those who disregard the ethical ordinations of the Bible. They contend that if we do not heed, say, the Ten Commandments, God will hit us over the head with the stone tablets! Are these Christian Fundamentalists to be believed? No. Does the Bible itself back them up? No. Progressive revelationThe concept of progressive revelation is an important key to understanding the Bible that has been furnished us by the higher criticism but purposely ignored by the Religious Right. The older idea of revelation was that it was something complete, given just once, to be obeyed forever, and that it was all of equal importance. Ever since the searchlight of criticism, this conception is an impossible one. Progressive revelation, on the other hand, means that when Israel was a child-barbaric and uncouth-then God's revelations were on a lower level than when Israel had matured. Revelation fit the growth of human capacity-much as a girdle reshapes itself to accommodate later growth. In other words, God could reveal to one age only what it was capable of absorbing. When the Bible is read without preconceived ideas, various stages can be traced: certain larger movements, cultural reformations, which are the "punctuated equilibria," you might say, of the biblical records. This allows us to study the changes in morality brought about by each of these cultural upheavals. I want to explore four of these reform movements: the Deuteronomic, the Pentateuchal, the Pharasaic, and the Christian reformations. The DeuteronomicThe first movement, the Deuteronomic reform, occurred in the 7th century B.C., during the reign of king Josiah in the kingdom of Judah and centered in Jerusalem, its capital. Josiah was motivated, according to the second book of Kings (22,23) by the discovery of a book by a Temple priest. This is called "the book of the covenant," and is held by modern scholars to be our book of Deuteronomy, either whole or in part. For this reason, the work of Josiah is known as the Deuteronomic Reform. One of the reforms prohibited the sacrifice of children. The Bible itself verifies this primitive practice. We are all familiar with how close Abraham came to sacrificing his son Isaac, but did it not end then. Jephthah sacrificed his daughter (Judges 11); other accounts are II Sam. 21, Lev. 27:29, etc. Another reform ended the Israelite worship of the sexual organs (II Kings 23). King Josiah eradicated idols and household images of all kinds, and outlawed magicians and fortunetellers. He deposed all priests who had been identified with the worship of the sun, the moon and the zodiac. (As you can see from the newspapers, this part of Josiah's reforms did not last!) From our own viewpoint, Deuteronomy is flush with ethical invigoration. A frequent refrain is that of compassion. Repeatedly we come across references to "the widow, the orphaned and the stranger" who are to be looked after. The hired laborer now had to receive his pay not later than the day on which the work was done. Mafia-type gouging regarding money-lending was eliminated, for it was forbidden to charge interest to one's countrymen. (This sacred dictum has long been abandoned by both the Jews and the Christians, leading us to scratch our heads over just how sincere is the commitment to biblical literalness.) Just as humane were the measures for mitigating the lot of the slave. He was to be set free in the seventh year of service, nor was he to leave pennilessly but be richly endowed. The law courts, as corrupt as any under Tammany Hall, were cleaned up. No testimony was valid unless at least one additional witness concurred. A lying witness was subject to the same penalty which he had sought to bring upon the defendant. No bribes were countenanced. "Justice, justice, shalt thou follow" we are admonished (Deut. 16:19-20). While warfare is condoned, measures to mitigate its horrors are found. Among them is one I would have appreciated, for I married during W.W. II and was given no opportunity for even a honeymoon. Deuteronomy 20:7 says: "And what man is there that has betrothed a wife and has not taken her? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in battle and another man take her." It emphasizes rigid honesty in regards to weights and measures. There is also consideration for animals-a sort of prefigured SPCA. In Deuteronomy is the third version of the Ten Commandments. It differs from Ex. 20 in that the motivation for observing the Sabbath is on a higher humanitarian plane. One no longer keeps the Sabbath because an anthropomorphic God needed to rest after the labors of creation, but because "thy man-servant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou." The PentateuchalThe second reformation took place in the fifth century B.C., after the Babylonian exile. The key event (Nehemiah 8) is when Nehemiah organized a gathering that listened to his colleague, Ezra, read from a sacred book. What was that book? It was The Priestly Code. By this is meant those parts of the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, which deal with the rituals and activities of the Temple, like the kinds of sacrifices, payment, qualifications and clothing of the priests, and the ceremonies the priests conduct. Hence the term "The Priestly Code." All of the 3rd book of the Pentateuch, Leviticus, consists of material from The Priestly Code. So does the greater part of Numbers, the 4th book. Exodus, the 2nd book, has less, and lesser still has the 1st book, Genesis. It practically dries up in the 5th book, Deuteronomy. Besides all of the legislation about the priests, there is a good deal concerned with social welfare. Here we find, for instance, that certain property has to be returned to its previous owners every fifty years. There is a provision for liberating Hebrew slaves every fifty years, or less if relatives come forth and pay the redemption price, and a provision that whatever grows in the corners of a field must remain unharvested so that the needy may have something to eat. It has provided some of the most cherished biblical utterances: "Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." No, this is not from the inscription on the Liberty Bell, but from Leviticus 25:10. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." No, this is not from the New Testament, but from Lev. 19:18. "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart." This long precedes anything like it in the Christian Bible. It was on the basis of the Priestly Code that the rest of the codes could be fused together. As the genuine reform of king Josiah consisted in promulgating the book of Deuteronomy, so the authentic reforms wrought by Ezra and Nehemiah are evidenced in the Pentateuch. The PharisaicThe third reform is the Pharisaic Reformation. To understand the Pharisees, we must compare them to their chief opponents, the Sadducees. While the Pharisees were the party of the masses and often poor themselves, the Sadducees represented the party of aristocrats and often were themselves rich. The leaders of the Sadducees were the highborn priests of the Jerusalem Temple, while those of the Pharisees were the rabbis and scholars, the latter known as "scribes." Sadduceeism centered in the Temple; Phariseeism revolved around the synagogues scattered throughout the land (Mk. 5:17). The main activity of the Temple was the sacrificing of animals as burnt offerings; that of the synagogues was to conduct prayer and to read the Bible (Mt. 23). The Pharisees believed in the hereafter. There would come a time, so they taught, when the dead would be resurrected from their graves (Acts 23:6f.). Along with this, they believed in the immortality of the soul and the awarding of rewards and punishments in the next world. (Sounds almost Christian, doesn't it?) To the Sadducees, such doctrines were ridiculous, for they had no basis at all in the Five Books of Moses. The Pharisees also had their own way of interpreting the Bible. Their view was that God had given Moses not only the Written Law but an Oral Law as well, so that by clever exegesis the Oral Law could be discovered. An example: The Pentateuch has the famous punishment dictum: "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, hand for a hand, foot for a foot" (Ex. 21:24). The Pharisees abolished this harsh practice. They substituted for physical mutilation the requirement that the offender pay to the injured party a money compensation. To justify such a substitution, they reinterpreted another passage from the Pentateuch: "Ye shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer that is guilty of death; but he shall surely be put to death" (Nu. 35:31). Their argument stressed the word "life." Where life had been taken, there could be no money compensation; but if the injury involved an eye or a tooth or a hand or a foot, then money could be substituted. Here's another illustration demonstrating that their method of exegesis led to reform. The Jewish dietary laws forbid the eating of milk and meat at the same meal. This is supposedly the meaning of the verse "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk" (Ex. 34:26). Now I ask you, how does "seethe" come to mean "eat," how does "kid" mean "meat" of any kind, and how does "its mother's milk" mean milk of any kind? Yet by resorting to such a tortuous interpretation, they were able to arrive at their predetermined reform. Incidentally, it's most interesting to note that this law actually derives from one of the three sets of Ten Commandments we have been given-this being the tenth commandment of what is known as the Ritual Set, for it is quite different from the other two sets, one of which is found in Deuteronomy and the other in Exodus 20. When every allowance has been made for its flaws, there remains in Phariseeism a great appealing residue. When new legislation is derived from scholarly interpretation rather than priestly fiat, prestige shifts from the priest to the scribe, from the privileged to the unprivileged, from the few to the many. Their often convoluted way of interpretation also helped progress. New situations and new needs could be met much more quickly. Nearly all of the Pharisaic reforms involved the meeting of new conditions. To the Pharisees also must be traced the Jewish concern for education. It was a Pharisaic maxim that "the learned bastard takes precedence over the ignorant high priest." Such oft-quoted and admired passages in the New Testament, the Christian Bible, are: "Blessed are the meek," "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Blessed are the merciful," and "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you"-all these come from the Pharisees. It is Phariseeism that has come down the centuries, reflecting itself in the rabbinical Judaism of today. The Pharisees were also the spiritual fathers of both Christianity and Islam. The ChristianThe last reform I want to develop is the Christian Reformation. The New Testament is its own best witness that there is no such thing as ethical absolutism. The Christian reform starts during the time known as "the intertestamental," that is, between the time of the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New. At least three conclusions may be plainly held regarding Jesus' opinions about his own Bible, the Old Testament. He did not regard it as final, but claimed to advance upon it and even to supersede it. He protested against the tradition of the Pharisees and scribes because he thought they distorted the Word of God. And he, in spite of these objections, did accept much of the Old Testament as the revelation of God. That Jesus did not hesitate to reform the Pharasaic tradition is demonstrated by referring to Matthew 5:21f., where he plainly revises the 6th, 7th, and 3rd of the Ten Commandments. Then in Mark 7:18-19, he overthrows the dietary laws, making all meats clean. In Mark 2:25, Jesus abrogates the strictness of the Sabbath by allowing his disciples to pick corn, an incident that allows him to proclaim himself "Lord of the Sabbath." In Mark 10:2f., he supersedes the Mosaic Law of divorce. In Matthew 19:10, Jesus recommends that one should make himself a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven (the great Church Doctor Origen castrated himself on the basis of this text). In Matthew 11:13 and Luke 16:6 the implication of the text is that the Law and the prophets had been merely a preparatory function which he was now fulfilling. He repudiates the appeal to the characteristic spirit of the Old Testament, where God is habitually invoked to take open and swift vengeance on the enemy (Lk. 10:23-24; Mt. 12:6-8). Scriptural evidence that Jesus rebelled against the Pharisees is found in the Synoptic Gospels (Mk. 7:1-23; Mt. 9:13; Lk. 11:46). In these passages, the Pharisees who represent Jewish tradition are accused of moral blindness and of obscuring instead of enlightening the meaning of God's Word. Finally, there is a whole class of texts where Jesus recognizes that "the Scripture cannot be broken" (Mk. 9:11-13; Lk. 16:17). He clearly treats the Psalms and the book of Daniel as authoritative. Yet he is apparently "schizophrenic" in this regard, for he greatly modifies the above conviction (Mt. 15:6-14). On the other hand, Jesus himself is represented as restoring within his new church the same authority he unhesitatingly criticized when exercised by the Pharisees (Mt. 16:19). Today we are confronted by powerful forces from the Religious Right who want to impose their version of biblical ethical absolutism. Their key argument is that this is required by the teachings of Jesus. But, as I have just proven from Scripture itself, this is just not the case. I submit that to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, one must attempt to emulate him. And if Jesus did not accept biblical absolutism, then neither should his followers. Progressive revelation, like the thrust of the Greeks toward a greater and greater rationality, "suffered a loss of nerve." It was turned back into itself by the Jesus Party, becoming a "regressive revelation." Long ago most of the ancients had abandoned cannibalism, a way a believer could incorporate within himself the manna of his ingested god. Here they were back in the primitive wilderness, with Jesus allegedly demanding that his followers commemorate him by eating his body and drinking his blood. I submit that the efforts of the Religious Right to impose a version of biblical ethical absolutism are unwarranted scripturally, regressive in results, and as unworkable in our society as the move backward to fundamentalism by Islam is to the modern needs of the Moslem countries.
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