At various points in Exodus and other books, rather specific rules are given about how people should conduct themselves—how to treat sleeves and thieves, what things to eat, etc. What purpose could these rules have?
Throughout Exodus we see God communicating directly with Moses instructing him on how to deal with the Egyptians as well as how to rule the Israelites. This communication is different from the way in which Greek gods were introduced in Plato and Aristotle because this singular god is featured much more prominently in the lives of citizens.
In Exodus 20, God explains the 10 commandments by which his followers must live by. They range from things like no false idols to no stealing, from thou shall not murder to honor your mother and father. These wide ranging instructions seem relatively reasonable to follow. However as he continues, he gives explicit instructions as to what to do with slaves after 7 years, what to do if you take advantage of a virgin, what should happen to those who enact violence. These detailed procedures of how to act in life are not as common sense, and may not have been followed if God did not tell them to. Some of the actions God says to take are gruesome and involve “eye for an eye” and murdering those people who disobey. These types of actions seem like surprising commandments from a God.
While I think God cared about all of these causes and wanted people to act in the way that he suggested I think the main purpose of these commandments and instructions on how to live your life were God’s way of testing people’s faith in him. Those who followed his rules, he knew he could trust and that they would listen to the word of God. Those who did not follow his commandments could not be considered trust worthy. While perhaps gruesome action is suggested by God at some points, it is only by finding out the extreme that people will go to for their Lord that he may truly know who his followers are.
For me the idea of the Ten Commandments bring up the idea of good being seen as what is not bad. Most of the commandments have a structure that is begun with "Thou shalt not..." This structure itself designates actions that should not be committed which begs the question what what should be committed in order to be a good person. The lack of response to that question in from the text makes it appear that as long as you do not do those things, everything else is fair game. This reminded me a lot of St. Augustine's confessions. The dualist view he had before converting held good and evil has separate entities. Good is simply not bad. However, as he converted and adopted a more Christian view, he realized that bad is simply the absence of good. In that way, bad does not really exist in its own form. There is only good, and its concentration or lack there of is what determines the morality the action. It is interesting to see how this idea relates to the Ten Commandments in the Hebrew Bible and the way in which the two religions differ in their approach to morality.
ReplyDelete