Here is a summary of an excellent article written by Jean Bottéro, assyriologist, entitled "God and the Crime".

In a nutshell, he explains that the Judeo-Christian notion of good and bad as we know it was "invented" by the Jews. Among the gods back then, Jehovah only considered that a crime was also a sin against him too. There is a second part that I'll broach a bit later.

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GOD AND THE CRIME

The obligation upon men to respect the "Ten Commandments" of God is the core of the Old Testament. The definition of good and bad is expressed there with a radical novelty : henceforth, the only law that matters is God's. The crime est defined as an infraction to God's will, and is assimilated to sin.

According to the Bible, the crime is an inveterate habit of man. It took place and even seriously influenced the oldest stories of all, our origins.

Adam, the first man ever, incited by his wife, disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit. If we consider the punishment that followed, that event must have been an horrendous criminal act.

Later, after having been thrown out of the Garden of Eden, out of the children that were born from the first couple, Cain murdered his brother Abel, whom he envied, and was banished and condemned to an errant and fearful life.

From among the offsprings of that murderer came up some kind of a brute : Lamech, who boasted having "killed a man for a mere wound, and a kid for a scratch" - "seven times more" cruel than his father Cain.

As time went by, crime spread all around, so much so that God became disappointed, noticing that "spread all around the world is the perversity of men, unable henceforth to think about others things than bad purposes". So much so that he decided to kill them all through a Deluge, excepted the only righteous individual back then, Noah with his family, in a floating ark.

Once the Deluge was over, here was Ham, Noah's second son who according to how things were perceived back then, offended seriously his father in beholding him naked whilst drunk. That unhealthy curiosity must have constituted such an unforgivable offense that Noah cursed the culprit and told him that he would be the father of generations of slaves.

Eventually, once men were back spread out over the earth, they started plotting again against God, trying to become like him by building a tower, which feat would symbolize their will to transgress prohibitions and to make their crimes go further. Here is why God condemned them and changed their languages so there was no agreement possible anymore and thus made them stop building that tower.

Here is why God felt motivated to create a people of his own, righteous like Noah was, so he was not disappointed anymore. To that end, he found someone in a remote country whose name was Abraham, who would become the father of that people according to his heart.

Here, we can notice that even before history became what it is now, the oldest past ever was, according to the Bible, just a succession of disasters allowed each and every time because of crimes and the punishments that follow, everytime because of the legitimate reaction of God before men's wickedness.

Unfortunately, things didn't stop there and the biblical account is replete with records of criminal acts more or less severely punished, and this even among God's people. As an example, we can cite Sodom and Gomorrha, Agar being chased out of Abraham's tent, Dinah's rape and so on. Even the ideal kind David wasn't spared when after committing adultery with a married woman, had her husband die.

According to this summary of Israel's history, we can notice that crime is considered as something inside of us and that it has affected everyone, even those among God's chosen people : "See! This only I have found, that the [true] God made mankind upright, but they themselves have sought out many plans.†- Ecc7:29

However, the term used in the Bible and the general idea that it conveyed everywhere in the Bible is not crime but sin, which is not the same at all. As if beyond the horror, the shame related to each crime, the Bible stressed on the real reason for which such acts were wrong, them being sins : or the refusal to obey God, the rebellion against his will and therefore against his Being. In the Bible, the seriousness of a crime isn't to be understood according to its horrendous nature but as something despicable in God's eyes, against whom man is resisting through such or such acts, against whom he rises up and behaves in defiance. Before being a crime, the criminal act, in the Bible, is first condemned by God, because it is a rebellion and a "sin". After the death of Uriah, David sees a prophet coming to him and reproaching him overtly his crime : "Why did you despise the word of God by doing what is bad in his eyes?"

The religion of Israel was considering such things under a peculiar point of view.

The Israelites were Semites and belonged to one of the older cultural groups, among which were the Mesopotamians. According to them, our world and our society down here were a mirror image of the world and of the society up there in heaven. Said otherwise, the supernatural world was a magnified projection of the political class which, in that country, had always taken a monarchical form. Thus, the gods had created the men in order for them to play the same role as subjects to their kings : that is to provide through their hard work for all their needs, similar to ours - food and drinks, clothes, jewellery, palaces and a joyful and festive life, which was guaranteed through the whole bestiary of statues and images in their temples. Here was the gist of the worship that the gods received and having invented us and made us been born to that very end, they didn't ask more than that. However, they also played the role of kings and of theirs servants towards us, their subjects. Everything that for men constituted an obligation or a prohibition was coming from their will and whoever transgressed one of them was found liable to, in their eyes, a punishment, which was taking the form of all those troubles, evils and woes that may befall us all of a sudden, unexpectedly, and darken and devastate our lives, which found there a justification.

Around the start of the XIIIe century BCE, one of those Semites whose name was Moses, changed things in everything. In a world mostly polytheistic, he taught not to care about the other gods and to be attached to one of them only, whose name was Yahve, to remain forever faithful to him and in return this god would protect his people, still weak, and would guarantee its political and territorial ambitions. Resorting to what was a usual means to seal deals among the Old Semites, Moses concluded between Yahve and Israel a genuine covenant : the people swore to stay faithful to its God and the latter would support it, no matter what.

That covenant was something totally new and unusual in all the Middle East back then. The attachment of a people to its God would not, like in Mesopotamia and for other Semitic peoples, take the shape of an assitance for goods and physical needs - beautiful temples, clothes and priceless jewels, daily offerings of food and other things - but only through their behaviour, through a unique and total obedience to some kind of a "moral code", something alike what the Bible has recorded and that we would call the "Decalogue".

That ethical polarization of the religious system as a whole created in Israel an accute feeling of obligations in everyone, and within their reach. In a world where the world - and that very people even less - wasn't "disenchanted" yet and where religion mirror-imaged and covered the whole field of human activities, and even more in people who viewed the "supernatural" so deeply mixed up with their history, the least infraction to the "moral code" and to what it implied, in detail, beyond the biggest issues, every transgression was therefore deemed and judged right away according to the fundamental criteria which linked them to God's will and to the obligations towards him that stemmed from the Covenant and its founding pact. For deeds in accordance with this will and this "code", it was acceptable and also in accordance with the very pattern that God expected from his people ; for deeds not in accordance in whatever issue related to the conduct, it was first and foremost a sin, and that's mainly thus that it raised disapproval and conviction.

The scale of such a pattern went to much bigger proportions when the kingdom of Israel ended up under the yoke of the formidable Mesopotamians. Here, the prophets ceaselessly repeated that what was ocurring was a punishment by Yahve for the endless transgressions committed - which were, we must admit this fact, humanly avoidable, and which the Israelites were piling up upon their heads against God. Selfishness and greed for some for them, fondness for the fleshliest desires, wickedness and violations each time bigger, pride and vanity, dishonesty and injustices, as well as similar other crimes, were first and foremost condemned by God only, as insults and sin against him.

"Woe to the ones joining house to house, [and] those who annex field to field until there is no more room and YOU men have been made to dwell all by yourselves in the midst of the land! [...] Woe to those who are getting up early in the morning that they may seek just intoxicating liquor, who are lingering till late in the evening darkness so that wine itself inflames them! And there must prove to be harp and stringed instrument, tambourine and flute, and wine at their feasts; [...] Woe to those drawing error with ropes of untruth, and as with wagon cords sin; [...] Woe to those who are saying that good is bad and bad is good, those who are putting darkness for light and light for darkness, those who are putting bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those wise in their own eyes and discreet even in front of their own faces! Woe to those who are mighty in drinking wine, and to the men with vital energy for mixing intoxicating liquor, those who are pronouncing the wicked one righteous in consideration of a bribe, and who take away even the righteousness of the righteous one from him!" (Is. 5:8-23)

Thus was the tone of the prophetic speech and we easily understand how much it could obliterate the whole field of conscience by inserting therein the main idea of sin. Whatever might have been the mere judicial effects of the misdemeanors and infamies judged by the secular powers (the Bible barely broaches that issue), the conduct had only one judge that mattered, supreme and implacable : God in person and the weight, the danger, the nuisance, the horrendous nature of the deeds and crimes gave ground to their main cause of ignominy, the refusal to obey him, which forced him, because of his sense of justice, to avenge the fault and inflict a deserved punishment to their authors through misfortunes.

In that regard, things would go so far as considering odious crimes as we would consider them nowadays as heroic and praiseworthy like Abraham's attempt to kill his son at God's behest. It stands to reason that, as the biblical account tells us, God didn't really want Abraham to kill his son but if we disregard temporarily the religious and symbolic aspect of such an account and only retain the cold, objective point of view of the penal code, that which God was asking Abraham to do is a crime, a murder.

Everything is therefore as if the Bible stressed, as the yardstick of human deeds, on God's will instead of on Law. Thus, even the most odious and horrendous crimes ever were first and foremost deemed so according to whether it was considered as a sin or not.

Integrated in its message by Christianity, which is at the root of our civilisation, such an understanding had a heavy weight on the way our consciences were shaped and on the tremendous "sense of sin" that overwhelmed them, said sense evolving too often towards a certain legalism so far away from the authentic religiosity.

 

Hi Utuna:

Read the whole comment but was left with, and? By the way Ham was Noah's true firstborn, until his sin, not his second as this writer has it. It is very easy to prove and I have done so a number of times before.

frank

 

What's explained in that article, which I'll flesh out in the second part, broaches one of the corner stones of our faith.

 

The article above and the second part that I am going to type here may seem unimportant at first but they broach the very foundations of our faith. This second post will also explain a few details about our faith that we may have missed and thus will cast some interesting light on them.

Let me explain:

As the article above explained, the main difference between Israel's religion and the religions of the countries in its surroundings was that the shortcomings and even the crimes committed were first and foremost so against God himself.

In Mesopotamia (and elsewhere as a matter of fact), the religious system was mainly based on the assistance that men owed to gods. In a nutshell, the gods being tired of working in order to have food, wine, palaces and a joyful life, they decided to create men so the latter ones work in their place. As long as the Mesopotamians provided the gods with that which the latter ones wanted, the daily life of humans wasn't their business. The gods were only concerned in receiving their due and if they ever wanted something else, they would let it know through different ways, either through shooting stars, comets, misfortunes or even toothaches for example. The problem is that the men never knew what the gods supposedly wanted and that's why they would ask the priests, the magicians what was going on or what the gods wanted because they had no idea about it. Then, the magicians and the priests would use divination and magical prayers either to find the reasons behind the misfortunes or to placate the gods and thus remove the spell, as it were. The gods could be invoked in order to have spells removed (illnesses were considered as punishments of the gods, back then) or for the believers to receive their blessings petitioned for private reasons (ex-votos, etc).

My point here is that there were no moral reasons for the gods to chastize the humans. Humans would never know why misfortunes may befall them. The gods could punish someone for such arbitrary and petty reasons as having cut a tuft of grass or having talked too loud (clay tablets mention such "sins", I'm not inventing here.) Conversely, a man who would have been a murderer, a womanizer or a notorious thief could be granted the blessings of the gods just by making offerings, sacrifices or by invoking their help through the priests. Religion and personal life were almost totally disconnected and the gods couldn't care less of the humans' personal life. That wasn't their business. They were very self-centered, which means that they may also bless or punish humans for trivial reasons, at will and at times, at random.

The nations around Israel had their own legal systems (see code of Hammurabi) but it was secular and the gods were mainly not concerned by its content. The king may have invoked the gods to curse the wrongdoers but the observance of such laws wasn't a requirement of the gods in the first place.

Here is where comes the main difference between Jehovah's religious requirements and the religions around Israel. It's also a testimony of how wonderful our God is and how deep his thoughts and commandments are.

In his Law, Jehovah was the only one to stipulate that the worship that we owe Him depends on the way we treat others. Said otherwise, he was the only one to stipulate that our sins against our neighbour are actually a sin against Him in the first place. Contrary to the other pagan gods, Jehovah said : "The way you treat others is also my business..."

We may take that novelty for granted because that's a core part of our religious culture but back then, it was a revolution, so to speak. Now, we better understand Paul's words when he said in Rom 7:7 : "What, then, shall we say? Is the Law sin? Never may that become so! Really I would not have come to know sin if it had not been for the Law; and, for example, I would not have known covetousness if the Law had not said: “You must not covet.â€

But also :

"However, Saul said to Samuel: “But I have obeyed the voice of Jehovah in that I went on the mission on which Jehovah had sent me and I brought A′gag the king of Am′a·lek, but Am′a·lek I have devoted to destruction. And the people went taking from the spoil sheep and cattle, the choicest of them as something devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to Jehovah your God in Gil′gal.†In turn Samuel said: “Does Jehovah have as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of Jehovah? Look! To obey is better than a sacrifice, to pay attention than the fat of rams; for rebelliousness is the same as the sin of divination, and pushing ahead presumptuously the same as [using] uncanny power and teraphim. Since you have rejected the word of Jehovah, he accordingly rejects you from being king.â€" - 1Sam15:20-23

"and you must say, ‘Hear the word of Jehovah, all YOU of Judah, who are entering into these gates to bow down to Jehovah. This is what Jehovah of armies, the God of Israel, has said: “Make YOUR ways and YOUR dealings good, and I will keep YOU people residing in this place. Do not put YOUR trust in fallacious words, saying, ‘The temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah they are!’ For if YOU will positively make YOUR ways and YOUR dealings good, if YOU will positively carry out justice between a man and his companion, if no alien resident, no fatherless boy and no widow YOU will oppress, and innocent blood YOU will not shed in this place, and after other gods YOU will not walk for calamity to yourselves," - Jr7:2-6

"The God that made the world and all the things in it, being, as this One is, Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in handmade temples, neither is he attended to by human hands as if he needed anything, because he himself gives to all [persons] life and breath and all things." - Acts 17:24-25

"This is what Jehovah has said: “The heavens are my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where, then, is the house that YOU people can build for me, and where, then, is the place as a resting-place for me?" - Is66:1

"However, Sol′o·mon built a house for him. Nevertheless, the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands; just as the prophet says, ‘The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What sort of house will YOU build for me? Jehovah says. Or what is the place for my resting? My hand made all these things, did it not?’" - Acts 7:48-50

That aspect explains very well why the Israelites failed to discern the spirit of the Law, that is that the love for God and the love for our neighbour are just two sides of the same coin. Said otherwise, love is the fulfillment of knowledge. As John said, if we don't have love, we don't have come to know God. Under the influence of the nations around them and because of the wickedness of their hearts, the Israelites mistakenly thought that God would be placated by the sacrifices, the prayers and an outwardly based observance of the Law. They thought that their conduct towards their neighbour wasn't God's business. Like the Mesopotamians, they thought that what God considered as a sin was only related to shortcomings and misconduct in relation with the technical aspect of the Law. They had lost of sight the fundamental aspect that their worship was intrinsically dependent on how they treated their neighbour and the vulnerable one in the first place.

Hence, we can't pretend serving God properly if we don't grasp the fullness, the depth and the subtlety of his Law (Jr31:33) regarding how we must consider others and act towards them. Otherwise, we'd be serving God like the Babylonians. Jehovah doesn't need our worship and our assistance. It's useless to be a pioneer or to have responsibilities in a local congregation if we let vulnerable brothers and sisters in the lurch. So many of them cry when alone in the dark and have a bleeding heart. So many of them need encouragements, a helping hand, maybe just a loving smile. It may mean the world to them. That's the kind of sacrifices and actions that God approves and blesses.

He doesn't need us to be pioneer at all cost: "and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘As a father we have Abraham.’ For I say to YOU that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones." - Mat3:9 and "But in reply he said: “I tell YOU, If these remained silent, the stones would cry out.â€" - Luke19:40 Furthermore, a sincere and meaningful act of love can be worth 30 hours out in service in terms of witness given. The way the Israelites behaved in the past and the fate that they met may well both repeat themselves here and now if we overlook what the following words really mean : "The form of worship that is clean and undefiled from the standpoint of our God and Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their tribulation, and to keep oneself without spot from the world." - Ja1:27

The way we treat others is also God's business and a sin against our neighbour is also a sin against Him... unless we're Mesopotamians of heart...

There is a third aspect that I'd like to broach in a future post.

 

"One isolating himself will seek [his own] selfish longing; against all practical wisdom he will break forth." - Prov18:1

"Safeguard practical wisdom and thinking ability, and they will prove to be life to your soul and charm to your throat." - Prov3:21-22

 

That is one of the reasons why I love Jehovah so much. Everything he does is deep, meaningful, thoughtful and all-encompassing.

No later than this week-end, I was driving to someplace in town and I went past a group of people trying to help a woman sitting with frailty on the crosswalk, right in the middle of the road. I felt terribly sad and had deep compassionate feelings towards her. Seeing this woman half sitting and lying on the ground like that, it reminded me the words I posted on another thread, about a book I read, which states that Jehovah cares about our health, about our feelings and even about our dignity.

The miracle comes when [Jesus] let himself be inhabited by God's compassion, be deeply troubled by the misfortunes of a woman or a man mutilated in their humanity.
Jesus is thus the instrument of a God who is moved when He sees His creature lessened by misfortune.

He wants us to stand, in each and every aspect of our lives !

No matter how hard you look for, no matter how loud some people may boast, nothing compares with Jehovah's ways !