The Real Ten Commandments: Solon vs. Moses

infidels.org ^ | Richard Carrier

[Destro]

Posted for discussion now that so many have their blood boiling over the Alabama courthouse 10 commandments controversy.

[Russell Scott]

It won't matter much longer.

Hebrews 8
10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. 13 In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.

[Southack]

"Solon was born, we believe, around 638 B.C.E...."

The new, Godless Left refuses to use BC and AD for their dates. Instead, they use B.C.E (Before Current Era or Before Common Era) and C.E. or CE (Current Era or Common Era), rather than the religious abreviations of our legal calendar (BC and AD).

The appearance of such non-legal abbreviations betrays the bias of the author.

[Destro]

Now, we can see at once that our society is entirely opposed to the first four, and indeed the last of these ten. As a capitalist society, we scoff at the idea of closing our shops on a choice market day. And our very goal in life is to desire--desiring is what drives us toward success and prosperity. The phrase "seeking the American Dream," which lies at the heart of our social world, has at its heart the very idea of coveting the success of our peers, goading us to match it with our own industry, and we owe all our monumental national success to this.

Sounds right wing to me!!!!

[skr]

1. Trust good character more than promises.--Good advice, but subjective. Nothing to base a legal system on.

2. Do not speak falsely = Thou shalt not bear false witness.

3. Do good things.--Subjective. Nothing to base a legal system on. Better to note what is bad, so that the denser oones know what the boundaries are.

4. Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made.--Good advice, but subjective. Nothing to base a legal system on.

5. Learn to obey before you command.--Subjective. Nothing to base a legal system on.

6. When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful.--Subjective. Nothing to base a legal system on.

7. Make reason your supreme commander.--Subjective. Nothing to base a legal system on.

8. Do not associate with people who do bad things.--Subjective. Nothing to base a legal system on.

9. Honor the gods. = Thou shalt have no other gods before me and Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain...

10. Have regard for your parents = Honour thy father and thy mother...

The other Commandments given to Moses, including not killing, not stealing, not lying and not coveting are actual foundations for law.

[risk]

It won't matter much longer.

"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (Mat 24:34-37 KJV)

[WOSG]

Yeah, rule #3 is written as badly as the 14th amendment. plenty chance for judicial abuse. :-)

Overall, it was an excellent article.

The author betrayed his secular tendencies and perhaps ignorance of Greek mythology with his 'honor the gods' comments. Greece was polytheistic - so of course, their own narrow cultural version of Moses #1 would be plural 'honor the gods'. yet the author bone-headedly takes it to be an opening for honoring different religions, some kind of writ of tolerance. Um, no, he confuses Joseph Campbell with the ancient Greeks. Do any serious non-primitive polytheists even exist today? Christianity and Buddhism killed that in the west and east repsectively... (And dont count Wiccans, they are a pseudo- new age 'religion' that constructed in recent decades with no real relation to primitive animists).

So I conclude, with the author, that Solon gives good advice overall, but his guidance on religion and the basis of any community laws both come up short.

Then much of it can be simplified to one rule as Jesus taught:

Love your neighbor as yourself.

[WOSG]

"Is it an accident that when Solon's ideals reigned, there grew democracies and civil rights, and ideals we now consider fundamental to modern Western society, yet when the ideals of Moses replaced them, we had a thousand years of oppression, darkness, and tyranny?"

That is a total and utter myth.

The 'glory of Athens' lasted only long enough for Athens to get consumed in a series of hellish wars. Wars in whcih towns were slaughtered, slaves taken, etc., then Sparta defeated Athens, then came Alexander the Great. Democracy and Athens barely lasted a century of glory.

The dark ages were not that 'dark'. It was the enlightening rather of the whole of Europe to Christianity. eg the heathen Vikings were Christianized in this period.

Everything that the Greeks like Solon gave us came through monastic Christian scribes who faithfully recorded them, considered them, and built upon them. Our modern age owes much, for example, to Thomas Aquinas, who used Aristotle and the rediscovery of his philosophy, to guide us futher on the past of just lives and just societies. from 1200 on, Europe grew to advance beyond the other civilizations.

In truth our heritage is *both* Greece and Rome - Christian Rome, derived from Christian and Jewish faith. Greek philosophy and Christian faith are the two causal ideals behind the rise of Western civilization.

[TheAngryClam]

I use it too, because it also stands for "Before the Christian Era," which accurately describes the B.C./A.D. divide.

[TheAngryClam]

But are they foundations of OUR law? Such laws are nearly universal among societies.

[TheAngryClam]

Actually, the Greeks were fairly open to foreign cults, tending to take a syncrenistic view of foreign gods. For example, Amon, the great sun god of Egypt, became identified with Zeus. Amon had a great temple and oracle that the Greeks started going to, calling it the Oracle of Zeus-Hammon. Stories like that abound.

The Greeks themselves believed that some of their gods, notably Dionysus, were foreign gods that they had adopted rather recently.

[nopardons]

The Code of Hammurabi predates the Ten Commandments and some are identical to them. Solon ? He and his " laws " come after Hammurabi as well.

[TheAngryClam]

Bingo.

Point is, the Ten Commandments aren't the basis for law in the United States.

[risk]

The Hamurabi laws sort of remind me of Sharia.

http://www.unesco.org/delegates/iraq/hamurabi.htm

Forgiveness wasn't high on the list.

[nopardons]

So do some Levitican laws ... sound like Sharia. Guess WHERE the Muslims got some of their ideas from ? Give up ? The OLD TESTAMENT.

And, lest I forget to mention it, UR, where Hammurabi ruled ( and where we're now fighting/making over BTW )is where Avram ( Abraham ) was born.

[jwh_Denver]

Bump later for rant.

[Junior]

Bookmark.

[Jason_b]

5. Learn to obey before you command.--Subjective. Nothing to base a legal system on.

Judges would do well to observe this one. They go hog wild making up rules for the rest of us to follow but show little willingness to follow their rules, i.e., our Constitution, the law of the land.

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

I keep hearing this chant, variously phrased: "The Ten Commandments are the foundation of Western morality and the American Constitution and government." In saying this, people are essentially crediting Moses with the invention of ethics, democracy and civil rights, a claim that is of course absurd.

Didn't need to read any further. God created the ten commandments. That's what the chant is you keep hearing. Sheesh.