|
BIBLICAL
VALUES PROMOTE
SAFER WORLD
Anonymous
(Investigator 41, 1995
March)
Previously when
investigating the Bible for
INVESTIGATOR I examined statements of fact in the disciplines of
zoology,
archaeology, history, etc. I compared such statements with statements
of
people who disagreed and investigated which statements are true and
which
are false.
However,
disagreements
are
not always about
whether certain statements are true or false. That's just one type of
disagreement.
Disagreements can also be over whether certain values are right or
wrong;
whether laws or principles are just or unjust, fair or unfair; whether
attitudes and emotions are appropriate or inappropriate.
Values, laws,
principles,
attitudes, emotions,
etc, effect behaviour and actions. One way to evaluate values, laws,
emotions,
etc, is by the likely behaviour and likely consequences of behaviour
they
promote, and whether the consequences were intended or not.
Child
abandonment and
infanticide were common
in the ancient Graeco-Roman world. This was a prevailing value and
standard
of society but was opposed by Jews and later by Christians.
To Jews children
were a
blessing from God.
This attitude and belief was derived from the Scriptures:
Deuteronomy
4:9-11;
32:45-47
Proverbs
4:1-4; 13:22;
17:6; 36:7
Psalm
78:1-6;
103:13-14; 115:14; 127:3-5;
128:3-6; 148:11-12
Isaiah
49:15
Malachi
4:4-6
Matthew
18:1-6
2
Timothy 3:15
Titus
2:4
This positive
attitude
toward the wellbeing
of children, promoted in the Bible and guiding the attitude, values and
behaviour of Jews and Christians gradually defeated the contrary
attitudes
and values which permitted and encouraged infanticide.
A safer world
for
children
resulted.
From: Ancient
Education And
Today, E.B. Castle, Penguin Books,
pp. 168 - 169
| Plato, we
remember,
abolished the family
in his planning of the ideal society. Such a solution to community
shortcomings
would have been inconceivable to the Jewish mind, for the Hebrews
interpreted
the community in terms of the family. No more telling evidence of the
family's
central position in Jewish society can be found than in the comparison
the Hebrews draw between the relationship of God to the nation and that
of a father to his children. The Jewish conception of Jahweh was a
reflection
of the patriarchal family system. This difference of outlook explains
why
Jewish family life reached a level never attained by the Greek world.1
It is true that in
the earliest period of
Jewish history the Jewish father had power of life and death over his
children;
but neither in the Bible nor in the Talmud before A.D. 135; is there
any
evidence of child exposure so common among other Mediterranean peoples,
and biblical references to child sacrifice are seldom made except to
condemn
the practice. In this respect there is a marked difference between the
Jews and their Graeco-Roman masters: Hebrew law recognized the right of
the child to his own life centuries before such a right was recognized
by the rulers of the Roman Empire, where infanticide was not made a
capital
crime until the sixth century of our era, largely owing to the
consistent
pressure of Christians.
As Nathan Morris
remarks, ‘This is all the
more remarkable when one remembers that in Palestine itself, during the
Roman period abandonment of children was quite common amongst the
non-Jewish
elements of the mixed population.' It was this Hebrew view of the
sanctity
of human life, passing through the medium of Christianity into the
Roman
world, that finally destroyed the monstrous evil of infanticide.2
There is, indeed,
a
vast difference between
the Jewish and the Graeco-Roman attitude to children. Throughout the
Bible
children are a sign of God's blessing and the barren woman is a mark of
his displeasure: Give me children or I die,' cries the childless Rachel;3
Elizabeth rejoices when the Lord takes away her ‘reproach among men';4
to the man that feareth the Lord the psalmist promises the blessings of
increase:
Thy life
shall be as a fruitful
vine
Thy children
are like olive trees, round
about thy table.5
|
|