22 ideas
| 7337 | In Mosaic legal theory, crimes are sins and sins are crimes [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: In Mosaic legal theory, all breaches of the law offend God. All crimes are sins, just as all sins are crimes. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt I) | |
| A reaction: This would seem to define Josephus called a 'theocracy'. Not just rule by a priesthood, but also an attempt to make civil law coincide with the teachings of sacred texts. But doing 80 m.p.h. on a motorway at 2 a.m. hardly seems like a sin. |
| 7339 | Because human life is what is sacred, Mosaic law has no death penalty for property violations [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: Where other codes provided the death penalty for offences against property, in Mosaic law no property offence is capital; human life is too sacred, where the rights of property alone are violated. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt I) | |
| A reaction: We still preserve this idea in our law, and also in our culture, where we are keen to insist that catastrophes like earthquakes or major fires are measured almost entirely by the loss of life, not the loss of property. I approve. |
| 7353 | The Pharisees undermined slavery, by giving slaves responsibility and status in law courts [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: It is no accident that slavery among Jews disappeared with the rise of the Pharisees, as they insisted that all were equal before God in a court. Masters were no longer responsible for actions of slaves, so a slave had status, and slavery could not work. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt II) | |
| A reaction: As in seventeenth century England, the rise of social freedom comes from religious sources, not social sources. A slave has status in the transcendent world of souls, despite being a nobody in the physical world. |
| 21733 | The right-wing conception of freedom is based on the idea of self-ownership [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: The right-wing conception of freedom is, I think, founded on the idea that each person is the morally rightful owner of himself, even if existing legal systems do not acknowledge it. Let us call that the 'self-ownership' thesis. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: He cites Nozick as articulating this view. At the end Cohen rejects self-ownership, though he agrees that no one would accept that the state could be the owner of your eyes. Do I own my hair after it is cut? |
| 21739 | Plenty of people have self-ownership, but still lack autonomy [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: Universal self-ownership fails to ensure autonomy, since it tends to produce proletarians, who lack it. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 3) | |
| A reaction: The implication is that autonomy is not a property of individuals but a social phenomenon. Self-owning people can still be imprisoned. What about autonomy without self-ownership? A bright slave who is given extensive responsibility? |
| 7340 | Mosaic law was the first to embody the rule of law, and equality before the law [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: Mosaic law meant that God ruled through his laws, and since all were equally subject to the law, the system was the first to embody the double merits of the rule of law and equality before the law. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt I) | |
| A reaction: If this is correct, it seems to be a hugely important step, combined with Idea 1659, that revenge should be the action of a the state, not of the individual. They are the few simple and essential keys to civilization. |
| 21736 | It is doubtful whether any private property was originally acquired legitimately [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to doubt that much actually existing private property was formed in what anyone could think was a legitimating way. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: What if I created an artificial island out of unwanted raw materials? What about the first humans to reach some remote territory? |
| 21734 | It is plausible that no one has an initial right to own land and natural resources [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: One may plausibly say of external things in their initial state, of raw land and natural resources, that no person has a greater right to them than any other does. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: How about if your group has lived on that plot for fifty generations, and some interlopers arrive and claim part of it. No one thought of 'owning' it till the interlopers arrived. Native Americans and Australians. |
| 21735 | Every thing which is now private started out as unowned [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: In the prehistory of anything that is now private property there was at least one moment at which something privately unowned was taken into private ownership. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: He is obviously talking about land and natural resources. Presumably a table which I made and own was always private property, although the land where the trees were grown was not. Though in some communities what I make could be automatically communal. |
| 7338 | Man's life is sacred, because it is made in God's image [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: In Mosaic theology, man is made in God's image, and so his life is not just valuable, it is sacred. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt I) | |
| A reaction: The obvious question is what exactly is meant by "in God's image". Physically, spiritually, intellectually, morally? I am guessing that the original idea was intellectual, because we are the only rational animal. The others seem unlikely, or arrogant. |
| 7348 | The Jews sharply distinguish human and divine, but the Greeks pull them closer together [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: The Jews drew an absolute distinction between the human and the divine; the Greeks constantly elevated the human - they were Promethean - and lowered the divine. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt II) | |
| A reaction: An intriguing observation. The Greek idea runs right through European culture, surfacing (for example) in 'Faust', or 'Frankenstein', or the films of James Cameron. I'm with the Greeks; I want to see how far humanity can be elevated. |
| 7355 | The Torah pre-existed creation, and was its blueprint [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: The Torah was not just a book about God. It pre-existed creation, in the same way as God did. In fact, it was the blueprint of creation. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt III) | |
| A reaction: You can only become a 'people of the book' (which Moslems resented in Judaism, and then emulated) if you give this stupendously high status to your book. Hence Christian fundamentalism makes sense, with its emphasis on the divinity of the Bible. |
| 7336 | A key moment is the idea of a single moral God, who imposes his morality on humanity [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: The discovery of monotheism, and not just of monotheism but of a sole, omnipotent God actuated by ethical principles and seeking methodically to impose them on human beings, is one of the greatest turning-points in history, perhaps the greatest of all. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt I) | |
| A reaction: 'Discovery' begs some questions, but when put like this you realise what a remarkable event it was. It is a good candidate for the most influential idea ever, even if large chunks of humanity, especially in the orient, never took to monotheism. |
| 7341 | Sampson illustrates the idea that religious heroes often begin as outlaws and semi-criminals [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: Sampson is the outstanding example of the point which the Book of Judges makes again and again, that the Lord and society are often served by semi-criminal types, outlaws and misfits, who become folk-heroes and then religious heroes. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt I) | |
| A reaction: This illustrates nicely Nietzsche's claim, that the jews were responsible for his 'inversion of values', in which aristocratic virtues are downgraded, and the virtues of a good slave are elevated (though Sampson may not show that point so well!). |
| 7342 | Isaiah moved Israelite religion away from the local, onto a more universal plane [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: The works of Isaiah (740-700 BCE) mark the point at which the Israelite religion began to spiritualize itself, to move from a specific location in space and time on to the universalist plane. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt I) | |
| A reaction: This is necessary if any religion is going to make converts outside the local culture. The crucial step would be to disembody God, so that He cannot be represented by a statue. The difficulty is for him to be universal, but retain a 'chosen people'. |
| 7344 | Judaism involves circumcision, Sabbath, Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, New Year, and Atonement [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: The practices of Judaism developed during their Exile: circumcision, the Sabbath, the Passover (founding of the nation), Pentecost (giving of the laws), the Tabernacles, the New Year, and the Day of Atonement. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt II) | |
| A reaction: These were the elements of ritual created to replace the existence of a physically located state. An astonishing achievement, not even remotely achieved by any other state that was driven off its lands. A culture is an idea, not a country. |
| 7345 | In exile the Jews became a nomocracy [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: In exile the Jews, deprived of a state, became a nomocracy - voluntarily submitting to rule by a Law which could only be enforced by consent. Nothing like this had occurred before in history. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt II) | |
| A reaction: It is the most remarkable case in history of a people united and strengthened by adversity, and it became an important experiment in the building of human cultures. But what is the point of preserving a culture, with no land? Why not just integrate? |
| 7347 | Zoroastrians believed in one eternal beneficent being, Creator through the holy spirit [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: Cyrus the Great was a Zoroastrian, believing in one, eternal, beneficent being, 'Creator of all things through the holy spirit'. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt II) | |
| A reaction: Is this the actual origin of monotheism, or did they absorb this idea from the Jews? The interesting bit is the fact that the supreme being (called Marduk) is 'beneficent', which one doesn't associate with these remote and supposed pagans. |
| 1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
| Full Idea: The Egyptians were the first to claim that the soul of a human being is immortal, and that each time the body dies the soul enters another creature just as it is being born. | |
| From: Herodotus (The Histories [c.435 BCE], 2.123.2) |
| 7349 | Immortality based on judgement of merit was developed by the Egyptians (not the Jews) [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: The idea of judgement at death and immortality on the basis of merit were developed in Egypt before 1000 BCE. It is not Jewish because it was not in the Torah, and the Sadducees, who stuck to their texts, seemed to have denied the afterlife completely. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt II) | |
| A reaction: This is the idea considered crucial to religion by Immanuel Kant (Idea 1455), who should be declared an honorary Egyptian. To me the idea that only the good go to heaven sounds like sadly wishful thinking - a fictional consolation for an unhappy life. |
| 7354 | The main doctrine of the Pharisees was belief in resurrection and the afterlife [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: Belief in resurrection and the afterlife was the main distinguishing mark of Pharisaism, and thus fundamental of rabbinic Judaism. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt II) | |
| A reaction: Belief in an afterlife seems to go back to the Egyptians, but this development in Judaism was obviously very influential, even among early Christians, who initially seem to have only believed in resurrection of the body. |
| 7356 | Pious Jews saw heaven as a vast library [Johnson,P] |
| Full Idea: Pious Jews saw heaven as a vast library, with the Archangel Metatron as the librarian: the books in the shelves there pressed themselves together to make room for a newcomer. | |
| From: Paul Johnson (The History of the Jews [1987], Pt III) | |
| A reaction: I'm tempted to convert to Judaism. |