Democracy and the Ten Commandments

The Politics of Limited Government in the Bible

Shinkoskey

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781498290104
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

For 2,000 years Western culture has leaned heavily on the Ten Commandments for guidance in religion, ethics, and morality. The author, drawing upon modern Biblical science, demonstrates that those laws were designed for an entirely different purpose--to provide alternatives to repressive policies Israel reeled under in Egypt. The Decalogue is a political document designed to limit government intrusion into private lives. Its precepts deal with matters like political parties and intellectual freedom, central banking and taxation, occupational choice, free economy, humane working conditions, local government, right to life and international relations, land possession and inheritance, equal justice and education, and citizenship and public health.The author's interpretation necessitates a wholesale repositioning of Biblical religion. The Bible is not a book about religious worship, but is rather a book about citizen-empowered local democracy. This essay suggests a way out of the woods for an American democracy that has lost its way in a headlong veer toward heavy-handed central government.

Part I

1

Democracy and Captivity in the Ancient Near East

It is important to understand that the Bible’s story of freedom-seeking people and their devastating slide into captivity at the hands of a once friendly neighboring nation was likely one of many such stories in the ancient world. This particular story apparently was just better documented and achieved a greater degree of notoriety than most. We are able to take this view after coming to an understanding that the natural political condition of neighboring tribes in the ancient world was peaceful cooperation between the tribal groups and democratic self-determination within each group. When an autocratic or aggressive war lord seized tribal leadership and ran roughshod over the tribe and its neighbors, the tribe saw even more clearly that the traditional way of limited leadership was better. When a large or powerful city-state took root in the ancient Near East, small tribal groups often took flight to avoid taxation and control. Alternately, they threw in their lot with the king and hoped he would make good on promises for a good life for them. Things were sometimes good for a period, but things were often bad for intolerable periods of time. In the view of the ancient tribes, powerful central government did not work very well. And that view took root over a very long period of time and in many places. It was not a sudden phenomenon.

Political anthropologists have found evidence of democratic group behavior in the long period before written history. In the very early period, hunter-gathers limited the power of the band leader and insisted upon inclusion in decision-making. However, with the development of city-states, some city leaders began to tax their people and build police forces to suppress dissent and standing armies to extend their predatory behavior outward.14

Larger societies flourished in lowland cities, but smaller and more democratic groups flourished in and about the cities when central power waned and where relatively inaccessible highland areas were available which could sustain unmolested family and clan life. This pattern is suggested in the Genesis narrative about democratic life in Eden in the beginning. Eden, an idyllic site located in a forested highland area (a river flows out of the site), is host to innocent socio-economic family life not affected at first by violence, and characterized by both farming and herding.

Geographers and historians of the ancient Near East describe periods of expanding and contracting imperial power. Kings captured and sometimes relaxed control over peripheral territories and people. Palestine was a good example of such a peripheral territory. Archeology of the late Bronze and early Iron Age periods in Palestine shows a roll-back of traditional hegemony in the area during the period of Judges in the Bible, beginning around 1200 BCE, the time when the bulk of Israelites arrived in Canaan. The Israelite tribes lived in relative peace and independence until around 700 BCE, when a great foreign power, Assyria, finally pressed heavily into the area. After Assyria, came Babylon, Greece, and Rome. Each invasion affected the lives of Israelites. In between came smaller irritations from the likes of Amalek, Midian and Philistia.

Outside Palestine, smaller, anti-autocratic societies flourished in Syria, Anatolia (modern Turkey), and Persia as well. These areas were overrun by imperial societies frequently but often held to local political institutions “above every other bond of loyalty.”15 Before the advent of the strong king Cyrus, Persian chief magistrates, for example, were temporary rulers. Each served as “the head of the principal of seven dominant clans, and ruled the nation in continual consultation with the leading clansmen.”16 This and other free soil domains demonstrated remarkable staying power throughout history. For example, indigenous, egalitarian, small-scale communities on the border between Sudan and Ethiopia have successfully survived in that buffer zone for the past three thousand years.17

The literature of the Bible is filled with vocabulary related to suffering from both external aggression and, at times, local oppression. The Bible uses a great number of words related to distress, harm, oppression, abandonment, exploitation, aggression, bondage, and exile, and an equally large number of words expressing relief, wellness, redemption, restoration, enfranchisement, peace, release, and return, when self-government and peace were re-established. Before the Exodus from Egypt, the Hebrews “cried” out loud to express their sadness. Once in Canaan, they lived under regular threat from nearby alien tribes. The Hebrew word “yr” translates as “fear” and can be found numerous places in the Bible in verb, adjective and noun form. The word “lqh” translates as “take” or “capture,” and many other words like it are found in numerous places as well. English words used to translate Old Testament vocabulary related to war summarize the process of conflict and/or capture and are poignantly indicative of great ordeal and suffering. Such words include smite, pluck up, tear, blast, cut down, waste, stroke, dashed to pieces, rip open, hew down, heap, waste, cut out, sweep, tread down, thresh, winnow, besiege. Many words also reflect the idea of fleeing from such devastation and living in exile from one’s homeland. In an earlier work this author wrote, “The words used to communicate these critical events can be grouped into a chronology reflecting the all-too-painful cycle of events detailing political, economic, and social captivity repeated over and over again in the history summarized by Deuteronomistic and Chronicalistic historians.” The Bible’s frequent body counts do not resemble the triumphalist victory poems of Near East kings and do not demonstrate that the Israelite God had a lust for murder and mayhem. Those body counts are published in order to give credence to the illegitimacy of autocratic political practices of those who do the killing, or the failings of a people who all-to-often give up peace-loving democracy in favor of lust for blood and treasure.18

The narratives in both testaments stress the never-ending battle of democratic society for survival in the wake of imperial activity, and local government oppression. The books of Exodus and Revelation are but more expansive and more deeply critical versions of earlier Mesopotamian and Egyptian accounts of citizen discontent with the self-important courts of monarchy, like the Mesopotamian story of Gilgamesh and the Egyptian story of Sinuhe. Greek stories of Illiad and Odyssey, and the Roman story of Romulus and Remus sound a similar note as well. The end result of experience with oppression is reversion to governmental processes that limit the powers of the national leader. Tribal groups throughout the region seemed to have remained poised to recoup political freedoms at a moment’s notice. Henri Frankfort, speaking of Egypt, mentions “the ease with which . . . provinces become independent under their own chiefs whenever central power weakened.” They kept local government institutions at the ready for such an eventuality. In other places, local home rule was an ongoing tradition. Frankfort points out that the oldest political institution in ancient Mesopotamia was the assembly, or electorate, of all free men. They “left power to deal with current matters in the hands of a group of elders . . . in times of emergency they chose a ‘king’ to take charge for a limited period.” The Hittite governor/king reported to a council of nobles which could curb or reverse his actions, as was the case in Mitanni and smaller Syrian states.19 This was the governing pattern of the Israelite tribes in Canaan for the first 300 years as well.

One pair of authors write that the biblical book of Genesis is a “rich source for . . . political terminology and constitutional ideas.”20 Genesis, for example, corroborates the results of scientific study of early societies of the ancient Near East, like Sumer in Mesopotamia. Bible patriarchs like Noah and Abraham re-established democratic governance in places where they could, like elders did during the inter-dynastic periods in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Bible’s patriarchs, portrayed essentially as humane political leaders, made covenants or constitutions with their people to govern according to law and likely to make policy and take action only according to the consent of the people. Abraham’s constitution, for example, required the leader and the people to tolerate those tribes and city states nearby who allowed them to govern themselves, and took issue with those that did not. (Gen 12:3) When Abraham raised an army, in addition, it is extremely likely he had the consent of the militia and their families for the task of rescuing Lot. (Gen 14:14) He did not conscript them against their wishes as strong kings were wont to do. Although the Bible does not explicitly say so, patriarchs like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were likely elected, or at least subject to removal if they did not govern according to popular will. In fact, Jacob’s sons and their followers frequently disregarded the advice of their tribal patriarch and implemented their own (often misguided) policies by right of common consent. The bulk of the Israelite people disregarded Samuel’s advice discouraging a stronger central government and went with the majority view of the elders, who clearly were excited about the possibility of new power, wealth, and security for themselves and their clans. (1 Sam 8:19–20)

Before Israelite democracy took root outside ...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Part I
• Chapter 1: Democracy and Captivity in the Ancient Near East
• Chapter 2: Organizing a New Government at Sinai
• Chapter 3: Moses’ Theory of Self-Government
• Chapter 4: Moses As Executor Of The Law
• Chapter 5: The Molten Calf: A Gold Mine of Political Information
• Chapter 6: Deuteronomy and Democracy
• Chapter 7: Judges Follow Precedents Set in the Wilderness
• Chapter 8: People and Elders in Government
• Part II
• Chapter 9: Civic Concerns and Secular Focus of the Bible
• Chapter 10: Bible Literature as Propaganda for People’s Government
• Chapter 11: Early Science and the Gods: Putting Political Content Back into Bible Vocabulary
• PART III
• Chapter 12: Ten Oppressions in Egypt, Ten Solutions in Israel
• Chapter 13: The First Two Commandments: Organizing Government
• Chapter 14: Third and Fourth Commandments: Organizing and Regulating the Economy
• Chapter 15: Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Commandments: Limiting National Government and Empowering Local Government
• Chapter 16: Ninth and Tenth Commandments: Mandating Justice and Literacy, Citizenship and Public Health
• Epilogue
• Appendix I: Comparison of Government Charters of Ancient Israel and the United States
• Appendix II: A Note on the “Public Display” Controversy
• Bibliography