Is Peaceful Coexistence Possible Between Christians and Muslims? (eBook)

Chapter Two

The Hebrew Bible and the Law of Moses

From the times preceding Christ, no more important book reached us as is the Hebrew Bible. Some other literary works from the old civilizations of the Near East did reach us from recent archaeological excavations but none reached us through ancient manuscripts as the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible over the centuries went through many phases of auditing and authentication before it took its present form. There were many teachers beside historians who participated in writing the Hebrew Bible, expressing the words of the legislator in the person of the Prophet Moses, in whose mouth spoke Jehovah (God), and the words and teachings of the prophets who followed him. Of the teachers who participated in writing the Bible were the wise men. Unlike Moses’ Law, emanating according to Hebrew rabbis from God, Wisdom originated from men. The renowned books of Wisdom were those of Job and the Proverbs. The goal of these teachers was the development of ethics, justice, social well-being during life on Earth and not the saving of one’s soul. The prophet held a particular position between the teachers, and the Hebrew faith begins with the prophets.

As described above, the founders of the Hebrew beliefs were nomads (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, to name a few) and their traditions and way of life were similar to the way of life of other Semitic peoples amongst whom they lived in Mesopotamia and in the Land of Canaan. The Prophet Jacob and his ancestors were wandering Arameans (Deuteronomy 26: 5: “Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous”). Their contacts with the Egyptian civilization enriched their beliefs without much changing their way of life and customs as a nomadic people. Before their entry to Egypt, the Hebrew patriarchs, starting with Abraham, had already established a covenant with God, who promised them to multiply their descendants and to give them as inheritance the Land of Canaan.

Prophet Moses had a major influence on the religious beliefs of the Hebrew people. The ten commandments of Jehovah (God) written on stone tablets and kept in the tabernacle are the basis of the Hebrew Bible. At Mount Sinai, Jehovah spoke to Moses from a fire (Deuteronomy 5: 4–21) giving him a promise He will keep as long as the Children of Israel (the Hebrews) stay faithful to Him.

It was Moses who saved his people from slavery and led them out of Egypt, but was not allowed to enter the promised land due to a sin he committed (Exodus 32: 19, Numbers 27: 12–14), (The Koran, Surah 28: 15–16, Surah 7: 150–151).

The Ten Commandments of God (Deuteronomy 5: 6–21) are thought to be the ethical basis of all later man-made legislations. Below we provide them as listed in the English Standard Version (ESV):

 1. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.

 2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

 3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

 4. Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

 5. Honour your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

 6. You shall not murder.

 7. And you shall not commit adultery.

 8. And you shall not steal.

 9. And you shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

10. And you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife. And you shall not desire your neighbour’s house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour’s”.

Besides the Ten Commandments, Moses (or could it be later the rabbis?) did add many other rules and regulations to be followed by the Israelites. These included prayer rituals, the sacrifice of animals, allowable meat to consume (specific to animals on land, sea and air), the rituals for ablutions before prayers and other hygiene rules, the methods to be used to diagnose illnesses and to recover from them (leprosy and others). It included also the mercy to show towards fellow Israelites, which included dispensing them of debt payment after the passage of seven years, the approach to follow with foreign peoples (obligation of capital and interest payment for loaned money), and in general their relations with the peoples surrounding them.

The Law of Moses (the Torah) as collected by the scribe Ezra after the Hebrews return from the Babylonian Exile was in fact a secular constitution, amalgamating the Mosaic Ten Commandments of God with the traditions of a tribal society, certain Babylonian mythological stories and rules based on Hamurabi’s Law, as well as some beliefs and traditions of the settled Egyptian people. It provoked a cultural revolution which brought the cultural level of the Israelite tribes to a much higher level, and allowed them to impose their rule on the surrounding desert tribes and peoples.

We find in the Torah the first mention of the tribute to be imposed on conquered peoples (Deuteronomy 20: 10–14: “When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labour for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. And when the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you.”)

The mention of tribute in the Koran came 2000 years later (Surah 9: 29: “Fight against those who have been given the scripture who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah has forbidden by his Messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they are compelled to pay the tribute readily, being brought low”).

As these rules were thought to be coming from God, they couldn’t evolve with time, as did man-made laws and constitutions of other peoples, which evolved with time through acquired experience, accumulated knowledge and social progress.

Besides the Law of Moses (the Torah), the Hebrew Bible contains a detailed description of the history of the Israelites up to the Babylonian exile and beyond, and the biography of the Israelite prophets and their teachings along with that of their kings and described these as humans prone to commit sin and to repent.

The prophet Amos was the first to ascribe to Jehovah the quality of a God for all humanity (Amos 9: 5–7) and not a God only for the tribe of Israel. The prophet Isaiah confirmed the sanctity of God and revealed His perfection, and spoke about the advent of the Messiah – the Prince of Peace whose reign and authority will prevail worldwide, and under his rule people will convert their swords and pikes into ploughshares, and wolves will live with sheep (Isaiah 2: 2-4, and 11: 1–9).

An obvious shortcoming of the Torah is the Israelites belief that they are the only people chosen by God (Deuteronomy 14: 2: “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”), and the unequal status which it established between them and the other peoples (Deuteronomy 15: 6: “For the LORD your God will bless you, as he promised you, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow, and you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you.”).

It also painted God (Jehovah) as jealous and vengeful who requested the Israelites to destroy, kill and exterminate the peoples who inhabited the land of Canaan (Deuteronomy 20: 16–17: “But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD...