Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
242This said, the question remains, what are the ethic al teac hings of the Bible?
T he quest ion presupposes t hat t he Bible is, at least in moral and t heologic al t erms,
a single unit. While t hat assumpt ion may be rejec t ed by hist orians of t he Bible, it
reflec t s t he t radit ional Jewish approac h t o the text and will be adopted here.
Perhaps the best-known of the ethic al teac hings of the Bible is the so-c alled
‘T en Command ments’ (‘so-called’ because there are many more than ten specific
c ommandments in this passage), found in Exodus 20. Of the ten discrete
statements in this text, at least six have direct ethical import: (a) honour thy father
and thy mother: (b) thou shalt not murder; (c ) thou shalt not c ommit adultery: (d)
thou shalt not steal; (e) thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour;
and (f) thou shalt not c ovet thy neighbour’s possessions (whic h inc lude thy
neighbour’s wife, whic h indic ates that the Dec alogue is not exac tly a monume nt to
feminist sensibilit ies). T he remaining four (‘I am t he Lord t hy God...’, t hat God alone
ma y b e worshipped, that God’s name must not be taken in vain, and the
observance of the Sabbath) relate to matters of theological and ritual importance.
T his division of subjec t mat t er reflec t s a division whic h lat er rabbis read out of (or
into) the Bible: that bet ween obligat ions bet ween human individuals and obligat ions
between human individuals and God.
Muc h of biblic al legislat ion involves t his first group and herein may lie one of
the basic c ontributions of Judaism to the Western religious tradition: that one
worships God through dec ent, humane, and moral relations with one’s fellows. (As
t he lat er rabbis were t o put it , God is ideally worshipped in t hree ways: st udy of
Torah, sac rific e and prayer, and ac ts of lovingkindness.) In other words, whatever
moralit y might be, it s basis is in God’s will. God c an be no more irrelevant t o
morality than he c an be for religion. The basis for this demand that God makes
upon his c reatures to treat eac h other properly is the biblic al teac hing that man is
created in the image of God (Gen. 1: 27).
Sinc e human beings are c reated in the image of God, it is obvious that one
achieves the highest possible level of perfection or self-realizat ion by bec oming as
similar t o God as humanly possible. T his is t he basis for what may be t he single
most important ethical doctrine of the Hebrew Bible, that of imit at io Dei, the
imitation of God (on whic h, see the essays by Shapiro and Buber in Kellner, 1978).
T he biblic al doc t rine of imit at io Dei finds expression in verses such as the
following: ‘Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy’ (Lev. 19:2); ‘And now,
Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to
walk in all His ways, and t o love Him, and t o serve t he Lord t hy God wit h all t hy
heart and with all t hy soul’ (Deut. 10: 12); and ‘T he Lord will est ablish t hee for a
holy people unto Himself, as He hath sworn unto thee: if thou shalt keep the
c ommandments of the Lord thy God, and walk in His ways’ (Deut. 28: 9). For our
purposes here, these verses involve t wo explic it c ommandme nt s: t o be holy,
because God is holy, and to walk in the ways of God. How does one make oneself
holy and thus God-like? T he Bible c ouldn’t be c learer. Levit ic us 19: 2 is an
introduc tion to a list of c ommandme nts c ombining matters moral (honour of
parents, c harity, justic e, honesty, kindness to the disadvantaged, etc ), ritual
(Sabbath observanc e, sac rific es, etc ), and theologic al (not taking the name of the
Lord in vain). One ac hieves holiness, that is, by obeying God’s c ommandments, or,
in the words quoted above from Deuteronomy, by walking in his ways.