Eye for an Eye: One of the Greatest Ideas in History

Nowadays, many people, particularly those living in Western civilization, no longer regard their society as morally superior to any other. In this video, Dennis Prager lays out how this view does not spring from intellectual rigor, but from intellectual laziness.

Dennis Prager's new book, The Rational Bible, is now available. Order today: https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Bible-Exodus-Dennis-Prager/dp/1621577724
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Script:

Even atheists acknowledge that the book that is most responsible for creating Western civilization is the Bible.

Until very recently, that was considered quite an achievement.

After all, it was Western civilization that created societies rooted in individual liberty, rooted in democracy, that affirmed the equality of all people, and which gave the world the notion of universal human rights.

Of course, these unique moral ideals took centuries to be realized, and the ideals were often violated. But only the West formulated these ideals, let alone achieved them — and then spread them around the world.

In the last half century, however, many of the recipients of these gifts — especially the well-educated — no longer regarded Western civilization as morally superior to any other. And as reverence for Western civilization fell, so did reverence for the source of that civilization.

The Bible has not only been neglected, but reviled — as a foolish fairy tale at best, and as an immoral work at worst. This view springs not from intellectual rigor, but from intellectual laziness.

People throw out all sorts of objections to the Bible as if there are no rational and moral responses to those objections. But the fact is there are rational and moral responses to all those objections.

I give many of them in my book, The Rational Bible, but let me offer two here.

In the biblical book of Deuteronomy, it says if someone has a rebellious  son  who does not obey his father and mother, his parents can take him to the elders of the city for judgment. And if the son is found guilty, the citizens are to stone him to death.

Sounds pretty primitive, doesn’t it?

In fact, however, it was an enormous moral leap forward. This law ended — forever — parental ownership of their children, and with it the right to kill to them. The brilliance of this law was that it seemed to preserve the absolute authority of parents, but in fact ended it.

But, you will respond, the citizens of the city could still kill the child. Theoretically, that was true. But we have no instance of it ever happening in the history of the Jews — the people who brought the book into the world and lived by its rules.

Critics of Western religion also often cite the famous biblical law, “an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand,” etc. as another example of an immoral biblical law.

But this law — known by its Latin name, lex talionis, the law of retaliation — was another great moral advance. It was not meant to be taken literally, and it never was — for the simple reason that it’s impossible to exactly duplicate bodily harm. Only “a life for a life” was meant literally and taken literally: there is capital punishment for premeditated murder.

So, then, what did it mean?

For one thing, lex talionis is the ultimate statement of human equality. Every person's eye is as precious as anyone else's. The eye of a prince is worth no more than the eye of a peasant. This was completely new in history. The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, for example, legislated that the eye of a noble was of much greater value than the eye of a commoner.

For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/videos/eye-eye-one-greatest-ideas-history

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