God is a Capitalist

by Roger McKinney

  Finally, the union of religion and state in Egypt resembled the economy of the middle ages in Europe before the separation of church and state. As we learned earlier in the chapter on capitalism, rising standards of living require massive amounts of investment by wealthy people in new processes, technology and businesses. The rich in Europe did not begin to invest in new or expanding businesses until the advent of capitalism. They gave to the Church in order to buy their way into heaven and to share in the Church’s political power, and they bought land and titles of nobility in order to protect what wealth they retained. The complete absence of investment guaranteed that the majority of people would remain close to starvation. The same dynamics would have worked in Egypt where the pharaoh spent what little surplus he extracted from the peasants on massive temples, pyramids, monuments, sacrifices and priests for his gods.

  The rule of law

  Until the modern world, law and religion were closely linked. Being a god was important for creating laws because people understood early in history that no human being has inherent authority over other humans. Only a god could claim authority to determine behaviors that others must follow simply because he told them to. The practice continued as late as the early modern period when European kings claimed divine right to rule.

  People look for reason and consistency in law because it makes the future a little more predictable and planning slightly easier. Business people, including farmers, need consistency in the law in order to encourage them to invest for the long term. But law by human gods tended to be capricious, being more human than divine. Pharaohs did not change the law continually, for they had at least the wisdom to understand the chaos it would cause in their kingdom, and too much chaos might cause others who aspired to be the god-king to attempt to murder him and assume the position. Still, the Bible provides several examples of god-kings making capricious laws. Pharaoh enslaved the Hebrew people for no reason but his own insecurities. Israeli kings launched wars to satisfy their egos. David murdered Bathsheba’s husband and committed adultery with her. Solomon amassed wealth and bankrupted his kingdom with building programs. Ahab allowed Jezebel to murder Naboth so Ahab could steal his land. Nebuchadnezzar made laws to inflate his ego and would have murdered Daniel and his friends had God not intervened. The King of Persia would have allowed Haman to murder all of the Jews in the kingdom had God not interrupted his plans.

  In addition to capriciousness, the law of the Egyptian pharaoh-gods did not apply equally to all people as has been the case with most societies through history. The law usually applied only to the common people. The nobility, who provided the support structure for the pharaoh, followed their own laws.

  The common people must have suffered at the hands of the nobility much as they did in Europe during the middle ages. Pieter de la Court, a businessman and economist in the Dutch Republic, offered an example of the oppression of commoners in his book published in 1662, The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republic of Holland. He wrote that before the founding of the republic the nobility searched the land for farmers who attained financial success. Coveting the farmer’s land, a nobleman would fabricate criminal charges against the farmer. The nobility employed the judges and sheriffs so the nobleman would bribe a sheriff to arrest the farmer and lock him in jail. He would then bribe the judge to find the farmer guilty of a crime worthy of capital punishment. After the execution, the nobleman would confiscate the farmer’s property as part of the punishment for his crime. Two other books by de la Court, History of the Counts of Holland and History of the Stadholders of Holland and West-Friesland provided more accounts of the crimes of the nobility. The creation of the republic ended the privilege that the nobility enjoyed to steal what they coveted from common people.

  To summarize, the ancient Egyptian economy from which the Israelis escaped was typical of all economies throughout history that were controlled by kings so it is reasonable for us to assume that it operated very much like them. The egos of the pharaohs, nobility and priests ensured that all other Egyptians had just barely enough food to keep them alive and working. The Old Testament prophets constantly indicted Israel’s kings and nobility for abusing and stealing from the poor. It’s unlikely that Egypt’s kings and nobility demonstrated greater honesty and compassion. André Dollinger in “The social classes in ancient Egypt” described Egyptian life this way:

  From the unification of the country onward, a diminutive rich upper class ruled with the help of a small scribal administration over the masses of Egyptian workers and peasants living barely above subsistence level, soaking up most of the surplus the labour of the workers produced. This development reached an apex during the beginning of the pyramid age, when the building of the royal tombs and mortuary temples required the effort of the whole nation, setting the pharaoh apart from the other members of the upper class.

  By the time Moses led the Israelis out of Egypt the people had been living in such destitution and mutual envy for over 3,000 years. Moses’ story provides an example of the absolute rule of pharaoh over his people. God had told Abraham that the descendants of Jacob who had relocated to Egypt because of a famine would become slaves to their hosts. They suffered as slaves for about four centuries, but prospered and multiplied as a result of God’s blessings. However, one pharaoh became alarmed at the number of Hebrews and decided to implement population control by murdering all of the baby boys. Pharaohs had the power to murder anyone with impunity.

  But Moses’ family feared God more than pharaoh and kept baby Moses hid until one day pharaoh’s soldiers made a house-to-house search for infants. Moses’ sister hid him in a basket floating among the reeds near the river bank where pharaoh’s daughter was bathing. Seeing the basket, she had her servants retrieve it and was delighted to find the healthy baby inside. She hired Moses’ mother to nurse him and when she weaned him pharaoh’s daughter took him to live with her in the palace. There Moses would have attended the school that educated the children of pharaoh, the nobility, and foreign diplomats in the arts, literature, science, religion and governance of the powerful empire.

  As an adult, Moses had to escape from Egypt after killing an Egyptian guard who was beating a Hebrew slave. Moses then worked for forty years in the most despised profession in Egypt, a shepherd. One day God appeared to Moses and commanded him to return to Egypt to persuade pharaoh to let the Hebrew slaves go free so they could build their own nation in Palestine.

  Employing history and archeology while applying comparative economics to the ancient Egyptian economy we have a good idea of how miserable life must have been for Egyptian peasants. Their lives must have been short, poor, and consumed with the resentment that envy breeds. Many would have starved in famines, just as peasants did in Europe until modern times. Typical of similar societies, the nobility would have extracted any surplus the peasants achieved and spent it on luxurious living or as offerings to the gods who protected them. Now let us look at the Israeli economy that Moses created.

  The Israeli economy

  Theologians often say that Israel under the judges was unique because it was a theocracy. But that was not the source of Israel’s uniqueness because Egypt was a theocracy as well. We know from reading the documents from the ancient regimes in Mesopotamia and Egypt that all empires considered themselves to be ruled by the gods through the king. In fact, we know from the Bible that God has always judged all nations and still does. He does not rule directly, as a king or president might, but then he did not rule directly in ancient Israel under the judges, either. He gave them the law to follow and expected the priests to teach it to the people, the judges to administer it and the people to enforce it. God did not sit as a judge in court cases; people did. Egypt was the same: the gods gave the law to the king who passed it on to the people who administered and enforced it.

  Some might protest that Israel was different because God judged the nation by causing pagan nations to conquer it when Israelis succumbed to idolatry. That is true an
d he did the same thing when Israel had kings, eventually causing the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem and the temple. But as the prophets make clear, he also judged Babylon and the nations surrounding Israel, but that did not make them theocracies. God judges nations today, but that does not make them theocracies, either. Israel was no more or less a theocracy than any pagan nation in its day, or any nation today for that matter. Israel’s uniqueness issued from the structure of its government.

  Revelation

  Israel was unique among the pagan nations of Moses’ day in the fact that it enjoyed direct revelation from God. Pagan nations enjoyed no direct communications from their gods and the many volumes of writing recovered by archeologists provide evidence. John Walton wrote in Ancient Near Eastern Thought,

  Historical records in the ancient Near East do not claim to be revelation from deity, but they do show great interest in discerning the activities of the gods. The polytheistic nature of ancient Near Eastern religion impedes the development of any concept of a singular divine plan encompassing all of history. At best the reigning dynasty may identify a divine plan in establishing and sustaining that dynasty. Some documents look back into the distant past to see a pattern that led to the present...These typically concern not what the deity has done, but what has been done to the deity. In Mesopotamia it is assumed that deity plays an active part in the cause-and-effect process that comprises history. The causation of the gods is understood to be impromptu rather than in accordance with any overarching plan or grand design.

  Priests relied on divination for clues to what their gods were up to. “Divinization produced the only divine revelation known in the ancient Near East. Through its mechanisms, the ancients believed not that they could know the deity, but that they could get a glimpse of the designs and will of deity,” Walton wrote. Pagan priests compiled catalogues of omens from the heavens made up of movements of the sun, moon and stars and omens from the earth comprising significant events. They tried to match omens in the heavens with those on earth and the more omens that the priest could assemble the more certain he felt about his interpretation of the intentions of the gods.

  The closest the gods came to “writing” revelation was on the organs in a sacrificial animal. Priests would prepare an animal such as a goat, sacrifice it to the god then butcher it and remove certain organs, such as the liver, for examination. Different features of the organ served as omens revealing the will of the god. An old Babylonian text offers an example: “If the base of the Presence has a Branch and it (the Branch) has seized the Path to the right of the gall bladder: the prince will expropriate a country which is not his,” according to Walton. And, “If a Weapon is placed between the Presence and the Path and it points to the Narrowing to the right: he who is not the occupant of the throne will seize the throne.” The Presence is the vertical groove on the left lobe of the liver and acted as the symbol of the god. The Path referred to the horizontal groove and surrounding area and usually symbolized military campaigns. The Weapon was a pointed protrusion of flesh that symbolized armed forces.

  Joshua used this pagan obsession with divination to help the Israeli army defeat an enemy as recorded in Joshua chapter 10. Most translations claim that the sun and moon stood still and that translation has caused a great deal of consternation since the rise of modern science. However, Wheaton College’s John Walton offers a better translation as a result of his understanding of ancient Near Eastern divination. The ancient world, including Israel, followed a lunar calendar with the first day of the month beginning on the appearance of the new moon. A full moon appeared in the middle of the month and was identified by the fact that it set in the west just minutes after the sun rose in the east, causing both to appear in the sky opposite each other.

  According to Walton, the day of the month on which this opposition of the sun and moon occurred served as an important omen for most cultures other than Israel. The opposition happening on the fourteenth day of the month was a good omen and the event was referred to as the sun and moon “waiting,” “standing,” or “stopping.” On such a day, pagan priests determined that “the speech of the land will become reliable; the land will become happy.”

  But if the opposition of the sun and moon happened a day later, the omen became evil and portended all kinds of calamity, such as “a strong enemy will raise his weapons against the land; the enemy will tear down the city gate.” Other predictions of disaster included raging lions and wolves and a diminishing of business.

  Walton suggests that Joshua took advantage of his knowledge of pagan divination and, noticing that the opposition of the sun and moon did not happen on the fourteenth day of the month, planned the attack to take place on the fifteenth when the opposition of the sun and moon would become an evil omen for the enemy but not for the Israelis. The omen would strike fear in the hearts of the enemy soldiers and give the Israelis an advantage in battle. Walton suggests the following translation for the key passage of Joshua 10:12-15:

  “O sun, wait over Gibeon and moon over the valley of Aijalon.” So the sun waited and the moon stood before the nation took vengeance on its enemies. Is it not written in the book of Jashar, “The sun stood in the midst of the sky and did not hurry to set as on a day of full length?”

  Of course, pagans attributed every bad event to the displeasure of the gods and every good one to their pleasure. The problem they faced was in knowing what pleased their gods. Experience and divination provided vague guidelines and often failed to explain why the gods were angry, so worshippers frequently offered sacrifices to appease the gods for unknown sins. Job offered such sacrifices after feasts to cover sins that his children may have committed without knowing it. When the Old Testament prophets made fun of the idols that Israelis worshipped by calling them dumb, they may have been pointing to the obvious lack of revelation from the pagan gods that frustrated worshippers.

  The Israelis did not have to resort to the vague methods of divination to guess at God’s will as the pagans did. And because of that they rejoiced at the direct revelation of God’s will to Moses on Sinai. As Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 4:5-7:

  See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the LORD my God commanded me that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?

  And unlike the laws of surrounding nations that favored the rulers and powerful, the laws of Israel applied to all people equally. For the first time in history all people stood in equal relationship to the law, as Moses instructed: “You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly,” (Leviticus 19:15) and “nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit,” (Exodus 23:3).

  Image of God

  The concept of the “image of god” explains much of the difference between Egyptian and Israeli government and economics. Genesis 1:26-28 relates the story of how God created mankind in his image and gave humanity dominion over the earth:

  Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

  The image of god referred almost exclusively to the king or the idol in the a
ncient Near East. In both cases, the image possessed the essence of the deity that empowered the image to carry out the divine functions. The physical features were not important. The emphasis was on the character and attributes of the deity. The image functioned as a mediator of worship of the deity and demonstrated his presence. “Across the ancient world, the image of God did the work of God on earth,” Walton wrote.

  Moses probably wrote the Torah around 1500 BC. By then, pagan people of the ancient Near East had been making and worshipping silver and gold idols for millennia. The concept of those idols and the king as the images of a god was well established. Moses, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, could have chosen any number of concepts to depict the relationship of humanity to God. Most Near East writers preferred the idea of slavery, much as modern Islam does. But Moses wrote that God created mankind in his image. He chose to use the commonly accepted concept of an idol and a king to describe his relationship to all of humanity. In order to prevent the term “image of god” becoming trivialized in our minds, we need to take an in depth look at what it meant to people in Moses’ day. Walton wrote,

  An understanding of what it means to be in the image of god in the ancient world can be enhanced by exploring other uses of “image” as well. For instance, in both Egypt and Mesopotamia an idol contained the image of the deity. This allowed the image to possess the attributes of the deity, and serve as an indicator of the presence of the deity. In another reflection, the image of a king was considered to be present in monuments set up in territories he had conquered.