The Origins of Morality

The ethical and moral ideas underlying the world’s dominant religions today emerged independently between 800 and 200 BC in China, India, Iran, Israel, and Greece, the period Karl Jaspers labeled the Achsenzet, or Axial Age.

This is not to say that earlier people had not thought about morality and ethics. The Sumerians wrestled with the question of how suffering and evil could exist in a world created by gods who were good, cherished righteousness and compassion, and abhorred falsehood and oppression. The Sumerians were the first to use the word “freedom.” Their kings often claimed to be merciful and just, and one published the oldest known written law code. Three of the five legible laws speak of fines for causing injuries—closer to our standards than the vengeful “eye-for-an-eye” approach of the more famous Babylonian Code of Hammurabi dated nearly a thousand years later (Kramer 1956). Egyptians developed the concept of ma‘at combining justice, order, righteousness, security, and truth, and from it the idea that the gods admitted to paradise only those whose virtues outweighed their faults. The concept of the Pharaoh as good shepherd responsible for the welfare of his people emerged during the First Intermediate Period (c. 2200–2050 BC) (Wilson 1951, Breasted 1912, 1933).

Mithraism emerged around 1400 BC in Anatolia, originating several ideas that Christianity adopted. Mithra was born of the virgin Anahita, an idea that recurs in the stories of Hercules, Lao Tzu, Perseus, Theseus, and of course Jesus. Mithraism’s great festival was 25 December, the first day of the week was dedicated to the sun, and bells called the faithful to prayer. Adherents believed in a celestial heaven and an infernal hell, looked forward to a final day of resurrection and judgment following an apocalyptic conflict, and went through seven grades of initiation, one involving bread and wine, another baptism in water.

In China, Confucius (born c. 575 BC) prescribed a code of conduct based on family, loyalty, nobility, tradition, and virtue. His belief that ability rather than ancestry, friends, or wealth should determine status led to a meritocratic bureaucracy. Taoists leaned toward anarchism, compassion, humility, and quietism. They opposed capital punishment and advocated a restrained, simple, modest life. Mozi advocated asceticism and self-restraint, and favored innovation over ancient practices. Much like the later European utilitarians, he evaluated actions based on benefit, and tried to replace entrenched family and clan structures with universal love, arguing that one should care for all people equally (Fung 1997, Hucker 1975, Waley 1956).

In India, ascetics and mystics gave Hinduism its characteristic features in the Upanishads, particularly including samsara, the belief in a series of births, deaths, and rebirths governed by the moral principle known as karma. Vardhamana (599–527 BC), known as Mahavira, the Great One, claimed to be the last prophet—a claim made later by Mani and Muhammad—and founded Jainism. It required that adherents practice asceticism, chastity, and truthfulness, and forbade stealing, possessing property, or injuring any living creature, because each, insects included, has a soul. Gautama (c. 560–483 BC), or Buddha, taught that escape from worldly suffering could be achieved through the eight-fold path of right action, effort, living, meditation, mindfulness, seeing, speaking, and thinking (Clothey 2007, Fromkin 1999).

In Iran and Afghanistan, Zoroaster (c. 588–511 BC),¹ probably borrowing from Mithraism, gave us angels, heaven, hell, and the trinity.

Israel produced a succession of outstanding prophets from the mid-eighth to the early-fifth centuries BC who were critics of wrongdoing, injustice, and idolatry. Some adapted Egyptian wisdom literature and Sumerian or Babylonian myths to their vision of man’s duties to God. Others warned that natural disasters or conquest by the likes of the Assyrians were divine punishments for violating religious law. Some emphasized God’s requirements for justice and righteousness, and His power of forgiveness (Coogan 1998, Kramer 1956, Metzger 1993, Noth 1958, Wilson 1951).²

Classical Greece produced an incredible number of great thinkers beginning with Thales (c. 625–546 BC), who sought natural explanations for events and phenomena through reason and observation. The universe ruled by anthropomorphic deities began to give way as Xenophanes (c. 570–480 BC) mocked humans for creating gods in their own image. Heraclitus (c. 540–475 BC) taught that the purpose of theory was to explain change and is credited with the idea of the logos that opens the book of Genesis (translated there as “word”). Pythagoras (c. 580–510 BC) established a community of ascetics and taught us to understand nature through mathematics. Empedocles (c. 490–430 BC) originated the theory of the four basic elements (although he never used the term itself) of air, earth, fire and water associated with Hera, Aidoneus, Zeus, and Nestis, and proposed love and strife as the forces that mixed and separated them in various proportions to form all things. Lasting over 2000 years, the idea gradually gave way with the discovery of the evolving elements and principles of chemistry we recognize today.

Others, led by Socrates and his disciple Plato, asked how humans should conduct their lives, and answered by placing morality at the center of their concerns. For them, morality began by recognizing that a group survives according to the ability of its members to cooperate for common ends. They believed in organizing society to ensure that each person could do what he did best. Such has been the conservative ideal ever since. Criticism of its ant-like “utopia” contributed to development of the contrasting liberal ideal (Durant 1953, Fromkin 1999, Tarnas 1991).