A July 10 letter, "Religion is, has been part of 'secular' world," asserted "(m)ost civilized nations' secular affairs are governed by laws grounded in the Bible" and that "(b)asic legal doctrines against murder, theft and perjury are rooted in the Ten Commandments." Pertaining to the American legal system, these assertions are historically inaccurate and merely represent Judeo-Christian elitism.
The American legal system is based on English common law established by King Henry II in the mid-12th century. Henry II took the existing patchwork of laws and legal traditions, many of which predated Christianity in England (i.e., Roman and Germanic laws) and consolidated them, introducing a consistent set of laws.
The Ten Commandments are laws plagiarized from pre-existing laws of Egypt and Babylon. Prior to the Exodus and the writing of the Ten Commandments, the Israelites were living in Egypt. The Egyptians had a code of moral behavior embodied in the "Book of the Dead" that was applied to judgment of the dead to see whether their conduct while alive would permit them a good afterlife. The moral imperatives of the much-later Ten Commandments are remarkably similar.
The Ten Commandments also are identical to moral requirements in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, which also predates the Ten Commandments. When one places the Ten Commandments next to a translation of the Code of Hammurabi, an identical Babylonian law can be found for each commandment - only the gods are different.
Research will show that, throughout recorded history, most civilized cultures shared the same moral imperatives regarding murder, theft, lying, etc. Only the gods these civilizations invented and chose to worship differ, be they Judeo-Christian, Babylonian or Egyptian gods. Morality, therefore, is by no means a Judeo-Christian or biblical invention.
Robert J. Szabo
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