27 Aug 2024

Ethics Project, Judaic Topics
Where is the Love in the Five Books of Moses? The Hebrew word for love, from the root aleph-heh-vet, or ahav, is not found in the Book of Numbers. There is no love in the wilderness! Where love is found in the other four books, its message is often unexpected. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out the concentration of uses of the love in the Book of Deuteronomy.[1] A closer look at a...
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08 Jan 2024

Ethics Project
This is a current draft of Chapter One of the book tentatively titled: The Ehtic of Respect: Why should we be concerned that our behavior towards others meets any particular standard? Why should I strive to be a “good person,” whatever that means? What do I owe to others and why do I owe it? What, in short, is the point? The short answer to that question is that it is ultimately good...
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26 Apr 2023

Ethics Project, Judaic Topics
This week in our regular cycle of Torah study we reach the part of the book of Leviticus known as the Holiness Code. In Lev 19:1-2 God tells Moses to say to the Israelite people, “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” To the question, “How am I to be holy?” we are often pointed toward the meaning of the Hebrew root of the word that is translated as “holy,” that is, קדש, k...
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09 Apr 2023

Ethics Project
Having published the first major part of The Hidden Bones Apocalypse I am turning back for a while to my Golden Rule ethics project. I reviewed Jeffrey Wattles' book on The Golden Rule, as a first step back into that subject, and I was drawn to the early Christian texts on the subject that he cites. Four major treatments of the Rule were written in 17th century England. I decided to l...
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07 Oct 2022

Ethics Project
I have not posted new "Ethics Project" material on this site for quite a while. I did return to the subject for a teaching prepared for Yom Kippur, which synthesizes the several approaches to a universal ethic. This is the one-page synthesis. Toward An Ethic of Respect And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Gen 1:27) Y...
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01 May 2018

Ethics Project
In searching the literature on the understanding of virtue in Islam I found “The Duties of Brotherhood in Islam” by Ih.yā’ of Imām al-Ghazālī. Translated by Muhtar Holland and published by the Islamic Foundation in 1975. Material used here is from the Kindle Edition published by Kube Publishing, Ltd. In an earlier post I commented on the chapter titled “The Golden Rule in Islam” by...
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29 Apr 2018

Ethics Project
In a prior post I wrote that: The Didache is dated by one source between 65 and 80 AD. By another 60 to 90 AD and others believe that additions and modifications to it were made as late as the 3rd century. That the Fellows of the Jesus seminar found that the text of Matthew 7:12 was probably not actually spoken by Jesus but represented an idea that the author of Matthew saw as cons...
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27 Apr 2018

Ethics Project
I have made a significant point of the distinction between the “Do unto others…” language of the common translation of Matthew 7:12 and the “Do not do…” language we find in the majority of world religions and cultures. The Golden Rule label, as we’ve seen, was attached to the “Do unto others…” statement by Anglican churchmen in the 17th century. And both the language and the label hav...
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26 Apr 2018

Ethics Project
Material quoted here is drawn from the paper by Dan P. McAdams, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, which was published in “Cultivating Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology and Psychology” edited by Nancy E. Snow, Oxford University Press, 2015. McAdams proposes that the development of virtue can be understood via a three-part model that traces t...
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