Quote:
Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy
There are different implementations, some monetary compensation and some tit-for-tat as in Hammurabi's Code, Exodus and Leviticus.
As far as the quote it's been used by the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cb2008
This is a common enough quote and the blind eye comment is also a common understanding and it illuminates the meaning quite well. The only misunderstanding lies in taking the blind eye to mean injury. it is not. it simply means revenge like that ends to nobody’s benefit.
The post was fine. The understanding was a bit dense.
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Actually, no.
The quote is actually, "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" and comes from Louis Fischer who was attempting to explain Gandhi's philosophy to readers in his biography. Gandhi's family insist Gandhi said it but there's no evidence to support their claim.
One reason Gandhi's family continues to maintain the claim is his philosophy was clearly one-sided. The British were to practice non-violence, but it was okay for the groups with whom Gandhi was linked to perpetrate violence and not be condemned by Gandhi.
Gandhi correctly employed Sun Tsu's concept that all war is deception. By maintaining the illusion that he was non-violent, the British were backed into a corner because to imprison or assassinate Gandhi would only elevate him to martyr status and prolong the conflict.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy
The idiom stands as in returning intolerance with intolerance is analogous to taking an eye for an eye. It's exactly the same tit-for-tat reaction. You poke my eye out, I poke your eye out. You are intolerant towards me, I am intolerant towards you. Taken to an extreme we have either a world of the blind or a world of the intolerant. It's using the extreme to make a point. It's the diametric opposite of the OP. It's not only accurate but pertinent to this thread and far beyond. One other point is tolerance/intolerance is partly based on subjectivity (eye of the beholder) and largely enforced/practiced outside the rule of law (unless it actually become the rule of law. Oh My!) as opposed to the below examples which are objective and adjudicated and enforced within the rule of law..
Concerning the historical record:
Hammurabi's Code
Personal Injury
195. If a son strikes his father, they shall cut off his hand.
196. If a man destroys the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye.
197. If he breaks another man's bone, they shall break his bone.
198. If he destroys the eye of a plebeian or breaks the bone of a plebeian, he shall pay one mina of silver.
199. If he destroys the eye of a man's slave or beaks a bone of a man's slave, he shall pay one-half his price.
200. If a man knocks out a tooth of a man of his own rank, they shall knock out his tooth
201. If he knocks out a tooth of a plebeian, he shall pay one-third mina of silver
209. If a man has struck a free woman with child, and has caused her to miscarry, he shall pay ten shekels for her miscarriage
210. If that woman die, his daughter shall be killed.
211. If by a blow he has caused a plebian's daughter to have a miscarriage, he shall pay five shekels of silver.
212. If that woman has died, he shall pay one-half mina of silver.
213. If he struck a freeman's female slave and has caused her to have a miscarriage, he shall pay two shekels of silver.
214. If that female slave has died, he shall pay one-third mina of silver.
Exodus 21:23-25
23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life,
24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
Leviticus 24:19-21
19 Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner:
20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury.
21 Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death.
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Although attributed to Hammurapi, the code was developed millennium earlier. Hammurapi modified and expanded the code to account for the fact that over the millennium, society had devolved (rather than evolved) into different classes which now included a slave class.
As an aside and to improve your understanding, the Gutians, who lived between the Tigris and Karun Rivers (the present-day border region of Iraq-Iran) over-ran the Sumerians.
The Gutian Period was virtually identical to the Barracks Emperor Period in the Roman Empire. Because that is true, the Sumerians were able to regain control after a century only to be overthrown by the Akkadians (specifically Sargon of Akkad) in 2,334 BCE.
For reasons unknown, Sumer was destroyed without being destroyed. The Sumerians literally fled overnight with nothing but the clothes on their backs and disappeared from history. That they fled overnight with nothing but the clothes on their backs is not an exaggeration, but it is archaeology. They left food cooking in clay pots on their hearths. The contents were chemically analyzed so we know their diet. Leek Soup/Stew was apparently a big hit. What know what they wore because they left their clothes behind. We know what kind of jewelry they liked because they left it behind. We know what the inside of their homes were like because they left their furniture, art, and knick-knacks behind.
It's a big mystery because whatever happened to Sumer did not happen to Akkad (just south of Sumer).
The Akkadians were over-run by the Amorites (the people idiots call "Babylonians") circa 1,830 BCE
So, yeah, Hammurapi was an Amorite and not a Babylonian.
The Amorites were overthrown circa 1,530 BCE by the Kassites who lived north of the Gutians between the Tigris and Karun Rivers and who are the biblical Kush (not Put in Africa).
The Kassites were overthrown by a cosmopolitan group of people that included remnants of Akkad, Kush, Amorite, Mari, Nuzi, Mitanni, and others who styled themselves as Babylonians circa 1,125 BCE.
Those Babylonians were over-run by the Assyrians in 729 BCE who were then over-run by Greek-speaking Canaanites, or "Chaldeans" in 612 BCE.
The Chaldeans got tossed by the Persians in 529 BCE.
The Persians got trashed by the Macedonians in 331 BCE.
Now you can understand why contemporary and later historians said what they said and they commented that Philip and Alexander marveled at the landscape which was dotted with earth-covered mounts. The Arabic tribes that migrated into the area called them
tells which is an Arabic word meaning hillock or small hill, like Tell Ubaid.
I mention that just to show who wrong
National Geographic is with their scare tactic videos on what cities would look like without people. What
Nat Geo claims takes a few years actually takes a few centuries.
It also tells us the Hebrews who always lived in Canaan and never lived in Egypt were very familiar with Hummurapi's Code and adopted it albeit with modifications centuries later.
One more thing it tells us is you don't understand the context.
Both Hammurapi's Code and the Hebrew laws can be dumbed down and simplified to this:
Do unto others.
Right?
If you don't want your eye gouged out, then don't do it to another.
If you don't want your arm broke, then don't break the arm of another.
Do unto others but that doesn't work unless people got some skin in the game and that would be the penalties that Hammurapi encoded.
Context: Today we have insurance, but not back then; however, insurance alleviates one of penalties.
I teach guitar to a vet over at St Francis Court and sometimes another vet sits in. He survived Iraq and Afghanistan only to come home and get hit by a drunk-driver driving the wrong way on I-75 and lost his left leg at the hip.
The drunk driver still has both his legs.
Okay, big deal he spent a year in jail which is not the same as prison and got fined had his license that was suspended continued on suspension.
We tolerate crime instead of being intolerant and because we tolerate crime we get more crime. If we exacted a meaningful penalty, like the Hammurapi Code, we'd have less crime and mo' money to spend on other things because we waste a lot of money on law enforcement, courts, prisons, and such.
Quote:
Originally Posted by phetaroi
The original poster doesn't really preach 'acceptance and tolerance'. Toward the end of his post he says, "It seems to me that ANY path that leads one to our Creator is a good path". Well gee...that leaves out we Buddhists who, for the most part don't believe in a creator god, as well as all atheists, and many agnostics. And probably many additional people in cultures we are not that familiar with. His post comes across more as 'for those of us who are believers may we be accepting and tolerant of others whose beliefs are pretty close to our own'.
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