why is the bible moral?

I prefer to think of KBW as guidelines that will probably never be met, ok practically speaking never ever met, but I guess if we got halfway there, practically speaking maybe a thousandth of the way there, we would all be better off. Well not all, some people would be worse off, but on average, everybody would be better off. Or so I claim.

The one thing the Hebrews had was rules. They had been keeping that book for a couple thousand years, and they had all these guys spending their whole lives studying it and deciding this and that about it, and then other guys studying what they said and writing about that, and so on. Inquiring of your rabbi what to do was not like going to see your preacher who would tell you to do what was right, it was more like consulting a lawyer who would have to go through all these volumes to figure what god wanted, and even then if you consulted another guy he might say something different.

Or so says, Karen Armstrong who is my authority on ancient monotheistic religions. Of course the Persians had what is generally believed to be the first monotheistic religion, but then much of that was incorporated later into Judaism and then into Christianity. But that morality thing was kind of a new thing with Judaism. Like you said on reading gilgamesh, and I imagine a lot of those other old myths, morality didn’t have a lot to do with it. The powerful took from the weak and that was that. I guess the mortals could try to cozy up to the gods, but maybe they would help them and maybe they wouldn’t, and the gods themselves didn’t seem to have much of a moral compass.

Not that the old testament god had much of one either, basically siding with the jews whenever they were up against someone, or maybe not if He was pissed. And he didn’t ask the Jews to be particularly nice to non-Jews, but they had to play fair and square with each other.

I don’t believe that the Jews first discovered morality, I believe that was always around due to how long it takes humans to raise kids. This is my own personal belief, which I could argue for, but I believe I have already.

Here is another of my own theories, I believe the Jews put morality into their religion because they had some kind of rude democracy. They had to have the consent of the governed in a way that maybe the Sumerians or Egyptians, who would just say off with your head if you don’t like it, didn’t have to.

I am just talking out of my ass about how the Jews had a more democratic society than the Sumerians, I have no idea, but I think if you need the consent of the governed you have to at least pretend to be nice, you have to pretend to be just, because then people will feel they have some kind of rights, and will more readily consent for you to rule them rather than string you up and choose some other asshole.

Oh this is all speculation, what do you think about it? More specifically why do you think the Jews incorporated some morality into their myths while others didn’t bother?