Abstract
The way in which a nation’s economy is structured is of great importance for the material welfare of its people as well as the people’s relationship with the state and the operation of the state itself. It is also important for the proper functioning of a nation as a people and its psychological welfare. If the gap between rich and poor increases, the structure of an economy, and therefore the welfare of the state and the nation, is at risk. Two important documents of antiquity, Plato’s Nomoi and the Book of Deuteronomy, which even today influence life, dealt intensively with the fissures between rich and poor within society as a danger to political welfare and harmony. This article will examine these documents to make use of these two books for improving a societal situation. This will be done by a comparative perspective on both of these books.
Highlights
Deuteronomy and Plato’s Nomoi – Their correspondenceThe structure of the organisation of the economy is most important for the material welfare of the people of a nation, and for their psychological welfare and the harmony in the political organisation of the state
The best way of deliverance from such approaches is a comparative perspective on both of these books, and to organise a kind of discourse between the ‘Athenian Stranger’ in Plato’s Nomoi, who, as already Aristotle had observed, represents Plato himself, and Moses, who was regarded to be the author of the Book of Deuteronomy
Each of the two books was construed as a plan for a new society expected in the future. Plato designs his Nomoi as a legal construction for a new colony of Knossos which shall be founded in Creta, and the Book of Deuteronomy is designed as Moses’ speech to his people in the land of Moab before their crossing the river Jordan for a new life in the Promised Land
Summary
The structure of the organisation of the economy is most important for the material welfare of the people of a nation, and for their psychological welfare and the harmony in the political organisation of the state. To an outsider you may lend at interest, but to your brother you are not to lend at interest, so that YHWH your God will prosper you in everything you set out to do in the land you are entering in order to take possession of it This commandment is, as those in Deuteronomy 15 are, part of the brotherly and sisterly ethics of the Book of Deuteronomy, which aim at a new way of economic behaviour, different from that which was usual in the days of the earlier authors of the Book of Deuteronomy. The authors of the Book of Deuteronomy put the commandments to release loans in the seventh year, and the probation of loans at interest, in Moses’ mouth
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