The Moral Dimension: Commonality and Particularity

Abstract

This chapter emphasizes that it was the ethical (moral) basis of Judaism that was now seen as separating Jews from non-Jews. Moreover, it stresses that the Greek mirror played an important role in shaping the image of Jewish morality. Greek morality (or better non-morality) was perceived as antinomical to Judaism; even when Jewish writers were ready to agree that Greek ethics did exist, they found them fundamentally different from (and inferior to) Jewish ethics. The chapter thus demonstrates that Greeks and Jews alike distinguished between themselves and other nations on a moral basis. Some Greek writers believed that Greek ethics was what separated the Hellenes from the barbarians. The dominant view in Jewish tradition was similar, and also stressed the deep chasm between the moral behaviour of Jews and that of Gentiles.