Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] The Morality of War Written by Bart Ehrman, Read by Ken Teutsch I announced on Friday that we have canceled or at least postponed the Nile cruise trip I was planning to make with Thalassa Journeys because of the ongoing situation in the Middle East. Here I'll say a word indirectly about the conflict.
[00:00:28] As you may have noticed, I have a resolute policy not to discuss politics on the blog.
[00:00:35] I have always wanted the blog to be politically neutral so that people of all persuasions on governmental policy and action, social agenda, particular elected and appointed officials, and so on, can benefit from the knowledge scholars who are also of various persuasions have acquired in studying the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the history of early Christianity, and the many related topics connected with religion in antiquity.
[00:01:01] And so I will not be commenting or giving my views about the war with Iran and related conflicts, but I thought it would be useful to say something factual about armed conflict from an ancient historical perspective. This is something I talk about in my recent book Love Thy Stranger, and it has to do with the to us somewhat strange reality that in ancient discussions of morality there appear to be no objections to power relations and their social effects, no moral condemnation, for example of slavery or war.
[00:01:36] Why is that?
[00:01:37] I argue that it is because of a different common sense dominant throughout antiquity, a common sense that I call the dominant ideology of dominance.
[00:01:49] Here is how I talk about it in the book.
[00:01:52] Please if you comment on this post, I ask that you do not get into modern politics.
[00:02:00] Throughout all of antiquity and still in many places today, interpersonal relations were governed by a perspective we might call an ideology of dominance. For nearly all ancient people on record, from the Babylonians to the Egyptians to the Greeks to the Romans, it simply made sense that those who were powerful should dominate the weak.
[00:02:21] It's why they were powerful by divine or natural right. Mighty empires or cities were entitled to overwhelm weaker ones, killing and enslaving their inhabitants if they chose.
[00:02:33] This had life shattering consequences for the conquered, but that did not make it morally problematic.
[00:02:40] So too, masters were expected to dominate slaves who were property like livestock, there to do the work. Fathers were to dominate their families, wielding the power of life and death over their children.
[00:02:52] Men were to dominate women, not just socially and economically, but sexually as they saw fit. In those worlds, who decides what is right? Those who can.
[00:03:04] This ideology of domination is ubiquitous in ancient writings. It is not argued for it is simply assumed in literature as far back as we have it. Whether ethical treatises, medical writings, political discourse, epic poetry, personal correspondence. Name your genre.
[00:03:21] One of its more forthright and chilling expressions is found in the work of the great chronicler of the Peloponnesian War, the Greek historian Thucydides.
[00:03:32] The war was an extended conflict spanning 431 to 404 BCE between the Greek city states seeking control of the Peloponnese, the peninsula that makes up the southern part of Greece. Athens headed one group of cities, Sparta the other.
[00:03:51] Whether parts of the account are fiction or not is irrelevant to my point, since even if invented, they represent the author's and reader's common sense.
[00:04:04] Before the war began, the city of Corinth appealed to Sparta to launch a first strike against Athens, which in its opinion had needed to be beaten down before it could go on the offensive.
[00:04:16] Representatives of Athens refused to relinquish their military and political ambitions, maintaining they were simply doing what had always been done.
[00:04:25] It was not we who set the example, for it has always been the law that the weaker should be subject to the stronger. Peloponnesian War 176 Footnote I am using the translation of Richard Crawley, revised by Robert P. Strassler in the landmark Thucydides Touchstone, 1998. For a relevant selection of key passages from the account, see Gregory M. Reichberg, Henrik Seiss, and Andre Begsby, editors, the Ethics of the Classic and contemporary readings. Blackwell, 2006, 3, 17.
[00:05:05] End of footnote Such a view underlies the entire narrative later in the war. In 416 BCE the Athenians were set to attack the island of Melos, a Spartan colony. Their plan was to slaughter all the adult males and enslave everyone else. Before the assault, the Athenians sent representatives to offer the Melians a surrender or face the hellacious consequences.
[00:05:32] The Malians tried to sway their aggressors. They had remained neutral in the war and did not deserve to be assaulted.
[00:05:38] The response of the Athenian embassy was harsh and to the point.
[00:05:43] You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
[00:05:55] Peloponnesian War 589 the Malians understood the logic but refused to surrender, and the slaughter began.
