The Relevance of the Old Testament for Contemporary Ethics

Abstract

The Old Testament has a rather bad reputation, because of its intolerant and violent attitudes on many issues. It is indeed a product of another age, and many of its assumptions are untenable in the modern world. Nonetheless it remains important for discussions of ethics, primarily for two reasons: One is the fact that it exhibits a passion for justice that is unparalleled in world literature. The other is that it is the oldest layer of one of the major traditions that shaped western culture for two thousand years.