The Philosophical Significance of Jesus

Aside from questions of whether or not he was God, or God’s son, or God’s second cousin, what, if anything, was the philosophical significance of Jesus?
I believe Jesus was a serious (albeit perhaps untutored) philosopher of the Western (not necessarily Greek) tradition, and I believe his message concerns the logical scope of moral proscription.

Say what? Stick with me.

People are often confused by the fact that the same God who issues the Ten Commandments also, in 1 Samuel 15:3, says “Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!”

The source of our confusion is testimony to the success of Jesus’s message.

Prior to the time of Jesus, the laws of the separate tribes occupying the Middle East were understood to apply to that tribe only. “Thou shalt not kill” means “Thou shalt not kill other members of thine own tribe, i.e., other Hebrews.” Amalek is the name of another tribe.

Other Tribulations of Job

Today, we have difficulty understanding that ancient people could believe that divine proscriptions against human slaughter could be limited to one’s own tribe, but that is the difference between our minds and the minds of the ancients. And that’s what Jesus did.

Jesus taught (preached) that the moral commandment is not limited to this or that tribe, group, religion, gender, race, or individual. He taught that the moral law applies universally, across the board, to everyone, Hebrew or not, stranger or not. Everyone is equal under the law and everyone – for the most part – has a basic sense of what is right and wrong.

Everyone knows that it’s wrong to kill, everyone knows the exceptions (like self-defense, war, non-negligent accident), and everyone knows that the same rule applies to everybody everywhere.

Today we take the universality of moral proscription to be so obvious that we cannot imagine a time when it did not exist, nor do we take note of where it originated.

A Review on Igbos as the Hebrew Tribes in Africa

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