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Article Excerpt
Can market institutions and/or market outcomes be reconciled to Biblical values? Many modern Christian theologians think not. (1) They raise objections to a number of practices associated with market exchange. These range from alleged product market abuses, such as price gouging by firms and restraining entry to obtain excessive profits, to alleged domestic and foreign labor market abuses, including paying unjust (nonliving) wages and the exploitation of workers in lesser-developed economies through the practice of sweatshop labor. The economic ethics of the Scriptures are understood to have been violated in these instances. In large part they are cited as characteristic of the unjust, impersonal nature of much of modern market exchange which is driven by the raw unchecked pursuit of economic gain. In fact, a contrast is sometimes drawn with both personal exchange and economically just practices exhibited in the world of Old Testament Israel.
In contrast, modern market economists emphasize the salutary features which stem from freedom of exchange. They highlight the benefits of allowing an extended division of labor to disperse productivity gains through market-based exchange to numerous parties. In the end, such exchange is in fact an exchange of property rights. Well-enforced property rights have certain characteristics, including the rights of use, transferability, and ability to serve as collateral for borrowing. Societies which promote the pursuit of individual self-interest and economic gain are seen to achieve, through impersonal market mechanisms, rising living standards and generally fair (i.e., what is understood to be just) economic outcomes. Unjust exchange is often seen to stem from government intervention bestowing monopoly power or privilege upon a particular individual or group which is exploited in the product and/or labor markets.
The prominent twentieth-century economic historian Karl Polanyi claimed that in fact market mechanisms did not characterize the world of antiquity, including the economy of ancient Israel. Instead the Israelites relied upon nonmarket conventions, particularly reciprocity and redistribution, and exchange based on status or community considerations such as duty and/or obligation. However, significant research since Polanyi has tended to undermine this claim and laid weight on the rise of market institutions in ancient Palestine which brought challenges to these various forms of nonmarket conventions (Silver, 1995; Temin, 2001; Freyne, 2004). This scholarship opens the door to re-examine the role of exchange and property rights in Israel and the manner in which they are understood in the light of the values of the Hebrew Bible.
Seeking to extend this line of research, this essay examines the features of property rights and exchange found in the Old Testament. It also brings to bear a prominent theme of the ethics of the Hebrew Bible with respect to measuring the justice of economic activity. That is, the argument here seeks to trace the 'moral trajectory' of the Old Testament command "to love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18) into the marketplace. The ways in which the Old Testament develops the concept of commutative justice largely shape this trajectory as applied to economic exchange. Indeed, beginning with the foundation laid in the Decalogue and carrying through the case law into the wisdom and prophetic literature, the concepts of justice and injustice in exchange are found to be interrelated extensions of this trajectory. It is argued that both the wisdom and prophetic literature make use of these connections in addressing deceit, fraud and unjust gain in Israel's agrarian economy. This analysts of different sections or the Old Testament canon supports the claim that market exchange and property rights are reconcilable with Biblical values.
The paper is organized into the following five sections. In Section I there is an overview of the literature on the role of reciprocity, redistribution, and forms of exchange in ancient Israel and surrounding Near Eastern societies. The norms for commutative justice provided in the Pentateuch by the Decalogue are examined in Section II. It discusses how the commandments against theft and covetousness are applied to the requirement for just weights and balances in exchange. Section III considers how the wisdom literature, particularly the book of Proverbs, addresses injustice in exchange. Particular economic actions which generate unjust gain through afflicting the poor are discussed. The section of the Old Testament canon containing the writing prophets is examined in Section IV. It expands upon the ways in which certain economic gains occurred in an unjust manner, at the expense of the poor in Israel. Section V draws some conclusions regarding implications of the Old Testament norms for justice in exchange. It is argued that Biblical ethics retain their relevance for today in addressing economies relying more intensively on the division of labor and trade based on comparative advantage.
I. Means of Allocation in Ancient Israel and Surrounding Societies
Evaluating exchange and property rights in the light of Biblical values requires that certain other questions be answered. What characterized the means of allocating resources and products in ancient Israel? Was there a generalized dependence on transactions guided by traditional conventions and embedded in well-known community relations? To what extent was there reliance upon the price mechanism and impersonal exchange? Answering these questions leads one into an examination of certain dimensions of the premodern economic institutions in the ancient Near East.
Throughout much of the twentieth century, scholarship on economic life in ancient Palestine emphasized the significance of nonmarket social conventions as the means of allocating products and labor. Malina (1997), Oakman (1996) and others drew on the insights of Polanyi, Arensberg and Pearson (1957) and Moses Finley (1973) regarding primitive economies to apply them to the economies of ancient Israel and first-century Palestine. Polanyi acknowledged the practice of market exchange, yet emphasized instead the significance of customs, traditions, and religious norms which were embedded in ancient economies. Highlighting the importance of status and personal relations in trade, Polanyi found little evidence of market activity in premodern economies. Trade of products and the employment of labor bound by certain duties did not necessarily represent a market order. Ancient economies were said to be predominantly characterized by reciprocity, including ritualized gift-giving and gift-receiving; status drove economic relations as social obligations needed to be met (Polanyi, Arensberg and Pearson, 1957, 73-74). Societies in which reciprocity dominates have a low division of labor.
Polanyi recognized a second form of economic arrangements, redistribution, in which goods collected to a center...
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