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What comes to mind when you think of law? Is it authority? Is it a sense of morality, justice, and truth? Is it a sense of right and wrong? Maybe it relates to ethical conduct in the world, how to behave, and punishment. It also could relate to rewards for good behavior as well.
Where does law come from? How do you learn this? The short answer is that you learned it from your parents, and it will be transmitted to your children. There’s an element of handed-down wisdom in a person’s sense of justice and morality. When you think of this, maybe you think of the Ten Commandments, prescriptions and prohibitions against certain things.
To really understand the etiology, or the origin, cause, and evolution, of these norms, codes, and laws and how religion fits into it all, you might look at primitive societies. In early society back in the Stone Age, there was no term or concept for law as it’s understood today.
Some of the earliest forms of writing, known as cuneiform, indicate the relationship between humans in these societies and the supernatural. It also documented domestic relationships involving geographical boundaries and relationships between individuals. Essentially, this was documenting ethical conduct in society.
The first written codes were an evolving code of conduct for societies that were beginning to shift into relationships that involved mixed clans as opposed to a single clan. They outlined king-based rules, behavior, guidelines, and obligations.
The English word “law” comes from “decree” and “partnership.” The word legal comes from the Latin “lex,” which is taken from the Latin verb “legare”: “to bind” or “to bring together.”
Religion comes from the Latin “re-ligare,” which also means “to bind.” There’s a shared etymological root between “law,” “legal,” and “religion.”
The Greek word for morality is “ethicos,” which refers to behavior in society.
You don’t begin to see the intertwining of formal law, ethics, and social behavior until writing and language starts to be more directly associated with the supernatural as a direct other that communicates personally with mankind. This is known as the revealed word of God revealed to Moses, Christian prophets, and Muhammad. It becomes the basis for formal law and the Mosaic law. The Ten Commandments and Torah given to Moses by God and the Qur’an given to Muhammad by Allah became the bedrock of society, laws, ethics, and norms for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
You can continue following this transition from what anthropologists have called "primitive law" to formal codification. Humanity has had a changing relationship with ideas about what is right and wrong. This investigation could take you into the realms of enforcement, Roman law, private property, business relations, et cetera. However, what is important to understand here is the theory and history behind some of our common sense understandings about right behavior, morality, and laws.
In front of many US courthouses, you can find a representation of the Ten Commandments. It may lead you to wonder what exactly is the role of religion in life today.
In some cultures today, that law given from the divine is still directly referred to as a basis for civil law. These states are known as theocracies. “Theo” is the Greek word for “God.” It refers to a society beholden to divine law.
In many Muslim majority nations, religious law forms the basis for all other laws. In Islam, this is called sharia. Religious scholars are very involved in the process of assessing the relationship between divine doctrine and state law.
Some reformers of history thought that these codes of conduct were so common sense that God could just be written out of the law. They felt that issues pertaining to God should rest in the realm of religion, and the jurisdiction over human behavior should rest in human hands. This is the idea of separation of church and state. This exists in places such as the US, France, India, and many other nations.
Source: THIS TUTORIAL WAS AUTHORED BY TED FAIRCHILD FOR SOPHIA LEARNING. Please see our Terms of Use.
