Q&A: The Morality of the Gentile
The Morality of the Gentile
Question
It is stated in the Talmud (Bava Batra 10b):
"Rabban Gamliel responded and said: ‘Righteousness exalts a nation’—these are Israel, as it is written, ‘And who is like Your people Israel…’; ‘but the kindness of the nations is sin’—every act of charity and kindness that idolaters perform is considered a sin for them, because they do it only in order to glorify themselves by it, and whoever glorifies himself falls into Gehinnom, as it is said: ‘A proud, arrogant scoffer is his name, one who acts in outrageous pride’ (Proverbs 21:24), and ‘outrage’ means Gehinnom, as it is said: ‘That day is a day of wrath’ (Zephaniah 1:15).”
How do you understand this Talmudic passage? Is there a claim here that everything gentiles do stems from an egoistic outlook—in other words, that there really are no moral gentiles? And what do you think about the relevance of this Talmudic passage today?
Answer
I already wrote about this that I do not accept this Talmudic passage, and I have great doubt whether it was even true in their own time. See my article, "The Gentile Whom Jewish Law Did Not Recognize" (search for it here on the site).
Discussion on Answer
Correct. The facts are stronger than such dubious homiletics. The verse I can interpret in several other ways. The Sages saw before them different gentiles from the ones we see, and so they interpreted the verse in accordance with their understanding of reality. And in general, who says this is true of every act of every gentile? The Malbim there distinguishes between a nation and a people, and following him one could say that when a nation acts kindly, it is usually out of interest—as we also see today—as opposed to a private individual.
Maybe the meaning of the verse is that good deeds a gentile does for you are considered sin because this isn’t found in his law code as something that must be done (charity and justice), and it comes only from the side of kindness (and after all, sometimes he’ll do kindness and sometimes he won’t).
Abba Kovner asked Rabbi Amital:
“How is it that you, having gone through the Holocaust, still believe in God?”
Rabbi Amital answered him:
“How is it that you, having gone through the Holocaust, still believe in man?”
The Rabbi objected to the simple meaning that emerges from the Talmud in its interpretation of the verse ‘the kindness of the nations is sin.’
Clearly, morality without God—even if pragmatically it can survive—its very idea originates in selfishness and in the interest of preserving the human species, and therefore it is not moral in the pure sense of the word. Unless, of course, there is proof that a divine being commanded one to behave in a certain way, in which case that bypasses the philosophical-ethical problem according to which every human-made law stems from egoism.
And in simple terms, all human beings who exercised their power over others and robbed them of their freedom are equal in value and moral standing, including Joshua son of Nun, etc.—unless God commanded it. And here every religion has to prove logically its connection to the transcendent being. I hope that’s clear now.
You mean “instruction” in the sense of meaning, because there’s no practical instruction here about what to do. This is a description of the gentiles’ motives (though perhaps a halakhic instruction does emerge from here regarding “when its harvest is dry,” but this is not the place).
I don’t think every human law necessarily stems from egoism. I do think there cannot be a binding law whose source is human. That’s not the same thing.
The gentiles of the Sages who gave charity believed in God or in some idol of their own, so on their view there was a source for their morality.
Bottom line, I didn’t understand what your point is. Are you engaging with the discussion that started up above? Do you agree with me or disagree with me? In what way?
But didn’t they derive this from the verses? Meaning, are you basically claiming that their derivation from the verse is mistaken? Can you point to the flaw in the derivation (I can’t point to it because I have no idea what the method of derivation is)? Or even if you can’t point to a flaw, is it clear to you that there is a mistake here because reality is stronger than all that?