I. INTRODUCTION:
SOME ORIENTAL NOTIONS
The English word “impiety” derives of course from
the Latin impietas. Our notion of impiety (if we still
have one) is, however, the result of complicated cross-
influences in which we can isolate at least four compo-
nents: the old notion of impietas; the Greek classical
notion of asebeia (which in its turn affected the notion
of impietas from the times of the Roman Republic),
the Greek (mainly Septuagint) rendering of various
Hebrew words indicating “evil”-doers and “evil”
doings, and finally the early Christian transforma-
tion—partly with Jewish precedents—of the classical
notion of asebeia.
No doubt the story of impiety begins much earlier.
The Hebrew notions which contributed to the forma-
tion of the Christian notion of impiety have to be
compared with Egyptian and Akkadian notions. The
question has to be asked whether this comparison
points to Egyptian and Akkadian models for Hebrew
ideas. This question is legitimate because Egyptian and
Akkadian religious hymns and didactic literature, in
which such notions are deeply embedded, have long
been known for their similarities in other respects to
Hebrew texts. But unfortunately Egyptologists and
Assyriologists have not yet made available to other
scholars a clear analysis of the Egyptian and Assyrian
vocabularies referring to the transgression of the
approved order of things. We are left uncertain even
about the existence of a “secular” zone in these civili-
zations, though we have repeatedly been told that
Mesopotamian law is strictly “secular.” The fact that
leading Egyptologists apply the term “heresy” (a
purely Christian notion) to the religious reform of
Akhnaton is evidence of this confused state of affairs.
We shall only note in passing that the Egyptians had
various words to indicate the fool, the ignorant, the
senseless, the man who does not want to be educated,
in situations which recall the actions of the impious
in Jewish-Christian terminology. There is also in
Egyptian a word, usually translated as “abomination”
(bwt), which indicates the religious interdiction of
certain acts; the prohibition affects not only cultual
acts, but rules of behavior, such as lying and displaying
a lack of solidarity with one's fellow citizens (see for
instance the list of interdictions for nome XVIII col-
lected in the Ptolemaic period in the Jumilhac Papyrus).
Similarly, Mesopotamian texts provide an abundant
terminology for the godless, the wicked, the impure,
the blasphemous, etc. A word which is translated by
“abomination” (ik-kibu) can apply both to human ac-
tions and to the presence of a pig in a temple. From
these texts it is possible to fabricate a composite image
of a Mesopotamian anomic man who superficially is
not very different from his apposite number in Egypt.
But confessions of sins and purifications, not to speak
of divination, played a far greater part in the life of
Mesopotamian man (at least in the second and first
millennia B.C.) than in Egypt. The techniques of evok-
ing or re-establishing the protection of the gods in this
life were both more necessary and more developed in
Mesopotamia than in Egypt. The Mesopotamians had
what the Egyptians seem to have lacked—a compre-
hensive idea of sin. The Egyptian was taught how to
proclaim his innocence in the afterlife, but seldom
confessed his transgressions in this life. The confessions
of sins found at Deir-el-Medina, a village west of
Thebes, are those of workers for the kings of the XIXth
dynasty (thirteenth century B.C.) and may be due to
foreign influence. As the Mesopotamian king was nor-
mally not considered to be a god, he was capable of
sins and had to proclaim his innocence every year at
the festival of Marduk. The faults of an Egyptian king,
who was a god, were a far more delicate question. Only
the successor of Akhnaton was in a position to deal
with the religious vagaries of his predecessor.
Two features immediately strike the observer when
he passes from Mesopotamia to Israel. The Hebrews
practiced a collective confession of sins (apart from
the individual one); they never seem to have singled
out the sins of the king as the only sins relevant to
the welfare of the community as a whole. Their reli-
gious life was based on a unique relation to Yahweh,
and this affected everyone. At different times and in
different writers the transgression against Yahweh
might be idolatry (the main theme of the Deutero-
nomic writer) or an offense against the rules of justice
(one of the main themes of prophetic preaching). There
was also a progression from the emphasis on the col-
lective solidarity of Israel to the notion of the individ-
ual responsibility of each Jew. The offense of the sin-
ners might (or might not) be presented in juridical
terms as a violation of the Covenant between Yahweh
and Israel. All these (and many other) aspects of the
Hebrew understanding of the state of
anomia are
represented in the Old Testament with very little effort
to harmonize and unify them. What emerges, however,
is the insistence on a proper relationship between
Yahweh and the Jew which is based on the justice of
both. Yahweh
is just, and the Jew
may be just: in some
writers justice is indeed extended to the non-Jew. But
Yahweh can never be unjust, though questions about
his justice are asked—and seldom rhetorically. Man can
be, and very often is, unjust; there is, however, no
precise suggestion that he is irretrievably unjust by
nature. The Hebrew words we translate by “just”
(
zaddik) and “unjust” (
rasa') are some of the most
common and central terms of the Old Testament (
rasa'
261 times). But there are other terms such as “pious”
(
hasid) and “rebellious” which complete the picture.
All these terms were often translated rather indiscrim-
inately into Greek by
eusebes and
asebes (significantly,
the Septuagint writers do not use the word
atheos),
and thus contributed to the Jewish-Christian connota-
tion of
asebes and
asebeia as impiety involving idolatry
and/or violation of the moral rules imposed by the true
god. The classical notion of
asebeia was differently
oriented and, on the whole, more limited in scope.
Post-biblical Hebrew had new words to indicate the
Jewish unbeliever, an indication of a new situation in
which outright skepticism, on the one hand, and
sectarian distinctions within Judaism, on the other
hand, became prominent. One word has a familiar
Greek ring, apikuros, meaning the individual skeptic
or unbeliever (to be found, for instance, in a saying
by Rabbi Eleazar ben Arach which is quoted in the
“Sayings of the Fathers”). The other word is min
(literally “species,” “sect”), indicating the man (plural
minim) who holds opinions at variance with the Jewish
orthodox faith, for instance, the Judeo-Christian or the
Gnostic. Rabbi Samuel the Little, a pupil of Rabbi
Gamliel II, wrote a prayer for the extirpation of the
minim about the end of the first century A.D., which
was inserted in the “Eighteen Benedictions.” This is
also approximately the time in which we meet the
prototype of the Jewish “heretics,” Elisha ben Abujah.
Judaism was engaged in fighting both the spread of
Christianity and internal dissolution. The notion of min
is certainly parallel to the notion of heretic which Saint
Paul found among the Christians of his time. It may
have been provoked by it.
There is a further question about the connection of
these two notions (min, heretic) with the notion of
zandik which appears in Middle Persian to indicate
those who interpret the Zand or commentary of the
Avesta in an unorthodox way and more generally the
unbeliever, the dissident—sometimes the Manichean.
The Iranian evidence seems to be later than the Chris-
tian and Jewish (third century A.D.).
