To the Editor:

In John Thompson’s charming and diverting letter from a Greek Island [“The Vacancies of August, November 1966”], he states that there, in the 5th century, under the aegis of Athena, “law and reason were invented, for the first time something beyond the despotic passions of murderous fathers and murderous sons, and . . . all our ideas of justice, of truth. . . .”

Is there no one on the editorial staff of COMMENTARY who could have told Mr. Thompson that many centuries before those Greeks got such advanced ideas, Moses was promulgating the idea that even God, the Creator of us and our universe, is lawful, and was teaching, among many other laws, “Thou shalt not commit murder”; and that our other prophets went around harping on justice and the equality of men long before Homer smote his lyre singing the capriciousness of the gods and the murderousness of men? . . .

Irving Fineman
Shaftsbury, Vermont

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Mr. Thompson writes:

Yes, Moses indeed said that the Lord had many laws. But it was Job who asked if they were reasonable, and you know how far he got. Generally the biblical writers were too intelligent to put much stock in the notion that truth and justice could prevail in this world, or that reason was good for much. “For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increased! sorrow.”

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