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people were to blame if some unfavorable outcome; the god might well be using the calamity to punish
and discipline his beloved people. Thus, the prophets of Israel were always able to accuse to their
people's sins in their own generation or in their ancestors', to which God had reacted with almost
inexhaustible wrath, as evidenced by the fact that he permitted his own people to become subject to
another people who did not worship him at all:
(B.4.g) Religious Ethic
This idea, diffused in all conceivable manifestations wherever the concept of god has taken on
universalistic quality, develops a "religious ethic" out of the magical taboo which operate only with the
notion of evil magic. Henceforth, transgression against the will of god is an ethical "sin" which burdens
the "conscience," being independent from its direct results. Evils befalling the individual are god's
designated punishment and the consequences of sin, from which the individual hopes to be freed by
"piety" (attitude pleasing to god) which will bring the individual "salvation." In the Old Testament, the
idea of "salvation," appeared only in the elementary however rational meaning of liberation from
concrete sufferings.
In its early stages, the religious ethic consistently shares another characteristic with magic ethic in that it
is frequently composed of a complex of heterogeneous prescriptions and prohibitions derived from the
most diverse motives and occasions. Within this complex there is, from our modern point of view, little
differentiation between "important" and "unimportant" commandments, the transgression of which
constitutes "sin."
(B.4.h) Systematization of Ethic
Later, a systematization of these ethical concepts of god's commandment from the personal desire of the
god to fill his external pleasures may lead to a view of sin as the unified power of the anti-god whose
power human may fall into. Goodness is then conceived as an integral capacity for an attitude of
holiness, and for consistent action resulted from such an attitude. During this process of systematization,
there also develops a hope for salvation from an irrational yearning for being "good" to simple graceful
conscious attitude toward such goodness.
An almost infinite series of the most diverse conceptions, crossed again and again by purely magical
notions, leads to the sublimation of piety as the enduring basis of a specific conduct of life, by the
continuous motivation it engenders. Of course such a sublimation is extremely rare and is attained in its
full purity only intermittently by everyday religion. We are still in the realm of "magic" if "sin" and
"piety" are viewed as integral powers of material substances; at this stage, the nature of the "good" or
"evil" of the acting person is construed after the fashion of a poison, a healing antidote, or a bodily
temperature. Thus in India, a sacred power (tapas), the power achieved by asceticism and contained
within the body, originally denoted the heat engendered in fowls during their mating season, in the
creator of the world at the cosmogony, and in the magician during his sacred hysteria induced by
mortifications and leading to supernatural powers.
It is a long way from the notion that the person who does good receives a special "soul" of divine
provenience to the inward "possession" of the divine to be discussed later. [23] So too, it is a far away
from the conception of sin as a poison in the body of the evildoer by the power of an evil demon which
enters into possession of her/him, to the conception of sin as the culminating power of "radical evil,"
with which the sinner must struggle lest s/he falls into its devilish power.
By no means every ethic traversed the entire length of the road of these conceptions. Thus, the ethics of
Confucianism lack the concept of radical evil, and in general lack the concept of any integral devilish
power of sin. Nor was this notion contained in the ethics of Greece or Rome. In both those cases, there
was lacking not only an independently organized priesthood, but also prophecy, which normally created
a centralization of ethics under the idea of religious salvation. In India, prophecy was not absent, but as
will be discussed later, [24] it had a very special character and a very highly sublimated ethic of
salvation.
Prophets and priests are the twin bearers of the systematization and rationalization of religious ethics.
But there is a third significant factor of importance in determining the development of religious ethics:
the "laity" whom prophets and priests seek to influence on their ethic. We must now briefly examine the
interaction of these three factors.
(C) PROPHET
(C.1) Definition
What is a prophet, from the viewpoint of sociology? [25] We shall understand "prophet" a purely
individual bearer of charisma, who by one's mission proclaims religious teaching or divine
commandment. No radical distinction will be drawn between a "renewer of religion" who reveals a new
meaning in an older revelation, actual or fictitious, and a "founder of religion" who brings completely
new revelations. The two types are interconnected to one another. In any case, the formation of a new
religious community need not be the result of the announcement by prophets, since it may be produced
by the activities of non-prophetic reformers. Nor shall we be concerned in this context with the question
whether the followers of a prophet are more attracted to his person, as in the cases of Zoroaster, Jesus,
and Muhammad, or to his teaching, as in the cases of Buddha and the prophets of Israel.
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