# Why isn't The Bible the Official Law of The Land in any country? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 12, 2012, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819 "2012-12-12T10:14:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Acid\_Lamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Acid\_Lamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acid_Lamp)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/21 "2012-12-13T14:27:06Z")
It has been tried in the past and failed miserably. Any society in which the religious minority places severe, and restrictive obligations onto the nominally religious or secular majority is doomed to fail eventually. People don’t like being told what to do in regards to certain areas of their lives, where the rules are easy to live by it is simple to go along. When they begin to affect serious personal, financial, or ethical areas people tend to rebel. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/22 "2012-12-13T14:33:07Z")
> [@Acid\_Lamp](#): > > It has been tried in the past and failed miserably. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/23 "2012-12-13T16:10:24Z")
I’m pretty sure we’d rapidly run out of stones. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/24 "2012-12-13T16:19:03Z")
Even the Bible itself does not claim that it should be used as the sole source of law. One of the commandments is actually that people should establish laws and courts to govern themselves, a tacit recognition that the commandments themselves do not constitute a complete body of law. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/25 "2012-12-13T16:26:49Z")
Christianity arose at a time when the world was largely ruled by non-Christian monarchs, and it appeared that such would ALWAYS be the case. The earliest leaders of the Church (including St. Paul) simply took it for granted that Christians would always be ruled over by non-Christian governments, and tried to make their peace with those governments. Jesus himself said to render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s, and Paul told his followers to pay their taxes and obey secular laws so long as they were not directly in conflict with the commandments of Jesus. From the very beginning, Christians were comfortable with the idea that religious law and secular law were two entirely different things. That was NOT the case with Mosaic law or Sharia, both of which were designed to cover almost EVERY aspect of our lives. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/26 "2012-12-13T16:28:27Z")
> [@solosam](#): > > Ummm… I’m pretty sure this has been tried. Repeatedly. > [Inquisition - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition) Sorry, wrong. The Inquisition sought violators of Canon Law. (Read the article.) The RC Church has never been 100% Bible based. Besides, the Inquisition never really ruled any country. The Bible is an anthology, not a book of rules. Sure, it _contains_ rules–the Big 10 on down. But there’s also history (or legends with possible historical basis.) And myths–like The Flood–borrowed from other peoples. Plus the poetry–some rather erotic. Besides, the New Testament doesn’t really agree with the Old. Base a society on what Jesus said? What are you, some kind of Commie? Even the most Fundamentalist of KJV-thumping Protestants actually pick & choose from the Old Testament. How many of them keep kosher? ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/27 "2012-12-13T16:44:26Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I’m not aware that there were any centuries in which the Catholic Church was in charge of much of Europe. The Papacy may have occasionally fired off a document claiming to have political authority, but outside of the Papal states in central Italy it never had such authority. When the Roman Empire disintegrated, it was replaced in western Europe by a patchwork of kingdoms. Many such kingdoms rose and fell over the years, but the Popes never had administrative authority over Europe. This is extremely misleading. Certainly the Papacy had little to no direct political authority in Europe (not even in the Papal States), but there is no way you can understand, say, the Holy Roman Empire (at least up to Charles V) without assuming a Papacy with strong political strength in Europe. Not to mention details like the Avignon court, the development of the Inquisition as a judicial institution, and Alexander VI and Julius II’s mercenary armies. The Popes may not have been “officially” temporal sovereigns, but they sure acted like and were treated as such by other European rulers. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/28 "2012-12-13T17:28:51Z")
Yes, the Popes were often highly influential. (At other times, they were ignored.) But the RC Church has _never_ been run on strict Biblical standards. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/29 "2012-12-13T17:31:10Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > Yes, the Popes were often highly influential. (At other times, they were ignored.) > > But the RC Church has _never_ been run on strict Biblical standards. So what? It’s run on strict religious standards, which is the same thing we’re talking about. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/30 "2012-12-13T22:43:38Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > So what? It’s run on strict religious standards, which is the same thing we’re talking about. But even in the early days of the Church, thinkers like St. Augustine were already differentiating between “The City of Man” and “The City of God,” and knew that the two provinces weren’t identical. Has any Muslim thinker of comparable stature ever postulated that religion and secular government are separate sheres? ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/31 "2012-12-14T04:02:37Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > Sorry, wrong. The Inquisition sought violators of Canon Law. (Read the article.) The RC Church has never been 100% Bible based. Besides, the Inquisition never really ruled any country. > > The Bible is an anthology, not a book of rules. Sure, it _contains_ rules–the Big 10 on down. But there’s also history (or legends with possible historical basis.) And myths–like The Flood–borrowed from other peoples. Plus the poetry–some rather erotic. Besides, the New Testament doesn’t really agree with the Old. Base a society on what Jesus said? What are you, some kind of Commie? > > Even the most Fundamentalist of KJV-thumping Protestants actually pick & choose from the Old Testament. How many of them keep kosher? Islam is similar. If there’s just one set of laws, one shariah, then why are there so many different types of islam? Sunni and shi’ite, just to start with. The Koran is not the end of the story even for devout muslims. ---
**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/32 "2012-12-14T14:41:30Z")
The Bible is incoherent and incomplete as a codification of law, and the incompleteness is magnified by the schism between Jewish rules (keeping kosher, as observed above) and New Testament rules. There are textual reasons for Christians’ abandonment of the Leviticus rules, but that does not make the problem of treating the whole Bible as a codification of law go away. The “render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, render unto God what belongs to God” thing undermines any attempt to think about the Bible as a fundamentally legal set of rules. Islam is different. The Koran made significant claims to be prescriptive of behaviour without being burdened by the historical schism I mentioned above between Christianity and OT Judaism, and the Hadith add to that prescriptiveness. That said, it is interesting to see Islamic law applied in a country that has fundamentally Western traditions. Take Malaysia. Criminal laws are in English, derived from the Stephen Code. But family law is Islamic. Reading family law reports is like reading any other sort of law. There is a head note that sets out the key issues, but then instead of statutory references, there are references to the Koran and the Hadith, which are interpreted using the same intellectual tools as lawyers use elsewhere. And from my certainly incomplete reading of such cases, they seem typically to come to broadly similar conclusions that Western courts would come to, albeit via a different intellectual route. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/33 "2012-12-14T15:11:45Z")
> [@Ken001](#): > > The standard Christian thinking (as I was brought up) is the Ten Commandments are all we need - and many people believe that today. > > So…what commandments deal with: > > Drug dealing > > Money laundering > > Incest > > Cruelty to animals > > Tax evasion > > Online piracy of music and movies > > Speeding > > Parking infringements > > Unfair wills and estates > > Illegal immigrants > ??? Golden Rule. That’s the catch-all. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/34 "2012-12-14T15:16:32Z")
> [@Ken001](#): > > The standard Christian thinking (as I was brought up) is the Ten Commandments are all we need - and many people believe that today. I doubt that’s “the standard Christian thinking”. That’s where there are like 9,000 Mosaic laws. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/35 "2012-12-14T15:17:21Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > But even in the early days of the Church, thinkers like St. Augustine were already differentiating between “The City of Man” and “The City of God,” and knew that the two provinces weren’t identical. > > Has any Muslim thinker of comparable stature ever postulated that religion and secular government are separate sheres? [Read all about it.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_Muslim) > [@](#): > > **Early history** > > Secular governments had existed in the Muslim world since the 10th century. According to the scholar Ira M. Lapidus: > > In fact, religious and political life developed distinct spheres of experience, with independent values, leaders, and organizations. From the middle of the tenth century effective control of the Arab-Muslim empire had passed into the hands of generals, administrators, governors, and local provincial lords; the Caliphs had lost all effective political power. Governments in Islamic lands were henceforth secular regimes - Sultanates - in theory authorized by the Caliphs, but actually legitimized by the need for public order. Henceforth, Muslim states were fully differentiated political bodies without any intrinsic religious character, though they were officially loyal to Islam and committed to its defense.[10] > > In the same period, religious communities developed independently of the states or empires that ruled them. The ulama regulated local communal and religious life by serving as judges, administrators, teachers, and religious advisers to Muslims. The religious elites were organized according to religious affiliation into Sunni schools of law, Shi’ite sects, or Sufi tariqas. […] In the wide range of matters arising from the Shari’a - the Muslim law - the ‘ulama’ of the schools formed a local administrative and social elite whose authority was based upon religion. Thus though the Muslim madhahib were not organized in the same way as Christian churches, they had many of the religious and social functions we associate with churches. But whether or not we wish to speak of churches, religious organizations, institutions, personnel and activities were clearly separate from the ruling regimes.[11] > > As long as two decades ago, Sir Hamilton Gibb, in his essay ‘Constitutional Organization’, showed that Muslim political thinkers themselves had become aware of the separation of state and religion and recognized the emergence of an autonomous sphere of religious activity and organization. For example, Ibn Taymiyya held that apart from the Caliphate, the ulama constituted the true umma of Islam, and that ruling regimes were ‘Muslim’ regimes not by any intrinsic quality but by virtue of the support they lent the Muslim religion and religious communities.[12] > > In early Islamic philosophy, Averroes presented an argument in The Decisive Treatise providing a justification for the emancipation of science and philosophy from official Ash’ari theology, thus Averroism has been considered a precursor to modern secularism.[13][14] ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/36 "2012-12-14T17:09:21Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > I’m pretty sure we’d rapidly run out of stones. They _are_ reusable, you know… ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2012, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/37 "2012-12-16T06:28:54Z")
> [@ekedolphin](#): > > I’m curious as to why there aren’t some countries around the world that don’t do the same thing with a reactionary interpretation of The Bible. (I don’t believe the United States is a country that does that, by the way). Are you under the impression that there are countries where forms of Christianity based upon “reactionary” (I take it that by this you mean “fundamentalist” or “literalist”) interpretations of the Bible are more influential than they are in the United States? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/38 "2012-12-17T15:09:33Z")
> [@sidecar\_jon](#): > > Because every country in the world that’s run on religious lines is an awful place to live…i am thankful that we don’t have Biblical law. +1. I always tell the abortion protestors who use the Bible as justification to go live in a theocracy. And they have all been the worst governments ever. ---
**Author:** ![drew870mitchell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drew870mitchell/32/3946_2.png) [@drew870mitchell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drew870mitchell)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819/39 "2012-12-17T15:28:48Z")
Does Calvinist Geneva count? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-the-bible-the-official-law-of-the-land-in-any-country/643819.md?page=1)