With simplicity, vividness and force

The Old Testament is not only law; it is history, poetry and philosophy of the highest order. After making every deduction for primitive legend and pious fraud, after admitting that the historical books are not quite as accurate or as ancient as our forefathers supposed, we find in them, nevertheless, not merely some of the oldest historical writing known to us, but some of the best. [..] The stories of Saul, David and Solomon are immeasurably finer in structure and style than the other historical writing of the ancient Near East. Even Genesis, if we read it with some understanding of the function of legend is, (barring its genealogies), an admirable story, told without frill or ornament, with simplicity, vividness and force. [..]

[The Psalms] are marred for us by bitter imprecations, tiresome "groanings" and complaints, and endless adulation of a Yahveh who, with all his "lovingkindness", "longsuffering" and "compassion", pours "smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth", promises that "the wicked shall be turned into hell", laps up flattery, and threatens to "cut off all flattering lips". The Psalms are full of military ardor, hardly Christian, but very Pilgrim. Some of them, however, are jewels of tenderness, or cameos of humility . "[..] As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more".

- Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage

Futile voices

Moral progress in history lies not so much in the improvement of the moral code as in the enlargement of the area within which it is applied. The morals of modern man are not unquestionably superior to those of primitive man, though the two groups of codes may differ considerably in content, practice and profession; but modern morals are, in normal times, extended - though with decreasing intensity - to a greater number of people than before. As tribes were gathered up into those larger units called states, morality overflowed its tribal bounds; and as communication - or a common danger - united and assimilated states, morals seeped through frontiers, and some men began to apply their commandments to all Europeans, to all whites, at last to all men. Perhaps there have always been idealists who wished to love all men as their neighbors, and perhaps in every generation they have been futile voices crying in a wilderness of nationalism and war. But probably the number - even the relative number - of such men has increased. There are no morals in diplomacy, and la politique n'a pas d'entrailles; but there are morals in international trade, merely because such trade cannot go on without some degree of restraint, regulation, and confidence. Trade began in piracy; it culminates in morality.

- Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage

The force behind the law

When to this natural basis of custom a supernatural sanction is added by religion, and the ways of one's ancestors are also the will of the gods, then custom becomes stronger than law, and subtracts substantially from primitive freedom. To violate law is to win the admiration of half the populace, who secretly envy anyone who can outwit this ancient enemy; to violate custom is to incur almost universal hostility. For custom rises out of the people, whereas law is forced upon them from above; law is usually a decree of the master, but custom is the natural selection of those modes of action that have been found most convenient in the experience of the group.

Law partly replaces custom when the state replaces the natural order of the family, the clan, the tribe, and the village community; it more fully replaces custom when writing appears, and laws graduate from a code carried down in the memory of elders and priests into a system of legislation proclaimed in written tables. But the replacement is never complete; in the determination and judgment of human conduct custom remains to the end the force behind the law, the power behind the throne, the last "magistrate of men's lives."

- Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage