The Jerusalem Post has recently repeated a report that first appeared in Cairo’s Al Ahram newspaper, that “Archeologists have discovered ancient Egyptian coins bearing the name and image of the biblical Joseph”. The importance of this find for — if substantiated – for those who believe that the accuracy of the Bible is obvious. But for historians this find would have another important corollary, it would show that coins were being minted in Egypt, and used as a medium of exchange, far earlier than previously thought. For my purpose in this series of posts it would also be a reminder that there are few institutions more ancient than the market place.
When God created a nation of His own during the Bronze Age, He planted His kingdom in the midst of a world which the market place, and the rules that governed it, were already quite ancient…and so also were the attempts of human government to control it. For example, the surviving text of The Laws of Eshnunna (About 2000 BC) begins with an ancient attempt to regulate prices and wages. It is fair to say, then, that the tension between the market place and government has probably existed for as long as these institutions have existed.
Simply stated, the tension between these two ancient institutions can be distilled down to the market’s insatiable desire for freedom and government’s insatiable desire for control. I saw an example of this during my first trip to India in 1998.
Our host decided to take us shopping on a national holiday, Republic Day. Republic day is the day when India celebrates the adoption of its constitution. By law, all businesses are closed. So, one may wonder, how can you go shopping on Republic Day? We wondered about this ourselves. But we learned that it was really not difficult, because the stores were not really closed.
The large, metal, garage style doors were closed. But it was not difficult to gain admission, and once inside the shopping was great. You see, there were men and boys loitering around the entryways of certain stores. These loiterers were really lookouts and plain-clothed doormen. All our host had to do was let them know we wanted to shop in a particular store and within a few minutes we were in.
This is how it worked: the loiterers would make sure the police were not around, then they would knock on the door of the store in which we wanted to shop, then the door would quickly be drawn up so that that we could enter the store, and just as quickly, shut behind us. Once inside, business preceded as usual. So much for governmental control of commerce in the city of Vijayawada.
Abraham came from Ur. Commerce there would have been very similar to that which existed in the kingdom of Eshnunna. He traveled to where the market was much freer, but where the city states and loose alliances of the land of Cana made life far more dangerous than the land he had known. That is always the trade off. Government offers the market safety of its walls, gates and protection of its soldiers, but always at a price; taxes and some measure of control.
Often governmental control is aimed at protecting the unwitting “consumer” from dishonest merchants, or sure that the “working man” receive fair compensation. These motives can be seen in the Laws of Eshnunna. But government, like the camel that gets its nose in the tent, can always be depended upon to exercise as much control as it can. You see government and the market place have one thing in common, greed. The market is driven by its greed for profit. Government is driven by its greed for power.
It is ironic that the same Joseph whose inscription may have been found on a number of ancient Egyptian coins, was one of the first to push the power of government to its ultimate limit, and like a modern day follower of Saul Alinsky, he used a crisis to do it.
The civilization of Egypt was different in many ways from the culture Abraham had known in Mesopotamia. But in Abraham’s time it did have these things in common with the world the great patriarch had known: 1. there was still private ownership of the means of production, which in the ancient world was land; 2. the market was still a place where the producer traded his produce for a profit. Joseph changed that.
You may recall that when the full effects of the seven year drought were felt in Egypt, and the hungry people began to turn to Pharaoh for food (which Joseph had diligently stockpiled during the seven years of plenty), the desperate people were willing to give all of their money to the government, then their livestock, and finally their land and their bodies. The scriptures describe what happened: “Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, for every Egyptian sold his field, because the famine was severe upon them. Thus the land became Pharaoh’s. Thus, all Egypt became slaves to Pharaoh.
Total government control was not such a bad thing when Joseph was in charge. Unfortunately for Joseph’s people, “A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8), and the Israelites discovered, as people always do, that statism[i] is not all that its cracked-up to be.
Fortunately for Israel, God led his enslaved people out of Egypt, instructed them never to forget the awfulness of being slaves in Egypt, and established a very different kind of kingdom in the Promised Land.
[i] It is interesting that Microsoft Word’s dictionary does not have the word “statism.” It offered the word, “Sadism” instead. Probably just a coincidence.
The first time I ever read the word “statism” was in Mark Levin’s book: Liberty and Tyranny. Maybe he coined the word.
By: Arlo on October 5, 2009
at 5:45 pm
Perhaps. However, statist is in the dictionary. I thnk it is just an oversight on the part of microsoft.
By: markcarlton on October 6, 2009
at 8:03 pm