Abstract

Over 2000 years ago, Jesus faced nearly the same kind of economic, institutional, political, and social problems that confronted Socrates over 400 years earlier in Athens, Greece, as well as Adam Smith in Scotland in 1772. A certain segment of the upper-income class in Jerusalem, called Sadducees (Adam Smith’s projectors, imprudent risk-takers, and prodigals), who were allied with Israel’s aristocrats, were engaging in practices that were damaging the economic and social health of Israel. The Sadducees were the priestly class who controlled the Temple in Jerusalem. Like the Sophists and Sycophants in Plato’s Dialogues, they were severely impacted, in a very negative way, the economic living conditions of the lower and middle-income citizens of Israel. The Temple in Jerusalem had been turned into an economic mechanism for the extraction of economic profits from the lower and middle  classes, thereby draining the overall economy of resources that could have been used to improve the overall, macro, living standards of the population. Jesus was a teacher of ethics and moral philosophy in Israel. Ethics dealt with the self (starting with those actions that provided security and safety through prudent behavior for the individual) while moral behavior concentrated on the interactions between one’s self and other-selves (benevolence). Jesus’s main philosophical concern was teaching, applying, and living virtue ethics. Jesus’s main teaching tool was the parable, which was usually a short, fictitious story that made a clear cut ethical or moral point.

Keywords: Corruption, Virtue ethics, Utilitarian ethics