Living Standards: Income Distribution

Abstract

In spite of the very significant accomplishments thus far reviewed, modern assessments of the eighth-seventh centuries B.C.E. are almost uniformly unflattering, so much so indeed that in the social scientist they must strike a note of unreality, that is, of being out of social character. This negativism can be partially traced to religious presuppositions. Israel-Judah was ultimately destroyed. In some Jewish circles where ideas related to theodicy prevail, the fact of destruction is sufficient proof that “the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord,” while in some intellectual Christian circles, the destruction symbolizes the coming replacement of “ethnic-nationalist religions by the true and only universal faith” (see Kaufmann 1960, p. 135).