Omitted Text - 10. Social Justice Sanctified, From Inanna and Nanshe to Nemesis
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Query: 10. Social Justice Sanctified, From Inanna and Nanshe to Nemesis
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The etymology for some important Indo-European “credit” terminology points to a derivation from the religious sphere. Our word “credit” derives from Latin “credo,” “I believe.” Specifically, modern creditors believe that the debtor will repay the loan. However, the first belief in a quid pro quo relationship apparently was grounded in the sacred sphere: According to Benveniste[1] (1973: pp. 138–144), Sanskrit “śrāddha” (“belief, trust,” an offering at a shrine) implies an “act of confidence (in a god), implying restitution (in the form of a divine favor according to the faithful.” Only later were the ideas of “belief” and “trust” extended into the commercial sphere. Indeed, they were what helped establish this dimension of social relations. Brown[2] (1947: p. 26, speaking of Homeric Greek society) rightly remarked that “political institutions at this rudimentary stage needed the support of religious sanctions, and were organized as religious ceremonies.”
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As Karl Polanyi and his collaborators tried so hard to establish in the 1950s, it took thousands of years for the pecuniary ideas of standard prices, fines, and taxes to create a general market mentality. Bulk commodity trade at customary prices replaced gift exchange and rudimentary barter by a circuitous route, drawing on many social sources. Among the noncommercial catalysts to pecuniary reckoning were legal fines, military organization, the organization of sacrifices, and no doubt communal contributions to the public feasts discussed in The Distributive Justice of Group Feasts and Banquets. From the Near East diffused an elaboration of temple activities into the commercial sphere. By the third millennium BC a common standard of value developed throughout the Near East.To see the omitted text and help work the stub paragraphs into the Chapter 10 body, see this query on the Chapter 10 General Queries page regarding Stub Paragraphs on Etymology and the Mini-Bibliography for Stub Paragraphs on Etymology.
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- ↑ Émile Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society (Coral Gables, Florida: 1973), pp. 138–144.
- ↑ Norman O. Brown, Hermes the Thief: The Evolution of a Myth (Great Barrington, Massachusetts: 1990 [1947]), p. 26.
