Key words: Bible, law, education, science.
Nowadays many of us can’t help living a Western -style life---We prefer coffee to tea; We tend to relax ourlves in bars instead of staying at home after one day’s hard work; We enjoy symphony more than Beijing opera; We take delight in celebrating the valentine's day and the Christmas day; Our taste gets more and more ud to hamburger and KFC. All the facts just show us how influential the Western World is.
Basically we follow the lead of tho who are superior than us. We learn what is right and good for us. We imitate the Westerners’ life style mainly becau we consider their life style more advanced and stylish or modern. It is acknowledged that the Western World is better developed than us in many aspects. For years we have been pursuing after them and making great progress. Yet we haven’t pulled up to them. The Western World has been drawing our scholars’ attention.
There is something rooted in the western culture that is leading the Western World to
grow stronger and stronger. That is the Bible. The Bible is a foundation of ideas and principles upon which the western society rests, for it has shaped not only the religious thought, but also the education, law, and science of the Western World.
Education
The role of the Bible in education may be traced even to the early church. By the time of the cond generation of Christians, the developing Christian community needed to find ways to rai and nurture children in the faith, and the grounds for doing so. Both the Hebrew and Christian scripttures provided the authoritative material needed, and for almost two millennia, evangelical Christians in particular have looked to the scripttures for support and direction with regard to education.
With the removal of the Bible from the classroom this century, many Christians have felt a deep loss of biblical values and authority in their children's public school education. They also think that as parents they have a biblical mandate to be personally involved in their children's education. Vers such as Deuteronomy
6:6-7 are frequently cited: "The commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."
Faced with the vers and coupled with concern about public education which eliminates the Bible - many parents have turned to alternative modes of education. For some it leads to home schooling; for some it leads to Christian schools. The phenomenal ri in alternative schooling is evidence, at least in part, some say, of the Bibles impact on education.
Law
First, it is an empirical fact that biblical morality has been well enough understood and effectively enough applied to constitute perhaps the most important single influence on modern Western legal systems (the European civil law system and the Anglo-American common law).
The development of courts of equity is a specific example of the Bible's influence on law. The courts were first developed in 13th and 14th century England to provide an alternative to the more rigid and limited authority of the common law courts.
Common law allowed a person only to sue another person for damages and only when the matter under dispute fell into one of a limited number of categories, such as battery, assault, fal imprisonment, theft and trespassing. For disputes outside of the "caus of action," an individual had no ability to ek redress through common law courts.
Courts of equity, on the other hand, allowed a person to ek compensation for disputes outside the narrow caus of action, and allowed the person to ek remedies beyond simply receiving damages. The court could, for example, order one party to carry out its part of a contract instead. Courts of equity were bad on the concepts of "trust" or "specific performance" which didn't exist in common law at the time.
The concepts aro from the biblical principles of fairness and treating your neighbor as yourlf. The early chancellors who heard cas in courts of equity were ecclesiastical officials, such as Sir Thomas More.
Another example of the Bible's influence on law, with much more recent birth pangs, takes us around the world to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Set up by South Africa's parliament, over the past few years the commission has allowed perpetrators of apartheid era human rights violations to apply for amnesty if they confess their crimes, while also enabling victims and/or relatives to tell their stories. It investigates violations while encouraging reconciliation.
