Original subtitles

I have a rule that I've lived by for a long time:

Always tell the truth.

That way,

you don't have to remember what you said.

And I was never good at lying.

Hindus thought of the same rule

more than 3,000 years ago.

Satya, truthfulness,

sits alongside non-violence, non-stealing

and several other Hindu holy laws.

Jews and Christians have the Ten Commandments

as core spiritual rules for life.

Muslims can also find them throughout the Holy Quran.

Their connection with God gives these edicts

power over billions of lives.

Yet we live in an age of enlightenment,

driven by science and reason.

So do we still need holy laws?

I'm travelling the world

to understand the power ancient rules have over us today.

2,000 years later,

any six-year-old that learns to write can read this.

My God.

I'll meet holy people

who follow holy laws to the extreme.

They do not want to kill even a bug

or any micro-organism.

See what happens when people go against divine rules.

I'll explore divine retribution.

Some people escape,

other people die on the spot.

And I'll meet a man who followed God's commandment

to forgive his son's murderer.

We just hug each other

like a father and son.

Jerusalem.

A holy city for Jews, Christians and Muslims.

People trying to live side by side

need a common set of rules.

As fractious as this city can be today,

all three faiths recognize the holy laws

Jerusalem was built on:

the Ten Commandments.

To see these ancient edicts for myself,

I'm meeting Pnina Shor,

an archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority,

home to the ancient fragments of writing

known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

She has offered me a rare opportunity:

a personal encounter,

with the crown jewel of her collection,

the oldest known copy

of the Ten Commandments.

This is it. This is really it.

This is the only copy

of the Ten Commandments

that has survived intact.

2,000 years old.

Now, I have been to Qumran,

where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

This is the first time I've ever actually seen

the scrolls themselves.

And you're very lucky, because not everybody

gets a chance to see the scrolls face to face.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the most complete

ancient version of the Hebrew scriptures.

They were found in 1947,

in bone-dry caves at Qumran near the Dead Sea.

It's amazing that whatever this is written on

could survive that long.

It's written on parchment,

which is animal skin,

and yes, it is a miracle that it actually survived,

but it survived because probably

the conditions in the caves were the best.

And so what we're trying to do here,

and in the vault where we keep all the scrolls...

Recreate that.

Is to recreate these conditions.

We have copies of the Ten Commandments.

They're, they're all over the place.

So why is this important?

Why is it important?

This is our heritage, this is our common heritage.

And this shows us that 2,000 years later,

we can all talk about this and relate to it.

Know what we're talking about.

And know what we're talking about, right.

I'll read you through, okay?

Yeah, I am the Lord, thy God.

I, exactly.

Yeah, I'm your God.

I'm your God who took you out of the land of Egypt,

and continues all the way down.

What's it written in, is it written in Hebrew?

It's written in Hebrew

in what we call the Syrian writing,

which is the writing of Second Temple times.

So what's amazing about these scrolls

is that 2,000 years later,

any six-year-old that learns to write,

can read this.

Get out of here!

A six-year-old?

Any six-year-old who learns to read Hebrew.

Who learns how to read Hebrew can read these scrolls.

Can read this.

It takes a few minutes,

but you get used to it and you can do it.

Seeing these ancient laws as a living text

makes me wonder.

How did they shape Jewish life and culture over the millennia?

Adolfo Roitman is the curator of Jerusalem's Shrine of the Book.

Oh, my.

That's awesome.

Yes.

The Shrine of the Book.

It's the holy of holies,

like Solomon's Temple,

and instead of the Ark of Covenant

and the Ten Commandments,

what we have here are the scrolls,

the most significant spiritual treasure of Israel.

Now, I'm gonna ask you if there is a difference

between the commandments

and the other codes

of the Middle Eastern tribes.

What is very significant here in the scrolls

is the Ten Commandments, actually,

they have two sections.

One refers to God

and one refers to human beings.

The first four commandments set the rules

for how people should act towards God,

like having no other gods

and observing the Sabbath.

The last six concern human affairs,

prohibiting killing,

stealing,

cheating.

We are not dealing just with ideas.

We are dealing with real life.

And real life,

must reflect

all this

religious idea.

The concept that we,

our community,

we are a temple,

we are...

a spiritual temple.

When a law is religious in nature...

Yes.

What is the...

practical side of it?

How does that manifest itself?

Okay. Love your neighbour as yourself.

It's written.

But if you don't love him,

it's not just against him,

it's against God.

You have to care...

for them,

because all of them were created by God.

The good, the bad and the ugly.

Yes.

So, now,

the Ten Commandments...

have had an incredible influence

on large parts of the world.

Yes.

Do you think that they influence other religions?

There is no way to imagine the history

of human beings without these

specific Ten Commandments.

Why you shouldn't kill...

a person.

Why you have to keep morality.

All these traditions were very much inspired

by the Ten Commandments,

and even human beings that they belong to other civilizations.

It's quite astonishing,

that a list of do's and don'ts,

written on parchment thousands of years ago,

have had such an effect on the world.

But it's probably because the Ten Commandments

are not just a list of do's and don'ts.

They inspired the ancient Jews

to keep good relations, not only with God,

but with their family and neighbours.

No matter what your faith,

this is what creates a long and lasting society.

It's hard to find places on Earth

where the Ten Commandments haven't had some effect.

But they do exist.

In the remote hillsides of northern Vietnam,

there is a culture where the will of the divine

is not passed down through written laws.

It comes through a person.

Sociologist Andreas Schneider

is travelling to a village of the Hmong ethnic group.

He wants to understand how they follow

the unwritten rules of the spirit world.

He is meeting Hang A Sua,

who was born in the village.

Oh, Sua.

Hello.

Oh, thank you. I'm glad I've found your house.

Oh, yeah.

And you are?

Yeah, I'm Sua friend.

He ask me to come here helping you translate.

Sua is a Hmong businessman.

His 94-year-old grandmother, Sung Thi La,

is the village shaman.

Today she will be performing a divination ceremony

to speak with the spirits.

They beginning or starting...

Oh, they're beginning.

Yeah.

Let's make it through the rain, I guess.

-Yes. -Thank you!

-Thank you. -Let's go over there.

Let's go.

The Hmong are animists,

believing spirits called 'neeb' inhabit everything.

The Hmong believe if you behave correctly,

you will be surrounded by good spirits.

If you behave badly,

you will attract bad spirits.

La acts as a bridge

between the physical and spiritual worlds.

She alone in the village

can communicate with the spirits

and discover the balance between good and bad.

Yes, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

As people gather,

La covers her face

to focus on her connection to the spirit world.

The Hmong believe both good and bad spirits

respond to the shaman's call.

Ahh, okay.

La has sensed the presence of bad spirits,

but the good spirits

have instructed her how to deal with them.

Deep in the misty hills of rural Vietnam,

a gong rings out.

Signalling a shaman's connection with the spirit world.

Sociologist Andreas Schneider

is here with the Hmong people,

hoping to gain insight into how

they define the will of the gods.

Bad spirits invited in by past wrong-doing in the village

are expelled by fire.

But the shaman, La,

has told the villagers they must now make a sacrifice

to the good spirits.

The sacrifice complete,

the shaman must now perform the last step:

persuade the good spirits to accept the offering.

So these are horns of animals.

Yeah, this a horn from a goat.

Goat horn.

La uses goat horns to communicate with the spirits.

The Hmong believe the spirits send a coded message

in the patterns of the horns.

Ones that only the shaman can read correctly.

Uh, we have to say thank you.

Say thank you.

The ceremony is finished.

The wrong-doing has been corrected.

Everyone gives a bow of gratitude to the shaman.

Two time.

One more time.

The question that I have is,

what did we have today?

We had basically,

trying... a ceremony that tried to set things straight.

Yeah.

Something went wrong, there was an offering,

but who is determining the rules?

Who is making the laws?

The shaman, with the spirits, when they come...

Mm-hmm.

They will tell her.

So, of course, there was a lot of suspense at the end

when the bones were thrown,

to see in which direction they fall.

What are the results?

What is the result?

The results, everything's good.

I would like to thank her

for helping us to understand your society.

Okay.

She would like to thank you, so she...

she will give you some lucky silver thread for you guys.

As a parting blessing,

La ties a red thread around each of their wrists.

It's meant to help them stay in balance with the spirits

and stay on the right path.

Ohhh.

That's how you do it.

Sua's grandmother, La,

received a divine calling to be a shaman.

Just as Abraham, he did the urgings of God

to move to Canaan,

La heeded this commandment from the spirit world.

She felt bound by it.

Being tied to the spirits

helps the Hmong keep their culture alive,

ties people together,

like millions of red threads

spanning their entire Asian diaspora.

In many religions, holy laws dictate

not only how believers live life,

but how they confront death.

I've come to a cemetery in Lexington, Kentucky,

to meet Dr. Abdul-Munim Sombat Jitmoud.

He followed Islam's holiest law

in the face of great personal tragedy.

I want to tell you myself how grateful we all are

that you'd take the time to...

spend this time with us.

Yes, sir. It is mutual, sir.

I understand that you had...

something tragic

to your family. Can you tell me about it?

Yes, sir.

Three years ago, of course,

our dearest son, Salahuddin, got murdered.

Dr. Jitmoud ran an Islamic academy in Lexington.

He lived here with his wife and six sons.

In 2015, Dr. Jitmoud's second youngest son,

Salahuddin,

was working his way through college

as a pizza delivery driver.

Tell me what you remember

happened actually that night.

Yes, sir.

I gave Salahuddin a call,

and he said, 'Baba, I'm deliver the pizza.'

'Oh, I will call you later, then.'

He said,

'Inshallah, Baba.'

That was his last word for me to hear.

Inshallah. That means 'God willing,' right?

Yes, God willing.

Then a few hours later,

he had one more delivery to do.

Salahuddin was called to an apartment complex

on the outskirts of the city.

Actually, that order not supposed to be his order.

It's another lady supposed to deliver,

but she afraid, so Salahuddin volunteer.

As he approached the door,

he was attacked,

robbed,

and stabbed to death.

Did the police ever...

figure out who?

-Yes. -Did they catch him?

Trey Alexander Relford, along with two accomplices,

had devised a plan to rob a pizza delivery driver.

Salahuddin became their target.

Relford was found guilty for his role in the killing.

Dr. Jitmoud agreed to a plea deal

that kept Relford from receiving the death penalty.

But it was what happened at the sentencing

that caught the attention of the media.

I'm sorry about what happened that day.

He really remorseful,

and he's apologetic to me,

and I feel that he looking for...

some caring, some comfort.

That's why when I hug him, I said that...

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

You hugged him?

Yes, sir.

We just hug each other like a father and son.

And I feel he is one of my flesh and blood.

And I told him, 'Oh, my son,

I have forgiven you.'

'You have a brand-new chapter of life.

Make yourself a change

and become a good person.'

That was my message to him.

I think this may be a good time to take a break.

Thank you.

Where do you get the,

I don't know, the mercy to do that?

He's the murderer of your son.

You, and you forgive?

Mr. Freeman, it didn't come easy,

but because of...

Shahada,

our deep belief

in the oneness of God.

The Shahada is the first and greatest

of the Five Pillars of Islam.

These fundamental rules

are the foundation of the Muslim faith.

The Shahada states that there is no god but Allah,

and Muhammad is his messenger.

How does that manifest itself in daily life?

Because God create all of us.

We have to be good to everyone and be merciful

to the one who hurt us the most,

so that we can earn Allah forgiveness.

It's Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount.

Yes.

Forgive thine enemy.

Yes, sir.

Now, there was a moment

in the tragedy of Salahuddin's death

that gave you some comfort.

Yes, sir.

At the time of death,

Islam emphasize that you should have a moment to say,

'Laa ilaaha ill-Allah' with the finger up, to testify.

The night of murder, there was a witness

who had observed Salahuddin...

body lean against the wall,

and his finger go like this.

She realized he is Muslim, he's Muslim,

because the way he raise finger,

that's meaning he recite Shahada.

At the time of sorrow,

God send this incident to comfort me

and all of my sons.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

And peace and blessings be upon you, sir.

Thank you, sir.

I find what Dr. Jitmoud did truly humbling.

Of course, he would say he was just following God's

commandments of Shahada.

I think many people see God's commandments

as just admonitions.

What people like Dr. Jitmoud understand

is that they are God's way of showing us

how to live better lives,

as communities,

as individuals,

as members of the human race.

When our instincts might drive us to revenge and violence,

holy laws can show us a better way forward.

One religious group hopes to spread

this message to the whole world

and to eradicate violence completely.

I've come to Kathmandu, Nepal,

to learn about Jainism,

a faith whose ultimate holy law is non-violence.

With me is religious scholar Pankaj Jain.

He's invited me to the local Jain temple

to witness a religious ceremony known as the puja.

And here we are.

Okay.

The puja demonstrates the virtuous way.

Water symbolizes the washing away of spiritual impurities.

Fire illuminates,

destroying the darkness of delusion.

Svaha.

Food offerings, such as rice and almonds,

connote sacrifice.

And dried coconuts

represent the believer's own mind waking up.

Svaha.

Every human being ignorantly, they are sad.

But whenever they will getting the knowledge,

right knowledge, the right conduct, right character,

then they're becoming like God would.

This is our aim.

So every soul is...

no one needs to be killed in this globe.

So we must give the good knowledge.

I'm curious to know what knowledge Jains believe

will lead to universal enlightenment and peace.

So, the religion is called Jain,

and I'm talking to you,

and your name is Jain.

Is that a coincidence?

Jain is a very common surname,

last name for people practising Jainism.

Jain word itself comes from Jina, J-I-N-A.

Jina who have conquered all their passions,

basically those who have conquered themselves.

Much like Buddhists,

Jains strive for liberation

from the cycle of birth and death that is reincarnation.

Jinas are people who have attained that liberation.

So the Jinas, they've taken five great vows:

truth, non-violence, non-accumulation,

celibacy, and non-stealing.

Every Jain hopes to become like Jina,

so we follow their path.

So these five vows...

Vows.

Is there one or two more important than others?

Typically, Jains today describe...

their religion by the most fundamental

practice that is Ahimsa, or non-violence.

Let's stop and have compassion

towards your fellow beings in the universe.

How do you live like that?

Jains really practice non-violence

by practising vegetarianism.

They have never even tasted meat or egg or seafood.

The root vegetables

is also amounts to violence,

because when you kill the root of a plant,

you're killing the entire plant.

Another example of practising non-violence,

is when monks and nuns,

they keep sweeping the floor by a peacock brush,

so that they do not kill even a bug.

Alright, so what about breathing?

I mean, there, things float in the air, they're there.

What do you do there?

Right, so there is one sect in Jainism,

in which they put a mask on their mouth.

They're not supposed to even unintentionally...

breathe in any micro-organism.

Some Jains, usually late in life,

take the vow of non-violence

to the point where they stop eating altogether

and allow themselves to die.

Is it unfair...

to label this as a bit of extremism?

I prefer the word 'ultimate example of non-violence.'

Ahimsa, or non-violence,

leads to peaceful coexistence,

more acceptance of different faiths, different practices,

and that was really embraced by great leaders such as...

Mahatma Gandhi.

And Mahatma Gandhi,

in turn, influenced

Dr. Martin Luther King

in the United States

and also Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

The world could use more Jainism.

-Yes. -That's for sure.

Very well said. Yeah.

Definitely non-violence is needed.

Peace on Earth.

Peace on Earth.

Yeah.

Non-violence.

Ahimsa.

Some of the people I admire most,

Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela,

all lived by this principle.

For the Jains,

non-violence

represents a higher road,

to strive,

to live above

our base of instincts,

to be more...

god-like.

But for every high road,

there's a low road.

There's another way to keep the faithful on the right path:

fear of divine retribution.

Naples, Italy.

This metropolis sits in the shadow of an active volcano,

Mount Vesuvius.

When Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD,

it buried a different city in ash and volcanic rock:

Pompeii.

When natural disaster strikes,

there are people who see it as a sign of the wrath of God.

Just like in Sodom and Gomorrah,

God is punishing unrepentant sinners.

Hurricane Katrina

and the Haitian earthquake

were both labelled acts of divine retribution

by radical preachers.

I'm meeting archaeologist and historian

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill.

I want to know

whether ancient Romans saw the fire

and brimstone that engulfed Pompeii

as divine punishment.

So, that's it right there.

That's Vesuvius.

They organized their forum

to look at the mountain.

How many people would you say lived here?

The estimates vary between, say, 10,000 and 20,000.

What happens is when Vesuvius blows,

there's a column that shoots up into the air,

20 miles up into the stratosphere.

And it rains

the little pebbles of pumice,

and it just fills this entire area,

but that's not the killer.

The killer is later.

When the column collapses...

You get pyroclastic surges.

That is really hot gas.

400 degrees Fahrenheit

by the time it reaches Pompeii.

There's no way you can survive it.

That's a person?

That's actually a cast.

And inside of it,

there's still the bones.

-Inside of... skull, bones? -Yeah, yeah.

Holy cow.

You can see he's covering his face because...

-Yeah, he can't breathe. -He can't breathe, can't breathe.

Vesuvius's victims were found

when excavations started in 1748.

Beginning in the 19th century,

dozens of them were preserved by creating plaster casts.

How did they make sense of what happened here?

We actually don't know whether they blamed the gods or not,

but the gods really matter for them.

You go into a house,

there are shrines to the gods.

-Okay, can we see any of that? -Yes.

-I want to see. -Let's go see.

Excavations of Pompeii not only unearthed

bodies frozen in their moment of death,

it also gave archaeologists insight

into what everyday Romans believed about divine will.

Alright, what is this, Andrew?

So, this, this is a household shrine.

It's where you worship the Lares

who are the household gods.

For the ancients, the gods are here in the house.

They're out there in the street.

They're everywhere.

Is that Merc?

That's Mercury. And do you see down here?

Yeah.

You've got a little altar.

Yeah.

And on the altar's an offering.

This is how you do a sacrifice.

Alright.

In the household, you sacrifice

just things like eggs

and a bit of, a bit of flour.

You'd leave it up here.

It may only be a cake,

but you're sacrificing it.

Instead of eating it,

you're putting it out for the gods.

And it's part of...

this sort of deal that you're doing with the gods.

You give something to them...

-They give something to you. -Yep.

-Quid pro quo. -Quid pro quo.

So with all this sacrificing and offerings,

did the people feel that

somehow they did something wrong

and they're being punished by the gods?

You don't have this idea of...

the eruption, as divine punishment.

They haven't got one great, angry god

who if you don't worship him,

will destroy your city.

You've got loads of gods,

and they're much more interested in,

have I offended this particular god?

Is Mercury upset with me?

Is that why I'm not making a profit this year?

The Roman gods didn't care about your moral conduct.

There were no divine rules to break.

The only way to incur their wrath

was to be stingy with your gifts.

What about other religions?

I mean, how did they...

explain Vesuvius?

Really what we get

is a much later

Judeo-Christian interpretation,

because they thought,

what does the eruption mean to people?

And they go to the biblical story

of Sodom and Gomorrah, and it's seen as...

an act of God...

Right.

Punishing, but that's, that's not antique.

That's not what the ancients were making of it. That's us!

When nature unleashes its raw power,

be it with volcanoes, earthquakes,

hurricanes or tsunamis,

we are humbled

by our human frailty.

The Romans believed that their gods

needed constant attention,

in order to offer protection.

But there were no commandments to be broken.

No moral failings that would cause their wrath.

Today, most people on Earth believe

we must live by divinely inspired moral laws.

But when cultures clash,

holy laws come into conflict,

and people take divine retribution

into their own hands.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house.

Thou shalt not steal.

Those Jewish laws merged with the political systems

of ancient Greece and Rome

and helped build the Western world.

But they aren't universal rules.

They don't form the foundation of all societies.

One faith's prohibition

could be another's virtue.

And...

as cultures meet,

commandments can drive a wedge between them.

In Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in 2001,

the Taliban ordered that the tallest

statues of Buddha in the world

be destroyed.

The motivation was the Islamic prohibition

against idolatrous images,

stemming from the second commandment of Jewish law.

Most Muslims decried these acts as extreme

and intolerant of other faiths.

But mass destruction of religious icons

has happened before.

The perpetrators...

were Christian.

The conflict erupted here,

in Istanbul, Turkey,

1,300 years ago.

Journalist Nelufar Hedayat

has come here to visit the Hagia Sophia.

And to learn how a holy law

divided the entire Christian Empire.

She's meeting archaeologist

Alessandra Ricci.

-Hello. -How are you?

So nice to meet you. Welcome to Istanbul.

My God.

It looks so much bigger on the inside.

This is a building that envelops you.

You're hit by the majesty of it all.

It's just so stunning.

This place just looks like

there's layer upon layer of history.

The Hagia Sophia was built in the year 537

by Emperor Justinian.

At the time,

it was the largest building in the world,

and the greatest church

in the Byzantine Christian Empire.

In 1453, the Ottomans conquered the city

and turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque.

Since 1935,

it's been a museum

where visitors can see spectacular

religious art from both faiths.

One of these artworks, the Deeisis,

is a window into a tumultuous century

of early Christianity.

Here, on this wall,

in the centre is Christ

and then is his mother, the mother of God,

and John the Baptist over here.

Alessandra, this is absolutely beautiful,

but I've seen countless images just like this

within Christianity.

Why is this controversial?

This representation of Christ

might have been similar to an earlier one,

which decorated the entrance

into the Imperial Palace of the Byzantine emperors.

And in 726, the Emperor Leo decided

to remove and actually destroy

that holy representation of Christ.

The destruction was the opening salvo

of more than a hundred years

where the Christian Empire banned

graven images in religious art.

They were doing this because

the Second Commandment says, 'Thou shalt not make unto thee

any graven images.'

Right.

A lot of figural representations

of the holy were destroyed in the city

and probably around the Byzantine Empire.

In Islam, in my faith,

we prohibit the representation of God

or the prophet Muhammad, in any form,

but in Christianity this was so important and fundamental.

How did this start?

If we look east,

beyond the borders of the Byzantine Empire,

at this very moment what you have

is the rise of Islam,

and it was the rise of Islam

that may have encouraged Leo

to look at that commandment

in a more strict fashion,

by saying you should not worship

these human images

and not associate them with the divine.

It wasn't just the rise of Islam

that spurred Leo to rethink the Second Commandment.

In his powerful empire,

images of Christ were also being used

for non-religious ends.

What you have here is an empress

by the name of Irene, and next to her

is her second husband, Constantine Monomachos.

And what the imperial figures are doing here...

Yes.

They are carrying a donation to the church.

-Of money? -Yes.

And we've got it right here,

where emperor and empress are sat next to Christ.

And putting yourself into the picture like this,

I can see how that would be problematic

when it comes to the Second Commandment.

The ideological battle over the Second Commandment

raged back and forth until 843,

when Empress Theodora

permanently reinstated the use of icons.

What you see standing above the apse,

which was the holiest place of the building,

is this beautiful mosaic of the mother of God,

the Theotokos.

She's holding on her lap

the infant Jesus,

and this mosaic marks the return of religious imagery

in Eastern Mediterranean Christian churches.

I'm from Afghanistan, Alessandra,

and the religious extremists there

have destroyed important parts

of our cultural and historic DNA.

So you don't have to go far in history to see the importance

of these images of the divine

and what it means to people.

Today, this breathtaking building

stands as a shining example of religious tolerance.

The first Ottoman sultan of Istanbul

turned the Hagia Sofia into a mosque,

but he did not destroy the Christian icons.

He merely plastered over them,

preserving them for history.

I think...

what we are seeing here is this

beautiful visual rendering of the holy,

that stand here and are made available

to all visitors of all faith and of all cultures.

Such a joy.

Do we still need holy laws?

In the hands of fanatics,

they can lead to moral judgements

and conflict.

But they can also point us in the right direction,

on the path to valuing peace above all else.

Living in harmony with others.

And forgiving the most grievous wrongs.

I think divine laws

are so embedded in our lives

that they are here to stay.

Question is,

how do we use them?

To divide and demean,

or as a reminder to honour and respect each other,

and to take care of this...

remarkable world we live in.

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