What is the difference between the idea of theocracy in China during the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties and the idea of theocracy in the West?

The idea of theocratic law refers to the idea that in the primitive society, due to the limited level of people's understanding of nature, they could not recognize or explain many things, and produced a kind of blind worship of the sky, God, and even a certain kind of animal using God as a law as a kind of criterion for judging the right and wrong of things.

Comparison of the theocratic law in ancient China and the theocratic law in ancient Europe:

(1) The period of generation is different. The theocratic law of ancient China arose in the slave society of the early civilization. The Western theocracy arose in the feudal era of the Middle Ages, when civilization was relatively mature. After the end of the Greek classical period, the West formed the Macedonian Empire of Alexander and the Roman Empire, which also practiced dictatorship and outlawed the democratic politics of the original city-state system of small states and small peoples. The Roman Emperor Justinian combined monarchical power with divine power in his code of laws, and for the first time put forward the idea of divine right of kings, propagating the idea that the emperor could directly receive "heavenly favors" to rule the people, and sacralizing the monarchical power, so that the Eastern Roman Empire gradually developed into a theocratic monarchical state. At the same time, the Christian Church, represented by the Holy See, advocated the supremacy of religion over kingship and authoritarian rule. Since the period of Charlemagne's empire, the pope crowned foreign countries, and the secular regime in the West began to be under the theocratic law.

(ii) The definition of theocracy is different. When the theocratic law of ancient China arose, there was no religion in the modern sense, only some witchcraft, totem worship, ancestor worship, soul worship. The theocracy of ancient Europe generally refers to the use of religious superstition ruling class, in order to obtain the people's support, their rights as God granted, to reflect their will of the law as the law granted by God. In countries or regions where divine power is held directly by religious leaders and theocracy is practiced, the theocratic law is church law. Ecclesiastical power is supreme. It has doctrines, professionals, rituals, activities and a large congregation.

(3) The main reasons for the emergence are different. Ancient China's theocratic law was born in order to hoodwink the people and maintain the ruler's political considerations of long-term peace and security; Western ecclesiastical law was created in order to adjust the internal contradictions of a large group of believers, so ecclesiastical law is in fact a secular law, which was born for exactly the same reason as the birth of other laws in modern times.

(4) The influence produced is different. Due to the difference in legal consciousness, in ancient China, the rule of man was the basis for moral concepts to manage the world. This led to a serious imbalance of civil law in the legal system, with only well-developed penalties. Therefore in China theocratic law brought one-sided influences, such as the ceremonial nature of the judicial system to increase its sense of majesty. And in Western Europe, theocracy brought a wide and far-reaching influence,

I. I. Ideology of Theocracy in Xia Dynasty: The Chinese theocracy's began in Xia Dynasty. Yu passed on his son to the family world. In order to stabilize and deter the people, in order to find a reasonable explanation for the system of succession from father to son. The Xia dynasty began to advocate that "the king is commanded by heaven", and that he represents "heaven's order", and that he honors the "five elements" (gold, wood, water, fire, and earth) and the "three elements" (heaven, earth, and heaven). "He honored the Five Elements (gold, wood, water, fire and earth) and respected the Three Principles (heaven, earth and man), and claimed that the Hu Clan's defense of the system of selecting and electing the public "insulted the Five Elements and neglected the Three Principles". At that time, the slave-owning aristocrats, led by the king, strongly propagandized that they adhered to the order of "heaven" to rule the people, and that the idea of divine right of kings was conducive to legitimizing their rule and conferring on them the absolute authority of the sacrosanct and inviolable. At the same time, war was also seen as a way to do justice to heaven. The early Xia inherited the tradition of judgment from primitive society, with a very strong religious color.

II. Ideology of Theocracy in the Shang Dynasty : Chinese theocracy reached its peak in the Yin and Shang dynasties. The slave masters of the Yin and Shang dynasties were famous for their superstitious belief in ghosts and gods. In the Book of Rites, it is written that the Yin people honored the gods and led the people to serve them. As the power of the king of Yin strengthened, there also emerged a supreme god, Di, God, who dominated everything. All important state affairs, even the use of punishment, had to be decided by divining the ghosts and gods. The oracle bones in China are mainly the divinatory texts in which the King of Yin and his civil officials prayed to God for divination. For example, "Ching (divination): the king heard not but pai, Ching: the king heard but pai"; "Ziren Jing (punishment) not". It was as if everything of the king of Yin was the will of God, but in fact, it was just a mysterious color for the rule of the king of Yin. The most significant feature of the Yin Shang theocracy was that it tended to emphasize the close relationship between the Yin Shang nobles and God. The ability to be constantly under God's sway. They even claimed that their ancestors were God's descendants. In the "Long Hair" of the Shijing and Shang Songs, it is written, "There is the Rong (the mother of Yin's forefather, Jian Di) who will grow up, and the emperor sets up a son to give birth to the Shang"; and in the "Xuan Bird", it is also written, "The heavenly bird Xuan Bird (i.e., Yan, the totem of the Shang tribe, which was born to the first king of the Shang, Qi, when Jian Di devoured the egg of the Xuan Bird) descended down to give birth to the Shang". In this way they found a legitimate basis for acting as God's agent from the bloodline, and provided a basis for monopolizing divine power.

Third, the Western Zhou's theocracy: theocracy in the Western Zhou underwent a major change, represented by the Duke of Zhou, the Western Zhou aristocrats, learned from the Xia, Shang too brutal to the people and led to the demise of the lessons, put forward a new concept of divine right of kings, that the sky and God is not unique to any one people, but all the people of the **** with the same possession. Whoever belongs to the Mandate of Heaven is the one who has the most virtue to bring the people into submission. So they made a great deal of propaganda that only fate is not more than constant, and that heaven's fate is always constant. "The Emperor has no relatives in Heaven, but virtue is the auxiliary." In the past, the first king of Yin had virtue and was worthy of God. But then the king of Yin "but do not respect the virtue, is early fall of the life", and the king of Zhou has virtue, so "God changed the syncope of the first son of the Great Kingdom of Yin's life" and the great life of the king of Wen. Therefore, the order of heaven returned to Zhou, and the king of Zhou became the first son of heaven. At the time of the transition of power between Xia and Shang, the conflict of social system change was not as intense as it was later, when "Si Cui Shan was captured and banished to the remote Nan Chao (Tongcheng, Anhui Province)" (Park Yang, "Outline of the History of the Chinese People"). Mr. Fan Wenlan also agreed with Mr. Wang Guowei's statement that "the change of political artifacts between the Xia and Shang dynasties was not as drastic as that between the Shang and Zhou dynasties, where the great change was the abolition of the old system and the rise of the new one. was the abolition of the old system and the rise of the new system, the abolition of the old culture and the rise of the new culture." The origin of the change between the Xia and Shang dynasties is different, Xia is the abolition of the "public election" and self-appointed "king", Shang is to push the Xia and take its place. This proves that the transition of power between Xia and Shang was not as intense as the later changes in the socio-political system. And the theocracy in ancient China began to decline from the Western Zhou Dynasty, which put forward the slogan of "matching heaven with virtue" to create public opinion for the replacement of the Shang Dynasty, which was also a shake-up of the theocracy. The rulers had realized that it was impossible to rule the country by divine right, and it was necessary to have the rule of virtue to support. Taking into account the personnel, he emphasized the people's sentiment. To reason into the law, embarked on the road of family law and theoretical law.