The myth of the Ten Commandments<\/i><\/p>\n
Asked to name the Ten Command\u00adments in a 2006 appearance on \u201cThe Colbert Report,\u201d Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, co-sponsor of a bill that would have required the Ten Command\u00adments to be displayed in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, responded: \u201cUmmmm. Don\u2019t murder. Don\u2019t lie. Don\u2019t steal. Ummmm.\u201d He then admitted, \u201cI can\u2019t name them all.\u201d<\/p>\n
The State of Texas recently considered a law mandating that a particular form of the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom; although it did not pass yet, it will likely be reconsidered in a future session, and similar bills are being considered elsewhere. The Texas bill is especially problematic, and violates the commandment that Westmoreland mistakenly attributed to the Ten Command\u00adments: \u201cDon\u2019t lie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biblical scholars agree that there is no distinct biblical text that can be identified as \u201cThe<\/i> Ten Commandments.\u201d The phrase \u201cthe Ten Commandments\u201d appears in the King James Version of the Bible in Exodus 34:28 and Deuteronomy 4:13 and 10:4. The Deuteronomy texts refer to the regulations in Deuteronomy 5:6\u201318\u2014one rendition of the Ten Command\u00adments. But the referent in Exodus is unclear, since the Exodus version of the Ten Command\u00adments appears many chapters earlier, in 20:2\u201317, and Exodus 34:28 may refer to a different set of ten laws found in Exodus 34:11\u201326.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, the commandments in Exo\u00addus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 are not identical. They differ in minor respects, sometimes more obvious in Hebrew than in English. They diverge in larger matters as well, including why the Sabbath day should be observed. Thus, there is no such thing as \u201cthe\u201d Ten Commandments: the Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 versions differ in details, while Exodus 34 may refer to ten quite different commandments! And to complicate matters further, the text found in several Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient biblical translations, and the New Testament differs from the standard Hebrew texts of Exodus and Deuteronomy.<\/p>\n
The Texas bill mandates that a particular version of the Ten Commandments be posted, a form that does not follow Exodus 20 or 34, or Deuteronomy 5. It is a highly problematic version of the Ten Commandments made up by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in the 1950s as part of their Ten Commandments campaign. On what basis can they, or the state following them, decide how to abridge such a central document and how to translate it into English?<\/p>\n
Like any biblical text, the Ten Command\u00adments present the translator with many choices and problems. These begin at the very outset, where the Hebrew allows for two translations: \u201cI am the LORD your God\u201d or \u201cI, the LORD, am your God.\u201d This is a subtle but important difference. The difficulties are less subtle later on; where the Texas version bans killing, biblical scholars find a prohibition against murder. I do not see how a legislative body\u2014or if it is appealed to, a court\u2014has the professional knowledge to arbitrate between alternative translations.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Texas proposal lays out the Ten Commandments in a problematic fashion, as twelve distinct sentences. The Bible itself does not number them, and contains thirteen statements that could be combined in different ways to reach ten; various religious traditions and scholars use different methods to attain ten<\/i> commandments. But which is right? And is it not odd to mandate a poster that must begin with \u201cThe Ten Commandments\u201d and then follow it with twelve statements? Math teachers might not be happy to have this Ten Command\u00adments poster in their classrooms.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, I also object to the Texas bill as a Jew. The term \u201cTen Commandments\u201d suggests that what follows are indeed commandments; and in many religious traditions, the first saying is the commandment: \u201cYou shall have no other gods beside me,\u201d with \u201cI am the LORD . . .\u201d serving as an introduction. But within Judaism, \u201cI am the LORD\u201d counts as the first. But it is not a commandment! Thus, the term \u201ccommandment\u201d is alienating to the Jewish community, and I prefer to call this text \u201cthe Decalogue,\u201d from the Greek, which means \u201cthe ten sayings.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposed Texas version of that first \u201ccommandment,\u201d following the Fraternal Order of Eagles, presents additional difficulties to my community. It reads: \u201cI AM the LORD thy God.\u201d But what of the rest of the verse, \u201cwho brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage\u201d? This depiction of a liberator God is a central Jewish image, commemorated often in Judaism, most especially on Passover. Can these words be removed by legislative fiat? And to raise another issue: Can they apply to every student studying in a Texas classroom?<\/p>\n
The mandated posting of the Ten Com\u00admandments sparks other significant problems for students who do not have this text as part of their Scripture. Should we legislate the posting of any theistic statement in all classrooms? Should we subject children whose practice includes worshiping G\/god(s) using images to their classmates\u2019 derision by posting, \u201cThou shalt not make to thyself any graven images\u201d? And finally, the Decalogue endorses vicarious, intergenerational punishment (Exodus 20:5; Deuteronomy 5:9); do we want to endorse that idea by placing the Ten Commandments in every classroom?<\/p>\n
I fully agree with Pastor Thompson in his article (p. 11): The religious person should embody these commandments through practice rather than a public display of piety. And Dr. Russo\u2019s warnings are equally trenchant (p. 7). He raises the issue of the Supreme Court\u2019s new criterion of \u201creference to historical practices and understandings,\u201d a tenuous and ambiguous standard\u2014much less clear than the Lemon<\/i> standard it replaces, and I worry whether the courts have the ability to adjudicate such historical issues in a fair and unbiased fashion. The recent coronation ceremony of King Charles III and Queen Camilla was full of quotations from the Hebrew Bible (especially Psalms) and the New Testament, and offers an indisputably certain example of a tradition heavily based on the Bible. The coronation ceremony illuminates by contrast how much less significant biblical influence was on American history and tradition.<\/p>\n
So, let\u2019s not lie. There is no such single thing as The<\/i> Ten Commandments\u2014in Hebrew, and especially in English. The Texas version is a complete fabrication. And let\u2019s not perpetrate the lie that America was always a deeply biblical religious society based on the Ten Command\u00adments. Let\u2019s keep the Ten Commandments\u2014in their multiple versions\u2014where they belong: in our Bibles rather than on our school walls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The myth of the Ten Commandments Asked to name the Ten Command\u00adments in a 2006 appearance on \u201cThe Colbert Report,\u201d Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, co-sponsor of a bill that would have required the Ten Command\u00adments to be displayed in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, responded: \u201cUmmmm. Don\u2019t murder. Don\u2019t lie. Don\u2019t steal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[354],"tags":[186],"class_list":["post-6666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-july-august-2023","tag-july-august-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}