Ten Command-nots
Sometimes Christians can be quite strange. They pound the pulpit about “Jesus this” and “Jesus that,” but when it fits their mindset, they dip back into the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) to cherry-pick verses that support their positions. Such cherry-picking twists the original intent, resulting in the ignoring of both the specific context of the passage and the entirety of the ancient Hebrew-Jewish faith and culture. Furthermore, these preachers are often using Bibles that are translations of translations, which frequently have little resemblance to the original Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek texts. Translation is, by any measure, an interpretation. The Bible, more than any other ancient text, has been weaponized since time immemorial. Even Jesus had to confront this with the “scribes and Pharisees.”
There is one item of note that has been receiving media attention in the U.S. lately. This attention swirls around various state legislatures and other local government bodies attempting to order schools to post the Ten Commandments in their classrooms. I noted that the Texas State Legislature recently openly violated the fourth commandment (prohibiting work on the Sabbath) when it met on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and was scheduled to meet the next day, Sunday, the Christian Sabbath.
The argument about posting the Ten Commandments often declares that the U.S. is a “Christian nation” founded by Christians on Christian principles. Not only does this blatantly disregard the separation of church and state, but there is also an adamant unwillingness of the same government bodies to give all religious persuasions equal time in the classroom.
Please, folks, read your history.
The founders of the United States were specific about the new nation being a secular republic. Even a casual reading of the U.S. Constitution confirms this. There is no mention of Christianity, God or the Bible. While the founders of the nation came from the religious tapestry of Western European thought — and a Christianity imposed by force of law — many of the founders were Deists or skeptical of organized religion. Deism is a rationalistic theology that rejects revelation and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of a supreme being. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and others openly and vociferously rejected key Christian doctrines. Rather, they favored universal ethical principles (justice, honesty, civic virtue), not religious dogma, as the basis of law, order and governance.
What strikes me as odd is that the so-called “Ten Commandments” is not a Christian document. In fact, Jews refer to it as the “Ten Words.” It is an ancient Israelite document. It enters the literature of the ancient Hebrew people as the stories were told, and later written down, about their time under the leadership of Moses, as the people escaped centuries of slavery in Egypt. From then until the time of Jesus, this list of rules was but one of a series of hundreds of rules the Israelites were obligated to observe to be counted worthy in “their” God’s sight. In fact, the Old Testament contains three variant versions of the Ten Commandments — each slightly different from the other and with different counts (Exodus 20:1-17, Exodus 34:11-26, Deuteronomy 5:6-21).
However, we must consider that such declarations were not unique to the Hebrews alone. They were common in Western Asia. The Code of Hammurabi of Babylon was proclaimed around 1750 BCE. (By the way, Abraham of the Hebrews was living around that time.) The Hittite Laws emerged one hundred or more years later, followed by the Middle Assyrian laws, which were contemporaneous or slightly later. All these empires were regional powers, and their laws would have been widely known.
Aside from the borrowed codes of conduct, let us consider the role of God in the matter. The modern Christian and Jewish understanding of a singular, omnipotent deity, with no possibility of any other gods, is a recent construct, dating at least a thousand years after the exodus from Egypt.
The ancient Hebrews worshipped “their” God, the God “above all other” gods. In their understanding, they acknowledged that other gods existed and had power, but for other people. But they believed “their” God was better than the other gods. In fact, the ancient Israelites understood God to be fixed in a location. This idea was so prevalent that when the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II took over the kingdom of Judah and the people were forcibly deported to Babylon, a massive crisis of faith ensued. The Jews fully believed “their” God had been left behind in Judea. Now they were in a place far away, without the presence of “their” God and only foreign gods to worship.
I find it telling that Jesus, when asked which of those commandments was the most important, listed only two, rather than 10 (or more). Without a doubt, the moral and ethical principles expounded in the Ten Commandments are valid and should be foundational to civilization, just as most major world religions acknowledge. But let us be clear, those principles are not unique or exclusive to any one religious philosophy or “brand.” Theocracy is a dangerous form of government when you elevate one religion over all others to dominate your neighbors, instead of loving them as yourself.
Rev. Steven L. Shields, FRAS (slshields@gmail.com) has lived in Korea for many years, beginning in the 1970s. A Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, he is also a lifelong member of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea, of which he was a director, vice president and president. He was a copy editor of The Korea Times in 1977. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect The Korea Times’ editorial stance.