Decalogue

On a societal level Philo argues for a ius talionis based on values of equality, life itself, and health. The first principle results in democracy as the best political system. It also implies that every killing is unjust, including killing in war, as every person who kills in effect gives him or herself a higher value than his or her victim. The second principle implies that when a life is willingly taken, it must be retaliated against—by the death of the offender. In some cases, Philo also considers an intentional assault on someone’s health as murder, especially when the principle sign of life, the ratio (nous), is thereby lost. The condition for the culpability of murderers or potential murderers is in every case the intention to kill. This intention also includes incitement to murder and attempted murder.
On a religious level there is only the one God. God is the creator and the guarantee of the world order (logos) which includes and effectively amounts to natural law. Every offence against God is an offence against this order and cannot be redeemed, and the offender should be completely erased. However, as men are shaped in the image of God, they are, to some extent, also godly. Killing the image of God is, thus, killing a part of God in some way. At the societal level, the victim is to be recompensed by means of the death penalty for the murderer. However, at the religious level, the murderer has broken the law of nature—offended God’s image, and God himself—and must be eradicated, to preserve the goodness inherent in God’s work. To repeat the words of Philo once again:
"The term murder or manslaughter is used to signify the act of one who has killed a human being but in real truth that act is a sacrilege, and the worst of sacrileges."
(Philo, Spec. Laws 3.83; trans. Colson, LCL)

The detailed review includes abstracts of, and comments on, the 21 papers published in the volume. The reviewer offers the following suggestion about the origin and the early history of the Ten Commandments: th festival of Tabernacles may have been the occasion when the Levites, instead of reciting the entire Torah (Deut 31:9-13), would have used the Dacalogue in their teaching. The words of the Decalogue originated in the Deuteronomic milieu, and the form in which the text appears in the book of Exodus reflects its Deuteronomic derivation and its slight revision in a "Priestly" (P) environment. The migration of the Decalogue from Deutronomy to Exodus is the first episode in the long story of the Decalogue's reception history.

Krzysztof Kieslowski's television series called Decalogue (1989), based on the Ten Commandments, depicts various moral and ethical concerns of a group of people living in an apartment complex in Warsaw. Academicians like Christopher Garbowski and Slavoj Zizek have studied the Decalogue series with respect to the influence of the Commandments either on individual films in the series or on all the films in the series. Since the films are based on the Commandments, many see the television series as religious, and often tend to look at how each film in the series portrays the essence of what each Commandment stands for. This article however argues that Kieslowski's representation of the Commandments is not religious. That is, the director does not adhere to its literal meaning but instead, is searching for its practicality in daily life. The technique that the director has used to accentuate the influence of the Commandments and the segments in which its influence can be felt are explored here.

The Decalogue in Exodus was composed and strategically embedded in its literary context in order to reflect the discourse of Northwest Semitic monumental inscriptions. Monument making in the ancient Near East involved primarily the materialization and perpetuation of ideologies as well as the proposition of collective identities, and these functions were easily carried out by text objects. Accordingly, the Decalogue’s commandments reveal a YHWH-centered ideology expressed in terms familiar to Northwest Semitic monumental discourse. These commandments were strategically structured to provoke collective interaction with the text that would persuade its users to accept its proposed perspective as their new collective identity. Finally, the Decalogue is inserted at a point in the narrative where the ancient audience could reasonably expect an account of monument erection—immediately following the account of YHWH’s defeat of Egypt, which makes up the first half of the book of Exodus. The Decalogue
thus acts as the text of an imagined victory monument to YHWH, which materialized YHWH’s newly established kingship over Israel and the divine proposition of the people’s collective identity. The Decalogue thereby fulfills the primary function of royal Northwest Semitic monuments by materializing an imagined encounter between a king and his people and establishing a relationship between them. The text’s monumentality thus provides a new means of conceptualizing
its composition and authority.

This article is currently available at the link provided. Alternatively, feel free to contact me for an offprint.

Among American evangelicals, the command to honor one's parents (Exod 20:12; Deut 5:16) has usually been interpreted as a command for young children to obey their parents. However, close study of this command reveals that it was primarily a command for adult children to care for their elderly parents. First, adult land-and slave-owning males were the implied audience of the Decalogue rather than children. Second, honoring and fearing parents in the ancient Near East was most commonly associated with adults and consisted primarily of physical support of elderly parents. Third, the other texts in the OT that describe the parent-child relationship clearly show the importance of honoring parents by caring for them. Fourth, NT texts and mainstream church tradition support this interpretation. The paper ends by looking at implications of this interpretation for today and some practical ways for adult children to care for parents in the modern world.

From Hellenistic Judaism to the Reformation era. For a chart sorting out the Jewish, Orthodox, Anglican, Reformed, Roman Catholic, and Lutheran traditions on how the Ten Words God spoke on Mount Sinai should be numbered, go here:
https://www.academia.edu/10545855/Enumeration_of_the_Ten_Commandments

Bernhard Lang, Der Dekalog (Dtn 5,6-21): Eine Sachanalyse. In: Volker Garske und Bernhard Lang, Die Zehn Gebote. Dtn 5,6-21 (EinFach Religion; Paderborn: Schöningh 2015), S. 18-40.

The Decalogue, here considered in its original Deuteronomic version (Deut 5), originated around 500 BCE as a piece of revelatory fiction echoing the divine speech known from the prophets of old. The Levites who composed the text may have used it for the oral instruction of lay pilgrims at the Second Temple of Jerusalem. The present text shows traces of the three stages of textual development. At first, the text consisted of five religious injunctions. Later, five social commandments were added. Eventually, the very long commandment to keep the Sabbath was inserted. – The article tells the story of the interpretation of the Decalogue, offers an annotated working translation and a historical commentary on the individual commandments, and, finally, a brief biography of the Ten Commandments.

In this article I propose – together with Frank Crüsemann – an interpretation of the Decalogue based on a concentric structure. The center of the structure is occupied by the prohibition to kill (Ex 20:13), making the respect for the person the crucial value of peaceful coexistence in society. Moving outwards from the center, pairs of commandments form concentric circles around the life of the individual, dealing with family (vv. 12 and 14), subsistence (8-11 and 15), and social interaction (7 and 16), respectively. The framing commandments address the respect for God at the beginning and the respect for the neighbor at the end of the Decalogue (3-5 and 17). Embedded into the structure is a movement from the slavery in Egypt at the beginning (v. 2) to a successful life in the land at the center (v. 12b).

This article investigates the intellectual history of the argument for the antiquity of Exodus 34,11–26. In the contemporary debate about pentateuchal theory, a question that remains insufficiently addressed is how and why the idea originally developed that the unit represents an ancient, independent, pre-Deuteronomic legal source. Wellhausen credited the idea to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Zwo bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen . . .” (1773). Like Goethe, Wellhausen regarded the unit as a “ritual Decalogue,” in contrast to the “ethical Decalogue” of Exodus 20. The distinction helped Wellhausen consolidate the classical model of the documentary hypothesis: he attributed the cultic Decalogue to the Yahwist and the ethical to the Elohist. Despite the importance of Goethe’s essay to the history of pentateuchal criticism, it is not clear that its arguments have previously been investigated.

Keywords: Julius Wellhausen, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Baruch Spinoza, Zwo bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen, Dekalog, Decalogue, Pentateuch, Exodus, German Jewish history, Christian Jewish relations, Ten Commandments, history of biblical scholarship, German Romanticism, Pentateuchal theory, documentary hypothesis, German intellectual history, Old Testament, cultic Decalogue, ethical Decalogue, ritual Decalogue, Covenant Code, Elohistic source, Yahwistic source, Exod. 34:11-26, Romans 11

The biblical text is explicit that God revealed Ten Words to his people at Mt. Sinai (Exod 34:28), but uncertainty still remains as to the proper enumeration of these ten. Many recent studies of the Decalogue accept without discussion the traditional Reformed breakdown. Throughout the centuries, however, interpreters have questioned their proper itemization, debating issues of form, style, semantic content, and cantillation, especially with reference to the boundaries of “words” one, two, and ten. The problems are only intensified by the various distinctions between Exod 20:1–17 and Deut 5:5–21. Recent studies in grammar above the sentence level (textlinguistics or discourse grammar) open new doors for evaluating literary structure from a bottom-up rather than top-down approach. Utilizing a nuanced understanding of the form, meaning, and function of the Hebrew connector wa, asyndetic constructions, and pronouns, this study reevaluates the numbering of the Decalogue and argues that the Masoretic paragraph marking and the traditional Catholic-Lutheran enumeration most closely align with the formal text-grammatical signals and find strong support from the perspective of form, style, semantic content, and cantillation. God gave us Ten Words, and we should know how to count them.

Although there are many studies on John Calvin's teaching on natural law, the relation between natural law and Roman law has received relatively less attention. This essay examines the relation between natural law and Roman law in Calvin's exegetical writing on the Mosaic law. I argue that Calvin regarded Roman law as an exemplary, albeit imperfect, witness to the natural law, and he used Roman law to aid in his interpretation of the Mosaic law. Since he assumed that Roman law embodies principles of natural law, Calvin drew on Roman law as an aid in order to distinguish natural from positive law within the Mosaic law. He also broadened the scope of commandments in the second table of the Decalogue by comparison with natural and Roman law. Yet although Calvin drew many continuities between Mosaic and Roman laws, he remained critical of the Roman system due to various failings in comparison with Scripture and principles of natural law.

What function do the two versions of the Decalogue in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 have within the framework of the Tora of Moses? Markl shows that the ‘Ten Words’ constitute Israel within the making of the covenant at Sinai in analogy to constitutions of modern states. Moreover, the Pentateuch as a whole forms a society-constituting complex of texts – in a unique combination of the historical, ethical and legal dimensions. As a fundamental text for the Jewish and Christian tradition in the history of culture, the Decalogue provides impulses for the identity of the ‘open society’.

El autor de este trabajo compila información bibliográfica sobre la dimensión histórica de las tablas del pacto y el becerro de oro como objetos clave en la narrativa de Éxodo 32-34. El objetivo es considerar lo que estos elementos pudieron representar en el antiguo Cercano Oriente y facilitar así la interpretación de esta parte del texto bíblico.

Abstract: in this paper the author compiles bibliographic information about the historical dimension of the tablets of the covenant and the golden calf as key objects in the narrative of Exodus 32-34. The objective is to consider what these elements might have represented in the ancient Near East and thus facilitate the interpretation of that section of the biblical text.

Genevan Reformer John Calvin produced a half dozen catechisms during his tenure in the city from 1536 to 1538 and 1541 to 1564. While not nearly so well-known as his Institutes of the Christian Religion or Geneva Bible, and not nearly so heavily used today as the later Reformed catechisms of Heidelberg or Westminster, Calvin's catechisms were impressive for their biblical acuity, pristine language, and doctrinal precision and for their power to integrate the far flung Calvinist communities of the sixteenth century. This Article samples these catechisms, and analyzes their use in spiritual formation and discipline for both children and adults in Geneva.

The relationship between Ezekiel 18:1-4 and Exodus 20:5-6 is sometimes interpreted in a way that highlights three difficulties encountered by modern exegetes when assessing the motivations underlying inner-biblical exegesis. From these three difficulties emerges another explanation of Ezekiel’s intention which illustrates some principles that could help refine the analysis of inner-biblical exegesis.

This is the second of my studies on the Decalogue (see also "Counting the Ten"), this one considering the exegetical, theological, and pastoral payoff of numbering the Ten Words as I do. Consideration is given to the development of the law theme in biblical theology, the meaning of the call to love God and neighbor portrayed in the Ten, the role of the Mosaic law in pointing to Christ, and the relationship of old covenant law in general and the Sabbath law in particular to Christians. The essay ends with an appendix that offers five guidelines for the Christian appropriation of old covenant law.

Riassunto
Un’analisi ravvicinata della composizione delle due versioni del decalogo in Es 20 e Dt 5 evidenzia la posizione centrale degli unici due comandamenti positivi della lista: la consacrazione del sabato e l’onore dovuto al padre e alla madre. La relazione letteraria e semantica tra questi due comandamenti fornisce la chiave di lettura di tutto il testo: rivolti all’uomo, il primo come padre, il secondo come figlio, lo definiscono come soggetto di libertà, ricevuto da un altro e riconosciuto dall’altro. La libertà è anche offerta al lettore dal fatto che due testi, simili e diversi, gli sono dati: la Presenza si rivela nello spazio lasciato libero tra loro.

Abstract
A close analysis of the composition of the both versions of the Decalogue in Ex 20 and Deut 5 shows the central position of the only two positive commandments in the list: the consecration of the Sabbath and the honour due to father and mother. The literary and semantic relationship between these two commandments provides the key for understanding of the whole text: addressed to man, the first as a father, the second as a son, they define him as a subject of freedom, received from another and recognized by the other. Freedom is also offered to the reader by the fact that two texts, similar and different, are given to him: the Presence is revealed in the space left free between them.

“You shall not kill” seems to be a self-evident norm, both in modernity and in antiquity. But what does this prohibition exactly mean? Does it only apply to humans or also to non-human beings? And what about indirect or unintentional killing? Is killing legitimate under certain circumstances? The prohibition of killing was most likely a prohibition of homicide, in its original context of the Decalogue (Exod 20:13 and Deut 5:17). However, as we all know, many other texts in the Bible refer to killing humans. Moreover, killing others in war or death penalty for capital crimes does not seem to be problematic in the biblical world. Sometimes God seems to be someone, for whom people should be killed for or who wants or orders others to be killed. In a few cases, it is God him/herself who appears as the one who kills. On the contrary other opinions like humans being created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27; 9,6) making them “god like,” which implicitly prohibits killing them, or the general prohibition of killing “You shall not kill” in the Decalogue, are articulated in the Bible. The central question of this volume is whether and how biblical and non-biblical killing prohibitions function as a norm in antiquity. The contributors stem from different research fields such as ancient law, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, New Testament, ancient Judaism, ancient history, and the church fathers. The volume covers a time spanning from the Ancient Near East up to the Christian patristic era with a look forward to Martin Luther.

From a literary point of view the Sabbath-Commandment is the most extensive and most elaborated part of the Decalogue. In modern times critical research has devoted much attention to the differences between the two text-versions (Exo. 20:8-11 and Deut. 5:12-15). These differences have usually been interpreted in the framework of historical-critical or literary-critical hypotheses. In contrast, this paper aims to highlight the corresponding elements in the two texts, especially in the overall construction logic of the Sabbath-Proclamation, in its text-syntax and palistrophic structure. Because of the considerable degree of agreement on various levels, which is demonstrated in the overall intratextual ties as well as in the correspondence in detail, the two texts are evaluated to be two variant elaborations of a literary, textually defined entity. Therefore, the concept of the Decalogue as the result of two partially independent developments in tradition history should be reconsidered.

A decalogue (5:7–21) is ten instructions, a handbook explaining the obligations of clients to their patrons (10:12—11:32; 16:18—17:13; 22:1–12; 24:6). A long-standing tradition of interpretation considers decalogues to be a genre developed by elite males to teach one another the basic stipulations of the Covenant between YHWH and Israel. Decalogues are codes of honor which reflect what elite males expect of themselves, and how other elite males will evaluate how well they fulfill their roles in their households, villages and tribes. The long-standing tradition of interpretation that the decalogue is a genre developed by elite males Furthermore, the emphasis on worshipping YHWH alone would be an unusual teaching of women whose household worship was more inclusive of other members of the divine assembly like Asherah (5:6–10), and it is unlikely that women would view themselves as household possessions rather than as full, contributing members of their households (5:21). The Decalogue teaches the Hebrews to treat one another the way YHWH treats them. Their behavior is an image of YHWH. They were not to be competitive, but to create communities where even the powerless could survive. Only Hebrews who could remember their own sufferings well enough could be compassionate. Only then could their households live simply so that other households may simply live.

Rudie van Leeuwen The painting Moses and the Israelites from 1574, which was commissioned by Peeter Panhuys (1529-85) from the Antwerp painter Maerten de Vos (1532-1603), serves as a case study for answering the question how the choice of a subject relates to the faith of the persons portrayed in a biblical portrait historié. Hence the starting point for this contribution is a partly new identification of the sitters and a new assessment of their religious persuasions. Although the persons portrayed have been connected to the 'spiritualistic' movement of the Family of Love in earlier studies, no attempt was made to interpret the painting in the light of this connection. The Family attracted both Protestants and Catholics. The iconography of this portrait historié however, points in the direction of Lutheran interpretation and seems to confirm the (otherwise established) Lutheran sympathies of Peeter Panhuys. Moreover, the specific formulation of the Ten Commandments indicates the consultation of a Lutheran (Bible) translation. This observation seems remarkable since the painting was considered distinctly Calvinist by others. Both passages from Luther's works and the Chronicles of the Family of Love explain the choice of subject of the panel. Notwithstanding evidence for a Familist interpretation, it has become clear that Hooftman and Panhuys were not fanatical Calvinists but rather moderate Lutherans.

This Article analyzes the development of rights talk in the pre-Enlightenment Protestant tradition, especially as formulated by the sixteenth-century Calvinist theologian and jurist, Theodore Beza. Responding to the horrific persecution born of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572, Beza mobilized classical, Catholic, and Protestant sources alike to develop a coherent Calvinist theory of rights, resistance, and revolution against tyrants. This Article details Beza's arguments, places his work in its historical and intellectual context, and highlights the innovations Beza contributed to the intersection of legal, political, and theological teachings. It concludes by showing how Beza's theory of subjective rights and resistance to tyranny helped to plot the course of modern democratic and constitutional theory.

D'après les enseignements des Rabbanim de AskNoah international :
Rav Michael Schulman (directeur)
Rav Moshé Weiner (auteur du Code de Lois pour bnei Noah-sefer sheva mitsvoth HaShem [en hébreu] The Divin Code [en anglais])
Rav Ya'aqov Imannuel Schochet z''l (premier Rav superviseur de AskNoah International)

The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law provides a state-of-the-art analysis of the major questions, principles, concepts, texts, and critical methodologies pertinent to biblical law. The thirty-three chapters, written by an international team of experts, deal with the concepts, significant texts, institutions, and procedures of biblical law; the intersection of law with religion, socio-economic circumstances, and politics; the relationship of biblical law with ancient Near Eastern and classical law; and the reinterpretation of biblical law in the emerging Jewish and Christian communities. The volume is intended to introduce non-specialists to the field as well as to stimulate new thinking among specialist

For Pseudo-Phocylides, and probably also for Pseudo-Menander, the Decalogue was so important that it was used to present Jewish wisdom in a Hellenistic disguise. In the work of Pseudo-Phocylides this is more or less explicit, and he clearly uses the wording of the Decalogue for his transculturation. In the work of Pseudo-Menander, the Decalogue seems to have gained the same status as universally apprehensible unwritten law and seems to belong to the author’s cultural memory. In both works the ‘written laws’ are, in a somewhat Aristotelian way, the law of God for Jews of which the Decalogue is the summary and, at the same time, the unwritten universal law (κοινὸς νόμος) that they wanted to instil into their non-Jewish neighbours.

This study conceives Christian ministry as a vocation defined by the New Covenant. Addressing a gap in the application of the New Covenant to moral and spiritual formation, it proposes and illustrates a two-dimensional method for the definition and validation of ministry outcomes for New Covenant-based attributes of character. It maintains that New Covenant outcomes result from the work of God within the mind and heart. It also maintains that ministers are co-labourers with God in this process. The study proceeds in four parts. First, it explores how outcomes-based educational theories can apply to formational objectives. This defines the first dimension of the method. Second, it examines the promise of the New Covenant in both the Old and New Testaments. This ensures biblical accuracy and explores the central place of the Decalogue in the New Covenant. Third, it considers the meaning of the writing of the law on the mind and heart. It relates this to the Decalogue and the development of virtue. This develops the second dimension of the method. The study ends by illustrating the application of method to the preface and sixth precept of the Decalogue.

This Article analyzes the transformation of Western legal philosophy in the sixteenth-century Lutheran Reformation, with a focus on the legal thought of theologian Martin Luther, moral philosopher Philip Melanchthon, and legal theorist Johann Oldendorp. Starting with Luther's two kingdoms theory, Melanchton developed an intricate theory of natural law based not only on the law written on the hearts of all persons, but also on the law rewritten in the Decalogue, whose two tables provided the founding principles of religious law and civil law respectively. Building on both Luther and Melanchthon, Oldendorp developed an original theory of equity and equitable law making and law enforcement as part of a broader biblical-based theory of natural law. Together these writers, laid the foundations for a new legal, political, and social theory which dominated Lutheran Germany and Scandinavia for the next three centuries.