Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [55]
If anything is still widely considered sacred today, presumably it is the Ten Commandments. Two cases that attracted wide media attention in America recently gave proof of that perception. First, the state legislature in Tennessee attempted to pass a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted on the walls of all public buildings, including courts and schoolrooms. Then in Alabama a judge was told to remove a plaque featuring the Ten Commandments from his courtroom wall. When he refused, the judge became a hero to thousands of people. The state’s governor, throwing his support behind the judge, threatened to call out the militia to defend the judge’s right to post the commandments. While the sacredness of the Ten Commandments has always been held up as central to American law and virtue, people through the centuries have done a pretty poor job when it comes to obeying them. Even Israel’s greatest national hero, King David, didn’t fare too well when it came to following the commandments. He broke the Sabbath rule at least once—as Jesus also later does—and he murdered, committed adultery, and coveted. God struck many people dead—Onan and the people of Sodom come to mind—for much less grievous sins.
With that in mind, take a closer look at the Ten Commandments and see just how well modern society does in observing this basic, presumably immutable, set of rules.
First of all, most people would be hard-pressed to name all ten. In his book Sources of Strength, Jimmy Carter cites the man who thinks the seventh commandment is “Thou shalt not admit adultery.” The fact is that most of the adulation given to the Ten Commandments is little more than lip service. The version shown above is the King James Version, the most commonly known Christian translation. Besides changing the order of the Hebrew commandments, the “Authorized Version” mangled some of the ancient Hebrew words, and more faithful translations show some interesting and very significant differences, especially regarding the sixth commandment, against “killing,” and the substitution of “impassioned God” for “jealous God” in the second commandment.
1. “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
Interesting. God didn’t say, “I am the only God,” but rather that he is Number One. God doesn’t even say don’t worship any other god, only not to put another god before him. This is a reflection of the times and circumstances. The tribes of Israel were wanderers in lands of many gods—Canaanite, Egyptian, Mesopotamian. Moving into the “Promised Land,” they confronted the fertility cult gods of Canaan, including the creator god EL, whose name was adapted by the Hebrews, the notorious storm god Baal, and his numerous consorts, including Asherah and Astarte. We have come to take for granted the idea that Judaism invented the notion of “One God” right from the start. But the original conception of Israel’s Yahweh was the greatest among many, and only over time did Yahweh evolve into the “One God,” meaning the only God.
Most modern believers have no trouble with the first commandment, taking it in the most literal sense. Although it does give pause to wonder if the God of an Orthodox Jew is the God of Pat Robertson or Jesse Jackson or the God (Allah) of an Iranian ayatollah.
The notion of a single God as the “True God” opens up the gates of intolerance. If people are really expected to hold the Ten Commandments, with its Judeo-Christian God, as an ideal for behavior, what does society do about all the other gods worshiped in a modern, pluralistic world? And then what happens to all those who choose to deny God’s existence? Granting this commandment the authority of “law of the land” clearly places such people in jeopardy of being second-class citizens, or even worse, dispensable.
But there is another way to look at the first commandment.