One cannot learn from the book of Exodus, which mentions the Ten Commandments in chapter 20 without calling them by that name and later says in chapter 31 that God wrote "two tablets of the Testimony" for Moses, what the content of these tablets is. After Moses destroys the two tablets out of anger upon returning from Mount Sinai and finding his people in the throes of idolatry, chapter 34 of Exodus (verse 28) details how Moses made new tablets himself and clarifies that they contained the Ten Commandments. Even here, it is still not directly affirmed that the initial contents of Exodus 20 are the Ten Commandments, though it could ne rather easy to convince many Christians to assume that what is written on the stones has been described by now.
Only in Deuteronomy 5:5-22 does the Bible actually specify that it was the instructions now called the Ten Commandments that God put on the stones once the Bible recites them for the second time (the first place being Exodus 20). Again, most Christians seem to just assume that it is obvious that the Ten Commandments were on the tablets inscribed by God and the duplicates created by Moses, when it is only by putting multiple passages together that this can be realized. The only real importance of this is just the avoidance of assumptions, but there is a far greater issue related to the Ten Commandments with more severe and far-reaching ramifications. Sometimes the Ten Commandments are regarded as if they are the epitome of all Christian morality, with the moral revelation that follows supposedly being either less important or just commentary on these initial ten instructions.
The fallacies of evangelical moral philosophy keep its adherents too blind to see that there is nothing special about the Ten Commandments that sets all of them above all other commands given by Yahweh. It does not logically follow from them being presented to Moses in Exodus 20 ahead of the other numerous moral demands of Yahweh that they are the most important, as if coveting or honoring one's parents could possibly be a more serious offense than the capital offense of rape of humans (Deuteronomy 22:25-27) or animals (Exodus 22:19), to give just one example! The order of moral revelation in Mosaic Law, the Ten Commandments included, is somewhat random, and it is clear that it not only does not logically follow from the order of communication that the ones mentioned earlier are more important, but also that some of the sins mentioned later in Mosaic Law are worse than those condemned in the Ten Commandments.
Some of the Ten Commandments do indeed address more than might initially seem to be the case, as a prohibition of theft would forbid kidnapping a person, even though kidnapping is separately tackled in Mosaic Law and given the death penalty (Exodus 21:16) in contrast to other forms of theft. Still, it is nothing but an obvious delusion when someone pretends like the Ten Commandments condemning adultery somehow addresses general promiscuity or rape (except for adulterous rape) or like their condemnation of murder addresses other kinds of assaults or specifies which physical punishments are just or unjust, such as distinguishing criminal assaults from limited flogging or the very limited Lex Talionis [1]. Similar to how the Golden Rule is totally incomplete on its own, the Ten Commandments are but a small, sometimes lesser part of Biblical ethics.
The philosophical errors of evangelicals will prevent them from realizing practically all of these truths about Christian theology, but especially that there are more important Biblical commands than the prohibition of murder, adultery, coveting, general theft, or working on the Sabbath. Since rape or extended, unjust torture can be far more traumatic and degrading than murder and the victim still lives with all of their pain, murder could have been replaced by multiple other condemnations that come later in Mosaic Law if the Ten Commandments were supposed to prohibit the most destructive and dehumanizing sins. Coveting would not even be on the list at all if this was the goal! Sins like coveting and blasphemy are clearly major moral issues within the Christian worldview, but they are not the ultimate sins, nor is anything else mentioned in the Ten Commandments.
No comments:
Post a Comment