The Ten Commandments (Pt 2): Their Context

The next thing to consider about the Ten Commandments is the context in which they materialized.

God did not just hand out flyers, or repeat earlier prophetic messages,
or paint them in the sky in every language.

Nor were they doled out separately, as if each could and would stand alone.
The Ten Commandments were given as a package, and enveloped in a Covenant.
They were given in the form received by Moses as the basis of a national charter,
a city-state, a set of core-values meant to serve first as a way to implement
an orderly and moral society, and secondly as an example, a role-model,
a means of instruction and transmission to the rest of humankind.

When taken in their proper historical context, they can be seen as a basis, and set of core-values.

But as such, they were from the beginning (for Israel and Moses) given with
the recognized understanding that they would require explanation, exposition,
interpretation, expansion, enforcement, and dispersion of benefits and liabilities.

From the beginning then, they formed the basis of an agreement between God and Israel, that is, a Covenant between God and specific tribal confederation, people, and nation.

From the beginning also, they required a system of government (a theocracy),
in which the implications and implementation of the Ten Commandments
would require an infrastructure of support for their practice.

The point here is that the Ten Commandments, although valuable as a Statement of Terms, or a Catechism, or Prospectus, would be incomplete without a supporting infrastructure.

The Ten Commandments needed an infrastructure and were intended to be used
in the context of an ongoing and consistent application throughout a whole society and community.

The danger of taking the Ten Commandments alone, or merely applying them individually, without the support of a community, is well described by various prophets in later times, when conditions had deteriorated to a point where acknowledgement and obediance to the Ten Commandments was no longer the norm.
The skeptical Preacher in Ecclesiastes observes the problem,
and ironically suggests one should not be TOO righteous,
in an environment where righteousness has become too lax:

'I have seen both of these:the righteous perishing in their righteousness,
and the wicked living long in their wickedness.
16 Do not be overrighteous,
neither be overwise—
why destroy yourself?
17 Do not be overwicked,
and do not be a fool—
why die before your time?
18 It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes.

Ecclesiastes 7:15-17

When an authentic Theocratic government was no longer being sustained at all,
when the content of the Ten Commandments were no longer being practised
throughout the society and community of Israel, horrible injustices were multiplied, even against innocent third parties who depended upon both the infrastructure and the implementation of these core values:

  'Thus justice is repelled,
righteousness stands apart, at a distance;
for truth stumbles in the public court,
and uprightness cannot enter.
Honesty is lacking,
he who leaves evil becomes a target.

Adonai [The Lord] saw it, and it displeased him
that there was no justice.'

Isaiah 59:14-15 - (Complete Jewish Bible - CJB)


'And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off:
for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.
Yea, truth faileth;
and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey:
and the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment.'

Isaiah 59:14-15 (KJV)

So we can see that for real and practical justice to prevail,
a whole society and community must commit to (the same) core set of values,
for people to actually benefit.

The Ten Commandments were never meant to stand independent of
or outside of a society and community which is committed to keeping them,
and implementing them fairly through a supporting infrastructure.

Standing alone they DO instruct us about moral values,
but without consent, commitment, and integration into the community,
they cannot deliver the blessings God intended.

The Ten Commandments (Pt 1): Borrowed from Egypt? No.

The "Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance" Website attempts to make a case that the Ten Commandments were plagiarized from the Egyptian Book of the Dead:
_____________________________________________________

'According to Wikipedia:

"Some historians....have argued that the Ten Commandments originated from ancient Egyptian religion, and postulate that the Biblical Jews borrowed the concept after their Exodus [c. 1491 BC] from Egypt . Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead [c. 1800 BC] ... includes a list of things to which a man must swear in order to enter the afterlife. These sworn statements bear a remarkable resemblance to the Ten Commandments..."

 Many religious liberals, historians, and secularists have concluded that the Hebrew Scripture's Ten Commandments were based on this earlier document...'

 ____________________________________________________

 The "many historians"  however, are not named; (as is usual with exaggerated claims), nor are their credentials offered.

The fraudulent presentation however has much deeper flaws and dishonest aspects.

For instance, they only quote a portion of the Book of the Dead (BoD) namely 13 crimes, rather than the whole passage, to give the impression of a nearly equal number of crimes/sins (their secondary source lists only 11 crimes, so they must be fully aware of the fudging).

The actual passage  however, lists over TWENTY-NINE specific crimes, after five general statements of innocence, so there is no numerical similarity with the Hebrew Decalogue of TEN unique commands intended to summarize a whole moral code.

The 29 'crimes' are a long and random (but not exhaustive) list of common offences, with no hierarchy or indication of relative importance.  They are merely an expression of a wordy prayer and claim of general innocence.

In no way can they be interpreted as a "Law Code", nor is there any evidence that the list is based on any earlier formal Egyptian Legal Code now lost.   Rather, this is just an ordinary funeral text, a prayerful plea meant to impress God(s) with its attempt at thoroughness of claim.

This discrepancy in the count makes it more obvious how dissimilar the two lists are.

Even the supposed "matches" are often at best only approximately similar in meaning:

(TC 6) Do not kill -  
(BoD 7) - I have not killed

(TC 7) Do not commit Adultery - 
(BoD 13,14) - I have not Sodomized with a Sodomite.
(the interpretation here of "adultery" is dubious, since the text says literally:
"I have not penetrated the penetrator of a penetrator",
suggesting buggery.)
 (BoD 14) - "I have not masturbated"  Adultery?  another implausible stretch.

(TC 8) Do not steal - 
(BoD 1)        - I have not cheated the Orphan of his goods. 
(BoD 20)      - I have not taken milk from babies' mouths. 
(BoD 11,12) - I have not taken the offerings of the Gods/dead.
(BoD 15-19) - I have not cheated with various weights and measures. 

Certainly these are examples of modern "stealing", but there appears to be
no specialized word for "steal" in early Egyptian,  and these were handled as separate crimes, as the text plainly illustrates.

Even the truncated source that the Ont. Consultants on Religious Tolerance (OCORT) use doesn't render any part of the BoD text as "stealing".

Other 'renderings' offered appear to contain 'glosses' or interpretations that reflect the modern liberal ideologies of the website rather than ancient Egyptian priests:

" I have not murdered or given such an order...." (unsourced quote)
"I have not killed; I have not turned anyone over to a killer." (unsourced)  

Both of these quotes appear to be 'interpretations' or elaborations offered by various unnamed translators.   The Egyptian text seems not to support it, if the UCL and JISC supported sites are reliable.  They give this for the portion of the text under consideration:

"I have not killed; I have not harmed the offering-cattle;" (Chapter 125a)

Which seems to have quite a different meaning than that offered by OCORT.

Out of 29 possible crimes in BoD, only ONE appears to correspond directly to a commandment in the Decalogue:  "murder".

But the context in both cases gives no indication that the two cultures had similar views on how to define "murder" or what the punishment should be in various nuanced cases.   We know that "Do not Kill" was a crime moderated by manslaughter and 'crime of passion' considerations, from the fact that Israelites allowed fugitives to flee to another city of refuge.  Nothing in Egyptian culture seems to correspond to these legal nuances.


OCORT do admit the following:

"One major difference between the two documents is that statues of the Gods and Goddesses formed a major part of the ancient Egyptian religion. The religion of the ancient Hebrews forbade any image or statue of Yahweh. Another difference was the Decalogue's emphasis on the Sabbath -- one day of rest each week. It is not found in the Book of the Dead or in ancient Egyptian culture."

This is not a small difference.  Hebrew Law forbade idolatry, while Egyptian culture celebrated it.   The Sabbath was completely foreign to Egyptians.
Thats  at least two, possibly three Commandments which are are directly opposed to Egyptian legal ideas.  Statistically twice the clear disagreement (20%) as seemingly direct agreement (10%).

And this is being generous in the use of statistics.
From the BoD viewpoint, only 1 match out of 29 crimes is a much lower agreement: (3.4%).  That is, while TC agrees with the BoD list for 10% of its own commandments, the BoD only agrees with TC for 3.4% of its crime list.
 

The other differences are just as serious.  The Egyptians appeared to have no 'core set' of values like the Hebrew Decalogue.   Instead, they had a complex and often arbitrary set of laws, enacted by Pharoahs and seemingly based on Egyptian religious values and social sensibilities, but unorganized or reasoned out by any unified worldview or legal philosophy.

But from early times, it appears that Hebrew culture embraced at least a legal awareness or core-value system, based on their careful preservation of early history in Genesis.

While Egyptians held core religious beliefs based on early history or myth (i.e., the afterlife and Osiris), they appear not to have based a legal code on their stories.

There seems no evidence that Hebrews borrowed their legal code from Egypt, although they may have been culturally influenced to a significant degree by their interaction, and service to the Egyptian state.

The similarities (e.g., prohibition of murder) can best be understood as universals that arose from situations common to all early peoples and hardly traceable to a specific culture or nation.

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