some commandments

[cellio]

Alabama isn't the only place with controversies over judicial monuments to the 10 commandments; there's a local case of this too. But ours doesn't weigh 2.5 tons; it's just a plaque and thus easy to miss in the political and media circus.

An article in yesterday's paper described what happened when a reporter stood near the courthouse and asked random people to list the commandments. The average hit rate was three. I do wonder, and the article didn't discuss this, how they handled different interpretations of this list. We don't all draw the lines in the same places. Jews and I think some Protestants say there's one commandment against coveting, for example, not two like the Roman Catholics say.

Quite aside from the legal and social issues surrounding these public displays, I find myself wondering where all the emphasis on these ten commandments really comes from. It's my impression that Christians focus on this a lot more than Jews do. Jews focus on the revelation at Sinai, of which this list is a part, but we have 613 commandments (and all the derivatives), so these ten aren't anything like a complete list. Yes, there are talmudic arguments that say that the 613 reduce to these ten, but some of the contortions are, um, challenging.

But Christians have more commandments than just these ten, too. After all, the ten commandments don't include anything that Jesus added, and at least "do unto others..." and "love your neighbor" are every bit as important as honoring parents.

So do we all just like neat, tidy lists with nice round numbers, or what? Why have these few verses been pulled out of scripture and given elevated importance?

Aside: At Shavuot we read the revelation at Sinai. In some congregations it's customary to stand for the ten commandments. In others, it is custom specifically not to stand for them, because that elevates them above the rest of the Torah.

Comments

[the-never.livejournal.com]

This is the thing with me:
I don't mind that the Ten Commandments were posted. This isn't because I expect everyone to follow the ten commandments or out of any kind of religious thing. I see them as an artifact of the history of law itself. I would not have a problem with the code of Hammurabi being posted, or a copy of the Magna Carta, either.

So I don't mind that they removed it, I guess. But I didn't mind it being there either. It seemed like an appropriate place to have it. Oh well.

[cellio]

I am more disturbed by a judge posting them in a courthouse (or, for similar reasons, a teacher posting them in a classroom) than I am with random displays. The judge here even said that these commandments are higher law than US law, which makes him unsuitable to be a judge in US courts.

If a church, or a private citizen, or a store, or whatever wants to post them publicly, that's cool -- assuming that a chanukiah, a shrine to Buddha, a atatue of Kali, and a pentacle are similarly protected.

All that said, I think a courthouse that dedicated some wall space to all of the significant historic law codes would be doing something useful. I'd like to be able to read the code of Hammurabi while waiting for my turn in the jury pool.

Above civil law

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

You've hit my feelings exactly -- The judge's assertion that this list is more important and will be used for decision-making instead of the law of the land. Now, I'm not a rabid constituionalist .. or, at least I didn't use to be. A bumpersticker I passed today sums up my feelings very precisely --
Ignore your rights and they'll go away
And, as my religious leanings aren't Christian, altho I do lean toward some of the Hebrew mysticism, I respect the bill of rights above nearly anyone's religious list of laws when making decisions in a court of law.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, the neat list factor is what does it. A very large percentage of the commandments can be, if not compressed into the 10, then at least keyed off them. It's a convenient format to teach to 4th-graders. :)

Possibly the greater Christian focus comes from _not_ having those 613 commandments--that is, most of the Torah is taken as guidance rather than law, so condensing it down to the most relevant and inclusive bits is a good and strategy to get people to remember it. The 613-as-equal never comes up because, well, I think they're not, in the Christian view. Some of them were even cancelled or drastically reinterpreted by Jesus.

[cellio]

I'm not sure most Jews count all 613 as being equal either, though technically they're supposed to be. I mean, if I had to hazard a guess on the relative importance of not murdering versus not mixing linen and wool, I think I know which way I'd call it. :-)

(Actually, I think I could argue (from sources) for the generalization of the above, that commandments about how we interact with each other are more important than those that have to do only with our interactions with God.)

But yeah, the fact that we have a number, even if it's not an especially meaningful number, might make the difference. And I agree that the list of ten is easy to teach to kids.

[murmur311.livejournal.com]

i'm personally very glad that the monument was taken out. a religious monument has no place in a government building. it bothers me that so many of the protesters are saying that this is simply one more way the united states government is trying to destroy religion, when in fact it is their right to practice their religion that is being protected. i wonder what the reaction would be if legal arguments from the Talmud were to be displayed? or something from the koran? i can't help but feel these same protesters would be livid.

and christians seem to have really taken these 10 commandments and made them their own; i was watching CNN and one of the protesters was saying how he wanted "more christians" to come down and protest. i think that shows right there how christians feel like they are the only ones who own the 10 commandments.

[cellio]

I think the founders would be highly offended at the claims some of the protesters make about how we're a "Christian country". This isn't supposed to be a theocracy -- and it doesn't matter who Theo is.

Aside

[magid.livejournal.com]

At Shavuot we read the revelation at Sinai. In some congregations it's customary to stand for the ten commandments. In others, it is custom specifically not to stand for them, because that elevates them above the rest of the Torah.

There's a third approach: some people stand for every Torah reading, 10 commandments, last sentence of each book, and everything in between. Though I admit not having seen this done by a whole congregation.

Re: Aside

[cellio]

Wow, haven't seen that one.

I heard a possibly-apocryphal story once about a congregation that stood for the first two aliyot of the torah reading and then sat down. A visitor asked why and it took a while to dig through the layers of "we've always done it that way" to find the root cause. It turned out that they used to stand for the whole thing, but a well-liked congregant had developed problens standing for long periods, so he started to sit down a couple aliyot in. To avoid embarrassing him, everyone else joined him. The custom survived longer than the congregant. I don't know if I believe it, but it makes a good story.

Tidy Neat Lists

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

I think this is an overwhelming compulsion in the human psyche. The Zodiac is defined as the constellations through which the sun passes. But, there are 13 constellations through which the sun passes, not 12. One got dropped so each month would have it's own sign.

Re: Tidy Neat Lists

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

The thirteenth one, I think, is mostly a product of the modern astronomical division of the entire sky into regions by constellation. It's only a little corner of it that actually crosses the ecliptic and the sun only spends a couple days there, so ancient astronmers would likely have considered it off to the side even without any attraction to the number 12.
On the other hand, the sun being "in" each constellation for exactly one month, despite them being different sizes, probably is a product of the neatness mentality...

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

So do we all just like neat, tidy lists with nice round numbers, or what? Why have these few verses been pulled out of scripture and given elevated importance?

I blame David Letterman, personally...

[cellio]

Gee, he's older than he looks. :-)

[goljerp]

Aside: At Shavuot we read the revelation at Sinai. In some congregations it's customary to stand for the ten commandments. In others, it is custom specifically not to stand for them, because that elevates them above the rest of the Torah.

I seem to recall that at one point the 10 commandments were a regular part of services, but the rabbis took 'em out because people were making too much of a big deal about 'em.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't have a problem with standing for the 10 commandments... after all, I stand for the song at the sea, and the end of each book (hazak hazak).

I agree to being somewhat miffed about all this focus on the so-called 10 commandments (there's no internal evidence that they're supposed to be exactly 10 of 'em). It's too bad that people aren't similarly entranced by, say, today's parsha (Shoftim). Justice, justice shall you pursue!

[cellio]

I seem to recall that at one point the 10 commandments were a regular part of services, but the rabbis took 'em out because people were making too much of a big deal about 'em.

Now that you mention it, I think I've heard them too. I wonder whether they occupied the niche in the service now occupied by "elu devarim".

I don't have a problem with standing for certain parts of the Torah and not others, either. We do read the entire thing, after all, rather than just pulling out the good bits. :-)

And yeah, the text provides no support for the notion that there are specifically ten commandments in the initial revelation. Efforts to find ten there are pretty old (talmudic if not before); I wonder where it started.

It's too bad that people aren't similarly entranced by, say, today's parsha (Shoftim).

Yes! There's a lot of good stuff in Shoftim, and it's just as applicable to judges today as it was to judges then.