World's Largest Ten Commandments, North Carolina |
This week in
Americans, as a whole, do not understand the Ten Commandments. In 1977, Eric Butterworth wrote a book with the controversial title How to Break the Ten Commandments. The book explores ideas about contemporary living with the commandments as wisdom. But there are actually three, yes three, sets of Ten Commandments in the Hebrew Scriptures and they are DIFFERENT! So which laws are to be followed? What do these different ancient traditional rules mean to us today? What about all 613 Jewish laws? Are we to disregard the commandments from Exodus 34 about the feast of the unleavened bread or outlawing covenants with foreigners? How do we rise above the preventions of Exodus 20, the most popular list in contemporary society, to principles and practices of universal love?
Richard Elliott Friedman, author of Who Wrote the Bible?, describes recent scholarship on biblical texts and authorship. Today many academic scholars subscribe to the view that four authors wrote the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers. The authors are distinguished in the text by their styles and points of view. The J writer (950 BCE) used the word Jahweh or Yahweh for God and lived in the southern
Consider two of the Ten Commandments from Exodus 34: “You shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land. . .” and “You shall not boil a kid (goat) in its mother’s milk.” Both are likely from the J writer (950 BCE). But, the words from seven out of ten laws in Exodus 34 are not found in the now popular version from Exodus 20. Friedman proposes that Exodus 20 was written by the E writer (850 BCE) and edited by the P or Priestly writer (500 BCE). This version appears to be more ethical and written from a different consciousness. The priests further elaborated on these laws in the book of Leviticus. The Ten Commandments of Exodus 20 are echoed in Deuteronomy 4, with minor differences (600 BCE).
It is said of Jesus that he encouraged people to follow the law as good Jews. Butterworth suggests that Jesus also encouraged the “dissolving the crystallized form” of the law and moving to spiritual principles. When challenged by critics to name the most important commandment, Jesus answered: "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandments. On these two commandment hang all the law and the prophets (Matthew 22:38-40).'" Next, I will write about Butterworth's exploration of the Ten Commandments and their role as solutions for contemporary life.
[1]
http://www.news-press.com/article/20101116/NEWS0101/11160359/1003/ACC/Cape-Coral-council-wary-of-Ten-Commandments-proposal
No comments:
Post a Comment