The History of the Short Form of the Tenth Commandment

[Stephan Huller]

I also wonder whether the citation of the Torah in 4 Maccabees was a secondary insertion.

[Stephan Huller]

If such monuments existed in central places of worship for Jews only the 'short form' of the commandments would (a) allow for them to fit on two tablets (b) appear large enough to be read by people standing far away and (c) be ascetically pleasing to the eye:

[Stephan Huller]

Curious then that if we envision a monument with two tablets set up in the temple and the large synagogue in Alexandria, the right tablet (our left) would all appear in short form at least according to Philo's citations:

οὐ μοιχεύσεις

οὐ κλέψεις

οὐ φονεύσεις

οὐ ψευδομαρτυρήσεις

οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις

The Hebrew section inverts the order of commandments (murder for adultery) and is reflected in the gospel manuscripts:

לֹא תִרְצָח

לֹא תִנְאָף

לֹא תִגְנֹב

לֹא תַעֲנֶה

לֹא תַחְמֹד

Is that coincidence? That one tablet demonstrates itself to have been preserved in complete 'short form' in our earliest witnesses?

[Stephan Huller]

Heschel on the difference between 'heavenly Torah' (or 'Torah from heaven') and the text of the Law (= Moses' Torah). R. Ishmael is a Sadducee who taught that only the ten commandments were given from heaven, Akiva by contrast says the 613 were given at Sinai:

We will also demonstrate below that the original denotation of the term heavenly Torah was the Ten Utterances heard at Mount Sinai, but . . . Rabbi Akiva expanded the term to include all of the words of the Pentateuch (p. 59)

Note that Rabbi Ishmael deviated from the commonly accepted division of the Ten Commandments. It is generally accepted that the first Commandment is "I am the Lord your God" and "you shall have no other gods" is the second. Rabbi Ishmael, however, combines these two into a single utterance. This division is the one adopted also by Philo and Josephus. (p. 382)

There are places in the Torah in which the words "these are" (eileh) appear, and there are places where the words "and these are" (ve-eileh) appear. It is common for midrashim to interpret as follows: "these are" implies "just these," whereas "and these are" implies "also these." The father of this interpretation is Rabbi Ishmael. '"And these are the rules that you shall set before them' (Exodus 21:1)[441— Rabbi Ishmael says: 'and these are' adds to what came before; just as the former words came from Sinai, so do the latter. But Rabbi Akiva certainly did not expound as Rabbi Ishmael did, for in his view the entire Torah was spoken at Sinai, with its generalities and particulars, and there is no need for any special emphasis to establish its origin at Sinai. (p. 469)

[Stephan Huller]

FWIW the Samaritans unlike Jews or Christians do not count "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" as part of the first commandment:

I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
(Commandment No. 1) You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments
(Commandment No. 2) Save the day of Sabbath to make it holy. You shall labor six days, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates; for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.
(Commandment No. 3) Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which Yahweh your God gives you.
(Commandment No. 4) You shall not murder.
(Commandment No. 5) You shall not commit adultery.
(Commandment No. 6) You shall not steal.
(Commandment No. 7) You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
(Commandment No. 8) You shall not covet your neighbor's house
(Commandment No. 9) You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's."
(Commandment No. 10) It shall be when your god will bring you to the Canaanite land, which you are going to inherit, you shall set yourself up great stones, and plaster them with plaster, and you shall write on them all the words of this law. It shall be, when you are passed over the Jordan, that you shall set up these stones, which I command you this day, in Mount Gerizim. There shall you build an altar to Yahweh your God, an altar of stones: you shall lift up no iron tool on them. You shall build the altar of Yahweh your God of uncut stones; and you shall offer burnt offerings thereon to Yahweh your God: and you shall sacrifice peace-offerings, and shall eat there; and you shall rejoice before Yahweh your God. That mount beyond the Jordan, behind the way of the going down of the sun, in the land of the Canaanites who dwell in the Arabah, over against Gilgal, beside the oaks of Moreh, against Shechem (Nablus).

[Stephan Huller]

on the ancient Israelite practice of putting representations of the decalogue everywhere


http://books.google.com/books?id=_iMnzh ... =html_text

when Pummer writes that Jews gave this practice up he assumes the reader is already familiar with the sources. The reason Jews banned the depiction and recitation of the ten commandments was because early Christians (IMO Marcionites) were pitting differences between the ten commandments from God against the human Torah from Ezra/Moses.

[Stephan Huller]

An example of the Samaritan use of the Decalogue on the door posts outside of their synagogues:



Now the question is:

1. are there archaeological remains of the (proposed) short form of the tenth commandment?
2. are there examples of the (proposed) short form of the tenth commandment in the liturgy of the Samaritans?

[Stephan Huller]

Alright, alright, alright. I found the abbreviated form used among the Karaites and hung on the lintels of doors:



Now the question is are there more? Got to go to a soccer practice ...

[Stephan Huller]

and then it all makes sense why Clement's gospel begins with an allusion to Isa 61:2, why the narrative is called "gospel" (= start of the Jubilee was counted in the month of Sukkot) and why Jesus scandalized the Jews in the synagogue. On the last day of Sukkot was the celebration of the giving at Sinai. But which Torah? We know this was the subject of contention between early Christians and Jews. Now we know the gospel was the source of the tension. There were after all two Torot in Israel. The original gospel had Jesus say not Moses's Torah but the heavenly Torah should be read.

Who better than the god who stood in the fire (with Moses) while the God spoke from heaven to settle the question of which law was given?

[Stephan Huller]