Moses: a man of the people?
They’ve been used by religious zealots to justify all sorts of bigotry and intolerance, and modern atheists roundly dismiss them as the rantings of a vain and vengeful god. As Christopher Hitchens put it, who would possibly want to follow the “vague pre-Christian desert morality” of the ten commandments, which show every sign of being invented by a petulant “Bronze Age demagogue”?
Lots of people, argues David Bodanis, if the commandments were properly understood. Far from being harsh dictums forged in fire and brimstone, they are a radical early blueprint for inclusive—even democratic—self-government, created by refugees fleeing tyranny. Their core message is not: “Thou shalt not swear when a hammer has whacked thy thumb,” but instead, one might argue, a form of left-wing communitarianism. And we still owe an astonishing amount to them—including the weekend, the concept of innocent until proven guilty, and the philosophy of Martin Luther King.
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Religion is a way of guiding and controlling the behaviour of groups of people, large and small, that has been discovered, adopted and evolved by human leaders over many centuries. It is not the only method of social control, but it is an effective one, providing that its rationale is not questioned. The insistence by its leaders on adherence by their followers to the ideas and rules of a religion is almost a defining characteristic of a religious organisation. In building the structure of a religion, a key part is to ensure that its followers toe the line. This is done in two ways; firstly with the idea of a power greater than that of the human leader or priest who wants to be in charge. This idea can be of a God or Gods, the Sun, Mother Nature or it can be a race of extraterrestrial beings, but it will almost always be there. The second is the rules will include penalties for being out of line. It is simple to demonstrate both this fact and the purpose of Religion as a means of social control. Let’s look at the Ten Commandments.
1. You shall have no other Gods before me.
2. You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
These first four are designed to establish the rules of the religion. First is the idea of the God who has more power than the man carrying the message (in this case Moses), along with the prohibition on having any other ideas like this, itself hung around with non-specific threats of punishment for disobedience. The fourth establishes the key ritual of the 7th day of a social cycle devoted to religion. Note that this is neatly one fourth of the usual lunar cycle of 28 days and therefore has some structural sense.
5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
The next six, which are less important than establishing the rules of the religion, are rules that govern a social group. Number 5 is obvious, since parents pass on knowledge and genes, as is number 6, which seeks to inhibit competition between people through extreme violence. The rest are a set of rules that control a social organisation based on property being owned by individuals rather than the group, long-lived partnerships between mates and a concept of evidential truth.
This is, of course, only one possible social organisation for humans. We are used to it – as those who wrote down Moses’ list were – but there are, conceptually and practically, alternative sets of rules in which property is held in common, and/or people have multiple sexual partners. The requirement for evidential truth is a very powerful one, since it forms a key part of the social control system in virtually every society where there is Law and means (typically Courts) of enforcement of them.
The religion-establishing set is the source of the power of priests and churches and is unnecessary. We readily dispense with the first 4 and have a basic starter set of rules of society – apart from the need for a day off once a week.
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Very refreshing to find such a good article as Mary Fitzgerald’s in the secular press! But why look for a ‘reply’ rather than a comment, thus inviting the trite kind of stuff posted by Clerkenwellman? I fancy his legacy is likely to be somewhat short-lived compared to that of Moses!
Unlike David Bodanis, I am no fan of Christopher Hitchens but on the matter of the ten commandments he is, of course, quite right. By contrast, Bodanis’ apologia is the usual bundle of fudge and non sequitur in an attempt to make the Decalogue appear to be relevant today.
1 to 3 are of interest only to those who subscribe to the God delusion and can reasonably only be retailed to the rest of us together with some scrap of evidence that Jehovah exists.
4 is thanked for giving us the weekend. This must be a joke. It has been only in my lifetime that Sunday was wrenched from the clutches of priests and bigots who (following this commandment) wanted to make it holy, whatever that might mean. It is still today insufficiently unholy.
5 In a time when “honour†is generally regarded as something that should be earned, not commanded from above, this rule is wicked.
6 Anyone who needs a commandment not to kill (people) must be a cretin. Of course, Moses meant only that you should not kill others among the faithful; smiting the luckless indigenous peoples was positively recommended. Zionists are still doing so today (against fellow Semites) and quoting the same authority for their misdeeds.
7 The whole idea of adultery is irrelevant to modern lifestyles with marriage everywhere in decline. This rule is rightly neglected by a majority of Christians along with everyone else.
8 The idea of theft is transformed since the Bronze Age. What of the colossal misappropriations by bankers and the moguls of commerce that is claimed (by them) to be strictly within the law? This rule needs radical revision for our time.
9 Bodanis sees the forbidding of false witness as the origin of the legal principle of innocent till proved guilty. The history of the law tells a different story: the principle resulted from earlier miscarriages of justice (a process that continues today). The rule can also be seen as forbidding hypocrisy but all religions teach hypocrisy, not by precept but by example. It is one of the three great evils bestowed by the history of religion.
10 Thou shalt not covet ill suits a generation devoted to coveting. The sin is not to covet but to do something illegal or immoral to fulfil the desire.
All this may appear to have been a “progressive creed†in a context of lawless bandits and warlords who had not the access to a long history of ideas and knowledge available to us. It has no virtue for us. To make a case for “an early blueprint for self-government†Bodanis relies on “some suggestive evidence and the Bible†and a ramble of speculation that he supposes makes “intuitive senseâ€. This is crass.
The resonant name of Martin Luther King is invoked to imply a value for the Decalogue in our time. This is the most transparent non sequitur. MLK was a good leader and a wonderful orator. He also subscribed to the God delusion as many do, doubtless as a result of brainwashing in early childhood. His admiration for the ten commandments and for the tale of Exodus was almost entirely irrelevant to his achievement. Many atheists fought and some died in the struggle for civil rights guided only by the Golden Rule. Now there is a truly democratic principle.
The second great evil of all religion is to teach that the source of morality is outside of ourselves; the commandments are the great symbol of this. Among the consequences of the alienation of public actions from private morality is the third great evil: the epic quantities of killing, oppression, displacement of populations, genital mutilation, oppression of women and of homosexuals, suppression of knowledge and general unhappiness, all in the name of religion, that have disfigured our history despite the ten commandments.
It is to be regretted that the Mosaic Decalogue is not consigned to its proper place as a curiosity of archaeology along with “My name is Qzymandias, king of kings; Look on my works ye Mighty and despairâ€.
It was fascinating to read the emotionally loaded responses from clerkenwell and Jim Grove. I thoroughly enjoyed the sober, measured
and well-informed approach of David Bodanis and thought of the many, many displaced tribes of Africa. Will they eventually develop their own decalogue?
Spot the Muslim
For those of you un-acquainted with the technique – Islam has been playing a tiresome game of historical name dropping since the time of Muhammad.
Bodanis’ essay claims to be about the 10 commandments and to the unsuspecting it is. But wait we are not a few lines into the article when bam ! the line “…found in the
standard religious accounts: the Koran and the old testament” turns up – note the koran is first and capitalised ! – You can see this technique every Saturday with the street
preaching Muslims in East London, Bradford… “David, Solomon, Jesus and Muhammad” say the posters in front of a table full of Islamic literature along with a copy of the
bible (for reference) turned upside down. What do they catechistically say, stall to stall, high street to high street ? “The old testaments is OK – but has been changed too
much by bad translations over the centuries so the Torah in it’s true firm no longer exists – The Koran however contains what was in the original Torah so if you really want to
believe in the OT you need to believe in the Koran – What does David Bodanis say – the same thing ! How did this rubbish get past Prospects Editors ?
Ok let’s look at the technique in a little more detail : the first name drop is Martin Luther King – now despite him having been a Baptist this is not un-Islamic at all. The Koran
name drops Dhul-Qarnain – Who ? Well I don’t know and nobody in history has ever heard of him either but he is foot-noted in old versions of the Koran as being Alexander the Great – an ancient Muslim (!) who travelled to the place where the sun sets in a muddy lake and genocided the natives for not being Muslims then went to the place off to where the Sun rose from another hole in the ground – Surah 18 vs 33+. Now that it’s better known that Alexander’s Islamic credentials were a little thin, this foot note has been dropped. The main other name dropping is : The Hadith has it that Muhammad went to heaven and saw an argument between Abraham and Moses as to who was the greatest prophet – the answer to this debate turned out to be Muhammad – fancy that. One chapter in the Koran is called Mary, another is called Abraham, and it’s got chapters called Noah, Joseph and Jonah of course such a list would not be complete without a chapter called Muhammad.
So if Muhammad were alive to day writing the Koran he’d have name dropped a bunch of famous dead people : Elvis would have been a Muslim, Martin Luther King for sure, Princess Di, Kennedy… – “am I exaggerating ? – The Koran has it that the dying words, un-heard by any witness, of Pharaoh as he chased Moses across the Red Sea was “I convert to be a Muslim”- you get the pattern : He’s dead, He’s famous… so he was a secret Muslim” Having name dropped Martin Luther King let’s see the legitimacy of the point he was making – what of the claim that “he found great power in the commandments and the entire Exodus story” – Well with the Torah is full of
Slavery: “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves” – Leviticus 25:44
Murder of handicapped people “Whosoever smiteth the lame and blind that are hated of David’s soul he shall be chief and captain”- II Samuel 5.8,
Gencoide : – Well stick a pin in it and get your own quote but I Samuel 15 will do for now “go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy, and spare non, Slay both man and
woman, infant and suckling” and Psalm 137 “Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the rocks”.
If you want an historical figure you could claim to have been inspired by this vicious creed you’re better off picking Adolph Hitler.
- David Bodanis can’t and doesn’t complain about the Evils of Exodus much because his lovely Muhammad was a slaver himself and the Koran sanctions it Surah 4.91 “he who hath killed a Muslim by mistake shall set one of his Muslim slaves free”. Muhammad wallowed in Exodus style evils with his harem of captured slave girls. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill all the women that are not Virgins but all the girls that are still virgins, keep them alive for yourselves”- Numbers 31:15 – the Old Testament – it’s not far off the Koran in Surah 33:50 – “Prophet, We have made lawful to you the slave girls whom God has given you as booty.”
Next line, more problems : Bodanis writes : the 10 commandments “… has bequeathed to us the weekend, the principle of innocent until proved guilty, the Sunni/Shia split and much else besides. – Whoops ! Look there ! – the Muslims for no reason whatsoever, other than a crass NLP style right brain association attempt, have turned up again ! The Sunni/Shia split has nothing to do with the 10 commandments ! The Sunni’s, after Muhammad died followed his General, the Shias followed his nephew. These people – “the holiest people the world has ever seen”- the “righteously guided” then started hacking each other to death.
The claim that the 10 commandments has bequeathed to us the principle of “innocent until proved guilty” is utterly ridiculous – read it ! it says “thou shalt not bear false witness to thy neighbour” – a ‘neighbour’ is ‘another Hebrew’. Bearing false witness, along with wife coveting is not forbidden when a ’stranger’ – a non Hebrew is the victim. Is Bodanis trying to tell us that the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians… civilisations pre-dating Moses by hundreds and maybe thousands of years of the Middle East didn’t have a bunch basic laws that said don’t kill and don’t steal…, don’t lie in court ?
Here he goes again : “Further west, in the great kingdom of Egypt, serfdom was also widespread—and slavery was as harsh as described in the book of Exodus.” – like he’d prefer to be a slave of a Hebrew … ” Hebrew slavery was at least the same as Egyptian and given the Egyptian slavery was ‘economic’ whereas the Hebrew slavery had the additional component of a vicious racial superiority shoulder chip, it was arguably likely to have been worse – but for David the Hebrews were really Muslims “believers” and Muslims owning slaves is OK”
I just think this next bit is staggering : the “Commandments” are something imposed. But this list is more like a set of guiding principles…” – has he even read the Old Testament ! ” Numbers 15:32 “…they found a man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath day and they brought him unto Moses… and they stoned him to death” … guiding principles ! In the New Testament St John does a Monty Python style routine on this Talabanesque Judaism that was still then live and kicking at the time of Christ : St John 5 – a cripple lay by a pool for year after year – waiting for an angel to stir the waters – the first person to go into the water after that was healed. As he was a cripple he could not move and no-one helped him. People used the healing for their minor injuries and left him. One day Jesus came by and healed him. The healed cripple picked up his bed and went home – but as it was the Sabbath the Jews wanted to kill him – as in numbers 15:32… “guiding principles !”.
What’s this : “The commandments also ignore political subservience. There is nothing about grain to deliver… Rather, at their heart is a series of guidelines for producing a co-operative life” “Em… and he shall bring a lamb without blemish… and the priest shall make a burnt offering and the priests shall eat the meat…” Leviticus 6
Look Dave – before you finish this book you’re writing, can I suggest that you change your research technique – the one you revealed in your Einstein quote “a glimpse of what was written on just a single page†– don’t do this – read the whole bleepin’ page properly… and at least a couple of pages either side as well !
Oh no ! Einstein – he’s famous, he’s dead… don’t tell me you are going to adopt him as secret Muslim !
You are aware that the ‘tale of Exodus’ is just that: a tale, as in, it didn’t ever really happen. It’s just a story. See,this is the kind of error you get when you uncritically believe what you are told…
uh, Glenis, you are aware, aren’t you, that the decalouge predates the old testament by several centuries? Your citations from scripture (old & new testaments) are irrelvant in a discussion about the original intent and meaning of the ten commandments – but you knew that.
Bodanis may have done a bit of an injustice in his piece by not going far enough in explaining the political realities of the time, but he is otherwise very close to the mark. What occured historicaly after-the-fact has nothing to do with Bodanis mostly insightful commentary.
uh, Michael My citations from scripture (old & new testaments) are relevant in a discussion about the original intent and meaning of the ten commandments as they explain the political realities of the time and that gives us a better understanding of what they really meant to the people who had them. In a world that sees every human equal before God “Love thy Neighbour” means something very different from “Love thy Neighbour” in a world that is split between Neighbours(Hebrews) and unclean, shortly to be genocided in the next chapter, strangers/goy. I am aware that decalogues existed well before the Hebrews – basic don’t kill, don’t steal stuff – but ‘the Decalogue’ – the 10 commandments – the Hebrew version – is very much part of the Old Testament so quoting from the OT to set it in it’s real, and rather nasty context, is perfectly valid. It’s more valid than Bodanis who sets it in an rose-tinted Islamic context – Bodanis starts off with the Koran as the right answer, then takes the ruins of a village with no fortifications in a world where no Egyptian ruler would tolerate such fortifications, as evidence that is was the 10 commandments (…and ‘wink wink’ the True Torah which can only now be found in the Koran) that produced peace on Earth. If you found his essay ‘insightful’ then you might enjoy listening to more of the same at your local mosque on Fridays – It’s not just Moses, they have the Islamic version of Solomon, the Islamic version of Noah… his essay was nothing more than a fairly standard Islamic sermon.
Hitchens and others must believe that Western society could have existed in something like its present form without Christianity. Which is absurd: what we know of European paganism suggests a something much more brutal, less sympathetic and less rational.
Both Judaism and Christianity gave some status and dignity to ordinary people, some rights against the rulers and warriors. That’s what paganism lacked.
It is amazing to me that we go to such lengths to understand and explain something that already has a plausible explanation. Was it really the ten commandments that held the Israelites together, or an almighty God who heralded them through history that from one man Abram there might be a great nation and a blessing to man? Can we really divorce the actions of a person from their beliefs (specifically referring to the faith and deeds of MLK Jr.)? I understand many Americans have been burned by religion, and further a desire to seek the important things (ten commandments, golden rule, etc.). But what if Jesus is the most important thing? If you are not truly willing to consider it, perhaps because it is too naive for you, then have you really given all the perspectives a chance?
I speak as a former searcher for truth/God/enlightenment, and now I have an immense love for all of you in your dialogues. I read all sorts of Buddhism and Islam; I grew up Catholic and Jewish. I tried seeking after so many things in this life. And then one day Jesus came to me and met me; my life has been changed ever since. Are you giving God a chance to speak to you?
HAAHAHAAHAAA!!!
Your attempt to disagree with Hitchens fails epically.
By removing all religious meaning from the commandments, you have, well, removed all religious meaning from the commandments.
“The archaic version says nothing about walls of water. Indeed, it says nothing about crossing a body of water at all.”
What does this mean? the same section, in poetic hebrew that differs from the rest of the bible, says u’veruach apecha ne’ermu mayim nitzvu kemo neyd nozlim etc ad ya’avor amcha hashem. That’s about the walls of water and in context, the people passing through the water.
“Indeed, it’s quite likely that the ten commandments were drafted before the foundation of Judaism, to cover this much broader community, of whom the soon-to-be-Jews were just one component. This makes intuitive sense, given that many of the Old Testament’s ethical attitudes apply universally, rather than simply to the Jews themselves—a legacy of the commandments’ original function of helping a diverse community treat its members fairly.”
Yet the sabbath is not described in universal terms – vegercha asher beshaaracha, there is a jewish people already – and other commandments are just as universal.
I’d say there still is controversy over the dating of the exile and that that is not critical to the point being made. If you read the accounts of Joshua and Judges carefully, you’ll find that they do not claim that the tribes got their sh** together by any means, and that early on, they fell short of their purported intent, and then things got steadily worse until they were nearly wholly acculturated to the other groups of the area. Or to be brief, the narrative of the Deuteronomical history indicates that we have no good reason to expect the emergence of distinct communities from the 1500s bce on…, it would have to have been delayed and then further stymied by the difficulties of going against the flow (I mean look at how successful Plato and Aristotle were in their own time?
Alexander the Great’s imperialism doesn’t exactly count…. It wasn’t until the age of Plotinus that Neo-Platonism blossomed. )
I also don’t believe that it is implied that the Hebrews of Exodus where necessarily an ethnically exclusive group. The concept of friendship we find emerging in the Pentateuch is all about relativizing the importance of kinship ties in what basically constitutes an adoption of others or excommunication of our kin.
And what of Aminotep?
Perhaps it’s best to posit large confidence intervals or brackets around any attempts to infer at a history behind the text and focus on the text and its context and cotext, which no doubt involves the comparisons you made very well.
dlw
Numbers 15:32-36 While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.
we should all give thinks to the ten commandments for the ‘guideline’ of enjoying our weekend. of course, if you don’t, god will FUCKING KILL YOU!
David Bodanis’s take on the Ten Commandments is, to say the least somewhat imaginative! He ends his treatise with the opinion that few things have lasted thirty centuries but he has just spent several thousand words telling us that these law have been consistently misinterpreted and misunderstood through incorrect translation, lack or cultural understanding or insufficient academic rigour over the intervening centuries. Strange how the alleged words of a creative deity are open to so many interpretations! Communication breakdown on the part of God! (not for the first time!)
As for the medium and format of these words and they manner in which we are told they came to be given to humans, even this is not unique nor original. There are numerous “law codes” inscribed in stone that pre-date the Hebrew version and they even have the accompanying story of being received on a mountain top! The story as depicted in the Bible is neither first-hand nor contemporary with the events they purport to portray. Far from being a cornerstone of civilisation or the foundation of moral behaviour the commandments, instructions, laws, etc., etc., (call them what you will, even a word in some other language that doesn’t actually have a translation and even if it did it still doesn’t convey the meaning!) demonstrate the belief system of an illiterate, nomadic, desert dwelling, live-stock owning, tribal people struggling to come to terms with the settled agricultural, and considerably more advanced, societies all around them.
Most of the Old Testament, written many centuries after the events, comprises this type of revisionist history. (the old argument that oral history conveys a high degree of accuracy therefore this “accuracy’ was evident when the Hebrew scribes came to write down these ancient tales is patently false; As with the story of Abraham the scribes, presumably with their pens guided by God, didn’t even know that camels had only recently been domesticated!)
Of course, almost all historians and theologians conveniently forget one very important fact about the incident on Mt. Sinai (or somewhere else depending upon your point of view!); The “words in stone” were intelligible to their recipients!
The stories in the Old Testament may be the word of God, but he was one hell of a plagiarist!