The Exodus by Richard Elliott Friedman

Author:Richard Elliott Friedman [Friedman, Richard Elliott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Judaism, History, Biblical Studies, Old Testament, Biblical Criticism & Interpretation
ISBN: 9780062565266
Google: _sbADQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01N9J8BY2
Publisher: HarperOne
Published: 2017-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

The Ten Commandments

One more item to clear up: at the beginning of this chapter, we acknowledged that even the Ten Commandments say: “You shall have no other gods before me,”20 and that some say that this commandment is not monotheistic. They say that its words in fact prove the opposite: it recognizes that other gods exist, but it just forbids Israel from worshipping them. That is called henotheism or monolatry, not monotheism. We must admit it: the commandment does indeed say “other gods.” But we must also be cautious of what we derive from that. For years I have been telling my students, as an exercise, to think of five ways to command people to be monotheistic without mentioning those gods in whom they are not supposed to believe. Try it. It is possible but really hard. We should simply recognize a fact of linguistics that it is difficult to formulate a command against doing something without mentioning the something that is not supposed to be done. The issue is more likely to be linguistic than theological. The command against having “other gods” is just an example of this linguistic phenomenon, probably the most famous example of it in all literature.

Another point: the text says “before me.” The Hebrew is ‘al pānāy, which, more carefully, means “in my presence.” Literally, it translates as “in my face.” The old, usual English translation “before me” in fact originally meant just this: “in my presence.” It became misunderstood when the phrase “before me” came to be taken also as meaning “ahead of me.” That meaning is not present in the original Hebrew for this word. So, since it means “in my presence,” then the question is: where exactly is not in God’s presence? The implied answer is: nowhere.

Now if an early text like the Ten Commandments did in fact imply henotheism, that would not be a crisis. The original meaning of “Who is like you among the gods” in the Song of the Sea might be the same. This would just reflect the stages that we have been tracing on the stairway to monotheism. It need not ruin anyone’s day. But still, we should recognize that the words of the Commandment may very well be genuinely monotheistic in the light of these linguistic considerations.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.