The Ten Commandments fall into two basic types: technical and general. The former, which also appear first, concern the nature of worship. None of that fiddly business to do with transubstantiation and rosaries, which caused so many people to kill one another later. Just a few basic ground rules. The second sort deal with how we should relate to one another rather than directly to our God.
The first commandment is, I confess, one that gives me some problem. Worship no other gods but me, said the Lord. I don't find it troubling directly. I've never felt any great urge to bow down to Buddha or Vishnu or the rest of the gang. And it's an understandable law, of course. God was speaking to what was basically a group of ragged asylum seekers lost in the middle of a desert. He would have wanted to remind then of the point of their exodus, why they had left their relatively comfortable old lives. From this perspective, it is essentially no different from a manager telling his players to be loyal to their team.
It is still rather draconian, however. And it's a commandment which has been used to justify crusades, holy wars, forced conversions; basically, a great deal of evil committed in the name of the Lord. It set Judaism and Christianity apart from other religions of the ancient world right from the start. Worshippers of Vesta, say, wouldn't deny the existence of Jupiter or Dionysus or deny the rights of others to worship them. But for the Jews and later the Christians, there was only one God and this commandment backed up the claim. Or they may have done, after it had been tweaked a little. I've got two Bibles; the King James version first produced in 1611 and the more modern Good News. The latter goes with a simple 'worship no god but me.' King James, though, has 'no god before me.' This seems a slight softening of the instruction; interestingly, done at a time when softening of anything wasn't exactly common. It hints at the practice more common in ancient times, when a certain god was given pre-eminence by particular groups but many others were also acknowledged. And that lets in the potential for ecumenicalism and tolerance in our times. I don't know precisely how the original Hebrew should be translated. But it seems likely that even a God emphatically laying down the law wouldn't expect His followers to cast out all their practices. Even if that meant allowing them to at least acknowledge other deities.
The second commandment, about not bowing down to graven images, seems a simple reinforcement of the first and so logical enough. In fact, though, the commandment doesn't simply prohibit bowing down. It also bans making 'any likeness of anything that is in heaven, or anything that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.' What we have here is basically a universal condemnation of all representative art.
The one always used to puzzle me. Mainly because the very places which told us to obey all God's rules are themselves defying one. The churches with their stained glass likenesses of things in heaven (the angels, for example), on earth (Adam and Eve, the creatures on Noah's ark) and even in the sea (the whale which gulped down Noah). You could say that the abstract paintings of Jackson Pollock and his like are actually less blasphemous than all so-called 'religious art.' And I still can't find a solution to the paradox except for this one. The commandment is just ignored. It may have had a little influence, I suppose. Perhaps it is the reason why the God of the Bible, almost uniquely of all deities worshipped, is almost never pictured directly. It has become to describe Him mockingly as being a white-bearded man sat on the cloud. But this is the product of a very limited number of images; most famously Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco. Far more common is for God to be depicted through the proxy of his son. But Jesus, of course, is someone 'that is in heaven' himself, except for the short period when he was 'in the earth'. Judea-Christianity has simply bypassed half of the second commandment. In terms of both the success of the religion (for no faith can spread without strong images) and the enrichment of society in general, this was a very wise decision.
The commandment ends with a familiar carrot-and-stick message. Defiance will bring punishment upon you, your sons, your sons' sons and so on. Obedience will lead to great rewards. It's a little strange that God puts this here, rather than at the start or end of the whole list. Perhaps He anticipated that this instruction would be an especially tricky one to enforce, given humanity's perennial love of pictures. The wording, in one translation at least, is also interesting. Good News has Him simply calling Himself 'the Lord your God.' According to King James, though, He claims to be 'a jealous God.' If the latter is correct, it's rather a strange thing to confess to. Jealousy is a weakness. It is one of the deadly sins and actually condemned in the last commandment. Perhaps nothing more was intended than to reinforce the heinousness of bowing down to another deity. But I like to think that God could be admitting to a very human foible in the midst of one of the greatest moments of His power.
Of all the commandments actually acknowledged, the third which prohibits taking the Lord's name in vain has to be the most regularly violated. Nearly everyone does it, and does it at least once a day. And in an amazing variety of ways. The English language alone has been considerably expanded by blasphemies, from classics like 'zounds' (i.e. 'God's wounds') and 'bejesus' to modern favourites such as 'Jesus H Christ.' (Incidentally, what does the 'H' stand for? Holy? Hallowed? Henry? I think we need to know this.) Occasionally I try to prise out the exclamations which form such a regular part of my speech. I find, though, that this makes me swear rather more – "For Christ's sake" becomes "For fuck's sake," for example. And in one more indication of the inherent secularism of our society, this brings me rather more criticism than actual blasphemies. I suppose the solution is to stop cursing entirely. On the other hand, I'm only human. For fuck's sake.
The fourth commandment requires us to labour for six days and rest on the seventh, to mimic God's rapid creation of the world. This is really a combination of the 'technical' commandments and the more general ones. It's an excellent idea for many physical, mental and social ones. It has also fundamentally affected the structure of western societies From here came the concept of the weekend, the moral approval placed on (limited and carefully controlled) idleness and, ultimately, the modern leisure industry. And the instruction continues to have an influence, even on atheists. Sunday trading laws have been gradually chipped away by the greed of retailers and the timidity of governments. Saturday has joined Sunday as a day of rest for most of us. But Saturdays still tend to be when we do most of our household tasks; leaving Sunday devoted to pleasure. Unfortunately, our definition of enjoyment nowadays often requires others to work. Somebody has to play the football games, run the rollercoaster rides or staff the DIY stores. Our rest often isn't especially restful any more and can rarely be carried out alone.
We generally get told that we should spend our Sundays at church. However, this is simply a convention first created by expediency. Sundays used to be the only time people were released from their labour long enough to worship. Nothing in the actual commandment requires it, beyond the rather vague notion about keeping the day 'holy'. It could be argued that Sunday should be the one time people avoid church. Because their attendance requires the clergy to work, thus disobeying one of the commandments they are advocating.
Now we get on to the commandments dealing more with how people treat one another; as essential to a proper religion as the mechanics of worship. Honouring your father and mother used to be emphasised especially, and no wonder. It was always a handy reinforcement of traditional patriarchal authority. However, to honour (or even, to use Good News' interpretation, 'respect') doesn't necessarily mean 'automatically obey.' I've always seen it as saying we should try to both love and like our parents. So we should, even in this era of looser familial relations. Except, possibly, for those unlucky enough to have been mistreated by theirs. The end of the commandment hints at one reason why. There is a promise that if you obey you will long enjoy 'the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.' I don't think this is just God using the carrot again. He is reminding us exactly what our parent gave us. Life, and so, at the start, everything. So respect, as DJ's used to say, is due.
'Thou shalt not kill,' according to King James, comes next. Anti-abortionists are very fond of this one. It is the only piece of text in the whole of the Bible which justifies their creed. I think, however, that we need to be careful how freely we define it. Push it in other directions and it becomes a commandment supporting pacifism or vegetarianism. And neither of these are supported elsewhere. Some of the disciples, for example, were fishermen, which requires killing on a rather regular basis. And the God of the Old Testament was always telling his followers to smite their enemies, even when He wasn't doing the smiting Himself. The narrower translation in Good News, 'Do not commit murder,' seems truer in this instance. Which doesn’t seem enough for many people, including me, but there you are.
The next two commandments instruct us not to steal or commit adultery. God hasn't supplied footnotes in either instance. Frankly, they don't need any. Just say no, kids.
The final pair are perhaps the subtlest ones. Both recognise that harm can be done to others not simply through the direct means of assault or theft but through simple speech as well. Particularly number nine: 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.' The precise wording makes it seems a very limited instruction, simply prohibiting committing perjury in a court. I think, though, that this can be legitimately extended further. Do not slander somebody, or libel them, or spread rumours or lies about them. Don't say a word about them, basically, which you don't believe to be true. And this could include false compliments and flattery, which themselves can be damaging. If you stick to this notion of falseness, however, not all methods of harm are excluded. You can probably insult somebody, providing you genuinely believe in the insult. This is a commandment against gossip rather than bad manners, one which exhorts honesty. Which makes it an excellent rule to follow.
At school, we were told that the final commandment was said to be against coverting thy neighbour's ass. I suspect this was done to give bored children a cheap laugh. (And how it worked.) In fact, the list of things not to desire is rather longer: 'thy neighbour's house… thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's.' It's against envy, basically, chiefly though not specifically relating to possessions. I don't think that this instruction was put last because it was seen as the least important. Rather, it underlines the whole list. Jealousy can cause us to break all the other commandments. It can lead us to theft and (when one starts coverting wives) adultery most obviously, but also to slander, dishonouring parents, even murder. Greed can make us work on the Sabbath. Ultimately it can create a god other than the one who speaks in the Bible.
Which it has done, of course. Perhaps we covert even more regularly than we blaspheme or represent the things of the earth. We covert every day and we are told it is right to do so. The whole of modern consumerist society is based on coverting. We're told to buy one thing after another not because of their worth because somebody else already has them. Even if the 'neighbour' in question is just a person in an advert with a pleasing smile, the principle is the same. I don't think that it's just uneasiness about the word 'ass' which makes the religious right gloss over this final commandment.
Finally, what isn't in the Ten Commandments? A ban on abortion for one, unless you add some words which aren't actually there. Nothing about homosexuality, sex outside marriage or single mothers; those who take up religion as an excuse to hate other people have had to root through St Paul's letter tray to excuse them here. There's no mention of drugs or cigarettes, which is understandable as neither to the people in the desert at the time. Nor of alcohol, less so because it emphatically was.Less encouraging are other omissions. Assault which isn't intended to cause death. Rape. Kidnap. Prostitution, pimping, usury, arson, blackmail, bullying… and those are just off the top of my head. A man could live a life which is evil by every definable standard and still claim not to be breaking any of the Ten Commandments. Which leads to the thought that the list can't be used alone to form a set of laws, either religious or civil. It can't even be the keystone, as the Constitution is in America. Too much is vague where it should have been precise, too much is specified when it should have been left open. God's instructions to Moses were a starting point and nothing else. Little wonder that His son later felt the need to come down and sort a few things out.
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