MetaCatholic

I am often surprised by the way in which moral positions are asserted on the basis of either individual verses of scripture, or indeed individual passages. I am also surprised by the ways in which people present biblical morality as a straightforward matter. Any detailed acquaintance with the complexity of the canonical collection of diverse texts shows how much interpretation plays a role. The mix of largely mono-cultural living, sufficiently comprehensive communal scripts for behaviour, and a plausible and persuasive tradition of interpretation once appeared to present a reasonable clarity. In the past the way of knowing and the way of living were largely unified.

One feature of the Reformation was its beginning to unpick the tradition by which Scripture had ben read. At the same time the path of knowledge and the path of behaviour were beginning to divide. The world was expanding its experience of other cultures. The foundations of individual choices over communal scripts were beginning to be laid down.

One feature of the nascent Protestant ethical tradition was a new focus on the Decalogue. That is not to deny the Ten Commandments played a role in Catholic or Jewish tradition, but to note that they now assumed a priority over all other biblical sources for ethics. They also typify the sense that morality is taught by proof-texting, and a direct voice of God in “God’s Word written”. In a wide variety of churches over several centuries, tables of the commandments took pride of place on the east wall, a new iconography of word and commandment to replace the art and symbols of sacraments and saints. The tables themselves represented those tablets brought down from Sinai by Moses with the laws divinely inscribed.

But, like many other texts the Decalogue does not speak for itself. It sits within an edited book among other edited books in a collection. This canonical inter-texuality puts subversive questions, not least by providing two versions of the same “ten” words – Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5: 5-22 . In what follows I want to note some of the main subversions of the text.

First, within the Exodus narrative on its own, the first reference to the ten commandments comes sometime later (Ex 34: 28-9), well after the first two stone tablets have been broken as a sign of Moses anger (Ex 32:19). Of these tablets the text says:

Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, carrying the two tablets of the covenant in his hands, tablets that were written on both sides, written on the front and on the back.The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets. (Exodus 32:15-16).

But there is little to hint at exactly what the writing is. Between the giving of what we identify as the ten commandments, and this moment, there are many chapters of laws, of which the most recent have been concerned primarily with worship and ritual. There is no mention of the tablets in direct proximity to the Decalogue. That identification is made in Deuteronomy 5:22 but without a specified number – and that number is not entirely obvious. The texts are needed together to identify these commandments as those inscribed on the stone tablets, and to count them as being ten.

Yet if the texts need to be read together to get a list of ten commandments spoken by God and written by God’s own finger, this act of yoking them together highlights differences. The most obvious is a completely different rationale for the sabbath commandment: Exodus roots it in the priestly creation narrative, Deuteronomy in the liberation from Egypt. The ordering of the various provisions against coveting are slightly different, with Deuteronomy adding fields to the list as well. The tradents and scribes of this text seem able to differently retell words written by God himself.

In both cases, even a superficial reading of the text makes clear that it is addressed internally to married male property owners, the leaders and people of substance within the community, and, within the external narrative, to those on a journey towards freedom, where ownership of anything is some way off. The text demands interpretation, even as it stands: it is not “straightforward”.

But it stands also within a larger collection. And even within the collection of the Hebrew Bible it is subverted. The commandment against idolatry in both versions reminds us that:

I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:5-6 cf Deut 5: 9-10)

This is not strict enough for another part of the Deuteronomistic editing team, who wants to be clear that the sinner is punished - God is not going to wait for the next generation

Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and who repays in their own person those who reject him. He does not delay but repays in their own person those who reject him. (Deuteronomy 7:9-10)

Equally it is not fair or just enough for Ezekiel:

The person who sins shall die. A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be his own. (Ezekiel 18:20)

The earlier divine declaration associated with the revelation of God’s presence to Moses, is particularly criticised by the prophet most focussed on the presence of God with his people. Even within the First Testament, the words portrayed as belonging to God both in speech and writing seem to be up for conversation, criticism and dialogue. God in Ezekiel disagrees with God in Exodus, and even though the final redaction of Exodus most likely post-dates these prophecies the tensions and discordances are preserved in the text on its long journey towards canonicity.

When we move on to the New Testament, the subversion becomes even more noticeable. First, there is the implication of their inadequacy: more needs saying than they say: “You have heard that it was said” says Matthew’s Jesus (5: 21, 27, (31), 33, 38, 43) followed by “But I say to you …”. Included in this intensified recasting of the Law are two of the commandments, against murder and adultery. Despite various attempts to wriggle out of this implication, the most logical explanation of “You have heard” is that this was the way the crowds, the masses, received scripture: by hearing it read. And the most logical interpretation of “it was said” is as a periphrasis for “God said.” Just as in the First Testament subversions, a direct attribution of the commandment to God no more prevents Jesus from adapting it (and raising questions about his authority) than it did the earlier editors of Torah.

Then there are those subversions that either vacate or come close to vacating the law. The stories of Jesus prioritising the eschatological family over his natural family, or the demand to leave mother and father (illustrated most poignantly in the story of Zebedee being left alone in the boat with the day labourers), or the shocking demand to abandon even one’s father’s corpse and let the dead bury their dead: all these, at the very least, put a substantial question mark over a straightforward obedience of the commandment to honour father and mother.

Jesus’ own disputes about sabbath may legitimately be seen as about interpretation, but Paul goes further: “do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths.” (Colossians 2:16). The observance of sabbath was to become a thorny issue in the relationship between Jews and Christians over the next few centuries. But it is a good illustration of how the divide made in later Christian interpretation between moral and ceremonial law fails to be worked out when it comes to the Decalogue, and neither does justice to the nature of Torah’s holistic combining of them, nor to Paul’s dismissal of sabbath law as part of these “ceremonial” laws.

None of this is intended to dismiss the Decalogue. I only seek to illustrate that the intertextual relationships of the canon drive the need for interpretation as a necessary work. Even this basic text of biblical morality is not a simple text, but needs a theological framework in which to read it. Unusually, even within Scripture it is a text described not only as the spoken word of God, but as the written word of God. Yet that does not prevent other scriptures interacting with it in development and criticism, intensification and abolition. Assuming any text can be absolutised by describing it as “God’s Word”, and freed from the demands of theological interpretative work, actually denies what the scriptures themselves do with this particular and cherished text.