Moses, Sinai and the 10 commands

How the Abraham, Isaac, Israel clan got to Egypt is a story that is not yet fully understood. There was no written version of the story of Abraham and his descendants for at least 400 years. The stories of Abraham, Isaac, Israel, Joseph and Moses existed as oral traditions before being written, edited and expanded by temple priests during the reign of King Solomon.

Gleaning the written records, some events must be considered historical. The Israel clan was driven to Egypt during a period of famine. They went in search of food. They were enslaved. The Israel clan was only one of many foreign tribes that were enslaved by a powerful Egyptian dynasty. The Egyptians were in a period of spectacular building. They used slaves by the thousands. The clan of Israel was just one of many slave labor gangs.

The Israelite story is truly remarkable. The Israelites escaped. In recorded history there is not even a hint of such an escape of a whole clan from an Egyptian slave camp. The history of slaves always shows an eventual assimilation into the culture of the slave owners. The American example is the African slaves who almost all became Christians. The clan of Israel did not assimilate. Our best understanding is that this happened because of the bond between “Father Abraham” and Jehovah God.

Imbedded in Israelite tradition is the simple statement. “Jehovah delivered us from the bondage of slavery in Egypt.” Such an exodus cannot be conceived unless there was a leader to whom the illiterate slave people could look for leadership. This is what the Moses story is all about. His survival as a baby. His inclusion and education in the house of Pharaoh. His personal escape from Egypt. His confrontation with Jehovah in the burning bush. His return to Egypt to lead his people to freedom. The parting of the waters for an escape route. There is no historical verification of any of these events. They represent an enormous amount of legend.

Among the legends there is a kernel of history. A man named Moses found himself in the Sinai Desert leading an unruly and undisciplined clan, who traced themselves to Abraham and his God named Jehovah.

Among Jews, Christians and Muslims the experience of Moses and the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai is controlling to our own day. Moses went to the mountain top, where Jehovah gave Moses 10 rules for living. Obedience to the 10 commands became equated to obedience to Jehovah. The great legacy of Moses is that he defined the social meaning of complete devotion to God.

The Ten Commandments have stood the test of over three millennium. No one in the Muslim, Jewish or Christian traditions suggests that the Ten Commandments should be discarded. The great arguments within and between these three religious traditions are about the meaning and application of the commandments in ever changing cultural contexts.

According to the account of the giving of the Ten Commandments, as found in Exodus 20, the commands are prefaced by a statement from Jehovah. “I brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” He could have added “and don’t you ever forget it!” It is no surprise at all that the first three commandments are about the relationship between Jehovah and the people that he delivered, and that the fourth command is a demand that a special day, one out of every seven, be devoted to the honor and worship of Jehovah.

The materials in the collection of writings that we now call the Bible are best understood as a long series of arguments about the meaning of the commands that Moses carried down from Mount Sinai. There is no need to discard a single sentence of the Bible material, when read as argument. The Bible reveals not one point of view of the meaning of the 10 commands, but numerous meanings, each written in a particular context. There is no reason to discard any of the writings of Paul. They represent his contribution to the debate. Agreeing or disagreeing is the reader’s part in the debate. There is no reason to discard the book of Revelation. This piece of apocalyptic writing is a serious contribution to the debate.

I claim my religious heritage as that of Jesus from Nazareth. The Bible material presents him as debating the meaning of Torah (the law) when he was a young kid. I understand him as a man who never stopped his engagement in the debate. The reason he went regularly to synagogue meetings was to debate the meaning of the 10 commands. Under pressure, Jesus made what I believe to be his finest utterance.

“The law is summed up in these two statements…You shall love the Lord God with your heart, mind and soul. You shall love your neighbor as though he were a member of your own clan.”

I have never been tempted to be a church drop-out. In my own experience a church is still the best place to find a good debate about the meaning of life and the law of God, the 10 commands. My heartache is the churches that do not intentionally foster the debate of the meaning of the 10 commands for our own day.

Moses and the 10 commands will not go away.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.