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The Ten Commandments: Monuments of Memory, Belief, and Interpretation
The Decalogue, commonly known as the Ten Commandments, is usually analysed as a text. Within the Hebrew Bible, however, it is depicted as a monument– an artifact embedded in rituals that a community uses to define itself. Indeed, the phraseology, visual representations, and ritual practices of contemporary monuments used to describe the Ten Commandments imbue them with authority. In this volume, Timothy Hogue, presents a new translation, commentary, and literary analysis of the Decalogue through a comparative study of the commandments with inscribed monuments in the ancient Levant. Drawing on archaeological and art historical studies of monumentality, he grounds the Decalogue's composition and redaction in the material culture and political history of ancient Israel and ancient West Asia. Presenting a new inner-biblical reception history of the text, Hogue's book also provides a new model for dating biblical texts that is based on archaeological and historical evidence, rather than purely literary critical methods.
360 pages, Hardcover
Published September 28, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 10, 2024
Thought provoking -- Hogue offers a fresh set of lenses (the monumental tradition) for evaluating the Ten Commandments and their role in the biblical text as well as in ancient Israel.
He stands midway between critical views that date the Decalogue to the 6th century and traditional views that date it to the time of Moses (13th century). Hogue argues that the monumental tradition offers an outside means of corroborating the biblical witness to the development and transformation of the Decalogic authority over time. He dates the original text to the 9th century BCE, with updates in subsequent centuries that kept alive its authority for each generation.
I'll be submitting a fuller review for the Bulletin of Biblical Research soon.
He stands midway between critical views that date the Decalogue to the 6th century and traditional views that date it to the time of Moses (13th century). Hogue argues that the monumental tradition offers an outside means of corroborating the biblical witness to the development and transformation of the Decalogic authority over time. He dates the original text to the 9th century BCE, with updates in subsequent centuries that kept alive its authority for each generation.
I'll be submitting a fuller review for the Bulletin of Biblical Research soon.
August 4, 2024
2024 reads: 26
Rating: 4 stars
What is monumentality? This field of inquiry investigates artifacts and their social function, specifically for forming identity. Hogue surveys the Decalogue through this lens and provides a comparative study that also engages social and religious implications. Hogue's own inquiry within the bounds of archaeological evidence necessarily limits the conclusions. As such, the historical dating project (which I would say is essential to the study), means that the Decalogue as we have it in our Bibles is representative of a much later project, roughly spanning 9th-6th century BCE. Most notable for Hogue is the development throughout both Exodus and Deuteronomy, development that reflects two major time periods in monument history and praxis: Territorial Theatre (8th century) and Court Ceremony (6th century). Less time (unfortunately) is spent discussing the Decalogue in the postexilic reception, but the shorter discussion was nonetheless very intriguing. As a whole, Hogue's thesis is that the changes of the Decalogue's depiction and the practices related to it reflect these time periods, a shift from Territorial stelae at Sinai, centralized tablets in Jerusalem, to individualized amulets and scrolls in the exilic periods. These developments reflect not only neighbouring practices of Israel's contemporaries, but are intimately tied to Israel's own history of the exodus from Egypt, collapse of Israel, and the Babylonian exile.
I was certainly out of my depth for most of the conversation in The Ten Commandments, so I cannot fully speak to the dating project. Hogue's thesis makes sense, but I am consistently weary of archaeological inquiries that limit (obviously) findings to what has been unearthed. The late date will no doubt throw more conservative readers off but one has to make sense of the redactions within the Pentatuech somehow.
Besides this, my interest with Hogue's volume related to the social function of monuments, and their capacity for forming identity among its adherents. This emphasis on spatial discourse and ritual stimulated lots of thoughts, especially as one considers the reception of the Decalogue in the NT and among early Christians. It is this fact, and the relationship between artifacts and their scriptualization, that generated some exciting ideas. For one, it certainly highlights the 'religious' or, should I say ritual qualities, of something like a smartphone today—it's accessibility and our incessant demands for its presence and activity is reflective of religious artifacts in antiquity—regardless of how we explain away our use of them. But, as regards explicitly religious texts, monumentality opens up more holistic and embodied aspects of religious discourse and its purposes for forming identities—something for which I wish to explore with regards to the Gospels and the idea of monumentalizing Jesus for worship and identity.
Rating: 4 stars
What is monumentality? This field of inquiry investigates artifacts and their social function, specifically for forming identity. Hogue surveys the Decalogue through this lens and provides a comparative study that also engages social and religious implications. Hogue's own inquiry within the bounds of archaeological evidence necessarily limits the conclusions. As such, the historical dating project (which I would say is essential to the study), means that the Decalogue as we have it in our Bibles is representative of a much later project, roughly spanning 9th-6th century BCE. Most notable for Hogue is the development throughout both Exodus and Deuteronomy, development that reflects two major time periods in monument history and praxis: Territorial Theatre (8th century) and Court Ceremony (6th century). Less time (unfortunately) is spent discussing the Decalogue in the postexilic reception, but the shorter discussion was nonetheless very intriguing. As a whole, Hogue's thesis is that the changes of the Decalogue's depiction and the practices related to it reflect these time periods, a shift from Territorial stelae at Sinai, centralized tablets in Jerusalem, to individualized amulets and scrolls in the exilic periods. These developments reflect not only neighbouring practices of Israel's contemporaries, but are intimately tied to Israel's own history of the exodus from Egypt, collapse of Israel, and the Babylonian exile.
I was certainly out of my depth for most of the conversation in The Ten Commandments, so I cannot fully speak to the dating project. Hogue's thesis makes sense, but I am consistently weary of archaeological inquiries that limit (obviously) findings to what has been unearthed. The late date will no doubt throw more conservative readers off but one has to make sense of the redactions within the Pentatuech somehow.
Besides this, my interest with Hogue's volume related to the social function of monuments, and their capacity for forming identity among its adherents. This emphasis on spatial discourse and ritual stimulated lots of thoughts, especially as one considers the reception of the Decalogue in the NT and among early Christians. It is this fact, and the relationship between artifacts and their scriptualization, that generated some exciting ideas. For one, it certainly highlights the 'religious' or, should I say ritual qualities, of something like a smartphone today—it's accessibility and our incessant demands for its presence and activity is reflective of religious artifacts in antiquity—regardless of how we explain away our use of them. But, as regards explicitly religious texts, monumentality opens up more holistic and embodied aspects of religious discourse and its purposes for forming identities—something for which I wish to explore with regards to the Gospels and the idea of monumentalizing Jesus for worship and identity.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews