Status Updates From The Ten Commandments: Monum...

Isa 56 emphasizes that the Sabbath is not just an act of social justice toward foreigners...but also a means of incorporating them into the community...It is thus not an identity-marker so much as an identity-maker. Isa 56:2, 4, 6 equate keeping the Sabbath with keeping the covenant between Yahweh and his people. (221)

The Israelites encountered Yahweh through the medium of the Decalogue and its associated artifacts, and engaged him through sacrifices, blood ritual, and feasting. Together, these ritual actions bound the people to Yahweh and provided a means of community formation...these artifacts and practices were actually giving shape to the community of Israel...creating Israel out of a disparate group of individuals. (115)

The zkr (Heb. ”remember”) ritual was selected specifically for its connection to coronation rituals, and it is connected in the Decalogue to Yahweh's act of creation as a justification and reenactment of his enthronement. (95)

Akkadian, Hieroglyphic Luwian, and Northwest Semitic dialects all use the word "name" as a metonym for an inscribed monument, because the monument cannot function as a proper reembodiment without naming its agent. (90)

The Decalogue primarily functioned in the narrative world of Exodus as a reembodiment of Yahweh meant to constitute the Israelites as a community upon their escape from Egypt. (76)

Unlike other "I Am" monuments, the Decalogue survived their demise in the seventh century. While it adapted key aspects of the verbal, aesthetic, and spatial discourse of ancient Levantine monuments, this text continues to be engaged even now. By drawing upon the discourse of "I Am" monuments especially, the Decalogue was presented as more than a text. It was a reembodiment of Yahweh, speaking with his very voice. 75

This first chapter is a griiiiiind.

Monuments are artifacts that prompt communities of people to imaginatively construct meaning in ways particular to their historical and cultural context. (13)

The meaning of the text and its purpose must be determined not on the basis of verbal content alone, but also in light of its context—how it was depicted, how it was integrated into the Hebrew Bible's narrative world, and how the community was depicted as engaging with it. (13)

In the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy in particular, Yahweh is shown defeating his enemies and rescuing his people much as an ancient West Asian king would do with the support of the gods. Yahweh here combines the royal role of conqueror and the divine role of patron. The story of Sinai is then not simply about a theophany or a covenant. Rather, it is about the enthronement of Yahweh as king of Israel. (12)

Monuments, to be monuments, must provoke a reaction on the part of communities. They are focal points of engagement and interpretation that prompt groups of people to reconstruct what they remember and believe. (1)

This book presents a new analysis of the Ten Commandments based on their monumentality and their relationship to the monumental assemblages of ancient Israel and its neighbors. (ix)