Shane Williamson’s Reviews > The Ten Commandments: Monuments of Memory, Belief, and Interpretation > Status Update

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.