When James Madison studied government, his primary examples were Greek and Roman. The Federalist Papers, written by Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, mention the “early ages of Christianity” once, and only to criticize it as part of the feudal system.30 But the papers contain numerous references to Sparta, Carthage, Rome, the Achaean League, Thebes, Crete, Athens, and other federations.31 The framers studied these governments and their histories and lawgivers (whether real or legendary), including Minos, Theseus, Draco, Solon, Lycurgus, Romulus, Numa, and Tullus Hostilius.32
The classical influence on the American founding was recognized at the time by those outside of the Convention and by later religious thinkers. Just after the Constitution was adopted, Harvard president Joseph Willard received a letter from Thomas Brand Hollis, a pro-revolutionary Englishman, about reviving the Olympic games in America because “having acted on Greek principles, [America] should have Greek exercises.”33
Thomas Cuming Hall, an early twentieth-century theologian and professor of Christian ethics, complained bitterly about the American founding completely ignoring the bible. He wrote at length about the records of the Constitutional Convention:34
The whole atmosphere of the entire literature is secular…. The fact that the Old Testament is never even alluded to as an authority by the principal authors of the Constitution should give some pulpit rhetoric pause….Where a hundred years before every case, whether civil, political or criminal, was decided by a reference to the Old or New Testament…in The Federalist the Bible and Christianity, as well as the clergy, are passed over as having no bearing upon the political issues being discussed…. The eighteenth-century conception of Greco-Roman Paganism has completely supplanted Puritanic Judaism.
Hall, who held degrees from Princeton and Union Theological Seminary, was right. The founders studied the classics extensively, and they were familiar with Judeo-Christian principles, but they relied on the former and shunned the latter at the Constitutional Convention. One would expect to see the opposite if Christian nationalists are correct. The founders did not ignore the centuries when religion ruled—they simply forswore the doctrines that permitted religion to reign. Perhaps this was because, as atheist author Ruth Hurmence Green put it, “There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.”35
PART III
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS V.
THE CONSTITUTION
“Some Christian lawyers—some eminent and stupid judges— have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law. Nothing could be more absurd…all that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the Dark Ages—has been done in spite of the Old Testament.”
— Robert G. Ingersoll, About the Holy Bible: A Lecture, 18941
“Where human laws do not tie men’s hands from wickedness, religion too seldom does; and the most certain security which we have against violence, is the security of the laws.”
— John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, Cato’s Letters, 17212
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 16703
13
Which Ten?
“All pay heed, the Lord, the Lord Jehovah, has given unto you these Fifteen [drops one of three stone tablets]…oy. Ten! Ten Commandments for all to obey.”
— Mel Brooks as Moses in History of the World: Part I, 19814
“Which one of the Ten Commandments that’s out there on the lawn of the Texas capitol bothers you so much? I mean, which one of those is bad public policy? Which one of those is so onerous to how we as a people function?”
— US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry5
Before reading any further, go get a bible and open it to the Ten Commandments. Go on, I’ll wait.
This is not such a simple task. The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue—supposedly the most moral law known to humanity and supposedly authored by the biblical god himself—are not easy to find. They’re not at the beginning of the bible. God didn’t give the rules to Eve and Adam, even after their fall. Nor did he give them to Noah after exterminating all human and animal life save Noah’s crew. And Noah needed a bit of moral guidance. Noah’s son, Ham, accidentally walks in on him, drunk, naked, and passed out. Refusing to take responsibility for his frat boy behavior, Noah curses an innocent child, Canaan, Ham’s son and Noah’s own grandson, to a life of slavery for Ham’s “crime” of seeing him naked. 6 This was the only man the Jewish god thought moral enough to save from a worldwide flood. Yahweh did not see fit to give out the laws, his most moral laws if Christian nationalists are to be believed, until much further along the biblical storyline. The first set—there are four—doesn’t appear until halfway through the second book of the bible, Exodus.
H. L. Mencken reportedly once quipped, “Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.”7 If this wit does indeed belong to Mencken, so does the error. There are not Ten Commandments, but four different sets of Ten Commandments (see comparison tables of four sets on pages 164–65).
The first set was given to Moses on Mount Sinai in chapter 20 of Exodus and later written on stone tablets.8 These are the ten that Heston, DeMille & Co made famous. This set is probably what most people think of as the ten. According to the story, after three months wandering in a desert wilderness with little to eat or drink other than manna from heaven and water that they could squeeze from rocks, the vagabonds make camp at the base of Mount Sinai. Exhausted, starving, and dehydrated, Moses climbs to the top of the 7,500-foot-tall mountain and hears a voice he attributes to a god.9 Is it any wonder? Three months of marching under the hot desert sun and then scaling a mountain—it would almost be odd if he hadn’t been hearing disembodied voices.
Moses descended the mount to present his people with their god’s perfect law10 only to find them worshipping a golden calf, an idol. Moses was so furious that his followers would break one of the commandments—a commandment on which they had not yet been instructed—that he smashed the stone tablets.11 The only physical evidence that a divine being had visited this world was in his hands. The most priceless object in all history and possibly proof that god exists, yet the religious leader destroyed it…before any of his followers got a chance to examine or even read it. This is suspicious, reckless—and a convenient dodge. Joseph Smith used a similar ploy when dictating the Book of Mormon. Smith claimed he discovered two golden plates etched with reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics. An angel led him to the plates but also decreed that Smith could not show the plates to anyone. He translated the story on the plates using a hat and a magic seeing stone. Smith returned the plates to the angel after his translation was complete. All the priceless physical evidence of divine existence was destroyed or returned to the divine plane. Moses’s destructive temper tantrum in Exodus 32:19 is even more suspect if one reads 32:7–8, in which Yahweh tells Moses to go back down the mountain because his people have “acted perversely” and “cast for themselves an image of a calf.” Moses knew beforehand that they were worshipping an idol, and still he destroyed the tablets.
Not content with simply destroying god’s word, Moses ordered the slaughter of 3,000 of his “brothers,” “friends,” and “neighbors” for worshipping an idol. Moses commanded the priestly clan, the Levites, to “Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.”12 They succeeded: “the sons of Levi did as Moses commanded, and about three thousand of the people fell on that day.”13 The synonymous language Moses used in pronouncing the death sentence, “your brother, your friend, and your neighbor,”14 and the language the Exodus author uses to describe those killed, “three thousand of the people fell on that day,” is instructive for interpreting the commandments, as we shall see.
Post-slaughter, Y
ahweh orders Moses to fashion new tablets and gives him the second set of ten commandments in chapter 34 of Exodus.15 God kicks off this set by vowing to sweep all the current residents from the land he promised to Moses, thereby sealing his moral laws with genocide.16 God said: “I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”17
In this second set and as payment for his role as genocidal patron, Yahweh lays claim to all the firstborn of Israel, although he spares the firstborn human sons: “All that first opens the womb is mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem.”18 “Redeem” in this context means substituting one sacrificial victim for another, such as a goat for a human (see also chapter 10). (What does it say about a god who repeatedly orders his followers to kill their sons, only to occasionally retract the death sentence at the last moment? Abraham and Isaac, this commandment, and the later sacrifice of Jesus—filicide is common in the bible. God himself says that these sacrifices are meant to horrify his subjects: “I defiled them through their very gifts, in their offering up all their firstborn, in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am the Lord,” according to Ezekiel 20:26).
Decalogue version 2.0 includes the prohibition on casting idols and the mandate to keep the sabbath,19 but the similarities to the first set end there. God’s final commandment of the second batch is to “not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.”20 This refers to a baby goat, not a human child. Though, given the preceding filial-sacrificial language and the sacrifice of a son in the New Testament, one can be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
The differences between the first two sets of commandments, the Exodus sets, are particularly vexing for believers in the bible’s infallibility because Yahweh says they should be identical, yet they are not. God says that he meant to write the same thing: “The LORD said to Moses, ‘Cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you broke.’”21 But regarding these most moral, important laws—the biblical god could not keep his rules straight.
The third set, issued in chapter 5 of Deuteronomy, is basically the same as the first.22 In the biblical narrative, the third set is really just Moses retelling the story of how he received the first set. But even the retelling is flawed because the sabbath commandments of the third and first sets don’t match.
The fourth set issued later in Deuteronomy is markedly different from the others, but it meets the criteria: they are commandments from Moses set in stone tablets. According to Moses, his followers must “keep the entire commandment that I am commanding you today” and “set up large stones…. Write on them all the words of this law” and “set up these stones, about which I am commanding you today” when they reach the promised land.23 This final set is not a list of prohibitions or injunctions; rather, it is a list of people who are cursed, “cursed be” the so-and-sos. Among the cursed are those who make idols or fail to honor their parents,24 but otherwise this bears little resemblance to the other sets. Much of the cursing is directed at sexual behavior.25
Four Sets of the Ten Commandments in the Bible26
[Note: Language is underlined in the second, third, and fourth sets to facilitate comparison with the first set. Some verses were combined into paragraphs to conserve space.]
FIRST SET
Exodus 20:2–17
2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
3 you shall have no other gods before me. 4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for 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, 6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
13 You shall not murder.
14 You shall not commit adultery.
15 You shall not steal.
16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
SECOND SET
Exodus 34:11–28
11 Observe what I command you today. See, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
12 Take care not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you are going, or it will become a snare among you. 13 You shall tear down their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their sacred poles 14 (for you shall worship no other god, because the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God). 15 You shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to their gods, someone among them will invite you, and you will eat of the sacrifice. 16 And you will take wives from among their daughters for your sons, and their daughters who prostitute themselves to their gods will make your sons also prostitute themselves to their gods.
17 You shall not make cast idols. 18 You shall keep the festival of unleavened bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib; for in the month of Abib you came out from Egypt. 19 All that first opens the womb is mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. 20 The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem.
21 Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in plowing time and in harvest time you shall rest. 22 You shall observe the festival of weeks, the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the festival of ingathering at the turn of the year. 23 Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the LORD God, the God of Israel. 24 For I will cast out nations before you, and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land when you go up to appear before the LORD your God three times in the year. 25 You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, and the sacrifice of the festival of the passover shall not be left until the morning. 26 The best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the LORD your God. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk. 27 The LORD said to Moses: Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.
28 He was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.*
[*This is the first time “the ten commandments” is referred to; later in Deuteronomy 4:13 and 10:4, the reference to tablets is again made. Given that the first set was destroyed, those later references probably refer to this set of commandments and not to those that are now so popular.]
THIRD SET
Deuteronomy 5:6–21
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of t
he house of slavery; 7 you shall have no other gods before me.
8 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, 10 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
11 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
12 Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 14 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. 15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
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