16 Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
17 You shall not murder.
18 Neither shall you commit adultery.
19 Neither shall you steal.
20 Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor.
21 Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife. Neither shall you desire your neighbor’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
FOURTH SET
Deuteronomy 27:1–2, 27:15–26
1 Then Moses and the elders of Israel charged all the people as follows: Keep the entire commandment that I am commanding you today. 2 On the day that you cross over the Jordan into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall set up large stones and cover them with plaster.
15 “Cursed be anyone who makes an idol or casts an image, anything abhorrent to the LORD, the work of an artisan, and sets it up in secret.” All the people shall respond, saying, “Amen!”
16 “Cursed be anyone who dishonors father or mother.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”
17 “Cursed be anyone who moves a neighbor’s boundary marker.” All the people shall say, “Amen!” 18 “Cursed be anyone who misleads a blind person on the road.” All the people shall say, “Amen!” 19 “Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”
20 “Cursed be anyone who lies with his father’s wife, because he has violated his father’s rights.” All the people shall say, “Amen!” 21 “Cursed be anyone who lies with any animal.” All the people shall say, “Amen!” 22 “Cursed be anyone who lies with his sister, whether the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother.” All the people shall say, “Amen!” 23 “Cursed be anyone who lies with his mother-in-law.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”
24 “Cursed be anyone who strikes down a neighbor in secret.” All the people shall say, “Amen!” 25 “Cursed be anyone who takes a bribe to shed innocent blood.” All the people shall say, “Amen!” 26 “Cursed be anyone who does not uphold the words of this law by observing them.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”
So which ten influenced our founding? The second set, a pact sealed with genocide and requiring the sacrifice, but redeeming, of all first-born males? The final set, cursing anyone “who lies with his mother-in-law”?27 Is it the first set of Ten Commandments, which is not even called the “Ten Commandments” in the bible, but actually called the “Ten Words” or “Ten Sayings”?28 (The English shorthand phrase for the commandments, the Decalogue, comes from the literal Greek translation: deca or “ten,” and logue from logos, meaning “word.”) The first time the phrase “Ten Commandments” appears in the text, it refers to the second set, the set that ends with the kid-mother’s-milk cooking prohibition.
These intra-biblical differences are not the only conflicts among the Ten Commandments that confuse the “which Ten” question. There are dozens of different English translations of bibles and thousands of translations into other languages that render the commandments differently, all of which were translated, often several times, from ancient languages. The inter-biblical differences are often more consequential than they first seem. For instance, the New Revised Standard Version reads: “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God,”29 while the King James Version reads: “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain;”30 The NRSV prohibits “idols,”31 while the KJV prohibits “graven images.”32 The KJV says, “Thou shalt not kill,”33 while other translations prohibit “murder.”34 These are not minor differences. The difference between prohibiting murder and prohibiting killing is the difference between outlawing the intentional, premeditated taking of a life and outlawing even killing done in self-defense, in war, or to protect your child. Religious sects also interpret the commandment prohibiting art differently. Some think it prohibits “idols,” some think it prohibits “graven images,” some think it prohibits all religious art. These differing interpretations split Christendom in the eighth and ninth centuries during the Byzantine Iconoclasm or Iconoclastic controversy.35 Religious artwork was destroyed because it violated the commandment, and both sides of the controversy had their martyrs, all due to the interpretation of this “minor” discrepancy.
Seemingly small differences are magnified because religion claims to possess ultimate truth on the basis of faith alone. Any deviation from an absolute truth is significant. And deviations cannot be reasoned away because believing the “truth” requires faith or, as Catholic Canon Law puts it, “a religious submission of the intellect and will.”36 Certainty without reason breeds absurdity. An eighteenth-century Christian group in Russia thought Jesus was not the Redeemer, Iskupitel’, but the Castrator, Oskopitel’, and that God commanded they castrate themselves, plotites’, rather than be fruitful, plodites’.37 Group members acted accordingly and cut off their genitals.38 The idea that Jesus was born of a virgin is a transliterative mistake that cannot be admitted because of religious certitude. The original Hebrew text labels Mary alma, Hebrew for “young woman.”39 This was mistranslated into Greek as parthenos, “virgin,” even though there is a different Hebrew word for virgin.40
Minor variations are further magnified by believers’ righteous superiority and the violence expended—or, as James Madison put it, the “torrents of blood” that have been spilled— trying to eliminate religious differences.41 Thomas Jefferson once asked whether these minor points of division could ever be eliminated and uniformity attained. He thought not: “Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.” The religious coercion made “one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites” and “support[ed] roguery and error all over the earth.”42
IN ADDITION TO INTER-AND INTRA-BIBLICAL DISPARITIES, there are sectarian disparities. The various Jewish and Christian denominations have unique interpretations about which directive belongs to which commandment. The chart on page 168 is a simplified summary of these theological differences.43
Again, the numbering of the commandments may seem insignificant to modern readers, but Christianity warred with itself over this during the idol/graven image controversy.44 The Catholic Church, so fond of its statuary, art, and gold-leafed finery, buries the prohibition on graven images and expands the coveting prohibition into two commandments.
The variety and intensity of these differences—intra-biblical, inter-biblical, and inter-religious—complicate the claimed influence on America’s founding. So does the plethora of commands in the bible.
Mosaic Law actually encompasses some 613 commandments found in the first five books of the Hebrew bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These 613 rules, known as the mitzvot, are as important in Judaism as the Ten Commandments. There is no biblical or theological reason to think that the Ten Commandments are special.
Of course, one might argue that the real ten are obviously those rules Yahweh handed to Moses, a literal gift from god. But if that makes them special, why did Moses destroy those god-given tablets? Furthermore, within the book of Exodus, there are actually four full chapters of laws that could be part of the first set of commandments. God speaks to Moses on Mount Sinai almost continuously from Exodus 20 to Exodus 31, before finally carving the commandments into stone tablets in 31:18. Nothing sets off the first ten commands as more important than the rules god dictates in the eleven remaining chapters. As just noted, there are even four other books of laws, all of which must be followed. We are told read the law and “learn to fear the LORD his God, diligently observing all the words of this law and these statutes.”45 All 613, not just ten. (Note again that obedience to god is based on fear.) These biblical books are clear: “If
you do not diligently observe all the words of this law that are written in this book, fearing this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, then the LORD will overwhelm both you and your offspring with severe and lasting afflictions and grievous and lasting maladies.”46 We must “take to heart all the words [and] give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law.”47
These 613 commandments include orders against erecting pillars in public places,48 communing with ghosts or spirits,49 performing magic,50 getting tattoos,51 and mating different species or planting different crops in the same field or wearing fabrics woven from two different materials.52 Not all the 613 mitzvot are so benign or risible. Some are undeniably divorced from anything that could be considered an American principle, such as the prohibitions on mixing fabrics and trimming facial hair; others are downright barbaric.53 We can forgo an examination of all 613 rules as a small charity to both the Christian nationalist and the reader. However, these brutal laws are fair game for two reasons. First, Christian nationalists are careful to say that we are founded on Judeo-Christian principles, not Christian principles, and the mitzvot come from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Second, even if Christian nationalists claim that only Christian principles were influential, Jesus himself said that he came to uphold all 613 rules: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law.”54 This is not some passing reference; Jesus said it during the Sermon on the Mount.
Despite no valid biblical, theological, or logical reason to hold the Ten Commandments special, our inquiry into the possible influence of Mosaic Law on America’s founding will be limited to them because that is what the Christian nationalists themselves emphasize. The Texas School Board altered its curriculum in 2014 to include Moses in American History because of his supposed influence on the Constitution.55 The Ten Commandments appear, often illegally, in government buildings, schools, and courthouses around the country. They appear at the Texas Capitol in Austin and on the robes of a judge in Alabama.56 They dot government property courtesy of Cecil B. DeMille, who promoted his movie with granite monuments and some help from the Fraternal Order of Eagles. When Bloomfield, New Mexico, lost a court battle over a Ten Commandments monument displayed in front of City Hall, Mayor Scott Eckstein was “surprised (by the decision) and had never really considered the judge ruling against it because it’s a historical document just like the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.”57 The city’s reliance on bad history cost the taxpayers $700,000.58 The commandments are ubiquitous not just because of Hollywood promoters, but because they are argued to be the basis of American law and morality.59
They are not. Every one of the ten would be considered unconstitutional in our system—every single one, including the commandments against killing and thievery. The Ten Commandments conflict with our American principles so completely that they alone of the 613 amply prove that our nation is not founded on Mosaic Law.
The question remains: Which Ten Commandments were so influential on American law? Christian nationalists refuse to answer. The argument that America was founded on the Ten Commandments is actually an argument that America was founded on one of four discrepant sets of ten rules selected—without reason—from more than 600 other rules, which were in turn plucked from one of many divergent English translations, which was selected from any one of hundreds of different Judeo-Christian sectarian interpretations of the bible. When properly worded, the assertion is unconvincing.
It is possible, indeed probable, that Christian nationalists are ignorant about the imprecision of their religion’s ten paramount rules. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia admitted as much in a case involving a Ten Commandments monument on government land: “I doubt that most religious adherents are even aware that there are competing versions [of the Ten Commandments] with doctrinal consequences (I certainly was not).”60 And if the country’s leading originalist, a Catholic who believed in the literal existence of the devil, didn’t know which set influenced America’s founding, how would the average Christian nationalist?
Many Americans’ knowledge of the Ten Commandments comes from Cecil B. DeMille and Charlton Heston and their Hollywood epic. DeMille often felt accused “of gingering up the Bible with large infusions of sex and violence.”61 He said of these allegations, “I can only wonder if my accusers have ever read certain parts of the Bible. If they have, they must have read them through that stained-glass telescope which centuries of tradition and form have put between us and the men and women of flesh and blood who lived and wrote the Bible.”62 Despite this insight, DeMille could not shatter Americans’ stained-glass view. DeMille’s influence sadly means that most Americans, like Justice Scalia, are ignorant about the commandments. It also means that the first set of ten, which appear so prominently in DeMille’s epic, is likely what most Americans think of when they think of the Decalogue. And although Protestants are no longer a majority of citizens, most religious Americans are Protestant; so for the purposes of this book, let’s use the Protestant interpretation of the first set to answer, in the next eight chapters, the apparently unanswerable question: which Ten?63
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The Threat Display: The First Commandment
I. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”
— Exodus 20:2–3
“Principal Errors of Our Time…#15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.”
— Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors encyclical, 18641
“Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.”
— James Madison, “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” 17852
Male gorillas slap their puffed-out chests to show off their size and strength. So does Yahweh in his first commandment. This insecure self-declaration of superiority must be important to Yahweh, given its primacy. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate and champion of creationism during the Scopes “Monkey Trial,” wrote that the first commandment’s placement “indicate[s] that it is the most important of the ten, and the same conclusion is reached if we compare it with the other nine.”3
It would be difficult to write a law that conflicts more with America’s founding document, the Constitution, than this rule: “I am the Lord your God…you shall have no other gods before me.” First, our Constitution protects every citizen’s freedom to worship as they choose, chiefly by requiring and guaranteeing a secular government. Second, the people, not god, are supreme. The Constitution’s first words are more poetic and quite obviously more reflective of American principles: “We the People.”
The First Amendment is one of humanity’s greatest political and legal triumphs. Every fiber of that legal commandment stands opposed to the Judeo-Christian god’s Ten Commandments. The First Amendment was originally proposed as several different amendments that were consolidated. The six rights enshrined in the First Amendment—secular government, religious freedom, free speech, free press, free assembly, and a right to petition the government—can be summed up as the freedom of thought. It reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of the speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.4
The first two clauses protect your right to think for yourself about life’s most important questions; the third, fourth, and fifth protect your right to speak and even publish those thought
s without fear of censure, and to gather with others to discuss them; the sixth protects your right to ask the government to listen to those ideas. Of the six clauses, the first two are arguably the most important, for without the ability to think freely about life’s questions, little would be added to the discourse protected by the other rights.
Of those first two clauses—the Establishment Clause (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”) and the Free Exercise Clause (“or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”)—the first is more important. The freedom of religion cannot exist without a government that is free from religion (nor can the freedom of religion exist without the freedom to choose no religion at all). True religious freedom depends on a secular government.
If the Establishment Clause were faithfully upheld, there might be no need for the Free Exercise Clause because, as one Supreme Court justice put it, when the Constitution says “make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” “‘no’ means no.”5 Unfortunately, a representative secular government is vulnerable to violations of this stricture because people occupy government offices, and when most people are religious, officeholders are religious, too. As history and the work of the Freedom From Religion Foundation show, people often abuse civil power in the name of their personal religion. Majority religions consistently torment minority religions when they have the power to do so. John Locke, a major influence on the founders, wrote of this phenomenon: “Where they [religions] have not the Power to carry on Persecution, and to become Masters, there they desire to live upon fair Terms, and preach up Toleration.”6 But when “they begin to feel themselves the stronger, then presently Peace and Charity are to be laid aside.”7
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