HumanisTim

Something I'm wondering to myself right now is. What things fall under the graven image category in the ten commandments. All these people want to have these monuments of the ten commandments up. But could a monument of the commandments be a graven image?. I think they need to put up the real ten commandments. There are just too many kids these days going around boiling goats in their own mothers milk. :-)

beachbum

HOw true, and the stench is terrible.

Writer@Large

The cross, and esp. the crucified Jesus, almost ceertainly count as "graven images," IMO. Xians disagree, of course, and have their own answers for why it's okay. My wife's reply (paraphrasing) was: "It's not a graven image. It's just a reminder of the sacrifices Jesus made. Besides, we don't worship the cross; they were actually worshipping the golden calf. That's what a graven image is--something you worship."

I imagine any complaint of this kind concerning a 10C monument would be met with similar rationalizing.

--W@L

Mageth

Note that the Roman Catholic version of the 10 commandments differs from the Protestant version (they lump what Protestant Xians consider the first and second commandments into a first commandment) and thus "idols" or graven images refer to worshipping other than the true god, not to xian icons such as crucifixes, statues, etc.

Krieger

"All these people want to have these monuments of the ten commandments up. But could a monument of the commandments be a graven image?"

I think so, "graven" simply means "1. To sculpt or carve; engrave. 2. To stamp or impress deeply; fix permanently."

Kevin Dorner

And they were all executed for it before the "law" telling them not to had even been written, never mind communicated to them. The so-called "source of modern law" couldn't even come up with the ex-post facto exemption, that one cannot be punished for something that was legal at the time, but made illegal later.

Oh, I forgot... gods are not accountable to ex-post facto nor anything else but may murder at whim and yet never want of worshippers...

[ April 10, 2002: Message edited by: Kevin Dorner ]</p>

ohwilleke

Islam traditionally has interpreted the prohibition on graven images as banning all representational art (i.e. all pictures of real things). Instead, Islamic art developed elaborate abstract art found in tile mossiacs, carpets, fabrics and similar displays all over the Islamic world.