Javaman

During a discussion at work about the "Pledge" ruling, I mentioned (I'm not sure why) that many belief systems have goofy stuff in them. I cited LDS Invisible Golden Tablets and the strange other Ten Commandments in Ex. 34 (especially the last Commandment about not boiling/seething a goat/kid in its mother's milk). To which a fundamentalist co-worker asked, "What are you talking about?"

She had a Bible handy (of course) and I showed them to her. She was a bit taken aback and kept saying that those WEREN'T the Ten Commandments. I kept pointing to the part that says: "And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments."

Her initial reasoning was that, yes, the Lord said these things to Moses but Moses wrote the original Ten Commandments on the new stone tablets, not what God had just said. Her thinking was that originally God has said, "And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest." and then Moses was the one that did the writing (where?) later of the weird stuff.

Apparently two things happened in Exodus 34. One, God himself wrote on Moses' new tables the old Ten Commandments and, two, Moses also wrote down some other laws.

At the end of our discussion, my friend was a bit flustered and said she had to do some research. It's been almost a month. My question for the more hardcore theists here would be:

What's your take on this?

Vorkosigan

Actually, I've always wondered about that Last Commandment, the kid in the mother's milk. Is that some kind of garbling in transmission -- it's just so effing weird! Or does it make some kind of odd cultural sense in the light of sacrifices to the gods of nearby cultures?

Javaman

Vorkosigan,

Maybe Moses' mind started wandering. He was probably still pretty pissed off over that golden idol. You would have thought, though, that God would have noticed...

What the f**k did you just write down, Moses? I hope you brought some Liquid Stone(TM)!

rodahi

According to James G. Frazer, the final commandment of the older "Ten Commandments" exemplifies the principle of sympathetic magic. He gives an analogy: "Now among pastoral tribes in Africa at the present day there appears to be a widely spread and deeply rooted aversion to boil the milk of their cattle, the aversion being founded on a belief that a cow whose milk has been boiled will yield no more milk, and that the animal may even die of the injury thereby done to it...Even after the milk has been drawn from the cow it is supposed to remain in such vital connexion with the animal that any injury done to the milk will be sympathetically felt by the cow. Hence to boil the milk in a pot is like boiling it in the cow's udders; it is to dry up the fluid at its source." See Folklore in the Old Testament, pp. 364-365.

I agree, much of the ancient Hebrew magical/ritualistic religion is strange and beyond comprehension. Yet, it brings comfort to untold millions--especially to those who have no idea what the ancient Hebrew religion was all about.

Jayman

Most scholars believe that two separate authors penned the two Ten Commandment passages and that's why they're different. The reason that a kid should not be boiled in its mother's milk is probably a purity issue. Exactly how it is impure is a debatable issue (mixing of life [milk] and death [kid]?). Also note that this law is repeated in Deut. 14:21.

Grumpy

I've always wondered why God bothered with the first set of stone tablets. Surely He knew Moses would smash them. And He must also have known that, though rendered unreadable, the contents of the first set of tablets would be transcribed into the book later known as Exodus.

It's almost like something a make-believe character would do.

Berean

Leaving aside the silly epithet "fundamentalist" your co-worker was quite right. I don't see what is so hard about this passage. Not only does the sense of the chapter clearly indicate that this list is not the Ten Commandments, it's a repetition, more or less, of the list of ritual commands given in chapter 23, including the one about goats and milk in verse 23:19.

Given that both lists are about festivals and that it is juxtaposed against rules for sacrificing the firstfruits, scholars generally assume that this was some sort of harvest ritual practised by the Canaanites, possibly with the resulting broth sprinkled over the fields. However, this is speculative and no one knows for sure, but it makes sense in context.

Additionally, the same command appears at Deuteronomy 14:21, but this time in a discussion of clean and unclean food. As a result, it forms the basis for the Kashrut (kosher) rule against mixing meat and dairy.

Mageth

As a result, it forms the basis for the Kashrut (kosher) rule against mixing meat and dairy.

So it's basically saying: "Thou shalt not eat cheeseburgers"???

lpetrich

There is supposedly some document found in Ugarit from 1500 BCE or thereabouts that describes boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk. Can anyone track that down?

But Vorkosigan is right about how the Bible presents the wickedness of boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk -- the Bible gives no hint as to why that might be a Bad Thing.

But one justification of some law I've found very amusing -- Exodus 20:26 states that one ought not to climb onto an altar because one would expose oneself to it if one did.

Javaman

Sorry, I was unaware that the self-coined term was now an epithet. I'll let my friend know not to call herself that. I think Bob Jones Univ. stopped using the term, though, but I'm not sure.

I think you're trying to read that into the chapter. God clearly says that he's going to give Moses the laws again... Laws follow. Then, oddly, they're not the same. Given that there are only three sections in the OT that use the phrase "Ten Commandments" (aside from a couple of added english chapter headings, these must be the true ones:

Exodus 34:28
And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

--The section under discussion

Deuteronomy 4:13
And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.

--I'm not well versed enough to figure out to which incident this refers

Deuteronomy 10:4
And he wrote on the tables, according to the first writing, the ten commandments, which the LORD spake unto you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly: and the LORD gave them unto me.

--A reference to Ex. 34

If you're right, Berean, that would mean God did a fairly poor/confusing job of divinely inspiring his work.