IT is the claim of both Jews and Christians that the Ten Commandments form the foundation, not only for the moral and civil laws of our country, but of the civilized world as well. Some bibliolaters, in their zeal, go so far as to say that there was no morality in the world before the Ten Commandments were announced. That is to say, in their opinion, morality is but a few thousand years old. Why, the world itself, according to the bible chronology, is nearly six thousand years old. Are we to understand, then, that until the time of Moses the world managed to get along without any morality at all?
But we know that the world is very much older than six thousand years, and that there were great empires and a civilization which was already old, long long before the Jews arrived. Egypt was at the zenith of her culture when the sons of Jacob appeared within her gates to beg for bread, and Babylonia and Persia were world-empires when the Jews were still slaves. But to admit that there was any morality before Moses, is to give up the bible. What need could there be of a moral law coming down from heaven, if there were one already growing out of the earth? No deity is needed to find for us what was never lost, or to give us what we already possessed. To admit, therefore, that there were ancient nations who flourished and waxed strong in art and commerce, in culture and character, long before the Ten Commandments descended from the clouds, would be fatal to the claim that there can be no morality without the bible.
The defenders of the bible find themselves in a very embarrassing position. They can not deny Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome; but if they admit the greatness and glory of these empires, what becomes of their claim that morality was first given to the world by Moses in the wilderness? There is only one way out of the dilemma: Refuse to discuss the question. And that is practically the tactics of the bible champions at present. It is absolutely impossible to find any more an educated and respectable churchman who is willing to debate the question before an audience of inquirers. Silence is their one remaining asset.
It is related in the bible that the Ten Commandments were written on two tables of stone by the deity himself. But in a fit of anger, Moses, in whose custody the documents in stone were placed, "cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount." * This was a device to account for the nonexistence of the tables. If ever there were a time when a miracle would have been in order, it was when Moses dropped the commandments. After forty days of labor, Jehovah delivers the moral law, and not wishing to entrust the work of taking down his dictation to Moses, he inscribes them on imperishable stone, with his own hand. And then they fall and break, like any schoolboy's slate. The slates should not have broken—and they would not have broken—if all the other miracles told in the bible are true. To have miracles without number when we do not need them, and then to refuse the one miracle that could have saved the handwriting of God, is a fatal argument against the miraculous.
* Exodus xxxii, 19.
It is true that Moses was summoned to the mountain for a new set of tables and commandments, but as I shall proceed to explain, the second Ten Commandments were not written by the deity. His handwriting was irretrievably lost by the breaking of the first tables. We have miracles to preserve shoes and garments, and dead men's bones, but none to save the writing of God. Thus it is that all the "original" documents of the prophets and the apostles have perished, while the real wood of the cross and the coat of Jesus have been miraculously preserved.
In Exodus, thirty-second chapter, verse sixteen, we read:
And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.
But what was the use? The tables broke, and the writing is lost. Why go to all that trouble to produce original documents, only to lose them so shortly after they are finished? The thirty-fourth chapter and the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth verses of the book of Exodus inform us that the second collection of Commandments which were given to replace the broken tables of stone, were not written by Jehovah, but by Moses:
And the Lord said unto Moses, write thou these words... And he (Moses) was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights... And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. *