| Title | : | The Nine Commandments: Uncovering The Hidden Pattern Of Crime And Punishment In The Hebrew Bible |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0385499876 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780385499873 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 240 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2000 |
In a powerful and persuasive argument, Freedman asserts that this hidden trail of sins betrays the hand of a master editor, who skillfully wove into Israel's history a message to a community in their Babylonian exile that their fate is not the result of God's abandoning them, but a consequence of their abandonment of God. With wit and insight, The Nine Commandments boldly challenges previous scholarship and conventional beliefs.
David Noel Freedman has been General Editor and a contributing coauthor of the Anchor Bible series since its inception in 1956. He is a professor in Hebrew Bible at the University of California, San Diego, and lives in La Jolla, California.
From the Hardcover edition.
The Nine Commandments: Uncovering The Hidden Pattern Of Crime And Punishment In The Hebrew Bible Reviews
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This book by the late David Noel Freedman (1922-2008) is about as much fun as one can have studying the Bible. It pairs the intrigue and excitement of a Dan Brown mystery with with first-rate biblical scholarship. No cheap thrills here. While his thesis is strained at a couple of points, it is plausible. I found myself hoping it was true—WANTING it to be true. I suspect other readers will too.
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Superior book on the 10 Commandments
Really enjoyed and learned so much about how the Ten Commandments are intertwined thought-out the bible. Get the book it is worth the time and investment. -
The basic idea here is that violations of the ten commandments run sequentially, book by book, from Exodus through Kings, a commandment per book. This shows, to readers living in Exile, that the Exile was the result of breaking the covenant embodied in the ten commandments (or better, ten words) — AND shows that the final redactor of these documents gave us a consciously crafted, unified composition.
The pros are — Freedman writes well, and this book is evidently for a lay audience. If he teaches like he writes, he'd have been great in the classroom (Freedman passed away a few years ago). He makes a good case for showing the accumulation of covenant violations leading up to the Exile. And he brings in a number of interesting subsidiary subjects, making for a good read (and a good ride).
The cons — I'm not much of one for hearing things like "this is the first time anyone has ever noticed this in the Bible," a claim which Freedman repeats in one form or another several times. As the trend in biblical studies has continued to emphasize literary artistry and the "final canonical shape" of the text, we are sometimes given several possible unifying factors that supposedly tie the Bible, or significant parts of it, together. After a while one wonders if they can all be due the skill of the "redactor," who must indeed have been a literary supergenius for weaving together such a variety of unifying features. One also wonders about the human ability to find patterns where they do not exist (seen at its worst in the "Bible code" books).
In short — a lot of great material in this engaging volume. The illustrations of the covenant violations are compelling, and Freedman's reading of the number "10" as a kind of number of finality is thought-provoking (thought challenged by reviewers). I am not sure, though, that the unifying threads Freedman finds are those of the redactor rather than of Freedman himself and his co-authors. -
Read it a second time June 6, 2001
