Another new thing One nice thing about posting my opinions on here; I get slapped down by the nicest people. Case in point, my last blog. A reader wrote:
Oy, I gotta say something:
"Moses was given 10 simple laws, and the Hebrews managed to develop endless tomes of law and interpretation of the law, requiring very learned men to research, argue, and debate, before telling the common man what he could or could not do."Is that what they taught you in school? 'Cause it bears little resemblance to the tradition from which all three of the world's monotheistic faiths sprang. According to Jewish tradition, law and practice, G-d dictated to Moses on Mt. Sinai the first five books of the "Old Testament," (Genesis, Exodus, Deut., Leviticus & Numbers), including all of the 613 commandments that were to govern the lives of the Jewish people, plus the rest of the "Bible" and the entire body of the Talmud. In relatively short order,
the Hebrew Bible was written down and everything else remained Oral Law until after the Second Temple was destroyed. Those "10 simple laws" aren't even a distillation of the law. They were, rather, rules that were set out for civilized behavior generally, regardless of race, religion, creed or nationality. The only sage (Hillel) to have tried to distill the full body of the Law (Halacha) into a sound bite phrased it thus:
"Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you. The rest is commentary. Now go and learn it."
I enjoy and appreciate your blog. But in these times when every aspect of my tradition seems to be under attack from one source or another, I feel an obligation to set the record straight. Moses was not given "10 simple laws." He was given 613 very complex laws, and a whole lot more. The subsequent arguments and debates to which you refer are what translated those laws from the pure, divine essence out of which they were created to the nitty gritty human level in which they were to be implemented -- and
that, my friend, was part of the Grand Design all along.
While I reserve judgment on whether the end result of the debate was what G-d intended all along, (I'm more of a free will person than a predestination person) 5 minutes with a Bible in my hand shows that the more I think I know, the more I have to learn.
Posted by Rich at May 26, 2002 4:00 AM