Ten Commandments and Indianna

[Vance R. Koven]

At 6:40 PM -0500 3/17/00, JLSatty at aol.com wrote:

>However, that still leaves the question of whose Commandments we will
>use--the King James version, the Tanach version, or the Catholic version.
>Lets remember that there is no listing in any bible that goes 1, 2, 3, etc.
>Rather there is a grouping of some 13 phrases that, taken together, are the
>Ten Commandments.  The different religions highlight different passages,
>especially in the first two or three Commandments, for very theological
>reasons.  There was a very good article about this a couple of years ago by
>Steven Lubet in a Minnesota Law School publication I believe is called
>Constitutional Commentaries.
>
>If we require an assortment of other religious items from other religions get
>equal billing and importance, I think this issue would go away.  Nobody would
>do it.

Joel raises a good point but I think that the answer most closely related
to historical accuracy (how's that for a dodge?) is that the specifically
King James version is the formulation that had the greatest impact on the
development of Anglo-American legal thought. This isn't to say that the
other renditions aren't worth noting or studying from the standpoint of how
their respective adherents might have a different take on the content, but
that is graduate-seminar stuff as opposed to Civics 101.

The historical/sociological point, seems to me, is the key to the analysis,
and as a result I think Will Esser gives up too much by downplaying the Ten
Commandments' religious origins. The very fact that these fundamental laws
were religious in origin--and are still so regarded, in one form or
another, by such a wide variety of cultures and by the specific ones that
were instrumental in creating the legal underpinnings of the US--is what
makes them so important in understanding what role these concepts play in
the legal system. Consequently, the "God-centered" commandments should be
displayed alongside the "social-centered" commandments to establish the
context of the latter.

As I understand the ACLU position on the Indiana law, anything emanating
from the government that could conceivably be interpreted, regardless of
context, to give aid and comfort to a religious point of view should be
extirpated. This strikes me as mechanistic reasoning run amok. There is,
and, it's not hard to understand or convey, a distinction between
*acknowledging* the religious underpinnings in something and  *exhorting*
people to treat it in a religious fashion. Saying that we aren't allowed to
do the former because somebody might do the latter contributes to the
cultural amnesia that seems to be the lowest common denominator of civic
discourse--and a BAD THING if you want an educated populace.


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*Vance R. Koven         20 Park Plaza Ste. 633                Boston MA 02116*
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