{
"title": "On the Decalogue",
"language": "en",
"versionTitle": "merged",
"versionSource": "https://www.sefaria.org/On_the_Decalogue",
"text": {
"Introduction": [
"THE DECALOGUE (DE DECALOGO)
INTRODUCTION TO DE DECALOGO",
"The first part of this treatise deals with some questions raised by the law-giving on Sinai. First, why was it given in the desert? Four reasons are suggested: (a) because of the vanity and idolatry rampant in cities (2–9), (b) because solitude promotes repentance (10–13), (c) because it was well that laws needed for civic life should begin before the era of that life began (14), (d) that the divine origin of the laws should be attested by the miraculous supply of food in the barren wilderness (15–17). Secondly, observing that the Commandments given by God Himself were ten, we ask why that number, and the answer is given by a disquisition on its perfection as a number (18–31). Thirdly, what was the nature of the voice which announced the commandments?—not God’s, for He is not a man, but an invisible kind of speech created for the occasion (32–35). Fourthly, why was the singular number “thou” used? (a) Because it emphasizes the value of the individual soul (36–38), (b) the personal appeal better secures obedience (39), (c) it is a lesson to the great not to despise the humblest (40–44). This part concludes with some words on the grandeur of the scene, particularly the fire from which the voice issued (45–49).",
"Coming to the Commandments themselves, after noting that they divide into two sets of five (50–51), we pass to the First. Polytheism is denounced, particularly as taking the form of worship given to the elements or heavenly bodies (52–65). Worse than this is the worship of lifeless images forbidden by the Second Commandment. Its absurdity is exposed (66–76) and with it the worse absurdity of Egyptian animal-worship (77–81). The Third Commandment is taken as forbidding principally perjury (82–91), but also reckless swearing (92–95). The Fourth teaches us to set apart a time for philosophy as opposed to practical life (96–101), and reasons are given for the sanctity of seven and the seventh day in particular (102–105). The Fifth stands on the border-line, because parenthood assimilates man to God and to dishonour parents is to dishonour God (106–111). Children owe all to their parents, and in the duty of repaying kindness they may take a lesson from the lower animals (112–120).",
"The second set of five opens with the prohibition of Adultery (121). Adultery is denounced as (a) voluptuous (122), (b) involving the sin of another (123–124), (c) destructive of family ties (125–127), (d) cruel to the children (128–131). The second of the set forbids murder as both unnatural and sacrilegious, since man is the most sacred of God’s possessions (132–134). Stealing is forbidden by the third, because theft on the smallest scale may develop into wholesale robbery and usurpation (135–137). The fourth forbids false witness, as opposed in itself to truth and justice, and also in law-courts causing judges to give wrong verdicts and thus break their own oaths (138–141). The last Commandment against “desire” gives Philo an opportunity of discoursing in Stoical terms on the four passions, pleasure, grief, fear, desire, of which the last is the deadliest (142–153).",
"Sections 154–175 are really a rough synopsis of Books II., III., and IV. 1–131, shewing the nature of the particular laws which will be placed under each commandment. And the concluding sections 176–178 justify the absence of any penalties attached to the commandments on the grounds that God who is the cause of good leaves the punishment for transgression to his subordinates."
],
"": [
[
"[1] Having related in the preceding treatises the lives of those whom Moses judged to be men of wisdom, who are set before us in the Sacred Books as founders of our nation and in themselves unwritten laws, I shall now proceed in due course to give full descriptions of the written laws. And if some allegorical interpretation should appear to underlie them, I shall not fail to state it. For knowledge loves to learn and advance to full understanding and its way is to seek the hidden meaning rather than the obvious.",
"[2] To the question why he promulgated his laws in the depths of the desert instead of in cities we may answer in the first place that most cities are full of countless evils, both acts of impiety towards God and wrongdoing between man and man.",
"[3] For everything is debased, the genuine overpowered by the spurious, the true by the specious, which is intrinsically false but creates impressions whose plausibility serves but to delude.",
"[4] So too in cities there arises that most insidious of foes, Pride, admired and worshipped by some who add dignity to vain ideas by means of gold crowns and purple robes and a great establishment of servants and cars, on which these so-called blissful and happy people ride aloft, drawn sometimes by mules and horses, sometimes by men, who bear the heavy burden on their shoulders, yet suffer in soul rather than in body under the weight of extravagant arrogance."
],
[
"Pride is also the creator of many other evils,",
"[5] boastfulness, haughtiness, inequality, and these are the sources of wars, both civil and foreign, suffering no place to remain in peace whether public or private, whether on sea or on land.",
"[6] Yet why dwell on offences between man and man? Pride also brings divine things into utter contempt, even though they are supposed to receive the highest honours. But what honour can there be if truth be not there as well, truth honourable both in name and function, just as falsehood is naturally dishonourable?",
"[7] This contempt for things divine is manifest to those of keener vision. For men have employed sculpture and painting to fashion innumerable forms which they have enclosed in shrines and temples and after building altars have assigned celestial and divine honours to idols of stone and wood and suchlike images, all of them lifeless things.",
"[8] Such persons are happily compared in the sacred Scriptures to the children of a harlot ; for as they in their ignorance of their one natural father ascribe their paternity to all their mother’s lovers, so too throughout the cities those who do not know the true, the really existent God have deified hosts of others who are falsely so called. Then as some honour one,",
"[9] some another god, diversity of opinion as to which was best waxed strong and engendered disputes in every other matter also. This was the primary consideration which made him prefer to legislate away from cities.",
"[10] He had also a second object in mind. He who is about to receive the holy laws must first cleanse his soul and purge away the deep-set stains which it has contracted through contact with the motley promiscuous horde of men in cities.",
"[11] And to this he cannot attain except by dwelling apart, nor that at once, but only long afterwards, and not till the marks which his old transgressions have imprinted on him have gradually grown faint,",
"[12] melted away and disappeared. In this way too good physicians preserve their sick folk: they think it unadvisable to give them food or drink until they have removed the causes of their maladies. While these still remain, nourishment is useless, indeed harmful, and acts as fuel to the distemper."
],
[
"[13] Naturally therefore he first led them away from the highly mischievous associations of cities into the desert, to clear the sins out of their souls, and then began to set the nourishment before their minds—and what should this nourishment be but laws and words of God?",
"[14] He had a third reason as follows: just as men when setting out on a long voyage do not begin to provide sails and rudders and tillers when they have embarked and left the harbour, but equip themselves with enough of the gear needed for the voyage while they are still staying on shore, so Moses did not think it good that they should just take their portions and settle in cities and then go in quest of laws to regulate their civic life, but rather should first provide themselves with the rules for that life and gain practice in all that would surely enable the communities to steer their course in safety, and then settle down to follow from the first the principles of justice lying ready for their use, in harmony and fellowship of spirit and rendering to every man his due."
],
[
"[15] Some too give a fourth reason which is not out of keeping with the truth but agrees very closely with it. As it was necessary to establish a belief in their minds that the laws were not the inventions of a man but quite clearly the oracles of God, he led the nation a great distance away from cities into the depths of a desert, barren not only of cultivated fruits but also of water fit for drinking,",
"[16] in order that, if after lacking the necessaries of life and expecting to perish from hunger and thirst they suddenly found abundance of sustenance self-produced—when heaven rained the food called manna and the shower of quails from the air to add relish to their food—when the bitter water grew sweet and fit for drinking and springs gushed out of the steep rock—they should no longer wonder whether the laws were actually the pronouncements of God, since they had been given the clearest evidence of the truth in the supplies which they had so unexpectedly received in their destitution.",
"[17] For He who gave abundance of the means of life also bestowed the wherewithal of a good life; for mere life they needed food and drink which they found without making provision; for the good life they needed laws and ordinances which would bring improvement to their souls."
],
[
"[18] These are the reasons suggested to answer the question under discussion: they are but probable surmises; the true reasons are know to God alone. Having said what was fitting on this subject, I will proceed to describe the laws themselves in order, with this necessary statement by way of introduction, that some of them God judged fit to deliver in His own person alone without employing any other, and some through His prophet Moses whom He chose as of all men the best suited to be the revealer of verities.",
"[19] Now we find that those which He gave in His own person and by His own mouth alone include both laws and heads summarizing the particular laws, but those in which He spoke through the prophet all belong to the former class."
],
[
"[20] I will deal with both to the best of my ability, taking those which are rather of the nature of summaries first.",
"Here our admiration is at once aroused by their number, which is neither more nor less than is the supremely perfect, Ten. Ten contains all different kinds of numbers, even as 2, odd as 3, and even-odd as 6, and all ratios, whether of a number to its multiples or fractional, when a number is either increased or diminished by some part of itself. So too it contains all the analogies or progressions,",
"[21] the arithmetical where each term in the series is greater than the one below and less than the one above by the same amount, as for example 1 2 3; the geometrical where the ratio of the second to the first term is the same as that of the third to the second, as with 1 2 4, and this is seen whether the ratio is double or treble or any multiple, or again fractional as 3 to 2, 4 to 3, and the like; once more the harmonic in which the middle term exceeds and is exceeded by the extremes on either side by the same fraction, as is the case with 3, 4, 6. ",
"[22] Ten also contains the properties observed in triangles, quadrilaterals and other polygons, and also those of the concords, the fourth, fifth, octave and double octave intervals, where the ratios are respectively 1⅓, i.e. 4: 3, 1½, i.e. 3: 2, doubled, i.e. 2:1, fourfold, i.e. 8:2.",
"[23] Consequently it seems to me that those who first gave names to things did reasonably, wise men that they were, in giving it the name of decad, as being the dechad, or receiver, because it receives and has made room for every kind of number and numerical ratio and progressions and also concords and harmonies."
],
[
"[24] But indeed apart from what has been said, the decad may reasonably be admired because it embraces Nature as seen both with and without extension in space. Nature exists without extension nowhere except in the point; with extension in three forms, line, surface, solid. For space as limited by two points is a line,",
"[25] but, where there are two dimensions, we have a surface, as the line has expanded into breadth; where there are three, we have a solid, as length and breadth have acquired depth, and here Nature comes to a halt, for she has not produced more than three dimensions.",
"[26] All these have numbers for their archetypes, 1 for the non-extended point, 2 for the line, 3 for the surface, 4 for the solid, and these one, two, three, four added together make the ten which gives a glimpse of other beauties also to those who have eyes to see.",
"[27] For we may say that the infinite series of numbers is measured by ten, because its constituent terms are the four, 1, 2, 3, 4, and the same terms produce the hundred out of the tens, since 10, 20, 30, 40 make a hundred, and similarly the thousand is produced out of the hundreds and the ten thousand or myriad out of the thousands, and these, the unit, the ten, the hundred and the thousand are the four starting-points from each of which springs a ten. And again,",
"[28] this same ten, apart from what has already been said, reveals other differences in numbers; the order of prime numbers divisible by the unit alone having for its pattern three, five, seven: the square, that is four, the cube, eight, the products respectively of two and three equal numbers, and the perfect number six equal to the sum of its factors 3, 2 and 1."
],
[
"[29] But why enumerate the virtues of Ten, which are infinite in number, and thus treat perfunctorily a task of supreme greatness which by itself is found to be an all-sufficing subject for students of mathematics?",
"But while we must leave unnoticed the rest, there is one which may without impropriety be mentioned as a sample.",
"[30] Those who study the doctrines of philosophy say that the categories in nature, as they are called, are ten only, substance, quality, quantity, relation, activity, passivity, state, position and the indispensables for all existence, time and place.",
"[31] There is nothing which does not participate in these categories. I have substance, for I have borrowed what is all-sufficient to make me what I am from each of the elements out of which this world was framed, earth, water, air and fire. I have quality in so far as I am a man, and quantity as being of a certain size. I become relative when anyone is on my right hand or my left, I am active when I rub or shave anything, or passive when I am rubbed or shaved. I am in a particular state when I wear clothing or arms and in a particular position when I sit quietly or am lying down, and I am necessarily both in place and time since none of the above conditions can exist without these two."
],
[
"[32] These points have been sufficiently discussed and may now be left. We must proceed to carry on the discussion to embrace what follows next. The ten words or oracles, in reality laws or statutes, were delivered by the Father of All when the nation, men and women alike, were assembled together. Did He do so by His own utterance in the form of a voice? Surely not: may no such thought ever enter our minds, for God is not as a man needing mouth and tongue and windpipe.",
"[33] I should suppose that God wrought on this occasion a miracle of a truly holy kind by bidding an invisible sound to be created in the air more marvellous than all instruments and fitted with perfect harmonies, not soulless, nor yet composed of body and soul like a living creature, but a rational soul full of clearness and distinctness, which giving shape and tension to the air and changing it to flaming fire, sounded forth like the breath through a trumpet an articulate voice so loud that it appeared to be equally audible to the farthest as well as the nearest.",
"[34] For it is the nature of men’s voices if carried to a great distance to grow faint so that persons afar off have but an indistinct impression which gradually fades away with each lengthening of the extension, since the organism which produces them also is subject to decay. ",
"[35] But the new miraculous voice was set in action and kept in flame by the power of God which breathed upon it and spread it abroad on every side and made it more illuminating in its ending than in its beginning by creating in the souls of each and all another kind of hearing far superior to the hearing of the ears. For that is but a sluggish sense, inactive until aroused by the impact of the air, but the hearing of the mind possessed by God makes the first advance and goes out to meet the spoken words with the keenest rapidity."
],
[
"[36] So much for the divine voice. But we may properly ask why, when all these many thousands were collected in one spot, He thought good in proclaiming His ten oracles to address each not as to several persons but as to one, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, and so too with the rest.",
"[37] One answer which must be given is that He wishes to teach the readers of the sacred scriptures a most excellent lesson, namely that each single person, when he is law-abiding and obedient to God, is equal in worth to a whole nation, even the most populous, or rather to all nations, and if we may go still farther, even to the whole world.",
"[38] And therefore elsewhere, when He praises a certain just man, He says, I am thy God, though He was also the God of the world. And thus we see that all the rank and file who are posted in the same line and give a like satisfaction to their commander, have an equal share of approbation and honour.",
"[39] A second reason is that a speaker who harangues a multitude in general does not necessarily talk to any one person, whereas if he addresses his commands or prohibitions as though to each individual separately, the practical instructions given in the course of his speech are at once held to apply to the whole body in common also. If the exhortations are received as a personal message, the hearer is more ready to obey, but if collectively with others, he is deaf to them, since he takes the multitude as a cover for disobedience.",
"[40] A third reason is that He wills that no king or despot swollen with arrogance and contempt should despise an insignificant private person but should study in the school of the divine laws and abate his supercilious airs, and through the reasonableness or rather the assured truth of their arguments unlearn his self-conceit.",
"[41] For if the Uncreated, the Incorruptible, the Eternal, Who needs nothing and is the maker of all, the Benefactor and King of kings and God of gods could not brook to despise even the humblest, but deigned to banquet him on holy oracles and statutes, as though he should be the sole guest, as though for him alone the feast was prepared to give good cheer to a soul instructed in the holy secrets and accepted for admission to the greatest mysteries, what right have I, the mortal, to bear myself proud-necked, puffed-up and loud-voiced, towards my fellows, who, though their fortunes be unequal, have equal rights of kinship because they can claim to be children of the one common mother of mankind, nature?",
"[42] So then, though I be invested with the sovereignty of earth and sea, I will make myself affable and easy of access to the poorest, to the meanest, to the lonely who have none close at hand to help them, to orphans who have lost both parents, to wives on whom widowhood has fallen, to old men either childless from the first or bereaved by the early death of those whom they begot.",
"[43] For as I am a man, I shall not deem it right to adopt the lofty grandeur of the pompous stage, but make nature my home and not overstep her limits. I will inure my mind to have the feelings of a human being, not only because the lot both of the prosperous and the unfortunate may change to the reverse we know not when, but also because it is right that even if good fortune remains securely established, a man should not forget what he is. Such was the reason, as it seems to me, why he willed to word the series of his oracles in the singular form, and delivers them as though to one alone."
],
[
"[44] It was natural that the place should be the scene of all that was wonderful, claps of thunder louder than the ears could hold, flashes of lightning of surpassing brightness, the sound of an invisible trumpet reaching to the greatest distance, the descent of a cloud which like a pillar stood with its foot planted on the earth, while the rest of its body extended to the height of the upper air, the rush of heaven-sent fire which shrouded all around in dense smoke. For when the power of God arrives, needs must be that no part of the world should remain inactive, but all move together to do Him service.",
"[45] Near by stood the people. They had kept pure from intercourse with women and abstained from all pleasures save those which are necessary for the sustenance of life. They had cleansed themselves with ablutions and lustrations for three days past, and moreover had washed their clothes. So in the whitest of raiment they stood on tiptoe with ears pricked up in obedience to the warning of Moses to prepare themselves for a congregation which he knew would be held from the oracular advice he received when he was summoned up by himself.",
"[46] Then from the midst of the fire that streamed from heaven there sounded forth to their utter amazement a voice, for the flame became articulate speech in the language familiar to the audience, and so clearly and distinctly were the words formed by it that they seemed to see rather than hear them.",
"[47] What I say is vouched for by the law in which it is written, “All the people saw the voice,” a phrase fraught with much meaning, for it is the case that the voice of men is audible, but the voice of God truly visible. Why so? Because whatever God says is not words but deeds, which are judged by the eyes rather than the ears.",
"[48] Admirable too, and worthy of the Godhead, is the saying that the voice proceeded from the fire, for the oracles of God have been refined and assayed as gold is by fire.",
"[49] And it conveys too, symbolically, some such meaning as this: since it is the nature of fire both to give light and to burn, those who resolve to be obedient to the divine utterances will live for ever as in unclouded light with the laws themselves as stars illuminating their souls, while all who are rebellious will continue to be burnt, aye and burnt to ashes, by their inward lusts, which like a flame will ravage the whole life of those in whom they dwell."
],
[
"[50] Such are the points which required a preliminary treatment. We must now turn to the oracles themselves and examine all the different matters with which they deal. We find that He divided the ten into two sets of five which He engraved on two tables, and the first five obtained the first place, while the other was awarded the second. Both are excellent and profitable for life; both open out broad highroads leading at the end to a single goal, roads along which a soul which ever desires the best can travel without stumbling.",
"[51] The superior set of five treats of the following matters: the monarchical principle by which the world is governed: idols of stone and wood and images in general made by human hands: the sin of taking the name of God in vain: the reverent observance of the sacred seventh day as befits its holiness: the duty of honouring parents, each separately and both in common. Thus one set of enactments begins with God the Father and Maker of all, and ends with parents who copy His nature by begetting particular persons. The other set of five contains all the prohibitions, namely adultery, murder, theft, false witness, covetousness or lust.",
"[52] We must examine with all care each of the pronouncements, giving perfunctory treatment to none. The transcendent source of all that exists is God, as piety is the source of the virtues, and it is very necessary that these two should be first discussed.",
"A great delusion has taken hold of the larger part of mankind in regard to a fact which properly should be established beyond all question in every mind to the exclusion of, or at least above, all others.",
"[53] For some have deified the four elements, earth, water, air and fire, others the sun, moon, planets and fixed stars, others again the heaven by itself, others the whole world. But the highest and the most august, the Begetter, the Ruler of the great World-city, the Commander-in-Chief of the invincible host, the Pilot who ever steers all things in safety, Him they have hidden from sight by the misleading titles assigned to the objects of worship mentioned above.",
"[54] Different people give them different names: some call the earth Korē or Demeter or Pluto, and the sea Poseidon, and invent marine deities subordinate to him and great companies of attendants, male and female. They call air Hera and fire Hephaestus, the sun Apollo, the moon Artemis, the morning-star Aphrodite and the glitterer Hermes,",
"[55] and each of the other stars have names handed down by the myth-makers, who have put together fables skilfully contrived to deceive the hearers and thus won a reputation for accomplishment in name-giving.",
"[56] So too in accordance with the theory by which they divided the heaven into two hemispheres, one above the earth and one below it, they called them the Dioscuri and invented a further miraculous story of their living on alternate days. ",
"[57] For indeed as heaven is always revolving ceaselessly and continuously round and round, each hemisphere must necessarily alternately change its position day by day and become upper or lower as it appears, though in reality there is no upper or lower in a spherical figure, and it is merely in relation to our own position that we are accustomed to speak of what is above our heads as upper and the opposite to this as lower.",
"[58] Now to one who is determined to follow a genuine philosophy and make a pure and guileless piety his own, Moses gives this truly admirable and religious command that he should not suppose any of the parts of the universe to be the omnipotent God. For the world has become what it is, and its becoming is the beginning of its destruction, even though by the providence of God it be made immortal, and there was a time when it was not. But to speak of God as “not being” at some former time, or having “become” at some particular time and not existing for all eternity is profanity."
],
[
"[59] But there are some whose views are affected with such folly that they not only regard the said objects as gods but each of them severally as the greatest and primal God. Incapacity for instruction or indifference to learning prevents them from knowing the truly Existent because they suppose that there is no invisible and conceptual cause outside what the senses perceive, though the clearest possible proof lies ready at their hand.",
"[60] For while it is with the soul that they live and plan and carry out all the affairs of human life, they can never see the soul with the eyes of the body, though every feeling of ambition might well have been aroused in the hope of seeing that most august of all sacred objects, the natural stepping-stone to the conception of the Uncreated and Eternal, the invisible Charioteer who guides in safety the whole universe.",
"[61] So just as anyone who rendered to the subordinate satraps the honours due to the Great King would have seemed to reach the height not only of unwisdom but of foolhardiness, by bestowing on servants what belonged to their master, in the same way anyone who pays the same tribute to the creatures as to their Maker may be assured that he is the most senseless and unjust of men in that he gives equal measure to those who are not equal, though he does not thereby honour the meaner many but deposes the one superior.",
"[62] And there are some who in a further excess of impiety do not even give this equal payment, but bestow on those others all that can tend to honour, while to Him they refuse even the commonest of all tributes, that of remembering Him. Whom duty bids them remember, if nothing more, Him they forget, a forgetfulness deliberately practised to their lasting misery.",
"[63] Some again, seized with a loud-mouthed frenzy, publish abroad samples of their deep-seated impiety and attempt to blaspheme the Godhead, and when they whet the edge of their evil-speaking tongue they do so in the wish to grieve the pious who feel at once the inroad of a sorrow indescribable and inconsolable, which passing through the ears wastes as with fire the whole soul. For this is the battery of the unholy, and is in itself enough to curb the mouths of the devout who hold that silence is best for the time being to avoid giving provocation."
],
[
"[64] Let us then reject all such imposture and refrain from worshipping those who by nature are our brothers, even though they have been given a substance purer and more immortal than ours, for created things, in so far as they are created, are brothers, since they have all one Father, the Maker of the universe. Let us instead in mind and speech and every faculty gird ourselves up with vigour and activity to do the service of the Uncreated, the Eternal, the Cause of all, not submitting nor abasing ourselves to do the pleasure of the many who work the destruction even of those who might be saved.",
"[65] Let us, then, engrave deep in our hearts this as the first and most sacred of commandments, to acknowledge and honour one God Who is above all, and let the idea that gods are many never even reach the ears of the man whose rule of life is to seek for truth in purity and guilelessness.",
"[66] But while all who give worship and service to sun and moon and the whole heaven and universe or their chief parts as gods most undoubtedly err by magnifying the subjects above the ruler, their offence is less than that of the others who have given shape to stocks and stones and silver and gold and similar materials each according to their fancy and then filled the habitable world with images and wooden figures and the other works of human hands fashioned by the craftsmanship of painting and sculpture, arts which have wrought great mischief in the life of mankind.",
"[67] For these idolaters cut away the most excellent support of the soul, the rightful conception of the Ever-living God. Like boats without ballast they are for ever tossed and carried about hither and thither, never able to come to harbour or to rest securely in the roadstead of truth, blind to the one thing worthy of contemplation, which alone demands keen-sighted vision.",
"[68] To my mind they live a more miserable life than those who have lost the sight of the body, for those have been disabled through no wish of their own but either through suffering from some grievous disease of the eyes or through the malice of their enemies, but these others have of deliberate purpose not only dimmed but without scruple cast away entirely the eye of the soul.",
"[69] And therefore pity for their misfortune waits upon the former, punishment for their depravity quite justly on the latter. In their general ignorance they have failed to perceive even that most obvious truth which even “a witless infant knows,” that the craftsman is superior to the product of his craft both in time, since he is older than what he makes and in a sense its father, and in value, since the efficient element is held in higher esteem than the passive effect.",
"[70] And while if they were consistent in their sin, they should have deified the sculptors and painters themselves and given them honours on a magnificent scale, they leave them in obscurity and bestow no favour on them, while they regard as gods the figures and pictures made by their workmanship.",
"[71] The artists have often grown old in poverty and disesteem, and mishap after mishap has accompanied them to the grave, while the works of their art are glorified by the addition of purple and gold and silver and the other costly embellishments which wealth supplies, and are served not merely by ordinary freemen but by men of high birth and great bodily comeliness. For the birth of priests is made a matter for the most careful scrutiny to see whether it is unexceptionable, and the several parts which unite to form the body whether they make a perfect whole.",
"[72] Horrible as all this is, we have not reached the true horror. The worst is still to come. We have known some of the image-makers offer prayers and sacrifices to their own creations though they would have done much better to worship each of their two hands, or if they were disinclined for that because they shrank from appearing egotistical, to pay their homage to the hammers and anvils and pencils and pincers and the other tools by which their materials were shaped."
],
[
"[73] Surely to persons so demented we might well say boldly, “Good sirs, the best of prayers and the goal of happiness is to become like God.",
"[74] Pray you therefore that you may be made like your images and thus enjoy supreme happiness with eyes that see not, ears that hear not, nostrils which neither breathe nor smell, mouths that never taste nor speak, hands that neither give nor take nor do anything at all, feet that walk not, with no activity in any parts of your bodies, but kept under watch and ward in your temple-prison day and night, ever drinking in the smoke of the victims.",
"[75] For this is the one good which you imagine your idols to enjoy.” As a matter of fact I expect that such advice would be received with indignation as savouring of imprecations rather than of prayers and would call forth abusive repudiations and retorts, and this would be the strongest proof of the wide extent of impiety shown by men who acknowledge gods of such a nature that they would abominate the idea of resembling them."
],
[
"[76] Let no one, then, who has a soul worship a soulless thing, for it is utterly preposterous that the works of nature should turn aside to do service to what human hands have wrought.",
"But the Egyptians are rightly charged not only on the count to which every country is liable, but also on another peculiar to themselves. For in addition to wooden and other images, they have advanced to divine honours irrational animals, bulls and rams and goats, and invented for each some fabulous legend of wonder.",
"[77] And with these perhaps there might be some reason, for they are thoroughly domesticated and useful for our livelihood. The ox is a plougher and opens up furrows at seed-time and again is a very capable thresher when the corn has to be purged; the ram provides the best possible shelter, namely, clothing, for if our bodies were naked they would easily perish, either through heat or through intense cold, in the first case under the scorching of the sun, in the latter through the refrigeration caused by the air.",
"[78] But actually the Egyptians have gone to a further excess and chosen the fiercest and most savage of wild animals, lions and crocodiles and among reptiles the venomous asp, all of which they dignify with temples, sacred precincts, sacrifices, assemblies, processions and the like. For after ransacking the two elements given by God to man for his use, earth and water, to find their fiercest occupants, they found on land no creature more savage than the lion nor in water than the crocodile and these they reverence and honour.",
"[79] Many other animals too they have deified, dogs, cats, wolves and among the birds, ibises and hawks; fishes too, either their whole bodies or particular parts. What could be more ridiculous than all this?",
"[80] Indeed strangers on their first arrival in Egypt before the vanity of the land has gained a lodgement in their minds are like to die with laughing at it, while anyone who knows the flavour of right instruction, horrified at this veneration of things so much the reverse of venerable, pities those who render it and regards them with good reason as more miserable than the creatures they honour, as men with souls transformed into the nature of those creatures, so that as they pass before him, they seem beasts in human shape.",
"[81] So then He gave no place in His sacred code of laws to all such setting up of other gods, and called upon men to honour Him that truly is, not because He needed that honour should be paid to Him, for He that is all-sufficient to Himself needs nothing else, but because He wished to lead the human race, wandering in pathless wilds, to the road from which none can stray, so that following nature they might win the best of goals, knowledge of Him that truly IS, Who is the primal and most perfect good, from Whom as from a fountain is showered the water of each particular good upon the world and them that dwell therein."
],
[
"[82] We have now discussed as fully as possible the second commandment. Let us proceed to examine carefully the next in order, not to take God’s name in vain. Now the reason for the position of this commandment in the list will be understood by those who have clear-sighted minds, for the name always stands second to the thing which it represents as the shadow which follows the body.",
"[83] So after speaking first about the existence of the Ever-existent and the honour due to Him as such, He follows it at once in orderly sequence by giving a commandment on the proper use of His title, for the errors of men in this part of their duty are manifold and multiform.",
"[84]To swear not at all is the best course and most profitable to life, well suited to a rational nature which has been taught to speak the truth so well on each occasion that its words are regarded as oaths; to swear truly is only, as people say, a “second-best voyage,” for the mere fact of his swearing casts suspicion on the trustworthiness of the man.",
"[85] Let him, then, lag and linger in the hope that by repeated postponement he may avoid the oath altogether.",
"But, if necessity be too strong for him, he must consider in no careless fashion all that an oath involves, for that is no small thing, though custom makes light of it.",
"[86] For an oath is an appeal to God as a witness on matters in dispute, and to call Him as witness to a lie is the height of profanity. Be pleased, I beg you, to take a look with the aid of your reason into the mind of the intending perjurer. You will see there a mind not at peace but full of uproar and confusion, labouring under accusation, suffering all manner of insult and reviling.",
"[87] For every soul has for its birth-fellow and house-mate a monitor whose way is to admit nothing that calls for censure, whose nature is ever to hate evil and love virtue, who is its accuser and its judge in one. If he be once roused as accuser he censures, accuses and puts the soul to shame, and again as judge, he instructs, admonishes and exhorts it to change its ways. And if he has the strength to persuade it, he rejoices and makes peace. But if he cannot, he makes war to the bitter end, never leaving it alone by day or night, but plying it with stabs and deadly wounds until he breaks the thread of its miserable and ill-starred life."
],
[
"[88] How now! I would say to the perjurer, will you dare to accost any of your acquaintance and say, “Come, sir, and testify for me that you have seen and heard and been in touch throughout with things which you did not see nor hear.” My own belief is that you would not, for it would be the act of a hopeless lunatic.",
"[89] If you are sober and to all appearance in your right mind, how could you have the face to say to your friend, “For the sake of our comradeship, work iniquity, transgress the law, join me in impiety”? Clearly if he hears such words, he will turn his back upon his supposed comradeship, and reproaching himself that there should ever have been the tie of friendship between him and such a person, rush away from him as from a savage and maddened beast.",
"[90] Can it be, then, that on a matter on which you would not dare to cite even a friend you do not blush to call God to witness, God the Father and Ruler of the world? Do you do so with the knowledge that He sees and hears all things or in ignorance of this? If in ignorance,",
"[91] you are an atheist, and atheism is the source of all iniquities, and in addition to your atheism you cut the ground from under the oath, since in swearing by God you attribute a care for human affairs to one who in your view has no regard for them. But if you are convinced of His providence as a certainty, there is no further height of impiety which remains for you to reach when you say to God, if not with your mouth and tongue, at any rate with your conscience, “Witness to a falsehood for me, share my evil-doing and my knavery. The one hope I have of maintaining my good name with men is that Thou shouldest disguise the truth. Be wicked for the sake of another, the superior for the sake of the inferior, the Divine, the best of all, for a man, and a bad man to boot.”"
],
[
"[92] There are some who without even any gain in prospect have an evil habit of swearing incessantly and thoughtlessly about ordinary matters where there is nothing at all in dispute, filling up the gaps in their talk with oaths, forgetting that it were better to submit to have their words cut short or rather to be silenced altogether, for from much swearing springs false swearing and impiety.",
"[93] Therefore one who is about to take an oath should have made a careful and most punctilious examination, first of the matter in question, whether it is of sufficient importance, whether it has actually happened, and whether he has a sound apprehension of the facts; secondly, of himself, whether his soul is pure from lawlessness, his body from pollution, his tongue from evil-speaking, for it would be sacrilege to employ the mouth by which one pronounces the holiest of all names, to utter any words of shame.",
"[94] And let him seek for a suitable time and place. For I know full well that there are persons who, in profane and impure places where it would not be fitting to mention either a father or mother or even any good-living elder outside his family, swear at length and make whole speeches consisting of a string of oaths and thus, by their misuse of the many forms of the divine name in places where they ought not to do so, show their impiety.",
"[95] Anyone who treats what I have said with contempt may rest assured, first, that he is polluted and unclean, secondly, that the heaviest punishments are waiting to fall upon him. For justice, who surveys human affairs, is inflexible and implacable towards such grave misdeeds, and when she thinks well to refrain from immediate chastisement, be sure that she does but put out her penalties to loan at high interest, only to exact them when the time comes to the common benefit of all."
],
[
"[96] The fourth commandment deals with the sacred seventh day, that it should be observed in a reverent and religious manner. While some states celebrate this day as a feast once a month, reckoning it from the commencement as shown by the moon, the Jewish nation never ceases to do so at continuous intervals with six days between each.",
"[97] There is an account recorded in the story of the Creation containing a cogent reason for this: we are told that the world was made in six days and that on the seventh God ceased from His works and began to contemplate what had been so well created,",
"[98] and therefore He bade those who should live as citizens under this world-order follow God in this as in other matters. So He commanded that they should apply themselves to work for six days but rest on the seventh and turn to the study of wisdom, and that while they thus had leisure for the contemplation of the truths of nature they should also consider whether any offence against purity had been committed in the preceding days, and exact from themselves in the council-chamber of the soul, with the laws as their fellow-assessors and fellow-examiners, a strict account of what they had said or done in order to correct what had been neglected and to take precaution against repetition of any sin.",
"[99] But while God once for all made a final use of six days for the completion of the world and had no further need of time-periods, every man being a partaker of mortal nature and needing a vast multitude of things to supply the necessaries of life ought never to the end of his life to slacken in providing what he requires, but should rest on the sacred seventh days.",
"[100] Have we not here a most admirable injunction full of power to urge us to every virtue and piety most of all? “Always follow God,” it says, “find in that single six-day period in which, all-sufficient for His purpose, He created the world, a pattern of the time set apart to thee for activity. Find, too, in the seventh day the pattern of thy duty to study wisdom, that day in which we are told that He surveyed what He had wrought, and so learn to meditate thyself on the lessons of nature and all that in thy own life makes for happiness.”",
"[101] Let us not then neglect this great archetype of the two best lives, the practical and the contemplative, but with that pattern ever before our eyes engrave in our hearts the clear image and stamp of them both, so making mortal nature, as far as may be, like the immortal by saying and doing what we ought. But in what sense the world is said to have been created by God in six days when no time-period of any kind was needed by Him for his work has been explained elsewhere in our allegorical expositions. "
],
[
"[102] As for the number seven, the precedence awarded to it among all that exists is explained by the students of mathematics, who have investigated it with the utmost care and consideration. It is the virgin among the numbers, the essentially motherless, the closest bound to the initial Unit, the “idea” of the planets, just as the unit is of the sphere of the fixed stars, for from the Unit and Seven springs the incorporeal heaven which is the pattern of the visible. ",
"[103] Now the substance from which the heaven has been framed is partly undivided and partly divided. To the undivided belongs the primal, highest and undeviating revolution presided over by the unit; to the divided another revolution, secondary both in value and order, under the governance of Seven, and this by a sixfold partition has produced the seven so-called planets, or wanderers. ",
"[104] Not that any of the occupants of heaven wander, for sharing as they do in a blessed and divine and happy nature, they are all intrinsically free from any such tendency. In fact they preserve their uniformity unbroken and run their round to and fro for all eternity admitting no swerving or alteration. It is because their course is contrary to that of the undivided and outermost sphere that the planets gained their name which was improperly applied to them by the more thoughtless people, who credited with their own wanderings the heavenly bodies which never leave their posts in the divine camp. ",
"[105] For these reasons and many others beside Seven is held in honour. But nothing so much assures its predominance as that through it is best given the revelation of the Father and Maker of all, for in it, as in a mirror, the mind has a vision of God as acting and creating the world and controlling all that is."
],
[
"[106] After dealing with the seventh day, He gives the fifth commandment on the honour due to parents. This commandment He placed on the border-line between the two sets of five; it is the last of the first set in which the most sacred injunctions are given and it adjoins the second set which contains the duties of man to man.",
"[107] The reason I consider is this: we see that parents by their nature stand on the border-line between the mortal and the immortal side of existence, the mortal because of their kinship with men and other animals through the perishableness of the body; the immortal because the act of generation assimilates them to God, the generator of the All.",
"[108] Now we have known some who associate themselves with one of the two sides and are seen to neglect the other. They have drunk of the unmixed wine of pious aspirations and turning their backs upon all other concerns devoted their personal life wholly to the service of God.",
"[109] Others conceiving the idea that there is no good outside doing justice to men have no heart for anything but companionship with men. In their desire for fellowship they supply the good things of life in equal measure to all for their use, and deem it their duty to alleviate by anything in their power the dreaded hardships.",
"[110] These may be justly called lovers of men, the former sort lovers of God. Both come but halfway in virtue; they only have it whole who win honour in both departments. But all who neither take their fit place in dealings with men by sharing the joy of others at the common good and their grief at the reverse, nor cling to piety and holiness, would seem to have been transformed into the nature of wild beasts. In such bestial savagery the first place will be taken by those who disregard parents and are therefore the foes of both sides of the law, the godward and the manward."
],
[
"[111] Let them not then fail to understand that in the two courts, the only courts which nature has, they stand convicted; in the divine court, of impiety because they do not show due respect to those who brought them forth from non-existence to existence and in this were imitators of God; in the human court, of inhumanity.",
"[112] For to whom else will they show kindness if they despise the closest of their kinsfolk who have bestowed upon them the greatest boons, some of them far exceeding any possibility of repayment? For how could the begotten beget in his turn those whose seed he is, since nature has bestowed on parents in relation to their children an estate of a special kind which cannot be subject to the law of “exchange” ? And therefore the greatest indignation is justified if children, because they are unable to make a complete return, refuse to make even the slightest.",
"[113] Properly, I should say to them, “beasts ought to become tame through association with men.” Indeed I have often known lions and bears and panthers become tame, not only with those who feed them, in gratitude for receiving what they require, but also with everybody else, presumably because of the likeness to those who give them food. That is what should happen, for it is always good for the inferior to follow the superior in hope of improvement.",
"[114] But as it is I shall be forced to say the opposite of this, “You men will do well to take some beasts for your models.” They have been trained to know how to return benefit for benefit. Watch-dogs guard and die for their masters when some danger suddenly overtakes them. Sheep-dogs, they say, fight for their charges and hold their ground till they conquer or die, in order to keep the herdsmen unscathed.",
"[115] Is it not, then, a very scandal of scandals that in returning kindnesses a man should be worsted by a dog, the most civilized of living creatures by the most audacious of brutes?",
"But, if we cannot learn from the land animals, let us turn for a lesson in right conduct to the winged tribe that ranges the air.",
"[116] Among the storks the old birds stay in the nests when they are unable to fly, while their children fly, I might almost say, over sea and land, gathering from every quarter provision for the needs of their parents;",
"[117] and so while they in the inactivity justified by their age continue to enjoy all abundance of luxury, the younger birds making light of the hardships sustained in their quest for food, moved by piety and the expectation that the same treatment will be meted to them by their offspring, repay the debt which they may not refuse—a debt both incurred and discharged at the proper time—namely that in which one or other of the parties is unable to maintain itself, the children in the first stage of their existence, the parents at the end of their lives. And thus without any teacher but their natural instinct they gladly give to age the nurture which fostered their youth.",
"[118] With this example before them may not human beings, who take no thought for their parents, deservedly hide their faces for shame and revile themselves for their neglect of those whose welfare should necessarily have been their sole or their primary care, and that not so much as givers as repayers of a due? For children have nothing of their own which does not come from their parents, either bestowed from their own resources or acquired by means which originate from them.",
"[119] Piety and religion are the queens among the virtues. Do they dwell within the confines of such souls as these? No, they have driven them from the realm and sent them into banishment. For parents are the servants of God for the task of begetting children, and he who dishonours the servant dishonours also the Lord.",
"[120] Some bolder spirits, glorifying the name of parenthood, say that a father and a mother are in fact gods revealed to sight who copy the Uncreated in His work as the Framer of life. He, they say, is the God or Maker of the world, they of those only whom they have begotten, and how can reverence be rendered to the invisible God by those who show irreverence to the gods who are near at hand and seen by the eye?"
],
[
"[121] With these wise words on honouring parents He closes the one set of five which is more concerned with the divine. In committing to writing the second set which contains the actions prohibited by our duty to fellow-men, He begins with adultery, holding this to be the greatest of crimes.",
"[122] For in the first place it has its source in the love of pleasure which enervates the bodies of those who entertain it, relaxes the sinews of the soul and wastes away the means of subsistence, consuming like an unquenchable fire all that it touches and leaving nothing wholesome in human life.",
"[123] Secondly, it persuades the adulterer not merely to do the wrong but to teach another to share the wrong by setting up a partnership in a situation where no true partnership is possible. For when the frenzy has got the mastery, the appetites cannot possibly gain their end through one agent only, but there must necessarily be two acting in common, one taking the position of the teacher, the other of the pupil, whose aim is to put on a firm footing the vilest of sins, licentiousness and lewdness.",
"[124] We cannot even say that it is only the body of the adulteress which is corrupted, but the real truth is that her soul rather than her body is habituated to estrangement from the husband, taught as it is to feel complete aversion and hatred for him.",
"[125] And the matter would be less terrible if the hatred were shown openly, since what is conspicuous is more easily guarded against, but in actual fact it easily eludes suspicion and detection, shrouded by artful knavery and sometimes creating by deceptive wiles the opposite impression of affection.",
"[126] Indeed it makes havoc of three families: of that of the husband who suffers from the breach of faith, stripped of the promise of his marriage-vows and his hopes of legitimate offspring, and of two others, those of the adulterer and the woman, for the infection of the outrage and dishonour and disgrace of the deepest kind extends to the family of both.",
"[127] And if their connexions include a large number of persons through intermarriages and widespread associations, the wrong will travel all round and affect the whole State.",
"[128] Very painful, too, is the uncertain status of the children, for if the wife is not chaste there will be doubt and dispute as to the real paternity of the offspring. Then if the fact is undetected, the fruit of the adultery usurp the position of the legitimate and form an alien and bastard brood and will ultimately succeed to the heritage of their putative father to which they have no right.",
"[129] And the adulterer having in insolent triumph vented his passions and sown the seed of shame, his lust now sated, will leave the scene and go on his way mocking at the ignorance of the victim of his crime, who like a blind man knowing nothing of the covert intrigues of the past will be forced to cherish the children of his deadliest foe as his own flesh and blood.",
"[130] On the other hand, if the wrong becomes known, the poor children who have done no wrong will be most unfortunate, unable to be classed with either family, either the husband’s or the adulterer’s.",
"[131] Such being the disasters wrought by illicit intercourse, naturally the abominable and God-detested sin of adultery was placed first in the list of wrongdoing."
],
[
"[132] The second commandment is to do no murder. For nature, who created man the most civilized of animals to be gregarious and sociable, has called him to shew fellowship and a spirit of partnership by endowing him with reason, the bond which leads to harmony and reciprocity of feeling. Let him, then, who slays another know full well that he is subverting the laws and statutes of nature so excellently enacted for the well-being of all.",
"[133] Further, let him understand that he is guilty of sacrilege, the robbery from its sanctuary of the most sacred of God’s possessions. For what votive offering is more hallowed or more worthy of reverence than a man? Gold and silver and costly stones and other substances of highest price serve as ornaments to buildings which are as lifeless as the ornaments themselves.",
"[134] But man, the best of living creatures, through that higher part of his being, namely, the soul, is most nearly akin to heaven, the purest thing in all that exists, and, as most admit, also to the Father of the world, possessing in his mind a closer likeness and copy than anything else on earth of the eternal and blessed Archetype."
],
[
"[135] The third commandment in the second five forbids stealing, for he who gapes after what belongs to others is the common enemy of the State, willing to rob all, but able only to filch from some, because, while his covetousness extends indefinitely, his feebler capacity cannot keep pace with it but restricted to a small compass reaches only to a few.",
"[136] So all thieves who have acquired the strength rob whole cities, careless of punishment because their high distinction seems to set them above the laws. These are oligarchically-minded persons, ambitious for despotism or domination, who perpetrate thefts on a great scale, disguising the real fact of robbery under the grand-sounding names of government and leadership.",
"[137] Let a man, then, learn from his earliest years to filch nothing by stealth that belongs to another, however small it may be, because custom in the course of time is stronger than nature, and little things if not checked grow and thrive till they attain to great dimensions."
],
[
"[138] Having denounced theft, he next proceeds to forbid false witness, knowing that false witnesses are guilty under many important heads, all of them of a grave kind. In the first place, they corrupt truth, the august, the treasure as sacred as anything that we possess in life, which like the sun pours light upon facts and events and allows none of them to be kept in the shade.",
"[139] Secondly, apart from the falsehood, they veil the facts as it were in night and profound darkness, take part with the offenders and against those who are wronged, by affirming that they have sure knowledge and thorough apprehension of things which they have neither seen nor heard.",
"[140] And indeed they commit a third transgression even more heinous than the first two. For when there is a lack of proofs, either verbal or written, disputants have resort to witnesses whose words are taken by the jurymen as standards in determining the verdicts they are about to give, since they are obliged to fall back on these alone if there is no other means of testing the truth. The result is that those against whom the testimony is given suffer injustice when they might have won their case, and the judges who listen to the testimony record unjust and lawless instead of just and lawful votes.",
"[141] In fact, the knavery of the action amounts to impiety, for it is the rule that jurymen must be put on their oaths and indeed oaths of the most terrific character which are broken not so much by the victims as by the perpetrators of the deception, since the former do not err intentionally, while the latter with full knowledge set the oaths at nought. They deliberately sin themselves and persuade those who have control of the voting to share their sin and, though they know not what they do, punish persons who deserve no chastisement. It was for these reasons, I believe, that He forbade false witness."
],
[
"[142] The last commandment is against covetousness or desire which he knew to be a subversive and insidious enemy. For all the passions of the soul which stir and shake it out of its proper nature and do not let it continue in sound health are hard to deal with, but desire is hardest of all. And therefore while each of the others seems to be involuntary, an extraneous visitation, an assault from outside, desire alone originates with ourselves and is voluntary.",
"[143] What is it that I mean? The presentation to the mind of something which is actually with us and considered to be good, arouses and awakes the soul when at rest and like a light flashing upon the eyes raises it to a state of great elation. This sensation of the soul is called pleasure.",
"[144] And when evil, the opposite of good, forces its way in and deals a home thrust to the soul, it at once fills it all against its will with depression and dejection. This sensation is called grief, or pain.",
"[145] When the evil thing is not yet lodged inside nor pressing hard upon us but is on the point of arriving and is making its preparation, it sends in its van trepidation and distress, messengers of evil presage, to sound the alarm. This sensation is called fear.",
"[146] But when a person conceives an idea of something good which is not present and is eager to get it, and propels his soul to the greatest distance and strains it to the greatest possible extent in his avidity to touch the desired object, he is, as it were, stretched upon a wheel, all anxiety to grasp the object but unable to reach so far and in the same plight as persons pursuing with invincible zeal, though with inferior speed, others who retreat before them.",
"[147] We also find a similar phenomenon in the senses. The eyes are often eager to obtain apprehension of some very far off object. They strain themselves and carry on bravely and indeed beyond their strength, then hit upon a void and there slip, failing to get an accurate knowledge of the object in question, and furthermore they lose strength and their power of sight is dimmed by the intensity and violence of their steady gazing.",
"[148] And again when an indistinct noise is carried from a long distance the ears are roused and pressed forward at high speed and are eager to go nearer if they could, in their longing to have the sound made clear to the hearing.",
"[149] The noise however, whose impact evidently continues to be dull, does not shew any increase of clearness which might make it knowable, and so a still greater intensity is given to the ceaseless and indescribable longing for apprehension. For desire entails the punishment of Tantalus; as he missed everything that he wished for just when he was about to touch it, so the person who is mastered by desire, ever thirsting for what is absent remains unsatisfied, fumbling around his baffled appetite.",
"[150] And just as diseases of the creeping type, if not arrested in time by the knife or cautery, course round all that unites to make the body and leave no part uninjured, so unless philosophical reasoning, like a good physician, checks the stream of desire, all life’s affairs will be necessarily distorted from what nature prescribes. For there is nothing so secreted that it escapes from passion, which when once it finds itself in security and freedom spreads like a flame and works universal destruction.",
"[151] It may perhaps be foolish to dilate at this length on facts so obvious, for what man or city does not know that they provide clear proof of their truth, not only every day but almost every hour? Consider the passion whether for money or a woman or glory or anything else that produces pleasure: are the evils which it causes small or casual?",
"[152] Is it not the cause why kinsmen become estranged and change their natural goodwill to deadly hatred, why great and populous countries are desolated by internal factions, and land and sea are filled with ever-fresh calamaties wrought by battles on sea and campaigns on land?",
"[153] For all the wars of Greeks and barbarians between themselves or against each other, so familiar to the tragic stage, are sprung from one source, desire, the desire for money or glory or pleasure. These it is that bring disaster to the human race."
],
[
"[154] Enough on this subject, but also we must not forget that the Ten Covenants are summaries of the special laws which are recorded in the Sacred Books and run through the whole of the legislation.",
"[155] The first summarizes the laws on God’s monarchical rule. These laws declare that there is one First Cause of the World, one Ruler and King, Who guides the chariot and steers the bark of the universe in safety, and has expelled from the purest part of all that exists, namely heaven, those mischievous forms of government, oligarchy and mob-rule, which arise among the vilest of men, produced by disorder and covetousness.",
"[156] The second sums up all the enactments made concerning the works of men’s hands. It forbids the making of images or wooden busts and idols in general produced by the baneful craftsmanship of painting and sculpture, and also the acceptance of fabulous legends about the marriages and pedigrees of deities and the numberless and very grave scandals associated with both of these.",
"[157] Under the third he includes directions as to all the cases where swearing is forbidden and as to the time, place, matters, persons, state of soul and body which justify the taking of an oath, and all pronouncements concerning those who swear truthfully or the reverse."
],
[
"[158] The fourth, which treats of the seventh day, must be regarded as nothing less than a gathering under one head of the feasts and the purifications ordained for each feast, the proper lustrations and the acceptable prayers and flawless sacrifices with which the ritual was carried out.",
"[159] By the seventh I mean both the seventh which includes the most creative of numbers, six, and that which does not include it but takes precedence of it and resembles the unit. Both these are employed by him in reckoning the feast-times. The unit is taken in the case of the holy-month-day which they announce with trumpets, and the fast-day on which abstinence from food and drink is commanded, and the day called by the Hebrews in their own tongue the Pasch on which the whole people sacrifice, every member of them, without waiting for their priests, because the law has granted to the whole nation for one special day in every year the right of priesthood and of performing the sacrifices themselves.",
"[160] Also the day on which a sheaf is brought as a thanksgiving for fertility and for the produce of the lowlands as shown in the full corn in the ear; then by reckoning seven sevens after this the fiftieth day, when it is the custom to bring loaves the nature of which is properly described by their title of “loaves of the first-products,” as they are the sample of the crops and fruits produced by civilized cultivation which God has assigned for his nourishment to man, the most civilized of living things.",
"[161] To seven he gives the chief feasts prolonged for many days, two feasts, that is, for the two equinoxes, each lasting for seven days, the first in the spring to celebrate the ripeness of the sown crops, the second in the autumn for the ingathering of all the tree-fruits; also seven days were naturally assigned to the seven months of each equinox, so that each month may have, as a special privilege, one festal day consecrated to cheerfulness and enjoyment of leisure.",
"[162] Other laws, too, come under the same head, admirable enactments exhorting men to gentleness and fellowship and simplicity and equality. Some of them deal with the hebdomadal year, as it is called, in which the land is ordered to be left entirely idle without any sowing or ploughing or purging or pruning of trees or any other operation of husbandry.",
"[163] For when both the lowlands and the uplands have been worked for six years to bring forth fruits and pay their annual tribute, he thought well to give them a rest to serve as a breathing-space in which they might enjoy the freedom of undirected nature.",
"[164] And there are other laws about the fiftieth year which is marked not only by the course of action just related, but also by the restoration of inheritance to the families which originally possessed them, a very necessary procedure abounding in humanity and justice."
],
[
"[165] In the fifth commandment on honouring parents we have a suggestion of many necessary laws drawn up to deal with the relations of old to young, rulers to subjects, benefactors to benefited, slaves to masters.",
"[166] For parents belong to the superior class of the above-mentioned pairs, that which comprises seniors, rulers, benefactors and masters, while children occupy the lower position with juniors, subjects, receivers of benefits and slaves.",
"[167] And there are many other instructions given, to the young on courtesy to the old, to the old on taking care of the young, to subjects on obeying their rulers, to rulers on promoting the welfare of their subjects, to recipients of benefits on requiting them with gratitude, to those who have given of their own initiative on not seeking to get repayment as though it were a debt, to servants on rendering an affectionate loyalty to their masters, to masters on showing the gentleness and kindness by which inequality is equalized."
],
[
"[168] The first set having each of them the form of a summary contains these five and no more, while the number of the special laws is considerable. In the other set the first head is that against adultery, under which come many enactments against seducers and pederasty, against dissolute living and indulgence in lawless and licentious forms of intercourse.",
"[169] The characteristics of these he has described, not to show the multiform varieties which incontinence assumes, but to bring to shame in the most open way those who live a disreputable life by pouring into their ears a flood of reproaches calculated to make them blush.",
"[170] The second head forbids murder, and under it come the laws, all of them indispensable and of great public utility, about violence, insult, outrage, wounding and mutilation.",
"[171] The third is that against stealing under which are included the decrees made against defaulting debtors, repudiations of deposits, partnerships which are not true to their name, shameless robberies and in general covetous feelings which urge men openly or secretly to appropriate the possessions of others.",
"[172] The fourth against bearing false witness embraces many prohibitions. It forbids deceit, false accusation, cooperation with evil-doers and using honesty as a screen for dishonesty, all of which have been the subjects of appropriate laws.",
"[173] The fifth blocks that fount of injustice, desire, from which flow the most iniquitous actions, public and private, small and great, dealing with things sacred or things profane, affecting bodies and souls and what are called external things. For nothing escapes desire, and as I have said before, like a flame in the forest, it spreads abroad and consumes and destroys everything.",
"[174] And there are many ordinances which come under this head intended for the admonition of those who are capable of reformation and the punishment of the rebellious who have made a lifelong surrender to passion."
],
[
"[175] This is all that need be said regarding the second five to complete our account of the ten oracles which God gave forth Himself as well befitted His holiness. For it was in accordance with His nature that the pronouncements in which the special laws were summed up should be given by Him in His own person, but the particular laws by the mouth of the most perfect of the prophets whom He selected for his merits and having filled him with the divine spirit, chose him to be the interpreter of His sacred utterances.",
"[176] Next let us pass on to give the reason why He expressed the ten words or laws in the form of simple commands or prohibitions without laying down any penalty, as is the way of legislators, against future transgressors. He was God, and it follows at once that as Lord He was good, the cause of good only and of nothing ill.",
"[177] So then He judged that it was most in accordance with His being to issue His saving commandments free from any admixture of punishment, that men might choose the best, not involuntarily, but of deliberate purpose, not taking senseless fear but the good sense of reason for their counsellor. He therefore thought right not to couple punishment with His utterances, though He did not thereby grant immunity to evil-doers, but knew that justice His assessor, the surveyor of human affairs, in virtue of her inborn hatred of evil, will not rest, but take upon herself as her congenital task the punishment of sinners.",
"[178] For it befits the servants and lieutenants of God, that like generals in war-time they should bring vengeance to bear upon deserters who leave the ranks of justice. But it befits the Great King that the general safety of the universe should be ascribed to Him, that He should be the guardian of peace and supply richly and abundantly the good things of peace, all of them to all persons in every place and at every time. For indeed God is the Prince of Peace while His subalterns are the leaders in war."
]
],
"Appendix": [
"APPENDIX TO DE DECALOGO",
"§ 1. For knowledge loves to learn, etc. As stated in the footnote, the phrasing seems almost impossible. I can find no case where ἐπιστήμη bears a sense which could be coupled with φιλομαθής, or where διάνοια means an understanding which is above knowledge. The translators appear to be at a loss. Treitel has “wegen der auf den tieferen Sinn gerichteten Schriftforschung.” But how can ἐπιστήμη = “Schriftforschung”? Mangey (perhaps translating the conjecture mentioned below) has “reconditae scientiae studio et curiosae.” Yonge (probably translating Mangey) “natural love of more recondite and laborious study.” The emendations mentioned are Mangey’s διʼ ὑπονοιῶν for πρὸς διάνοιαν, and Wendland’s ἐπιστάσεως for ἐπιστήμης. If ἐπίστασις can = “intentio,” this will give some sense, though it would be better if ὑπόνοιαν is accepted for διάνοιαν (ὑπόνοια sing. is used for “allegorizing” in Spec. Leg. ii. 257).",
"§ 21. The arithmetical, etc. This seems to be very loosely expressed. ἀναλογία does not carry with it the idea of a series like our “progression,” but of an equality of ratio, and indeed it can only be properly (κυρίως) applied, as Nicomachus says, to the geometrical. It certainly cannot itself be said to exceed or be exceeded. Philo has stated it quite clearly in De Op. 108, in much the same words as are used in the translation. Possibly here also we should read ᾗ <ὁ μέσος ὅρος> ὑπερέχει, κτλ.",
"§ 30. The categories. Philo follows with little variation the two lists given by Aristotle in Topica, i. 9 and Categoriae 4 of the 10 categories. But he carries them away into a very different region from Aristotle’s logical meaning of predicates or “classification of the manners in which assertions may be made of the subject.” His reason for asserting that he has οὐσία, and his view of time and place (in Aristotle πότε and ποῦ) as the indispensables for all existence are quite foreign to Aristotle’s thought, at any rate in drawing up this list.",
"§ 39. (Text of ὅτε δὲ προστάττων, etc.) Cohn deals with this passage in Hermes, 1903, pp. 502 f., but not very conclusively. The solution he would prefer is to omit ὅτε δὲ and to correct (with one MS.) ἰδίᾳ to ἰδίᾳ δʼ, a change which he bases largely on the improbability of such an hiatus as ἰδίᾳ ὡς. I do not feel competent to estimate the value of this last argument (see remarks on Spec. Leg. i. 90, App. p. 620). The omission of ὅτε δὲ has some support from one MS. (G), which has διαλέγεται ἑνὶ ἑκάστῳ προστάττων, κτλ. Of the rest, one has ἑνί, ὅτε δὲ, the others an obvious corruption of this, ἐνίοτε δὲ. No doubt with Cohn’s changes the sentence is translatable. He, however, says that he cannot see the sense of τῶν ἐμφερομένων, which he justly remarks cannot mean, as Mangey takes it, “eorum qui adsunt.” I think the sense given in the translation, which will also fit in with the form suggested by Cohn, does not present much difficulty. In the kind of oration which Philo has in mind definite instruction as to the steps to be taken (τὰ πρακτέα) would be only part of the contents.",
"§ 54. They call air Hera. This is first suggested by Plato, Cratylus 404 c (ἀήρ being an anagram of ἥρα) and was adopted by the Stoics. See particularly Diog. Laert. vii. 147, where Hera is the name given to the divine power in virtue of its extension (διάτασις) to the air, as Athena, Poseidon, Hephaestus and Demeter represent its extension to aether, sea, fire and earth. For other references see Index to S. V. F. So also Philo, De Vit. Cont. 3, where the name is supposed to be derived παρὰ τὸ αἴρεσθαι καὶ μετεωρίζεσθαι εἰς τὸ ὕψος.",
"§ 56. Living on alternate days. Or perhaps as Philo understands it “living (and dying) alternately every day,” which is what the interpretation of the story by the hemispheres requires. So, too, in the other place where he alludes to the story, De Som. i. 150, since the antithesis there is between sleeping and waking. The only other passage where I have found this interpretation is in Sext. Emp. Adv. math. ix. 37 τὰ γὰρ δύο ἡμισφαίρια τό τε ὑπὲρ γῆς καὶ τὸ ὑπὸ γῆν Διοσκούρους οἱ σοφοὶ τῶν τότε ἀνθρώπων ἔλεγον.",
"§ 77. (Egyptian animal worship.) See Herodotus ii. 65–74. These chapters lay stress chiefly on cats (αἴλουροι) and crocodiles, but ibises and snakes are mentioned also. Juv. xv. 1–7 mentions crocodiles, ibises, apes, dogs and fishes. On these lines Mayor has collected a number of illustrations, among them Philo, Legatio 139, where he speaks very briefly in the same sense as here. Neither Herodotus nor Juvenal mentions wolves and lions, and I see no other allusion to them in Mayor’s quotations.",
"§ 88. ἐγὼ μέν γε. This is one of the small matters in which an earlier knowledge of the Palimpsest would apparently have led Cohn to alter his reading. His MSS. have μὲν, except M which has μὲν γὰρ, on the strength of which he printed μέν γε. The Palimpsest has μὲν οὖν, which he considers preferable. Unwilling or unable to judge, I have retained μέν γε with this warning.",
"§ 92. τὰ κενὰ τῶν. This emendation of μὲν αὐτῶν to κενὰ τῶν seems certain and will perhaps support my emendation of the same two words in De Mig. 164, where I have altered them to μελιττῶν.",
"§ 96. Once a month. The principal passages quoted in support of this are Herod, vi. 57, where he says that the Spartans made offerings to Apollo at every new moon and seventh day of the month, and Hes. Op. 770, where the seventh day is said to be sacred as Apollo’s birthday. Also there are inscriptions in various places where ἑβδομαῖος and ἑβδομαῖον appear as epithets of Apollo or indicating feasts held in his honour. See references in L. & S. (revised).",
"Ibid. (σελήνην or θεὸν.) Cohn writing in Hermes, 1903, p. 548, before the discovery of the Palimpsest, had declared for σελήνην. His explanation of the corruption to θεὸν is that it arises from the scribes mistaking the astronomical symbol of the moon for Θ̅Ν̅ = θεόν. (This would be convincing if this symbol were as he describes it. On my present information it is rather C, while Θ = the sun.) Prima facie it does not seem impossible that in a country where the opening of the sacred and lunar month has to be distinguished from the civil the phrase “according to the goddess” might have been in such common use that Philo might employ it without much thought or scruple. See note on Spec. Leg. iii. 171. But the discovery that the Palimpsest actually has σελήνην certainly weights the evidence strongly in favour of it.",
"§ 106. προστάττεται for πρὸς τὰ πέντε, which may be presumed from Cohn’s silence to be the reading of the Palimpsest as well as of the other MSS, is adopted by him on the grounds that ΤΤΕΤΑΙ might easily be corrupted to ΠΕΝΤΕ, and that the Armenian version gives a similar sense “ut videtur.” If this last is clearly established, the emendation may be accepted. Otherwise it is difficult to see why a word like προστάττειν, which perpetually recurs in these treatises, should be corrupted. The reading of G, ἑνοῖ (“unites”) πρὸς τὰ ἕτερα πέντε καὶ συνάπτει τῇ δευτέρᾳ, looks, as he says, like an unsuccessful attempt to emend the passage. Perhaps we might consider as an alternative προστεθέν τε, “last of the first pentad in which are the most sacred things and added to it,” i.e. “an appendage.” Philo often uses προσθήκη with a sense of inferiority, e.g. Spec. Leg. ii. 248, and it would fitly describe the relation of the fifth to the first four commandments.",
"§ 116. (Filial affection of storks.) The currency of this idea is best shewn by the existence of the verb ἀντιπελαργεῖν = “to return kindness.” Other mentions of it will be found in Aristotle, Hist. Anim. ix. 18, Aristophanes, Av. 1353 ff.; and the φρονιμώτατοι οἰωνοί of Sophocles, El. 1058, “who are careful to nourish those who gave them nurture,” are no doubt the same.",
"§ 120. Some bolder spirits. One such is Hierocles the Stoic quoted by Stobaeus (Meineke, iii. p. 96), οὓς (sc. γονεῖς) δευτέρους καὶ ἐπιγείους τινὰς θεοὺς οὐκ ἂν ἁμάρτοι τις, ἕνεκά γε τῆς ἐγγύτητος, εἰ θέμις εἰπεῖν, καὶ θεῶν ἡμῖν τιμιωτέρους. Heinemann quotes Dikaiogenes (Fr. 5 Nauck), θεὸς μέγιστος τοῖς φρονοῦσιν οἱ γονεῖς. The ordinary Stoic view is given by Diog. Laert. vii. 120, that parents, brothers and sisters are to be reverenced next to the gods.",
"§§ 142–146. This disquisition on the four passions is thoroughly Stoic in substance and much of its phraseology is found elsewhere. Thus any passion is a κίνησις ψυχῆς παρὰ φύσιν (S. V. F. iii. 389, and elsewhere). So, too, pleasure is ἔπαρσις ἄλογος (ibid. 391). A passage which closely resembles this is Cic. De Fin. ii. 13 (S. V. F. iii. 404) “(Voluptatem) Stoici … sic definiunt: sublationem animi sine ratione, opinantis se magno bono frui.” πτοία, which Philo associates with fear, is a characteristic of all four; (λέγουσι) πᾶσαν πτοίαν πάθος εἶναι καὶ πᾶν πάθος πτοίαν (ibid. 378), while ἀγωνία is a subdivision of φόβος, defined by Diog. Laert. vii. 112 as φόβος ἀδήλου πράγματος (ibid. 407). Also ἐπιθυμία is often an ὄρεξις, though none of the definitions quoted otherwise agree closely with Philo’s. I have not found any parallels to his idea that desire differs from the others in being more voluntary.",
"For a shorter definition of the four see Mos. ii. 139.",
"§ 147. (Text at end of section.) Cohn in his description of the Palimpsest has an interesting if not quite convincing theory about this. In place of ἀμαυροῦνται καὶ θροῦ the Palimpsest has in the main body of the text ὁμάδου τε καὶ θροῦ beginning the next sentence, while ἀμαυροῦνται is set in smaller writing on the margin. Cohn’s view is that ὁμάδου τε is the original text, and was corrupted in one or more MSS. to ἀμαυροῦνται, which was then set in others such as the Palimpsest as a marginal variant and finally ousted the real words. One may perhaps accept his theory about the corruption of ὁμάδου τε to ἀμαυροῦνται, which as he says is not indispensable to the construction, but his other argument that ὁμάδου τε is wanted to correspond to ὀφθαλμοί τε in the previous sentence seems questionable. “Both … and” are expressed by τε … καί, as well as by τε … τε.",
"§ 158. τὸ περὶ τῆς ἑβδομάδος. While there would be no great difficulty in this passage, where the virtues of the number are so prominent, in taking ἑβδομάς as = “the number seven,” there can be no doubt that Philo does sometimes use it for the seventh day See notes on Quis Rerum 170, where we have ἀπραξία ascribed to it, and Mos. i. 205, where οὐδὲν ἐφεῖται δρᾶν ἐν αὐτῇ, i.e. on ἱερὰ ἑβδομάς. So, too, Jos. Contra Apion. ii. 282 τῆς ἑβδομάδος ἣν ἀργοῦμεν ἡμεῖς. This use is ignored in L. & S. (revised), which indeed has expunged the entry of older editions, “The seventh day, Eccl.”",
"On the other hand, ἑβδόμη below appears to be used for ἑβδομάς, as also in Spec. Leg. ii. 40 τῆς ἐν ἀριθμοῖς ἑβδόμης, and there are other instances in earlier treatises, where clearly the number and not the seventh day is under consideration, e.g. De Op. 116, De Post. 64. I leave to experts to consider whether a confusion of the two words may have been produced by varying interpretations of ζʹ.",
"§ 159. ἱερομηνία. Except in Mos. ii. 23, where he is apparently referring to pagan use, Philo consistently uses this word to denote the first of Tishri or Feast of Trumpets (New Year’s day in the civil year). Whether this usage is in accordance with its regular meaning in classical Greek is not clear to me. The general opinion seems to be that there it indicates a period during which, as stated in the note on Mos. loc. cit., hostilities or legal proceedings are forbidden, not a particular day. See Dict. of Ant. and L. & S. (revised), where it is only given two meanings, “sacred month during which the great festivals were held and hostilities suspended,” and (in the plural) “sacrifices offered during the sacred month.” On the other hand Stephanus gives examples from Harpocration, Scholiasts, etc., which assert that it means a festal day, and that is what is suggested in Mos. loc. cit., where it is contrasted with the single day fast of the Jews.",
"A scholiast on Pind. Nem. iii. 2, who says that ἱερομηνία is an abbreviation κατὰ σύντμησιν of ἱερονουμηνία “because the beginnings of months are sacred to Apollo,” expresses, whatever his authority may be worth, the idea which had occurred to me in connexion with Spec. Leg. i. 180. I refer these points to the lexicographer. The entry in L. & S. is clearly inadequate."
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"heTitle": "על עשרת הדברות",
"categories": [
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"schema": {
"heTitle": "על עשרת הדברות",
"enTitle": "On the Decalogue",
"key": "On the Decalogue",
"nodes": [
{
"heTitle": "הקדמה",
"enTitle": "Introduction"
},
{
"heTitle": "",
"enTitle": ""
},
{
"heTitle": "הערות",
"enTitle": "Appendix"
}
]
}
}