And I know we’re mostly atheists here, but please keep the theological discussion to a minimum and appreciate the lighthearted hypothetical scenario for what it is.
And I know we’re mostly atheists here, but please keep the theological discussion to a minimum and appreciate the lighthearted hypothetical scenario for what it is.
There literally was another one if Idan Dershowitz’s theory that the Shapira Scroll was legit is true.
In that document (the translation is in his book The Valediction of Moses: A Proto-Biblical Book (2021)), there’s effectively an 11th commandment of “thou shalt not hate your brother in your heart.”
In general, a number of the sayings found across both Deuteronomy and Leviticus would seem like good candidates, such as “love your neighbor as yourself” and “love the foreigner among you as yourself.”
A lot of the modern interpretation is that the former refers to your literal personal home neighbors, but it makes more sense for an emergent pastoral community to be in reference to political neighbors like the Canaanites and Philistines.
Which we are now realizing thanks to archeology that the early Israelites cohabitated and were at peace with, in spite of the anachronistic stories in the Bible about it, such as the book of Joshua which is completely at odds with any archeological picture of history. Early Israelite theomorphic names in graveyards were even around 30% ‘Baal’ based. So the whole “hate and kill your neighbors that are different from you” seems like it was a later addition. To be fair, as likely was the monotheism.
In general, the story of Moses breaking the first set of tablets in response to the golden calf worship is sus as fuck. It mirrors the alleged reforms of Josiah centuries later where he destroyed the golden calves at Bethel and Dan while getting rid of the old laws and instituting new ones. So much more likely that it was a later addition to an earlier folk narrative being shaped to support contemporary major religious reforms.
My personal pick for a good candidate comes from a line in an 8th century BCE bilingual tablet from the group that the lead excavator of Tel Dan now thinks was the lost tribe of Dan up in Adana Turkey, the Denyen sea peoples. Their king, in discussing how he improved his kingdom over the past, used as a measuring stick the fact that women could now walk home alone feeling safe.
So “Thou shalt create and foster a society where women can walk home alone at night feeling safe” seems like it would do a lot of heavy lifting to improve the current set of commandments significantly.
Hey thanks, that was choice!