Ten Commandments Conclusion

The Common Origins of Western Law [I Repeat and Conclude]
One of the many justifications made by those in favor of posting the Ten Commandments on public property is the claim that the Ten Commandments are historically significant to American law. The Ten Commandments were actually not given much consideration outside of Jewish society until well after the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, and even then much more emphasis was placed on New Testament texts than Old Testament ones by early Christians. By this time the basis of Western law had already been established by the Greeks and Romans.

In reality, there are many facts that contradict the claims of Ten Commandment proponents, not the least of which being the fact that the Biblical text of the commandments does not match their popular presentation. In fact, there are three distinctly different accounts of the commandments in the Old Testament/Torah, and each of these accounts are different among different translations of the commandments.

The biggest difference between American colonial law and English law was in regard to slavery. In America, unlike any of the other places practicing slavery at that time, slaves actually came to be defined as property. In 1705 Virginia passed the first such law to define slaves as property:
All servants imported and brought into the Country...who were not Christians in their native Country...shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion...shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resist his master...correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction...the master shall be free of all punishment...as if such accident never happened.
This law, and others like it throughout the South, made it legal for Christians to enslave and kill other humans, as long as the other humans were not Christians.

The Common Origins of Western Law
One of the many justifications made by those in favor of posting the Ten Commandments on public property is the claim that the Ten Commandments are historically significant to American law. The Ten Commandments were actually not given much consideration outside of Jewish society until well after the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, and even then much more emphasis was placed on New Testament texts than Old Testament ones by early Christians. By this time the basis of Western law had already been established by the Greeks and Romans.
Before the oldest laws were recorded there were proverbs. The earliest known written proverbs are those of the Sumerians, written in cuneiform, the earliest known written language.

Sumerian Cuneiform

Among these proverbs are several statements similar to those found in the Ten Commandments, including statements such as:
28-31: You should not steal anything; you should not ...... yourself. You should not break into a house; you should not wish for the money chest;
35-38: You should not pick a quarrel; you should not disgrace yourself. You should not spit out lies; ....... You should not boast; then your words will be trusted.
50: You should not curse strongly.
The list of proverbs contains many more mundane and even amusing statements as well.
Laws, unlike proverbs or commandments, provide a standard for judgment as well as a defined punishment. The oldest known written laws were recorded by the Sumerians as well, around 2095-2047 BCE.
The Sumerian Empire existed at the base of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in the area of present day Iraq. The Sumerians were later overtaken by the Babylonians and Assyrians, both of which derived their laws from Sumerian law.

Around 1750 BCE the Code of Hammurabi was written in Babylon, based on the earlier Sumerian laws. The Code of Hammurabi contains the first recorded use of "An Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth". There is significant debate about this law because though it sounds "barbaric" today it may actually have been written with the intent of limiting punishment to a measure no greater than the original offense. In other words, the law prevented excessive punishment. The Code of Hammurabi was posted all over the cities so that everyone could see it and no exceptions were made to it, despite the fact that very few people could actually read. A significant aspect of the Code of Hammurabi is that it was a secular set of laws.

Code of Hammurabi

Egyptian law is actually thought to have proceeded the existence of Sumerian law, but it appears that the Egyptian legal system didn't use written laws and was not as well defined as Babylonian and Sumerian law. It is thought that Egyptian law was not codified until after the Persians conquered Egypt around 525 BCE. Prior to the codification of Egyptian law, however, the Egyptians did use a system of legal precedent. Each case that was judged was recorded along with its verdict. These precedents were referred back to in later cases, which resulted in a legal system heavily based on tradition, with relatively predictable outcomes for similar types of cases, but the laws weren't clearly defined for the public.
The Egyptians are the first known people to have developed a strong doctrine of social equality and impartiality before the law. This is perhaps due to the great wealth of the region that afforded the kingdom the luxury of fairness. Though laws were seen as coming from the authority of the Pharaoh, the principle of Ma'at guided the law. The instruction for lawmaking to the Egyptian viziers was, "the creator-god states that he has made all men equal in opportunity and that, if there be any violation of this equality, the fault is man's."
Religious commandments, also guided by Ma'at, were written down in Egypt prior to the codification of civil law.

Section from a Book of the Dead

During the 18th Dynasty (between 1580-1350 BCE), The Book of Coming Into the Day, popularly known as The Book of the Dead, was assembled from Egyptian texts and practices. One section of a book recorded the 42 Confessions and 42 Judges that a person would have to pass in order to successfully enter the eternal afterlife. The 42 Confessions are as follows:
1. I have not committed sin.
2. I have not committed robbery with violence.
3. I have not stolen.
4. I have not slain men and women.
5. I have not stolen grain.
6. I have not purloined offerings.
7. I have not stolen the property of God.
8. I have not uttered lies.
9. I have not carried away food.
10. I have not uttered curses.
11. I have not committed adultery, I have not lain with men.
12. I have made none to weep.
13. I have not eaten the heart.
14. I have not attacked any man.
15. I am not a man of deceit.
16. I have not stolen cultivated land.
17. I have not been an eavesdropper.
18. I have not slandered [no man].
19. I have not been angry without just cause.
20. I have not debauched the wife of any man.
21. I have not debauched the wife of [any] man.
22. I have not polluted myself.
23. I have terrorized none.
24. I have not transgressed [the law].
25. I have not been wroth.
27. I have not blasphemed.
28. I am not a man of violence.
29. I have not been a stirrer up of strife.
30. I have not acted with undue haste.
31. I have not pried into matters.
32. I have not multiplied my words in speaking.
33. I have wronged none, I have done no evil.
34. I have not worked witchcraft against the king.
35. I have never stopped [the flow of] water.
36. I have never raised my voice.
37. I have not cursed God.
38. I have not acted with arrogance.
39. I have not stolen the bread of the gods.
40. I have not carried away the khenfu cakes from the spirits of the dead.
41. I have not snatched away the bread of the child, nor treated with contempt the god of my city.
42. I have not slain the cattle belonging to the god.
It must have been very difficult to make it into the Egyptian afterlife, but what this does represent is a clearly defined set of moral standards, even though they were not laws.
According to scriptural tradition, after having lived in Babylon and Egypt for hundreds of years, some time around 1300 -1000 BCE the Hebrews established their own state outside of Egypt in Israel. Hebrew texts, indeed the story of Moses and the Exodus, state that the Hebrews worshiped many gods prior to leaving Egypt and didn't have their own laws before they left. Clearly the story of Moses, regardless of its accuracy, tells us that the Hebrews got at least some of their laws and their beliefs from the Egyptians. The Hebrews had also previously lived in the lands of the Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians. Modern archeology and scholarship, however, casts serious doubt as to whether this early Israeli state ever existed. Modern scholarship suggests that the Pentateuch (books of Moses) were written between 700 BCE and 500 BCE, when a mythical Moses figure, along with a mythical early kingdom, was invented.
According to the story of Moses, Moses was raised in Egypt by the daughter of a Pharaoh and would have received the best of Egyptian education. If the story is accepted at face value then indeed Moses himself would have been greatly influenced by Egyptian law and knowledge. If the story of Moses is taken as a mythology, similar to the story of Romulus and Remus or any number of other mythical founders of ancient civilizations, then the story is still a reference to the Egyptian origins of Hebrew law.