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RBL 04/2014
Dominik Markl, ed.
The Decalogue and Its Cultural Influence
Hebrew Bible Monographs 58
Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2013. Pp. xxii + 383.
Hardcover. $110.00. ISBN 9781909697065.
Bernhard Lang
Berlin, Germany
While it is notoriously difficult to sever the biblical text from its postbiblical
interpretations in theology, literature, the arts, politics, and so on, this is exactly what
historical-critical scholarship has been doing during the past two centuries—and quite
successfully so. Now that a substantial body of critical biblical scholarship has
accumulated, the discipline of biblical studies is beginning to rediscover the reception
history of the Bible. Studying the impact the Bible has made is now generally felt to be
important, but the area is not yet well established in scholarship. Things begin to
improve, however. The very publication of the volume under review constitutes a step
forward. In what follows I will summarize each of the twenty-one papers included in the
volume and offer an occasional critical remark. Like the volume under review, I will begin
with the contributions that comment on the origins and early history of the Ten
Commandments.
1. Origins and Early History
This is of course the subject with which biblical scholars are most familiar; accordingly, it
is here that views tend to differ most widely. Did the recitation of the Decalogue belong to
the liturgy of Shavuoth (the Festival of Weeks) in Second Temple times? In a paper
published in 1990, Moshe Weinfeld suggested that this was indeed the case, while R.
Langer (in paper 6) dismisses the idea as too hypothetical. Reconsidering Weinfeld’s