Deconstructing the Decalogue
• Skeptics & Atheists
Two paragraphs from an essay by Katha Pollitt in The Nation:
Consider Commandment One: God identifies himself as God--as if you didn't know! Who else crashes about with thunder and lightning? He reminds the Jews that he brought them out of Egypt and orders that "thou shalt have no other gods before me." What does that mean, exactly? No other gods, period, or no other gods come first? No other gods because they don't exist, or no other gods because they are minor and inferior and God doesn't like them? His need for constant reassurance is one of God's more perplexing characteristics. ...
What sets the Ten Commandments apart is not content but style: that gloomy, vengeful, obsessive, insecure authorial voice, alternately vulnerable (he confesses he's "jealous") and dissociated (he talks about himself in the third person, like an American celebrity). As elsewhere in the Bible, God looks constantly over his shoulder at the competition, threatens to visit the sins of the father on generations yet unborn, raves against those who hate him. He is equally disturbed by killing and cursing, and is incredibly possessive (I made that tree! no copying!). Granted we all know people like this, but would you want them presiding over your trial?