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The Decalogue in Early Christianity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Robert M. Grant
Robert M. Grant
Affiliation:
School of Theology, University of the South
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Extract

Tannaite rabbis were accustomed to summarize succinctly the 611 or 613 commandments of the Law in from one to eleven general precepts; but these summaries were merely private halakoth. Until the second century A.D. there were read in the synagogue service the Ten Words which God himself spoke directly to his people, without the mediation of Moses. A Hebrew papyrus from about 200 B.C. includes the Decalogue with the Shema. And Philo goes so far as to declare that “the Ten Words are summaries of the special laws which are recorded in the sacred books.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , January 1947 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1947

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References

1 Moore, G. F., Judaism in the Age of the Tannaim II (Cambridge, 1927), 83–85.Google Scholar

2 Taylor, C., Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (ed. 2, Cambridge, 1897), 119 f.Google Scholar

3 Charles, R. H., The Decalogue (ed. 2, Edinburgh, 1926), vii–xxxiiiGoogle Scholar; Albright, W. F. in JBL 56 (1937), 145–76.Google Scholar

4 Philo, Dec. 154.

5 Ibid. 50f., 106, 121.

6 Ibid. 51.

7 Ibid. 108 f.

8 Ibid. 110.

9 Issachar v. 2 (p. 112 Charles), Dan. v. 3 (p. 137).

10 Galatians v. 3.

11 Asher ii. 5–10 (p. 17s f.); Philo, Spec. ii. 13. Asher emphasizes the Decalogue.

12 Asher vi. 3 (p. 179).

13 Josephus, Ant. iii. 90 (he paraphrases them); see Knox, W. L., St. Paul and the Church of the Gentiles (Cambridge, 1939), 29.Google Scholar

14 See note 2 above; Moore, op. cit., I 291.

15 Mark x. 17–19 and parallels.

16 On the meaning of this expression see Daube, D. in JTS 39 (1938), 45–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Dodd, C. H. in G.K.A. Bell-A. Deissmann, Mysterium Christi (London, 1930), 53–66.Google Scholar

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29 Galatians iii. 10–13, after a paraphrase by my father.

30 Galatians iv. 6; see my note in HTR 39 (1946), 71–73.

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34 Romans viii. 3–4 (Moffatt).

35 See note 76 below.

36 Romans xiii. 8–10 (partly as translated by Moffatt).

37 This seems to me more likely than Dibelius' (An die Kolosser Epheser An Philemon [ed. 2, Tübingen, 1927], 31) idea of the mystical number five for the principal sins of the heathen, a “Fünf-Lasterkatalog.”

38 See G. Schrenk in Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament II 549.

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46 See Meinhold, P. in ZKG 59 (1940), 255–303Google Scholar; Windisch, H., Der Barnabasbrief (Tübingen, 1920), 315 f.Google Scholar

47 On this see Jackson, F. J. F.–Lake, K.–Cadbury, H. J., The Beginnings of Christianity IV (London, 1933), 79.Google Scholar

48 See John vii. 19.

49 The idols which Barnabas has in mind include not only the calf but also the serpent (Numbers xxi. 9) which Moses made as a type of Jesus (Barnabas xii. 6; see John iii. 14f.).

50 See John v. 17 f.; and note that Genesis is regarded as prophecy. When the legal part of the Old Testament was restricted to the Decalogue and the rest was searched for types, that remainder could be classified only as prophetic.

51 Isaiah i. 13.

52 This was greatly admired in the ancient church: Irenaeus, Adv. haer. iv. 20. 2 (II, 213 f. Harvey), Epid. 4 (p. 3 f. Harnack); Origen, De principiis i. 3. 3; Athanasius, De incarnatione verbi iii. 1.

53 See note 21 above; not Stoic, as against M. Dibelius, Der Hirt des Hermas (Tübingen, 1923), 544.

54 M. Dibelius, op. cit., 424.

55 Goodspeed, J., A History of Early Christian Literature (Chicago, 1942), 48.Google Scholar

56 Irenaeus, Adv. haer. iii. 4. 2 (II, 17).

57 Harnack, A. v., Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott (ed. 2, Leipzig, 1924), 251 f.Google Scholar; Knox, J., Marcion and the New Testament (Chicago, 1942), 12.Google Scholar

58 Wilcken, U. in Hermes 49 (1914), 120–36.Google Scholar

59 Kraemer, C. J. Jr., in CP 29 (1934), 293–300Google Scholar; Coulton, C. C. in CP 35 (1940). 60–63Google Scholar. Compare A. D. Nock in CR 38 (1924), 58 f.

60 Pliny, Ep. x. 96. 7 (p. 309 Kukula).

61 Aristides, Apol. xv. 3–5 (p. 24 Geffcken; see also pp. 87 f.).

62 Doubtless a summary of the “judgements” of Exodus xxi-xxiii; see note 69 below.

63 Justin, Apol. i. 14–17 (see 61. 2); W. Bousset, Jüdisch-christlicher Schulbetrieb in Alexandria und Rom (Göttingen, 1915). 282–308.

64 Eusebius, HE iv. 18. 6, states (from the lost preface to the Dialogue?) that the discussion was held at Ephesus; but the Dialogue was obviously written after the first apology; compare Dial. 120 with Apol. 1.26.

65 Epiphanius, Haer, xxxiii. 5. 3 (I, 454 Holl.).

66 Irenaeus, Adv. haer. I praef. (I, 5). An example of semi-Christian ridicule of the Decalogue is to be found in Epiphanes, De justitia, in Clement, Strom, iii. 9 (W. Völker, Quellen zur Geschichte der christlichen Gnosis [Tübingen, 1932], 35). God gave desire; how could he forbid it?

67 Marmorstein, A. in The Expositor, Eighth Series, 17 (1919), 104–109Google Scholar; also discussed in my dissertation Studies in Theophilus of Antioch (1944, unpublished), 147–57.

68 Ad Autolycum III 9 (p. 214 Otto).

69 Didascalia 26 (p. 219 Connolly).

70 Ad Autolycum II 10 (p. 82); T. Zahn, Forschungen zur Geschichte des N. T. Kanons II (Erlangen, 1883), 145.

71 Ad Autolycum I 3 (pp. 10–12).

72 Ibid. I 2 (p. 8).

73 Irenaeus, Adv. haer. iv. 2. 3 (II, 148).

74 Ibid. iv. 4. 1 (II, 152).

75 Ibid. iv. 15. 1 (II, 186).

76 Ibid. iv. 16.2 (11, 190).

77 Ibid. iv. 16. 3 (II, 191).

78 Ibid. iv. 16.4 (II, 192).

79 Epideixis 87 (p. 45 Harnack).

80 A quotation from Polycarp (Phil. iii. 3); Harris, J. R., Testimonies I (Cambridge, 1916), 66.Google Scholar

81 See I Corinthians xiv. 20.

82 Epideixis 95–96 (p. 49 Harnack); see Adv. haer. iv. 15–16 passim; Hitchcock, F. R. M., Irenaeus of Lugdunum (Cambridge, 1914), 55–58.Google Scholar

83 On Irenaeus' “Paulinism” see Werner, J., Der Paulinismus des Irenaeus (Leipzig, 1889)Google Scholar. His statement (p. 218) that Irenaeus' standpoint reflects “not Golgotha but Rome” is one-sided.

84 Similarly in Origen's treatise on allegorization (De Principiis IV) he gives some of the commandments and their interpretations in the Sermon on the Mount as examples of passages to be taken literally (Philocalia i. 19, p. 27 Robinson).

85 See Plumpe, J. C., Mater Ecclesia (Washington, 1943), 68f.Google Scholar

85a Stählin's notes (GCS edition, II 499–508) show how much Clement owes to Aristobulus and Philo; see also Heinisch, P., Der Einfluss Philos auf die älteste christliche Exegese (Münster, 1908), 273–77.Google Scholar

86 Testament of Naphthali iii. 2 (p. 149); Sirach xvi. 26–28; Drummond, J., Philo Judaeus II (London-Edinburgh, 1888), 166–69Google Scholar; Dodd, C. H., The Bible and the Greeks (London, 1935), 25–41.Google Scholar

87 Dodd, C. H., Romans (London-New York, 1932), 36.Google Scholar