9/24 Law, Slavery, and Liberation

In our viewing of “Audience of the Ten Commandments,” I was confronted by some things that I hadn’t thought about. Specifically, I had always believed the “Decalogue” was meant for everyone men, women, and children alike. However, Cheryl Anderson says that you can tell a lot by the language of the Decalogue. It is more addressed to adults and specifically adult men who have households. It isn’t addressed to women at all which surprised me. The Decalogue was always presented to me as a universal blanket of general rules for everyone. However, upon further consideration it seems to be leaving out many groups of people. Basically only privileged or somewhat wealthy individuals were addressed in this text.

Another viewing of “Law and the Bible,” gave me some things to consider as well. I never knew that the law about adultery only matters if the woman is the married one. It doesn’t apply or intend consequences to any married man going outside his marriage. This seems pretty strange for me because I hadn’t thought a lot about gender inequalities in the Bible. Actual laws that are used to outline moral codes of today aren’t actually being represented as what they were truly meant to say when they were written. It’s pretty upsetting to realize this about a text that used to play such a huge role in my life.