Some Locker Roomies know that I?ve been listening to a new course of lectures on the Gnostic Gospels and other Lost Christianities, which has me in a biblical-interpretation frrame of mind. So when I ran across this thought-provoking but misguided piece in The Charlotte Observer, I thought I?d offer up something.
The columnist argues that if Americans really took the Ten Commandments seriously, they would have a hard time honoring two of them in particular: remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy, and avoiding the temptation to covet the possesssions of others.
I?ll leave the Sabbath issue to the side. But on the other, the columnist makes the common mistake of equating ?coveting? with ?desire? or ?greed.? In a capitalist society, how can we really avoiding wanting more possessions, or being influenced by the materialism of others?
Actually, the best-available evidence suggests that these issues are not at all what the original text was getting at. As I have written in a chapter of my forthcoming book on advertising and commerce:
The Hebrew word ?hamad,? which was translated into Greek and later into other languages with words such as ?covet? and ?crave?, also originally bore the meaning of ?to attempt to attach something to oneself illegally? ? or, to put it another way, to attempt to steal or defraud another. It referred not just to feelings but also to actions.
Scholars interpreting the 10th Commandment in this literal way didn?t see it as redundant with the 8th, traditionally rendered as ?you shall not steal,? because in that case the original Hebrew word actually translated as ?enslaving a neighbor?s labor,? essentially a form of kidnapping. Christians who adhered to this interpretation of the commandment against coveting cited as evidence the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, in which he restated several of the commandments and used the phrase ?do not defraud? to convey the meaning of the 10th Commandment.
Not surprisingly, this interpretation became quite popular among commercially oriented Christians, especially Protestants in the Netherlands, Britain, and Northern Europe. That?s not to say that they, or I, see envy as bearing no moral opprobrium. But understood this way, it refers to feelings of anger or disaffection that others have what you do not ? rather than to feelings of aspiration (?that looks like something I would like?) that motivate productive labor.
More generally, the exhortation to keep things in their proper place, maintain a life balance, and avoid excessive materialism is suggested in the first four commandments , which are about setting priorities.
