Monday, March 27, 2000
Theologian differs with Commandments as posted
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Xavier University theologian Arthur J. Dewey last week entered the battle over the Ten Commandments at four Adams County high schools, saying they represent a Protestant bias.
“Catechisms of the Catholic Church articulate the Ten Commandments in various ways, but always in ways different than what is posted at the Adams County high schools,” he said.
Not only are the Ten Commandments not universal among all religions, the ministers' wording deviates from the original Hebrew and meaning of the Sixth Commandment, Dr. Dewey said.
The Adams County Ministerial Association raised the money for and erected the 3-foot stone tablets in 1997 with wording reflecting the literary and theological thrust of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible.
Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, Berry Baker of Peebles sued to remove the tablets from schools in Peebles, Seaman, West Union and Manchester. He said they violated the separation of church and state.
The defendant, Adams County-Ohio Valley School Board, denies any violation of the First Amendment.
Dr. Dewey's appraisal was offered in an affidavit filed by ACLU attorneys William R. Jacobs and Scott Greenwood.
The ACLU also filed an affidavit by Mr. Baker, describing “the humiliation, isolation and pain of sitting alone” in Adams County classrooms as a Catholic when classmates participated in “various non-Catholic religious ceremonies.”
The tablets recall that discrimination,and “it is in part because of these painful memories that I have decided to file this suit,” Mr. Berry told Magistrate Judge Timothy S. Hogan in his affidavit.
“I do not want any other child or adolescent to suffer the pain and humiliation of being made to feel like an outsider, whatever religious or nonreligious beliefs that person may have.”
Specific textual and theological differences cited by Dr. Dewey include:
• The KJV Second Commandment bars the worship of “any graven image.” That's in the First Commandment taught to Catholics.
• The KJV Third Commandment prohibits taking God's name in vain; that is the Catholics' Second Commandment.
• The KJV 10th Commandment — don't covet — becomes Catholic Commandments Nine and 10: don't covet your neighbor's wife and don't covet your neighbor's goods.
Further, Dr. Dewey noted differences in the opening phrase of the First Commandment.
Adams County tablets say “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Catholic versions begin, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
This, he said, “is not a mere matter of style, but goes to the core of what the Ten Commandments mean in Catholic thought.”
They are part of the covenant between God and a people who agreed to God's terms and, as part of that contract, to obey the commandments, he said.
A member of the ministerial association, the Rev. Douglas W. Ferguson of West Union United Methodist Church, acknowledged that the tablets were “King Jamesish” and a “Protestant summary” of the longer, original Hebrew texts.
However, that should not give offense, the Rev. Mr. Ferguson added, “because you find some form of the Ten Commandments everywhere ... It's a universal moral code.”
That said, Dr. Dewey explored conflicts between ancient and contemporary understandings of the purposes of the two versions (Exodus 20:1-17 and Deut. 5:6-21) and differing translations.
“The original intent of the Ten Commandments was not to present some universal set of laws of all peoples and for all times,” he said. “Rather, it was to express a covenant or treaty between the God of the Hebrew Scriptures and one among many gods, and a particular group of tribes known as Israel or Jews.”
He also said the Adams County language and placement without any context of the covenant between God and the Jewish people “demonstrates a literalist reading ... that is not shared by all Christian people.”
An alternative to biblical literalism is critical biblical scholarship, which Dr. Dewey embraces.
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