Set in Stone

The Ten Commandments have been in the news a lot in recent years, thanks especially to an Alabama judge who refused to remove them from his courthouse (and who is now running for the United States Senate). On its surface, the controversy over a granite tribute to tablets described in the Bible and delivered by Moses to the Hebrews is a strange one. Who really cares whether the commandments appear in the rotunda of a modern courthouse? A lot of people, that’s who. Thanks to Jenna Weissman Joselit, we can make better sense of how and why the Ten Commandments have sparked such a long-running controversy, one that shows no signs of abating. Originally something that brought Americans together, in recent years, Joselit shows, the Ten Commandments have instead split Americans apart. Joselit’s goal in Set in Stone is to explain how the commandments moved from a denominational text to “an expansive American phenomenon” (6). “The Ten Commandments,” she argues, “furnished America with a pedigree. The Old World had its castles and coats of arms. The New World had the Ten Commandments.” These commandments, she explains, helped Americans articulate and claim a special biblical covenant with God, they fostered Americans’ sense of election, and they reminded Americans that they occupy “a latter-day Promised Land” (159). To make this argument, Joselit explores how Americans have used, interpreted, and applied the commandments over the last century and a half. She makes no effort to provide an exhaustive accounting of understandings of the commandments over time, but instead highlights a handful of important and fascinating examples of the uses of and controversies around the commandments. She organizes her examples (and chapters) around various physical representations of the commandments—how they have appeared in stone, on paper, in stained glass, and on movie screens.

Argument (complex analysis) · Expansive · Political science · Sociology · Ten Commandments · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Classics · History · Law · Medicine · Philosophy