What is it about early man's facination with high mountains? The story of 'Moses and the ten commandments' is filled with legend and mystery. It was the necessity of god jehovah, to select a mountain undergoing fear inspiring lightning, thunder, and clouds, that first got me thinking about this whole 10 commandment story.
First of all Moses is selected to climb up there, by himself (convenient), next he witnesses a bush burning, that never burns up. Not a big deal when you consider lightning is all around. Ask any 'hot shot' fire fighter about the Manzanita bush, it will ignite in a flash burn and when dosed with water, often appear none the less for the wear and tear. A hearty bush indeed.
So I will give Moses the burning bush. We will have to take his word that he heard God's voice coming from it.
Where I have a real problem with this story is the 'stone tablets', etched by god's finger himself. Now if I as God wanted to make a big impression on someone, would I select the crude shale off the side of some big boulder, to write my commands...the egyptians had been doing that very thing for a long time already (nothing new here), or would I have whipped up a batch of papyrus paper, or heck, why not some 50# 'water marked' bond paper to inscribe my message. If nothing more it would have been alot easier for Moses to distribute the new law's among the thousands of Isrealites. Why did it have to be written on rock?
Well for some reason god chose the medium of the day, rock. Then the story goes on to tell us that when Moses came down, from a face to face with the Almighty creator himself, he couldn't control his emotion's enough to keep himself from hurling the tablets (on which god's own finger's had just written) to the ground, shattering them to bits?????
Come on, if Moses was so inspired so in awe of what he had just witnessed, would he have even given a thought about doing such. He knew how long it took for the average egyptian scribe to write on stone(not easy). How did he know that god would even supply duplicates? Or was it in fact, that he had invented these commands, to help him maintain order among the throng, that now looked to him for guidance? So no problem he had them all down pat. Just rewrite them, eh?
Of course he was disciplined by god for that, you say. Who disciplined him, himself? He was the undisputed leader in the wilderness. Perhaps he imposed his own sanction, just to keep the murmer's and whisper's of his chicanery on the mountain from proliferating.
Why would god manufacture all that drama, just to restate what many civilized peoples, had already included in their laws of civility and worship?
Nothing new came out of the 10 commands from the mountain. You would think god could have at least, given them something more tangible than some more do's and don'ts.
Moses was indeed a great leader, and as often great leader's stoop to all kinds of tricks and drama, to insure their subjects follow in step.
Still the story is a good one, and many a child has been regaled with it(including myself). But like so many stories, it has to be examined, for what it was a good story, legend, passed on from generation to generation. Or perhaps it really did happen...who knows?
DannyBear