First Glance

Are the Ten Commandments redundant? Nine of them actually appear, sometimes more than once, in other places in the first five books of the Bible. So why were these ten commandments grouped to become the Ten Commandments? In “What Makes the Ten Commandments Different?” Moshe Weinfeld shows that the Ten Commandments define the conditions that must be met for membership in the community of the faithful, and he highlights several interesting aspects of their structure.

Born in Poland, Weinfeld received his undergraduate and graduate education at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he has served as a professor since 1973. His specialty is Hebrew Bible. He has also served as visiting professor at Brandeis University and at the University of California. His books include Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomy School (Clarendon Press, 1972) and The Qumran Sect: Its Organization in the Light of Hellenistic Guilds and Associations (Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus, 1986). A member of BR’s Editorial Advisory Board, Weinfeld debuts in BR with his article in this issue.