Bible Review

The full text reads as follows:

“You shall not desire [or covet] your neighbor’s house. You shall not desire your neighbor’s wife, his man or maidservant, his ox or his ass, or anything at all that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17).

In Deuteronomy 5:12 the word is “observe.”

There are several different ways of counting the Decalogue. Different religious bodies have assigned numbers to them in different ways. The numbering here reflects what might be called the consensus position to which most scholars adhere.

The author is well known as the general editor of the Anchor Bible series, probably the leading Bible commentary in modern times.—Ed.

B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era) are the religiously neutral terms used by scholars, corresponding to B.C. and A.D.

It is no accident that Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are the three longest books (by word count) in the Hebrew Bible (between 24,000 and 26,000 words each) and therefore the most likely to be divided. The division may have occurred when the Greek translation of these books was made, because the translations are longer than the originals and we can speculate that the books had reached their practical limit in terms of scroll length. Thus anything longer than that would literally be divided.

The Binding of Isaac: The Akedah—A Primary Symbol in Jewish Thought and Art (Berkeley, CA: Bibal Press, 1988) 322 pp., $16.95