I saw the picture above as I was going through Google for an image of "Moses and the Law". I found it strange at first seeing Moses with three -- not two -- tablets of the Law. But when I clicked the image to see the "context" of the image, it led me to the "Bible as Literature" course homepage of a professor of literature in the Arkansas State U. It was then that it made sense.
Years ago, I saw this movie called "History of the World", a parody of ancient world history. In one of the movie's segments, Moses appeared with three tablets. He began to say "O Israel the Lord has given you the thr.." but one of the tablets fell down and broke to pieces. And so he continued "...the TWO tablets of the Law."
I thought that was funny then. And the picture above actually reminded me of that movie segment.
Is the picture irreverent? No. I don't think so. But it does tell you that something is the happening in the way scholars are treating the documentary history of the community of the faithful. A course on "Bible As Literature" is not going to pander to fundamentalistic conceptions of divine inspiration and biblical infallibility. Besides, we know now that during the time of Jesus, there was not just ten commandments -- there were six hundred and thirteen of them, all drawn out of the Mosaic law by the rabbis. In fact, there was even a rabbi -- I forget his name now -- who said that the Lord did not pronounce all the ten commandments. He only uttered the first letter -- the aleph -- and let Moses write down the rest. The aleph? It is a Hebrew glottal stop! The letter that indicates the opening of the throat. It doesn't have a sound associated with it! The history of the interpretation of the Law of Moses -- its "interpretative baggage" so to speak -- will not allow any serious student of the Bible today to hold on to a facile understanding of the sacred text according to which it was all dictated by God.
The picture of Moses with the three -- not two -- tablets remind us of that.
