The Commandment for the Ten Commandments Monument
February 25, 2009
In the discussions surrounding a monument to the Ten Commandments, why is there no one who realizes that a sculpture of the commandments is itself a violation of the second commandment [“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” (Exodus 20: 4)]?
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I thought “graven” images were pictures of people? What are they?
“Graven images” are, strictly speaking, all works of art that are not for sacramental or liturgical use. So, they would include all autonomous or secular paintings, sculpture, poems, novels, movies, et cetera. That is why there is no tradition of secular art by Jewish artists comparable to that for Christianity. The first major secular Jewish artists are assimilated Jews in the 19th century and after.
This also means that those parts of the Old Testament that persons refer to as poetry because they seem “poetic” to us are not poetry. There is no poetry in our sense in the Jewish Bible, but there are songs.
This may be TMI.