UCLA

The Decalogue was a monumental text. This does not mean that the text was important, enduring, or carved on stone. Its monumentality rests not in any sense of size, permanence, or publicity, but rather in its ability to provoke communities to imagine together and make meaning. This study contends that the Decalogue was composed and depicted in the Hebrew Bible by drawing upon contemporary monumental discourse designed to provoke this kind of communal engagement.

In order to substantiate this argument, I have conducted a history of monuments and a history of monumentality. My history of monuments analyzes the Levantine “I Am” monuments of the Iron Age. These monuments were united by their function of reembodying the individual identified in their opening “I Am” statement. Once reembodied, this individual could address his audience in strategic ways so as to bring about social formation. This function was accomplished by much more than just the words of the monument’s inscription. My analysis also accounts for their deployment in space, their aesthetic features and medium, and the different ways in which communities interacted with them. I also analyze how these dimensions changed over time in order to periodize the monumentality of Levantine “I Am” monuments. While the function of these monuments remained stable during the few centuries during which they were employed in the Levant, the means of accomplishing it did not.

Using this history of Levantine “I Am” monuments as a backdrop, I turn to a history of the monumentality of the Decalogue. The Decalogue drew upon monumental discourse from these inscriptions in order to develop its own monumentality. It was depicted utilizing the monumental discourse of specific periods. Editorial strata within the biblical text point to shifting depictions of the Decalogue that align it with new periods of monumentality in the Levant. That is, not only was the Decalogue composed to act as a monument for its original audience, later editors also updated it to better match contemporary monumentalities and thus to remain meaningful to subsequent generations.