From Chat GPT on 1/28/2025.
Prompt: How do critical bible scholars explain how the original 10 commandments were preserved when the tablets were broken? Cite the names of the scholars and where their argument are recorded.
Critical biblical scholars have proposed various explanations regarding the preservation and transmission of the original Ten Commandments after Moses shattered the initial tablets. These explanations often involve textual analysis and the study of the documentary hypothesis.
Richard Elliott Friedman argues that the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20:1–17 likely originated as an independent document, which was later incorporated into the biblical text by a redactor. He suggests that the narrative in Exodus 34, where Moses receives a new set of tablets, was added to reconcile different textual traditions and to explain the replacement of the shattered tablets. Friedman discusses this perspective in his book “Who Wrote the Bible?” (1987), particularly on pages 73–74.
The documentary hypothesis posits that the Pentateuch is a compilation of texts from different sources, each with its own version of events. According to this theory, the Ritual Decalogue in Exodus 34:11–27 and the Ethical Decalogue in Exodus 20:1–17 (and its parallel in Deuteronomy 5:6–21) originated from distinct traditions. The narrative of Moses breaking the tablets and receiving a new set serves to harmonize these differing accounts within the unified text. This explanation is detailed in the “Ritual Decalogue” article on Wikipedia. ***
These scholarly perspectives suggest that the preservation of the Ten Commandments, despite the breaking of the original tablets, can be understood through the lens of textual development and redaction in the biblical tradition.
Extracts from the very good article at Wikipedia linked above.
The documentary hypothesis identifies the Ritual Decalogue as the work of the Jahwist, from the Kingdom of Judah, and the Covenant Code as that of the Elohist, from the Kingdom of Israel, both writing independently. It does not however answer the question of how these texts were related, merely that the Ritual Decalogue circulated in Judah, and the Covenant Code in Israel. What the documentary hypothesis does partly explain is the relationship of the Ritual Decalogue to the Ethical Decalogue, and why, instead of the Ethical Decalogue, it is the Ritual Decalogue which is written on the two tablets when Moses ascends the mountain to have the Ethical Decalogue inscribed for a second time.
The documentary hypothesis claims that the Jahwist and Elohist texts were first combined by a redactor, producing a text referred to simply as JE, in such a way that it now reads that God dictated the Covenant Code, which was written onto stone, Moses subsequently smashing these stones at the incident of the golden calf, and thus having to go back and get a new set, with a set of commandments, the Ritual Decalogue, resembling the first. Under this reconstruction another writer, the Priestly source, later took offence at parts of JE, and rewrote it, dropping the story of the golden calf, and replacing the Ritual Decalogue with a new (ethical) decalogue initially based on it, but taking commandments from elsewhere as well, and replacing the Covenant Code with a vast new law code, placed after the Decalogue for narrative reasons, most of which forms the greater part of the mitzvot in Leviticus.
The reconstruction then suggests that a century later yet another writer, the Deuteronomist, objected to the Priestly source, and rewrote it yet again, but in a different style: that of a series of flashbacks, producing a second slightly different copy of the Ethical Decalogue, and re-introducing the golden calf. Presented with such divergent versions of the same event, a later redactor is thought to have combined all three versions – JE, the Priestly source, and Deuteronomist, together. JE and the Priestly source were interleaved together, altering JE so that it was now the Ethical Decalogue which was written on the first set of tablets and subsequently destroyed. The alteration, by careful juxtaposition, subtly implied that the second set of tablets also received the Ethical rather than Ritual Decalogue, despite the text saying, immediately after the Ritual Decalogue, “The LORD said to Moses, Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. […] And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments” [emphasis added]
NOTE – The Wikipedia article includes a table comparing the three different lists of commandments and a table comparing the “Small Covenant Code” (Exodus 34) and the “Large Covenant Code” (Exodus 20–23).
