על עשרת הדברות י״בOn the Decalogue 12
א׳
1[50] Such are the points which required a preliminary treatment. We must now turn to the oracles themselves and examine all the different matters with which they deal. We find that He divided the ten into two sets of five which He engraved on two tables, and the first five obtained the first place, while the other was awarded the second. Both are excellent and profitable for life; both open out broad highroads leading at the end to a single goal, roads along which a soul which ever desires the best can travel without stumbling.
ב׳
2[51] The superior set of five treats of the following matters: the monarchical principle by which the world is governed: idols of stone and wood and images in general made by human hands: the sin of taking the name of God in vain: the reverent observance of the sacred seventh day as befits its holiness: the duty of honouring parents, each separately and both in common. Thus one set of enactments begins with God the Father and Maker of all, and ends with parents who copy His nature by begetting particular persons. The other set of five contains all the prohibitions, namely adultery, murder, theft, false witness, covetousness or lust.
ג׳
3[52] We must examine with all care each of the pronouncements, giving perfunctory treatment to none. The transcendent source of all that exists is God, as piety is the source of the virtues, and it is very necessary that these two should be first discussed.
ד׳
4A great delusion has taken hold of the larger part of mankind in regard to a fact which properly should be established beyond all question in every mind to the exclusion of, or at least above, all others.
ה׳
5[53] For some have deified the four elements, earth, water, air and fire, others the sun, moon, planets and fixed stars, others again the heaven by itself, others the whole world. But the highest and the most august, the Begetter, the Ruler of the great World-city, the Commander-in-Chief of the invincible host, the Pilot who ever steers all things in safety, Him they have hidden from sight by the misleading titles assigned to the objects of worship mentioned above.
ו׳
6[54] Different people give them different names: some call the earth Korē or Demeter or Pluto, and the sea Poseidon, and invent marine deities subordinate to him and great companies of attendants, male and female. They call air Hera and fire Hephaestus, the sun Apollo, the moon Artemis, the morning-star Aphrodite and the glitterer Hermes,
ז׳
7[55] and each of the other stars have names handed down by the myth-makers, who have put together fables skilfully contrived to deceive the hearers and thus won a reputation for accomplishment in name-giving.
ח׳
8[56] So too in accordance with the theory by which they divided the heaven into two hemispheres, one above the earth and one below it, they called them the Dioscuri and invented a further miraculous story of their living on alternate days.
ט׳
9[57] For indeed as heaven is always revolving ceaselessly and continuously round and round, each hemisphere must necessarily alternately change its position day by day and become upper or lower as it appears, though in reality there is no upper or lower in a spherical figure, and it is merely in relation to our own position that we are accustomed to speak of what is above our heads as upper and the opposite to this as lower.
י׳
10[58] Now to one who is determined to follow a genuine philosophy and make a pure and guileless piety his own, Moses gives this truly admirable and religious command that he should not suppose any of the parts of the universe to be the omnipotent God. For the world has become what it is, and its becoming is the beginning of its destruction, even though by the providence of God it be made immortal, and there was a time when it was not. But to speak of God as “not being” at some former time, or having “become” at some particular time and not existing for all eternity is profanity.