Chiseled in stone?

Proclaiming that Moses himself was a revisionist, Christopher Hitchens offers a new and improved version of the Ten Commandments. As the Bible offers “three or four wildly different scriptural versions…. we are fully entitled to consider them as a work in progress.”

Making graven images of the Lord: “This appears to forbid representational art … It certainly seems to discourage Christian iconography, with its crucifixes, and statues of virgins and saints.”

Honoring thy mother and father?  “By all means respect for the elders, but why is there nothing to forbid child abuse? … Even in a long and exhaustive list of prohibitions, parental sadism or neglect is never once condemned. Memo to Sinai: rectify this omission.”

Adultery: “Most criminal codes have long given up the attempt to make it a punishable offense in law: its rewards and punishments are carefully administered by its practitioners and victims. It perhaps does not deserve to be classed with murder or theft or perjury.”

Coveting a neighbor’s house, or wife, or ox…. “This is the first but not the last introduction in the Bible of the totalitarian concept of ‘thought crime.’”

“In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.”  It’s on Vanity Fair‘s website, along with a link to a droll  video of Hitchens performing the critique.