The Ten Commandments: The earliest surviving inscribed tablet of the Ten Commandments, incised during the late Roman-Byzantine era, The Holy Land, (ca. 300–800 CE)
The Only Complete Example Of A Ten Commandments Tablet From This Early Period.
White marble tablet, approximately 24 ⅞ x 22 ⅛ x 2 ⅜ inches (632 x 562 x 62 mm), weighing approximately 115 pounds (52 kg), neatly chisel-inscribed with the Mosaic Ten Commandments in their Israelite Samaritan version, 20 lines in a Paleo-Hebrew script, each line containing between eleven and fifteen characters, with margins of about 10 cm on either side; the letters have a width of between one and 2 cm and words are separated from one another with one or two dots; a few letters are confused for each other (especially ה and א) and a few characters on the right side of the first two lines are effaced and re-inscribed.
The Ten Commandments are by any measure one of the most widely known and influential texts in the vast canon of the world’s written word, taking primacy in disciplines ranging from religion to literature to philosophy to law to ethics to pedagogy and beyond. Described in their earliest recordings as being spoken directly by God to Moses so that they could be conveyed to the Israelites encamped at Mount Sinai after the Exodus from Egypt, the Ten Commandments—or the Ten Statements, as the Hebrew would be rendered literally—remain fundamental to the adherents of Judaism and Christianity. But the influence of the Decalogue extends far beyond the Judeo-Christian religions, underpinning around the globe the foundational concepts of common law, natural law, formal legal codes, personal conduct, and the social compact.
THE HISTORY
Dating to the late Roman-Byzantine era, this remarkable artifact is approximately 1,500 years old and is the only complete tablet of the Ten Commandments still extant from this early era. Weighing 115 pounds and measuring approximately two feet in height, it is now called the Yavne Tablet after the city on the coastal plain of the Land of Israel near where it was rediscovered more than a century ago. This monumental, incised marble slab was serendipitously uncovered during excavations for a railroad track running through the Land of Israel to Egypt. The significance of the discovery went unrecognized for many decades, and for thirty years it served as a paving stone in a local home.
In 1947, Jacob Kaplan, the highly regarded municipal archaeologist for Tel Aviv, published an article in the Bulletin of The Jewish Palestine Exploration Society that detailed his acquisition of this Tablet four years previously and provided further information about the Tablet’s origin and provenance. Kaplan described how in 1943, an Arab man from Yavne sold him a white marble Tablet with an inscription engraved upon it. According to the seller, his father found the Tablet in 1913 during the excavation for the railroad and transferred it to his home where he placed it at the threshold of one of the rooms of the inner courtyard.
In a companion article in the same issue of the Bulletin of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, a historian and the second and longest-serving president of Israel, provided an overview of the earlier history of the Yavne Tablet. Based on the Paleo-Hebrew script and on the paleography, Ben-Zvi dated the Tablet to the Byzantine era and ascribed its creation to the Israelite Samaritans, an ethno-religious people who lived in Samaria in the Land of Israel. The Samaritans claim partial descent from the Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, but they set themselves apart religiously and ethnically from the Jews.
According to further information received by Jacob Kaplan, the Tablet was discovered buried to the east of the central Jama Mosque in the same spot where a church and a Samaritan synagogue once stood. Historical documents associated with the mosque indicate that it was established in 1292 and/or around 1373 C.E. This places the mosque’s construction after the era of the Christian Crusaders. Before the mosque's establishment, the site was occupied by a Christian church built by the Crusaders following their conquest of the area in 1142 C.E. During this period, the Crusaders besieged the city of Yavne and conquered the city. However, several decades later, following the Muslim victory over the Crusaders, a large mosque was constructed atop the ruins of this church.
This raises intriguing questions about the site's earlier history. It is likely that an ancient Samaritan synagogue once existed in the same location during the time when Samaritans inhabited Yavne and that the Crusaders destroyed the Samaritan synagogue to erect their church. Following the Crusaders' defeat, it is conceivable that Muslims constructed the new mosque in the 13th century, utilizing the remnants of the church as its foundation. This pattern of religious structures being built atop one another is not uncommon; for instance, remnants of other Samaritan inscriptions have been discovered in the ruins of a small 4th century church on Mount Nebo, suggesting that an ancient Samaritan synagogue had previously stood there as well.
Further information about the early Samaritan communities in the Holy Land is provided by Peter the Iberian (ca. 417–491), the son of Bosmarios, king of Georgia (Iberia). Peter traveled to Jerusalem and become a monk, eventually settling in a monastery near Gaza. During the last 3 years of his life, he lived in the town of Yavne and reported that the entire city of Yavne and its coastal areas were settled by the Samaritans. During that time, Yavne served as a vital center for the trade of Samaritan grain. Historical accounts from Greek and Arab sources indicate that a significant population of Samaritans resided in Yavne and its surrounding regions until the end of the 9th century. This is further corroborated by Samaritan sources, including the 12th century Tolidah chronicle, considered to be the oldest Samaritan historical work. This text references a Samaritan settlement in the vicinity of Yavne, offering additional evidence of the area's historical significance to the Samaritan community.
Benjamin of Tudela, the famous 12th century Jewish traveler who provided a colorful and detailed account of the many places he visited, noted in his diaries that Ashkelon (a city not far from Yavne) was home to a large Samaritan community of approximately 300 families. However, following the era of the Crusaders, we do not have any further information regarding a significant Samaritan community in this area and it would therefore stand to reason that this Tablet discovered near Yavneh must have been created for the larger Samaritan community that lived there during the earlier Roman or Byzantine era.
THE SCRIPT
The text of the Ten Commandments on this Tablet is engraved in a Paleo-Hebrew script, an ancient writing system used by the Israelite people during the early stages of their history, specifically from around the 10th century BCE to the 5th century BCE. This early script, known in Hebrew as Ktav Ivri, is characterized by its angular and linear forms. By the 5th century BCE, the Jewish people had largely transitioned from this alphabet to the Aramaic alphabet and adopted a square form that is now known as the Hebrew alphabet (and in Hebrew as Ktav Ashuri). The Samaritans, however, continued to use the early Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, as seen on this Tablet. As a precursor to the modern Hebrew alphabet, Paleo-Hebrew script holds significant importance for the study of the Hebrew Bible.
THE TEXT OF THE YAVNE TABLET
THE TEXT OF THE YAVNE TABLET
Translated from Hebrew, the line-by-line inscription runs as follows:
1. Dedicated in the name of Korach
2. I will call you to remember for goodness forever
3. God spoke
4. all these words
5. saying I am the Lord
6. your God you shall not have
7. for yourself other Gods
8. besides me; you shall not make
9. for yourself a sculptured image or any likeness;
10. for I the Lord
11. your God am an impassioned God;
12. Remember the Sabbath day
13. keep it holy; honor
14. your father and your mother;
15. you shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery;
16. you shall not steal; you shall not bear [false witness] against your neighbor
17. you shall not covet; you shall erect
18. these stones that
19. I am commanding you today
20. on Mount Gerizim rise up to God
The Ten Commandments are most familiar from their inclusion in two of the books of the Pentateuch: Exodus, chapter 20 and Deuteronomy, chapter 5. But there is a significant degree of variation in the enumeration and even the content of the Commandments among the various translations and faith traditions that consider the Five Books of Moses to be sacred texts. Simply put, there are a variety of ways the Commandments can be listed, combined, and separated to get to “Ten.” Even between the rosters of Commandments presented in Exodus and Deuteronomy, there are several differences, for example, the variant explanations given for the observance of the Sabbath.
The Yavne Tablet opens with two lines of dedicatory text and for reasons that cannot now be discerned, omits the Third Commandment against taking the name of God in vain. But this omission may not simply be an error or oversight on the part of the stonecutter; it must be noted that the Palestine Museum Tablet also omits this prohibition, and the scholars Bowman and Talmon hypothesize that the Palestine Museum Tablet inscription included in its Second Commandment by implication the Jewish Third Commandment. The same implied inclusion could well pertain to the Yavne Tablet.
Further, while Ben-Zvi acknowledges that the Commandment “You shall not take the name of God your Lord in vain” is absent from the Yavne Tablet, he points out that this commandment is carved on the stone in the Green Mosque in Shechem [i.e., Nablus], but another commandment “You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image” is missing.
The Yavne Tablet concludes with the Tenth Commandment that focuses on the imperative to worship exclusively at Mount Gerizim, reflecting the Samaritans' belief that this location is the true and divinely ordained site for worship. The text directs the reader to construct an altar and place inscribed tablets on Mount Gerizim and worship God there.
The text of the Yavne Tablet is succinct, largely due to its format: incising or carving in marble is necessarily a slower process than engrossing with a reed and ink on papyrus or parchment. But by all accounts, with the first two Commandments presented as they were originally intended, and with the concluding Samaritan Commandment regarding Mount Gerizim, the Yavne Tablet is a true Decalogue.
While a handful of other fragmentary stone tablets of the Decalogue have been documented, crucially, all these other witnesses are partial, and several are weathered to the point of illegibility. They contain only a portion of the Ten Commandments or otherwise cannot be considered complete. Several of them are also from a later period than the Yavne Tablet, and the current locations for some of them are not known. No other is believed to be in private hands and certainly no other is in the United States. Ferdinand Dexinger has published ten other inscriptions of the Samaritan Ten Commandments—in addition to the present, Yavne Decalogue (his g), these can be found in an appendix to this catalogue entry.
The Yavne Tablet is not simply the earliest surviving complete inscribed stone tablet of the Ten Commandments, but the text it preserves represents the spirit, precision, and concision of the Decalogue in what is believed to be its earliest and original formulation.
A Comparative Table of the Ten Commandments as Recorded on the Yavne Tablet and in Exodus and Deuteronomy
PROVENANCE
1913: Tablet was found during excavations for a railroad track near the city of Yavne on the coastal plain of the Land of Israel
1913 to 1943: Taken home by the local man who found it while working on the railroad and used as a paving stone in his courtyard
1943: Tablet passed to the finder’s son, and its text now recognized, sold to Mr. Jacob Kaplan, a scholar in Israel.
1995: Sold by Kaplan’s descendants to the Israeli antiquities dealer Robert Deutsch
2005: Sold to Rabbi Saul Deutsch (no relation to the above dealer), Founder and Director of the Living Torah Museum in Brooklyn, New York
2016: Deaccessioned by the Living Torah Museum and purchased by the Judaica collector Dr. Mitchell Stuart Cappell
The Israeli Antiquities Authority has provided an export license and agreed to the public or private ownership of the tablet.
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