Sotheby's : Ten Commandment tablet that was used as paving stone sells for millions...

 

The oldest stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments sold at auction for over $5 million at an auction on Wednesday at Sotheby’s of New York, in the United States of America.

Video and link at the bottom of this article:

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

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 stone was previously used as a paving stone. Sotheby’s said the 155-pound (52-kilogram) marble slab was acquired by an anonymous buyer who plans to donate it to an Israeli institution. The New York-based auction house said the final price exceeded the presale estimate of $1 million to $2 million and followed more than 10 minutes of “intense bidding” during the global competition. The tablet dates from 300 to 800 A.D. and is inscribed with the commandments in Paleo-Hebrew script—according to Sotheby's, it is the only complete example of its kind from antiquity. Sotheby’s said the tablet was used as a paving stone at a local home until 1943 when it was sold to a scholar who grasped its significance.

Sharon Liberman Mintz, Sotheby's Judaica Specialist, Books & Manuscripts, discusses the oldest complete tablet of the Ten Commandment (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)© (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

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. 

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.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Robert T. Anderson, “Samaritans,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman, 5:940–47 (New York: Doubleday, 1992) 

John Bowman and Shmaryahu Talmon, “Samaritan Decalogue Inscriptions,” in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 33, no. 2 (March 1951): 211–36 

Raymond F. Collins, “Ten Commandments,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman, 6:383–87 (New York: Doubleday, 1992) 

Ferdinand Dexinger, “Das Garizimgebot im Dekalog der Samaritaner,” in Studien zum Pentateuch: Walter Kornfeld zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Georg Braulik, pp. 111–34 (Vienna: Herder, 1977)  

Neil Godfrey, “The Samaritan Tenth Commandment,” blog post, 9 May 2024, on Vridar: Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science (vridar.org) 

Gershon Hepner, “The Samaritan Version of the Tenth Commandment,” in Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 20, no. 1 (May 2006): 147–52 

Jacob Kaplan. “A Samaritan Synagogue Inscription from Yavneh” Bulletin of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society 13 (3–4) 1947, 165–166 (Hebrew)

Yitzchak Ben-Zvi. “Notes on the Foregoing Inscription” Bulletin of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society 13 (3–4) 1947, pp. 166–68.  (Hebrew)

Bradley J. Marsh, Jr. Early Christian Scripture and the Samaritan Pentateuch: A Study in Hexaplaric Manuscript Activity (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024) 

William H. C. Propp, trans. & commentary. The Anchor Bible: Exodus 19–40 (New York: Doubleday, 2006) 

H. H. Spoer “Notes on Some New Samaritan Inscriptions,” Proceedings Of The Society Of Biblical Archaeology Vol 30 (1908, 284-291)

John Strugnell, “Quelques Inscriptions Samaritaines.” Revue Biblique vol. 74, no. 4, 1967, pp. 555–80

W. R. Taylor, “A New Samaritan Inscription,” in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 81 (February 1941): 1–6 

Benymim Tsedaka, ed. & trans. The Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah: First English Translation Compared with the Masoretic Version (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2013) 

Bruce K. Waltke, “Samaritan Pentateuch,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman, 5:932–40 (New York: Doubleday, 1992)  

Moshe Weinfeld, trans. & commentary. The Anchor Bible: Deuteronomy 1–11 (New York: Doubleday, 1991)

APPENDIX 

Census of Samaritan Decalogue Inscriptions  

Published by Ferdinand Dexinger, “Das Garizimgebot im Dekalog der Samaritaner”  

Leeds Decalogue (Dexinger a)  

Presented to the Leeds Philosophical Society (later the City Museum) by the Rev. Joseph Hammond. The donor had received this inscription from the Samaritan High Priest in Nablus to keep it for preservation in a safe place. Like the majority of inscriptions this stone was likely found in the vicinity of Nablus, the ancient center of the Samaritan community. Approximately the second half of the text only. First published by W. Wright, “Note on a Samaritan Tablet in the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society Library”: PSBA 6 (1883) 25.]

The Jerusalem Decalogue (Dexinger b) 

First published by A. Alt in 1925, when it was privately owned in Jerusalem. The date of the inscription has not been established and it may have been cut in the Middle Ages. Approximately the second half of text only. 

Nablus Decalogue (Dexinger c; also known as the Shechem Decalogue) 

The Nablus Decalogue is walled upside down in the minaret of the El-Khadr Mosque in Nablus. It was first published by E. Rödiger (1845). The inscription has not been closely dated and may have been produced at any time between the pre-Justinian period and the early Middle Ages. 

Beit-El-Mā Decalogue (Dexinger d; also known as the Palestine Museum Decalogue)  

The Palestine Museum Decalogue was discovered in 1935 in Beit-El-Mā  near Nablus, after a heavy rainfall which washed away the covering soil. The stone is a comparatively long slab which served, presumably, as a lintel. The inscription was published by Y. Ben-Zvi in the year of its discovery.  The inscription is currently in the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in East Jerusalem. The dating of the Beit-El-Mā Decalogue has been controversial and inconclusive. Once believed to be earliest incised exemplar, scholarly consensus now dates this inscription to at least the medieval period: “… [T]he fragment found in Beit al-Mā … was a frieze, most likely taken from the Neapolis theatre, which had been dismantled during the medieval period, its stones reused in the city of Shechem. The Samaritans patently took an architectural fragment, dressed its façade, and prepared an area for the inscription. The inscription was therefore definitely carved on a Roman-period stone in secondary use. … We propose that the Samaritan inscription from Beit al-Mā dates to the medieval period or perhaps even later, rather than to Roman times …” (Yitzhak Magen, quoted in Marsh, p. 633). 

The Jacob’s Well Decalogue (Dexinger e; also known as the Sychar Decalogue) 

During the summer of 1950, John Bowman was shown a stone at bar Yakub (Sychar = Shechem). Although he thought the inscription was previously unrecorded, it had already been published in 1908 by H. H. Spoer. 

The Mount Ebal Decalogue (Dexinger f) 

This Decalogue inscription, also published by H. H. Spoer in 1908 was probably found on Mount Ebal. 

The Ecole Biblique Decalogue (Dexinger h) 

This inscription also comes from Nablus and was published by J. Strugnell in 1967. It is housed at the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem. 

Ephraim’s House Decalogue (Dexinger i) 

This inscription was published by J. Strugnell (1967) solely on the basis of a photograph from the archives of the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum. 

The Kfar-Bilu Decalogue (Dexinger j) 

This inscription was found during excavations for the Kfar-Bilu cooperative community in 1954 and given to Ben-Zvi for publication. This had been an area of Samaritan settlement up to the Crusader period. Ben-Zvi speculated that this inscription may have been a mezuzah.  

The Nablus II Decalogue (Dexinger k) 

The same mosque that houses the Nablus Decalogue also contains a second such inscription salvaged as building material. This second inscription from the El-Khadr Mosque was published by G. Reeg in 1977 

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Sotheby's - Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE