What Are the Ten Commandments? (What Was?)

We are using this book specifically to supplement our history memory work for Classical Conversations cycle 1 weeks 1&2. I've already ordered more 'who was' books for the rest of the year! They are extremely informative and engaging.

A must have for kids

My daughter loves this book series and even in her early teens still reads them.

Great series

Gifts

This book is so much more than a list of the ten commandments, or even simply an attempt to understand those ten guides to living. This book attempts to place them in 'historical context' even as it acknowledges we lack proof Moses lived. The book does a nice job of balancing the importance of the ten commandments in both the Jewish and Christian faiths, as well as highlighting how the Koran and the Muslim faith has direct parallels as well. I appreciate that this book doesn't take for granted that the reader can pronounce words like Canaan and offers nice pronunciation guides in the text. It also has some nice information boxes, for example explaining the numbers listed after a book name for a Bible quote. If you are looking for a deep dive, for kids, specifically on the ten commandments, I'm not sure this is what you want -- this does a great job of putting them in context within the old testament, and presents Moses life in an abbreviated and flowing manner. (I feel like portions of at least 2, maybe three or 4 books from the Bible given Joshua is in here are put together in one smooth story, without the duplication that comes with the separate books in the Bible.). The ten commandments weren't listed until... chapter 5 or later. It's a good book, but the focus might be broader than some expect from the title.

That it's a good book.

I was really looking forward to this one, but saw right away I was in for a bumpy ride when I noticed a misleading statement on the first page: the author explains that Moses led the people out of Egypt and, despite hardships, "everyone believed God would protect them and lead them to the Promised Land." Anyone who has read the Old Testament knows that Moses had a helluva lot of trouble with the Israelites, and there were various episodes of the people losing their faith, wanting to turn back Egypt etc. So why tell children that everything was fine when it wasn't? In later chapters the book goes on to explain some of the problems of faith (most prominently the episode of the Golden Calf) but these incidents contradict the opening statement, so why was it not revised? As I continued to read I found other minor but significant mistakes: for example, on page 18, the author says that Moses married Zipporah, "an Israelite," when it is clear from the Torah that she was not and this fact resulted in some unfortunate gossip against Moses. In the section about Christianity, the author states that Jesus added a new commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself," when any Bible scholar would know that this commandment was not new but is found in the book of Leviticus (Old Testament), and was famously stated in the negative by Hillel (born 110 BC), "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. All the rest is commentary." More important: why does the author wait until page 66 to actually go through the Ten Commandments, and why does the author only do this after devoting a whole unnecessary chapter to an explanation of the gods that the Egyptians worshipped? Obviously, the chapter detailing the Ten Commandments should have come no later than page 46 where the author explains that Moses wrote a second set of tablets and the Israelites promised to obey those laws of God. I could see giving some background on the polytheistic world that monotheism arose from, but that would be much better accomplished by going back to the story of Abraham and recounting how he left his idol-worshipping family to become the first monotheist. I could go on (there's a typo on page 57, there's an unnecessary sidebar about Hindu gods on pg. 65, etc) but the main point is that this book should have been thought through more carefully and would have benefitted from some fact checking and another round of editing.