Tuesday, May 05, 2015

Rounded or rectangular Decalogue?

ART HISTORY: Squaring the Circle. The Israeli Chief Rabbinate has cut the arches off the 10 Commandments (Shalom Bear, The Jewish Press).
In the Israeli Rabbinate's new logo, the McDonald's arches have been excised from the 10 Commandments.

There is a controversy over what the stone tablets on which the 10 Commandments were written actually looked like.

Artistically, the tablets are almost always drawn as two rectangles with McDonald’s-like arches on top.

But the Gemorah (Baba Batra 14a) describes the two tablets as rectangular, and doesn’t mention any arches, McDonald’s or otherwise.

[...]
The Israeli Rabbinate, not unreasonably, is going with the Talmud on this one. But there's a complication in that the closest ancient Near Eastern analogue, the Code of Hammurapi stele, has the rounded top.