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Material Texts: Tim Hogue (University of Pennsylvania), “What Were the Ten Commandments Really Written On? A Catalogue of Ancient Levantine Material Texts”

  • Monday, December 2, 2024 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm

Class of 1978 Pavilion, in the Kislak Center for Special Collections on the 6th floor of the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center


We look forward to welcoming Tim Hogue (University of Pennsylvania), for a talk titled “What Were the Ten Commandments Really Written On? A Catalogue of Ancient Levantine Material Texts.” Professor Hogue writes: 

While later artistic reception almost universally imagines the Ten Commandments written on two stone tablets, this is hardly a decided matter in the Bible itself. Raising the question of their writing surface permits an exploration of a great variety of material texts from the world behind the Bible—the ancient Levant. By pairing close readings of the biblical passages surrounding the Ten Commandments with archaeological evidence, we find that these texts are related to stelae, altars, statues, wall reliefs, tablets (both for display and to be hidden), tablet boxes, scrolls, and even jewelry. From an emic Levantine perspective, each of these had distinct functions within the icono-epigraphic worlds they inhabited. Cataloguing these material texts thus provides an opportunity to explore broader questions of what texts were in the ancient Levant, how they were made, and what they could do. 

Tim Hogue is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at University of Pennsylvania. He is a specialist in the Hebrew Bible and the history and culture of the ancient Levant (including but not limited to ancient Israel). His research focuses on the material world behind the Bible, especially text-making practices. His first book is The Ten Commandments: Monuments of Memory, Belief, and Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2023).  Professor Hogue's talk will mark the end of our fall 2024 season. The Workshop in the History of Material Texts will then resume on Monday, January 27, 2025. We will announce our spring 2025 schedule at an earlier date in January.