In so doing there is room for interpretation. There is no difficulty in holding that the judicial and ceremonial laws were restricted to Jews. After all, they were given expressly to the Israelites. The real issue is why the Ten Commandments were treated as applying to everybody. My answer is in two parts. First, the desire of Christians to accept the Hebrew Bible, as far as possible, as applying also to them. Secondly, the banality of the secular provisions of the Decalogue. They could be incorporated into any legal system, but not so the judicial or ceremonial laws. The result is a split, unjustifiable in terms of the biblical tradition, between laws applying to all people and laws applying only to Jews. To return to the theme of the lecture: the overwhelming prestige of the Ten Commandments in the history of the western world is inexplicable except on the basis of the role of authority for law. God’s authority is the greatest, hence the admiration for the Commandments. But the unacceptable judicial and ceremonial laws of God could be rejected as applying only to a particular people.
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