Tablets of Stone

File:The10Commandments.png are represented by the first ten letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which in Hebrew usage may be used interchangeably with the numbers 1–10.]]

In recent centuries, the tablets have been popularly described and depicted as round-topped rectangles, but this has little basis in religious tradition. According to rabbinic tradition, they were rectangles, with sharp corners,Bava Batra 14a. and indeed they are so depicted in the 3rd-century paintings at the Dura-Europos Synagogue and in Christian art throughout the 1st millennium CE,Except for a variant tradition where a scroll is shown, only known from Christian examples. [https://books.google.com/books?id=BUyGDWSsi4sC&dq=Dura-Europos+Moses+receiving+the+law&pg=PT37] drawing on Jewish traditions of iconography.

File:Meister der Bibel des Patrice Léon 001.jpg in the 10th century Byzantine Leo Bible.]]

Depictions of round-topped tablets appear in the Middle Ages, following in size and shape contemporary hinged writing-tablets for taking notes (with a stylus pressing on a layer of wax on the insides). For Michelangelo (1475–1564) and Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) they still have sharp corners (see gallery), and are about the size found in rabbinic tradition. Later artists, such as Rembrandt (1606–1669), tended to combine the rounded shape with a larger size. While, as mentioned above, rabbinic tradition teaches that the tablets were squared, according to some authorities, the Rabbis themselves approved of rounded depictions of the tablets in replicas – so that the replicas would not exactly match the historical tablets.See [http://rchaimqoton.blogspot.com/ HaQoton, Reb Chaim] "[http://rchaimqoton.blogspot.co.il/2014/06/squared-vs-rounded-tablets.html Squared vs. Rounded Tablets]" (also available on [https://www.academia.edu/7237484/Squared_vs._Rounded_Tablets academia.edu])

According to the Talmud, each tablet was square, six tefachim (approximately 50 centimeters, or 20 inches) wide and high, and more a thicker block than a tablet, at three tefachim (25 centimeters, 10 inches) thick,Bava Batra 14a.{{Cite web|url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/michelangelo-was-right-about-the-tablets/ |title=Michelangelo was right about tablets |website=The Times of Israel |quote=As detailed in the Talmud, the two tablets were eight tefahim wide and high—perfect squares, [...] — equal to about 24 centimeters or eight inches, and four tefahim deep, with sharp, not curved, corners.}} though they tend to be shown larger in art. (Other Rabbinic sources say they were rectangular rather than square, six tefachim high and three wide and deep.{{cn|date=June 2023}}) Also according to tradition, the words were not engraved on the surface, but rather were bored fully through the stone.{{Cite Talmud|b|Shabbat|104a}}

Replicas of the tablets, known as tabots or sellats, are a vital part of the practice of Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which claims that the original Ark of the Covenant is kept in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Axum.Paul Raffaele, [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/ark-covenant-200712.html?c=y&page=1 "Keepers of the Lost Ark?" Smithsonian Magazine], December 2007 (accessed 9 April 2011)

{{Musa|related}}

{{See also|Moses in Islam|Islamic ethics#Moral commandments}}

The Quran states that tablets were given to Moses, without quoting their contents explicitly:

:"And We wrote for him on the tablets [something] of all things – instruction and explanation for all things, [saying], 'Take them with determination and order your people to take the best of it. I will show you the home of the defiantly disobedient.{{'"}} ({{cite quran|7|145|style=ref}})

These tablets are not broken in the Quran, but picked up later:

:"And when Moses returned to his people, angry and grieved, he said, 'How wretched is that by which you have replaced me after [my departure]. Were you impatient over the matter of your Lord?' And he threw down the tablets and seized his brother by [the hair of] his head, pulling him toward him. [Aaron] said, 'O son of my mother, indeed the people overpowered me and were about to kill me, so let not the enemies rejoice over me and do not place me among the wrongdoing people.{{'"}} ({{cite quran|7|150|style=ref}}).

:"And when the anger subsided in Moses, he took up the tablets; and in their inscription was guidance and mercy for those who are fearful of their Lord." ({{cite quran|7|154|style=ref}}).

Biblical scholars Alan Millard and Daniel I. Block note parallels between the storage of the tablets in the Ark of the Covenant with the practice of other Ancient Near Eastern cultures whose treaty texts were preserved in their temples.{{Cite book |title=Reading the Law: Studies in Honour of Gordon J. Wenham |last=Millard |first=Alan R. |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-567-45454-6 |editor-last=McConville |editor-first=J. G. |page=264–265 |chapter=The Tablets in the Ark |editor-last2=Möller |editor-first2=Karl |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ipUKbxg6dkIC&pg=PA264}}{{Cite book |title=Write That They May Read: Studies in Literacy and Textualization in the Ancient Near East and in the Hebrew Scriptures: Essays in Honour of Professor Alan R. Millard |last=Block |first=Daniel I. |publisher=Wipf and Stock Publishers |year=2020 |isbn=978-1-7252-5210-3 |editor-last=Block |editor-first=Daniel I. |page=113 |chapter=For Whose Eyes? The Divine Origin and Function of the Two Tablets of the Israelite Covenant |editor-last2=Deuel |editor-first2=David C. |editor-last3=Collins |editor-first3=C. John |editor-last4=Lawrence |editor-first4=Paul J. N. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mSj4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA113}}

Alternatively, the scholar Thomas Römer argued in 2015 that “clearly… the tablets of the law are a substitute for something else.” Thomas Römer, The Invention of God (Harvard University Press, 2015), p. 92. He proposed that “the original Ark contained a statue [i.e. a cult image] of Yhwh”,{{cite journal |title=The mysteries of the Ark of the Covenant |journal=Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of Theology |url=https://www.academia.edu/99766658 |last=Römer |first=Thomas |issue=2 |volume=77 |pages=169–185 |doi=10.1080/0039338X.2023.2167861 |year=2023}}{{rp|4}} which he specifically identifies as “two betyles (sacred stones), or two cult image statues symbolizing Yhwh and his female companion Ashera or a statue representing Yhwh alone.”

File:Reims Façade Portail de droite 40808 2.jpg|Round corners, 13th century, France

File:Torun sw Janow popiersie Mojzesza.jpg|Round corners, c. 1390

File:Andrea Mantegna 009.jpg|Sharp corners by Andrea Mantegna, c. 1461

File:Moises.jpg|Sharp corners by Michelangelo, c. 1513–1515

Philippe de Champaigne - Moses with the Ten Commandments - WGA04717.jpg|Moses with the Ten Commandments by Philippe de Champaigne, 1648

File:Rabbi_Raphael_Evers.jpg|Example behind rabbi Raphael Evers, son of Bloeme Evers-Emden, friend with Anne Frank; the Hebrew lines are incomplete.

• World's largest book, a stone book the pages of which are inscribed stone tablets

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{{Ten Commandments}}

{{Ark of the Covenant}}

{{Temples in Jewish history}}

{{Characters and names in the Quran}}

Category:Ten Commandments

Category:Hebrew Bible objects

Category:Ark of the Covenant

Category:Steles