ביטול אמירת עשרת הדיברות בתפילה והפולמוס היהודי-נוצרי – בחינה מחודשת

This article offers a re-examination of the place of the Ten Commandments in late antique Jewish liturgy. Contrary to the accepted scholarly approach,I argue that during the Second Temple period, the Ten Commandments did not have a special liturgical status. Instead, I suggest that the later polemics over their liturgical status, as expressed in the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud, should be understood in light of parallel discussions regarding the status of the Ten Commandments within Christian literature during the third and fourth centuries. As opposed to seeing the Ten Commandments as an ancient Jewish liturgical expression, which came to an end due to claims by Minim (Christians or others) at the 1st century CE, I argue that these are later traditions that seek to project from their present back to the past. Thus, the claims regarding the cancelation of the Ten Commandmentsנshould be seen more as a rhetorical expression than as a record of early historical events. Accordingly, both the desire and the opposition to grant special status to the Ten Commandments constitute a relatively late development, from the Talmudic period. This re-examination has implications both for the study of the development of early Jewish liturgy and for the study of Jewish-Christian polemics in late antiquity.