Aren’t there too many religions (and religeous beliefs) to go around; all grounds for disagreement among the children of (essentially the same) God?

Haven’t we fought enough wars in the name of Religion, where Religion was used as a thin veneer to hide the underlying (economic) motivations to slaughter each other?

Just some questions from a simple minded citizen.

But surely we would be concerned if a plaque to honor Roman Law, with panic-stricken people crying that the Government was about to impose emperor-worship — or at the very least imperial-colonialist rule over the peasants in flyover country.

What if the plaque were presented to the “Government” by emperor-worshipers?

But surely, to put Race or Party or Nation in the place of the Highest Good would be objectionable only to the unfavored Races, outlawed Parties, and People Not Like Us.

Not everyone thinks ‘worship’ itself is a good thing, though…

A plaque honouring Roman Law? Well, outside virtually every Mairie and law court in France one sees the fasces, topped with the Phrygian bonnet.

I rather like it – the axe and rods represent the coercive power of the magistrate (the imperium) and the cap of liberty was worn by newly emancipated freedmen as a symbol of liberty.

But surely we would be concerned if a plaque to honor Roman Law, with panic-stricken people crying that the Government was about to impose emperor-worship — or at the very least imperial-colonialist rule over the peasants in flyover country.

Or is it only the wife in this marriage who is to be tossed aside?
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Brian Westley
The first tells you which god to worship

YOS
Whoever “I” is. [The source of all being.] But surely, to put Race or Party or Nation in the place of the Highest Good would be objectionable only to the unfavored Races, outlawed Parties, and People Not Like Us.

Brian Westley
….government has the power and authority to tell its citizens which god to worship (which, of course, can change).

YOS
One would have to be pretty stupid and/or easily hysterical to think that a public display in a county courthouse would mean anything like that. Of course, we have been growing accustomed to government ruling every aspect of our lives; but it would not have been a danger to a republic. Test: how much fretting over such matters was engaged in by the people who wrote the laws that are being cited in the cause?

Brian Westley
The second tells you not to have any other gods

YOS
Well, it is logically impossible to have more than one God; but not even Jews and muslims suppose there are no other lesser divine beings. At a Hindu temple complex south of Chennai, it was explained to me that all the lesser gods were simply avatars or manifestations of the One God, with Brahma, Vishnu, and Kali being the trinity representing that unity.

Brian Westley
The third says no graven images … if the government takes that to mean that Buddhists can’t have statues of Buddha.

YOS
You mean like Catholics and Orthodox can’t have statues of Christ or Mary or….? The prohibition is on worshiping blocks of wood, not using them for decoration or a means of focusing attention.

Brian Westley
tells Buddhists which day to worship

YOS
Actually, it doesn’t specify a particular day. It does tell employers they have to give you a day off and not work you like a slave all week long. But now with cell phones, one is expected to be on-call 24/7.
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Actually, the obstreperousness doesn’t lie in such matters, only in the overheated hysterics that desecrate crosses raised by WW1 vets to their comrades, or erase teeny little crosses from the city seal of Los Angeles so they can pretend the city did not grow around a Franciscan mission. That sort of Puritanism never has worked out well, no matter what Highest Good has been pushed on people.

Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?” He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?”

Note first that when Jesus refers to “the commandments,” the young man asks which ones. When Jesus responds, four of the five commandments he lists are from the Decalogue, but the last one is not. Jesus is definitely not saying, “Keep the Ten Commandments.” Also I don’t believe anyone would claim that Jesus was saying that only the five commandments he listed were the ones that should be kept. Jews recognize 613 commandments and certainly do not limit themselves to the Ten Commandments. I found this interesting comment while researching the topic:

But there is an additional aspect of this controversy that is of concern from a Jewish perspective. In Talmudic times, the rabbis consciously made a decision to exclude daily recitation of the Aseret ha-Dibrot* from the liturgy because excessive emphasis on these statements might lead people to mistakenly believe that these were the only mitzvot or the most important mitzvot, and neglect the full 613 (Talmud Berakhot 12a). By posting these words prominently and referring to them as “The Ten Commandments,” (as if there weren’t any others, which is what many people think) schools and public buildings may be teaching a message that Judaism specifically and consciously rejected.
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*The words d’varim and dibrot come from the Hebrew root Dalet-Beit-Reish, meaning “word,” “speak” or “thing”; thus, the phrase is accurately translated as the Ten Sayings, the Ten Statements, the Ten Declarations, the Ten Words or even the Ten Things, but not as the Ten Commandments, which would be Aseret ha-Mitzvot.

Ye Olde Statistician said, “I’ve always wondered to which of the ten they imagine that Jews or muslims would object.” Well, it turns out there is a plausible reason why Jews actually might object to posting the Ten Commandments as a separate list, even though they would obviously not object to any of the individual commandments themselves.

Other kings and emperors had law codes; but the trick is to trace them through actual history into Western law

No one’s claiming that medieval legislators consulted the laws of Lipit-Ishtar directly. But the Hebrew laws developed in the context of, and in many cases from, those antecedent codes. Christianity developed from Judaism, and Christianity had a strong influence on Western legal developments, it cannot be denied. (Though not always a positive influence, note.)

The thing is, presenting the Ten Commandments without that historical context is inaccurate and “symbolic politics at its best (or worst).”

The principle influence in early mediaeval law (from the Sack of Rome in 410 to the Edict of Pistris in 864) was undoubtedly Roman law

Throughout Italy and Gaul, south of the line from Geneva in the East to the mouth of the Charante in the West, Roman law has been in force continuously from Caesar’s conquests to the present day. Not for nothing was this part of France (about two-fifths) known as « Le pays de droit écrit » – The country of the written law.

One thinks of the great maxims of Ulpian – “Justice is a firm and constant intention to give to each his due” (D.1.1.10 pr) and “The precepts of the law are these: to live uprightly, not to harm another, to give to each his due” (D 1.1.10.1)

Ulpian and his fellow-jurists, like Julian, Modestinus, Paulus, Papinian and Pomponius are the founders of modern jurisprudence. They acknowledged both a “law of nature” and a law of nations (the ius gentium), representing the rules and institutions common to all people, living in society.

In fact, the similarity between the Mosaic and Roman laws, not only in general outline, but in many points of detail is so striking that it impelled one writer (whether Jewish or Christian is unknown, but certainly a lawyer and Hebrew scholar) to write the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum, or Collation of the Laws of Moses and the Romans. Internal evidence shows it to have been written between 294 and 313.

Well, depending on which numbering you use:

The first tells you which god to worship; I can see Buddhists (and pretty much anyone who doesn’t follow an Abrahamic religion) objecting to that, and even some of those objecting to having such a declaration on a government building, implying that the government has the power and authority to tell its citizens which god to worship (which, of course, can change).

The second tells you not to have any other gods; again, I can see Buddhists and others objecting.

The third says no graven images, which I can certainly see Buddhists objecting to if the government takes that to mean that Buddhists can’t have statues of Buddha.

The fifth tells Buddhists which day to worship; since some Buddhists use a lunar calendar, the day of the week that is holy to them changes.

Just keep the government OUT of the religion business. Religious freedom is pretty basic, after all.

So think it through. It wasn’t an exhaustive laundry list. Which of the ten would a Buddhist find objectionable? They’re pretty basic, after all.

(The decalogue is the starting point for western jurisprudence.) ….. It had no precursors??

Not directly. Other kings and emperors had law codes; but the trick is to trace them through actual history into Western law, meaning the codified system of law that emerged in the Early Middle Ages. No one in Burgundy had much access to the Code of Khammurapi. Just because it’s older, it doesn’t make it a precursor. Most of the kingdoms and principalities modeled theirs on the first codified law in that milieu: Church canon law. That is the reason for one of the more remarkable features of Western law: viz., the presumption that human beings are capable of reaching correct moral conclusions by reason (i.e., synderesis). There is a discussion of the Early Medieval Legal Revolution in the first part of Toby Huff’s The Rise of Early Modern Science.

The plebs forced the patricians of Rome to post all the laws of the Republic in the Forum because legal behavior was defined by strict obedience to a collection of individual commands. One had to know the commands. (That’s what makes the Code of Khamurapi such a congeries of individual minute regulations.) But in the Western/Christian tradition, each person is presumed capable of knowing by nature that theft is wrong, (etc.) IOW, there is a natural law underlying the positive law.

Mike Melendez,

The above is a pretty extravagant claim, as others have pointed out.

One wonders why it is objectionable as an historical document.

The answer is that it is not objectionable if displayed on government property as a historical document. It is objectionable if it is displayed on government property for religious purposes.