PAUL AND THE RHETORIC OF REVERSAL: KERYGMATIC ...

Philo, On the Decalogue 168-169
And the first set, each having the form of a summary, contains these five; while the
special laws are not few in number. In the other set [i.e. the second table of
commandments] the first heading is against adultery, under which come many
directions: against corrupters, against pederasty, against lustful living, participating
both in unlawful intercourse and licentious defilement.
Elsewhere Philo relates different sets of commands to each other, characteristically expanding
“adultery” to incorporate the pursuit of “pleasure” more generally: 87
Philo, The Special Laws 3, 8
In the second tablet, the first commandment is this: “Do not commit adultery”,
because, I think, everywhere in the inhabited world, pleasure is a great force, and no
part has escaped its domination.
In relation to the Enochic Book of the Watchers, William R.G. Loader finds that 1 Enoch 6-11
applies the commitment to proper “ordering” of chapters 1-5 to the issue of sexuality, as the
angelic Watchers pursue sexual disorder in the model of the god Pan. This sexual disorder
brings “impurity” (cf. 10:20-22) and draws on luxurious adornment (cf. 8:1ff); but the
consequences of this “great sin” for humankind and for the Watchers’ offspring (cf. 10:9-10:
the “sons of πορνεία”) are not necessarily sexual in nature. 15:11 summarises the sin of the
offspring in terms of violence and affliction, perhaps illustrating the devastating social end of
87 This expansion is common to many of the examples seen here. Robert Travers Herford
views Rabbinic ethics as a continuation of such an approach: “The Old Testament gave a
strong and unfaltering lead in the direction of sexual purity, continence, modesty, chastity, and
the Rabbis followed that lead – or, rather, they built on that foundation a structure of their own,
more elaborate in its details and more severe in its lines than that sketched in the older
Scriptures. The commandment in the Decalogue [concerning adultery] was extended to
include every kind of sexual offence, or even irregularity; and the breach of this
commandment, so extended, was made one of the three deadly sins which the Jew must die
rather than commit. The other two were idolatry and bloodshed.” R. Travers Herford, Talmud
and Apocrypha: A Comparative Study of the Jewish Ethical Teaching in the Rabbinical and
Non-Rabbinical Sources in the Early Centuries (New York: Ktav, 1971), 163.
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