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 If such a system of precepts was ever viewed as the basis of the covenant with Israel, it must belong to a far earlier stage of religious development than that of Ex. xx. This is recognized by Wellhausen, who says that our Decalogue stands to that of Ex. xxxiv. as Amos stood to his contemporaries, whose whole religion lay in the observance of sacred feasts. To those accustomed to look on the Ten Words written on the tables of stone as the very foundation of the Mosaic law, it is hard to realize that in ancient Israel there were two opinions as to what these “Words” were. The hypothesis that Ex. xxxiv. 10-26 originally stood in a different connexion, and was misplaced at some stage in the redaction of the Hexateuch, does not help us, since it would still have to be admitted that the editor to whom we owed the present form of the chapter identified this little code of religious observances with the Ten Words. Were this the case the editor, to quote Wellhausen, “introduced the most serious internal contradiction found in the Old Testament.”

The Decalogue in Christian Theology.—Following the New Testament, in which the “commandments” summed up in the law of love are identified with the precepts of the Decalogue (Mark x. 19; Rom. xiii. 9; cf. Mark xii. 28 ff.), the ancient Church emphasized the permanent obligation of the ten commandments as a summary of natural in contradistinction to ceremonial precepts, though the observance of the Sabbath was to be taken in a spiritual sense (Augustine, De spiritu et litera, xiv.; Jerome, De celebration Paschae). The medieval theologians followed in the same line, recognizing all the precepts of the Decalogue as moral precepts de lege naturae, though the law of the Sabbath is not of the law of nature, in so far as it prescribes a determinate day of rest (Thomas, summa, Ima IIdae, qu. c. art. 3; Duns, Super sententias, lib. iii. dist. 37). The most important medieval exposition of the Decalogue is that of Nicolaus de Lyra; and the 15th century, in which the Decalogue acquired special importance in the confessional, was prolific in treatises on the subject (Antoninus of Florence, Gerson, &c.).

Important theological controversies on the Decalogue begin with the Reformation. The question between the Lutheran (Augustinian) and Reformed (Philonic) division of the ten commandments was mixed up with controversy as to the legitimacy of sacred images not designed to be worshipped. The Reformed theologians took the stricter view. The identity of the Decalogue with the eternal law of nature was maintained in both churches, but it was an open question whether the Decalogue, as such (that is, as a law given by Moses to the Israelites), is of perpetual obligation. The Socinians, on the other hand, regarded the Decalogue as abrogated by the more perfect law of Christ; and this view, especially in the shape that the Decalogue is a civil and not a moral law (J. D. Michaelis), was the current one in the period of 18th-century rationalism. The distinction of a permanent and a transitory element in the law of the Sabbath is found, not only in Luther and Melanchthon, but in Calvin and other theologians of the Reformed church. The main controversy which arose on the basis of this distinction was whether the prescription of one day in seven is of permanent obligation. It was admitted that such obligation must be not natural but positive; but it was argued by the stricter Calvinistic divines that the proportion of one in seven is agreeable to nature, based on the order of creation in six days, and in no way specially connected with anything Jewish. Hence it was regarded as a universal positive law of God. But those who maintained the opposite view were not excluded from the number of the orthodox. The laxer conception found a place in the Cocceian school.

 DE CAMP, JOSEPH (1858–), American portrait and figure painter, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1858. He was a pupil of Frank Duveneck and of the Royal Academy of Munich; became a member of the society of Ten American Painters, and a teacher in the schools of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; and painted important mural decorations in the Philadelphia city hall.

 DECAMPS, ALEXANDRE GABRIEL (1803–1860), French painter, was born in Paris on the 3rd of March 1803. In his youth he travelled in the East, and reproduced Oriental life and scenery with a bold fidelity to nature that made his works the puzzle of conventional critics. His powers, however, soon came to be recognized, and he was ranked along with Delacroix and Vernet as one of the leaders of the French school. At the Paris Exhibition of 1855 he received the grand or council medal. Most of his life was passed in the neighbourhood of Paris. He was passionately fond of animals, especially dogs, and indulged in all kinds of field sports. He died on the 22nd of August 1860 in consequence of being thrown from a vicious horse while hunting at Fontainebleau. The style of Decamps was characteristically and intensely French. It was marked by vivid dramatic conception, by a manipulation bold and rapid, sometimes even to roughness, and especially by original and startling use of decided contrasts of colour and of light and shade. His subjects embraced an unusually wide range. He availed himself of his travels in the East in dealing with scenes from Scripture history, which he was probably the first of European painters to represent with their true and natural local background. Of this class were his “Joseph sold by his Brethren,” “Moses taken from the Nile,” and his scenes from the life of Samson, nine vigorous sketches in charcoal and white. Perhaps the most impressive of his historical pictures is his “Defeat of the Cimbri,” representing with wonderful skill the conflict between a horde of barbarians and a disciplined army. Decamps produced a number of genre pictures, chiefly of scenes from French and Algerine domestic life, the most marked feature of which is humour. The same characteristic attaches to most of his numerous animal paintings. He painted dogs, horses, &c., with great fidelity and sympathy; but his favourite subject was monkeys, which he depicted in various studies and sketches with a grotesque humour that could scarcely be surpassed. Probably the best known of all his works is “The Monkey Connoisseurs,” a clever satire of the jury of the French Academy of Painting, which had rejected several of his earlier works on account of their divergence from any known standard. The pictures and sketches of Decamps were first made familiar to the English public through the lithographs of Eugène le Roux.

 DECAPOLIS, a league of ten cities ( ) with their surrounding district, situated with one exception on the eastern side of the upper Jordan and the Sea of Tiberias. Being essentially a confederation of cities it is impossible precisely to fix Decapolis as a region with definite boundaries. The names of the original ten cities are given by Pliny; these are as follows: Damascus, Philadelphia, Raphana, Scythopolis (= Beth-Shan, now Beisan, west of Jordan), Gadara, Hippos, Dion, Pella, Gerasa and Kanatha. Of these Damascus alone retains its importance. Scythopolis (as represented by the village of Beisan) is still inhabited; the ruins of Pella, Gerasa and Kanatha survive, but the other sites are unknown or disputed. Scythopolis, being in command of the communications with the sea and the Greek cities on the coast, was the most important member of the league. The league subsequently received additions and some of the original ten dropped out. In Ptolemy’s enumeration Raphana has no place, and nine, such as Kapitolias, Edrei, Bosra, &c., are added. The purpose of the league was no doubt mutual defence against the marauding Bedouin tribes that surrounded them. These were hardly if at all checked by the Semitic kinglings to whom the Romans delegated the government of eastern Palestine.

It was probably soon after Pompey’s campaign in 64–63 that the Decapolis league took shape. The cities comprising it