Stone Tablets Handed Down by Paramount

Cumberland's Commandments.

To promote his huge, and hugely expensive, 1956 epic The Ten Commandments -- at the time, the most expensive movie ever made -- veteran Paramount Pictures producer/director/showman Cecil B. DeMille partnered with the Fraternal Order of Eagles to erect granite Ten Commandments monuments nationwide. 

This was great, low-cost publicity in every corner of the land, even if DeMille, Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner were not on hand for the unveilings (as they mostly were not). And the erections continued for many years, long after the movie's initial theatrical run.

I don't know how many of these originally were erected in Maryland, but apparently only two remain, both in Western Maryland, and both erected after the movie's premiere 8 November 1956. One is in Memorial Park in Frederick, and was erected in 1958; the other, erected in 1957, is on the lawn of the Washington Street courthouse in Cumberland.

Interestingly, the best current tally of these monuments online is being kept not by Paramount, and not by the Eagles, but by a crusader determined to get them all off public property: retired Virginia attorney Robert V. "Bob" Ritter, a veteran of the U.S. Supreme Court bar and founder of the Jefferson Madison Center for Religious Liberty. He views separation of church and state as vital to both church and state:

"My ultimate goal is to assist in moving Eagles Ten Commandment monuments from public property to private property -- not to destroy them. The public square belongs to all Americans where no one religion is entitled to preference over another religion, or religion generally over nonbelief. The Constitution prohibits all religious monuments on public property or requires cities and states to permit all religious and nonbelief monuments -- an impractical alternative."

As of Ritter's October 2020 tally, 190 of the DeMille/Eagles Ten Commandments monuments are still on public display nationwide, 120 of them on public property. Cumberland's is one of 32 on courthouse grounds, Frederick's one of 41 in public parks.

Detail of Cumberland's Commandments.

Cumberland's courthouse monument, near the edge of the yard to the right of the entrance, is easy to overlook, especially if visitors are preoccupied by worldly issues -- for example, the pending verdict of their criminal trial, which after all will be decided by the laws of Maryland and not of Moses.

Biblical scholars who go looking for the marker, moreover, may be puzzled by the wording. DeMille's people seem to have based the inscription on Exodus 20:1-17 in the King James Version, or a Hollywood rewrite thereof. Here's the text on the Cumberland monument, as best I can make it out:

The Ten Commandments

I AM the LORD thy God.

I. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

II. Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.

III. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

IV. Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

V. Thou shalt not kill.

VI. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

VII. Thou shalt not steal.

VIII. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

IX. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.

X. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife nor his manservant nor his maidservant nor his cattle nor anything that is thy neighbor's.

Art by Macario Gómez "Mac" Quibus. (Wikipedia)

A glance at the original KJV passage, via the invaluable Bible Gateway, shows the writers' room at Paramount has done some heavy editing. Omitted is not only the naked threat -- "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me" -- but also the injunction against graven images, which pre-DeMille Protestants historically regarded as a big deal. 

Long story short, they cut 319 words down to 118 words, and that's counting the Roman numerals that weren't in the KJV, either. To fit the passage onto a granite slab of reasonable size and cost, in other words, they threw out 63 percent of the divine Word. But remember, this was standard practice in Hollywood. Everyone got rewritten, even Shakespeare. No one's script was carved in stone.

Sources:

Fraternal Order of Eagles. https://www.foe.com/. Accessed 29 Sept. 2021.

Ritter, Robert V. "F.O.E. Ten Commandment Monuments in Maryland." http://www.eaglesmonuments.com/states/Maryland.html. Accessed 29 Sept. 2021.

---. "Fraternal Order of Eagles Ten Commandment Monuments Project (1951-2010). http://www.eaglesmonuments.com/pages/Eagles_Ten_Commandments_program.html. Accessed 29 Sept. 2021.

---. "Where Are the Eagles Ten Commandments Monuments?"  http://www.eaglesmonuments.com/. Accessed 29 Sept. 2021.

"The Ten Commandments (1956 film)." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ten_Commandments_(1956_film). Accessed 29 Sept. 2021.

"Unholy Alliances: DeMille and the Fraternal Order of Eagles." Daily Kos, 7 Mar. 2019. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/3/7/1839932/-Thursday-Hangout-Unholy-Alliances-DeMille-and-the-Fraternal-Order-of-Eagles-3-7-19. Accessed 29 Sept. 2021.

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