Journalist and philosopher David Hazony offers a new look at our most venerable moral text. Combining a fresh reading of the Old Testament's most riveting stories and ancient rabbinic legends with an exploration of what ails society today, Hazony shows that the Ten Commandments are not just a set of obscure laws but encapsulate a deeply valuable approach to life, as relevant now as it was when they first appeared more than two millennia ago. He begins with a daring claim: Although they have become a universally recognizable symbol of biblically based religion, they are not, strictly speaking, a religious text. Rather than making a statement about faith or mystical realms inaccessible to reason, they contain a coherent prescription for how to make a better world. At their core stands what Hazony calls the "spirit of redemption," which he describes as one of the two basic spiritual components of Western civilization.--From publisher description.