| Abstract
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This thesis intends to focus on the text of the Decalogue in the Hebrew Bible, and to interpret it in the literary, cultural, and reader's contexts, and feminist perspective. In a broader horizon, the methods of literary criticism, historical criticism, reader-response criticism and feminist criticism will be applied throughout the thesis. This dissertation is composed mainly of four chapters. In the first chapter Introduction, I present a history of scholarship on the Decalogue in the past, and explore different interpretive genre, which is identical with the development of biblical interpretation in the twentieth century. As a unique and important text, the Decalogue has very positive significance for religion and social ethics of ancient Israel. The second chapter deals with its literary context and tradition history. The Decalogue is put into a vast cultural context of the Ancient Near East to examine the process of how the Decalogue is sprouted and developed, in which the law codes of Mesopotamia and covenants of Hittite and Neo-Assyrian have a deep influence on it. There is always interaction between reader and text. All readers of text, including biblical texts, bring their own interests, presuppositions and prejudices with them. The reader's own interests, values and commitments are what make him or her a person with identity and integrity. The third chapter presents the Decalogue in a Chinese context. In the reader's own context, I will argue how the Decalogue was reinterpreted and reconstructed both by the Jesuits and Chinese Christians in the process of cross-textual reading, and show the dual meaning of "inculturation" and "accommodation". The fourth chapter is based on ideological criticism of feminist reading on the Decalogue, which aims to explore the relationship between gender and power. Especially, I will pay close attention both to the subject of the Decalogue and the seventh commandment on adultery, and show that how the paradigm of male domination and female subordination is shaped in the androcentric discourse, including patriarchal control of female sexuality, which results in absentation of female sexual autonomy and woman's helplessness in sexual violence. The thesis will try to explore the normative notions of 'masculinity' and 'femininity' through Foucauldian genealogical critique. In sum, as an important text, the Decalogue not only stipulates religious and social life for ancient Israelite and create the symbol of their identity, but also, in the process of its historical dissemination, responds to different cultures continuously and presents vivid impetus.
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