Ten Commandments and Knowledge of Good and Evil

Arguably, the centerpiece of 'Biblical morality' is the Ten Commandments. Now, it might so happen that one begins to wonder if there is a principle common to the Ten, or one might be confused about the relation between the prohibition of killing and God's command to Abraham to slay Isaac. In both cases, the contents of the Commandments are being subjected to intellectual assessment, i. e. to the same standard of consistency that motivates the systematic Ethics of Aristotle, Kant, and Mill, among others. In the process, the Commandments are no longer taken at face value, i. e. divine approval no longer suffices for the acceptance of their Goodness. Indeed, such moments of hesitation can be characterized as 'eating fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil', even by the most devout.