Are there really 10 commandments? And whose do we hang?

Great Debates
1

One of the things that really amuses me about the efforts of fundies to “hang ten” (i.e. hang up the 10 Commandments in courts, schools and other public buildings in violation of the separation of church and state) is that there is not even universal agreement among major Christian Churches as to how to number the Commandments.

Believe it or not, Roman Catholics AND Lutherans use one numbering system, and Anglicans and non-Lutheran Protestants use another.

First of all, can anyone explain to me why there are necessarily 10?

What we call the 10 Commandments is generally taken from Exodus, Chapter 20, verses 1 to 17. At the risk of making my post too long, I have reproduced it here:

1: And God spake all these words, saying,
2: I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3: Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
5: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for 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;
6: And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
7: Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
8: Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9: Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
12: Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
13: Thou shalt not kill.
14: Thou shalt not commit adultery.
15: Thou shalt not steal.
16: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
17: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

Now, one thing that is obvious is that they are NOT neatly numbered, 1 through 10. We can all agree, I think, that verses 12 to 16 (“honour parents” through to “bear false witness”) contain five distinct Commandments. But what about the other verses? There are different ways to divide them, it seems to me.

So first of all, can anyone tell me where in the Bible it says that there has to be 10? I have not found anything, but I may have missed something.

Apparently, it was St. Augustine in the early Church who looked at this text and divided it up into 10 Commandments accordong to what seemed to make sense.

St. Augustine made “No Gods before me” no. 1. He then considered the part about graven images to be a mere commentary on the first commandment, and made “name of the God in vain” no. 2. This made "keep the Lord’s Day no. 3.

Then the next five are: 4) honouring parents,5) killing, 6) stealing,7) adultery, 8)false witness.

Then verse 17 is divided into 9) coveting neighbour’s wife, and 10) coveting neighbour’s goods.

When the Reformation came, the Protestants (except for Luther) preferred to list the part about graven images as the second commandment, because of their position on statues and images. So “name in vain” becomes no. 3 instead of no. 2, and so on, with the last 2 Commandments (coveting wife and goods) run together to form no. 10.

But look at the biblical text. If “make no graven images” is no. 2, why couldn’t “don’t bow down to them” be no. 3? That would give us 11 Commandments!

Or maybe verses 8 and 9, above could form two commandments instead of 1. They would be:

“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

and

“Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work”

This would give us 12 commandments.

So on what basis must there be 10? And when Fundies want to hang the commandments in our public buildings, which numbering system will they favour? Could Roman Catholics and Lutherans launch a class action to demand that THEIR numbering system be respected?

2

Revisionist history and good catchphrases, just like the rest of most religions…

3

Exodus 34:28

King James Version:And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

4

The phrase comes from Exodus and Deuteronomy:

The original Hebrew for “commandments” in fact means “words” or “statements”; thus Jewish tradition holds that “I am the LORD your G-d, who brought you out of Egypt” counts as the first “statement” while as a Protestant, I’ve always been taught that “You shall have no other gods before me” is the first “commandment.”

There are certainly more than ten commandments (not coveting alone can be divided up into six separate commandments if we chose to), but there are pretty much ten categories of commandments, even if there’s some argument about how the first two should be categorized.

As far as the second part of your OP, most fundamentalists I know have a very distorted understanding of Roman Catholic/mainline Protestant theologies, and I doubt the majority of those supporting putting the ten commandments in public places even know that the decalogue is divided up differently by different denominations. Those who do may claim that America was founded on evangelical Protestant values (and yes, I know how absurd this argument is), and thus their version of the commandments should be more “respected” than other versions. I don’t really know. Maybe you should ask someone who actually supports putting the ten commandments in secular places and tell us what answer you get- I’m really curious myself.

5

Ah, King James; revisionist pap. Ten was selected because it’s a nice, round number; conveniently too large to keep all in memory simultaneously, but few enough that you can count them down on your fingers.

I’m particularly fond of Verse 5, where God admits that he’s a spoiled brat who can’t stand not being the center of attention at all times, and will punish generations thereafter of he who fails to grovel before Him.

As far as I’m concerned, you can draft whatever Commandments you like and hang them anywhere you please. They’re not binding on me, though, and can be said to form the basis for Western law only in the most simplistic and spurious fashion.

Stranger

6

Well, you can disagree with how important or ethical the ten commandments are, but it’s not revisionist (which seems to be a very popular way to dismiss religious concepts recently on this board, although I don’t think it’s always used correctly), and it’s certainly not only in the King James version that we find the phrase “ten commandments” or some variation thereof.

I suppose it’s possible that later redactors of the Torah added in the phrase to clarify, or perhaps edited the set of commandments found in both Exodus and Deuteronomy so that you could divide them up into ten basic categories, but I don’t really know the specifics of what source critics have to say about that.

Either way, I don’t think you can call it “revisionist” to suggest that there are ten basic statements here.

7

There are three basic numbering systems, with two in use by the Jewish community at different times and two in use by different Christian communities.

The numbering provided in Alexander McKenzie’s Dictionary of the Bible (with early supporters for each version) is as follows. In addition, the on-line Jewish Encyclopedia from the early 20th century uses the moden Jewish numbering system in its article on the Decalogue rather than the numbering system followed by Philo and Josephus. This numbering is certainly consistent with the concept of the “Ten Words” although it makes less sense if one uses the term “Ten Commandments.” Given that even the borrowed word decalogue means “ten words,” it is clear that that interpretation cannot be dismissed. (I do find it interesting that Philo and Josephus did not use that numbering and I do not know when the shift occurred.)


**Reformed Protestant Churches**
**Modern Orthodox Churches**
*(plus First Century Jewish References)*
01. Prohibit false gods				
02. Prohibit images			 		
03. Prohibit vain use of Divine name	Philo of Alexandria, Jewish 	
04. Honor Sabbath				philosopher (10 BCE - 50 CE)
05. Honor parents			(Flavius) Josephus, Jewish	
06. Prohibit murder				historian (fl. 1st Century CE)
07. Prohibit adultery			Greek Fathers of the Christian Church			
08. Prohibit theft				
09. Prohibit bearing false witness		
10. Prohibit covetousness			

**Modern Catholic Church**
**Lutheran Protestant Churches**
01. Prohibit false gods and images
02. Prohibit vain use of Divine name	 
03. Honor Sabbath			Clement of Alexandria, Christian 
03. Honor Sabbath			 	theologian (ca 150 – 215?)
04. Honor parents			Origen, Christian theologian
05. Prohibit murder				(ca. 185 - 254)
06. Prohibit adultery			Augustine of Hippo, Christian 
07. Prohibit theft				theologian (354 - 430)
08. Prohibit bearing false witness
09. Prohibit coveting neighbor's wife
10. Prohibit coveting neighbor's goods

**Modern Judaism**
01. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."
02. Prohibit false or foreign gods and images
03. Prohibit vain use of Divine name
04. Honor Sabbath
05. Honor parents
06. Prohibit murder			
07. Prohibit adultery
08. Prohibit theft
09. Prohibit bearing false witness
10. Prohibit covetousness
8

I’m probably one of the prime criminals here as categorizing much of religion (especially modern christian beliefs) as revisionist, but I actually am not going to suggest that the “ten” commandments are revisionist. I don’t find it odd at all to suggest that “ten” was chosen at its first conception as a good medium between “enough to be noticable” and “not enough to be too confusing”. But even on that note it seems like the number is conveniently enough to know but not enough to be trivial, as originally written

9

Thank you to everyone, especially Tom, for this info. So the Bible does specifically tell us there are 10, but does not specifically tell us which 10 they are or how to divide them. Just 17 verses at the beginning of Exodus 20, that we have to divide up. Weird!

Frankly, it is communications bloopers like this that seriously make me question the divine inspiration claims for the Bible. If “God” is going to tell us there are 10 in other parts of the Bible, how hard would it have been to say in Exodus 20:

"First, I am the Lord your God. . . . . .
“Second, . . . . .”

I also forgot about orthodox Christianity. It may seem strange that the Orthodox, known for their extensive use of icons, would agree that no. 2 is the prohibition of images. But I read in a book about the Reformation that Orthodoxy leans heavily on the word “graven”. Icons are painted on flat surfaces or possible mosaics, but are in neither case “graven”. Does anyone with a knowledge of Orthodoxy know if this is really true?

Finally, I have a question about coveting my neighbour’s ass. If my neighbour has a really cute ass and rides his bike in tight cycling pants, would God really mind if I coveted his ass discretely from behind the curtains of my home? :smiley:

10

Thou shalt no God but me adore:
'Twere too expensive to have more.

No images nor idols make
For Roger Ingersoll to break.

Take not God’s name in vain: select
A time when it will have effect.

Work not on Sabbath days at all,
But go to see the teams play ball.

Honor thy parents. That creates
For life insurance lower rates.

Kill not, abet not those who kill;
Thou shalt not pay thy butcher’s bill.

Kiss not thy neighbor’s wife, unless
Thine own thy neighbor doth caress.

Don’t steal; thou’lt never thus compete
Successfully in business. Cheat.

Bear not false witness–that is low–
But “hear 'tis rumored so and so.”

Covet thou naught that thou hast got
By hook or crook, or somehow, got.

– Ambrose Bierce

11

If by “divine inspiration” you mean that the Bible is necessarily inerrant, free of contradiction and/or literally written by God, I would agree, although there are plenty of other, more convincing reasons.

From Wikipedia :

12

One detail I do not understand. No. 1 in the modern Jewish Commandments does not command anything. It just makes a statement. How are you supposed to obey a commandment that doesn’t command?

13

That is the point. I am not even talking about inerrancy in the sense used by Christian fundies.

For example, some skeptics point out that the Bible “errs” in calling a bat a bird. That does not bother me much. Modern scientific classifications of animals is just a few centuries old. “Bird” to ancient peoples pobably meant “A critter with a beak and feathers, or a critter that flies, or both.”

I am even willing to overlook that a hare does not chew a cud, or two reports of the same battle with completely different statistics on results, or different and conflicting geneaologies for Jesus.

But the Bible says at several places that there are 10 commandments. Now that is pretty central and fundamental to religious blief. Yet, after telling us there are 10, the actual text that lists them, Exodus 20, verses 1-17, is a hodge-podge of commandments and comments that make it impossible to figure out which 10 they are.

It is that kind of sloppy communication snafu that makes me seriously doubt that an omnipotent God is really using the Bible to communicate what would, if it were true, be the most important message I will ever hear.

14

The rabbis and philosophers discuss this at length. The command is not explicit, but is implicit, and it is the command to believe that such a God really exists.

15

As you may have noted also in my first post, the Hebrew for commandment can mean “word” or “statement”; thus the first commandment in the modern Jewish tradition is in fact the first statement.

As much as I love the Bible, I would probably agree with this as well, but this should be saved for a different debate.