The ten commandments
The Ten Commandments, the ethical foundation of western culture… or so the religionists claim. But if you ask anyone to recite them all, almost none can name all ten (I can!). In fact, there’s more than one version of the decalogue. While Protestants and Roman Catholics use Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 as their basis for it, they come up slightly different lists:
Protestant Decalogue
- I am Yahweh your God. You shall have no other gods before me. (Exo 20:2-3)
- You shall not make for yourselves an idol. (Exo 20:4)
- You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain. (Exo 20:7)
- Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. (Exo 20:8)
- Honor your father and your mother. (Exo 20:12)
- You shall not murder. (Exo 20:13)
- You shall not commit adultery. (Exo 20:14)
- You shall not steal. (Exo 20:15)
- You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. (Exo 20:16)
- You shall not covet your neighbors house. You shall not covet your neighbors wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbors. (Exo 20:17)
Roman Catholic Decalogue
- I am Yahweh your God. You shall have no other gods before me. (Exo 20:2-4)
- You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain. (Exo 20:7)
- Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. (Exo 20:8)
- Honor your father and your mother. (Exo 20:12)
- You shall not murder. (Exo 20:13)
- You shall not commit adultery. (Exo 20:14)
- You shall not steal. (Exo 20:15)
- You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. (Exo 20:16)
- You shall not covet your neighbors wife. (Exo 20:17)
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods. (Exo 20:17)
The difference lies mainly in the Roman Catholic version’s joining of verses 2 and 3 with verse 4. We can understand why they do it. Since Roman Catholic churches, houses, and other papist places are rife with images, idols, and religious statues, they can’t very well allow the ten commandments to have a prohibition against idols and images. Or rather, the Protestants split verse 4 from verses 2 and 3, to damn the papists with idolatry.
Roman Catholics believe that the prohibition against graven images must be understood as a further elaboration on verses 2 and 3, that is, that not only must you not worship other gods, you shouldn’t make graven images depicting such gods. Protestants (ideally) prohibits any images at all, not even of Jesus or Yahweh. Or so they claim, but I see more and more Protestants embracing religious images. In a local Methodist church I used to attend, the ceiling had paintings of what seemed to be cherubs resting among the clouds. Nice artwork, but theologically questionable.
In order to make the list a round ten, Roman Catholics split verse 17 into two commandments: not coveting your neighbor’s wife and not coveting your neighbor’s goods. I think Protestants are correct in listing this verse as a single commandment.
BTW, notice that in this verse, a man’s wife and servants are considered as chattel, no more important than his cattle. Such attitudes are the antithesis of Humanism.
Also, if you compare the justification for keeping the sabbath day holy in Exodus 20 with Deuteronomy 5, you’d get two totally different reasons. According to Exodus 20:You shall labor six days, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your stranger who is within your gates; for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy. (Exo 20:9-11)
But in Deuteronomy 5, we get:
You shall labor six days, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God, in which you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your livestock, nor your stranger who is within your gates; that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm: therefore Yahweh your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (Deu 5:13-15)
While the discrepancy is not great, it is there. Why should we keep the sabbath holy, because God (not Yahweh, see my previous post) rested on the seventh day, or because Yahweh brought us out of Egypt (actually, it’s just the Jews)?
Actually, if one reads the text of the ten commandments in the bible, one can’t help but notice that it’s only given to the Jews. I can only presume that only the Jews need follow all of it (the rest of us can keep commandments 6-9 from the Protestants’ list).
And there’s yet another version of the ten commandments! In Exodus 34 we have another list:
The Ten Commandments
- You shall worship no other god: for Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. (Exo 34:14)
- You shall make no cast idols for yourselves. (Exo 34:17)
- You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib; for in the month Abib you came out from Egypt. (Exo 34:18)
- All that opens the womb is mine; and all your livestock that is male, the firstborn of cow and sheep. The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb: and if you will not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. No one shall appear before me empty. (Exo 34:19-20)
- Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest: in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. (Exo 34:21)
- You shall observe the feast of weeks with the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of harvest at the years end. (Exo 34:22)
- You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread. (Exo 34:25)
- You shall not leave the sacrifice of the feast of the Passover to the morning. (Exo 34:25)
- You shall bring the first of the first fruits of your ground to the house of Yahweh your God. (Exo 34:26)
- You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. (Exo 34:26)
Why another list? Because Moses broke the tablets containing the first list when he saw that his people created an idol, a gold calf, and began to worship it (Exo 32:1-19). So he took the golden calf, burned it, pulverized it, and made the Israelites drink the powdered remains (Exo 32:20). Not content, Moses ordered the massacre of the idolators:Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Whoever is on Yahwehs side, come to me! All the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him. He said to them, Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, Every man put his sword on his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and every man kill his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. The sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men. Moses said, Consecrate yourselves today to Yahweh, yes, every man against his son, and against his brother; that he may bestow on you a blessing this day. (Exo 32:26-29)
Interestingly, the ringleader of the calf-worshippers, Aaron the high priest, wasn’t punished for leading his people astray. Talk about selective justice.
Back to the list. Now after breaking the stone tablets and killing three thousand of his people, Moses was ordered by his god to make another set of stone tablets: Yahweh said to Moses, Chisel two stone tablets like the first; and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke (Exo 34:1). Strangely enough, God’s second list bears little resemblance to the first, despite God’s claim that he will “write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets.” I mean, where did it say in the first list not to boil a young goat in it’s mother’s milk? And lest you think this second list shouldn’t be called the ten commandments, it’s referred to as such in the very same book!Yahweh said to Moses, Write you these words: for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. He was there with Yahweh forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread, nor drank water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. (Exo 34:27-28)
But regardless of which version of the ten commandments one favors, they’re all the product of a primitive and is of little value to the modern world. My ten commandments is the Humanist Manifesto, and unlike the decalogue, it’s not written in stone and can adapt to a changing world.
