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Keryg 2021: When and where did we get the idea there are ten commandments?
Here is part of Exodus 20
If you look closely, it is clear that there are only nine. Some churches make ten by saying that "i am the Lord your God... is the first and "You shall not make for yourself an idol..." is the second. Other churches say that the ninth commandment is "You shall not covet your neighbor's house..." and the tenth is "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife..."
How did the idea there are ten commandments originate? Is it a Jewish idea or did Christians invent it? Does anyone know how this came about?
Then God spoke all these words:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.
If you look closely, it is clear that there are only nine. Some churches make ten by saying that "i am the Lord your God... is the first and "You shall not make for yourself an idol..." is the second. Other churches say that the ninth commandment is "You shall not covet your neighbor's house..." and the tenth is "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife..."
How did the idea there are ten commandments originate? Is it a Jewish idea or did Christians invent it? Does anyone know how this came about?
Comments
Here's the Bible Hub interlinear of Deuteronomy 5 showing different translations.
For comparison here are the commandments as given in Deuteronomy.
"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery" seems like a pretty important bit. It establishes the identity of the God whom you're not supposed to have any others before (or besides), and some of the characteristics of that God, i.e. "brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery". These seem like very relevant details.
"I am your physician, with a degree from Harvard Medical school. And I am telling you that you need to quit smoking now." Only the second sentence qualifies a doctor's order.
And as also noted above, by the traditional Jewish numbering, the first goes beyond what you quoted; it’s: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”
I’m not sure why there’s confusion about the number. (Yes, I know there are differences in how those numbers are parsed.) Looking at what @Moo has in OP, there are 10 paragraphs and 10 “you shalls/you shall nots” after the initial “Then God spoke all these words.”
I must be missing something.
It as to do with how you approach the listed sayings. Do you approach them as something that is prescriptive? Or as descriptive? Are they demands concerning how to obtain righteousness, or are they indications of righteousness? To me, they describe an ideal community.
Another word I learned in relation to these sayings is "gifts."
@Mousethief related that his ?lecturer said that they were the Ten Expectations. I've gone with that.
My Religion of Israel lecturer called them apodictic laws, as there are no penalties for disobeying them, unlike Deuteronomic Laws which specified penalties.
Interestingly, In the Matthean presentation of Jesus as a prophet like Moses, in Jesus' first (of five) discourse there are nine Beatitudes. Of course, where God gives the Ten whatsit's to Moses, Jesus is the one giving the Beatitudes. We are left to make the connection/ comparison/progression.
Hebrew professor.
It was downloaded from the cloud onto a tablet. Moses was very ahead of his time!
Where? Do you mean the Septuagint or the apparatus?
I'm sure I've heard somewhere that at some point Jewish thought was that these two (three?) were commandments from God and the others were additional laws from Moses to ensure compliance.
After those it does seem to switch from God speaking in the first person to Moses speaking about God. At least in English.
The Torah itself uses a variety of words to describe the list. Deuteronomy 5:22 uses the word mitzvot, which means "commandment." It has a secondary sense of "blessing," which is probably where the association with "gifts" comes from. While the ten commandments are called out specially in both Judaism and Christianity, Judaism traditionally identifies 613 mitzvot in the Torah. FWIW
Though I should have been more precise; the Septuagint doesn’t actually use “Decalogue” as such. It uses deka logous (ten words), from which we get the English word “Decalogue.”
It took the Jews many centuries to work out what 'work actually meant.
That sounds really ugly. @Telford what are you saying?
Does this mean Jesus is removing Sabbath observance from the Ten Commandments? Or, adding some clarification that there are some forms of work (doing good) which are permitted? Or, even is He classifying doing good as something that isn't work, and therefore not proscribed by the Commandment against work on the Sabbath? Under that third option it could certainly be argued that the Jews hadn't understood what constitutes "work" within the context of Sabbath keeping.
Yes, I wondered if this was the sort of thing to which @Telford was rather obliquely referring.
I assume “word” here is in keeping with the phrase often encountered in the OT: “The word of the Lord came to . . . . “ Something akin to a synecdoche.
I'm not gonna assume that Telford meant anything ugly by that comment, though I would be interested in further explication on his part.
Luther believed every day was as holy as any other day. For him, "sabbath-keeping" was in the hearing and following the Word of God every day of the week. To be sure, Luther, also recognized the importance of resting; but, again, it did not have to depend on a particular day of the week.
It took me quite some time to decipher how Telford's post could be ugly. I read it as saying that it took the Jewish people quite some time to decide just what was barred on the Sabbath. Can you rescue a person trapped on a cliff? If yes, can you do the same for a lamb? Where do you draw the line?
I read @Telford as saying that Jesus encountered and criticised a tradition that had developed over a long period of time.
Implying that the word of God (who according to the OT originated the notion) is hard for humankind to grasp.
Which seems pretty small-o orthodox, and not particularly cryptic nor ugly.
I wonder if changing it from words to commandments forces a renumbering. "I am ...slavery" is a perfectly valid bullet point, and there definitely is a bit of instruction. But makes a rubbish commandment.
[Counting you shall nots hidden, as boring]
There are 11 "Thou shall nots" in the text provided. I might look up to see there's a obvious Hebrew thing I can pattern match.
First the header is 9 words (as spaced out), there doesn't seem any obvious compound words. It was worth a check, it wouldn't have been the first block of text referenced by how it begins.
Secondly (and I do recall hearing this before), there's no "You shall not". But probably something like "not (inflected verb*)". Assuming that is the case, there are some elements that seem to match "(you shall) Not"'s, some "And (you shall) not" and of course "not acquit".
I'm not going to be able to count them, that would require actual understanding and looking at sentence level rather than word level. Nothing screams out as being an obvious structure (but if it isn't obvious again, I'd have no chances of spotting it).
You may have something there. I found this explanation:
Nothing ugly about it. It's a reference to the Talmud. Jewish scholars got together and discussed how the law of Moses should be interpreted. Good example
Exactly what happened.
Judaism is a work in progress.
Aren't we all?
There are people today working on the rightness of, wrongness of , and appropriate response to all kinds of things in greater and greater detail (eg fertility treatments and the use of mobile phones to name but two)
It's such an orthopractic religion anyway so endless scruples will always be involved. So it does indeed get "ugly" as MaryLouise said. "Ugly" because a few people are making rules for a lot of other people. Added to which the rule-makers and deciders generally have an agenda to push and a status quo to maintain. This in order to retain their privileges and keep certain people oppressed
[I think that fixes the extra opening quote, Jay_emm kergymania host. ]
There's actually quite a bit of subtly in Brooks TV-land style one-liners. For example, while it's the norm for actors doing historical epics to adopt a sorta faux-aristocratic, mid-Atlantic accent, Brooks always talks like an old-school New Yorker. The effect is especially pronounced in "It's good to be the king!" (Possibly NSFW)
1. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
3. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
4. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
5. Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.
6 For six days you shall labour and do all your work.
7. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
8. Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
9. You shall not murder.
10. You shall not commit adultery.
11. You shall not steal.
12. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
13. You shall not covet your neighbour’s house
14. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.
I make it 14.
Lutherans will combine #2 and #3 with #1; and #6 goes with #5.
Video.
In them, 10 is seen as the number of perfection. So that may be answer to the question posed by this thread.