The Ten(?) Commandments
Yesterday, I turned on the TV to sort of watch the Ten Commandments — You know, the original with crazy NRA Charlton Heston? Anyways, it turned out that ABC was airing a new remake of the Ten Commandments. Tuning in part way through I wasn’t that interested in watching it, but I was confused enough to look up the ABC website to find out what this movie was.
Then I stumbled across a few websites about the variations in the Ten Commandments. There is a good entry in the wikipedia about the Ten Commandments and there is another one looking at the Hebrew origins of the Ten Commandments.
The short form of the variations between the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant versions are as follows:
The Jewish First commandment is “I am the Lord your G-d…” and the Second is “You shall have no other gods but me”. Both the Catholic and Protestant combine these into a single First Commandment. The Second Commandment of the Protestant faith is “You shall not make (and worship) any graven image”. This combined in the Jewish First and Second commandments, and in the the First Commandment for the Catholic.
The final major difference is that the Catholic Ninth Commandment is “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife” and the Tenth Commandment “Thou shalt not covet your neighbour’s goods” is only a single Tenth Commandment in the Jewish and Protestant versions. This implies that coveting a wife has more (or different) importance in the Catholic faith. |By the way, the separation of the Commandments into Jewish, Catholic and Protestant is only for the majority of denominations in making up each faith. There are notable exceptions, Lutherans (Protestants), for example, hold with the Catholic version of theTen Commandments.
Even more surprising to me, is that the Ten Commandments appear twice in the Bible. Once in Exodus 20 and again in Deuteronomy 5. Depending on the bible you read they will be slightly different. The most important difference is the Commandment “You shall remember the Sabbath and keep it holy”. In Exodus, the reason is given that God rested on the 7th day of creation. In Deuteronomy, the reason is given that God delivered the Hebrews from slavery and that they were to remember the Sabbath in honour of him.
One of the creepiest lines in the Ten Commandments is this:
Thou shalt not make thee any graven image…thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them,… for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the father upon the children..
The italics are mine. I’ve always wondered why the God of the Old Testament is so mean and vindictive and in the New Testament he is so loving. I have no answers, of course, but I do choose the New Testament view.
The two sites that I mentioned above seem to provide a fairly unbiased and historical view of the variations. Be careful, however, there are lots of sites that essentially accuse other religions of altering or defacing the word of God. When you read, be sure to analyze the writer’s motivation.
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