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What christianity has labeled as the “Ten Commandments” is a blunt and complete misrepresentation of what Moses was given by God. In the Tanakh what was inscribed on those stone tablets are called “The Ten Words or “The Ten Sayings”. They were the Ten Words because there were only ten words inscribed on the tablets.

The first time the hebrew name Asereth ha-D'bharîm was mistranslated as the “Ten Commandments” was the Geneva Bible in 1557ad. The King James Bible followed and the Asereth ha-D'bharîm has been mistranslated in christianity as the Ten Commandments ever since. However, the Septuagint did properly translate the Ten Sayings as the dekalogos literally meaning the “Ten Words”.

The two stone tablets of which Moses famously brought down from Mount Sinai were also not labeled the “Ten Commandments” or the “Commandments Tablets”, or any variation thereof. In the Tanakh they are called Luchot HaBrit or the the “Tablets of the Covenant”. The first tablet, containing the first five declarations, identifies duties regarding our relationship with God, while the second tablet, containing the last five declarations, identifies duties regarding our relationship with other people.

The above facts have significant meaning because the Ten Words were never considered to be the “core commandments” nor were the Ten Words considered to be a “paring down of the Law of Moses”. Simply put, from the inception of the Law of Moses, the Ten Words were a simple categorizing of the Law, or the summary headings of the whole Law. Each word on the tablets corresponds to a whole section of the Law, each word represents a whole chapter of the Law.

The significance is awesome in that while christianity has erroneously taught that the Torah or Mosaic Law has a singular purpose, the ancient biblical and cultural understanding of even the Ten Commandments shows that the Torah is not singular in purpose. Jesus taught as much and whether it was First Temple Judaism or Second Temple Judaism the meaning of the Ten Words never changed and Jesus himself never changed them. Just as Jesus taught the whole of the Law and Torah, you cannot have the Ten Words separate from the Law and Torah. The Ten Words are the written Mosaic Law and vice versa.

Was just saying.

What christianity has labeled as the “Ten Commandments” is a blunt and complete misrepresentation of what Moses was given by God.

"Search for the truth. I tell you things and I always ask you to verify what I say. I told you yesterday that there was an attack and a retreat at Saddam's airport."