Changed The Ten Commandments?
Posted on 03/11/2007 7:28:32 PM PDT by Salvation
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Most common Protestant listing: Thou shalt have no other gods before me Latin Catholic listing: Thou shalt not have other gods besides Me So what the heck? What did happen to the commandment about graven images in the Catholic listing? Did the Church just "drop" a commandment?
So we have 16 verses and Ten Commandments (this we know because of Exodus 34:28 and Deuteronomy 4:13 which speak of the "Ten Words" of God). How to group these verses and Commands? Here's how different groups have handled this:
When the Commandments are listed, they are often listed in short-hand form, such that, for ex., verses 8, 9, 10 and 11 concerning the Sabbath become simply "Remember the Sabbath and to keep it holy." Because Latin Catholics group 3, 4, 5 and 6 together as all pertaining to the concept "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me," we are accused of having "dropped" the commandment against idols. That Eastern Catholics list the Commandments differently never enters the equation for people who think this way; they are simply against those they probably call the "Romish popers" and that's that (I hope it doesn't bother them that Jews would accuse them of totally forgetting the First Commandment, or that Latin Catholics could accuse some Protestants of skipping lightly over the commandments against lust. And why don't the Protestants who have a problem with our numbering system go after the Lutherans for the same thing, anyway?).
Further Reading
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Precisely...and Martin Luther, being an Augustinian was hardly inclined to change the organization of the Decalogue. Pryo, if this is post # 20 we have managed to stay on topic.
**However, it does appear that we actually do cover the same material but disagree about how to organize it.**
And then how to say it! But the same ideas are all there!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1799282/posts?page=22#22
Wow! LOL! <a little bit of sarc/
IMHO, everything loses something in translation. Unfortunately, very few people can read ancient languages (my Latin is awfully rusty) so we must rely on someone else to provide a translation, which opens things up for interpretation or misinterpretation. There is also a matter of style.
Personally, I find that older translations of the Bible have a certain majesty to them that "contemporary" versions lose, but I have trouble with some of the more archaic verbiage in those older ones.
** I find that older translations of the Bible have a certain majesty to them that "contemporary" versions lose,**
Agree with you here. My son loves the Duoay Rheims because it is more like the KJV in language. I prefer one of the more modern ones.
RSV is a good choice. Jerusalem Bible isn't too bad.
What surprised me when I did a search before posting this was that there were tons of stories about The Ten Commandments court cases both SCOTUS and the one down south, was it in Kentucky?
But there was no post that I could find about "The Ten Commandments!" I found that very strange!
Martin Luther, 1524
adapted for use with the WOODWORTH tune
These are the holy Ten Commands
Which came to us from God’s own hands
By Moses who obeyed his will
On top of Sinai’s great high hill.
“I am the Lord your God alone
Of gods besides you shall have none
You shall yourself trust all to me
And love me only whole-heart-ed-ly”
“You shall not speak like idle word
The name of God who is your Lord,
As right or good you shall not praise
Except what God commands and says.”
“You shall keep holy the seventh day
That rest you and your household may,
From your own work you must be free
, That God’s praise your only work may be.”
“Honor you shall, and shall obey,
Your father and mother ev’ry day;
To serve them ready be your hand
That you may long live in this good land.”
“In wrath-ful-ness you shall not kill,
Nor hate, nor take revenge for ill
But patience keep with gentle mood
And to e’en foe be kind and good.”
“The marriage bond you shall keep clean,
That even the heart no other mean’
Your life you shall keep pure and free,
Restrained and held in chas-ti-ty.
“Steal not your neighbors goods or gold,
Nor profit by his sweat and blood,
Open then wide your kindly hand
To all the poor folk of your land.”
You shall not lying stories bear,
“Nor ‘gainst your neighbor falsely swear;
His innocence you shall rescue
And hide his shame from other’s view.”
“Your neighbor’s wife or house to win
You shall not seek, nor aught within;
But wish that his such good may be
As you would want yourself to see.”
To us come these commands, that so
You, child of earth, your sins would know,
And make you also well perceive
How before God you now should live.
May Christ our Lord help us in this,
For He our Me-di-a-tor is;
Our own work is hopeless thing
God’s wrath and anger it will bring.
Amazing how much might be learned through a song. Too bad there isn't a simple one for children.
That's pretty neat. Thanks for sharing
I was raised and confirmed Lutheran, and even spent a couple of years at a Lutheran College.
While on active duty, I finished my degree at a Baptist College. For some reason, they accepted my previous New Testament class, but not the Old Testament, so in order to graduate, I had to relearn the 10 commandments. I got my A, and my degree. The so-called Protestant numbering system makes more sense to me, but as was pointed out earlier, it's the content that matters.
Meanwhile, my kids were all confirmed in the Lutheran Church, and they all asked why we needed two covets.
Great thread!
Here's another site I found some time back with interesting comparisons:
http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/denominations/comparison_charts.htm
Sample:
http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/charts/catholic_protestant.htm
Catholic Protestant
Authority Scripture and tradition Sola Scriptura - Scripture alone
Bible Includes apocrypha Excludes apocrypha
Purgatory Affirmed Denied
Prayer to saints Accepted Rejected
Interesting. I didn't know that there were two different versions.
I'm no religious scholar, but from a practical point in this day and age the two covets seem more applicable. Modern media is built upon greed and lust. The sexy models advertising the sports cars are appealing to both covets, but greed for material things and lust for the flesh are separate things. I would venture to guess these two are the biggest downfall of mankind and deserve two separate commandments.
Well this stunes my beeber 'cause I was raised with the correct (Hebrew) 10 commandments including the "just say no to idols" commandment. Maybe all Lutherans aren't the same?
Thanks for posting, I'm surprised the "Catholics deleted no idols command so they could worship their statues and/or Saints" Jack Chic-esque notion hasn't generated a thread such as this on FR. It's good to have this "out there", so to speak, to refer to later.
For those who may be particularly dense, there are MORE than 10 commands in Exodus, so SOMETHING must be condensed to fit them into TEN Commandments.
The spirit of the "no graven images" command was to not WORSHIP anything above or equal to God. It doesn't mean to not make them PERIOD; indeed, later in Exodus itself, we see God commanding Moses to build an Ark with images of CHEREBUM on it.
We Catholics do not worship the images of Saints. Even when some of us bow/kneel to statues. We actually laugh at people who say by SIMPLY bowing/kneeling to a statue, that's WORSHIPING the statue, or even the Saint it depicts.
We laugh. We really do.
A few thoughts on all of this "commandments" business.
The Jews think there are 613 Commandments, not 10. The "ten words" is a nice summary, but it isn't "the highest law", the Torah is, and that's all 613 commandments.
Traditional Jews also think that statuary is a graven image. Period. Not statues of Jesus or Mary. Statues. The statue of David is a graven image. Some variants of traditional Judaism have gone as far as the strict Muslims have who refuse to allow pictures of animals, etc., in their art. To a pure Jewish traditionalist, the lions outside of the New York Public Library are bad things: graven images. There were exceptions to this, sanctioned by God. The Seraphim on the Ark of the Covenant and stitched into the fabric of the temple, and Moses' bronze serpent - but these had special dispensation. If one is going to be a hard-core Old Testament literalist, you have to reject not just the statuary in the Catholic Church, but the statues in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, indeed, ALL depictions of animals, plants, humans, etc. The "graven images" prescription is in no way limited to houses of worship. It literally means you cannot have paintings, photographs, statues or any other artifical depictions of living creatures AT ALL. Most Jews don't go that far, and I don't know ANY Christians who reject SECULAR art. But worrying about Catholic statues while having paintings or animal statues in your house is not being a literalist about the Bible. It's picking and choosing.
The most glaring case of "picking and choosing" indulged in by ALL Christians (except the 7th Day Adventists) is ignoring the Sabbath. The commandment says honor the SABBATH. It doesn't say honor the "Lord's day" - that's a Christian gloss. God established the Saturday Sabbath, and nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus ever END the Saturday Sabbath (the way he ends the kashrut food laws, calling all things pure). The Acts say that Christians met on the Lord's day of resurrection, which is well, but that does not constitute a divine authorization to break one of the Ten Commandments and STOP honoring the Sabbath Day and keeping it holy.
The Sabbath Day is Saturday, and has been for about four millennia. Christians and Jews say God established it. Christians say God established the Bible. Noplace in the Bible did God ever DIS-establish any of the Ten Commandments, and nowhere did God authorize changing the Sabbath Day from Saturday to Sunday. Sunday is not the Sabbath, Saturday is, since God rested on the Seventh Day (not the first). So, Catholics AND Protestants AND Orthodox, while they may not have CHANGED the Ten Commandments, actually obey at best only NINE of them. They blow off the Commandment about honoring Saturday and keeping it holy, preferring in their traditions to exchange Sunday for Saturday, and to call Sunday the Sabbath.
Is there any AUTHORITY for doing THAT?
Well, yes. In the Christian Bible, Jesus (whom the Christians say is God) gives to Peter and the apostles the "power of the keys", "to loose and to bind", and tells them that whatever they bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.
So, based on that, there is (Christian) Biblical authority for the Christians to do as they have: God said in the Ten Commandments to honor the Sabbath Day, Saturday. Peter and the early Catholics used their power of the keys to alter God's commandment, so that Saturday meant Sunday. If you're a Christian and accept the Christian New Testament as authoritative, and Jesus as God, then Peter and the Church could do that - change one of the Ten Commandments - because Jesus gave Peter the power of the keys to do that sort of thing: change the divine law on earth, and bind God by the decision. Jesus didn't change the sabbath day God established from Saturday to Sunday. Peter and the apostles didn't do it formally in the Biblical record either. But they clearly did it, because the records show Christians celebrating on Sunday, and leaving behind the Saturday Sabbath, from the earliest generations.
So, there you have it. AS WRITTEN, in the Bible, the Christians don't keep the Ten Commandments: they do not honor the Saturday Sabbath. But as written, Peter and the Apostles had the power given to them by Jesus to change around the law of God as they thought necessary, and they did so regarding the Saturday sabbath, changing it to Sunday. They didn't explicitly do this in the Bible, but the fact that the Christians always have celebrated the Sunday "Lord's Day" tells us that the tradition of ignoring the Sabbath and honoring Sunday goes back to the earliest traditions of the Christian Church.
Does that Christian tradition override the written Ten Commandments? If Jesus was really God, then he did give Peter the power to bind God by his decisions, so if Peter or the Apostles (or perhaps their heirs...that part is murkier) substituted Sunday for the Sabbath...then God is bound to respect that tradition of the Church and not hold Christians to the commandment to honor the Sabbath Day.
If Jesus was NOT God, then Christians aren't bound to the Ten Commandments anyway. They're Gentiles, and the Ten Commandments were given to the Jews. Christians, as Gentiles, would only be bound by the Seven Noachide Laws, and wouldn't have anything further to do with the Torah or Jewish law.
So paradoxically you end up for Christians with one of two situations: Either Jesus was who Christians say he was, in which case Christians are bound to whatever Peter and the Apostles said, because they had the power of the keys. Or Jesus was just an unfortunate man who was killed in Roman Palestine, in which case Jewish Christians are bound by the Torah, and Gentile Christians are only bound by the 7 Noachide laws, and can stop reading the Bible once they get to the end of the story of Noah. They're mostly descendants of Japheth, and all the Jewish Scriptures tell us about them is that they're blessed. The rest of the stuff from Abraham on down applies to Semites only, and the Ten Commandments don't apply to Christians. Christians can have meaningless statues. They need to dig out the Seven Noachide Laws and learn those. They have 7, not 10, Commandments. (If Jesus WAS God, then Christians have 9, not 10, Commandments and can blow off the Sabbath business and follow their Sunday tradition, because Peter said so and he was given the power by Jesus God to do it.)
I suppose that there's one last possibility, and that's that Jesus wasn't God, and there isn't really a Yahweh out there either burning bushes or handing out commandments. If that's the case, the whole Bible is a set of ancient myths and nobody's bound by any of it other than by respect for tradition and the desire not to offend mom.
Each must decide for himself.
The logic of the Latin listing:
[In the ancient scriptural traditions, the number "four" was not permitted to be used represent the Divine, as "four" is an imperfect number. "One" and "Three" are perfect numbers.]
Three Commandments (1-3) pertain to God.
Three Commandments (5-7) pertain to our neighbor: no murder, adultery, or theft.
One Commandment (4) pertains to the bridge which brings us from God to our neighbor: our parents whom we must honor.
Three Commandments (8-10) mirror 5-7. Don't kill your neighbor's reputation, don't even think about adultery, and don't even think about stealing.
And if one is to consider the first commandment to include both "have no other gods before me" and "make no image" as part of it, then quote the whole commandment that includes it. Otherwise, why not the latter part instead of the former.
The biggest problem the Jews had in the Land of Israel was with idolatry --- making images of things and worshipping them. They too kept forgetting about the "making image" part of the Decalogue.
Perhaps, instead of numbering them, Deuteronomy 20:1-17 should just be quoted verbatim and let those who read it put their own numbers to them.
I'm not too sure, but I think that IS a "simple one, for children". ;'}
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