THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (there are THREE versions!) (page 2)

Shining One

Terry,
Are you so interested in smearing scripture (getting 'back' at God) that you let your bitterness color your commentary?
Rex

wanderlustguy

Are you so interested in smearing scripture (getting 'back' at God) that you let your bitterness color your commentary?

I'm definaitely aware Terry can answer his own questions, but I just couldn't help but notice it doesn't look like you even READ his post. Up at the top...the second line.

The point was the arguments people give about the commandments, i.e. keeping them in the couthouses, etc. There are three versions, so if you keep them, which version do you keep in a public forum?

Who is letting bitterness guide their commentary again? WLG

funkyderek

the_classicist:

Now as to the point of Exodus 34 and 20. If you notice, the Decalogue is not reproduced in Exodus 34, but there is a record and command of it's reproduction. Exodus 34:10-26 concerns religious laws and not the Decalogue. You're taking it out of context.

Not at all. It's quite clear.

Exodus 34:10 begins: "Then the LORD said: 'I am making a covenant with you.'" and then proceeds to outline the terms of the covenant that Terry quoted above. Verse 28 says: "Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments."

Now, to me, it would require the most extraordinary mental gymnastics to interpret that as meaning the Ten Commandments were something other than the ten laws God gave to Moses as a covenant, which covenant Moses wrote on the stone tablets. The real clincher for me is that the laws in Exodus 20 are not referred to as the Ten Commandments. The first time that phrase is used is in Exodus 34. I'd be fascinated to hear your explanation.

Pole

ShiningOne,

Are you so interested in smearing scripture (getting 'back' at God) that you let your bitterness color your commentary?

And how did Terry's post "smear" the scripture? All he wrote was that different religions have different versions of the ten commandments. Can you please address that point specifically instead of resorting to silly generalisations?
classicist,
BTW, I don't care about the history of the Catholic church, but I can tell you something about the actual feelings of the catholics I've met. I live in a 95% Catholic country. When I was a JW and I showed how the Catholic version is out of keeping with the biblical warning against making idols they were usually shocked. Especially when they saw how the last commandment was split into 2 to round up to 10. When you come to Poland and see the Catholic idol worship you can understand that. LOL. So when you make this comment:

Catholics consider that a violation of the first commandment; the Second Council of Nicaea assigned to sacred images the same veneration given to the Book of the Gospels, which is different from the adoration warned against in the first commandment.

The question remains: Why did the Catholic church feel the need to adjust this commandment? Isn't it just another example of religious double-speak which helps them to get away with the obvious idolatory at Catholic sanctuaries?
Pole

MidwichCuckoo

If there's 3 versions, would it be ok to 'Pick 'n' Mix' a selection?

Faraon

I am reading “Who Wrote the Bible” by Dr. Richard Elliot Friedman who states, as I understand it, that Israel had the tabernacle At Shechem where besides the two fifteen-foot-high winged sphinxes, or cherubim, made of wood with gold plated coverings, there were sculpted images of flowers and palm trees, ordered by the Jewish deity to be placed there; they had two molten golden young bulls (not really calves) as the symbol of their religion. One was placed in Dan, and the other in Beth-El, so the deity would be enthroned in all of Israel rather than in only one place in Jerusalem, Judah’s capital.

Exodus 32:4 (KJV)
And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

My comments: A curious thing is that besides the bible throughout condemns molten images, but not beaten gold Exodus 32 uses the plural “these” and “gods”. It should indicate more than one god, even though there is only one golden young bull (calf) to represent them.
Dr. Elliot Friedman makes the point that the Canaanite god El was represented not only by cherubs (winged sphinxes), but also by bulls.

Numbers 21:8 (NIV)
The LORD said to Moses, "Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live."

My comments: Here the deity YHWH orders the construction of an idol with magical powers. (Although this one did not eat two snakes without apparent weight gain when switched back to wood, as it happened in the pharaoh’s court legend)

2 Kings 18:4 (NIV) He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.)

My thoughts: Those high places were used for the sacrifice of acceptable animals to YHWH, but the Aaronite priests would not get their cut of the action. The Mushite (descendants of Moses) priests would be out of a job due to the centralization of sacrifices. El's / YHWH’s consort would be of the picture for some time.

The bronce snake had offerings of burnt incense, which were meant, not to the snake, but to the deity. According to Josephus, all animals could talk in “Paradise”, but I doubt that they would would burn incense to an animal or anything else that a representation of their exclusive god, who ordered it built. Obviously this deity had no problem with it for 800 years or so. How do I know it?
Remember that Moses, the meekest man on earth, had a man murdered for picking sticks on a Saturday, but there is no record of anyone being murdered during all this time by YHWH or his followers for burning incense to the snake's statue. Therefore working on a Saturday is a greater sin than offering a smoke to El / YHWH.

Faraon

Terry

Therefore working on a Saturday is a greater sin than offering a smoke to El / YHWH.

The first Marlboro Man?

T.

Narkissos

Great points.

Actually this is a very complex issue, as there are many similar lists of commandments in the OT and the formal top-ten list only appears at the end of the process, most probably after the Babylonian exile (first in Deuteronomy 5, then in Exodus 20; the "ten words" of Exodus 34:28 seems to be a late gloss -- btw, this is commonly admitted in Catholic exegesis, cf. the Jerusalem Bible's footnotes). Ancestors to the extant Decalogue can actually be found in prophetic literature, e.g. in Hosea:

Swearing, lying, and murder,
and stealing and adultery break out;
bloodshed follows bloodshed. (4:2)

I am Yhwh your God
from the land of Egypt (12:10; 13:4)

or in Jeremiah:

Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known... (7:9).

References to the sabbath are widely acknowledged as post-exilic, all the more in the form of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 which depend on the priestly Genesis 1--2:4a.

kid-A

Interesting that everybody except the catholics are forbidden from coveting their neighbours ASSES.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (there are THREE versions!)

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