hinduwoman

According to one of my acquaintances in Hebrew there is no Ten Commandments; Moses only brought down 10 Utterances.
??
Does it make that much of a difference in Hebrew?

Chili

Utterances are convertible and laws are applied convertibles.

Toto

The Jews have 613 commandments, not just 10.

"Utterances" is a literal translation of the Hebrew for whatever Moses brought down from the mountain, and makes sense in context because the first utterance was not a commandment - "I am the lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage." The Jews consider this the first utterance, but because it is not a commandment, the Catholics and Protestants turn it into a prologue to what the Jews consider the second utterance, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

Comment on the three versions of the 10C

Zipporah

The Jews have 613 commandments, and relegate 7 to the non-Jewish population. Where the Christians got the idea that the Decalouge is any more important than the rest of Torah is beyond me. But then again, most things Christians come up with are.

Dave Roberts

True and false.

The ten utterances,"oral" commandments can be found in Exodus Chapter 20, and these are the ten that Christians like to use as they are universal laws.
The ten written on the tables of testimony and supposedly housed in the ark of covenant are found in Exodus Chapter 34, most Christians never make it this far as the preceding chapters are filled with uninteresting instructions on how the ark is to be constructed.

Exodus 34:1 And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will upon these table the words that where in the first tables, which thou brakest.

Later you will find (verses 11-26) the Ten Commandments, God gives to Moses.

Exodus 34:27 And the Lord said on to Moses, right thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.

Exodus 34:28 And he was there with the Lord 40 days and 40 nights; and he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant The Ten Commandments.

Exodus 34:29 And it came to pass, when Moses came down the mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shown while he talked with him.

The commandments found in this chapter, (34) are obviously meant only for the Jewish people, and Christians surely would never try to present them to to a public they were trying to convert, and I'm quite certain that they would never try to have them placed in ANY public building. :thumbs:

One might also notice that God forgot to write them himself, as he had said he would in verse 34:1. Maybe he forgot what he said.