jmsr

I heard that moses got 10 or 15, broke them accidentally, then got a different set from god. Is this true? If so, where can I find it?

jmsr

Secular Pinoy

Compare the list in Exodus 20 with Exodus 34

-DM-

There is a problem inherent in any discussion of the so-called Ten Commandments, and that is that there are several versions in the Bible itself and, in addition, some variation in interpretation of the so-called Ten Commandments between Catholics, Protestants and Jews. Thus, one needs to clarify exactly which version and which interpretation is under discussion. (This is one of the reasons, by the way, that I refer to them as the "so-called" Ten Commandments. The other is that what we refer to as the Ten Commandments are, in their original form, not necessarily ten in number.)

There is yet another problem: Because Moses broke the tablets on which "God" allegedly wrote the first version of the Ten Commandments, "God" allegedly redid them. Unfortunately, "He" seems to have forgotten what he said in the first instance inasmuch as the first and second editions are hardly identical. Worse. there are actually three sets of so-called Ten Commandments in the Bible:
1.) EX 20.2-17: the first set of ["Ten"] Commandments on two stone tablets.
[EX 32.19: Moses breaks the first set of tablets.]
[EX 34:1, God promises Moses a new set of tablets with the same words that were on the first set.]
2.) EX 34.12-28: the second set of ["Ten"] Commandments on a new set of two stone tablets.
3.) DT 5.6-21: [allegedly] a restating of the #1 set.

#1 and #3 are essentially the same, although there are minor variations between the two. #2, however, is quite different, and this is in spite of the fact that God allegedly said that he would write the same words on this set of two tablets as had been on the first set, the set which Moses broke. Only #2 is specifically labeled as the Ten Commandments and yet these are not the so-called Ten Commandments which we normally think of as the Ten Commandments. What it boils down to is these different sets of commandments come from different traditions, and in the case of #2, two different traditions have apparently been comingled after-the-fact by an editor.

-Don-

Ulrich

In History of the World Part One, Mel Brooks depicts Moses as offering his people the "Fifteen Commandments" on three unwieldy stone tablets. He drops one of the tablets, smashing it to bits, and in mid sentence changes it to "Ten Commandments". Since the movie is a comedy, it would seem that someone is pulling your leg.

In contrast the biblical depiction in Exodus has Moses bringing down the original Ten Commandments to find the people worshiping a golden calf, at which point he gets rather upset and breaks them. Some unspecified time later he goes back up the mountain and god makes them for him all over again.

Of course I have always wondered how Moses could get so pissed off at his people for breaking a law that he hadn't revealed to them yet, as the instruction not to worship graven images is one of the Ten Commandments.

Secular Pinoy

In fact, I always remember that particular scene whenever someone mentions the decalogue.

DM, I'm pretty interested with this idea that the multiple Ten Commandments are derived from different traditions. I've always thought that the scribes who wrote the TC were just sloppy. Can you provide any good reading material about this? (I am primarily concentrating my Bible studies to the HJ discussions, so my exposure to the Bible is heavily biased towards the NT, and my OT background was/is elementary at best.)

Marduk

If you plod through all of Deuteronmy and Leviticus there are a total of some 613 commandments.

Javaman

So which of these laws do Christians get to ignore with the new covenant? I assume they don't get to ignore either set of 10 Commandments. And this whole new covenant seems pretty vague to a non-scholar like myself.

I would have thought that the NC would allow today's Xtian to bypass not only Jehovah's inconveniant laws but also the big ones.

Mmmm.... Mama's Milk Goat Stew, my fave!

jmsr

Wow. Thanks everyone. If this comes up in the debate, I'll know where to point them.

jmsr

-DM-

Can I provide any good reading material about this? You caught me at a very bad time inasmuch as most of my books are packed away in getting ready for the installation of a new floor in our place. Here are a couple that are not yet packed away:

"The Ten Commandments," Joseph Lewis, 1946, Freethought Press Association, New York. (Long out of print, but I found my copy through a book search service.)

The Two Creation Stories in Genesis, by James S. Forrester-Brown. (This doesn't specifically address the TC, but it does address the issue of the different traditions in Genesis showing that no one author is responsible for Genesis. OF course, the same is true of many if not most or all books of the Bible.)

Who Wrote the Bible?, by Richard Elliot Friedman. (This expands the multiple authorship theme to the first five books of the Old Testament, the so-called Books of Moses. See quote, below.)

Sorry, but at the moment I cannot offer the titles of other books in my collection which might address the issue.

--

Here is some possibly relevant information from the footnotes in "The New Oxford Annotated Bible," a source which I trust as quite reliable:

--

Here are some quotes from Friedman:

-Don-

Javaman

I suppose we shouldn't leave out Jesus' famous extra commandment:

Mark 10:19
the commands thou hast known: Thou mayest not commit adultery, Thou mayest do no murder, Thou mayest not steal, Thou mayest not bear false witness, Thou mayest not defraud, Honour thy father and mother.'