Why did God change the Ten Commandments, part two?

Question

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AsW3lMWVjqbHdEMU1G.lYiXsy6IX?qid=20060710191740AA4G7JS

On the above question i got half of the answers telling me how silly i was, for stating that God changed the Ten Commandments. It always saddens me to see how many so called christians know so little about their own Bible.

Thank God that one answerer provided me with an accurate link, which i like to share here:
http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/whichcom.pdf

So, i ask again: God didn't change the Ten Commandments? And which are the real ones?

pls try to give some serious answers, because i'm truly wondering...

Answer 1

First, check the answer I gave to the previous question.

These are the parallel passages:

2“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3“You shall have no other gods before Me.
4“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
7“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
8“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. 11For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
12“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you.
13“You shall not murder.
14“You shall not commit adultery.
15“You shall not steal.
16“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.” Exodus 20:2-17

6‘I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
7‘You shall have no other gods before Me.
8‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 9you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 10but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
11‘You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
12‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. 13Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. 15And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
16‘Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the LORD your God is giving you.
17‘You shall not murder.
18‘You shall not commit adultery.
19‘You shall not steal.
20‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
21‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife; and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.’ Deuteronomy 5:6-21

Answer 2

god didn't change them; the site you agree with posts 2 things -- three different versions of what the ten are, dependig on religious tradition and then an invention of a second set based on picking 10 other commandments and claiming that they are a new set of ten on the stone -- but that's not accurate. In fact, if you look at deuteronomy, you'll see the same initial 10 restated (almost identically). Why are you picking other verses and claiming that they were a replacement? the torah is filled with lots of commandments -- 10 was the start, not the end, but the 10 on the tablets were the only 10 on the tablets.

Answer 3

The Bible is said to have over 600 commandments from God. This document you show lists a distillation of the Ten Commandments in each of the first 3 columns -- these are not necessarily biblical quotes, so there should be no confusion from these with what is written in the Bible (giving latitude for translation variances -- though, I'm not sure where the third column came from).

The column entitled "The Second Tables of Stone (Ex. 34)" is NOT what was written on the stone tablets. These are various commandments, statutes and ordinances that God SPOKE to Moses. Your confusion seems to come from misunderstanding the idiom used in Exodus 34:27-28.

Reading another translation of these may help:
"And Yahweh said unto Moses, Write for thyself these words, FOR ACCORDING TO THE TENOR OF THESE WORDS, have I solemnized with thee, a covenant, and with Israel. So then he was there, with Yahweh, forty days and forty nights, bread, did he not eat and, water, did he not drink, and he wrote upon the tables, the words of the covenant, the ten words." (Exodus 34:27, The Emphasized Bible, by J.B. Rotherham)

In other words, "Take notes, Moses; we're going to be going over the gist of the covenant so you understand it thoroughly."

Moses was on the mountain for 40 days (Exodus 34:28), talking with God. It didn't take 40 days to write 10 commandments on stone! These were just some of the things that they talked about, to give Moses a clearer idea of what the Covenant was all about.

The last column is irrelevant, because it is merely a small subset of the 600+ commandments of God. You might as well pick any set of 10, but that won't make them THE Ten Commandments.

The 10 Commandments form the foundation of God's Law and Way of life. These are expounded with explanations and detailed in the form of statutes, ordinances and judgements. Don't confuse these with the Ten Commandments.

Answer 4

The reason the Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish commandments are *somewhat* different is due to differences in translation. Languages like Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic did not have the notion of paragraphs. A complex document like the ten commandments was written in one big long text that would drive an English teacher nuts.

When translating the Torah / Old Testament into English, the translators have to read the document and make decisions about where the paragraphs should be in order for the text to make sense and be readable in English. Different translators, being human, made *somewhat* different decisions about which topics to put in which paragraph.

The link that you posted show this clearly. The three versions of the ten commandments are nearly identical in terms of ideas. The differences are in the word choice and grouping.

Answer 5

God gave Israel the Ten Commandments a/k/a the Mosaic Law. That law helped the nation of Israel remember that they were imperfect and needed forgiveness of their sins. When Jesus came, he fulfilled that law and replaced it with "the law of the Christ", which is basically two commands: 1) love God with your whole heart, mind and sould, and 2) love your neighbor as yourself. He said that the whole law hangs on these two commands, which is true. If you truly love God and other people, you don't do anything listed in the ten commandments.

Answer 6

In spite of popular belief, the Bible was not written by one or two people who sat down and recorded info. from A to Z. It was written by lots of different people, with different biases and view points. It is also important to recognize that the Bible, especially the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, did not always exist in the current form, but were a loose collection of writings, that were much later put together.
The Bible is a human book, written by humans. Biblical scholars generally believe that there were several "streams" or schools of editors who wrote the Hebrew Scriptures. This is called the "four source theory." This is why there are also parallel accounts of historical events in different books. Different people wrote about various events, at different times, and with different approaches.

Answer 7

God did not change the ten commandments. One who clearly reads the scriptures know that they are only ten, and which ten they are.

The problem lies in how various religions choose to number them. There are four variations of the ten commandments.

The differences in these four ways of numbering relate only to the first, second and the last commandments. The numbering by Josephus and Philo, noted Jewish writers of the first century C.E., made the First Commandment the prohibition of worshiping other gods; the Second Commandment, the prohibition of making images and worshiping them and the Tenth Commandment the prohibition of coveting per se, that is the coveting of anything that one’s neighbor might have. This method of numbering gives due importance to the various things forbidden and is the method used by most Protestant churches as well as by the Christian witnesses of Jehovah.

Modern Jews follow the division given in the Talmud. It lists as the First Commandment what is actually the preamble, namely: “I am Jehovah your God, who have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slaves.” By what kind of logic or reasoning this preamble is supposed to be a commandment is hard to determine. Because of counting this as the First Commandment, the Talmudists were obliged to include both the command against worshiping other gods and the command against making images and worshiping them in the Second Commandment.

Roman Catholics count the command against worshiping other gods before Jehovah, and the command against making images and worshiping them, as the First Commandment. Then they number the command against coveting the wife of one’s neighbor as a command separate from that against coveting other things a neighbor has. The basis for this is said to be the way Deuteronomy 5:21 reads: “You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, you shall not set your heart on . . . anything that is his.”—The Jerusalem Bible.

Martin Luther followed the Roman Catholic method as to the First Commandment. However, he counted the coveting of the house of one’s neighbor as the Ninth Commandment and the coveting of the neighbor’s wife or anything else a neighbor has as the Tenth Commandment. He based this numbering on the way Exodus 20:17 reads: “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet . . . anything that belongs to him.”—New English Bible.

Thus we have four ways of numbering the Ten Commandments: The Talmudist, the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran, in addition to the one most widely accepted.


INTERESTINGLY, New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), Vol. 4, page 7, admits: “The Christians who follow the tradition of Exodus seek to maintain the tradition of ‘ten’ by splitting the two commandments—Ex 20.3 and Ex 20.4-6—by what is considered as one commandment by the tradition of the [Roman Catholic Church], namely, Dt 5.7-10. Such a split is considered to represent the more original form of the Decalogue. . . . This opinion, that Ex 20.4a was originally a separate commandment, seems to be a satisfactory solution, especially if it is maintained that it represents a prohibition against making idols of Yahweh, since it would then conform to the nature of apodictic law by regulating a matter different from that of the first commandment.” Compare Exodus 32:4, 5; 1 Kings 12:28.

Answer 8

If you are that interested read the bible or go to the Library and look up Ten comandments.Somethings you just got to take on faith. As for as the Ten Comandments that was for the childern of Israel. You can no more live by the Ten Comandments than they could, So why are you so concerned if God changed them or not, if he did you still could not live by them, that is sort of the point.
Be careful of what you ask for you just may get it. God wanted them to live by faith and trust in him that he would take care of them but no they want rules. They want to go back were there were rules so he gave them rules.
Me I had much rather live by faith, yes the Ten comandments still apply they are guide lines to live by, but if you brake just even one you have broken them all.
So it really does not matter if there is to sets of Ten Comandments are a 100 each being different you still could not live by them.
That is way God sent Jesus to die on the Cross but even yet now we still do not belive,Question if you where god what would you do to us. Distroy us or just say oh well?
Me you would be toast.

Answer 9

The Ten Commandments were the blueprints of the first written document of law, morality and order for the human race. It "saddens me" that some such as yourself don't realize the importance and consequences of the Ten Commandments.

Answer 10

I thought in that Mel Blancs movie that there were 15 commandments, but Moses dropped one tablet, so he came down with only 10 commandments.

Was that movie not factual?

Answer 11

Who did he give them to? Moses and the Hebrews or Jews Right. Then go with thiers Dude.