Catholics? why is the order of the 10 Commandments not the same as in the Torah?

Question

When, who and why and for what purpose were the original Commandments changed?
Protestant Bibles are the same as the Torah.

Answer 1

There are actually three versions of the Ten Commandments, Jewish, Catholic (and Lutheran), and Protestant taken from Exodus Chapter 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy Chapter 5:6-21.

With the new revelations of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in the early Catholic Church, a slightly different emphasis was placed on different commandments.

Then 1500 years later, the Protestant in objecting to certain Catholic practices, once again changed the emphasis of the Ten Commandments.

+ Jewish Ten Commandments (before 1000 B.C.E.)

1. I am the Lord your G-d who has taken you out of the land of Egypt.
2. You shall have no other gods but me.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your G-d in vain.
4. You shall remember the Sabbath and keep it Holy.
5. Honor you mother and father.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness.
10. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Source: http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/Torah/Ten_Cmds/ten_cmds.html

+ Catholic (and Lutheran) Ten Commandments (about 100 C.E.)

1. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or 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; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.
2. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain
3. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; in it, you shall not do any work.
4. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.
5. You shall not kill.
6. You shall not commit adultery.
7. You shall not steal.
8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
9. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.
10. You shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ***, or anything that is your neighbor's.

Source: http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt3sect2chpt1ind.htm

+ Protestant Ten Commandments (about 1600 C.E.)

1. You shall have no other gods but me.
2. You shall not make unto you any graven images
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain
4. You shall remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
5. Honor your mother and father
6. You shall not murder
7. You shall not commit adultery
8. You shall not steal
9. You shall not bear false witness
10. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor

Source: http://www.biblicalheritage.org/Bible%20Studies/10%20Commandments.htm

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

The Ten Commandments are not numbered in the Bible. The Lord has not explicitly set out for us how they are to be numbered.

If we were to number every "command" in those sections of the Bible we would have about 17 commandments or more.

So, over the centuries different efforts by different people have been made to number and group them. Two of the major players in the early Church were St. Augustine and Origen.

We Catholics consider these two guys Saints. Roman Catholics, Anglicans (like myself) and Lutherans generally prefer those set out by Augustine and the Eastern Churches and Protestants follow the Commandments set out by Origen.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Catholics change the Bible as a cult would do.

Catholics are not saved and are not Christians. Catholics believe a false gospel of works that leads to eternal hell.

Bible teachers that said that the Vatican and the catholic cult are an antichrist: John Bunyan, John Huss, John Wycliffe, John Calvin, William Tyndale, John Knox, Thomas Bacon, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Samuel Cooper, John Cotton, and Jonathan Edwards

Answer 4

And why is there a totally separate list that everyone seems to ignore in Exodus 34:12-27?

Here they are Directly from the KJV:
1Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
2 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.
3 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
4The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.
5. All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. But the firstling of an *** thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.
6 Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.
7 And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end. Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the LORD God, the God of Israel. For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year.
8 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.
9 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God.
10 Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

Answer 5

The truth, of course, is that the Catholic Church did not and could not change the Ten Commandments. Latin Catholics and Protestants simply list them differently. It is incredible that such a pernicious lie could be so easily spread and believed, especially since the truth could easily be determined by just looking into the matter. But the rumor lives.

Most common Protestant listing:

Thou shalt have no other gods before me
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy
Honour thy father and thy mother
Thou shalt not kill
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour
Thou shalt not covet
Latin Catholic listing:

Thou shalt not have other gods besides Me
Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain
Remember to keep holy the Lord’s day
Honor thy father and thy mother
Thou shalt not murder
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods



So what the heck? What did happen to the commandment about graven images in the Catholic listing? Did the Church just "drop" a commandment?

Um, no. The Old Testament was around long before the time of the Apostles, and the Decalogue, which is found in three different places in the Bible (Exodus 20 and Exodous 34 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21), has not been changed by the Catholic Church. Chapter and verse divisions are a medieval invention, however, and numbering systems of the Ten Words (Commandments), the manner in which they are grouped, and the "short-hand" used for them, vary among various religious groups. Exodus 20 is the version most often referred to when one speaks of the Ten Commandments, so it will be our reference point here. Here's how the relevant portion of Exodus 20 reads:



2
I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3
Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.

4
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

5
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

6
And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

7
Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

8
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9
Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

13 Thou shalt not kill. 1
14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
15 Thou shalt not steal.
16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ***, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.


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?

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?).

Bottom line:


chapter and verse numbering in the Bible came about in the Middle Ages


the Catholic Church (which includes Eastern Catholics, too) has two different numbering systems for the Commandments given, one agreeing with the most common Protestant enumeration;


the Latin Church's numbering is the most common in the Catholic Church and is the one referred to by Protestants who, ignoring Eastern Catholic Churches, accuse the Catholic Church of having dropped a Commandment;


no Commandment has been dropped, in any case, but the Latin Church's shorthand for the Commandments looks different than the typical Protestant version because of how the Commandments are grouped;


everyone knows how to find Exodus 20 in the Bible, anyway -- even us stoopid Latin Catholics; and


we don't care how they are grouped together; we only care that they are understood and obeyed -- not because we are under the Old Testament Moral and Ceremonial Law with its legalism and non-salvific ritual (we aren't!), but because we are to obey God as children of the New Covenant, whose moral law includes the Two Great Commandments (to love God and to love our neighbor) which surpass the Decalogue, and whose Sacraments surpass empty ritual, being media of grace.


Footnote:
1 The Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate (the official Scripture of the Church), and the original Douay-Reims phrase the Fifth Word as "Thou shalt not murder"; later Douay-Reims versions, such as the Challoner, and the King James Bible, etc., phrase it as "Thou shalt not kill." "Thou shalt not murder," however, is the original intent and the meaning of the earliest texts.