The Ten Commandments - Page 3

It is amazing that the ten commandments have received so much attention in recent years, and yet the very people who have raised the issue do not take what the commandments say seriously. The ten commandments, as recorded in Exodus 20, maintain the absolute oneness of God. Most of those who wish to have the commandments displayed on public buildings by contrast believe in the Trinity, a doctrine completely foreign to the ten commandments and its associated traditions. Furthermore, about a third of the text of the ten commandments relates to the seventh-day Sabbath. Most of those who support the greater visibility of the commandments are Sunday observers. Finally, one of the ten commandments is Thou shalt not kill. Both the death penalty and pre-emptive war of aggression seem to be popular issues among some of the same people who glibly favor the Decalogue.

It is only reasonable, however, that this inconsistency should be so. The ten commandments are pervasively used by nearly all Christian churches, to say nothing of Jews. Even Islam recognizes them to have been given to Moses as the criterion of right and wrong. Obviously, most of these religious establishments, despite their lip service to the ten commandments, do not observe them. In fact, all of the faith traditions of the world maintain at least half of the commandments. Yet no faith tradition maintains all ten in a literal way. The ten commandments appear in nearly every Christian catechism ever written, but some of them are explained contrary to the clear and obvious sense of the text. For Martin Luther in the Shorter Catechism the Sabbath commandment means to go to church and abide by what the preacher says! The very commandment that establishes the authority of God is being usurped to bolster the authority of man. Even the Roman Catholic Church gives the ten commandments, in abridged and changed form, a place in its catechism.

The ten commandments are unique in that in all of the classical religious literature of the world it appears that there is no other text that claims to have been revealed directly by God to an enormous crowd of people. All other texts come through an individual, often by means of visions, dreams, or individual intuitions. Angels and prophets are prominant, but rarely direct speach of God.

Exodus 20 reports that God spoke directly and publicly on Mount Sinai soon after Israel left Egypt. There are hints and references to such a divine revelation around the world in the oral traditions of the most far-flung people. Tribes in Africa, North and South America, and other parts of the world have preserved the story of God giving a message to humankind on a mountain. Sometimes the details of such stories are strikingly similar to the Bible. The story as told among American Indians included the destruction of pursuing enemies by being buried and smothered, the miraculous springs of water, the covenant, the thunder on the mountain, the speaking of the Creator from the mountain, and the giving of a stone memento of the event.

While the text of the ten commandments may not appear in other sacred books, most of them refer directly to most of the commandments. No religion supports killing, stealing, adultery, or dishonoring parents. Their sacred books refer to these principles in terms that are very much like the ten commandments. Each of the commandments is referenced in the Qur'an, including the Sabbath in several passages. Most religious traditions are like Christianity in having the principles of the ten commandments in their sacred books, but fail to maintain some of them. The Qur'an terms Sabbath-breakers monkeys, but that does not prevent Muslims generally from ignoring the Sabbath, just like their fellow believers the Christians. On the other hand, in ancient times it appears that the principles of the ten commandments were incredibly well-known and followed. The observance of the Sabbath by non-Jewish populations was widespread.

The importance of the ten commandments in ancient Jewish tradition is inestimable. Some people valued them so highly, that they considered nothing else of importance. At a time when books were rare and costly, the temptation to consider that revelation consisted of the ten commandments only was great. The Rabbis eventually irradicated the idea from Judaism, but at a heavy cost. Only after prohibiting the recitation of the ten commandments as part of the daily prayers were they able to educate the Jewish populace to see the other duties of the Torah as of equal value. The history is mentioned in some detail in Jewish Liturgy and its Development, A. Z. Idelsohn, pages 91, 92.

”In the Temple Service the Ten Commandments were read before the Shema. This custom, however, was not adopted outside the Temple, on account of the Sectaries who said that only these commandments were divinely revealed (b.Ber.12a). In the Nash-Papyrus of about the first century C.E. found in Egypt, the Ten Commandments are given before the Shema.

”The Ten Commandments continued to be recited in the Palestinian synagogue in Egypt until the thirteenth century.

”A clearer reason is given in Jer. Ber. 1, 3c, – the reason being that 'they (the Minim) shall not say that only these (the Ten Commandments) were given to Moses on Mount Sinai.' Kohler adds: 'Only because the early Judeo-Christians claimed divine revelation exclusively for the Ten Commandments, discarding the other Mosaic laws as temporary enactments, was the recital of the Decalogue in the daily morning liturgy afterwards abolished.'”

There is a great deal stated and implied here, but perhaps the most relevant to this article is the fact that the ten commandments were once far more central to both Judaism and Christianity than they are today. The only conclusion to be drawn is a general and pervasive apostasy. A few people still maintain that early ”Judeo-Christian” belief, that the Ten Commandments form the central and determining divine revelation for all time and everywhere.

Those who are coming out of Babylon and forming home churches to worship in purity would do well to consider that the ten commandments should be recited in every meeting for worship.