Ten Commandments

[Arkady]

In Exodus, Moses throws a temper tantrum and breaks the tablets that held the ten commandments. Then, a couple chapters later, God tells him to make two new stone tables, to replace the ones he broke. And Moses goes up on Mount Sinai with those tablets, and God has him write down the words of the covenant, the ten commandments, on the tablets. But it's not the same list as the first time. God repeats some of the commandments from the list that was broken, but drops some others and replaces them:

(1) Worship no other god.
(2) Make no molten gods.
(3) Keep the feast of unleavened bread.
(4) Sacrifice first-born animals to God.
(5) Rest on the Sabbath.
(6) Keep the feast of weeks.
(7) Don't use leavened bread with your blood sacrifices.
(8) Don't leave fat overnight.
(9) Sacrifice first fruits to God.
(10) Don't boil goats in their mother's milk.

Jesus also provides a different list of commandments, in the three versions of the camel-through-the-needle's-eye story.

Luke:
(1) No adultery
(2) No killing
(3) No stealing
(4) No false witness
(5) Honor your parents
(6) sell everything you have and distribute to the poor
(7) Come and follow Jesus

Matthew:
(1) No murder
(2) No adultery
(3) No stealing
(4) No false witness
(5) Honor your parents
(6) Love your neighbor
(7) Sell everything you have and give to the poor
(8) Come and follow Jesus

Mark:
(1) No adultery
(2) No killing
(3) No stealing
(4) No false witness
(5) Don't defraud
(6) Honor your parents
(7) Sell whatever you have and give to the poor
(8) Come, take up the cross, and follow Jesus

Since the first commandments were destroyed, and the second set replaced them, and since Jesus provided a new list, anyway (or three new lists, depending on how you resolve the Bible contradicting itself this way), why is it that first set that people refer to? Wasn't it superseded? Wouldn't that be like referring, today, to the Articles of Confederation, rather than the Constitution?

 

[Arkady]

In Exodus, Moses throws a temper tantrum and breaks the tablets that held the ten commandments. Then, a couple chapters later, God tells him to make two new stone tables, to replace the ones he broke. And Moses goes up on Mount Sinai with those tablets, and God has him write down the words of the covenant, the ten commandments, on the tablets. But it's not the same list as the first time. God repeats some of the commandments from the list that was broken, but drops some others and replaces them:

(1) Worship no other god.
(2) Make no molten gods.
(3) Keep the feast of unleavened bread.
(4) Sacrifice first-born animals to God.
(5) Rest on the Sabbath.
(6) Keep the feast of weeks.
(7) Don't use leavened bread with your blood sacrifices.
(8) Don't leave fat overnight.
(9) Sacrifice first fruits to God.
(10) Don't boil goats in their mother's milk.

Jesus also provides a different list of commandments, in the three versions of the camel-through-the-needle's-eye story.

Luke:
(1) No adultery
(2) No killing
(3) No stealing
(4) No false witness
(5) Honor your parents
(6) sell everything you have and distribute to the poor
(7) Come and follow Jesus

Matthew:
(1) No murder
(2) No adultery
(3) No stealing
(4) No false witness
(5) Honor your parents
(6) Love your neighbor
(7) Sell everything you have and give to the poor
(8) Come and follow Jesus

Mark:
(1) No adultery
(2) No killing
(3) No stealing
(4) No false witness
(5) Don't defraud
(6) Honor your parents
(7) Sell whatever you have and give to the poor
(8) Come, take up the cross, and follow Jesus

Since the first commandments were destroyed, and the second set replaced them, and since Jesus provided a new list, anyway (or three new lists, depending on how you resolve the Bible contradicting itself this way), why is it that first set that people refer to? Wasn't it superseded? Wouldn't that be like referring, today, to the Articles of Confederation, rather than the Constitution?

All those views and no replies? Any theories on this? It just seems odd to me.

 

[Jen]

In Exodus, Moses throws a temper tantrum and breaks the tablets that held the ten commandments. Then, a couple chapters later, God tells him to make two new stone tables, to replace the ones he broke. And Moses goes up on Mount Sinai with those tablets, and God has him write down the words of the covenant, the ten commandments, on the tablets. But it's not the same list as the first time. God repeats some of the commandments from the list that was broken, but drops some others and replaces them:

(1) Worship no other god.
(2) Make no molten gods.
(3) Keep the feast of unleavened bread.
(4) Sacrifice first-born animals to God.
(5) Rest on the Sabbath.
(6) Keep the feast of weeks.
(7) Don't use leavened bread with your blood sacrifices.
(8) Don't leave fat overnight.
(9) Sacrifice first fruits to God.
(10) Don't boil goats in their mother's milk.

Jesus also provides a different list of commandments, in the three versions of the camel-through-the-needle's-eye story.

Luke:
(1) No adultery
(2) No killing
(3) No stealing
(4) No false witness
(5) Honor your parents
(6) sell everything you have and distribute to the poor
(7) Come and follow Jesus

Matthew:
(1) No murder
(2) No adultery
(3) No stealing
(4) No false witness
(5) Honor your parents
(6) Love your neighbor
(7) Sell everything you have and give to the poor
(8) Come and follow Jesus

Mark:
(1) No adultery
(2) No killing
(3) No stealing
(4) No false witness
(5) Don't defraud
(6) Honor your parents
(7) Sell whatever you have and give to the poor
(8) Come, take up the cross, and follow Jesus

Since the first commandments were destroyed, and the second set replaced them, and since Jesus provided a new list, anyway (or three new lists, depending on how you resolve the Bible contradicting itself this way), why is it that first set that people refer to? Wasn't it superseded? Wouldn't that be like referring, today, to the Articles of Confederation, rather than the Constitution?

I think they are all superseded by the commandment that we treat each other with love.
John 13:34-35 ESV
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. "

That one commandment covers all of them except for the ones telling the people not to eat stuff that will make them sick later.

 

[Arkady]

I think they are all superseded by the commandment that we treat each other with love.
John 13:34-35 ESV
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. "

That one commandment covers all of them except for the ones telling the people not to eat stuff that will make them sick later.

That's a good one -- though damned hard to follow.

 

[Jen]

That's a good one -- though damned hard to follow.

Very hard to follow for sure.

 

[Mr. Friscus]

All those views and no replies? Any theories on this? It just seems odd to me.

The original tablets were written by the Lord:

The LORD said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction."

Compare to the passage referred to in the question. The Lord says he will write the tablets, but the commandments cited in the question are left for Moses to write:

The LORD said to Moses, "Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.

And the LORD said to Moses, "Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel."

After the Lord gave the original ten commandments (Exodus 20), he also gave other commandments (Exodus 20:23-23:33). A similar thing happened here: there were other things that the Lord said to Moses, besides just writing the new tablets.

The quite logical explanation is, then, that the Lord wrote the new tablets and gave them to Moses. Then the Lord spoke other words and told Moses to write them down. The content of the tablets is not recorded in Exodus for a second time, since the content was the same as originally.

 

[Arkady]

The original tablets were written by the Lord:

Compare to the passage referred to in the question. The Lord says he will write the tablets, but the commandments cited in the question are left for Moses to write:

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After the Lord gave the original ten commandments (Exodus 20), he also gave other commandments (Exodus 20:23-23:33). A similar thing happened here: there were other things that the Lord said to Moses, besides just writing the new tablets.

The quite logical explanation is, then, that the Lord wrote the new tablets and gave them to Moses. Then the Lord spoke other words and told Moses to write them down. The content of the tablets is not recorded in Exodus for a second time, since the content was the same as originally.

I suppose that's as close as one can get to making sense of the passage on its own terms, but it remains very weird, then. Three of the "new commandments" were already covered by the old commandments. So, if the idea was that God wrote down ten and then had Moses write down ten more, why have him repeat three of the ones God already wrote? You'd think either Moses would be tasked with writing down all the old ones plus the new ones, or he'd only be told to write down the new ones, rather than a partial repetition of the old list like that. It would be like if three of the Constitutional amendments numbered 11-20 were actually just repeated items from the Bill of Rights, but the rest were new material.

I suppose we could conclude that God was making it clear those three were particularly important, so they needed to be emphasized through repetition. But that leads to the idea that a rule about resting on Saturdays is more important than a rule about not murdering people, which just seems wrong.

I suppose another possibility is that there were two oral traditions about a founder figure being handed a list of rules by the tribe's god, and these two traditions, in the course of generations of retelling, had diverged substantially. One became more focused on moral and social conduct, while the other became more focused on instructions for honoring the god. Then, when the priests decided to write these down (say, during the Babylonian exile), they had to find a way to capture all the commandments from both oral traditions, without violating the idea that there had been exactly ten rules written on stone tablets, which was a key feature of both oral traditions. So, they came up with a story where there was one set of rules on tablets, which got broken, then another set on a replacement list, allowing them to incorporate all 17 commandments from both oral traditions within a story about the "Ten Commandments."