Numbering the 10 Commandments...

I learned the Ten Commandments back in the 3rd Grade... or at least I thought I did.  But an odd thing happened when I started talking to my other Christian friends.  Their 10 Commandments list seemed to be different from mine.

In fact, I even began to hear accusations that the Catholic Church had altered the 10 Commandments to remove the ban on "graven images".  That was, of course, all so we could continue worshiping statues.  Because we do that, apparently.

Today I want to look at the 10 Commandments and how they are numbered.  Perhaps we can get to the bottom of this.

The Exodus List:

There are two things you have to realize about the 10 Commandments.  First, they are listed in two places in the Bible; Exodus and Deuteronomy.

Second, in neither location does the author actually give you an official numbering. There are a bunch of commandments, but how they form 10 isn't entirely clear.  By my counting, you actually end up with 11 in both locations.

Let's take a look at the list found in Exodus:

The Deuteronomy Difference:

Now let's look at the list which appears in Deuteronomy:

Look closely at the 10th and 11th commandment in those lists.  Do you spot the difference?

Let's isolate them and zoom in:

Exodus has a special commandment reserved for coveting someone's house.  Then it groups together coveting a man's wife with coveting his livestock.

Conversely, Deuteronomy has the 10th commandment dedicated to coveting a man's wife, and put the house together with the animals in the 11th commandment.



Finding Ten:

Regardless of which listing you use, you encounter the same problem.  How do you get from 11 to 10?  You have to combine two together as one.  But which two?

In Christian culture there are two ways this has been done.  The first is given to us by the Catholics, the second from the Calvinist Protestants.


Similar Sins:

The Catholics (and Lutherans too) begin with the observation that Commandments 1 and 2 are addressing the same thing.  Namely, they bind people to the worship of the one true God and prohibit all forms of idolatry.  Therefore, commandment 2 is combined with commandment 1.

Now there is a second choice.  As I noted above, the 10th and 11th commandments differ between Deuteronomy and Exodus.  So which ending do we go with?

The Catholic tradition sided with Deuteronomy.  That's because the coveting of someone's wife is very different from coveting his mule.  Therefore, basing itself on the Deuteronomy list, the 9th commandment is used to ban lust and the 10th is used to condemn greed.

The end result was this:

Iconoclasm and Livestock:

The second tradition of numbering the commandments comes from the Calvinist Reformed school of theology.

This group was influenced by a resurgent movement of "iconoclasm".  That means they regarded religious imagery and artwork - (which Christians have always had) - as an abomination.

Therefore they opted to keep the 2nd commandment distinct from the 1st - using it to ban religious icons. But this meant something else had to be combined to get the total number down to 10....

So instead they opted to lump the coveting of your neighbor's wife in with coveting his livestock.  This formed one giant commandment against coveting your neighbor's property.

Now... a cynical man might propose this indicates a rather low view of women. But perhaps one can more charitably think of this as a comprehensive ban on envy.

In event, the result was this:

An Accusation Revisited:

Let's return to the accusation what got us started.  Did the Catholic Church alter the 10 Commandments to justify its teachings?  Hopefully this overview has shown this not to be the case.

In fact, hopefully you can see how the objection could be turned around.