The Ten (ish) Commandments

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Are you interested in the parts of history that remain a mystery? Do you want to learn more about the historical myths and misconceptions used to prop up belief today?

I'm Nathaniel Lloyd. In my podcast, Historical Blindness, I delve into all of these topics, sharing puzzling tales from the past and examining hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and misremembered events that provide insight into modern politics and religion. New episodes every two weeks find historical blindness on most podcast players and platforms.

Dan McClellan (0:37)

The idea is basically you're paying money so that you don't have to sacrifice this animal or this child.

Dan Beecher (0:44)

It's a nice donkey you got there. I hate for anything to happen to it.

You know, if you give us a little bit of money, we will let it go.

Dan McClellan (0:56)

Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (0:57)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (0:59)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we seek to increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:13)

It's grand. It's all Decalogue all the time today. And I'm having a screaming good time. It's a beautiful fall day here in Salt Lake City.

Dan McClellan (1:23)

Yeah, it's Commandments, Commandments, Commandments. You can rent the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge.

Dan Beecher (1:31)

While we've been hinting at it, we might as well just launch into our first segment. It's the law.

Dan McClellan (1:39)

It's the law, dang it.

Okay, we are. We're talking about the Ten Commandments today. That specific segment of the law, except we got a bit of a problem here.

Dan Beecher (1:49)

Yeah.

Dan McClellan (1:50)

Which is that? Which Ten Commandments are we talking about?

Dan Beecher (1:54)

Yeah, it's funny because, you know, you get, you know, there have been controversies in the last, you know, ten years about people wanting to put the Ten Commandments up in the courthouse here in the United States or in, you know, in the state capital of whatever, you know, Arkansas or whatever.

And then people are like, no, no, separation of church and state. But then what nobody's yelling about is like, but which Ten Commandments though, which is funny. And you don't think that there could be any question about that until you look up the Wikipedia article on the Ten Commandments and there's a table that's like showing you all of who thinks which is, you know, who thinks what is which commandment and all sorts of stuff. And let me tell you something. They don't agree.

Dan McClellan (2:46)

Yeah, we've got several different verses, in fact, and in order to get ten out of them, you have to kind of combine some and divide some a little bit. And are you including the very first or the second verse of Exodus 20, if that's your Ten Commandments, or is verse three the first and is ten about coveting all these things plus someone's wife, or is that a separate commandment? And then the biggest problem, though, I want to start off pointing out, though, is that Exodus 20, this is traditionally where we get the Ten Commandments from.

It's nowhere referred to as the Ten Commandments. And we get an almost identical list of laws in Deuteronomy 5 Again, nowhere referred to as the Ten Commandments. So where are we getting this Ten Commandments title from? Well, it actually comes from another set of Ten Commandments that is found in Exodus 34 At the end of Exodus 34, 28, and this is after the Commandments are listed, you have this statement that Moses wrote all these things down.

He wrote the tablets, or he wrote upon the tablets, the words of the covenant. And then in Hebrew, it says, acerat hadvarim, which would be the 10 words.

And in the ancient Greek translation of this, the Septuagint, it's tus dekhalos, or the dekalog. So it's in later translations of this into other languages that we go from 10 words to like 10 principles, 10 concepts, and then ultimately we get the Ten Commandments. Commandments, not a great translation of devadim, which just means words or issues, concepts. If it were meets vote, that would be a little easier as commandments.

Dan Beecher (4:47)

Okay, so we've got our 10 words, but I think that if people are looking at Exodus 34, they're going to be surprised by what the 10 words are.

Dan McClellan (4:57)

Yeah, it's missing what we generally associate with the Ten Commandments, which is our little listicle that we are so fond of quoting.