The Jewish 2nd Commandment

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alexamasan

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Hello,

I am new to the forum and I have a lot of questions for the beliefs of the Catholic church. If anyone is willing to have dialogue, that would be great. For now, I will ask this question which I’m sure you guys have heard quite often. If anyone can help me out, I would appreciate it.

The Jewish 2nd Commandment is summarized as “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” However, the Catholic Church seems to “skip” that one and instead splits the Jewish 10th Commandment into the 9th and 10th commandment. Protestants often argue that the Catholic church “skips” the 2nd Commandment to accommodate pagans and that the 10th commandment was split into two so that there would still be 10 commandments.

Many Christians of other denominations find this disturbing, so would anyone mind explaining what is actually happening here with the 10 commandments?

Thanks
 
First of all, that’s not the “Jewish 2nd commandment”, that’s the Protestant 2nd commandment, the only Protestants who don’t use it are the Lutherans and they number their commandments like us, so you can’t say they “skipped that commandment” because they have no images.

Second all, we didn’t “skip” it. We blended it with the first one, because they both have to do with the same thing.

Third of all, the Jews actually blend it the same way we do. Their first commandment is “I am the Lord thy God.” and that’s it.

Fourth, we split the “don’t covet your neighbor’s wife” and “don’t covet your neighbor’s possesions” as the 9th and 10th because Deuteronomy 5:21 splits them. There are two sets of “ten commandments” in the Bible. One in Exodus (the one Protestants look to) and the one in Deuteronomy (the one Catholics look to)

God bless :byzsoc:

David
 
alexamasan said:
Hello,

I am new to the forum and I have a lot of questions for the beliefs of the Catholic church. If anyone is willing to have dialogue, that would be great. For now, I will ask this question which I’m sure you guys have heard quite often. If anyone can help me out, I would appreciate it.

The Jewish 2nd Commandment is summarized as “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” However, the Catholic Church seems to “skip” that one and instead splits the Jewish 10th Commandment into the 9th and 10th commandment. Protestants often argue that the Catholic church “skips” the 2nd Commandment to accommodate pagans and that the 10th commandment was split into two so that there would still be 10 commandments.

Many Christians of other denominations find this disturbing, so would anyone mind explaining what is actually happening here with the 10 commandments?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Gladly.

This is from the Baltimore Catechism (ah, the days of my youth, :D).

See what it says.
The First Commandment of God

Lesson 16 from the Baltimore Cathechism
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198. What is the first commandment of God?

The first commandment of God is: I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.
Thou shalt not have strange Gods before me. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. (Exodus 20:3-4)
Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them: I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me:

And shewing mercy unto thousands to them that love me, and keep my commandments.Hey, there’s the ‘graven images’ part taken right from Scripture, noted under the FIRST commandment. . .so it hasn’t been ‘left out’ of the Catholic commandments! It’s been put WITH "I am the Lord Thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before me. . .t**hose ‘strange gods’ or idols or images are not to be worshipped as a god in place of me!

*But since Catholics don’t worship statues, they aren’t ‘graven images’. *
Now what about that second commandment?
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224. What is the second commandment of God?

The second commandment of God is: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that shall take the name of the Lord in vain. (Exodus 20:7)

Hmmm. Ok, that’s right ‘next’ to the Exodus verses above for the FIRST commandment.

And ‘taking the name of the Lord in vain’ doesn’t really have to be considered as part and parcel of ‘graven images’ right? They are two separate things.

It looks as though the Catholic numbering (and it is not JUST the Catholics who number the commandments this way, just so you know–Lutherans do it too!) of the SIXTEEN VERSES which make up the commandments contains EVERY SINGLE ITEM in the "protestant numbers’. . .and vice versa.

No ‘changing’, no ‘sneaking’.
 
Also. . .just as a point of fact that might otherwise not even be considered –

It was not until the Middle Ages (the13th century) that the Bible actually had its verses ‘numbered’.
 
This is very interesting. Everywhere I look for the Jewish 10 commandments, they are summarized as…
  1. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery in Egypt.
  2. You shall have no other gods but me.
  3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
  4. You shall remember and keep the Sabbath day holy.
  5. Honor your father and mother.
  6. You shall not murder.
  7. You shall not commit adultery.
  8. You shall not steal.
  9. You shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
  10. You shall not covet…
jewfaq.org/10.htm
levitt.com/hebrew/commandments.html#c2
the-ten-commandments.org/the-ten-commandments.html
hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/Torah/Ten_Cmds/ten_cmds.html

Is there a source you can refer me to that says otherwise?
 
alexamasan said:
This is very interesting. Everywhere I look for the Jewish 10 commandments, they are summarized as…
  1. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery in Egypt.
  2. You shall have no other gods but me.
  3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
  4. You shall remember and keep the Sabbath day holy.
  5. Honor your father and mother.
  6. You shall not murder.
  7. You shall not commit adultery.
  8. You shall not steal.
  9. You shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
  10. You shall not covet…
jewfaq.org/10.htm
levitt.com/hebrew/commandments.html#c2
the-ten-commandments.org/the-ten-commandments.html
hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/Torah/Ten_Cmds/ten_cmds.html

Is there a source you can refer me to that says otherwise?
Click to expand...
Try www.newadvent.org
 
alexamasan said:
Thanks, I’ll be sure to get to it, though if anyone is willing to sum it up for me, that would be nice too 😛
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I’ve only glanced at it, but it seems to be an exploration of how there are two texts in two different books on which the idea of “The Ten Commandments” is based and neither is clearly divided into ten parts, so the traditional division into ten and the summation of each of those ten can be done in different ways, leading to slightly different lists that have been used both inside and outside the Catholic Church through history. The Catholic Church recognizes both biblical texts as canonical, so this difference is nothing but different conventions for how to summarize the material.
 
alexamasan said:
Hello,

I am new to the forum and I have a lot of questions for the beliefs of the Catholic church. If anyone is willing to have dialogue, that would be great. For now, I will ask this question which I’m sure you guys have heard quite often. If anyone can help me out, I would appreciate it.

The Jewish 2nd Commandment is summarized as “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” However, the Catholic Church seems to “skip” that one and instead splits the Jewish 10th Commandment into the 9th and 10th commandment. Protestants often argue that the Catholic church “skips” the 2nd Commandment to accommodate pagans and that the 10th commandment was split into two so that there would still be 10 commandments.

Many Christians of other denominations find this disturbing, so would anyone mind explaining what is actually happening here with the 10 commandments?

Thanks
Click to expand...
God and the Jews fundamentally changed the way all people regarded religion. Until the Jews, religion was something that dealt with man’s relationship to God. The Jews irrevocably changed that concept.For Jews religion dealt not only with man’s relationship to God but also man’s relationship to other people.

The second revolution was the connection between laws and commandments and God. The concept of laws was already well known. However, with God’s revelation to the entire Jewish nation at Sinai, we establish the concept that these laws and commandments are not merely rules to be followed but a Divine imperative.

If we understand those concepts we can understand the division of the ten commandments.The first five commandments (having faith in God’s existence, prohibition of idolatry, prohibition of vain oaths, the Sabbath and honoring parents [which in Judaism is equal to honoring God] - all deal with the relationship between man and God. The second five commandments (prohibition against murder,prohibition against adultery,prohibition against kidnapping [usually misunderstood to mean simple theft],prohibition against bearing false witness and prohibition against coveting) - all deal with relationships among people.
 
Thank you everybody, it seems that the point is it is difficult to really be sure how to organize the different phrases into 10 categories. I think the main concern that people have is the origin of the organization and how the 10 commandments are sometimes summarized. However, that will be another discussion for another time.

Thanks.
 
followingtheway said:
First of all, that’s not the “Jewish 2nd commandment”, that’s the Protestant 2nd commandment,
Click to expand...
Or to be more exact, that’s the 2nd ‘word’ or commandment that Philo, Josephus, some Church Fathers, most Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox use. 😉
the only Protestants who don’t use it are the Lutherans and they number their commandments like us, so you can’t say they “skipped that commandment” because they have no images.
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And we can’t also accuse Protestants who use the Philonic Division since the Orthodox aren’t exactly iconoclastic. 😃
 
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