What is the origin of the Protestant Ten Commandments?

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porthos11 said:
It’s not Protestant. It’s Greek and is the reckoning the Orthodox use.
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Correct. The ‘Protestant’ ordering of the Ten Words (aka ‘Ten Commandments’) is actually the older one: it is already used by 1st century Jewish historians Philo and Josephus. The Greek Fathers (and the Eastern Churches) continued to use this system.

In the West, St. Augustine devised a different way to parse the commandments around the 4th-5th century. Catholics and Lutherans continue to use the Augustinian reckoning. (Other Protestants, meanwhile, adopted the Greek version, under the influence of John Calvin.) Around the same time as Augustine, the Jews also began to develop a new system: the statement “I am the LORD your God” is counted as the first ‘commandment’, or rather, declaration.

So all in all, you have currently three methods of parsing the commandments:

Greek Numbering
(Philo, Josephus, Greek Fathers, Eastern Orthodox, most Protestants)

(1) (I am the Lord thy God; ) thou shalt have no other gods before me
(2) Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
(3) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
(4) Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy
(5) Honour thy father and thy mother
(6) Thou shalt not kill
(7) Thou shalt not commit adultery
(8) Thou shalt not steal
(9) Thou shalt not bear false witness
(10) Thou shalt not covet

(In Greek sources, the commandment against murder is sometimes counted as the seventh or eighth commandment)

Augustinian Numbering
(Catholics, Lutherans)

(1) (I am the Lord thy God; ) Thou shalt have no other gods before me
(2) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
(3) Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy
(4) Honour thy father and thy mother
(5) Thou shalt not kill
(6) Thou shalt not commit adultery
(7) Thou shalt not steal
(8) Thou shalt not bear false witness
(9) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife
(10) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house

(Lutherans tend to follow the text of Exodus and put the prohibition against coveting the goods of another before that of coveting another’s wife; the Catholic system shown here, meanwhile, follow the text of Deuteronomy)

Talmudic Numbering
(Modern-day Jews)

(1) I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of Egypt
(2) Thou shalt have no other gods before me
(3) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
(4) Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy
(5) Honour thy father and thy mother
(6) Thou shalt not kill
(7) Thou shalt not commit adultery
(8) Thou shalt not steal
(9) Thou shalt not bear false witness
(10) Thou shalt not covet
 
The “decalouge” (ie, ten words) actually contain twelve distinct commandments. So, obviously, some are assumed to be grouped together. But the Bible does not tell us how they are to be grouped. So different traditions have arisen. They all contain all twelve commandments (at least by implication), but group them differently.
patrick457 said:
Augustinian Numbering
(Catholics, Lutherans)

(1) (I am the Lord thy God; ) Thou shalt have no other gods before me
(2) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
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Luther did not exactly agree with Augustan’s numbering.

You omitted “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” which is included in Augustine’s numbering, but is omitted in Luther’s Large Catechism (though it is strongly implied to the point that I would not care to argue that he did not indirectly include it).

Also, Augustine and Luther disagreed about how the Ninth and Tenth Commandment should be grouped. There are three “thou shalt not covet” commandments:
  • Neighbor’s house
  • Neighbor’s wife
  • Neighbor’s servants, animals, or anything else
Augustine saw the house and servants (etc) as a property covet, and the wife as a sexual covet, so he grouped them together accordingly. Luther, for some reason, saw house as a separate covet, and grouped wife and servants (etc) together.
 
Why in Exodus 34 does it seem that God changes up the 10 Commandments written on the new stone by Moses to include boiling a sheep/kid (Ex 34:26)

26 “The choicest first fruits of your soil you shall bring to the house of the LORD, your God.
You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
27 Then the LORD said to Moses: Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.

Is the “writing down of these words” different that the writing down on stone at the beginning of Ex 34?
 
miamijoe said:
Why in Exodus 34 does it seem that God changes up the 10 Commandments written on the new stone by Moses to include boiling a sheep/kid (Ex 34:26)

26 “The choicest first fruits of your soil you shall bring to the house of the LORD, your God.
You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
27 Then the LORD said to Moses: Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.

Is the “writing down of these words” different that the writing down on stone at the beginning of Ex 34?
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That’s the so-called “Ritual Decalogue,” to distinguish them from the “Ethical Decalogue” we all are more familiar with. You’re right, they also are (if count them a certain way) ten statements or ‘words’. You’re right, the text as it is is rather confusing (just exactly which ‘ten words’ did Moses write on the second set of tablets? And for that matter, what *was *written on the first set?); some scholars even think that there were originally different ‘Ten Commandments’ in circulation and different stories passed down (Was it God or Moses who carved the words onto the tablets? What was written on those tablets?); the sacred writer/s combined these different versions into a single account as best he could, but not always smoothly.

Of course, that’s assuming that “these words … the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments/Words” mentioned in verses 27-28 refers to the ritual statements given in 34:14–26 rather than the ethical one given earlier, which itself is unclear.
 
DavidFilmer said:
Also, Augustine and Luther disagreed about how the Ninth and Tenth Commandment should be grouped. There are three “thou shalt not covet” commandments:
  • Neighbor’s house
  • Neighbor’s wife
  • Neighbor’s servants, animals, or anything else
.
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I think the Catholic distinction between coveting property verses coveting one’s wife is a position that is easy to defend.
defendingthebride.com/mc/sa/sab24.html#ten

It probably would be a lot easier for a man to forgive his neighbor who just used his brand new lawnmower against his explicit prohibition to do so, than it would be for him to forgive another neighbor who raped his wife. Both sins are evil and wrong, but the second is much more serious (Cf. 1 Jn. 5:16-17), and so Catholics count prohibitions against them as two different commandments.
​
John
 
I think its ironic we worry about which version of the ten commandments and not that our goverment routinely doesn’t agree with any version.
 
miamijoe said:
Why in Exodus 34 does it seem that God changes up the 10 Commandments written on the new stone by Moses to include boiling a sheep/kid (Ex 34:26)

26 “The choicest first fruits of your soil you shall bring to the house of the LORD, your God.
You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
27 Then the LORD said to Moses: Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.

Is the “writing down of these words” different that the writing down on stone at the beginning of Ex 34?
Click to expand...
It should be noted that according Exodus 34:1 that the words on the second set of tablets matched those of the 1st
1The Lord said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.
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So all of those monuments where they show the Ten Commandments on two tablets should be telling people to celebrate the Festival of Weeks and to not give anything for sacrifice to contain wheat.

Also what are generally called the Ten Commandments are not called that in the Bible.
 
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