jshine: DamnYankees: jshine: simplicimus: The design is wrong. It's two tablets, 5 on each. Did this guy even read the Old Testament?

I certainly haven't. Where does it say how many commandment were on each tablet?

It doesn't say how many on each. Just says there were tablets.

That was my understanding as well, but the person I quoted seemed to have his knickers in a knot over something...

I always assumed that there being two tablets, with a number of commandments divisible by two, that it would be fairly likely that the distribution of commandments would be equal.

/symmetry is important!
//disclaimer: tablets never existed. Fairy tale mythology is not affected by logic

The One Commandment:


TRY NOT TO BE A DICK

The Larch: simplicimus: How do I know? I don't read Hebrew. The 10 commandments are a translation of 20:1-17. But the Talmud is pretty clear on their being 10.

The Talmud is just fan fiction for the Old Testament that the Jews wrote about 1,000 years ago.

The Bible itself doesn't say anywhere that there are Ten Commandments, and different sects can't even agree with each other on how to split up Exodus 20:1-17 into ten different chunks.

Heck, Christ said there two commandments, And he said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets."
Which brings up back to the Talmudic interpretation of 5 and 5.

simplicimus: AdolfOliverPanties: Isn't there something in the Ten Commandments about graven images?

I think that refers only to the competition, Baal and whoever else was being worshiped.

More properly, refering to graven images of all the ba'alim and ashtarot, aka the old gods and goddesses of Sumer (which were later adopted by the Babylonians).

(To make a long story short, it's now thought by actual archaeologists that Judaism started out as a monotheistic fork of Mesopotamian polytheistic faiths (being probably the first monotheistic faith to actually catch on, versus Akhenaten's failed attempt). There are still some traces of the old polytheism (particularly in Genesis and the creation myths), and at the time that the Ten Commandments were encoded as the basis of halachic law, there were still a lot of issues with folks reverting to the polytheistic worship of the old gods.

Hell, even the Bible itself mentions this in relation to Moses and Aaron--with Aaron having set up a golden calf, a ritual item of Ba'al Hadad (the old Sumerian god of storms) which was specifically designed as an idol to the (monotheistic) god of Israel. There are at least two instances recorded after this when royalty or the people in general went back into frank polytheistic worship (with the God of Israel equated to either Ba'al Hadad or El) and a number of other instances where the early Israeli people had gone into partial polytheism reversion (with the God of Israel being paired with Ishtar or Astara, and the female companions of God/the gods being referred to as the ashtarot--"Astara" may well have been a functional title of "Lady" in this case, much as "ba'al" is actually a title of "Lord").

Yes, this is where knowing a bit about the predecessors of Judaism gets very interesting :D

Indubitably: simplicimus: The Larch: simplicimus: How do I know? I don't read Hebrew. The 10 commandments are a translation of 20:1-17. But the Talmud is pretty clear on their being 10.

The Talmud is just fan fiction for the Old Testament that the Jews wrote about 1,000 years ago.

The Bible itself doesn't say anywhere that there are Ten Commandments, and different sects can't even agree with each other on how to split up Exodus 20:1-17 into ten different chunks.

Heck, Christ said there two commandments, And he said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets."
Which brings up back to the Talmudic interpretation of 5 and 5.

"...brings up back..."?

What are you saying?

You are incoherent.

*)

Way up thread I mentioned the Talmud's parsing of the 10 commandments, first 5 about man and God, second 5 about man and man.

kid_icarus: simplicimus: Paris1127: simplicimus: Magorn: simplicimus: The design is wrong. It's two tablets, 5 on each. Did this guy even read the Old Testament?

Well actually THREE tablets, 5 on each, didn't you see the movie?

Yeah, I saw the movie. But on the bright side, we have 5 fewer commandments.

I wonder what was on that tablet... Perhaps a commandment about loving other people even if you disagree with him or her?

Well, the first 5 are man's relationship with God, the second 5 are man's relationship with fellow humans. No idea what would be on the third tablet.

the fine print.

Thou shalt not take The Ten Commandments rectally
Thou shalt consult thy priest, pastor, or preacher before using The Ten Commandments
Thou shalt take The Ten Commandments in their entirety
Discontinue use of The Ten Commandments if thou dost experience any of the following: fainting, dizziness, speaking in tongues, or homicidal/suicidal thoughts or actions. Side effects may be worse for teens, young adults, and the elderly
Thou hast no chance to survive make your time

/Okay, I ran out of ideas on that last one

Somacandra: simplicimus: Yeah, I saw the movie. But on the bright side, we have 5 fewer commandments.

Maybe you do, but the Jews have 613 commandments. That whole "Maimonides" thing.

And technically, the Ten Commandments aren't supposed to be binding on non-Jewish people anyways--the Jewish people are bound by the 613 mitzvot whilst non-Jewish people (including other "people of the book") are supposed to be bound by the Noahide laws (which are generally considered to be basic universal laws of morality; the Ten Commandments were basically like an early basis of law, with the 613 mitzvot becoming binding when Judaism proper began its proper development after settlement in Israel).

For that matter, it's probably a good thing for them that dominionist "Ten Commandments" fetishists don't seem to be aware of the halachic requirements for transcribing the Torah and particularly the words of the Most High--these must be written by hand, and if so much as a letter is mistranscribed (not implausible in the Hebrew alphabet which does include optional "jot" and "titter" diacritics to indicate vowels, intonation, cantillation, etc. because traditionally the Torah is sung) the entire parchment or scroll has to be ritually destroyed--oh, and granite rock with the national symbols of the United States also generally isn't considered proper material to be writing the Ten Commandments on, either. :D (And yes, it's actually one of the 613 mitzvot to participate in the production of a proper Torah scroll. Most folks aren't scribes and contribute by helping purchase the materials and/or labour required to make one for the synagogue.)

SquiggsIN: In my experience, the more religious a person is, the less likely they want to hear about the ACTUAL origin of their religious customs. Christians, in particular, (likely due to my increased exposure to this group) seem especially offended when confronted with the Pagan origins of many of their most treasured traditions.

Which to me is actually really farking sad...I actually LIKE the "backstory" and find it makes some of the weirder (non-blatantly-supernatural) stuff make more sense (then again, I also REALLY like "colour text" in RPGs and tabletop games, so I'll admit a skewed interest there). To me, knowing that all the stuff about golden calves and all in the Bible is pretty much people going back to the "old religion" is colour text that makes the other stuff seem more interesting...then again, I also tend to consider the Bible as an attempt by people to explain the world, not as an object for idolatry (or Bibolatry, as the case may be).

(I also tend to find the book of Revelation/Apocalypse hilarious and enlightening...as a heavily-coded political cartoon poking RIGHT at Rome in the style of a Doonesbury comic or the better runs of "Bloom County". Probably the only way the work could have gotten out without the author being executed, at that. Still head-desk how a political cartoon somehow made it into the Christian canon, and head-desk further at people who apparently take it as a sign of the End Of Days rather than as a political cartoon against Roman repression of Christianity (which was being played up as a Horrible Cult and Menace to Society and which was the subject of an organised blood libel at the time...much as Christians would later do with neopagan groups, and earlier with Judaism) of which the meaning was "this too shall pass and we'll eventually prosper if we keep the good road".)

The problem didn't seem to worry Oklahoma State Representative Mike Ritze, who paid $10,000 of his own money to see the monument's creation.

Those words should be chiseled into the bottom of the monument, so everyone remembers the politician who thought this would be a good idea.