Why Protestants use a set of Ten Commandments different from the Catholic one.

[DemBones DemBones]

The Ten Commandments or the Decalogue are 16 verses of Exodus 20. They are referred to as the Ten Words of God in Exodus 34:28 and Deuteronomy 4:13.

In the Middle Ages, the 16 verses were separated into a list of 10 Commandments, which required grouping some together and leaving out some words, for the sake of making them short enough to memorize. Most people were illiterate in those days and couldn't afford books, anyway, so memorizing parts of the Bible and prayers were an important part of religion. Jews may have been the first to group the Commandments, I haven't found that information yet, or a listing of how they word the Commandments. But we do know Roman Catholics were the first Christians to group them.

Here's the Decalogue in Exodus 20:

2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

13 Thou shalt not kill. #1

14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

15 Thou shalt not steal.

16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

(The footnote # 1 after kill is to indicate that the word used in the original language actually means murder, to kill an innocent person, not simply to kill. In other words, we may kill animals and we may kill humans in self-defense or in a just war, or by capital punishment, although many Catholics oppose capital punishment even of those who confess their guilt, and many Catholics believe there can no longer be a just war in today's world. If you've read the new Catholic Catechism issued by John Paul II, and written under the supervision of then-Cardinal Ratzinger, you know that it sees no need for capital punishment and very limited need for war.)


Latin or Roman Catholics grouped the Commandments this way:

Thou shalt not have other gods besides Me
Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain
Remember to keep holy the Lord’s day
Honor thy father and thy mother
Thou shalt not murder
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods


Martin Luther did not change the grouping. Later Protestants, probably Anabaptists or Calvinists changed the grouping to:

Thou shalt have no other gods before me
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy
Honour thy father and thy mother
Thou shalt not kill
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour
Thou shalt not covet


No doubt the post-Luther Protestants wanted to include the "graven images" bit because they opposed statues and crucifixes and anything "Romish." Yet Protestants use crosses in their churches, wear crosses, have crosses hanging from their Bibles, etc., and in recent decades have gone back to using the ancient symbol of the fish to represent Jesus, displaying it on windows, cars, tee shirts, etc. Why those aren't graven images and crucifixes and statues are is something I've never understood, and I was raised Protestant. If you take that "graven images" prohibition seriously, that eliminates art entirely, and also photographs, IMO. Interestingly enough, Orthodox and Eastern Catholics use the same grouping as most Protestants, although icons are very important in the Orthodox faiths. I'm not sure when or why they adopted that grouping.

But the main thing is that Catholics who have been properly educated about their faith understand that the 2nd Commandment "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" is meant to include the next three verses from Exodus and that the prohibition is not against graven images per se, but against worshipping graven images. Despite what some Protestants think, Catholics do not worship statues! We have them as a reminder of Jesus and the saints.

Even more importantly, Jesus said that the two Great Commandments are 1) to love the Lord your God with all your heart and 2) to love your neighbor as (much as) you love yourself.

If everyone obeyed those Two Commandments thoughtfully, they wouldn't violate any of the Ten Commandments, no matter which grouping they prefer.


O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8) O8)

[hedgehog]

1. Don't forget, that from a Protestant point of view, the Roman Church

was the one gone off the tracks and their church was the one instituted by Christ.

[DemBones DemBones]

2. Having taught at a Baptist college, I'm unlikely to forget that.

O8)

I wrote the OP to explain why the Catholic Commandments are organized differently from the Protestant ones, and that the part about "graven images" refers to worshipping graven images, such as the Golden Calf.

The Jewish Commandments are yet another version, but I don't have a copy to post.

[regnaD kciN]

3. Although I don't have the time to dig out my seminary materials...

...I recall that one point that was made was that there were several "decalogues" in the Torah (not just the familiar one in Exodus 20), with different items included in each.

In fact, the urge to divide any of them into a neat list of ten is an artificial construct...the list in Exodus 20 could just as easily be broken down into nine items, or twelve, or even more.

And, while it's possible that the churches of the Reformation divided what Rome considered the first commandment in order to emphasize their repudiation of religious statuary (although I think it's instructive that the Church of England, in their original 1549 Book of Common Prayer, uses the latter numbering, even though they were not among those equating religious statues with "graven images"), I would argue that it's equally artificial to split Exodus 20:17 into two different commandments (dealing with a person's wife and a person's goods), especially since the original Hebrew Torah passage clearly groups both (along with slaves, which we don't like to mention) into a man's "house," which is what one is forbidden to desire.

Interestingly, it seems to me that the division used in the Roman numbering comes from a mistranslation of that Exodus passage in the Septuagint Greek (where it is essentially translated "you shall not desire the wife of your neighbor; you shall not desire the house of your neighbor...", which is at odds with the Hebrew original). Since the Vetus Latina (the old pre-Vulgate Latin translation) had the Old Testament translated from the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew text, I could see how that version of the Decalogue could have come to be accepted as the standard in the pre-Reformation (and, indeed, pre-1054) Church, although I think it's an inaccurate version of the Hebrew. And I could see how some of the Reformers, particularly those of a Sola Scriptura mindset, whose denominations produced their own re-translations based on the Hebrew manuscripts, might have decided to bring their liturgical and educational expressions of the Decalogue into line with what they saw in those translations.

In truth, though, I would argue that any division of the "words" in that passage into a neat list of ten is going to be arbitrary in its very essence; and I would agree with the original poster that, if Christians of whatever stripe were more concerned with mirroring the love of God as shown in Christ, rather than with having an easily-remembered checklist of rules to achieve holiness, the whole matter would be utterly academic.

[DemBones DemBones]

4. Thanks for an excellent post. You're absolutely right that

there are three versions of the Decaolgue. They are found in Exodus 20, Exodus 34, and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. I left that out since my post was already so long but perhaps I shouldn't have. Someone reading this might actually want to compare the three, in which case I should add that there are some differences in the numbering of verses in different versions of the Bible. I'm going by the Douay-Rheims Bible here. Usually, Exodus 20 is the version referred to but I'm not sure why, perhaps simply because it's the first instance of the Decalogue in the Bible.

You're also correct that the Commandments could have been divided differently. Chapter and verse divisions of books of the Bible are another medieval invention, and all the divisions and numbering are arbitary. Artificial constructs abound in many areas of human thought, ideally to facilitate classifying and learning, but sometimes end up muddling things. I'm a biologist and remember when all living things were classified as either Animalia or Plantae. A lot of things don't fit properly in either kingdom and I eventually came to prefer the five kingdom system that adds Monera, Protista, Fungi. But some argue for seven or more kingdoms. At some point it's time to consider similarities more than differences, I think. For high school students, I think it would suffice to use the three kingdom system that uses Protista as a place to stuff every organism that's not obviously a plant or an animal. College is soon enough to be concerned with why it's useful to add the kingdoms Monera and Fungi.

Back to Scripture, etc. . . . In the Church of England, the Mass was celebrated the same and churches were the same as before, with roodscreens, crucifixes, statues, etc. Henry VIII started the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538, which of course developed into looting monasteries and churches of valuable objects. I can't remember what time frame the real iconoclasm hit England, maybe you do. If they were breaking stained glass windows and destroying statues in the late 1530s-1540s, it's possible by the time the 1549 Book of Common Prayer was issued that the Church of England was turning against "graven images."

I'm just speculating, though; it's easy to quickly find the date for the Dissolution of the Monasteries but would take far longer to find out when attitudes changed. Henry VIII died in 1547 so his Protestant son Edward was King when the Book of Common Prayer was issued, suggesting he would have influenced it. I've read that Katherine Parr, Henry's last wife, was very sympathetic to the writings of Martin Luther, and I think to others as well, very much into the Sola Scriptura way of thinking, which was something she had to conceal from Henry. Edward's mother, Jane Seymour, died shortly after his birth, and Katherine Parr was the closest thing to a mother he had, so she probably influenced his religious thinking. So it's possible that there was a royal prejudice against "graven images" reflected in the Book of Common Prayer.

The reason I think it likely that most Protestant denominations worded the Commandments to include the prohibition against making "graven images" is that there has always been a lot of Protestant hostility toward Catholicism. I grew up Protestant, have attended five denominations enough to be familiar with their teachings, and have heard the hostility all my life, still hear it from those who don't know I'm Catholic. The reason I wrote the OP was to refer a poster from another forum to it after he posted that a crucifix violates the 2nd Commandment. It was difficult to explain why that's not so in a brief post, and I also thought the topic might interest others who read this forum. I doubt it's explained much in any denomination.

As for the Catholic 9th and 10th Commandments, I wonder if the prohibition against coveting your neighbor's wife (which at first glance may seem superfluous since adultery is already prohibited) was inspired by Jesus saying that lusting after a woman is the same as committing adultery. I would think that avoiding impure thoughts was emphasized by the Middle Ages, when the Commandements were grouped, if not before. Chastity and celibacy were valued by that time. But I never went to seminary so I'd be interested in what you think about my hypothesis. :hippie:

Also, are the Hebrew scriptures that the Septaguint is based on still in existence? I learned a lot about the various translations from the priest I took instruction from but it's been many years and my notes and books are packed up at present as we are remodeling. I keep thinking I'll go get a certain book and then realize it's in a box. Anyway, IIRC, St. Jerome used some texts for translating the Vulgate that no longer exist.

It is interesting how the mention of slaves is omitted since slavery was certainly common in medieval times. I would like to think it was left out due to shame but I'm afraid it was more likely nonchalant acceptance of slavery. Wives were considered "goods" as well, of course.

Following The Two Great Commandments that Jesus gave is all we really need to do. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself" covers it all.

In the same vein, my godmother, who lived to be 93, often said to me "You know, I've lived a long time and I've come to the conclusion that greed is the greatest of all sins. It's really behind all other sins." Since remembering the Seven Deadly Sins can be as difficult as trying to remember the names of the Seven Dwarves -- always that last one you just can't remember -- I think focusing on greed is a good idea and helpful in remembering the others. Think about different forms of greed and you can probably recall the other six sins.

[Beer Snob-50]

5. it can be said that the ten commandments

(no matter what ten commandments you adhere to) can all be boiled down to the two greatest commandments

[DemBones DemBones]

6. Yes, and while the Old Testament prefigures Christ,

we should focus most on what Christ said.

[Beer Snob-50]

7. i think that is what f**ks up christianity!

people tend to focus on the old testament. what would jesus' take on war, capital punishment, and gays be? i tend to think he would be against the first two in all circumstances and be very much for gay rights.

we have to remember that much of the old testaments take on marriage was to promote progogation of the species. man on man or woman on woman sex cannot do that. thus they were against it. if old leviticus was around today, he/she/it would probably not give it a second thought.