I recently spoke to a friend and the only commandments he could remember were don't steal, don't kill, don't fornicate. no mention of witches or respecting parents. It then struck me that the ones he mentioned are basically the glue that holds every civilised society together and therefore the others are useless, so do you think that it is worth even having the ten commandments if the important ones are entrenched in modern society and the others are forgotten?
Whoa there. In my family, if Mum or Dad asks me to do something, i do it. Even if im in the middle of something i drop it and do what has to be done. When i was younger, if i didnt do it straight away or if i did it wrong i got beat with a blackthorn stick or an ash plant. Needless to say i learned pretty quickly. I still pay nearly a quarter of my earnings to my parents. I really respect (and slightly fear) my Dad, who used to be a bare knuckle fighter. I swear, if one of those teen brats on Jeremy Kyle had my dad as a parent it wouldnt be long before they behaved right.
Its true that some people dont respect their parents. Sad and true. but not in my house.
There is No Commandment about Fornication(It's Adultery) ; nor Witches. Just wanted to point that out for you. Might want to give them a quick look over so you know what are and arn't commandmants before you start saying they're irrelevant.
(ALSO I don't know where you live, but if people didn't fornicate around here; I think society would stop pretty quickly from all the sexual tension. ) I'm not Even a Christian, and i consider most of the commandments to be a good idea, Especial "Thou shall honour thy mother and thy father"
Not really; It'd take a good number of years, maybe even a generation. You've got all the people who are babies now who are going to grow up to look after us.
Meanwhile, think how Cranky you would get if you were NEVER going to get any, ever again. it'd be horrible. On the plus, the goverment would save loads on child benefits; maybe we can start getting rid of some of that defecit....
Most people don't really understand the actual laws of the bible and simply assume that whatever they were raised to believe to be "correct" must be in the bible somewhere. I'd go so far as to say that a lot of people seem to be under a number of fundamental misapprehensions about the bible.
Taken from the book of Exodus
2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
The first of the ten commandments seems obvious to modern christians (god is god) but at the time these laws were made the Jewish faith would have been a more fluid religion. The worship of idols of other gods and spirits would have been common.
3 Do not have any other gods before me.
Another law made specifically against polytheism.
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Once again, stop making idols of other gods.
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,
No worship of other gods. If you worship other gods you are to be rejected and your kids are screwed too for generations for making the mistake of not worshiping me.
6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Obey the laws (four of which are don't worship other gods) and you'll be rewarded. Note that this comes AFTER the whole I am a jealous god who will fuck you up if you screw with me bit.
7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
People have taken this to mean that you can't say something like "God damnit" or "fucking christ" because it references god in a bad way but it literally means that you can't say god's name. The Abrahamic god has a name, YHWH, and that's what you're not allowed to say out loud. Literally. Just that one word. Elohim (god, or authority), El (mighty one), Shaddai (almighty), Adonai (master), Elyon (most high), Avinu (our father), etc off of which the derivative christian terms are based off of are all ways for people to pray to god without saying his name.... which is YHWH.....
8 Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. 9 For six days you shall labour and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.
Pray to god on the Sabbath... so you must spend at least one day a week praying to god and not working.
12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
Obey your parents
13 You shall not kill/murder.
Its worthy of note that the words for kill and murder translate the same way from the original texts with drastically different meanings.
14 You shall not commit adultery.
No cheating on your wife.
15 You shall not steal.
Don't steal
16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Don't lie
17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Stop being jealous of what you don't have.
Now the last in that list are relative no brainers but the VAST majority of the things covered in the ten commandments are details specifically related to not being polytheistic and only worshiping YHWH. To only select the parts of the bible you like is foolish and misrepresentative of the text's actual meaning.
People also have a tendency to lump the seven deadly sins with the ten commandments.
But none of these are actually mentioned in the bible listed as such. They're actually retroactively added to the catholic dogma following the excesses of Rome in an effort to curb the Roman Hedonism.
It's unsurprising that most people make these mistakes considering the mix and match sort of "literal truth" used by the average christian.
As Exodusv has wonderfully pointed out, these commandments were told to the Israelites coming out of Egypt. Egypt is a polytheistic society, and the Israelites were slaves. The ten "commandments" (the better title is the "Ten Words" [for commandment is found nowhere in the text, and these are the 'words of God']) were given largely to make the Israelites depend on, and follow, God, instead of falling into the ways they were familiar with (abundance of work under slavery, and polytheism that is in every other culture). That should be put into thought when applying them to today's culture (which is after the death of Jesus; Grace or Law?) .
Which set of 10 commandments? The ones found in chapter 34?
1. Thou shalt worship no other god (For the Lord is a jealous god). 2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. 3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep in the month when the ear is on the corn. 4. All the first-born are mine. 5. Six days shalt thou work, but on the seventh thou shalt rest. 6. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, even of the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end 7. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread. 8. The fat of my feast shall not remain all night until the morning. 9. The first of the first fruits of thy ground thou shalt bring unto the house of the Lord thy God. 10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk.
Those aren't the Commandments. Those are covenant instructions to the people of Israel. The Ten 'Commandments' are in Exodus 20:2-17 & Deuteronomy 5:6-21.
Those are not the ten commandments. That is the covenant between the people of Israel and God.
1) You shall have no other gods before me.
2) You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
3) You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
4) Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
5) Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
6) You shall not murder.
7) You shall not commit adultery.
8) You shall not steal.
9) You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10) You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
Now you see, the 10 commandments is just a catchall phrase. There are actually 2 sets of 10 commandments. You have the ritual set that I quoted and then you have the ethical set. Both Jewish and Christian traditions that the ethical ones were one the original tablets (that Moses broke) and the replacement ones. There are some scholars who say the ritual set was on the replacement set.
Also i kinda prefer the Jewish enumeration for rules 1 and 2 of the ethical set. 1.) I am the LORD your God 2.) You shall have no other gods before me, you shall not make for yourself an idol Because from the Judeo-Christian mindset, idolatry really is the same as polytheism. The LORD God should be the sole object of all worship.
"16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Don't lie"
Just thought I would drop in and point out that verse 16 doesn't mean don't lie. Bearing false witness has to do with lying in a court of law. Think about it. Why would they list lying with the big ones like murder? They didn't list assault. Lying can be ok if the context says it is needed. For example, you see a guy with a gun say "Which way did he go?" The right thing to do is most probably to lie.
No. It does not. "False witness" is a direct idiomatic translation. It literally translates to do not lie to/about those around you/in the eyes of god. It is commonly translated as "bear false witness" way but the literal translations of hebrew are often more literal than the more flowery translations to english.
Gonna disagree with you. Bearing false witness is more in line with testifying (not necessarily in court) to a falsehood rather than just simply saying something untruthful. You see this phrase again further on in the context of a priest holding an inquisition between two men (one of whom is "bearing false witness"). Just like it's do not murder and not do not kill. The words are similar, but not exactly the same.
Ok.... we're going to try this again. "Bear False Witness" is a common translation into english of a hebrew phrase that is closer to meaning "Don't lie." Bear False Witness is a shitty translation.
Young's Literal Translation says, "thou dost not answer against thy neighbour a false testimony." You can't get any closer to the original hebrew. As I said above, it is testifying to something that is untruthful, not simply stating a falsehood.
Which is it's literal meaning rather than the meaning of the idiomatic phrase at the time it was written. In dealing with hebrew texts you are dealing with several thousand years of outdated idiomatic phrases, just because you can read the words doesn't mean you have a clue what they mean.
An idiomatic phrase is a series of words with an associated meaning socially and culturally that doesn't necessarily have a logical meaning once it is translated out of the language it was made within. For example a phrase like "a shotgun wedding" or "a bird in the hand" have a literal meaning associated with them. I could translate them but it wouldn't necessarily be a translation of the meaning of the idiom.The Japanese word "Ganbatte" for example has no real translation to it. It means something that is simply understood culturally and socially by the people who use it, but it's meaning is near impossible to translate.
The Young's translation is a literal translation that often ignores idiomatic oddities of hebrew and greek. This is to its credit but if the reader doesn't have a basis in near prehistoric socio-linguistic idiomatic phrases there are going to be bizarre and outright erroneous assumptions about the meaning of the text. Seeing the literal "meaning" of the words doesn't matter if you don't have a linguistic context within which to frame them.
I'd disagree on the "Ganbatte" point somewhat. It's not a direct translation, but it basically means "Do good", "Succeed", "Do your best"; but it is distinctive in itself enough to be a good loan word that over the years I've encourage others to adopt. So it's not impossibly to translate, but, like much of the Japanese language, meaning it understood best as circumstance dictates, not necessarily by what the word is. It just means that there is some flexibility in much language that depends on context to understand meaning.
But this:
Seeing the literal "meaning" of the words doesn't matter if you don't have a linguistic context within which to frame them.
Ganbatte means "Succeed" or "Do your best" but it's literal translation is something closer to "fight" in the sense that one ought to "fight to succeed."
There's a good example of that failing to understand the meaning of a word, due to changing meaning over time, in the name of an old English king, Ethelred the Unready.
Today you would translate his nickname, the Unready, as meaning unprepared, where at the time it actually meant something more along the lines of 'ill-advised'. This was due to the fact that his court advisors apparently did a terrible job.
We don't need the concepts of the Ten comandments. If we need an ancient tablet to tell us whats right or wrong something is well... not right. We should be able to make these laws and rules our selfs and not need a religon to uphold the rules. In my eyes we are not yet civilized as much as we should be.
honestly ive always considered jesus to have summed them all up... do unto others as you would have them do unto you...if you dont like the idea of being robbed murdered disrespected lied to, or get cheated on...then dont do it yourself as far as religeous figures go however he also said its not our place to judge thats his job so il be nice to people...yes, but im not going to become a christian
