Somewhere around town there’s a billboard that says, “Praise Darwin – Evolve Beyond Belief.” It’s part of a billboard and bus advertising campaign sponsored primarily by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). Since I’m teaching a youth Sunday School class intended to help our young people learn to think wisely when it comes to challenges to our faith, I went to the FFRF’s web site to find some discussion material.
Among other documents, I found a 50 question “Bible Quiz” intended, as far as I can tell, to shock Christians. If you take the Bible Quiz as Gospel truth, you’ll come away thinking the Bible is the most vile, horrible, bizarre book in human history.
To stimulate my mind and keep my Bible knowledge sharp, I’ve been using part of my daily devotion time to research and write responses to the Bible Quiz. Why not share what I’ve written with you in this blog from time to time? At the very least, it can help you learn some Bible research skills of your own.
Below, you’ll find question 1 of the Bible Quiz along with some additional statements by the original author, some of which I have deleted for the sake of brevity. My response is in italics.
1. What is the last of the Ten Commandments?
Answer: C
- Don't steal.
- Don't covet your neighbor's wife and property. --This is the final commandment as listed in Exodus 20:2-17, the version often used by Protestants and Catholics. However, these are not the "ten commandments." (See below.)
- Don't boil a young goat in the milk of its mother. --Believe it or not, this prohibition in Exodus 34:26 is the official tenth commandment, from the only set of stone tablets that were called "the ten commandments." There were three sets of commandments:
- The first time Moses came down from Mount Sinai with commandments, he merely recited a list (Exodus 20:2-17), which is the version most churches today erroneously call the "Ten Commandments," although they were not engraved on stone tablets and not called "the ten commandments."
- The first set of stone tablets was given to Moses at a subsequent trip up the mountain (Exodus 31:18). In this farcical story, Moses petulantly destroyed those tablets when he saw the people worshipping the golden calf (Exodus 32:19).
- So he went back for a replacement. God told Moses: "Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest." (Exodus 34:1) Here is what was on the replacement tablets (from Exodus 34:14-26):
1) Thou shalt worship no other God. 2) Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. 3) The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. 4) Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest. 5) Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks. 6) Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the Lord God. 7) Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven. 8) Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left until the morning. 9) The first of the firstfruits of thy land shalt thou bring unto the house of the Lord thy God. 10) Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.
Keep this in mind next time you are tempted to boil a goat. This list differs, obviously, from the one in Exodus 20 (was God's memory faulty?), but it is only this list that is called the "Ten Commandments": "And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments." (Exodus 34:28)
- Love your neighbor as yourself.
Pastor Tom’s response: Have we really had the wrong 10 Commandments for thousands of years? What would you say to this? Here’s what you do.
First, use your Bible software program (if you don’t have one, you can go to BibleGateway.com) and do a search for “ten commandments.” You’ll find three references – Exodus 34:28, Deuteronomy 4:13 and Deuteronomy 10:4.
Second, read all three. You might have to read several verses – or even chapters – to understand what’s going on. (Critics of the Bible are notorious for singling out verses that suit their purposes.) You already have an idea of what happened in Exodus 34 (from the Bible Quiz above), so let’s look at the other two first.
In Deuteronomy 4:12-13, Moses, in one of several farewell addresses to the Israelites, says, “12 Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. 13 He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow and then wrote them on two stone tablets.” In Deuteronomy 10, Moses recalled the replacement of the stone tablets in Exodus 34. 4 “The LORD wrote on these tablets what he had written before, the Ten Commandments he had proclaimed to you on the mountain, out of the fire, on the day of the assembly. And the LORD gave them to me.” Both times, Moses said the Ten Commandments had been proclaimed by God himself in the hearing of all the Israelites at Mt. Horeb (also known as Mt. Sinai). What we Christians know as the 10 commandments are recorded in two places – Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, and both times they were proclaimed by God himself in the hearing of all the Israelites at Mt. Horeb. That leaves no doubt that the commandments we have today are the ones Moses thought of as the 10 commandments.
So what about the “commandments” in Exodus 34:14-26? Clearly, the Ten Commandments were the most important part of God’s covenant agreement with the Israelites. They were so important, God spoke them in the hearing of everyone. Since they were the most important part, the entire body of covenant laws between God and his people became known as the Ten Commandments. Every part of the covenant revolved around the Ten Commandments. The specific laws that in Exodus 34 and in other places in Exodus were examples of how the Ten Commandments are to be carried out in practical ways in daily life. When Exodus 34:28 says “Ten Commandments,” it is using the term in that all-inclusive way. The Ten Commandments and all the laws that clarified them were the words of the covenant.
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