Commandments, counting and splitting hairs

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First off, I have to say I am sorry. Once upon a time I had thought all those years of compulsory Religious Education at school had taught me a thing or two about religion. I think I was wrong.

Take one of the basics as an example. I was taught that Moses had carried a tablet with ten commandments which formed the basis of the annoying triumvirate of Monotheistic religions we suffer with in this day and age. Today, reading Wikipedia, I learned I may be wrong. This is from Wiki’s page on the Ten Commandments:

  1. I am the Lord thy God
  2. Thou shalt have no other gods before me
  3. Thou shalt not make for thyself an idol
  4. Thou shalt not make wrongful use of the name of thy God
  5. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
  6. Honor thy Father and Mother
  7. Thou shalt not murder
  8. Thou shalt not commit adultery
  9. Thou shalt not steal
  10. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor
  11. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house
  12. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife

Now, I might be a bit old fashioned but I actually count 12 there… It seems most religions get round this by lumping two of them together every now and then. I suppose the “Ten Commandment” had a more authoritarian ring to it even all those years ago.

This leads to the second bit of confusion. I was brought up thinking the commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill” was on the books and it was only today I discovered the rules were you couldn’t murder someone. Apparently only Catholics say the “not kill” bit (must have caused a few problems during the crusades). I find this odd as my school was at most a Protestant one (mostly secular) and we certainly weren’t taught the Catholic doctrine anywhere else.

Anyway it now seems killing people is fine, as long as it isn’t murder. This creates a bit of confusion though. Does God wait until a secular court has reached a verdict before he consigns the killer to hell? Who decides when taking a life is murder and when it isn’t?

Why cant these bloody religions make sense. It is all proof that the bible was written by Loki while he was bored if you ask me…

1 thought on “Commandments, counting and splitting hairs”

  1. Try to keep up. It is now up to 14 commandments…… 🙂

    I looked at the Wikpedia page. There are a few lists of commandments.

    You start to feel a bit sorry for fundamentalists. Trying to maintain the literal truth of a book must be quite difficult when you don’t know which book you have to treat as literally true.

    It looks like the Ten were cobbled together from a couple of separate bible books.

    I am also REALLY confused by Commandment #1 “I am the Lord thy god*” or apparently, in Exodus –

    I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;

    In any case, I have to be really pedantic and say “This is not a command.” Surely it’s a statement (though clearly not a statement of fact.)

    (*The King James bible is much more poetic than the dull modern translations. Also, the beautiful antique language makes it so much easier to appreciate the bible as myth and metaphor than to hate it as bullsh, so it would be my bible of choice, if I were to read one, which is obviously a mite unlikely.)

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