Talk:Ten Commandments/Archive 3

message: I removed text that claimed that most liberals claim the posting of the commandments on a government building violated the "separation of church and state" (and the statement that "separation of church and state is not part of the constitution" or whatever it was) and replaced it with "some liberals oppose the posting of the Ten Commandments on public property, arguing that it violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States." and I wikified the link to the first amendment.
While posting the ten commandments is not literally "making a law" establishing a state religion, it could create a "slippery slope" situation that eventually entangles government in religion to a degree that the establishment clause is more likely to be violated.  It is a rational position to presume that it is safer for the constitution for the government to "avoid the appearence" of impropriety by not posting religious symbols.  I wonder how many Christian or Jewish groups would like to walk past a Ganesh or Buddha statue whenever they go to court?  Probably they wouldn't.  Religious neutrality is a critical element of American civil society, and reflects the reality of pluralistic religious faith.  By acknowledging no religion as "true" or "correct" or "right" the government is actually honoring all of them, and the beliefs of every American, as equal.  
It would also violate the Equal Protection clause for the religious beliefs of any citizen, including a belief that the ten commandments were of divine origin, or that the clearly religious commandments must be upheld to avoid angering a god, to be sponsored by the government by posting them as they commonly are on government buildings.
These positions better reflect the normative liberal view of the establishment clause, and I will see if it is possible to work them into the article as a description of these philosophies, without promoting them.  Understanding positions that are contrary to your own can be an important source of personal intellectual growth.
I also explained the conservative/religious view of the posting a bit better, and deleted the reference to the Dershowitz article because 1) it was totally irrelevant (about same sex marriage, not posting the ten commandments), and 2)the editor who referenced it to support his POV argument that liberals only favor a separation of church and state when it suits their purposes either deliberately or accidently misunderstood Dershowitz's point.  Dershowitz was arguing that government should be less entangled in deciding who could get married than it is now, and leave it to the individual religious to decide what marriages are acceptable.  This would promote the separation of church and state, not undermine it.  Because it was both POV, and reflected confused thinking, not to mention totally irrelevant, I simply removed it rather than trying to fix it.
--Hrodulf 14:10, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV fix 

message: I'm making some changes to the Historical origin section.
#Removed the first sentence. ("Some historians have argued[citation needed] that the Ten Commandments of Moses have a basis in ancient Egyptian beliefs and texts.") Since the "citation needed" has been there for a long time and no one has gone back and cited, it obviously needs some more research before it is included in the article.
#Added a link to an online translation of Chapter 125 of the Papyrus of Ani so that you can see what it actually says.
#Removed "...though one chapter of the Book of the Dead was found carved on the inside of the sarcophagus of Menthu-hetep who ruled around 2500 BCE. More interesting is that this carving cites, as its source, an original text which was written in 4266 BCE. during the reign of Hesep-ti." The point of this historical origin section should be about the part of the Book of the Dead that contains the "Negative Confessions" or lines similar to the 10C.  Mentioning that one chapter of the book predates the Exodus by a few thousand years is irrelevant.  The chapter that the removed lines refer to is LXIV (64). See  in the section Evidence of the antiquity of certain chapters to see the time period discussion of that early chapter (which includes talk about some mistaken attributions), then see  for the text of Chapter 64. That chapter, while it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, clearly isn't anything related to the Negative Confessions or the 10C. The Book of the Dead was not written all at once, so stating that one part was written in 4266 BCE doesn't mean that all of it was, and the way the sentences were phrased made it appear to imply that relationship, at least to me it did.
#I left in what is now the last sentence, which refers to one of the relevant papyri being written 100 to 400 years before the Exodus.  I don't know which papyrus that statement refers to.  The Papyrus of Ani, which contains the Negative Confessions, is thought to be dated to the 18th dynasty (see ), which would put it right around the time that most religious scholars date the Exodus (see Dating the Exodus).  So, it can't be referring to Ani.  The Papyrus of Nu does  have statements similar to the 10C, but I wasn't able to find a date for that one. I also don't know which other chapters of the Book of the Dead contain similar statements. So, while it's certainly possible (probable?) that some Egyptian texts that contained the similar statements predate the Exodus and the 10C, I don't know which ones, and don't know enough to be able to cite or remove that last sentence. So, if anyone else knows or has more information, feel free to help out.
Hopefully I haven't just messed up something that someone put a lot of effort into, I'm just trying to help improve the article.
Kylef81 00:40, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical origin section 

message: I made the following changes to the article.  If anyone objects to these, please let me know.  The main goal of these changes was to start to reduce the overall article length and make it easier to read.
*Made several wording changes to shorten complex sentences or make them easier to read.
*Changed several in-text citations to "ref" citations and added a "References" section.
*Moved the etymology/translation section to a new "Terminology" section.
*Reformatted the "Text of the commandments"
*Most of the "Nature of the stone tablets" section was pretty much identical to this webpage: 10 Commandments – Crystalinks.  I don't know which one came first, so, I reworded most of it to avoid violating copyrights (and also made it shorter and simpler).
*The "Breaking and replacement of the tablets" section had text identical to THE TEN COMMANDMENTS – Religion-Religions.com.  Again, I don't know which came first, so I reworded it just in case.
These changes didn't reduce the article length too much (62k to 61k).  But, I've only gone through the first part of the article so far.
Kylef81 00:02, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well done. JFW | T@lk 07:05, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changes made on 20 September 2006 

message: I hope to bring to the attention of Wikipedia, (the english version at least) that we are in an age when all sorts of changes are being made to the interpretation of the Royal Law, the Decalogue.
I must admit I just "jumped in" and attached a brief outline of AEMINPU Israelites, and then copied a translation i have made of the Ten Commandments that they follow from the original Spanish.
The founder, Ezequiel Ataucusi Gamonal wrote them in 1956, and i have included my translation of his testimony on my userpage (as well as my translation of the Royal Law). He is a rather controversial figure in his native Peru, a predominantly Roman Catholic country, where he a humble labourer congregated thousands and led other projects also, including FREPAP - a socialist democratic political party based upon the Ten Commandments and Fronteras Vivas a re-location programme taking people from the cities back to the jungle frontier areas of Peru (and other countries) to farm and live freely. 
I realise that AEMINPU does not have as many members as Jewish, Muslim or Roman Catholics or many others but that it's srict adherence to the Law and Sabbaths from evening to evening, are familar with traditional Israelite beliefs, and belief in the Holy Trinity as more traditional Christians with Christ as the manifestation of the Lord Jehovah to show humankind how to follow the Law.
In response to Steve Kap's very polite deletion notice of my first entry on this page, I hope that as the Ten Commandments form the most sacred and important role in the faith of these Israelites ( Rom 9:4  Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;) I suggest that there should be some reference to the movement which I believe is legally recognised by most South American governments, or does Wikipedia only cover topics from its own language origins?Swordedge 16:45, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New to Wikipedia 

message: I would like to add a section which give space for criticism of the ten commandments. E.g. mention that none of the commandmends forbids torturing. Does something like this makes sense or is it out of place in Wikipedia? Please give me your opinion on this.
: The Ten Commandments were not the say-all, do-all. There were other bits of philosophy, advice, and "paths" to follow. If you read most of the first part of the Book of John, you can see what sort of message was begin given. This part of John details the altruistic characteristics of Christ, which some say were more important that simply strictly following the Ten Commandments, alone. Nidht 23:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The laws in the western world strike me as being more similar to the Havamal than the 613 commandments that are listed in Exodus. This is obviously a topic that is very POV 195.153.45.54 13:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

text: There are more than 613 by the time you include the ones in Exodus 34 - which G-d states are part of the covenant which he has made with Israel. 195.153.45.54 13:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism of 10 commandments 

message: "Now Bring me a tool shed, for i am hungry" in the 6th verse of Deuteronomy.  Is that supposed to be there?  I'm no expert, but that doesn't seem right.
Well, I suppose that it is no more rediculous than "thou shalt not cook a kid in its mother's milk", but no, it is not supposed to be there.Steve kap 22:06, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Now Bring me a tool shed, for i am hungry"

message: Would someone care to tell the person who replaced with the entire page with 99kb worth of "HOWARD STERNS PENIS" to get a life? 
    Appreciate it,--AaronFX 02:48, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: New Vandalism

message: The table in "Division of the commandments"
has been completely vandelised,
72.75.89.172 20:25, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: The article currently lists a combined Jewish and protestant numbering of the commandments.  However, the typical Jewish understanding has the first "commandment" as "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."  This matches the Hebrew text calling them the ten words, as the first is not a commandment.  This is further reflected in the Jewish Encyclopedia article on the Decalogue, to which the article links.  The numbering then includes a single command against coveting and a combination of "no other gods" and " no idols."
Perhaps important to point out, the masoretic text includes duplicate accents (those used for verse divisions) on several of the lines in the Decalogue.  This probably reflects the presence of several numbering traditions when the accents were being added.
Of importance to this article is the fact that there is conflict here between the explanation given from Sefer ha-Chinuch and that found in the Jewish Encyclopedia.  To change the numbering now in the "Division of the commandments" section will conflict with the similarly named section under Jewish understanding.  I believe the numbering I am proposing is more accurate and should be preferred.  I am adding it as "Traditional Jewish."
Unregistered editor. 10-27-2006
Thats as may be, but the "ten words" sentence is in and CLEARLY ref's to the 10C in Exodus 34, the so called "Ritual 10C", NOT the 10C of this article.
Steve kap 01:33, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Numbering of Commandments 

message: Commandment three "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God". 
I believe doesn't have so much to do with swearing but to use the authority of God wrongfully.  When you do something in someone's Name that means that you are acting as their agent.  So when you use God's name to justify a wrongful act that is when you break that commandment.  Throughout history lots of wrongful deeds have been done in God's name.
REQUEST: Could somebody add the Muslim 10 commandments to the table?  I tried, but I screwed it up and abandoned the edit.  I don't get the table formatting commands.
The ten commandments table lists "Orthodox" as a column header but without any explanation of orthodox WHAT.  Also it would be nice if the table headers were links to the named religions either within this article or to main articles on that religion elsewhere in the 'pedia.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.172.218.201 (talk) 10:55, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  In God's Name 

message: The biblical reference in the 7th commandment is clearly to "kill" and not "murder" as some have said.  
The Hebrew word for kill in Ex 20:13 is ratsack. The word for slay in Ex 32:27 is haraq.  There are about 10 words which indicating killing or slaying, and throughout the bible you will find various references to these words that are inside and outside the boundaries of justified murder or killing. There is no credible evidence whatsoever within the bible that the 7th commandment specifically implies "murder".   For additional references consult the Hebrew translations of Numbers 35:6-34; verse 27 shows that the term ratsack can be considered a justified killing; Proverbs 22:13 uses the same "kill" translation, ratsack to describe a lion killing a man.
Please stop changing the definitions - the bible itself clearly indicates that the term is more ambiguous than "murder".
: means 'to murder'. My source for that claim is the Hebrew language itself. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 01:26, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Anon, you fail to see it, but reliable sources consistently do. ←Humus sapiens ну? 08:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  It's "kill" not "murder" 

message: I think the "Christian understanding" section needs a little bit of work. It starts off with "Lutheran and Roman Catholic Christianity", which is mostly about the Catholic interpretation, with a reference to the fact that it is the same division used by Lutherans. Later, we have the "Typical Protestant view" section, which is the "Lutheran Decalogue."  Now, the commandments discussed in that section are the same division as the Lutheran/Catholic section, just in a slightly different order. So, it would seem that one of two things need to be done:
#Rename the "Lutheran and Roman Catholic Christianity" section to "Roman Catholic View" since the Lutheran view already has its own section.
#Merge the "Typical Protestant view" section into the "Lutheran and Roman Catholic Christianity" section.
Basically, it appears that we currently have two sections that are covering the same material, without adding much additional value to the article. I would suggest option 2, since the material is essentially the same and merging them will help reduce the overall article length (which I think is currently an issue). Comments? Suggestions? Kylef81 23:47, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I guess if I had actually read the entire section, I would have seen that the "Typical Protestant view" really was the typical Protestant view, not the Lutheran interpretation/division. The paragraph at the beginning of that section was just out of place, and repeated information from the "Lutheran and Roman Catholic Christianity" section. I went ahead and removed the out of place paragraph and did some other minor editing. Kylef81 20:08, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Christian understanding section 

message: The source you cited in the article stated nothing on the innocence of man, so I think it best to change the text to reflect “Thou shalt not murder” as - Killing a human being is wrong and should not be done by anyone.  The only judge of character can be and should be only God. Runswithspoons 17:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Before I deal with your arguments, can you explain which part of the article you are referring to? JFW | T@lk 21:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Killing 

message: I believe that this article has completely failed to mention the resulting political ramifications of the Ten Commandments. Someone more qualified than me ought to write something about how the Ten Commandments have influenced Judeo-Christian thought, Western politics, Western philosophy, and the constitutions of numerous countries, including the United Sates, England, France, Australia, and many more. Any comments? -Hairchrm 03:22, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You find a reliable source and we can do business. Some scholar must have made an inventory. JFW | T@lk 17:06, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Political Ramifications

message: As a casual reader I wonder why Swedenborgiansism gets such a high profile in this article.  Surely it's not a very high profile religion?   Ferg2k 01:10, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This section does not belong in this article at all. This article is supposed to be about mainstream interpretations. Wikipedia policy says that we should not give equal in-depth treatment to a an old religion that contains a billion adherents (i.e. Catholic Christianity) and some new offshoot with a miniscule percentage, i.e. Swedenborgiansism.  The huge amount of emphasis on this small, relatively new faith is tantamount to advertising.  This in-depth treatment should be removed from here, and placed where it belongs, in the Swedenborgiansism article.  Here it should be reduced to a one paragraph summary. Mark3 17:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  High Profile of Swedenborgianism aka The New Church 

message: Fails WP:LEAD in every way. The lead should include the actual commandments themselves, all ten of them. The lead should be rewritten. I sticking the tag on to seek cooperation before I rewrite it myself. frummer 02:01, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: These tags deface the article and are not helpful. You have not indicated your actual misgivings about the present intro, bar the fact that you want the whole list included in the intro (with which I disagree). JFW | T@lk 00:03, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I wish to register agreement with JFW. Mark3 17:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  This makes three of us. ←Humus sapiens ну? 01:05, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: LEAD

message: where can we find these important tablets?.86.147.252.83 14:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They're here. -Lenoxus 21:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  where are the tablets? 

message: I have seen it said (in Standrechtlich gekreuzigt by ? PJTraill 21:59, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jesus' summary of the commandments 

message: "Secularists and some liberals oppose the posting of the Ten Commandments on public property, arguing that it violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."  This appears to have no source and has the author polled all the conservatives to ensure they support placement of the monuments?  How about "Secularists and others oppose" or "Some oppose" since we're not sure they're all secularists either are we?  I think it's odd to presume that conservatives wouldn't take the first amendment seriously.  I know some who do, but that's a strawman argument... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.0.193.220 (talk) 07:43, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Controversy in the US 

message: Would someone who knows please specify the translation used for the extensive quotation of the Exodus and Deuteronomy passages in this article. There are some wordings that are not without controversy, such as "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord." This is so mild a wording that it might well be a proscription against naming other things "The Lord"; while the actual passage is taken by some to be so strict as to ban almost all uses of it. So, anyway, at least say what transaltion it is.
PJTraill 12:41, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: New Revised Standard Version. JFW | T@lk 23:13, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

text: The table "Division of the commandments" seemed to switch inconsistently between "your" and "thy". I have changed all occurrences of "your" to "thy". (If there was a good reason for the seeming inconsistency, feel free to change it back and please explain here.) SpectrumDT 21:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Translation specification

message: some ones vandalised the section in the table
:Which section, in which table? --User talk:FDuffy 00:20, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandalism in the table

message: Many Protestants do not endorse dispensationalism, and some even find it insulting to be treated as if they do. There are plenty of theological systems that interpret the relation between the Old Testament and the New Testament in a way that amounts to rejecting the ten commandments as immediately binding on Christians while affirming that the general principles behind them are morally important nonetheless. You don't need dispensationalism for that. All you need is Jesus' juxtaposition between "it is said..." and "but I say...", where he appears to be indicating that Torah commands don't just apply to his followers the way they do under the Mosaic covenant.
On the other hand, there are plenty of evangelicals who do not take such a line to begin with, whether dispensationalist-influenced or not. My own impression is that many evangelicals do take the ten commandments to be binding on Christians, even the Sabbath command (although they think it's been transposed to Sunday).
My suggestion is to remove the reference to dispensationalism altogether or at least to indicate that there is much more variety among evangelicals. Covenant theologicans and new covenant theologians present a different grounding for similar views or may have very different views altogether, which leaves the section on this sounding thoroughly inaccurate. Parableman 20:35, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Protestant Connection with Dispensationalism

message: Here: http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/index.php/Septimalisation is described geometrized septenary system of units, that is fully compatible with Ten Commandments, especially with Commandment about keeping seventh day holy. This system is better than SI, because in this system exists only one day unit with septenary multiples/submultiples, while in SI exists unnecessarily several base units that shares common distance dimension along axis of any dimension such as X,Y,Z, or T.83.19.52.107 11:42, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As an undergrad, when I got "meters" on one side of the equation and "seconds" on the other, I thought I did my math wrong, turns out that I just never learned "Septimalisation"!!  But seriously, this is just madness, and I encourage all editors that read this to to the Septimalisation page and vote for deletion. Steve kap 17:53, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Well, I DO know the laws of general relativity, and you are an idiot.Steve kap 10:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You are performing unholy blasphemy against holy proposal of introduction of God's septenary system into everyday use again, and you are trying to fight this someone's anonymous holy proposal by mongering people to delete this article. I suspect that you will rather overthrow week and Sunday than will be fully obedient to its principle extended to its fullness, finally performing disobedience to God in this matter by reintroducing occult measurements originated from there:  everywhere.83.5.30.201 13:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Septenary system of units fully compliant with week and Sunday

message: Each of you that want to delete this http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/index.php/Septimalisation article think that meter, kilogram, second, and kelvin cannot be transformed into each other. This is not true, because you don't know laws of general relativity and due to this lack of knowledge you might want to delete this article: http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/index.php/Septimalisation , because you don't know nothing about geometrized unit system described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometrized_unit_system, that allows deriving for example meters, kilograms and kelvins from second, using c, c^3/G i c^5/(G*k) conversion factors. Sadly, you potential deletionists don't know nothing about general relativity, that permits such operations. In general relativity meters, kilograms, seconds and kelvins are on equel footing, because they all have dimension of distance, if you don't believe please look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone Time is just another dimension, such as length, width and height.
For scientific proof, I cite relevant fragment from article about geometrized unit system placed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometrized_unit_system
Definition
In geometric units, every time interval is interpreted as the distance travelled by light during that given time interval.  That is, one second is interpreted as one light-second, so time has the geometric units of length.  This is dimensionally consistent with the notion that, according to the kinematical laws of special relativity, time and distance are on an equal footing.
Energy and momentum are interpreted as components of the four-momentum vector, and mass is the magnitude of this vector,
so in geometric units these must all have the dimension of length.  We can convert a mass expressed in kilograms to the equivalent mass expressed in meters by multiplying by the conversion factor G/c2.  For example, the Sun's mass of 2.0×1030 kg in SI units is equivalent to 1.5  km.  This is half the Schwarzschild radius of a one solar mass black hole.  All other conversion factors can be worked out by combining these two.
The most useful conversion factors are listed in the table below. To convert from SI units to geometrized units, multiply by the given factor; to go the other way, divide.
quantity   	factor          	numeric value
time       	c               	3.00 × 108 m/s
mass       	G/c2            	7.43 × 10−28 m/kg
charge     	(G kC ) 1/2 / c2	8.62 × 10−18 m/C
momentum   	G/c3            	2.48 × 10−36 s/kg
energy     	G/c4            	8.26 × 10−45 m/J
power      	G/c5            	2.75 × 10−55 s/J
temperature	G k/c4   	1.14 × 10−67 m/K
The small numerical size of the last few conversion factors reflects the fact that relativistic effects are only noticeable when large masses or high speeds are considered.
83.5.30.201 09:08, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This seems out of place for some reason, or is it just me? ImprobabilityDrive 05:08, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is not out of place, this describes and defends reasonability of creation of SEPTENARY measurement system fully compatible with Ten Commandments in matter of day and week.83.5.75.21 11:35, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Septimalisation and general relativity 

message: I removed the division from the two extended quotes from the New Revised Standard Version, and made the Division of the commandments section a sub section of the  Text of the Ten Commandments section.  This seems logical because dividing the extended quotations is POV (since various religions divide the commandments differently), and having the Division of the commandments section so far away from the actual text made it more difficult for readers to ascertain the veracity of the abbreviated commandments in the table showing the divisions.  Hope this meets approval.  ImprobabilityDrive 05:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-organized 

message: Is it really necessary to have two pictures of the same stone? Thedarxide 13:03, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Public monuments in the US