WHICH TEN COMMANDMENTS ARE THESE?

All of you Religious Right jackasses, listen up. You too, Roy Moore. (And pay attention, Dubs!)

You want to put nice big granite monuments with the Ten Commandments in every courthouse, do you?

Let’s just put aside those niggling little concerns about the separation of church and state. The Founding Fathers of this country were smart enough to know that when you let religion get into the government, sooner or later the government is going to get into your religion. And that is not a Good Thing. Just ask the people who lived with the Taliban.

No: for now, let’s put all that aside. Let’s just consider the practical question: which Ten Commandments?

Because there are two versions: the one in Exodus, and the one in Deuteronomy. And they’re not identical. The first tells us to “remember the Sabbath day” and the second to “observe the Sabbath day.” The first admonishes us “Do not covet your neighbor’s house. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife…” But the second says, “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife. Do not covet your neighbor’s house…” [My rabbi suggested that it sounds like Mrs. Moses must have had a few words with Moses about the relative priority of wife versus real estate.]

There are plenty of minor differences beside these, but these will do to make the point: Which version?

Oh, and that’s just the Hebrew. When you add the issues of translating the words into English, you open up a whole new can of worms.

Like Commandment Number Six (or Five, by the Catholic reckoning. More about this later). The King James Bible famously mistranslates Exodus 20:13 as ”Thou shalt not kill.” And that’s one of the most popular translations around. But a better translation is “Thou shalt not commit murder.” Which version should be on that big granite slab?

And then you have to consider how the words are parsed. Jews, Catholics, and Protestants all group the words differently, leading to different lists of Commandments. Is the one about murder number six? Or five? More confusion.

And why stop at ten? Jews believe that there are 613 separate commandments, not just ten. It’s not possible to obey all of them today (since the sacrificial cult disappeared in 70 C.E. with the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem), but there are plenty of people who take the rest of them pretty seriously. Bacon cheeseburger, anyone? Not these dudes.

So let’s keep it simple. If you want to be reminded of the Ten Commandments, why not just put up a nice poster – or a granite slab, see if I care – in your family room? In your church?

Just keep it the hell out of my courtroom.