Which Ten
Commandments?
A Reprintable, Royalty-Free Handbill
edited by Cliff Walker
and the late Jyoti Shankar



One of the best-kept secrets in the discussions on the Ten Commandments concerns the fact that (according to the story) Moses smashed the first set of tables in a fit of anger, because the Israelites chose to worship the golden calf. (That this would happen or would be told casts doubt on the whole Exodus tale, but we will not cover that here.)

As the tale goes, Moses smashed the tables of stone, and God said he'd make a new set of tables containing "the words that were on the first" (Exodus 34:1). However, as we see on the second page, the second Ten Commandments in no way resemble the first set. To popularize this knowledge is to knock the wind out of this entire move to place "The" Ten Commandments in our schools.

Positive Atheism encourages readers to print out and distribute the PDF file of the two center pages of our July, 1999, issue, and distribute it far and wide. (If you don't have Adobe Acrobat, you can download it for free. If you don't use Acrobat, the contents are reproduced in HTML 2.0 below.) Although we know that the main premise of theism is flawed, many Americans haven't thought much on these things. Thus, to show biblical discrepancies can, with many people, go further than any discussion of the main premises of theism.

A discrepancy not mentioned is that between the original Ten Commandments of Exodus 20 and the recap listed in Deuteronomy 5. Exodus 20 requires keeping the Sabbath because "in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day." But in Deuteronomy, Jews must "remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath [sic] day." Nothing is said about God resting after the six days it took to create the universe.

Graphic Rule

Which Ten Commandments?

Read Here: http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/whichcom.pdf

I Know! I first looked at this years ago when a Sunday school friend of mine came up with the same comparisons! He was attempting to teach a study of the 10 Commandments when he ran into this little “bump”. It was devastating to him, but not to me so much because I never really accepted the Dogma of the Perfect Word of God.

Even though I agree with many things the Positive Atheist have to say, I frankly think their case is somewhat weak in this instance.

They state that the 10 commandments in Ex 20 are different than in Ex34. But can anyone really prove that they are different from what is written in the Bible? I think not!

Ex 34:1 states that God promises to write the commandments, “…like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables” Then in verse 12 thru 26 there are eleven (11) commandments with only a few matching the original 10 in Ex20. BUT, note that in Ex34:27 God tells Moses to write the new stuff!

So, it looks like God wrote something and Moses wrote something.

Now if God kept his promise, then God wrote the original 10 again, as he said he would, and Moses added another eleven, three of which being repeats of the original 10. Which three? Worship only God, and not idols and rest after 6 days. Why repeat these three? I don’t know, but there is no proof that Ex34 actually resulted in a different set of the original 10 commandments.

The only thing that can be stated conclusively is that Ex34 results in an extended set of commandments for a total of 18 unique statues, but the First Ten could have been the SAME.

In His Love, John