The Ten Commandments

In the Lutheran Church I used to belong to a reading from both the Old and New Testament were given each Sunday. The OT readings were carefully selected. Generic, vanilla, usually about praising God in some fashion.

The two books are inextricably tied together. There would be no need for the atonement in the New if not for the fall in the Old.

I'm not sure what you mean by Christians following the 10 C's.

In the Lutheran Church of Sweden they are reading both from OT and NT.
It is carefully choosen and fit the time of year and then fits the sermon.
Some deniminations consentrate on the NT and prefer to "kind of forget" about the OT.

In the Lutheran Church of Sweden they are reading both from OT and NT.
It is carefully chosen and fit the time of year and then fit the sermon.
Some denominations concentrate on the NT and prefer to "kind of forget" about the OT.

I live in a country wqhich knows about
The Ten Commandments.
None of the Christian countries follow the dictate of
The Ten Commandments

Thank you for your answers, everyone.

What I mean by follow the TC is if they are part of the religious teachings just like what Jesus taught.

I am not sure what is the difference about the Lutheran Church but do other churches read the OT also?

The Old Testament is a part of the religious teachings of every Christian religion/church.

And umm.. yeah, the 10 Commandments are included.

Christian religion is surviving with one name JESUS.
He is a jew.
Why we need so many christians who had tortured the jews?.
Why Jews have their own religion instead of projecting Jesus as idol to worship?
Why a Catholic tourist( A German to boot with) get that much of attention in USA?

I will die without any orders from this all pervasive but never visible GOD who had given some orders to a person to wage war and kill the sleeping mother's and sisters..

Ah, that makes sense now if the TC are part of the Christian religious teachings. I was wondering why people carry the Bible that has both OT and NT if only the NT is taught, why not have a NT-Bible only.

I think the Pope gets attention because the majority of Americans are Christians, that is normal. I don't live in the US but there seems to be a very strong feeling of being a Christian country over there, based on what I read in the other threads.

As for orders (TC), I think what religions try to teach is to give us some guidelines in social life. Some guidelines are more difficult to follow than others.

Cello
Thanks.
You had ignored my other critical views.
Of course I know that USA is a pious poor christian country.( I have many relatives there).
Should we need a religion which had tortured, butchered humiliated the jews?

That's a bit of a confusing statement. "The Bible" consists of both the Old and New Testaments. If is was New Testament only it would be the Bible - it would be the New Testament (and seperate books of the new Testament are published!).

It's kind of like saying that you see people driving cars which have both the body and the motor and wondering why people don't drive the motor only. Without the body it's not really a car now is it? :p



The majority of Christian's in the U.S. couldn't care less about the Pope. The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church - one of MANY Christian religions. The most recent stats I could dig up quickly show 82% of the people in the U.S. claim to be Christians. 52% are Protestants and only 23% are Catholics.

I wouldn't take what you see on A2K (or any other WWW site for that matter!) as a representative example of the U.S. population as a whole. The on-line folks tend to be much more "vocal" than people who don't frequent these sorts of forums. That applies to the religious as well as the athiests and agnostics.

How did you arrive at this conclusion?

While Christians will read parts of the Old and New Testament at Church, I've never heard a single passage from the New Testament read in a Jewish
Synagogue.

Ramafuchs, I did not comment on your other critical views as you said, just because I don't know a lot about the history of what happened between the Christians and the Jews. I guess you meant the Nazis' treatment of the Jews? I think the Nazis killed and tortured more than Jews, and Christians did bad things also when they colonized people in other countries. Besides Jesus was a Jew but the Jews rejected him, if I understand correctly. Maybe that is why they don't read the NT in synagogues as Miller said. Apart from that, I think people should not be "judged" by what their co-religious fellows are doing or did, but by their own acts.

Fishin, yeah, I meant the Bible as the Book, not Bible Bible which contains both OT and NT.

An edition entitled "Good News For Modern Man" actually did away with the Old Testament. I always considered that to be an acknowledgement that something needed to be done about the the God of the OT's behavior.

As for the 10 C's. Any discussion usually starts with agreeing on which 10 C's we will be examining. There are two different lists in the OT. There is also the Catholic 10 C's.

Are they observed by Christians today? No, and each commandment can be vigorously challenged in today's era. FWIW, some wit wryly stated that no sooner had God handed Moses the 10 C's he began breaking them all, as recorded by various biblical stories.

Fishin, I reread your post and just now it sinks in. The Pope is the head of the Catholic church and there are 23% Catholics in the US. I wonder is there more promotion/coverage when the Archbishop (the head of the Protestant church?) visits the US?

Tycoon, that is interesting. Can you please post here the three sets of TC just to compare them and know what we are talking about?

By the way, is there a summary (list) of what Jesus taught?

The Protestant Ten Commandments (as found on monuments in courthouses) are:

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
4. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy
5. Honor thy father and thy mother
6. Thou shalt not kill
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery
8. Thou shalt not steal
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness
10. Thou shalt not covet

They are taken from Exodus 20:

1 And God spoke all these words:
2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 "You shall have no other gods before me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 "You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
12 "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
13 "You shall not murder.
14 "You shall not commit adultery.
15 "You shall not steal.
16 "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
17 "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

The Catholic version omits the one about making idols and splits the coveting one into two parts:

1. I AM the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.
2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
3. Remember thou keep holy the Lord's Day.
4. Honor thy father and mother.
5. Thou shalt not kill.
6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
7. Thou shalt not steal.
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.

The Old Testament states that THESE are the "Ten Commandments" of the Covenant dictated by God to Moses and written on the stone tablets, but they are inexplicably ignored by Christianity:

Exodus 34
10 Then the LORD said: "I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the LORD, will do for you. 11 Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 12 Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. 13 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles. 14 Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
15 "Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. 16 And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.
17 "Do not make cast idols.
18 "Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in that month you came out of Egypt.
19 "The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or flock. 20 Redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem all your firstborn sons.
"No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
21 "Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.
22 "Celebrate the Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year. 23 Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD, the God of Israel. 24 I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the LORD your God.
25 "Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning.
26 "Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.
"Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk."
27 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel." 28 Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant?-the Ten Commandments.

Your ignorance is excused, due to the fact that Christian actions are confusing to say the least. It's all very pick and choose. Parts of the Bible that don't make sense (well, parts that make less sense than other parts; none of it really makes sense) are conveniently ignored by the more sensible churches (again, no churches are very sensible). The original 613 Jewish laws are somehow completely ignored, despite being part of the Bible. Sure, Jesus flagged them off, but that was because they made little sense. They have only been replaced by other traditions which make no sense. Jesus is rolling in his grave.

Terry, do you notice (among many things) that the 10 Commandments are written exclusively for men?

"The Bible isn't sexist!"
Yeah, right.

Ah, Terry beat me to the punch. Technically, as the Commandments in Exodus 34 are the only ones ever explicitly named as the Ten Commandments, that means that no one follows the Ten Commandments. Not even Christians.

Thing is, what with Moses breaking the stone tablets of the first set of Commandments, surely those don't apply anymore? I thought those Commandments were part of some kind of covenant and by breaking the tablets, Moses effectively made the covenant null and void akin to destroying a legal contract.

Thus, the only Ten Commandments that still apply, are the ones that make no moral sense.