The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue, are a set of biblical laws relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry, blasphemy, murder, theft, and adultery. Different groups follow slightly different traditions for interpreting and numbering them.
The Ten Commandments appear twice in the Hebrew Bible, in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. According to the story in Exodus, God inscribed them on two stone tablets, which he gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. Modern scholarship has found likely influences in Hittite and Mesopotamian laws and treaties, but is divided over exactly when the Ten Commandments were written and who wrote them.
Read more about Ten Commandments: Terminology, The Revelation At Sinai, Two Texts With Numbering Schemes, Importance Within Judaism and Christianity, United States Debate Over Display On Public Property, Cultural References
Famous quotes containing the words ten and/or commandments:
“Mix salt and sand, and it shall puzzle the wisest of men, with his mere natural appliances, to separate all the grains of sand from all the grains of salt; but a shower of rain will effect the same object in ten minutes.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“If you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes...then...Israel will become a proverb and a taunt among all peoples.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Kings 9:6-7.