Which Version of the Ten Commandments Do School Districts Intend to Display?

LaTonya Turner over at WPLN is reporting that school boards throughout the state, including in Rutherford and Wilson counties, have voted to prominently display the Ten Commandments. Turner writes:

The Wilson County School Board made that policy change in July. The vote was unanimous, with some board members stressing that the display is about history not religion, and the Ten Commandments shaped legal and ethical traditions.

Whew Lord, I’d love to know where that's actually the case. Here in Tennessee, people are constantly killing people, and then the state sometimes kills the killers. People run around committing adultery like it’s their hobby. Not to sound too much like ol’ Freddie Nietzsche here, but if you look too long at many Christians, you’d assume they’re all actually secret atheists — because they behave like they don’t believe God is real.

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I’d love to see any historical evidence that the Ten Commandments changed legal or ethical traditions. People talk a good game, but when it comes down to seeing real proof that things are different now than they were when Moses came down from the mountain and found everyone dancing around a cow, it’s pretty absent.

Here’s the real bone I want to pick about this, though: Any display of the Ten Commandments is going to be religious in nature. Not just because of the God stuff in it, but because choosing which version to display is saying “This is the right version,” and which version is the right version comes down to what you believe. 

Here’s me telling you the Ten Commandments:

1. God’s your god. So ignore all the other gods.
2. Don’t be dancing around statues — not even cute golden calves.
3. Don’t be yelling for God if you don’t want His attention.
4. Set aside one day to worship God.
5. Listen to and take care of your parents.
6. Don’t kill anyone.
7. Don’t fuck anyone who’s not your spouse.
8. Don’t steal.
9. Don’t say people did shit they didn’t or didn’t do shit they did.
10. Don’t worry about other people having shit you don’t.

Is Wilson County going to print out this column and hang it in their high schools? No. We all have a sense that — even if these are basically the Ten Commandments — they’re not the real Ten Commandments.

But which version of the Ten Commandments in the Bible is the real Ten Commandments? They first show up in Exodus 20, when God is all: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” 

Then, I guess, He clarifies in Exodus 34. I’m not a theologian, but these seem considerably different:

1. He’s a jealous god, so don’t worship any other gods.
2. Don’t make treaties with or marry into other tribes, because they might lead you into worshiping their gods.
3. Don’t make idols.
4. Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
5. Sacrifice or dedicate the first-born of everything to Him.
6. Rest on the seventh day of the week.
7. Appear before God three times a year.
8. Do not offer blood sacrifice with anything containing yeast, and don't keep leftovers from Passover.
9. Bring the first fruits of your land before God.
10. Don’t cook a young lamb in the milk of its mother.

God says for Moses to write those words down. And then Exodus 34:28 says that Moses “wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant — the Ten Commandments.”

But then in Deuteronomy 5, Moses is all, “Hey Israel, remember when we met God on that mountain and He gave us the Ten Commandments? No? Well, let me tell them to you again.” This version is closer to the version in Exodus 20, but shares some language with Exodus 34 — at least in English, in the translations I looked at. But there are some pretty big differences between the three versions. So which one do schools hang up? Which is the real version?

I would guess that, with the exceptions of the generations of Americans alive right now, every literate American in American history has been more familiar with the actual contents of the Bible than Americans are now. So they were probably equally familiar with all three versions. So if there was some great influence on American history, it came from an understanding reached from knowing the three versions. If you’re just giving students one of the versions, you’re not giving them an accurate sense of the content that shaped our history. The school board is giving students the school board’s approved version of the Ten Commandments. And a public school board can’t be out here deciding which version of a religious text is the real one. That’s clearly a violation of the separation of church and state.

It’s got to be three or none.

But even once we’re settled on displaying all three versions, you run into the problem that different Christian denominations number the commandments differently. Some put having no other gods and not worshiping idols in the same commandment — and fair, they seem like the same thing to me. A few break coveting your neighbor’s wife out as its own commandment separate from the coveting of other stuff. I’m not out here trying to edit God, but I think coveting your neighbor’s wife is already covered by not committing adultery. He probably could have cut one for space.

But even how the commandments are numbered depends on people’s religious beliefs. So whatever numbering the school system settles on is going to be, again, the school is indicating to kids that those are the right ways to break up the text to get to 10. And “government schools” don’t get to decide which version of Christianity has the correct numbering, because the government doesn’t get to weigh in on which religion is right. At least not yet.

I’m glad the ACLU and other groups are suing over this. But man, I wish some pastors would also speak up. It’s not good when the government gets into the business of messing in spiritual matters and deciding which religions are good and which are bad. And I know there are pastors out there who don’t want the government deciding what’s an approved part of the Bible and what’s not. And their words would carry weight.

So where are they?