Day 2396 – Theology Thursday – Counting the Ten Commandments – I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible

Welcome to Day 2396 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom – Theology Thursday – Counting the Ten Commandments – I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible Wisdom-Trek Podcast Script - Day 2396 Welcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! I am Guthrie Chamberlain, and we are on Day 2396 of our Trek. The Purpose of Wisdom-Trek is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before.   Today is the ninth lesson in our segment, Theology Thursday. Utilizing excerpts from a book titled: I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible written by Hebrew Bible scholar and professor the late Dr. Michael S Heiser, we will invest a couple of years going through the entire Bible, exploring short Biblical lessons that you may not have received in Bible classes or Church. The Bible is a wonderful book. Its pages reveal the epic story of God’s redemption of humankind and the long, bitter conflict against evil. Yet it’s also a book that seems strange to us. While God’s Word was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. Today, our lesson is Counting the Ten Commandments. One of the most enduring elements of the Bible and the Judaeo-Christian worldview within Western culture is the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. Even if one can’t recite them all, most people have seen the fiery finger of God etch the commandments into two stone tablets as Moses— for many of us, Charlton Heston—watches in awe. It seems to go without saying that the list of the Ten Commandments is something that Judaism and Christianity have always agreed upon. Well, that is not exactly true. Historically speaking, Jews and Christians—and even denominations within Christianity—have disagreed on exactly how the Ten Commandments should be listed and expressed. In fact, how to precisely spell out the commandments was an issue of considerable importance during the Protestant Reformation. The difference concerns how many commands are found in the first six verses and last two verses of Exodus 20:2-17, the initial listing of the commandments received by Moses at Sinai.- One point of context is required before we can understand the thinking behind the differences in the listing and expression of the commandments. Any listing of the commandments must result in a total of ten, because three other passages of Scripture fix the number of commandments at ten. Exodus 34:28, Deuteronomy 4:13, and Deuteronomy 10:4 each clearly tell us that God gave Moses ‘asereth hadvarim (“ten words”; “ten statements”) at Sinai. Interestingly, the Jewish tradition treats the statement in Exodus 20:2 (compare Deut 5:6) as a command when the wording has no imperative force to it at all. This latitude arises from the fact that the Hebrew text of the Old Testament exclusively uses ‘asereth hadvarim (“ten words”) instead of ‘asereth hamitsvot (“ten commandments”) with respect to the contents of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. After regarding Exodus 20:2 as the first “word” of the ten, verses 3-6 are thematically understood as speaking to a single prohibition: making idols for worship. There are actually three imperative statements in this group of verses ( You must not have any other god but me. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything. You must not bow down to them or worship...