Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/22/louisianas-new-ten-commandments-law-actually-contains-eleven-commandments.html
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The numbering and composition and organization of the 10 Commandments varies a lot between different religions and denominations that follow them, as this chart from Wikipedia shows:
No part of this story is at all funny, and nitpicking over the numbering and categorization of the 10 Commandments is not really helpful, except to show that the state really is favoring one religion by picking one specific version of the 10 Commandments.
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It’s just a question of priorities. Learning about appropriate places for paragraph breaks is no longer on the curriculum in Louisiana schools.
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To add to that, Slacktivist explains the origins of the text specified in the bill, which was put together in the 1950s by a judge and a “patriotic fraternity”.
A Minnesota juvenile court judge named E.J. Ruegemer started sentencing young people who’d gotten into trouble with the law to study the 10 commandments with a local pastor. Ruegemer and his local chapter of Eagles then got the idea of distributing posters of the commandments to judges, teachers, principals, and local government officials all over the country in the hopes of instilling “good moral conduct in American youth.” (Richard Lindsay found one of these original Fraternal Order of Eagles Commandments poster prints on eBay and posted an image here.)
In a statement on the back of each poster, Ruegemer wrote, “The Fraternal Order of Eagles is first of all a patriotic fraternity. It requires of its membership in the initial obligation the belief in the existence of a Supreme Being.” His version of the Ten Commandments, then, was a civil religious tool designed to have interdenominational, interfaith appeal.
Since Jews, Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and other traditions all number the Ten Commandments differently, Ruegemer’s poster tries to avoid alienating any of those groups by simply not numbering them. And because different traditions favor different translations, he paraphrases slightly from the King James Version he used as a starting point. That’s why the language of the poster is KJV-ish, but not always actually KJV.
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My favorite commandment is
“Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.” (Deuteronomy 14:21)
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I was going to say some other things, and I was searching for some factual information and stumbled across a column from 2003 that says absolutely everything that needs to be said on this issue. So I’m going to link it here. Everything in this article is still true and still relevant today. It was written in response to former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore’s attempt to put the 10 Commandments in his courtroom.
https://supreme.findlaw.com/legal-commentary/the-ten-commandments-and-american-law.html
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I thought James Bond took care of F.O.E. in Skyfall…
Cheeky villains are harder to get rid of than bedbugs.
(In all seriousness, this law is horrible, though the xianists / bedbugs comparison holds)
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Cute, but remember: this one simple directive was then extrapolated and expanded-upon by the Mishnah & Talmud to establish the entire “don’t ever mix any dairy and meat products” rules in Judaism’s eating ‘kosher’.
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Is it really news that these people can’t count (or read)? We are, after all, talking about (alleged) monotheists who nevertheless find a way to believe in three gods, in direct contravention of the first of their commandments…
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Getting it correct was never the point. Forcing “Christian” dominionism on children and signalling to their rabid far-right voter base that they’re willing to do so is the point. It doesn’t actually have to be right.
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/insert “oh wait you’re serious gif” here.
From the outside, it’s a whole lot more than 3 depending on sect. Mary, god knows how many saints (pun intended).
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Three at a minimum–agreed.
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"He would sometimes have a friend (child(?)) for dinner(?)
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Thanks for pointing this out in more detail than I could have. I was just going to say that all the commandments against coveting are in verse 17 of Exodus 20, so whether you split that into separate commandments or not is really just splitting hairs.
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There’s an old Jewish joke.
God says “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk”.
Moses answers, “Oh, I see what you’re saying, God, you want us to keep meat and dairy products separate.”
God repeats, “No, Moses, I’m telling you, thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk!”
Moses replies “Yeah, yeah, Lord, I get it! You want us to keep two sets of plates and dishes, one for meat and one for dairy!”
God says “No, no, Moses, I said thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk!”
Moses goes, “Yeah, yeah, we keep two sets of plates and stuff, and if one gets used wrongly we break it and bury it!”
God says, “Aw hell, Moses, do what you like.”
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The whole trinity business is (to me, at least) an unpleasant plagiarism and distortion of the triune Goddess idea. That’s old. That’s established. Maiden, Mother and Crone. It makes me smile when I hear about St. Patrick explaining to the Irish anout the trinity using a shamrock. Éire is a triune Goddess. (Éire, Fodla & Banba.) Every single Irish person would have been familiar with that. There are a host of Triune Goddesses in all kinds of pantheons. The Norns. The Furies. There’s theory that Hecate, Demeter and Persephone were a triune Goddess. A Male trinity? No, it just doesn’t work.
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What makes me really crazy are the ignoramuses who claim that the “Ten Commandments” are the basis for US law. It makes me wonder if they’re familiar with either.
I mean, right off the bat, “I am the Lord they God/Thall shall have no other gods before me.” isn’t just absent from US law, it directly contradicts the Establishment clause. The thing about graven images was originally from an aniconic tradition (making no depictions of living things), which Christians have never followed, but is often interpreted these days as being about creating “idols.” Again, directly contradicted by the Establishment clause.
The rest isn’t much better - laws against not working the Sabbath? Until Groff v. DeJoy in 2023, you didn’t have protection from your employer forcing you to work any day of the week. There’s no laws against taking anyone’s name in vain, “coveting” anything, or honoring one’s parents (while other countries do have laws about children having certain legal obligations for their parents). Again, if anything, such laws would conflict with the 1st Amendment.
You can’t say that laws against murder, theft and “bearing false witness” (in certain circumstances) have any basis in the “Ten Commandments” because they’re universal. (In fact the US is a lot more cool with killing - having more circumstances in which it’s legally okay - than many other countries.) Laws against adultery were inconsistent and are falling by the wayside as the importance of that civil contract has changed - and again, that was not limited to the US or Abrahamic religious countries. A (weak) three or four out of ten (to twelve, depending on how you count them) commandments is a failure.
I know the people really pushing the idea are doing so disingenuously, but lots of people honestly accept it because they want to believe it, without ever thinking about it.
That is important when they keep claiming this isn’t about one particular religion. (Which would seem to be an absurd claim on the face of it, but…)
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“Miss Jones, Susie’s making Jesus with the Play-Doh again!”.
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