The Bible itself does not show with precision, the numbering of
the Commandments. It does not do so at all. The set is referred to
as "ten" (Ex 34:28, Deut 4:13, 10:4), but the exact numbering is
not given in the two slightly different versions of it recorded in
the Bible (Ex 20:2-17 and Deut 5:6-21; see also an expanded
elaboration of the principles in Ex 34:11-2
. This is
as true of the King James Version as of any other. Therefore, no
one has the license to be dogmatic about the exact numbering and
division, based on the Bible alone -- let alone to make a charge of
dishonesty and "removal."
By nature, an abbreviation must leave out certain material, and
since the Church has most typically used the Augustinian division
of the Decalogue (The Lutherans use the Augustinian division as
well), the section of the Decalogue which says:
"You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for
yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in
heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the
water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve
them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the
fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love
to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
This gets abbreviated to:
"You shall have no other gods before me.
Some declare that the Catholic Church has "hidden" or "removed"
from the Ten Commandments the prohibition of idolatry. They have
misinterpreted the idolatry command as a prohibition of all
religious images There is nothing wrong with the abbreviation
because:
1. Luther himself abbreviated the no false gods/no idols
commandment this way.
2. Jews -- who today are even more opposed to religious
representations (so-called graven statues and pictures) than
Protestants -- abbreviate this command in this way.
3. Protestants themselves, even those who separate the two parts of
the command, abbreviate them for catechetical purposes, showing
that catechetical abbreviation is perfectly fine in principle and
is in no way an attempt to "hide" or "remove" any of the Ten
Commandments.
4. Teaching the faith to others, especially children, requires an
abbreviation of the Ten Commandments for easy memorization since
they are otherwise a very long block of material to memorize,
longer than any of the commonly recited creeds. It would take a
great deal of effort to memorize the Ten Commandments in
unabbreviated form. And while God certainly wants each Christian to
know the Ten Commandments, he certainly does not expect every
Christian (including the billions of illiterate ones in world
history) to memorize them in unabbreviated form. That is not an
essential Christian duty, and thus Luther, the Jews, and
Protestants in general have used abbreviations to aid in
memorization.
5. Another reason -- besides their sheer length -- for abbreviating
the Ten Commandments is that they contain a lot of historical
material that is simply not directly applicable to modern Gentile
Christians. Thus God tells the ancient, Jewish audience that he is
the Lord, "who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage" (Ex. 20:2), that they must honor (lit.,
"glorify") their parents so "that your days may be long in the land
which the LORD your God gives you" (Ex. 20:12), and that "You shall
remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the LORD
your God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an
outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep
the sabbath day" (Deut. 5:15). Besides these, there are also
numerous cultural-historical references which no longer apply to
the overwhelming majority of Christians today -- such as having
male and female slaves, cities with gates and walls, oxen, asses,
and fields -- while they did apply to what might be called "the
Hebrew middle class" in ancient Palestine.
6. Finally, the fact the Church is not trying to "hide" or "remove"
any of Ten Commandments by abbreviating them in the memorization
formula is indicated by the fact that everywhere else the Church
uses them in unabbreviated form. They are there, in all their
unabbreviated glory, in every Catholic Bible, including the
Vulgate, which was used for a thousand years before the Protestant
Reformation, as well as in all the vernacular translations of
Scripture before and since the appearance of Protestantism. They
are read out unabbreviated during the Scripture readings at Mass
(and always have been). And, finally, when catechetics is done and
people are taught the Ten Commandments, they are always read and
shown the unabbreviated form before being asked to learn the
memorization formula.
http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/numberng.htm
