Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!dptg!ulysses!andante!princeton!udel!wuarchive!mit-eddie!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!paul.rutgers.edu!christian From: credmond@watmath.waterloo.edu (Chris Redmond) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Commandments or Suggestions Message-ID: Date: 19 Oct 90 08:14:32 GMT Sender: hedrick@paul.rutgers.edu Organization: University of Waterloo Lines: 40 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article scott@clmqt.marquette.Mi.US (Scott Reynolds) writes: > >I find it harder and harder to believe that the 10 >Commandments should be viewed as the 6 Commandments and 4 Suggestions, >or the 9 Commandments and 1 Suggestion for that matter. > >I'm going to ask this question quite seriously: why is the prohibition >of images any different than the prohibition of murder? I can follow >the explanation of having statues vs. worshiping them, but it doesn't >satisfy the basic issue of why one commandment is any more or less >important than another. For another example consider "you shall remember >the Sabbath... to keep it holy" -- the actual day has been shown quite >convincingly to be Saturday. > And why is either prohibition any different from, or more important than, the prohibition against wearing garments made of wool and linen mixed? I may just have a defective Bible, but as far as I can tell Chapter 20 of Exodus does not say "the following are the Ten Commandments, and they are more important than any other rules set out by God". In fact I don't believe the expression "ten commandments" appears in the Bible at all. So what justification do we have for taking the prohibition against murder, to pick one which most of us think is important, more seriously than the prohibition against eating hoopoes? When we look at the 613 (isn't that the canonical number?) commandments given to the ancient Jews, how do we decide which ones we must obey, and what form our obedience will take? The only possible answer is: we use the brains God gave us. Which is not to say that bowing down to statues is a good idea. On the other hand, I'm not sure that eating hoopoes is a good idea either ;-). CAR credmond@watmath