| abstract
| - There are two versions, generally similar but somewhat different in wording: Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. The version in Deuteronomy adds the detail of Moses saying that God "delivered unto me two tables of stone written with the finger of God." (KJV) The Bible itself refers to there being "ten commandments" in Exodus 34:28 and Deuteronomy 4:13, but it is not clear how to parcel out the fifteen or sixteen verses into ten commandments, and different religious groups have done this in different ways. For example, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" and "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image" (KJV - see below) are sometimes considered to be two different commandments and sometimes as two parts of the same commandment. Protestants assign the Fifth Commandment to "honor thy father and thy mother," but in Catholic texts this is the Fourth Commandment. The Jewish tradition is to call that requirement the Fifth Commandment. However, as Jewish people would also recognize, the Torah, or Law (the first five books of the Old Testament) actually contains not ten, but 613 positive and negative commandments. Thus, when Jesus is asked (at Matthew 22:34-36) which is the greatest commandment in the Law, he picks two of the other 603: 'You shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength' (Deuteronomy 6:5) and 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself' (Leviticus 19:18).
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