Two Versions: Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy
5:6-21
The "Ten Commandments" or "Decalogue"
(from the Greek, "Ten Words") "were designed to convey to the Israelites a
representative sampling of the laws to be given subsequently but was in no
sense to be a summary of them, much less an act of legislation in their own
right. Thus it [the Decalogue] contains some of each of the two main types of
religious law: those pertaining to the individual's obligations toward God and
those pertaining to his relations with other people. It also contains both
forms of command, positive and prohibitive. ... The Bible nowhere refers to the
Decalogue as ten commandments. The text of the Decalogue does not even divide
naturally into pronouncements; the number of commands (positive and negative)
is more than ten, whereas the number of topics is nine. ... Yet the Bible
refers to it as 'the ten words'...apparently using this round number as an
expression of totality, as is found in other places in biblical and Talmudic
literature. Various methods arose for dividing the passage into ten
commandments. ... The two versions of the Decalogue (in Ex.and
Dt.) differ in several particulars, all of which are stylistic and not
substantive in nature." [from The Oxford Dictionary of the
Jewish Religion (1997), pp.683f.] There
are differences among Christians in the numbering of the Commandments.