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"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August 2018)
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"How do you spell ICE in German? GESTAPO." (S. Jonas, July 2025)
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"First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.
"Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
"Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
"Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." Pastor Martin Niemoller (c. 1946)
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Introductory note. Just after I first posted this column came the news that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals had upheld a state law in Louisiana that sanctions the posting of The Ten in schools. I must say that that ruling certainly gives the textual/origin considerations of the issue (in addition to the primary Constitutional/First Amendment ones) that I raise below particular pertinence.
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In this posting, I am running an updated version of a column I published awhile back (Click Here) on The Ten Commandments and certain issues related to laws, or other state-supported initiatives, requiring that it/they be posted, in one way or another, in public schools in one or more of the several states. The stimulus for this particular posting is a publication by the Freedom From Religion Foundation in the January-February 2026 of their newspaper, "Freethought Today." It describes a suit that the Foundation has filed in Texas to stop all (yes, that is all) Texas school districts from displaying the Ten Commandments in EVERY school classroom. One can only surmise that the requirement that a document displaying one version (and there are many --- see below) be in every classroom shows their concern that if, say, it were displayed only in a variety of public spaces throughout the schools no children (to say nothing of the teachers/administrators/school staff) would look at them.
When considering the matter, the first issue that comes to mind for is of course the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (with which the worthies in several of the states seem not to be familiar). It states, it would seem quite clearly (but, to repeat, apparently not clearly enough for a variety of state-level Republican and other Right-wing folk), that: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" For the "pro-posting forces" in Texas, somehow the wording here does not make itself clear.
Does that not indicate that Texas schools (and those who run them) should pay attention first to reading The First, and then, perhaps to the Ten Commandments? So, let's run the former again: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." (One should also note that the current campaign is led by an organization called the "National School Chaplains Association." Apparently for them, let's say, a system whereby any school chaplain could simply hand a copy of the Ten to any student who happened to come to see one of their number would not suffice. They must be displayed in every (state-funded, publicly supported) school.
For those who might say that the "First Ten" apply only to the Federal government, in other parts of the Constitution it is made clear that such provisions of it also apply to the States. As in Article VI: "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." At the same time, nowhere in the document is there a clause that says, words to the effect of, "State governments, and other interested parties, can skip any of the propositions/requirements of this Constitution at any time that it pleases them."
But, leaving those Constitutional issues aside, in this column we shall deal primarily with another issue. That is, exactly which historical version of the Commandments would one use, whether posted, handed out, or otherwise distributed? There are at least three versions of them, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish. They do agree on certain matters, such as "Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not commit adultery; Thou shalt not steal." But not on certain others, e.g., on which day of the week the Sabbath is kept. And by the way, while we are going through these, one has to wonder just how teaching of any of these three versions relates to Muslim, Hindi, Bahai, and etc. students. (And then further, we must mention the Mel Brooks version, for in the "History of the World, Part 1" he told us that there were originally 15 Commandments, but as, completing his journey down Mount Sinai he [as Moses] was dropping, and thus cracking up [as was the audience during this segment of the movie], one of the stone tablets on which they were written, reducing the number to Ten.
But going beyond the matter of Constitutionality, one might want to ask exactly which Ten are we talking about? Those in a particular English translation of a particular Latin translation of a particular Greek translation of a particular Hebrew translation of an original Aramaic text, known as the "King James Version?" Or one or more others. There is an extensive set of variations of the Ten, depending upon which language one uses. That question would have to be settled first. But let us say that somehow it would be, let us go on to the particulars, given the translation supplied.
"1. Thou shall have no other Gods before me. Which 'one God' are we talking about? The Jewish version (after all, 'he was the original,' so we are told). Or is it the Catholic version or perhaps one of a variety of Protestant versions, or even the Mormon version? Then, what does the word 'before' mean? Is this one talking about others? Oh my.
"2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. How do we define 'graven'? Sculpture, painting, photo, computer image. Are all prohibited, or only some? What happens from the fifth generation on? And what is meant by 'iniquity?' Apparently, this God is jealous in nature. But I thought that that was one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Oh my.
"3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. What name is that, and how is 'in vain' defined?
"4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. What, exactly, does 'keep it holy' mean? Further, right now there are at least two days of the week defined as 'the Sabbath' and a wide variety of approaches to recognizing it, whichever one it is, as special.
"5. Honour thy father and thy mother. How exactly are they to be honored? Gifts, speeches, flowers? And how frequently? What would count and who would do the counting?
"6. Thou shalt not kill. Uh oh! There goes war, self-defense, the death penalty, and, since it doesn't say 'who,' possibly hunting and the use of animals for food.
"7. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Given the commonality of the practice, just how would the Gov. propose to control it, much less punish it?
"8. Thou shalt not steal. Just how is 'stealing' to be defined? Does it include theft of elections [note that this inquiry was written in 2007; presumably it related to the Supreme Court's theft of the 2000 election from Al Gore], and stealing by the awarding of no-bid contracts to Presidential/Vice-Presidential cronies, or let's say, tax cuts for the rich that steal from everyone else's future?
"9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Does lying one's nation into war count? And if its intention is not quite that grand, what is the definition of 'neighbour" anyway? Next door, across the street, down the block, around the world in this increasingly so-called 'globalize'" economy?
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's. There's that troublesome definition of neighbour again. But before getting into any details, just how is 'covet' to be defined and what are the proposed penalties for any violations?"
Turning to what is referred to as "The Bible," myriad questions arise. For example, it is well known that the Old Testament was written down by a number of different authors over many centuries. And it should also be noted that while it has been noted that Moses "was the original law-giver," we actually don't even know whether there was an actual figure/person who was named "Moses," or at least one who fulfilled the role, as an individual, given to "Moses" in one version of the Bible or another. However, we do know for sure that Moses, or "Moses," was not the original lawgiver. Given what we do know about when the Old Testament was originally written down, over a millennium from 1500 or so to 500 or so, B.C.E., even then the Ten Commandments did not constitute the first Code. There were, for example, the Code of Ur-Nammu, written in 21st century B.C.E., and the Code of Hammurabi, written in the first half of the 18th century B.C.E.
Returning to a consideration of the Old Testament, further questions are: was there more than One God (writing everything down) or did he (or she) just like taking rests, and then stopped writing altogether (for unknown reasons, of course). Or is the Old Testament indeed not divine at all, but rather a collection of some brilliant (and not-so-brilliant) writings of political pundits and politicians and historians and self-styled "holy people" and tale-tellers of the times, to lay down the rules, justify events, set forth philosophies (the Golden Rule, etc.). Or is it divinely inspired (over the same many centuries after which the divine inspiration stopped)? Ah, questions, questions.
I for one, a Humanist, not a Theist, think that, for example, that the "Moses and the Divinely Inspired Ten Commandments" legend was just a brilliant early example of marketing. How else could a group of nomads/peasant-farmers become one the earliest groups of people, not a set of rulers/lawgivers, to write down a set of rules, set them up as laws, and commit themselves to the Rule of Law? Just on the basis of Moses (whoever he was) and his men saying, "do it?" Of course, it had to be "God," donchaknow.
There are of course many more questions raised by these laws and regulations relating to religious texts. For example, exactly which English translation of the Bible is being used?
Considering that question, the man who made the first English translation of the Bible, one William Tyndale, in 1536 was burned at the stake, in England, for having the temerity to do so. Under Henry VIII, who invented the "Church of England," the authorities still did not want the "common people" (some of whom might be able to read) to be able to interpret the "holy word" for themselves, without the intervention of clergy. In England, it was not until almost a century later that the Bible was first officially rendered into English, as "The King James" version.
The "King James" version, widely used in this country, was, however, hardly Divine. At the beginning of the 17th century in England, it was a translation from a variety of Latin and Greek texts, put together by a committee of 52 theologians and academics. The purpose was to have one officially sanctioned version of the Bible, in English, to support the installation on the English throne of the former James VI of Scotland (formerly Catholic) as James I of England (conveniently having converted to the Church of
England's version of Protestantism). One need not note (but I will anyway) that the King James version was hardly a document of "divine" origin, that is, of course, unless every one of those 52 committee members were speaking directly with God.
That is, in conclusion, to say nothing of the variety of other Christian Bibles, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox, or the Jewish ones. There is a broad range of them. And so, even before mandating the posting of the Ten Commandments in the schools, as a first step that should be considered, is the matter of just which version of them would be posted, and why that one, rather than any of the others (including of course, the original Jewish one or one[s]), is the Chosen One.
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Post note: Of course we haven't mentioned the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Shinto holy books, all of which have their version of the ten (or more) commandments. We shall leave that one for another day.
(Article changed on Feb 21, 2026 at 12:09 PM EST)
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