The Federalist has not been dilatory about weighing in on this matter. Of course it wouldn't be. One of its most one-eyed contributors (the competition there is fierce, too), John Daniel Davidson, put in his nickel's worth a couple of days ago. He thinks "The Ten Commandments Should be Taught in Classrooms, Not Just Hung on the Wall."
His justification for this is a doozy. He reckons students should be taught "to respect the rule of law and understand that just laws are based on objective moral standards."
Hey, give the LA lege some credit. All text material re The Big Ten (commandments, not sportsball stuff) posted must be printed in "large, easily readable fonts". They know the abilities of their target audience. Sadly, no matter how large and easily readable the font, based on the LA educational rankings, "readable" just isn't part of the equation. Maybe some sort of graphic for each commandment with one of those red circles with the diagonal line across it would be better for the kids. And when the tots question "adultery", perhaps a photo of TCF and Ms. Daniels with said circle and diagonal.
There are so many things wrong with the notion of posting the Ten Commandments in public classrooms everywhere in ANY state that it's hard to know where to begin. One possible place is with the demonstrable fact that they were devised and enforced by mortal, fallible men, not by a deity who cut them personally on tablets of stone on a sacred mountain. If even two of them are wasted on forbidding raising graven images to your own glory, and on strict observance of the Sabbath, it's easy to guess how universal and divinely wise the other eight are likely to be.
More relevantly in the U.S., it's also an - easily - demonstrable fact that you can have the Ten Commandments or the American constitution, but not both. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," shorn of the ambiguity in the archaic phrasing, means in modern terms, "You shall not worship or recognise other gods in my presence." Since the ancient Hebrew god was considered to have his presence everywhere and be all-knowing, his presence covered the whole earth. The American constitution, first amendment, bans any official or compulsory religion of any kind. It's one or the other.
Then there's the question of WHICH set of commandments you are to observe, if you wish to observe either. The book of Exodus has Moses coming down from the mountain with the tablets of the law most people are familiar with, but on finding the people worshipping the golden calf, he smashes them in a rage. Later he goes back to the mountain peak and gets a second set of stone tablets from Jehovah, which according to the Bible (King James Version, anyhow) were the same as the first. Only reading them as they are set out in Exodus Chapter 34, it's obvious that most of them are different. Two are the same; "You shall worship no gods but me," and "You shall do no work on the sacred Sabbath day." The others are given to commands like "Keep the Festival of Unleavened Bread" and "Devote every first born son and first born animal to me." Most people's favourite commandments, and the ones that make most sense, like "Do not murder," "Do not steal," and "Do not commit perjury," don't even appear in this lot of commandments.
Which the likes of Jeff Landry have probably never noticed and may not be aware exist.
Don't boil a young goat in its mother's milk?! That's the original tenth commandment?! How did I never know this set of commandments existed? I feel like I skipped over an entire part of the bibble by mistake.
So there might be 11 or 12 commandments. Wow. Didn’t know that. So is the name “10 commandments “ in the original text, or more like a count of the commandments added by people later on?
Also, aren’t they really Jewish, written long before Jesus was born ?
The "standard" text of the Ten Commandments, as displayed whenever one of these theocrats insists on having it displayed, is not the text in anyone's version of the Bible but cobbled together as promotional material for the Cecil B. DeMille movie, and is actually divided into Twelve Commandments although they are not numbered: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2024/05/20/louisiana-will-post-the-twelve-commandments-in-schools/
Just about the time that the Constitution was being written, Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was being published, volume by volume. You bet, it was a best seller among the Framers. Note that Gibbon had quite a lot of acid commentary about early Christianity and both its internecine squabbles and its persecution of the pagan establishment (including the poor common folk who did not welcome this bullying new sect out of Palestine).
They only had to reach back about 150 years to the English Civil War and the Thirty Years' War. And a bit further back to the French Wars of Religion in the 16th century.
That has occurred to me too, so it seems odd that I have never heard of any of them referring to those events. On the other hand, all those guys were serious Classicists and liked to imagine themselves as spiritual heirs of the heroes of the Roman Republic (the Horatii, the Scipii, Cinncinnatus, that lot) as portrayed by Livy.
Read ANY European history between the 3rd and 20th centuries, and you'll find Christian on Christian violence. When the Catholic church was the only game in town, they had Heretics. Once Protestantism became a thing, it got REALLY ugly.
Fun fact: did you know that Walter Tyndale, the first man to translate the Bible into English, had to do it in exile in The Netherlands? Because English religious authorities were 100% against ordinary oiks being able to read the Bible for themselves? And eventually Tyndale was lured into the power of the English government, convicted of heresy, and executed by strangulation before his body was burnt at the stake. Everyone considered this a great mercy...heretics were usually just burnt at the stake.
The Founding Fathers knew exactly what comes of governments enforcing specific religious doctrine. WHICH IS WHY THEY WROTE THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE, JFC people this isn't hard.
This is just more Project Blitz. They’re doing it in hopes someone challenges it so the six theocrats and Elana Kagan can finally do away with this Separation of Church and State nonsense and allow the Bible-fuckers to usher in the Republic of Gilead.
but see Matthew 23:13- "“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to."
The Federalist has not been dilatory about weighing in on this matter. Of course it wouldn't be. One of its most one-eyed contributors (the competition there is fierce, too), John Daniel Davidson, put in his nickel's worth a couple of days ago. He thinks "The Ten Commandments Should be Taught in Classrooms, Not Just Hung on the Wall."
His justification for this is a doozy. He reckons students should be taught "to respect the rule of law and understand that just laws are based on objective moral standards."
OBJECTIVE moral standards? The Ten Commandments?
Hey, give the LA lege some credit. All text material re The Big Ten (commandments, not sportsball stuff) posted must be printed in "large, easily readable fonts". They know the abilities of their target audience. Sadly, no matter how large and easily readable the font, based on the LA educational rankings, "readable" just isn't part of the equation. Maybe some sort of graphic for each commandment with one of those red circles with the diagonal line across it would be better for the kids. And when the tots question "adultery", perhaps a photo of TCF and Ms. Daniels with said circle and diagonal.
Did the nitwits who made this law ever consider that now there is going to have to be classroom instruction on the meaning of "adultery"?
Nope. That's an Adults Only form of entertainment. But fornication is not mentioned, so I guess.that's ok.
There are so many things wrong with the notion of posting the Ten Commandments in public classrooms everywhere in ANY state that it's hard to know where to begin. One possible place is with the demonstrable fact that they were devised and enforced by mortal, fallible men, not by a deity who cut them personally on tablets of stone on a sacred mountain. If even two of them are wasted on forbidding raising graven images to your own glory, and on strict observance of the Sabbath, it's easy to guess how universal and divinely wise the other eight are likely to be.
More relevantly in the U.S., it's also an - easily - demonstrable fact that you can have the Ten Commandments or the American constitution, but not both. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," shorn of the ambiguity in the archaic phrasing, means in modern terms, "You shall not worship or recognise other gods in my presence." Since the ancient Hebrew god was considered to have his presence everywhere and be all-knowing, his presence covered the whole earth. The American constitution, first amendment, bans any official or compulsory religion of any kind. It's one or the other.
Then there's the question of WHICH set of commandments you are to observe, if you wish to observe either. The book of Exodus has Moses coming down from the mountain with the tablets of the law most people are familiar with, but on finding the people worshipping the golden calf, he smashes them in a rage. Later he goes back to the mountain peak and gets a second set of stone tablets from Jehovah, which according to the Bible (King James Version, anyhow) were the same as the first. Only reading them as they are set out in Exodus Chapter 34, it's obvious that most of them are different. Two are the same; "You shall worship no gods but me," and "You shall do no work on the sacred Sabbath day." The others are given to commands like "Keep the Festival of Unleavened Bread" and "Devote every first born son and first born animal to me." Most people's favourite commandments, and the ones that make most sense, like "Do not murder," "Do not steal," and "Do not commit perjury," don't even appear in this lot of commandments.
Which the likes of Jeff Landry have probably never noticed and may not be aware exist.
Don't boil a young goat in its mother's milk?! That's the original tenth commandment?! How did I never know this set of commandments existed? I feel like I skipped over an entire part of the bibble by mistake.
So there might be 11 or 12 commandments. Wow. Didn’t know that. So is the name “10 commandments “ in the original text, or more like a count of the commandments added by people later on?
Also, aren’t they really Jewish, written long before Jesus was born ?
Well, then there's this...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXeTsWGPT0w
A wonderful thread from Stonekettle of questions about the Ten Commandments (or at least one version of them):
https://www.threads.net/@stonekettle/post/C8cjc-ugcZl
"Okay, Class, today let's talk about critical thinking.
PROBLEM 1a: I am the LORD thy God
Someone declares they are not just a deity, but YOUR deity
a) Who has the burden of proof?
b) Should you take this declaration at face value? Why or why not? Explain your reasoning and provide supporting evidence.
c) Using scientific methodology to the level of proof required of modern forensic evidence, define "god." Show your work.
1/" (of 12, plus an extra credit question)
Those are excellent rules for my neighbours to live by.
The "standard" text of the Ten Commandments, as displayed whenever one of these theocrats insists on having it displayed, is not the text in anyone's version of the Bible but cobbled together as promotional material for the Cecil B. DeMille movie, and is actually divided into Twelve Commandments although they are not numbered: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2024/05/20/louisiana-will-post-the-twelve-commandments-in-schools/
Just about the time that the Constitution was being written, Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was being published, volume by volume. You bet, it was a best seller among the Framers. Note that Gibbon had quite a lot of acid commentary about early Christianity and both its internecine squabbles and its persecution of the pagan establishment (including the poor common folk who did not welcome this bullying new sect out of Palestine).
They only had to reach back about 150 years to the English Civil War and the Thirty Years' War. And a bit further back to the French Wars of Religion in the 16th century.
That has occurred to me too, so it seems odd that I have never heard of any of them referring to those events. On the other hand, all those guys were serious Classicists and liked to imagine themselves as spiritual heirs of the heroes of the Roman Republic (the Horatii, the Scipii, Cinncinnatus, that lot) as portrayed by Livy.
As point of order, the original variant of the commandment against killing was "thou shalt not kill ̲𝘰̲𝘵̲𝘩̲𝘦̲𝘳̲ ̲𝘐̲𝘴̲𝘳̲𝘢̲𝘦̲𝘭̲𝘪̲𝘵̲𝘦̲𝘴."
It says nothing of the sort
Obligatory:
https://youtu.be/I48hr8HhDv0
Ta, Robyn. No good can come of this.
Read ANY European history between the 3rd and 20th centuries, and you'll find Christian on Christian violence. When the Catholic church was the only game in town, they had Heretics. Once Protestantism became a thing, it got REALLY ugly.
Fun fact: did you know that Walter Tyndale, the first man to translate the Bible into English, had to do it in exile in The Netherlands? Because English religious authorities were 100% against ordinary oiks being able to read the Bible for themselves? And eventually Tyndale was lured into the power of the English government, convicted of heresy, and executed by strangulation before his body was burnt at the stake. Everyone considered this a great mercy...heretics were usually just burnt at the stake.
The Founding Fathers knew exactly what comes of governments enforcing specific religious doctrine. WHICH IS WHY THEY WROTE THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE, JFC people this isn't hard.
William Tyndale, not Walter.
Oops, thanks for the correction.
Schools post ten commandments in classrooms. Kids start TikTok challenge to see how many they can break in the shortest time.
Post, then remove. It's the letter of the law, not the spirit that's important.
This is just more Project Blitz. They’re doing it in hopes someone challenges it so the six theocrats and Elana Kagan can finally do away with this Separation of Church and State nonsense and allow the Bible-fuckers to usher in the Republic of Gilead.
but see Matthew 23:13- "“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to."
Also refer to Maiden 19:82 "Woe to you o earth and sea for the devil sends the beast with wrath because he knows the time is short."