Ten commandments

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The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue, are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry, blasphemy, murder, theft, dishonesty, and adultery. Different groups follow slightly different traditions for interpreting and numbering them.

The Ten Commandments appear twice in the Hebrew Bible, in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. According to the story in Exodus, God inscribed them on two stone tablets, which he gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. Modern scholarship has found likely influences in Hittite and Mesopotamian laws and treaties, but is divided over exactly when the Ten Commandments were written and who wrote them.

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The seven commandments promulgated by Melchizedek were patterned along the lines of the ancient Dalamatian supreme law and very much resembled the seven commands taught in the first and second Edens. These commands of the Salem religion were:


" Again should you have discerned the growth of the understanding of divine law in perfect keeping with these enlarging concepts of divinity. When the children of Israel came out of Egypt in the days before the enlarged revelation of Yahweh, they had ten commandments which served as their law right up to the times when they were encamped before Sinai. And these ten commandments were:

  • 1. You shall worship no other god, for the Lord is a jealous God.[1]
  • 2. You shall not make molten gods.[2]
  • 3. You shall not neglect to keep the feast of unleavened bread.[3]
  • 4. Of all the males of men or cattle, the first-born are mine, says the Lord.[4]
  • 5. Six days you may work, but on the seventh day you shall rest.[5]
  • 6. You shall not fail to observe the feast of the first fruits and the feast of the ingathering at the end of the year.[6]
  • 7. You shall not offer the blood of any sacrifice with leavened bread.[7]
  • 8. The sacrifice of the feast of the Passover shall not be left until morning.[8]
  • 9. The first of the first fruits of the ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God.[9]
  • 10. You shall not seethe a kid in its mother's milk.[10]

" And then, amidst the thunders and lightnings of Sinai, Moses gave them the new ten commandments, which you will all allow are more worthy utterances to accompany the enlarging Yahweh concepts of Deity. And did you never take notice of these commandments as twice recorded in the Scriptures, that in the first case deliverance from Egypt is assigned as the reason for Sabbath keeping, while in a later record the advancing religious beliefs of our forefathers demanded that this be changed to the recognition of the fact of creation as the reason for Sabbath observance?

" And then will you remember that once again—in the greater spiritual enlightenment of Isaiah's day—these ten negative commandments were changed into the great and positive law of love, the injunction to love God supremely and your neighbor as yourself. And it is this supreme law of love for God and for man that I also declare to you as constituting the whole duty of man. " (fr. 142:3 The Concept of God)