phrases, sayings, idioms and expressions at

The Ten Commandments

Posted by Shae on June 29, 2005

In Reply to: The Ten Commandments posted by abe on June 29, 2005

: : : :
: : : : question: Current US news has made me curious about the history of the phrase "The Ten Commandments". There must be scores, perhaps hundreds of commandments in the Bible. These few must have been selected because of the story about Moses and the tablets. Then someone, centuries ago must have counted them and, probably first in Latin, dubbed them "The Ten Commandments".

: : : One of the great movie moments was in "History of the World," where Mel Brooks, as Moses, comes down from the mountain with the three tablets, announching he had been given "these fifteen -" (drops one tablet, which smashes to pieces) "um, TEN commandments..."

: : I'm not sure but I gather that no one has a clue. An almost identical question on a quite different forum doesn't seem to come up with anything except the [quite amusing] Mel Brooks story. Seriously folks, anyone have a clue as to when someone selected these ten and dubbed them "The ten....."?

: BTW: me again. Some smartaleck said that the answer to the "The.." question was included in the Supreme Court's Kentucky decision. I will go looking for that but if you've any thoughts on that please share them.

That particular set of commandments is known collectively as the Decalogue, from Gre*k deka = ten and logos = word.

© 1997 – 2024 Phrases.org.uk. All rights reserved.