The Bible UnveiledMangasarian, M. M. (Mangasar Mugurditch)
Religion
The Bible Unveiled
Mangasarian, M. M. (Mangasar Mugurditch)
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
By comparing these two pronouncements, only a very slight resemblance
can be discovered between them. In both documents, God is jealous, and
the feast of Sabbaths and weeks is ordered to be scrupulously observed.
There is not a single commandment in the second deliverance which can
be described as ethical in its import. It is a "moral law" without the
remotest suggestion of morality in it. Nothing is said about the duty
of man to himself, his neighbor, or his posterity. The Ten Commandments
which were broken and lost contained, at least, prohibitory clauses
against murder, theft, adultery, and the bearing of false witness
against one's neighbor. Even though these interdictions had in view
the protection of the Jew only, as the conduct of Israel toward other
peoples plainly shows; and even though only a portion of the lost
decalogue concerned itself with morality at all, the others being of
a theological and ceremonial character, still they, at least, have the
_appearance_ of being a moral law, while the second decalogue is not
even that.
And why are there ten commandments? The Protestants split the first
commandment which forbids the worship of other gods and the making of
graven images into two separate commandments; the Catholics, on the
other hand, divide the last commandment, which says, "Thou shalt not
covet thy neighbor's house," or wife, or ox, or ass, into two, by
separating the wife from the ass and the ox. "Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbor's wife," is a commandment by itself in the Catholic bible,
while, as explained, the Protestant bible makes no distinction between
a man's ox, ass and wife. Of course, we prefer the Catholic manipulation
of the bible, in this respect, to that of the Protestants, who are
more jealous of the favor of Jehovah than of that of woman. But by what
authority do these sects go about splitting the divine commandments?
Only recently Cardinal Gibbons expressed great horror at the suggestion
of certain Protestants that the Ten Commandments should be abbreviated
and modernized. "What blasphemy," exclaimed the cardinal. Yet, his
church was guilty of that very kind of "blasphemy" when it separated
what God had joined together--the ass, the ox and the wife.
VI. The Commandments Broken
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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