DECALOGUE. Literally " (the) ten words," a Greek expression for the earliest collection of Hebrew laws. In Hebrew also they are called " the ten words." In English they are commonly known as the Ten Command ments. Two versions (Exodus xx. 1-17; Deuteronomy v. 6-21) or more (Exodus xxxiv. 14-26) are given in the Old Testament, which differ from one another in certain details. It seems clear that " the fact of these differ ences, if the argument from style were not sufficient to show it, points to the Decalogue having originally existed in a still shorter form. It argues also the freedom with which the compilers, the Elohist and the Deuteronornist, the one in the eighth or ninth, the other in the seventh century B.C., considered themselves at liberty to vary the form in which the fundamental Moral Code was transmitted. Both writers have introduced some touches of individual style and colouring into the explanatory clauses of the longer commandments, e.g. fourth and fifth. They have not thereby Impaired the substantial accuracy of their record; but, by leaving impressed upon the Decalogue itself the literary stamp of the age to which they respectively belonged, they showed as con clusively as it was possible for them to show, that, in their days. the most sacred laws of Israel were not yet fenced about with any scrupulous regard for the letter apart from the spirit " (H. E. Ryle). W. E. Addis re
stores the decalogue of Exodus xx. as follows: 1. Thou shalt have no other gods beside me; 2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any (graven) image: 3. Thou shalt not. take the name of Jehovah thy God for a vain end: 4. Remember the Sabbath day to hallow it; 5. Honour father and thy mother; 6. Thou shalt do no murder; 7. Thou shalt not commit adultery; S. Thou shalt not steal; 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour; 10. Thou shalt not covet thy neigh bour's house. This decalogue belongs to about the middle of the eighth century B.C. But it is claimed now that an older decalogue is found imbedded in Exodus xxxiv. 10-26. J. Wellhausen has recon structed this decalogue as follows: 1. Thou shalt wor ship no other god; 2. Thou shalt made thee no molten gods: 3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep: 4. Every firstling is mine: 5. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks; P. And the feast of ingathering at the year's end; 7. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven: S. The fat of my feast shall not be left over till the morning; 9. The best of the first fruits of thy land shalt thou bring to the house of Jehovah thy God; 10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk. See H. E. Ryle; C. A. Briggs, 17e:r., 1S97; Encycl. Bibl.