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 England and Scotland, and generally among the Reformed (Calvinistic) churches and in the Greek Church, is known as the Philonic division (Philo de Decalogo, 12). It is sometimes called by the name of Origen, who adopts it in his Homilies on Exodus. On this scheme the preface, Exod. xx. 2, has been usually taken as part of the first commandment. The Church of Rome and the Lutherans adopt the Augustinian division (Aug., Qucest. super Exod., Ixxi.), combining into one the first and second command ments of Philo, and splitting his tenth commandment into two. To gain a clear distinction between the ninth and tenth commandments on this scheme it has usually been felt to be necessary to follow the Deuteronomic text, and make the ninth commandment, Thou shalt not covet they neighbour s wife. 1 As scarcely any scholar will now claim priority for the text of Deuteronomy, this division may be viewed as exploded. But there is a third scheme (the Talmudic) still current among the Jews, and not unknown to early Christian writers, which is still a rival of the Philonic view. The preface, Exod. xx. 2, is taken as the first word, and the second embraces verses 3-G. Among recent Christian writers who have adopted this view are Knobel (in his Com. on Exodus] and Kuenen (Godsdienst van Israel, i. 278 /.). The decision between Philo and the Talmud must turn on two questions. Can we take the preface as a separate word 1 And can we regard the pro hibition of polytheism and the prohibition of idolatry as one commandment 1 Now, though the Hebrew certainly speaks of ten &quot; words,&quot; not of ten &quot; precepts,&quot; it is most unlikely that the first word can be different in character from those that follow. But the statement &quot; I am the Lord thy God,&quot; is either no precept at all, or only enjoins by implication what is expressly commanded in the words &quot; Thou shalt have no other gods before me.&quot; Thus to take the preface as a distinct word is not reasonable unless there are cogent grounds for uniting the commandments against polytheism and idolatry. But that is far from being the case. The first precept of the Philonic scheme enjoins monolatry, the second expresses God s spiritual and transcendental nature. Accordingly Kuenen does not deny that the prohibition of images contains an element additional to the precept of monolatry, but, following De Goeje, regards the words from &quot; thou shalt not make unto thyself &quot; down to &quot;the waters under the earth &quot; as a later insertion in the original decalogue. Unless this can be made out of which below the Philonic scheme is clearly best, and as such it is now accepted by most scholars. How were the ten words disposed on the two tables 1 The natural arrangement (which is assumed by Philo and Josephus) would be five and five. And this, as Philo recognized, is a division appropriate to the sense of the precepts ; for antiquity did not look on piety towards parents as a mere precept of probity, part of one s duty towards one s neighbour. The authority of parents and rulers is viewed in the Old Testament as a delegated divine authority, and the violation of it is akin to blasphemy (comp. Ex. xxi. 17, Lev. xx. 9, with Lev. xxiv. 15, 16, and note the formula of treason, 1 Kings xxi. 13). We have thus five precepts of piety on the first table, and five of probity on the second, an arrangement which is accepted by the best recent writers. But the current view of the Western Church since Augustine has been that the precept to honour parents heads the second table. The only argument of weight in favour of this view is that it makes the amount of writing on the two tables less unequal, while we know that the second table as well as 1 So, for example, Augustine, 1. c. Thomas, Sumrna (Prima Sccundce, qu. c. art. 4), and recently Sonntag and Kurtz. Purely arbitrary is the idea of Lutheran writers (Gerhard, Loc. xiii. 46) that the ninth com mandment forbids cmcvpiscentia actualis, the tenth cone, oriymalis. the nrst was written on both sides (Ex. xxxii. 15). But we shall presently see that there may be another way out of this difficulty.

4. Critical questions.—That the decalogue not only con tains Mosaic ideas, but is as old as Moses in its form as a system of &quot; ten words,&quot; is admitted by critics of almost every school. 2 But it is much disputed what the original compass of the decalogue was. Did the whole text of Exod. xx. 2-1 7 stand on the tables of stone ? The answer to this question must start from the reason annexed to the fourth commandment, which is different in Deuteronomy. But the express words &quot; and he added no more,&quot; in Deut. v. 22, show that there is no conscious omission by the Deuteronomic speaker of part of the original decalogue, which cannot therefore have included the reason annexed in Exodus. On the other hand the reason annexed in Deuteronomy is rather a parenetic addition than an original element dropped in Exodus. Thus the original fourth commandment was simply &quot;Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.&quot; 3 When this is granted it must appear not improbable that the elucidations of other commandments may not have stood on the tables. Thus in the second commandment, &quot;Thou shalt not bow down to any visible form,&quot; &c., is a sort of explanatory addition to the precept &quot;Thou shalt not make uuto thee a graven image.&quot; And so the promise attached to the fifth commandment was probably not on the tables, and the tenth commandment may have simply been, &quot;Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour s house,&quot; which includes all that is expressed in the following clauses. Such a view gets over the difficulty arising from the unequal length of the two halves of the decalogue. The elucidations (unless in the case of the fourth command ment) may very well be as old as Moses (comp. Ewald, Gesckichte, ii. 229). It is quite another question whether there is any idea in the decalogue which cannot be as old as Moses. It is urged by many critics that Moses cannot have prohibited the worship of Jehovah by images ; for the subsequent history shows us a descendant of Moses as priest in the idolatrous sanctuary of Dan. There were tera- phim in David s house, and the worship of Jehovah under the image of a calf was the state religion of the kingdom of Ephraim. It is argued from these facts that image worship went on unchallenged, and that this would not have been possible had Moses forbidden it. This argument does not appear to have all the force that Kuenen and others attach to it, for it must be remembered how large a section of Christendom, in times much more advanced than those of the Old Testament, has accepted the decalogue and yet has worshipped images. And on the other side we have the much more cogent arguments that the number of ten words, which no one doubts to be primitive, cannot be naturally made out if the law against images is dropped, and that the existence of this law is necessary to explain the fact that the unquestionably Mosaic sanctuary of the ark, which is just the sanctuary of the revelation of the ten words, embodies the principle of the worship of Jehovah without images in a distinct and practical form. It may be added that the prohibition of images of hewn stone, which is the primitive sense- of the word &quot; graven-image,&quot; can hardly be less ancient than the conception that the stones of an altar were defiled by the touch of the chisel (Exod. xx. 24). And this is a conception which cannot be viewed as a later refinement on Mosaic ideas.

5. The Decalogue of Exodus xxxiv.—In the book of Exodus the words written on the tables, of stone are no where expressly identified with the ten commandments of 2 Exceptions to this consensus are Vatke (Biblische Theoloyie, p. 202) and Nokleke (Untersuchungen, p. 51). 3 It is generally assumed that the addition in Exodus is from the hand that wrote Gen i.-ii. 4. 