Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments (Biblical Hebrew , aséret ha-dvarím, The Ten Words, cf. Mishnaic Hebrew עשרת הדיברות \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְּרוֹת, aséret ha-divrót, lit. The Ten Sayings, The Ten Utterances), or the Decalogue (from Latin decalogus, from Ancient Greek δεκάλογος [dekálogos], lit. "ten words"), are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship that play a fundamental role in Judaism and Christianity. The text of the Ten Commandments appears twice in the Hebrew Bible: at Exodus and Deuteronomy . According to the Book of Exodus in the Torah, the Ten Commandments were revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai, told by Moses to the Israelites in Exodus 19:25 and inscribed by the finger of God on two tablets of stone kept in the Ark of the Covenant. Scholars disagree about when the Ten Commandments were written and by whom, with some modern scholars suggesting that they were likely modeled on Hittite and Mesopotamian laws and treaties. The Ten Commandments, called (transliterated aséret ha-dibrot) in Biblical Hebrew, are mentioned at Exodus , Deuteronomy and Deuteronomy . In all sources, the terms are translatable as "the ten words", "the ten sayings", or "the ten matters". In Mishnaic Hebrew they are called עשרת הדיברות \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְּרוֹת, aséret ha-dibrót, lit. "the ten sayings" or "the ten utterances". In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible was translated as δεκάλογος, dekalogos or "ten words"; this Greek word became decalogus in Latin, which entered the English language as "Decalogue", providing an alternative name for the Ten Commandments. The Tyndale and Coverdale English biblical translations used "nine verses". The Geneva Bible used "ten commandments", which was followed by the Bishops' Bible and the Authorized Version (the "King James" version) as "ten commandments". Most major English versions use the word "commandments". The stone tablets, as opposed to the ten commandments inscribed on them, are called , Lukhot HaBrit, meaning "the tablets of the covenant".