Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The Ten

In a little over a week, a movie called The Ten will be released. Directed by David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer), it's a series of comic sketches purportedly based on each of the ten commandments.

To recap them, by my accounting they are:
#1. It's Yahweh or the highway
#2. God is jealous of your deity dolls
#3. No goddamn blasphemy
#4. Never on Sunday (or Friday-night-to-Saturday-night, depending on who's counting)
#5. Be nice to your folks
#6. Don't kill
#7. No adultery
#8. Don't steal
#9. No perjury (Bush administration exempted)
#10. Don't lust after your neighbor's wife, servants, animals, and shit (no problem lusting after the husband).
I'm having as much trouble believing they're devoting 40% of the movie to those first four God-centric commandments as I have believing that sensible people would devote 40% of their moral code to them.

Exodus 24 coming soon...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

So that would be the Protestant version of the 10 commandments then.

I found this link on google, which makes very clear the differences between Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic versions of the 10 commandments, by listing them in parallel.

http://www.biblicalheritage.org/Bible%20Studies/10%20Commandments.htm

I can't support the site in general, but that particular page is rather useful.

Anonymous said...

That link is

http://www.biblicalheritage.org/Bi
ble%20Studies/10%20Commandments.htm

Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy said...

Reposting as a clickable link

Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy said...

A.,

The linked article leads off with "There is a great deal of talk going on now about putting the Ten Commandments in our public schools. The only question is -- 'Whose Ten Commandments are they wanting to put up - Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant?'"

I'm not so sure that's the only question.

Anonymous said...

Well, actually, thinking about it from a disestablishmentarianism point of view....

Isn't it establishing a particular religion above another to use the PROTESTANT 10 commandments in a courthouse, rather than the JEWISH 10 commandments? Couldn't they be taken to court just for that?

And of course if you have to have both sets of 10 commandments, so as to not make one better than the other, then you have to include all the other sets too....

Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy said...

A.,

That's a great idea. Though I'm not strictly sure that the religionists wouldn't delight in making bigger/multipart 10 commandments monuments, it would be kind of embarrassing for the literalists.

Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy said...

BTW, I've added the "10 Commandments" link to the sidebar.