PHILOLOGOS ON THE DECALOGUE:

Decalogue or Eleven-alogue? (from Forward Magazine)

The Decalogue, or Ten Commandments � so a federal court has decided, citing the Constitution's separation of church and state � must be removed from the rotunda of the Alabama State Judicial Building in Montgomery, together with the granite monument on which they were carved.

Or is it the Eleven Commandments? Anyone counting the number of commandments appearing in photographs of the monument's two tablets of the Law � something that, to the best of my knowledge, no one but the author of this column has bothered to do � can't help blinking. Nine....ten....eleven. You can count them from top to bottom or bottom to top, left to right or right to left; they still come out the same.

That's right, Eleven: Five on the left-hand tablet and six on the right-hand one. On the left we have, "I am the Lord thy God"; "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me"; "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image"; "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," and "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." And on the right, "Honor thy father and thy mother"; "Thou shalt not kill"; "Thou shalt not commit adultery"; "Thou shalt not steal"; "Thou shalt not bear false witness," and "Thou shalt not covet."

Eleven.

What gives?

To find out, read the rest of it.