Ten Commandments in Every Classroom: The Texas Bill Version

For a brief discussion, see: “Fraternal Order of Eagles Ten Commandment Monuments Project (1951-2010).” In greater detail, see: Jenna Weissman Joselit, Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 31–47; and Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic, 2015).

The text mandated by the legislation, the text found on the Eagles’ statues (including the one on the Texas State Capitol grounds in Austin, Texas, which was the subject of a Supreme court case), and the text in the poster that the Eagles distributed in the early 1950s differ only in minor details.

Joselit, Set in Stone, 37.

We thank Professor Jenna Weissman Joselit for this information.

In all of the places where Deuteronomy 5 is longer or slightly different, the Eagles’ text follows Exodus 20; see e.g., the Sabbath command and the lack of “and” or “neither” (reflecting the Hebrew waw) before the last several commandments in Deuteronomy.

See Jason A. Hentschel, “The King James Only Movement,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America, ed. Paul C. Gutjahr, Oxford Handbooks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 229–241.

Since different traditions enumerate the commandments differently, we do not use numbers while describing the commandments.

We have only commented in passing on several minor, possibly stylistic changes, such as the spelling “Lord” rather than KJV “LORD” everywhere except for the opening statement, and the initial capitalization of “Sabbath.”

“Honor thy father and thy mother….” and “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife…”

On the Eagles and communism, see Joselit, Set in Stone. On the Eagles’ discriminatory policy against Blacks, see e.g., “Unpacking the history of Milwaukee's Eagles Club”:

It should be emphasized that the Eagles Club wasn’t a hate group – it was a social club. But it was explicitly racist, as the organization’s national bylaws barred non-white people from becoming members.

Also, note the lawsuit brought against the Eagles, specifically in Wisconsin, where the Eagles’ Ten Commandment text was written. We thank Professor Nathaniel Berman for calling to our attention the discriminatory policies of the Eagles.

Indeed, this commandment is indented in the Eagles’ monuments (but not in the text mandated by the Texas legislation), allowing it to be read as part of the previous commandment. In what seems to be the most common version of the Eagles’ poster, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images.” also reads as a single commandment, following Catholic (and Lutheran) tradition. Note, however, that the initial capital “T” of “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images” uniquely appears in boldface black type, giving some encouragement to readers already inclined to treat it as a distinct commandment (despite the fact that the other commandments begin with a capital letter in boldface red type). Another version of the Eagles’ poster simply eliminates “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images” altogether, perhaps confirming that the retention of the clause in the more common version of the poster (and in the monuments) is part of the text’s outreach to non-Lutheran Protestant traditions. In short, the poster and monument can easily be read as containing an introduction followed by 10 commandments (one of which has two parts). However, none of these considerations is relevant to the proposed Texas legislation, in which all 13 statements are centered on separate lines and appear can be interpreted as separate commandments.

For a discussion of intergenerational punishment in the Bible, see Zev Farber, “Punishing Children for the Sins of their Parents,” TheTorah (2015); idem, “Does YHWH Remit Punishment?” TheTorah (2018).

The plural “images” is also found in The Book of Common Prayer, of the Church of England: Adapted for General Use in Other Protestant Churches, 2^nd ed. (London: Edward T. Whitfield, 1852) on p. 111 (in a catechetical passage on the Decalogue) but not on p. 88 (the recitation of the Decalogue at the beginning of the service of Holy Communion). “Images” is not found in standard editions of the Book of Common Prayer. We thank Mark Chancey for this reference and Timothy E. Kimbrough for his clarification.

OED, “name, n. and adj. I.3”:

“The individual designation of a divine or spiritual being used to invoke the presence or power of that being, or as the object of formal worship or reverence; Cf. Phrases P2a, Phrases P2b. Also with capital initial.”

It is difficult to evaluate how the Eagles’ version reflects Jewish interests (beyond the capitalization of “AM,” “LORD” in the opening statement, “Name,” and “Sabbath”) because in most cases, the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation that they might have consulted renders the Decalogue very similarly to the KJV. The KJV (often via the intermediary Revised Version) served as the basis of the 1917 JPS translation; see Jonathan Sarna, JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture, 1888–1988 (United Kingdom: Jewish Publication Society, 2021), 104–108. The presence on The Eagle monuments of two Magen Davids (Jewish stars) immediately beneath the commandments, beside a Christian symbol, gestures toward a Jewish audience, but we are focusing on the Decalogue text, not the surrounding ornamentation.

It also allows the text to avoid the most glaring difference between Deuteronomy and Exodus, namely whether the Shabbat command is to remember the creation story (Exodus) or the exodus from Egypt (Deuteronomy). For some discussion, see Marty Lockshin, “The Existence of Two Versions of the Decalogue,” TheTorah (2015).

Conservative Protestants (including Methodists, Baptists, Quakers, and Presbyterians) upheld the Puritan view that Sunday sports desecrate the Sabbath, while Episcopalians, Unitarians, Catholics, and Lutherans advocated for a more tolerant “Continental Sunday.” Opposition to sports on Sundays began to relax in the 1950s, when religious faith, patriotism, and sport were being merged to create an American way of life that could serve as a counterweight to Communism. See William J. Baker, Playing with God: Religion and Modern Sport (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), esp. 148-170 and 193-217.

Strikingly, the 1895 revision of the KJV (The Revised Version) renders: “Thou shalt do no murder.” For more on this term, see Marty Lockshin, “Does the Torah Differentiate Between Murder and Killing?” TheTorah (2016).

This arrangement does not derive from the Douay-Rheims translation, which reads both clauses as a single sentence, separated by a colon. In other words, here the Eagles’ text follows Catholic tradition, rather than the standard Catholic translation.

In theory, they could have used “donkey,” but this may also have seemed irrelevant to American life, unnecessarily specific, or even risible.

On the monuments, but not in the Texas legislation, “I AM the LORD thy God” is centered in contrast to the left justification of most of the other commandments, suggesting that it may be read as an introduction.

As noted above (n. 11), this may not be the case in the Eagles’ monument, which may contain ten distinct commandments by reading v. 2, which is indented, as an introduction, and reading verses 3-6 as a single commandment.