Ten Commandments in Every Classroom: The Texas Bill Version

In May 2023, Texas Senate Bill 1515, titled “Relating to the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools,” was slated to be brought to the floor for a vote, though it was adjourned sine die (without a specific deadline). The bill mandates:

A public elementary or secondary school shall display in a conspicuous place in each classroom of the school a durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments.

The bill does not allow for just any version of the Decalogue but states that the text “must read” according to a particular version, namely the version developed in the early 1950s by the Fraternal Order of Eagles (FOE),^[1] a not-for-profit group founded in 1898 that remains active today. On their website, they describe their mission as “uniting fraternally in the spirit of liberty, truth, justice, and equality, to make human life more desirable by lessening its ills and promoting peace, prosperity, gladness and hope.”

Some of their major accomplishments over the past century have been the founding Mother’s Day, creating a diabetes research center, lobbying for social security and against age-based discrimination, and erecting monoliths throughout the United States with a particular version of the Ten Commandments that they determined.^[2]

Their list of past members includes several former presidents (Harding, Kennedy, Reagan, and both Roosevelts), first ladies (Eleanor Roosevelt and Bess Truman), as well as entertainers, (Bob Hope, Tony Orlando, Virginia Graham), and, of course, Cecil B. DeMille, who produced and directed both the 1923 and 1956 films titled The Ten Commandments.

The Composition of the Text

Jenna Weissman Joselit, who has studied this subject most extensively, observes:

In an attempt to reconcile the three variant readings, to arrive at a version that would sit well with Protestants and Catholics, as well as with the Jews, the ancient biblical injunctions had been “rearranged” by a trio of latter-day Americans from the nation’s heartland.^[3]

The Eagles’ text was compiled by a minister, a priest, and a rabbi who were living in the Minneapolis area;^[4] this is actually what happened and is not the beginning of a joke. We cannot determine exactly who they were or whether any of them had advanced professional training in biblical studies.

The main Bible translations used by each of these three groups in that period were the Protestant King James, the Catholic Douay-Rheims, and the Jewish 1917 Jewish Publication Society versions. Nevertheless, the Eagles’ text is not a compromise text of these three translations, but a shortened version of the King James translation of the Decalogue in Exodus 20 (not the one in Deuteronomy 5)^[5] using Americanized spelling.

Given the significant status of the King James Version in America in the 1950s,^[6] it is not surprising that the Eagles’ main text follows that version; even the seventeenth-century diction of the KJV (e.g., “thou” and “thy”) is retained—making the English document sound more biblical, though the spelling of several words is Americanized (e.g., “neighbor” rather than “neighbour”).

Annotated Comparison with KJV

We will now present a side-by-side comparison between the Fraternal Order of Eagles text as found in the Texas legislation and the KJV,^[7] noting omissions (in bold) and some small adjustments (in italics).^[8] Following each commandment or statement, we surmise the reasons for the main changes.

Fraternal Order of Eagles	King James Version
I AM the LORD thy God.	I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

The omission of the verse’s ending seems unnecessary; the King James Version of the verse contains twenty-two words, the same number found in the Eagles’ version of two later commandments,^[9] so the length was not inordinate.

The ending is not simply rhetorical flourish but a key element of the statement, the removal of which changes its meaning: In the Eagles’ version, the statement is about the deity’s existence, while in the Bible, the verse is about YHWH as Israel’s liberator God. Perhaps apprehensive that the conclusion of the statement could be used to promote Marxism and denigrate the American South or was too particular to Israel (and the Jews), the committee of revisors focused on the existence of one God as part of their attempt to combat godless communism, a major concern of the Eagles and their allies in the 1950s.^[10]

One smaller change, the “AM” in capital letters, appears only in the monuments and in the Texas legislation, but not in the 1950s Fraternal Order of Eagles poster. Perhaps this reflects the folk etymology of the tetragrammaton in Exodus 3:14, translated in the King James, the Douay-Rheims, and the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation as “I AM THAT I AM.” This capitalization of “AM” (and “LORD” in all capital letters, here alone in the text) may also reinforce the idea that the statement is fundamentally about God’s existence.

Fraternal Order of Eagles	King James Version
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.	Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

No changes.

Fraternal Order of Eagles

King James Version

Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

This text is enormously abridged, not only because it is long and complicated but presumably because it is not a separate commandment in Catholic tradition (where verses 2-6 constitute a single commandment) and has often been used in anti-Catholic polemics.^[11] It excises the specifics of what likenesses cannot be made, the prohibition to bow to other gods, and the description of YHWH as a jealous God. This excision also removes the Decalogue’s theologically complex and even problematic notions of divine reward and punishment.^[12] Mention of divine punishment was cut in the commandment about taking YHWH’s name in vain as well.

The opening line has two small changes. Instead of “unto thee” it reads “to thyself”: The Eagles’ version is here following the Catholic Douay-Rheims translation, possibly a conciliatory attempt to incorporate Catholic perspectives. In addition, instead of KJV’s singular “image”—correctly reflecting the singular Hebrew pesel—it has the plural “images,” possibly in compensation for the “likenesses” (in the plural) that have been eliminated from the text.^[13]

Fraternal Order of Eagles	King James Version
Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.		Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

This too was shortened, perhaps because the Eagles did not want to mention any divine punishments in its text, as in the earlier commandment prohibiting crafting graven images. The capitalization of the word Name, which does not appear in any of the translations that we have found, is used (with initial capitalization) in the translation of Hashem—Hebrew for “The Name”—in the 1917 JPS translation of Deuteronomy 28:58.^[14] This initial capitalization might therefore be a gesture toward the Jewish use of Hashem as a surrogate for the tetragrammaton.^[15]

Fraternal Order of Eagles

King James Version

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

The length and specificity of the biblical Sabbath commandment may explain its abridgment.^[16] However, the truncated statement also allowed for some latitude in the consideration of long-simmering American debates about Sabbath observance, such as: Is it permitted to play sports on Sunday?^[17]

Fraternal Order of Eagles	King James Version
Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.	Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

One minor punctuation and one spelling change.

Fraternal Order of Eagles	King James Version
Thou shalt not kill.	Thou shalt not kill.

No changes, but here it is worth reflecting on the cost of maintaining the KJV. The Hebrew verb ר.צ.ח means “murder,” and the most significant way that the JPS differs from the KJV is that the former renders this law as “Thou shalt not murder.”^[18] In theory, the text’s retention of “kill” could allow the commandment to be applied to issues such as banning capital punishment (even though the Bible repeatedly prescribes it!).

Fraternal Order of Eagles	King James Version
Thou shalt not commit adultery.	Thou shalt not commit adultery.

No changes.

Fraternal Order of Eagles	King James Version
Thou shalt not steal.	Thou shalt not steal.

No changes.

Fraternal Order of Eagles	King James Version
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.	Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

Only a spelling change.

Fraternal Order of Eagles	King James Version
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house.	Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.

In addition to the minor spelling changes, the Eagles’ text diverges from Anglican and Reformed (non-Lutheran Protestant) traditions here and follows Catholicism^[19] and Lutheranism in presenting the prohibition(s) against coveting at the conclusion of the Decalogue as two separate commandments. This reading is advanced in the Eagles’ version by placing a period between each clause and listing them on separate lines. A smaller change is that the text paraphrases “ox and ass” as “cattle,” which was likely motivated by a desire to avoid the word “ass.”^[20]

The Ten Commandments in Twelve Lines

As noted in our essay, “The Decalogue: Ten Commandments or Ten Statements?” (TheTorah 2023), different religious traditions arrive at the number ten for the commandments in varying manners, often by considering “I am the LORD…” as an introduction that does not count as one of the ten and by separating or combining adjacent commands at the beginning or the end of the Decalogue.

Rather than favoring the solution of any single religious tradition, the Eagles’ text avoids numbering the commandments. The version mandated by the Texas law simply lists twelve separate commandments^[21]—even though the document has the title “The Ten Commandments”! This solution may have an ecumenical foundation, but not an arithmetical one, since 10 does not equal 12. In any event, the Ten Commandments proposed by Texas law lets no one understand how ten commandments might be derived from its twelve statements.^[22]

Not Really a Rendering of the Decalogue

The Eagles’ text is an inconsistently shortened rendition of the King James Version with a mere nod to Catholic and Lutheran tradition and perhaps a quarter-nod to Judaism. Its arbitrary abridgment of four commandments and its preference for Exodus at the expense of Deuteronomy underscore that it cannot legitimately be considered The Ten Commandments by any historically informed reader. The Eagles’ translation was incorrect seventy years ago, and its archaic English and its predominant use of the King James Bible—which enfranchises one particular religious community—is even less appropriate now.