Shared Inheritance, Differing Counts

Judaism and Christianity share the Decalogue but number and frame it differently: Jewish tradition counts the declaration "I am the Lord your God" as the first word, while Christian traditions divide the commandments in more than one way, and communities differ over the Sabbath's day. For Jews the Ten stand within the larger body of 613 commandments; for most Christians they express an enduring moral law distinct from the ceremonial law held to be fulfilled in Christ. Seventh-day Adventists place particular weight on keeping all ten, including the Sabbath, as permanently binding.

The numbering difference is more concrete than a matter of emphasis: Catholic and Lutheran tradition, following a division associated with Augustine, combine the prohibitions of other gods and of graven images into a single commandment while splitting the final prohibition of coveting into two separate ones, whereas Jewish, Eastern Orthodox, and most Reformed Protestant traditions count the prohibition of idols as its own separate commandment and keep coveting as one. The result is that the same biblical text yields, depending on tradition, a genuinely different list of what counts as the third, fourth, or ninth commandment, a discrepancy catechisms in each tradition address directly since it affects how the commandments are taught and memorized.