The Bible gives three different versions of the Ten Commandments
Everyone thinks they know the Ten Commandments, but the Hebrew Bible records them three distinct ways, in Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5 and a ritual list in Exodus 34. Those biblical texts hold more than ten imperatives, so Jewish and Christian traditions count and divide them differently. Even the original Hebrew name means ten words.
The biblical story places the revelation at Mount Sinai, also called Horeb. On the third day after the Israelites camped there, thunder, lightning, thick cloud and a blaring trumpet signalled God's presence. The frightened people kept their distance while Moses approached. He spent forty days and forty nights on the mountain and received two stone tablets said to be written by the finger of God, then smashed them on seeing the people worship a golden calf. A second pair was made and kept in the Ark of the Covenant.
Naming has its own history. Phrases in Exodus and Deuteronomy translate as the ten words, sayings or matters. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made in the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC, rendered this as dekalogos, which passed through Latin into English as Decalogue. Tyndale and Coverdale wrote ten verses; the Geneva Bible chose ten commandments, and the King James Version followed. The tablets themselves are called the tablets of the covenant or of the testimony.
Scholars propose many dates and settings for the list's origins and argue over its links to ancient treaty forms, its authorship, and the balance between ritual and ethics. Religiously, it forms the core of Halakha, Jewish law, supporting all other commandments. Most Christian churches treat it as divinely authoritative for moral life while differing in emphasis, and the Quran also presents commandments given to Moses.
The list also has a busy afterlife in culture and politics. In the United States its display in schools and public buildings has been fought over through the 20th and 21st centuries, with several states passing display laws in the 2020s that face church-and-state challenges. On screen, Cecil B. DeMille filmed it twice, the Polish television series Dekalog took it as its framework, and Mel Brooks mocked it in History of the World Part I.
Source: Ten Commandments
