If they're not the Ten Commandment then why does Exodus 34 name them like that?

What's your historical evidence for this? Except for the Bible claiming so.

What's your historical evidence for this? Except for the Bible claiming so.


Can you prove this 'fact'?


And you base the truth of the Scriptures on what? Surely not historical facts. So it must be faith. Why would that be unbiased and the truth?

MarcAurel,

Since it's the Scriptures you're questioning and accusing of being contradictory, it's the Scriptures I'm using to show you there is no contradiction.  If it's within your heart and mind not to believe any of it, that's fine with me.  I do believe it, and I will give you the best of my understanding to show you why I believe. 

Exodus 34 is not a different set of ten commandments.  It records Moses on Mount Sinai receiving instructions from God as Israel was about to leave the Desert at Sinai.  At that same time God made a second set of tablets on which he wrote the original Ten Commandments given to Israel when they all assembled before the mountain as recorded in Exodus 20.  If you can't accept that, you can't accept it and I can do nothing about it.  I will leave you with one of my favorite passages in the New Testament that relates to this issue.

To the Christian:

"You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded.  'If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned.'  The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, 'I am trembling with fear.'

"But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.  You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose  names are written in heaven.  You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

"See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks."

~Hebrews 12:18-25

The general error you are making is to confuse the telling of the story about the events with the events themselves, as if the story were being written by a reporter on the scene as they took place.


Because the author of Exodus 20 and the author of Exodus 34 are not the same person.  So there was no lapse of memory at all.  Exodus 34 is a J document associated with the early kingdom of Judah (possibly as early as Solomon's time).  Exodus 20 is a P document associated with the later kingdom of Judah, around or after the time of Hezekiah, possibly even exilic. So Exodus 34 could well have been written centuries before Exodus 20. 


And as has been repeatedly pointed out, your conclusion contradicts the witness of the text.


For as long as the tradition of reading the law every seven years was maintained.  We don't know how long that was, but from the latter chapters of Judges I would say it was a short-lived tradition.  We don't have reference to a book again until Josiah. 


It kept a lot of it alive through the preaching of the prophets.  We see from them that there was awareness that only Yahweh was to be worshipped, that standards of justice were to be maintained, that the sabbath day was important.  But they do not speak of the great festivals or the details of temple worship.  The reform of Josiah was mainly directed at re-establishing the Passover and other pilgrimage festivals and centralizing worship at the temple in Jerusalem.  This included the prohibition of sacrifices at local shrines which was customary before the reform.


Can't be absolutely sure that no copies were made, but any such would be rare.  The sheer time and expense of producing would make them rare.  Also, it is important to realize that when 99 out of 100 people don't read or write, there is little social reliance on written documents even when they do exist.  Yes, a tribe was dedicated to officiate the law and teach the people.  But most of them would also be illiterate.  They would learn the law by heart and teach it from memory.  Such dedicated memory-keepers are not at all unusual in oral cultures.  The kahunas of Hawaii and the griots of West Africa are other examples.  Priests, shamans, medicine men, wise women and elders have all traditionally learned their roles orally and kept the memories of the people alive by passing them on from generation to generation orally. The reliance on oral tradition is one of the reasons that learning with heart and mind is stressed over reading. 


But I have not questioned the accuracy of Exodus 34.  You and acumen have questioned its accuracy, claiming it does not mean what it says when it refers to this content as the covenant and the ten commandments. 


Rather than faulting the Holy Spirit, you might ask why the Holy Spirit allowed the editors to put contradictory passages from different traditions side by side in the Torah.  I expect the Holy Spirit's wisdom in this is greater than you imagine.


Or maybe we need to rethink whether a contradiction is a fault.


You are adding an assumption here which I did not express or intend.  Why assume that the Holy Spirit will not use a human purpose? 


You have set up a false dichotomy.  Of course the text is inspired teaching.  But the author's purpose and why he wrote the way he did, why he felt it important to provide this teaching to his contemporaries, is important to understanding the teaching.  You cannot understand God's message to you if you do not attend to how God used this author at this time to speak to this people in these circumstances. 

Exactly. 

But that's a lot of assumptions that are not in the text and it also doesn't add up:

27 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Write down these words (obviously referring to the words that he just told Moses and as indicated in verse 11), for in accordance with these words (being the ones he just referred to) I have made a covenant (here he mentions the covenant) with you and with Israel." 28 Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant (from verse 27)—the Ten Commandments (it can't be a coincidence that the list of commandments God gave Moses in this chapter are 10 too).

Yes, and what is the covenant, or agreement, God makes with Moses here?  God says, "I am making a covenant with you.  Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world."  God promises to do extraordinary wonders before the people of Israel.  God continues... "The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the LORD, will do for you."  Now God promises that the people Israel lives among will see how awesome God is through Israel.  God continues... "Obey what I command you today.  I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites..." so on and so forth.

What must Moses and the people of Israel do to receive this blessing?  They must obey the commandments God is about to hand down in Exodus 34:12-26.  Why is God giving Moses this promise and the conditions of this promise now?  Because they're about to leave the Desert at Sinai and head to the promised land.  Moses is concerned.  He said to the LORD, "O Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the LORD go with us." (Exodus 34:9) So God makes an agreement with Moses, a covenant, and says he will go with Israel and drive out those who stand in their way IF they obey the commands he gives.

However, the text is clear that Moses was to write down these words, and the LORD promises to write on the tablets the ten commandments.  That means Moses is not writing the ten commandments.  The LORD does that.  "The LORD said to Moses, 'Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets which you broke.'" (Exodus 34:1)

You're right, it's not a coincidence.  In chapter 35, Moses lays out commandments not specified in chapter 34.  Where did they originate?  Why weren't they included in the divine monologue? 

Since we know there was a larger codex not all introduced in the divine monologue, we must conclude that chapter 34 is a snapshot of the 40 days Moses spend as God's pupil in legislative and executive matters.  It makes good sense that the ten commandments given in chapter 34 were not arbitrary, but were meant to signify completion - as the number 10 did in the Hebrew culture.

Take note that Moses wrote the monologue given in 34, not the ten commandments because both Exodus 34:1 and Deuteronomy 10:4 state that God wrote on them, not Moses.  Also, Exodus 34:1 specifies that the second set would contain the words of the first set, which the ones listed in 34 doesn't do.  By reason, therefore,what Moses wrote wasn't the ten commandments referred to by Exodus 34:1 and Deut 10:4, but was something else.

The amount of assumptions and spin necessary to uphold your position is amusing

That may be what reason says, but it is not what the text says.