Clement's Ordering of the Ten Commandments

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Secret Alias
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Clement's Ordering of the Ten Commandments

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Clement inverts the order of the eighth and ninth commandments. The LXX changes the order (as we know it)) of the sixth and seventh.

12. Honour thy father and thy mother, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long on the good land which the Lord thy God gives to thee.
13. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
14. Thou shalt not steal.
15. Thou shalt not kill.

The Fifth Commandment.

Now the fifth in order is the command on the honour of father and mother. And it clearly announces God as Father and Lord. Wherefore also it calls those who know Him sons and gods. The Creator of the universe is their Lord and Father; and the mother is not, as some say, the essence from which we sprang, nor, as others teach, the Church, but the divine knowledge and wisdom, as Solomon says, when he terms wisdom "the mother of the just," and says that it is desirable for its own sake. And the knowledge of all, again, that is lovely and venerable, proceeds from God through the Son.

The Seventh Commandment.

This is followed by the command respecting adultery. Now it is adultery, if one, abandoning the ecclesiastical and true knowledge, and the persuasion respecting God, accedes to false and incongruous opinion, either by deifying any created object, or by making an idol of anything that exists not, so as to overstep, or rather step from, knowledge. And to the Gnostic false opinion is foreign, as the true belongs to him, and is allied with him. Wherefore the noble apostle calls one of the kinds of fornication, idolatry, in following the prophet, who says: " [My people] hath committed fornication with stock and stone. They have said to the stock, Thou art my father; and to the stone, Thou hast begotten me."

The Sixth Commandment.

Then follows the command about murder. Now murder is a sure destruction. He, then, that wishes to extirpate the true doctrine of God and of immortality, in order to introduce. falsehood, alleging either that the universe is not under Providence, or that the world is uncrested, or affirming anything against true doctrine, is most pernicious.

The Eight Commandment.

And after this is the command respecting theft. As, then, he that steals what is another's, doing great wrong, rightly incurs ills suitable to his deserts; so also does he, who arrogates to himself divine works by the art of the statuary or the painter, and pronounces himself to be the maker of animals and plants. Likewise those, too, who mimic the true philosophy are thieves. Whether one be a husbandman or the father of a child, he is an agent in depositing seeds. But it is God who, ministering the growth and perfection of all things, brings the things produced to what is in accordance with their nature. But the most, in common also with the philosophers, attribute growth and changes to the stars as the primary cause, robbing the Father of the universe, as far as in them lies, of His tireless might.

The Father of the universe, as far as in lies, of His tireless might. e elements, however, and the stars -- that is, the administrative powers -- are ordained for the accomplishment of what is essential to the administration, and are influenced and moved by what is commanded to them, in the way in which the Word of the Lord leads, since it is the nature of the divine power to work all things secretly. He, accordingly, who alleges that he has conceived or made anything which pertains to creation, will suffer the punishment of his impious audacity.

Tertullian makes "clear in his De Pudicitia that he draws this link from his own understanding of the order of the ten commandments themselves.84 he even sees a hierarchy in an unbreakable chain of sins in which “the adulterer, [is] the successor of the of the idolater, the predecessor of the murderer." This would imply that Christians shared this variant LXX at least in north Africa and Egypt. It would also imply that the tenth commandment "do not lust" was the ultimate commandment.
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