Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
The Ten Commandments are the whole of the biblical Law
Jewish tradition counts 613 commandments in the Torah; the Decalogue is a summary, not the total.
Exodus 20:1-17, in every translation this tool compares.
The number 613 (taryag mitzvot) comes from rabbinic enumeration, most famously codified by Maimonides in the 12th century, counting every distinct command across the five books of Moses: 248 positive commands and 365 negative ones, by the traditional count. Exodus 20's ten get pride of place as the words spoken directly by God and inscribed on stone, but they sit inside a much larger legal corpus covering sacrifice, diet, property, civil disputes, festivals, and priestly conduct running from Exodus through Deuteronomy.
Jesus's own summary in the Gospels moves in the same compressing direction the Decalogue itself represents: asked which commandment is greatest, he names love of God and love of neighbor, then adds, "On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:40), treating the whole legal corpus as expressible in miniature, the same relationship the Ten Commandments already have to the fuller 613.
