DECALOGUE, the ten precepts or commandments delivered by God to Moses, after engraving them on two tables of stone.
The Jews, by way of excellence, call these commandments the ten words, from which they had afterwards the name of decalogue; but it is to be observed that they joined the first and second into one, and divided the last into two. They understand that against stealing to relate to the stealing of men, or kidnapping; alleging that the stealing of one another's goods or property is forbidden in the last commandment.
The Emperor Julian objected to the decalogue, that the precepts it contained, with the exception of those which concern the worship of false gods and the observation of the Sabbath, were already so familiar to all nations, and so universally received, that they were unworthy, for that very reason, to be delivered by so great a legislator to so peculiar a people.