[Mesorah] עשרת הדברות How do we get to 10

[Zev Sero]

> But it is not only the Teimanim. Rabbi Mordechai Breuer concluded
> that that was the original in all the oldest mss., and so he prints
> the Ta‘am ha‘Elyon that way in all the editions of the Chumash and
> T'Nakh that he put out, including the Torat Chaim edition of the
> Chumash published by Mosad haRav Kook.
More evidence that such a reading did exist is that the future meshumad 
who did the pasuk count at the end of each parsha wrote that Yisro has 
72 pesukim, rather than the 75 that it has in Taam Tachton.  The only 
way to get 72 is for the Aseres Hadibros to contain 10 pesukim, not 9.

And yet our tradition is that the Taam Elyon deliberately combines the 
first two dibros together, to show that they were heard directly from 
Hashem. Surely that is more authoritative (at least for us) than 
whatever anyone has found in some manuscripts.  Perhaps the authors of 
those manuscripts were wrong, and the keepers of the authentic tradition 
rejected them for it.  It's like trying to show the correct text from 
things found in a geniza -- perhaps they were put in the geniza 
precisely because they were pasul!


-- 
Zev Sero            Wishing everyone a *healthy* and happy 5781
zev at sero.name       "May this year and its curses end
                      May a new year and its blessings begin"