If It's Adultery, Of Course It's Not Marriage

Ah, the Ten Commandments. Christians and Jews would have us believe that they're universal, so I decided to test that hypothesis.

I had a little difficulty at the very beginning, because actually there are Twelve Commandments. Different religious traditions organize them in various ways. But in the simple English version of Wik-sodus, these Twelve Commandments are:

1. I am the Lord your God.
2. You shall have no other gods before me.
3. You shall not make for yourself an idol.
4. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God.
5. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
6. Honor your father and mother.
7. You shall not murder.
8. You shall not commit adultery.
9. You shall not steal.
10. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
11. You shall not covet your neighbor's house.
12. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.

OK, I'd gotten my Commandments in a format easy enough for a child to understand, and I wanted to see how they'd make their way around the world. How could I do that?

Only one way: Google Translate.

So I carefully entered the Twelve Commandments in Wikinglish, and then I sent that text flying all over the linguistic globe. Here's the route: English to Arabic to Bulgarian to traditional Chinese to Croatian to Czech to Danish to Dutch to Finnish to French to German to Greek to Hindi to Italian to Japanese to Korean to Norwegian to Polish to Portuguese to Romanian to Russian to Spanish to Swedish. Those are the 23 languages that Google has made available. From Swedish, I made the final translation back to English, since — as any American fundamentalist can tell you — that's the actual language of Jesus.

The final result is the True and Authentic Universal Version of the Twelve Commandments, just as God meant them to be:

1. I am your God weeks.
2. Also from all other sins.
3. "The presence of the image.
4. In order to combat violence in the name of God.
5. Do not forget, Saturday, in order to protect a sacred animal.
6. His father and mother.
7. Sueopseup dead.
8. This is not marriage.
9. If the state.
10. It is perjury and neighbors.
11. This should be away from home sueopseup people.
12. In May a woman was approaching.

Forgive me for not knowing exactly how to pronounce the character " in the Third Commandment; I think it may be a variant of the click sound found in Xhosa, although I have no idea how it made its way into the translation. My guess is: the Bulgarians snuck it in.

I should also point out that we learn, from the final translated version of the Fifth Commandment, the name of the person to whom God was speaking. It was not Moses, as commonly believed; it was Saturday.

I'm sorry that I can't identify exactly who the Sueopseup people are, but I suspect that they may be the Hittites. In any case, they're either dead or away from home, so don't expect them to protect your sacred animal.

Even though I have no evidence, I'd like to believe that the approaching woman was beautiful. But I do wish she had chosen to wear something other than traditional Sueopseup garb.