The Scene Found Three Versions of the Ten Commandments. It Missed the One Argument That Matters.
Betsy Phillips is right that scripture has competing versions and that a school board shouldn't declare one official. She just used a real technicality to skip the debate she didn't want, and reached for a keep-government-out-of-morality principle the Scene discards every other week.
Give Phillips the part she gets right, because she gets a real part right. There are genuinely different versions of the Ten Commandments in the text. Exodus 20, Exodus 34, and Deuteronomy 5 do not line up, denominations number them differently, and a public school board that picks one is, in a narrow but real sense, making a religious editorial choice. That is a legitimate constitutional snag, courts have taken it seriously, and anyone pretending it is nothing is not being honest.
So we will not pretend it is nothing. We will point out something more interesting: the argument is a door Phillips walks up to and then very carefully does not open.
The technicality is doing the work the argument won't
Notice what the "which version" point lets her avoid. The actual dispute here is whether a state has any business acknowledging the Ten Commandments in a public school at all. That is a hard, interesting question with real authorities on both sides. Phillips never engages it. Instead she finds a formatting problem, three versions, competing numbering, and treats a genuine debate as if it collapses under a proofreading note.
It is a clever move and a familiar one. When you do not want to argue the merits, you argue the logistics. You do not say "monuments to a shared moral inheritance have no place in a school." You say "well, which translation, and numbered how," as though the answer to a serious question about civic tradition is that the committee couldn't agree on a footnote. The formatting problem is real. It is also a way of not saying what you actually think, which is that you would oppose the display in any version, in any numbering, on any wall.
She waves off the strongest argument for it in one line
The Wilson County board said the display is about history, not devotion. Phillips mocks the idea. "I'd love to see any historical evidence that the Ten Commandments changed legal or ethical traditions," she writes, and moves on as if the point is self-evidently silly.
It is not silly. It is a mainstream historical claim.
- The United States Supreme Court depicts Moses holding the tablets in its own chamber, among the lawgivers of history. The Court did not consider that a devotional act. It considered it a historical one.
- The influence of Mosaic law on Western legal and ethical development is a serious subject with serious scholarship behind it, not a talking point someone invented for a school board meeting.
- You can believe all of that and still think a mandated classroom poster is the wrong way to honor it. The history is real whether or not the statute is wise.
Phillips is entitled to argue the display is bad policy. She is not entitled to pretend the historical case for the Commandments' influence is a punchline, because it is the actual argument the other side is making, and waving at it is not answering it.
The principle she suddenly loves
Here is the line that gives the game away. Phillips closes by warning against government "messing in spiritual matters and deciding which religions are good and which are bad," and against the state "deciding what's an approved part of the Bible and what's not." She is right. That is a real danger, and a good principle.
It is also a principle the Scene discovers exactly when it is useful and misplaces the rest of the time. The idea underneath it, that government should stay out of contested questions of value and conscience and not put its thumb on the scale of what citizens ought to believe, is not a principle this publication applies consistently. It is invoked when the belief in question is religious and traditional, and quietly retired when the state is asked to promote a different, secular set of values with equal fervor. Keep the government out of the people's deepest convictions is a fine rule. The Scene simply wants it to run in one direction.
There is a real debate to be had about the Ten Commandments in public schools, and reasonable people, including many conservatives and many Christians who want the state nowhere near their scripture, land against the mandate. That debate is worth having on the merits. What is not worth much is a column that dodges the merits with a formatting objection, dismisses the other side's actual argument as a joke, and then borrows a keep-government-out-of-morality principle it abandons the moment the morality in question is one it likes. Phillips found three versions of the Commandments. She skipped the only question that matters, which is whether the state may acknowledge them at all, and why the answer keeps depending on whose values are on the wall.
"Government shouldn't decide which beliefs are good and which are bad" is an excellent rule. The Scene should try living under it on the days the beliefs aren't the ones it wants taught.
What you can do
Read Phillips' column. The three-versions point is real, and worth knowing. Then ask the question she skipped: not "which numbering," but whether a public institution may acknowledge a foundational moral text at all, and if not, notice how many other foundational moral claims your schools already teach without anyone reaching for the Establishment Clause. The consistency, or the lack of it, is the whole argument. The translation is a distraction from it.