The: The Basic Bible
Exodus 20:1-17

And God said all these words: I am the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the prison- house.
  1. You are to have no other gods but me.
  2. You are not to make an image or picture of anything in heaven or on the earth or in the waters under the earth:
    You may not go down on your faces before them or give them worship: for I, the Lord your God, am a God who will not give his honour to another; and I will send punishment on the children for the wrongdoing of their fathers, to the third and fourth generation of my haters: And I will have mercy through a thousand generations on those who have love for me and keep my laws.
  3. You are not to make use of the name of the Lord your God for an evil purpose; whoever takes the Lord's name on his lips for an evil purpose will be judged a sinner by the Lord
  4. Keep in memory the Sabbath and let it be a holy day. On six days do all your work: But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on that day you are to do no work, you or your son or your daughter, your man-servant or your woman-servant, your cattle or the man from a strange country who is living among you:

    For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and everything in them, and he took his rest on the seventh day: for this reason the Lord has given his blessing to the seventh day and made it holy.
  5. Give honour to your father and to your mother, so that your life may be long in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
  6. Do not put anyone to death without cause.
  7. Do not be false to the married relation.
  8. Do not take the property of another.
  9. Do not give false witness against your neighbour.
  10. Let not your desire be turned to your neighbour's house, or his wife or his man-servant or his woman-servant or his ox or his ass or anything which is his.
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Known details

C.K. Ogden
1930

History

The language used is Basic English. This version, produced by C. K. Ogden of the Orthological Institute, is a simple form of the English language which, in 850 words, is able to give the sense of anything which may be said in English. A committee under Professor Emeritus S. H. Hooke, of the University of London, working with the Orthological Institute, has been responsible for a new English form of the Bible made from the Hebrew and the Greek. When the Basic form was complete, it was gone over in detail by a committee formed by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press. The version is designed to be used wherever the English language has taken root.

Because of the narrow limits of the word-list, it has been hard to keep the Basic completely parallel with the Hebrew and the Greek. However, there was great effort to avoid errors of sense and loose wording. There is no question of the Basic work taking the place of the Authorized Version or coming into competition with it.

E. P. Dutton (1950)

[Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas]