Scythe: Dialect 1 key example

The novel makes clear that religions from the mortal age have all but disappeared. Still, these commandments seem to have the commandments from the Old Testament in mind. These 10 Commandments, which are referred to both in the book of Exodus and throughout the Bible, are well known in western culture. The Scythe Commandments emulate the biblical ones, first and foremost, in the use of the pronoun "thou." In many English translations of the Bible, "thou" is a familiar pronoun, used with people of equal or lower position, while "you" is a formal pronoun. Thus God would always use "thou" when speaking to a human. The use of "thou" in the Scythe Commandments gives them an ancient tone, as if the early scythes wanted to make the commandments sound more convincing by making them sound older. 

The Scythe Commandments also draw directly from the biblical commandments in their structure. The first Scythe Commandment, "Thou shalt kill," is a striking reversal of the fifth commandment in the Bible, "Thou shalt not kill." There are similarities between other commandments as well: granting immunity to the family members of the gleaned seems to connect to the fourth commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother." It appears that early scythes manipulated the Judeo-Christian commandments to apply to a post-mortal world, while retaining the original commandments' biblical tone.

Note, though, that Curie herself does not see this connection. In fact she knows very little about the origin of the commandments at all: "I wish I would have asked them how the commandments came about. What led to each one? How did they decide upon the wording? Were there any that were jettisoned before the final ten were written in stone?" Curie's apparent confusion shows how separated the post-mortal world is from the culture and customs of the mortal one. While the allusions to the biblical commandments are obvious to any modern reader, they perplex even one of the most educated scythes.