The flaws of NT-based morality

[seer]

My work here is done! Do I get the never-before-achieved "Actually Convinced Seer of Something!" award? I guess you'll claim it wasn't me.

No, you played a part. I liked the way your country did it, with the liability laws and such - it makes sense.

[One Bad Pig]

Do you have any idea whatsoever how arrogant you sound?

When you start to put reading comprehension above playing gotcha, I'll treat you better.

When did I say Christian scripture gives a license for Domestic Violence?

When you started whinging that it's not directly addressed.

What I gave to you was how scripture was interpreted into law - scripture that trumps those three verses as it comes from Adam and Eve, and from the lips of Jesus who said "what God has joined together let no man separate" (Mk 10:9).

What you cited has nothing to do with domestic violence. All it deals with is instructions on how to treat your wives. No punishment is given for those who abuse their wives - none whatsoever.

If husbands are instructed to treat their wives well, that means domestic violence is right out.

And worse still, Jewish women could not even get divorces for ANY REASON! I think this gets overlooked because the modern english word "divorce" is gender neutral. But the Jews/ancient Hebrews did not allow women to get divorces at all - only men could get divorces. And I can go further - men cannot commit a sexual sin unless they sleep with another Hebrew person's wife, or with a man. It is not sinful for men to sleep with unmarried women, their wives, their sex slaves ("concubines"), their slaves wives, the wives of other "races", and prostitutes. But of course you would know that if you'd read your bible. The way that ancient Jews treated slaves was particularly immoral, especially when directly compared to Rome and Egypt. The way that women were treated compared to Rome and Egypt is equally as abhorrent.

Hey, nice goalpost shift, topped by a whole slew of unsupported assertions.

[tabibito]

So to sum it up, you cite scripture that instructs husbands to treat their wives well. Meanwhile the wives had no rights to do anything about it, and no punishment was bestowed upon those that chose to abuse their wives.

It would seem that your sources are somewhat deficient:

Source: http://www.mentaldivorce.com/mdrstudies/DivorcesByJewishWomen.htm

Divorces by women

Only a man could enact a divorce, but this did not mean that women could not get a divorce. If they could show a court of rabbis that they had sufficient grounds for a divorce, the court could persuade her husband to divorce her.

The principle that divorce could only be enacted by a man was based on the law which said that a man should write out the divorce certificate (Deut. 24:1). This resulted in the principle that a man had to enter into divorce voluntarily, but a woman could be divorced against her will, as stated in the maxim:

The man who divorces his wife is not equivalent to a woman who receives a divorce, for a woman goes forth willingly or unwillingly, but a man puts his wife away only willingly. (mYeb.14:1)

However, it came to be recognized that a woman could force a man to divorce her if he broke his marriage vows or other obligations in the marriage contract. The marriage contract enshrined both the grounds and the authority for a woman to get a divorce. If the terms of the contract were broken, the injured party, man or woman, were within their rights to terminate the contract with a divorce. The promises spoken and implied in the marriage contract thereby became the grounds for divorce. The rabbinic court would make sure that the woman could be released from the marriage contract if the husband broke any of its terms.

The court had a difficult task, because theoretically the husband had to voluntarily divorce his wife. The court therefore 'persuaded' him by means of fines (by increasing the ketubah) until he was technically bankrupt, or even by using force. The nature of this force is not specified, but Talmudic commentators suggested that if persuasion failed, then whips were used. Another difficulty was that the man had to be present. If he abandoned his wife and went abroad where he could not be found, he could not be forced to give her a divorce certificate, even though the court agreed that she should have one.

© Copyright Original Source

[Sparko]

Wow. Torture is a modern invention?!

Your statement would be more convincing if US Christians had stood up clearly against their own Christian president explicitly commanding torture be carried out.

Abortion has never been covered by "do not murder" in any society's legal system that I am aware of. Roman law in biblical times had a law against murder, but abortion and infanticide were fully legal and regularly done. Modern societies likewise have laws against murder, but their laws that govern or control or allow abortion are separate laws and abortion doesn't simply fall under the laws of murder. There is basically zero reason to think any statements in the NT against "murder" refer to abortion, as in the Graeco-Roman world these were entirely different things one of which was illegal and the other legal. Not a single one of Paul's gentile readers when he heard the words "do not murder" from Paul would have thought "that means I can't perform abortions".

you are talking about civil legality verses biblical principals. Abortion is covered by the commandment to not murder for Christians (and Jews) because the life inside the mother is a human life.

Very little of this is in the NT. The NT is relatively silent with regard to any sort of instructions to care for animals.

Christians are not limited to the NT. I thought you knew that?

Drugs are sorcery? Awesome, I should try them.

In the bible yes, when it talks about sorcery. In fact the greek word translated into sorcery in the bible is pharmakeia, where we get our word "pharmacy" - often pagans and witches would use drugs and herbs in their potions.

[Sparko]

Exactly. I believe it is immoral to kill and eat a cow, just as I believe it is immoral to kill an eat a human. In both cases you are taking the life of an intelligent and conscious being.

stuff like this is what makes the rest of us think you are such a hypocrite. You won't kill or eat a cow because you think it is an intelligent and conscious being, but you think it should be legal to kill a todder.

At least be consistent in your principals, Starlight. please?

[Sparko]

It certainly was - the OT instructs the Jews to treat members of other tribes differently than they treat members of their own. The difference between slavery and servitude, for instance.

That isn't racism.

Was hating the Nazi's racism?


There weren't that many races around that area. pretty much all were semitic or arabic, and some africans. They didn't think of races like we do now. They thought of nations. They could like or dislike someone from a neighboring tribe who were the same race as they were.

As far as that goes, Jesus taught us to love our neighbors no matter who they were, even if they were a different tribe. Thus the story of the Good Samaritan.

[Sparko]

Um, yeah I'm shocked by his ignorance on this. The concept of "race" exists purely because of this primitive belief that other people are fundamentally different to you so-called "race". The two clearest examples I can think of are 1. that non-Hebrew male slaves are never to be freed, and you can make them do forced labour. And 2. Ezra 9:2 "They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness."

They were not sophisticated enough to know that we are all of the same human race - homo sapiens.

See my post above.

By the way, is that you in your Avatar? You ought to pick another photo, you have "crazy eyes" in that photo. Makes you look nuts.

[tabibito]

In fact the greek word translated into sorcery in the bible is pharmakeia.

Well, in one or two places it is, anyway. But that is merely an extension of the base meaning of farmakeia to other matters. ["to kick the bucket"] is "to die" doesn't show that "kick the bucket" means "to die", for example: nor does "buy a farm," though that too is used as a euphemism or as periphrasis for dying.

φαρμακεία (φαρμᾰκείᾱ, ἡ,)
Etym. φαρμακεύω
I. the use of drugs, potions, spells, Plat.
2. poisoning, witchcraft, Lat. veneficium, Dem.
II. remedy, cure, Arist.

[Sparko]

Well, in one or two places it is, anyway. But that is merely an extension of the base meaning of farmakeia to other matters. ["to kick the bucket"] is "to die" doesn't show that "kick the bucket" means "to die", for example: nor does "buy a farm," though that too is used as a euphemism or as periphrasis for dying.

er what?

Then you go on to post the definition which confirms what I said:

φαρμακεία (φαρμᾰκείᾱ, ἡ,)
Etym. φαρμακεύω
I. the use of drugs, potions, spells, Plat.
2. poisoning, witchcraft, Lat. veneficium, Dem.
II. remedy, cure, Arist.

[seer]

Exactly. I believe it is immoral to kill and eat a cow, just as I believe it is immoral to kill an eat a human. In both cases you are taking the life of an intelligent and conscious being. Because cows have much less of a mind than humans do, I regard it as much less of an offence however. And by the time you get down the chain of intelligence as far as biting insects, I think killing them is fine because their intelligence/mind is so minuscule.

So you are a vegetarian? And which is more intelligent - a cow or a toddler?

[Adrift]

It certainly was - the OT instructs the Jews to treat members of other tribes differently than they treat members of their own. The difference between slavery and servitude, for instance.

No it wasn't. All of Israel's Semitic neighbors generally had the same racial make up as they did (ignoring for now that "race" is a relatively modern construct). The few places we do hear of people of a likely different genetic makeup, we don't hear of the Israelites treating them any differently. Moses' wife Zipporah, the Queen of Sheba, Simon of Cyrene, Simeon who was called Niger, the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:37, they were all likely black, yet scripture never makes a big deal of their race, and in fact views most of them positively.

As far as the treatment of foreigners living among Israelites, we get passages in scripture that calls for their equal and positive treatment,

Scripture Verse: Leviticus 19:33-34

When a foreigner resides with you in your land, you must not oppress him. The foreigner who resides with you must be to you like a native citizen among you; so you must love him as yourself, because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

© Copyright Original Source

Scripture Verse: Leviticus 24:22

There will be one regulation for you, whether a foreigner or a native citizen, for I am the LORD your God.

© Copyright Original Source

Scripture Verse: Leviticus 25:35

If your brother becomes impoverished and is indebted to you, you must support him; he must live with you like a foreign resident.

© Copyright Original Source

Scripture Verse: Exodus 22:21

You must not wrong a foreigner nor oppress him, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.

© Copyright Original Source

While the concept of slavery seems to us in the individualist modern West as a totally intolerable social convention, it was practiced absolutely everywhere in the ancient world, and was considered perfectly normal. The Bible's way of dealing with the subject was not condemning it outright, but by progressively showing how both the slave and the master are equals in God's eyes. I think an argument could be made that slavery was so ingrained into the social fabric of the ancient world that had the Bible condemned the institution of slavery outright, the Gospel message would never have spread across the world, and touched the hearts of the millions of people it eventually did, who, seeing that the master and the slave truly were equals, fought to end the institution completely. While ending the practice of slavery was experimented with for short periods in other cultures, it was among Christian nations that we saw the abolition of the institution altogether, and spread to other cultures around the globe.

The distinctions we see between the permanency of foreign slaves caught in battle and those who temporarily sold themselves into slavery comes down to a covenant distinction, not a racial one. The Israelites that God freed from the bondage of Egypt had made a holy pact with Yahweh. The foreigner caught in war or sold into slavery by a foreign nation had no pact with the God of Israel. Yet even concerning the foreign slave, Israel had laws that were incredibly humanitarian compared to Israel's neighbors, and had legal rights not found anywhere else among their contemporaries. Also, slaves who had escaped their masters in foreign nations, and took refuge in Israel were permitted that refuge.

Scripture Verse: Deuteronomy 23:15-16

You must not return an escaped slave to his master when he has run away to you. 16 Indeed, he may live among you in any place he chooses, in whichever of your villages he prefers; you must not oppress him.

© Copyright Original Source

Other passages suggest God's general condemnation of the slave trade. So in Amos we read,



Finally, Aractus is wrong in assuming that Ezra 9:2 suggests racism. If Aractus had simply continued reading through to the end of the chapter, he'd have discovered that what distinguished the "holy race" (better translated "seed") from the other people around them wasn't to do with biological ethnicity, but to the other people's worship of other god's in place of Yahweh.

Scripture Verse: Ezra 9:9

Though we are slaves, our God has not forsaken us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia: He has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins, and he has given us a wall of protection in Judah and Jerusalem.

But now, our God, what can we say after this? For we have forsaken the commands you gave through your servants the prophets when you said: "The land you are entering to possess is a land polluted by the corruption of its peoples. By their detestable practices they have filled it with their impurity from one end to the other. Therefore, do not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them at any time, that you may be strong and eat the good things of the land and leave it to your children as an everlasting inheritance."

What has happened to us is a result of our evil deeds and our great guilt, and yet, our God, you have punished us less than our sins deserved and have given us a remnant like this. Shall we then break your commands again and intermarry with the peoples who commit such detestable practices? Would you not be angry enough with us to destroy us, leaving us no remnant or survivor? Lord, the God of Israel, you are righteous! We are left this day as a remnant. Here we are before you in our guilt, though because of it not one of us can stand in your presence.

© Copyright Original Source

[Adrift]

So you are a vegetarian? And which is more intelligent - a cow or a toddler?

If memory serves, he very recently started experimenting with vegetarianism, and believes a number of animals are more intelligent than children up to the age of three.

[seer]

If memory serves, he very recently started experimenting with vegetarianism, and believes a number of animals are more intelligent than children up to the age of three.

I doubt it, my two year old grandson can count to ten. I bet a cow can't even count to two...

[Sparko]

I doubt it, my two year old grandson can count to ten. I bet a cow can't even count to two...

I think cows are more intelligent than atheists.

[seer]

I think cows are more intelligent than atheists.

ouch!