but in the new testment when jesus came and forfilled the law ...those laws were changed ...so the bible dosint say anything about killing children in the new testment if there were disobediant so that would irrelevent if they used the bible today
So the things written in the Old Testament are unnecessarily brutal and shouldn't be followed anymore, since there is a "New Covenant" as Christians like to play it off?
On top of this statement-- why do christians still quote the old testament then? How come they brush off dumb rules like stone your children yet still use other aspects in the OT like banning homosexuality? Whatever's convenient to get your point across to the naive-religious I suppose.
from Tim Callahan's "Secret Origins of the Bible"......
"Even if a biblical narrative is deemed historically true , can we base our ethics on such narratives and their moral injunctions? Fundamentalists frequently use the codes of sexual ethics from Leviticus and Deuteronomy as a club with which to beat others. Since these codes include prohibitions against adultry(Lev.18:20, 20:10;Deut.22:22), incest(Lev.18:6-18, 20:11, 12, 14, 17, 19-21; Deut22:30), rape(Deut22:25), prostitution(Deut. 23:17), and bestiality(Lev.18:23, 20:15,16), the codes seem to relate to acts universally condemned by all societies, which gives them a certain validity. Of course, the main prohibition stressed by fundamentalists is that against homosexuality(Lev. 18:22, 20:13).Assuming that the penalties are moderated a bit(most of these offenses carried the death penalty)many people might be swayed by their seeming reasonableness.
However, this same code also prohibits a couple from having sex during the wife's menstrual period(Lev.18:19, 20:18), with the penalty that the offenders will be "cut off from among their people." The Hebrew word translated as "cut off" is
karath, which also means to destroy. Thus, a couple having sexual relations during the wife's menstrual period would be put to death if the act was discovered. Most of us would consider our decision as to whether to have sex with our wives during menstruationto be our own business. In fact, the prohibition against sex during menstruation has to do with another Levitical code, that of ritual impurity. Leviticus 15:19-30 goes into great detail about how a woman is unclean during her period, how anything she touches becomes unclean, how anyone who touches her or any thing she has touched is unclean for a day and must bathe to be cleansed, and how at the end of her period she is to offer two pigeons or doves to be sacrificed, one as a sin offering, so that the priest can "make atonement for her before the Lord for her unclean discharge"(Lev.15:30). Most of us today do not see menstruation as a sin or consider this quite natural funtion either unclean or a "sickness"(see Lev.20:18). I wonder if those state legislators who quoted Leviticus while fighting against the passage of California's law legalizing all private, voluntary sexual behavior between consenting adults(1972) kept their wives locked in menstrual huts during their periods, or if any fundamentalist congregations still ask a sacrifice of pigeons for the "sin" of menstruation.
That the Levitical sexual prohibitions were based on a psychology far different from our own can be seen not only in the exaggerated fear of menstrual blood, but in a verse just preceeding the list of penalties for sexual offences. Leviticus 20:9 says:
For every one who curses his father or his mother shall be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother,
his blood is upon him.
Are we to read this to mean that if, in a fit of rage, your teenage son or daughter yells, "GD you!" it's curtains for them? To understand the harshness of this penalty we must remember that in ancient times words were thought to have power. To curse someone was to literally call down a supernatural force on the cursed, hence the injuction in the Ten Commandments not to take the Lord's name in vain. Cursing one's parents was tantamount to physically assaulting them. It was also thought that such curses could likely reult in the victim's death unless that person had a protective counter charm. One way of protecting one's self was to have a secret name that was one's true name. Curses against one's prosaic name would then be ineffectual. Even today, when such ideas seem primitive and absurd, it is not uncommon for Jews to have a special "Jewish" name separate from the equally Jewish name they generally use. That the prohibition against swearing is based on magical thinking has not blunted its force among some believers.
A fundamentalist, however, might say that even though we today do not indulge in either sacrificing pigeons, putting women in menstrual huts, or stoning people to death for sexual offences, he and his wife do not have sex during her period and that he believes sexual relations condemned in the Levitical and Deuteronomic codes should be against the law.This would not only make homosexuality illegal but transvestitism (Deut22:5)and heterosexual premarital sex (Deut22:20, 21, 23, 24)as well.Is the fundamentalist justified in thinking that this view is consistent with what he considers the word of God? Not unless he is prepared to make it against the law to wear wool and linen(or any other two cloths) at the same time, since this is prohibited in Lev.19:19 and Deut.22:11. This is part of a series of prohibitions against mingling, and thus "contaminating" just about any thing> Deuteronomy 22:9 prohibits planting different seeds in the same orchard, and Deut.22:10 prohibits plowing with an *bleep* and an ox yoked together. (This last practice sounds a bit unworkable in any case.) The point of all of this is that something cannot be considered pure if it's mixed with something else. (As to whether a law against wearing wool and linen together would also extend to mixed weaves of cotton and polyester poses a knotty legal problem indeed!)
Community Forum
Topic: God in our Public Schools (Read 29408 times)
May 04, 2011, 09:12:43 am
