Did God err in making Adam ruler over Eve?

Post Reply New Topic

Indeed.

Christianity purged almost everything positive about the feminine out of scriptures as well as the positive attributes of the serpent.

Regards
DL

Well put. + 1

I do not think morality is objective. I think it subjective and no one has ever come up with an objective moral tenet that I could not show to be subjective.

Regards
DL

Nomadic people couldn't incarcerate criminals and when they settled in Israel they still didn't. Neither did neighboring kingdoms or any other nation for the next 3,000 years. Incarcerating criminals is a modern idea. They didn't practice because they were nomadic, they didn't practice it because the practice hadn't been invented yet, not even for settled people.

The OT prescribes different punishments for different crimes but I can't recall any part of the OT that says criminals should be punished with enslavement. I believe this treatment was used for debtors, not other types of criminal. Enslavement was also used for POWs of course.In that case the Israelites should have been happy to be slaves in Egypt, satisfied that they were the cornerstone of society. Did they cause societal collapse in Egypt when they left?Yep the Hebrew slaves could choose to leave on Jubilee year or stay with master so they wouldn't have to leave their wife and kids. On the other hand foreign slaves weren't given this choice. They were permanently slaves no matter what. Hey, do you like cartoons?




They did it too!
They did it too!

Next you're going to be saying "but he started it". Saying "they did it too" is about the worst justification I can think of.

Do I expect this ancient people to create laws that live up to modern standards? No. Definitely not. They couldn't possibly think of modern ideas.

But I expect the perfect and wise God to create laws that vastly exceed modern standards. Instead we get the sort of laws that we would expect an ancient people to think up by themselves.

I've heard people say that the objectively perfect morality of the Bible is a gift that could have only come from God. What I see is the subjective and average morality that ancient people could easily think up by themselves.

This is fine for an ancient people but when I hear people say the Bible should be used as a source for objectively perfect morality I get concerned because they may be mistaking the Israelites subjective and average mortality for objectively perfect morality.

I know that if the ancient Israelites had had better laws, some people would disobey them. I'm sure people disobeyed their laws anyway, just as people disobey the laws in modern times. That is to be expected. Yet the law can still serve as a guiding light to the people who aren't criminals.I'd say for most of the world the status of women has changed a great deal since ancient times, unless you're exclusively cherry picking the status of women in certain parts of the middle east to compare with ancient Israel.A turning point? They came out of Egypt, a land that had the best women's rights record in the ancient world. The ancient Israelites didn't have the best women's rights, even when measured against other countries that existed at that time.I can understand that. I wouldn't want to raise another dudes kids. If I lived thousands of years before the invention of contraceptives of and paternity tests I would want my bride to be a virgin. I wouldn't want to risk her carrying another man's child on our wedding night.

I can understand why they'd make a law against sex outside marriage because they didn't want pregnancy out of marriage. Back then there were no contraceptives.

Thousands of years later, certain Christians would claim contraceptives are immoral because they make it easier to have sex outside of marriage without being impregnated outside of marriage.

To make a rule against contraception because it encourages people to break another rule (by eliminating the problem the original rule was designed to prevent) suggests that some churches are more concerned about rules then consequences.

I think in the absence of modern contraceptives the rule that brides must be virgins and that sex cannot take place outside of marriage is reasonable. Some people who read the OT expect modern people to remain virgin outside of marriage.

The trouble is, the OT doesn't change. It had some good ideas for the time but it doesn't change. You've got people saying the Bible is still relevant today (parts of it are but not that part). You've got people saying God's morality, as recorded in the Bible is objectively perfect. Even if it was perfect for ancient times it's not perfect for modern times. To call it objectively perfect suggests that it's perfect for all time and encourages people to use it today.

Attempted murder sounds like a pretty serious crime. I'd expect a crime that is tantamount to attempted murder to have a much larger penalty than a fine of 50 shekels. A fine of 50 shekels (payable to her owner) sounds like the penalty for destruction of property (the girl), not the penalty for attempted murder.

Also which part of the passage says the girl was betrothed? It just says she's a virgin.I thought you said "Her father wouldn't be obligated to agree to it." Now you're saying "a father could be forced to give his daughter away in marriage."

Which is it? Is her father not obligated or is he forced into it?That's a clever trick but this law also applied in actual cases of rape too, right?You may be right yet a lot of modern Christians say they got their morality from the Bible. They don't say they improved on God's morality by placing a greater emphasis on virginity.I know it's a different context. I was citing two different things from the Bible.That sounds like a big advantage for her. But was she given a choice about whether or not she wanted to avail herself of this advantage?

Was the forced marriage followed by a forced consummation? To be raped is bad enough but to be raped by a foreign enemy, someone you saw killing your own people and possibly your own family is just adding to the trauma.



Was she given a choice in the matter? Or was it a forced conversion as well? hat would happen if she refused to convert?

Even if she was given marriage and conversion to Judaism as a choice, what if the choice was "convert and get married or starve". Not a very good choice, is it.Are you sure the surrounding kingdoms didn't have similar laws? Have you studied the laws of the surrounding kingdoms? No, neither have I.

As I said before, it's about as good as I'd expect for ancient people. But if they got their laws from a perfect God, as they claimed, as some people still claim, their laws should not only exceed ancient standards but they should also exceed modern standards by a very wide margin. Yet they fall in line with ancient standards.So why do some churches say sex education shouldn't mention contraception? Did they not hear that the modern version of sexual purity is a way of saying safe and involves contraceptives? Since we can test for paternity why do we need to use the old fashioned way of ensuring the kid is yours (impregnating a virgin).

If the modern way is better, why do some churches still want to do it the virgin way? I guess rules is rules.They're not up for debate according to some people.Not up do individual families according to some people.

I'm not saying you're like this and I'm not blaming you for the actions of some of the stubborn Christians.



The problem you run into is if you want to practice righteousness consistent with the OT, you have to apply ALL the laws. All 613 of them.[/quote]Yep. You are right. It's a shame no one told the guys who like to cite Leviticus 18:22 that they should also obey the other 612 laws.

Or the people who want everyone to follow the ten commandments. Should they follow the other 603 laws as well?I'd question it too but I've heard a few Christians say their morality comes from God himself.

Even the Bible says none of you are righteous. Perhaps they should read it.

I'm not trying to condemn all Christians or even the majority of Christians but I've met a few who seemed act as though they sourced their morality from the Pharisees.As you say, modern society is better than ancient society or medieval society. Who deserves credit for this improvement? Man or God?

Did we get a better society because we became more skilled at interpreting God's ancient law and changing it to suit modern times? Or did society become better because we started paying less attention to the Bible?

Retro: good stuff. I was hoping to respond by now, but it seems I’ve got some routine meatspace fires to put out. I was hoping to contain the discussion to the New Testament, which would have been much less time-consuming. But since a New Testament response from Gnostic doesn’t seem to be forthcoming in the near future, a diversion doesn’t strike me so bad for the time being.

Do help me with one minor thing, though: Avoid bringing up Biblical passages such as Lev. 18:22. That’s running into protected-class territory and there’s no fair way for me to address it. For what it’s worth, though, I’ll just say that anyone who gives anyone else a hard time over any one given law, just because THEY don’t struggle with that ONE law, should really examine themselves against the other 600+ laws. I believe Jesus called them “hypocrites.” I believe we are all born with the capacity for sin and are each predisposed to a select few. I may not be a Lev. 18:22 person, but, say if I were in private someone who got turned on by Lev. 18:23, or some other moral failing, then I hardly have any right to condemn the person in 18:22. We all possess that in some form. So casting the first stone always has a deeper rational than simply being sinless. Most of the time, we don’t enforce secular laws based on our perfection but rather to keep people safe in an orderly society. What are the goals of a theocracy? What does God’s exemplary theocratic society look like? That’s where the friction begins between God’s righteousness and a secular world with protected classes. I’d enjoy discussing it further, but site rules won’t allow it.