10 Commandments vs Mosiac law killing sprees

Post Reply New Topic

I don't see that as inflammatory at all.

I'm against those things because I believe those things are displeasing to God and NOT originally a part of God's plan for humanity and the world. God will have His way no matter what choices we make, but I'd rather be an agent working WITH God to accomplish that rather than an agent opposing God. I feel God wants obedience, not disobedience, and I think our decision ultimately is whether we are part of God's plan standing with or against God.

Are you saying free choice is just an illusion? Consdering the immense amount of evil encountered in the world it can't be part of any divine plan.

Who, by the way, initiated stoning in your opinion, since it's a brutal form of murder, which once again raises the original point. The ancient Jews seem to have prescribed it for a great many trivial things. Luckily Jesus rejected stoning and the OT laws when those Pharisees brought the woman before him (the one that was convicted of adultery).

Compassion is the highest virtue.

I agree compassion is the highest value.
With regard to free will - - yes, I have free will to get into my car and drive, or to turn on the TV, or to post on WP. But with the Lutheran theological position I was raised with, free will is impossible with regard to coming to God, as our very flawed natures makes it impossible. Rather, grace we believe, is wholly a work of God.

And you are working from an even more common misinterpretation "Do not murder" realtes to all of humanity, it does not, all the ten commandments relate specifically and only to Gentiles. Now you will argue that this has all changed, but if you believe in the God of the old testament who are you to decide that it has now changed.

Yes, compassion is the highest virtue. I think you're getting distracted by the act of stoning. Stoning is a form of execution. It is symbolic, too, in that those who have been affected by a person's crimes can all say they had a hand in the criminal's death.

The Bible is normally pretty flexible on such matters, with such details indicating a baseline, an upper limit, or simply an example of how to get the job done. You wouldn't be REQUIRED to stone someone. But you'd be justified in causing that person's death. And exactly what do you mean by "trivial"? Murder isn't trivial. What else was stoning, or in the greater context punishment by death, recommended for? The argument is often made these days that any kind of execution, really because it involves killing someone, is inherently barbaric and should be opposed.

Not related to your question, but I'd say death is preferable to lifelong incarceration in terms of compassion. You also have to understand the historical context. The Israelites in the exodus period were a nomadic society. Incarceration simply wasn't an option. A wealthy person could buy his way out of most crimes, whereas a poor person would incur a debt that had to be paid, and could be paid through servanthood and eventually forgiven entirely after a maximum period of time had been reached. Comparatively few crimes were actually punishable by death. Someone who had to repay his debt through involuntary servitude would still be a productive member of society, an area in which our prison system has totally failed. A life sentence condemns someone to live out his days either without any chance for freedom (if forced into a work program) or without any chance of giving back to society or doing anything genuinely useful. It's also a drain on society and doesn't effectively render justice. Take the Manson "Family." Those people still get three hots and a cot every day and have nothing really to worry about because all their needs are provided. As much as I admired Susan Atkins for what good she was able to do while in prison, from my understanding she was STILL able to get married and have conjugal visits while she was alive. Ask the survivors of her victims how they feel about that and whether justice was really done, since in a lot of ways she was able to carry on in prison pretty much the same any of us do who haven't committed horrible acts like those of Susan and the others.

I think some would say that justice was served in that Susan was almost literally left to rot in prison and died there. But that is an argument predicated on vengeance, not compassion. Compassion would have been a quick needle prick and drifting off to permanent sleep.

But Jesus didn't say that. It's not found in the earliest gospels and is widely believed to be a later addition by scribes. Someone thought of it though so kudos to him.



You can believe in the Exodus by faith but evidence wise it's a myth. There is no archeological evidence for it or Egyptian references to it. It's like a creation myth for a people. If there was any truth to an actual migration the details were lost in an oral tradition. And Egypt certainly didn't lose ~2 million people, which would have been almost half of it's population. They probably would have noticed.

Mistranslation. The Hebrew verb does not mean kill but to wrongly slaughter. It does not prohibit self defense or rightful defense of others which is actually commanded.

Not that I'm the grammar police or anything, but I'm having trouble understanding what you're referring to. I'm referring to the Decalogue primarily from an ancient Israelite perspective and how we think ancient people understood and applied it. I don't think anything has changed. Present-day Christians are tasked with trying to understand its relevance to us or even if it's relevant at all. Four commandments deal with relating to God, six deal with people relating to each other. That is something that concerns Jews and Christians alike. Jesus summarized the commandments of the entire OT as (paraphrasing) "Love God with all your being; care for others as much as you care for yourself." I like how "The Book of Eli" put it: "Do more for others than yourself." It's a great ethic applicable even if you're not a part of the Judeo-Christian heritage, don't you think?

Well, that's not what this thread is about. So far this thread is dealing with facts in the Bible as stated. The actual truth as to whether those things happened or not is another discussion.

As to the Egypt question, don't forget that ancient Egyptian tradition held that the Pharaoh was a decedent of a god and himself divine. That a god in the flesh was humiliated a deity worshiped by a people the Egyptians themselves considered repulsive would have been the ultimate embarrassment, not to mention the political damage of having lost a few thousand soldiers, presumably without a single loss by the other side. We DO know that it was common practice for histories of battles with a favorable outcome to be written before the battle even occurred, so there's good reason to believe that scribes were ordered not to include the Israelite incident in their records.

As to being lost in oral tradition, it's unnecessary to assume that. The human mind and memory is an impressive thing. I listened to an interview with a soap opera actress describing a typical day memorizing 57 pages, give or take, of script. Every DAY. It's hard to imagine since our tradition relies heavily on written communication. However, concert pianists frequently perform entire concertos from memory without missing a single note, and conductors perform entire symphonies from memory. So I'm not all that worried about the credibility of oral tradition or the reliability of human memory. Also, Moses had access to the best of Egyptian education and semitic tradition, and writing systems were well in place at the time Moses lived. So…again, not worried.

Here is a little info on the "reliability" of the human memory. I have pulled out just one small factor in how unreliable memory really is.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/eyewitness-testimony.html



Some more interesting readin on memory reconstruction error:

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/study-shows-memory-surprisingly-unreliable/

Of course you can believe whatever you like about the Exodus. Archeologists don't agree. Biblical deep history is as inaccurate as its science because the roots are mythological or symbolic, not literal.

Yahweh divides the waters three times, each representing a significant moment in world or Jewish history where he brings some new order. Ancient Near Eastern mythology saw the deep as chaos and the same theme is found in Canaanite and Babylonian myths. In Psalms he also battles the classic near eastern sea dragon and brags of defeating the sea more than once. When he creates he divides the waters, when he destroys he brings the waters. These are his mythological tools.

Jesus has a couple of stories that reflect mastery of the waters or their negative associations which might be parallels to reflect his father's power or beliefs. And finally in Revelations the Earth is destroyed and remade without a sea. The chaos of the deep finally defeated forever.

Too many assumptions, though, so I'm not really buying it.

meh…don't really have time for all this right now. It is possible to memorize vast amounts of information with little error, and I've already mentioned specific instances in which people are KNOWN to have reliably memorized complex series of items. Heck, I can write out Beethoven's "Für Elise" note for note complete with proper pedaling, Bach's "Toccata in D minor" for piano without omitting any important pedal notes from the organ version, and at one time I could have written out Bach's C-minor fugue from Well-Tempered Clavier, and with a little study I could do it again. I've memorized tons of stuff besides that, much of which I've forgotten really through lack of use and only need a week or two of practice to get it back if it were absolutely necessary to. I've personally known Shakespeare scholars who could recite multiple entire plays ON DEMAND. I've personally met preachers who didn't bother opening a Bible during a service because they could recite passages from memory. Oh, and they could also recite entire books ON DEMAND in addition to random passages, even the seemingly insignificant and mundane bits such as Levitical laws, the processions of kings in Israel and Judah, the Proverbs…whatever…and it wasn't just simply a matter of only memorizing what they needed for the sermon. I'm not buying that your argument or counterargument is NECESSARILY the case. It is not NECESSARY to assume that it is. Just because WE don't live in a time in which we have to rely on the human memory doesn't mean the ancients didn't, and there's no need to assume that the human memory at a time when we depended on it that it was as unreliable as you suggest.

Beside the point, anyway. This thread is concerned with 10 Commandements vs. Mosaic law killing sprees, which seems to be pretty much debunked at this point. The Decalogue is a VERY rough overview of a deeper Biblical principle, whereas the remainder of Mosaic law gets down to the nitty-gritty of definitions and execution. THIS is how we treat accidental death. THIS is how we treat (ancient version of) misdemeanors. THESE are crimes punishable by death. Etc.

At the end of the day many of the same stories show up across the region and you can explain that any way you like. But archeologists aren't buying the Exodus. You can argue they missed the evidence. That's fine. But that's a lot of people. I think you've given up on the literal scientific truth of the biblical accounts. Maybe one day you'll take a look at the evidence for or against the early historical stuff.

As for the laws of the OT having moral value, we'll have to disagree of course.

Last edited by simon_says on 20 Mar 2014, 10:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

Archeologists haven't bought a lot of things that actually turned out to be true. I don't think it's right to allow belief to be hijacked by science all because something hasn't been found yet.

It's not that I've given up on the literal truth of the Bible, it's just that for the sake of this thread I don't find verificationism to be relevant, nor do I find it relevant to my faith. Whether the Bible is literally true in a strictly empirical sense is not the cornerstone of my faith.

I love Crumb!