Is this Old Testament passage "hate speech"?

[Laodicean60]

Is this because someone calls this specific set of orders "hate speech"?

Or think it is? Hate speech in my eyes is lies because lies do NOBODY any good.

 

[AV1611VET]

Or think it is? Hate speech in my eyes is lies because lies do NOBODY any good.

No argument there!

 

[JohnClay]

(I just interpret the passage as perhaps not actually being historical)

Is this because someone calls this specific set of orders "hate speech"?

I think most or a lot of the Bible isn't historical. And I think the passage might be a test of people's morality.

 

[Soyeong]

The following is not allowed in Steam games:

I wanted to include the following passage in my game:

It seems to involve violence based on ethnicity though I don't think those ethnicities still exist. I hope it doesn't count as hate speech. What do Christians think?

The reason for that violence was not because of their ethnicity, so no, that is not hate speech according to that definition.

 

[AV1611VET]

I think most or a lot of the Bible isn't historical.

Did you know that the books of the Old Testament are in perfect balance?

39 books

First 17 are historical.
Next 5 are poetical.
Last 17 are prophetical.

Of the 17 historical, they are broken down into 5 and 12:

First 5 are books of Moses, followed by 12 more historical.

Of the 17 prophetic, they are broken down into 5 and 12:

First 5 are major prophets, last 12 are minor prophets.

And I could go on and on.

Neat, huh?

 

[Fervent]

Yeah but adulterers, gays and rape victims were also being killed at the behest of the god of choice. Killing in the name of you god was par for the course back then. None of the religions around back then didn't demand people be killed for inscrutable reasons.

On what basis do you presume to judge such issues?

 

[JohnClay]

Deuteronomy 20:16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

Orders are orders.

I guess God would be happy with that attitude....

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I think I’m on stable ethical ground by judging that killing people for being gay is wrong.

You're exactly right! You're on stable ethical ground to assert that it is wrong for a modern human being to murder another non-straight modern human being. Is there any intelligent, empathic person here who is going to disagree?

However, this isn't the Apologetics section and, what's more, only Christians are allowed to ethically post here in response to the OP ... so, y'know, this is kind of how it goes. Unless, of course, one is a Neo-Marxist/Modern Hyper Liberal, THEN you can just do whatever you want since the existing rules, such as they are (being unjust and whatnot) and written by Christians, ... don't apply to you.

 

[JohnClay]

About the passage where God orders everything that breathes to be killed....

Should a game where you kill babies in the promised land which quotes from the Bible be banned? I thought they were just doing something moral from the point of view of Christians....

Note the graphics would be cartoony like Minecraft.

 

[Margaret3110]

I don't think we should read our modern-day sensibilities backward into the Old Testament.

Personally, as a modern-day person and as a Christian, I find passages like this troubling and I cannot explain them away in any easy manner. I think it's reasonable to be troubled by such passages. At the same time we do need to recognize that it was a very different time, a very different world, that the ancient Israelites inhabited.

A lot of things only make sense when understood in context. For instance, the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac as a test only makes sense if you understand that that was usual in the ancient world and was being practiced by all the surrounding nations; the surprising part of the story is not the child-sacrifice request but the fact that God told Abraham not to go through with it.

 

[JohnClay]

the surprising part of the story is not the child-sacrifice request but the fact that God told Abraham not to go through with it.

Actually it was an angel that stopped him (Genesis 22:11-12) though I guess the message came from God.

BTW in Judges 11, Jephthah makes a deal with God and it ends up involving him sacrificing his daughter and no-one stops him.

 

[Margaret3110]

Actually it was an angel that stopped him (Genesis 22:11-12) though I guess the message came from God.

BTW in Judges 11, Jephthah makes a deal with God and it ends up involving him sacrificing his daughter and no-one stops him.

No one stops him - but there is no indication (if I remember correctly) that God was pleased. Judges is full of problematic behavior that is not explicitly condemned but not approved of either.

And yes the "angel of the LORD" is essentially God or God's messenger.

 

[ralliann]

About the passage where God orders everything that breathes to be killed....

Should a game where you kill babies in the promised land which quotes from the Bible be banned?

how about a ban on killing babies with fire in sacrifice to their gods?

I thought they were just doing something moral from the point of view of Christians....

Do you think it is Moral to burn your children alive? Like Hamas did to Israeli Children.. I guess that is moral from a liberal view. Carry on nothing to see there heh?

Note the graphics would be cartoony like Minecraft.

Well cartoon or not, putting a child in the arms of a brass image, with it's hollow center filled with wood and lit up until it glowed red from the fire. Then put the babe in it's arms, till it dies. will that do for your cartoon? Those ancient worshippers of Molech were said to have done this. God said he never even thought of such a thing, forbade it.

 

[ralliann]

Actually it was an angel that stopped him (Genesis 22:11-12) though I guess the message came from God.

BTW in Judges 11, Jephthah makes a deal with God and it ends up involving him sacrificing his daughter and no-one stops him.

But it is stopped when Israel took out seven evil nations. As for the man who sacrificed his daughter, that is parabolic in that she never married nor bore children, all the days of her life. so I have heard.

 

[SavedByGrace3]

The term "hate speech" was invented to create whole new classes of both victims and criminals.
It is an absurd concept. Most of the time, the speech is not hateful, only disagreeing.

 

[Fervent]

I don't think we should read our modern-day sensibilities backward into the Old Testament.

Personally, as a modern-day person and as a Christian, I find passages like this troubling and I cannot explain them away in any easy manner. I think it's reasonable to be troubled by such passages. At the same time we do need to recognize that it was a very different time, a very different world, that the ancient Israelites inhabited.

A lot of things only make sense when understood in context. For instance, the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac as a test only makes sense if you understand that that was usual in the ancient world and was being practiced by all the surrounding nations; the surprising part of the story is not the child-sacrifice request but the fact that God told Abraham not to go through with it.

Yep, context is critical to understanding a lot of the things that seem offensive in the OT to modern sensibilities. A lot of them make a lot more sense when we remember that the primary ethical consideration for the Israelites was communal purity, as opposed to individual rights. So capital punishment was surgical rather than punitive, and the ethnic bans were similarly preventative of introducing foreign contaminants into the camp rather than being motivated by malice against the foreign nations. The highest good in Israel was a pursuit of holiness for the community, and so no pollution could be tolerated.

 

[Fervent]

BTW in Judges 11, Jephthah makes a deal with God and it ends up involving him sacrificing his daughter and no-one stops him.

Not everything in the Bible is meant to be exemplary, and Judges in particular pushes pretty hard the evil that was tolerated in Israel and the faithlessness of Israel in contrast to God's faithfulness.

 

[AV1611VET]

Should a game where you kill babies in the promised land which quotes from the Bible be banned?

Yes.

 

[AV1611VET]

BTW in Judges 11, Jephthah makes a deal with God and it ends up involving him sacrificing his daughter and no-one stops him.

Wasn't that sad?

It shows you the moral turpitude that existed at that time.

Mankind had stooped to the point where even Jephthah's daughter accepted her fate.

 

[Lukaris]

I didn’t say anything about enforcing anything. Why did bring it up?

You objected to a law that would put someone to death for something that the law says is immoral. That is how such a law is enforced I would think.

Apparently you do not want to even study the change of understanding from the Old to the New Testament in a general sense.