Missing Mosaic Laws...
- Thread starter Moral Orel
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Nope, it still proved my point as far as Christians are concerned. No matter what the rest of the Jewish laws say, it shows that man had to improve upon laws written by God, since Christians don't consider the Talmud and their midrashim as being divinely inspired. It also pokes holes in the theory that their society couldn't handle more laws to punish rapists that Golgatha has been supporting. If you're Jewish then you can suppose that God wrote those laws too, but Christians can't claim that or their theology gets too complicated.
I'm not here to argue the nitty gritty about all of Jewish law, I don't know enough about it. And even if I did, this is the Christian apologetics section, so while I may criticize something about the OT because that's part of Christianity, I'm not going to go picking on the Talmud because that has no bearing here.
On a side note, I was corrected before about Jesus' lineage and him being a descendent of a Moabite, which is a no-no. But according to other Jewish scripture, that lineage only matters when you're descended from a male Moabite. So it creates a problem for Christians, but it doesn't create a problem for Jews that David was descended from a female Moabite. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about here.
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Nihilist Virus
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Apologies, I thought it was commonly known that rape is not condemned in the Bible and that he was therefore asking for other Jewish sources. If you look again at what he said, you can see it can be interpreted this way:
Interesting. To the topic at hand, are there more laws written elsewhere on the crimes in question? Are those laws likewise under contention as to their divine authorship?
In my research on this topic, I found that actual laws against rape were rare and took till nearly modern times to really develop in any concrete form. It would be interesting if there really were much older laws than what I've been able to find thus far.
Considering that this dialogue was spinning off of his inquiry about Judaism, I think my inference is understandable.
Moving on...
That's fairly late. As you have it written, that is taken to mean 300CE-500CE, which is quite a bit late. If you meant 500BCE-300BCE, that is still late by an unacceptable margin. You're now getting into the era of Babylonian captivity, or in other words the era of Babylonian influence. It seems there is no law of Jewish origin that condemns rape as an evil for its own sake.
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Agreed, although you're only even going to have a shot at this working (a slim shot, if that) if you're talking to a presuppositionalist. Many Christians here have faith that is quite elastic, to the point that they don't believe anything in the Old Testament and yet consider themselves Christian. These people get their morality from secular sources and don't care about missing Mosaic laws.
Right, and again, the target audience is a presuppositionalist because they're the ones who give the "absolute morality" pitch, where they seem to think that all of our "objective morality" comes from the Old and New Testaments. So when you show them that there are missing Mosiac laws, as has been shown on this thread, they dust their hands with the white powder and get ready for the back-breaking gymnastics that only Christian apologists are capable of.
I've pursued that and have since abandoned it. Also there is the issue of Jesus being a descendant of the latter kings of Judah who were cursed (that they would have no offspring ruling on the throne of David), and Jesus is supposed to be the fulfillment of the promise made to David in that his seed would reign forever. I think there were some problems with my line of evidence, and I have to revisit it to see if my argument is crippled or simply in need of a rephrasing.
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Right, and that's the target audience for this thread. I've said from the OP that this isn't a "God doesn't exist" thread. Anything that is just based on scripture never could be. It was actually the "Objective Morality Argument" that made me think about this. The Apologist always likes to ask, "So do you believe it is always wrong to..." and then follows it with some insanely evil act. But thus far, I've always been able to shoot back, "They did it in the OT" or "Nothing wrong with that in the OT" so "It was okay for someone sometime, and that isn't objective morality".
So this thread is to show that what they may feel is supposed to be set in stone morality for all of time, shouldn't be considered as such. If there is a set of morals that applies to one group, but not another, then maybe people ought to reexamine their beliefs about what not to do today.
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To engage in the language and translate it into what the author intended is what those Bible interpretations do that you objected to. The ESV of course is the literal word-for-word translation but it cannot provide a translation for a non-existent word. I understand your desire to reference the ESV. I also use it on occasion but when words are missing from the culture’s vocabulary but we know, or highly suspect, that the meaning for specific actions etc. are present but only in combinations of words along with the tenor, emotion, and contexts, then it seems reasonable to use Bible translations that have employed skilled philologers to reach a consensus on what actually took place. It just seems that someone like yourself who seems to be honestly looking for truth, would use all the tools that are at your disposal.
While looking at extra-biblical sources it is also necessary to not allow “historical reconstructions of biblical events” to “take the place of the depiction of the actual events described in the text” (Sailhamer). So, as we look at the texts that reference and define events that are in the Bible, we should allow the biblical text the magisterial authority.
What you appear to looking for is a modern law interpretation that would allow charges to be exacted against a complicit party. This may be the Levite in Judges or it may not be, but the point is, there is no ancient Hebrew laws that allow for that type of charge that I am aware of. It is tempting to judge that culture based on what we view as better laws in our modern culture but this puts us into the category of chronological snobs. We cannot force the virtues of our modern laws or views of justice on ancient cultures and judge them as inferior to ours.
Yes, the Greeks and the Romans participated in this sexual sin as well as some Popes such as Pope Alexander VI who had little boys jump out of large cakes http://www.oddee.com/item_96537.aspx. He was in office in the later part of the 15th century. However, there is no evidence that I am aware of in extra-biblical sources and definitely no biblical references to this type of sexual sin existing. It may interest you to know that the age of consent in the U. S. was 10 to 12 years old in the American colonies https://discover-the-truth.com/2013/09/09/age-of-consent-in-european-american-history/ and it never rose to 16 and sometimes 18 years of age in the U.S. until the 1920’s http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/230. I wasn’t made aware of this until just a couple of months ago. I think it wise, however to refrain from forcing a conclusion concerning this child molestation issue upon ancient Israel without some hard evidence. Until I find direct evidence that this was going on in the ancient Hebrew culture, it is unfair and presumptuous of me to make that charge against them.
Sailhamer, John H. "Johann August Ernesti: The role of history in biblical interpretation."
Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44.2 (2001): 193. Print.
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You're getting so close to the point I've been driving at. I'm not judging their culture to be inferior. I find them no worse than their contemporaries. The point is, that I find them no better. With all the assertions that God is the source of all morality, and the Bible is His Word on morality, it is strange that laws, based on His morality, that He is presumed to have written would overlook some of the most atrocious sins to ever exist. It would not be strange to assume a bronze-age human writer would do the same.
I'm not arguing for the sake of our laws, I'm arguing for the sake of our morals. If someone has sex but they don't want to, it results in immeasurable psychological harm. Whether they were physically forced or intimidated, it doesn't matter. The morals are based on what is harmful. Just like the "love your neighbor" passages found throughout the Bible, you shouldn't cause that harm to others because you wouldn't want it caused to you. But despite the fact that it did occur in the Bible, no one bothered to explain how to not cause that harm. We only really find it in reference to occasions when harm is also afflicted on the men who actually own the right to the girls consent. And given every other contemporary culture's views on the subject, and every law we can find in the Bible, and every thing we can look at in terms of female sexuality in the Bible, they had no idea of this harm either.
God showed up and turned their world upside down in how to worship and who to worship. That's all well and good. But if we're claiming that a perfect loving God told them exactly how to run their society in all manner of other laws but stopped short of telling them that consent belongs to the person who's having sex, then I find the idea that God Himself being the explicit author of that legal code to be preposterous.
Oh I know. I only brought up the average age of marriage because it starts the moment puberty does. The point is that the line is very fine between marriageable age and pre-pubescence. Girls too young to marry don't look much different at all from girls who are old enough by that very fine line.
In cultures where people don't have a chance of going on to become educated, and all they are ever going to do with their life is have children and live on a farm, there's absolutely no reason to wait until you're 18 to start raising a family. That's why I haven't talked about statutory rape.
But to think molestation just didn't happen because a culture back then didn't record it in their religious texts seems a bit like burying your head in the sand to me. We know people do it, we know people did it far back into the past, we know why people did it and continue to do it, and none of that reasoning is unique to the times we find it occurring. So in all likelihood we should assume perverts have simply always existed, not that we should assume they didn't come about until a much later time. But I can't prove it, so I guess I can't argue for it.
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- Jan 28, 2002
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I thought you guys believed your "oral tradition" (now written, of course) was from God?
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Nope. And I've been pointing that out from the beginning. The only reason to look at them is that they aren't any better even though they are proposed to come from God Himself, just like all the other cultures of the time claimed. I would expect something extraordinary and "ahead of the times", as it were, if God was the real author.
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Some do, we've been talking about that and how some folks do and some folks don't. I'm kind of curious why Christians don't.
If you believe that God wanted a record of all of human history, and ensured it's accurate transcription through the ages to that end, then why wouldn't you believe the oral tradition was part of that record?
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Hi Nicholas, here's one of the things the Lord Himself said concerning the traditions held by the Scribes and the Pharisees in the First Century, which also explains our principle reason for not holding to any "traditions" which invalidate the word of God (be it OT or NT).
*(BTW, the Jewish "oral" tradition is from the time of Moses .. just like the Torah .. so it did not predate the invention of writing).
*(BTW, the Jewish "oral" tradition is from the time of Moses .. just like the Torah .. so it did not predate the invention of writing).
5 The Pharisees and the scribes *asked Him, “Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?”
6 And He said to them, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written:
‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS,
BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME.
7 ‘BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME,
TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.’
8 “Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.”
9 He was also saying to them, “You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.
10 “For Moses said, ‘HONOR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER’; and, ‘HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF FATHER OR MOTHER, IS TO BE PUT TO DEATH’;
11 but you say, ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God),’
12 you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother;
13 thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.” ~Mark 7
6 And He said to them, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written:
‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS,
BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME.
7 ‘BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME,
TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.’
8 “Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.”
9 He was also saying to them, “You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.
10 “For Moses said, ‘HONOR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER’; and, ‘HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF FATHER OR MOTHER, IS TO BE PUT TO DEATH’;
11 but you say, ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God),’
12 you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother;
13 thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.” ~Mark 7
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What is the point of the written Torah listing the punishments for rape - up to and death penalty for the rapist? In what circumstances we apply judicial punishment? Crime. Prostitution? Also illegal, although not explicitly mentioned in the non religious context. But. It is stated- do not prostitute your daughters, lest the land fall to whoredom. That's a prohibition. Other things are not mentioned at all, like ritual slaughter, pedophilia or female homosexuality. Omission? Perhaps, but then, the text also mandates appointment of judges. Not only for application, but also for interpretation of the rules.
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Hi AJ, I know (of course, some Christians have "oral traditions" of their own .. as I'm sure you know .. that they also consider to be on par with the Holy Writ, though they obviously do not consider "Jewish" oral tradition as part of their "tradition").
I asked my question because of your statement that the oral tradition of your people has governed them for years, but that "all laws are not from God".
--David
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Jesus said to do away with a lot of what is in the OT though too. He goes on in that passage to explain that nothing that goes in the body defiles a person, which is in direct contrast to all of the dietary restrictions of Mosaic Law. And I consider the "ye among you with out sin" part to be Him speaking out against the death penalty too. So, to me at least, Jesus wasn't just against following the tradition of the Talmud, but at least parts of the OT as well. Of course He also says the "not one jot" part, which I still consider to be a major contradiction, but that can be for another thread.
Yeah, I thought about that after I wrote it and edited it out. I beatcha to posting your post, but I didn't beatcha to reading my post, sadly.
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How do you know that divinely inspired scripture wouldn't have omissions? Other scripture specifically states that some knowledge is intentionally hidden from us for a specific purpose. So to claim that something cannot be inspired by God simply because it does not include something you think should be there is flawed. Second, the Hebrew language did not have a specific word for "rape". The word used was "to lay with against their will" which we would define a rape. So it would be natural that their wouldn't be a specific law prohibiting something that their was no word for.
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