Not quite the Bible- but The Didache (written perhaps one generation after the NT by the students of the Apostles) does condemn abortion as an excommunicable offense, and one of the Books of Enoch lists abortion as one of the sinful practices the Fallen Angels brought to humanity.
Abbie Normal- Bible and Torah scholars don’t read it that way.
That interpretation doesn’t make sense, as an injury severe enough to cause premature delivery would almost certainly kill the foetus, and without modern neonatal care, any baby born before 33 weeks (i.e. more than 7 weeks early) would not survive. Prior to 33 weeks (and in some babies, up to 35 weeks) infants have no suckle reflex, so could not be fed with any methods available in those times, even if they were to be able to breathe on their own, fight infection and not succumb to massive dehydration due to an inability to control their body temperature.
If the child lived there would be no cause to make reparations, however, if the mother died too from, say, massive bleeding (a much more likely scenario after such an assault than a living baby and a healthy mother) murder has been committed.
In order to beat someone so badly as to cause an abortion you have to disrupt the flow of blood to the foetus- either by causing the placenta to detach from the walls of the uterus (leading to massive maternal bleeding), or by causing maternal shock and hypoperfusion of the placenta so that the foetus is starved of oxygenated blood and dies. Contrary to popular belief, strong emotion, pain or a light blow to the abdomen do not cause early labour or miscarriage- you’re talking about a particularly savage attack.
I don’t know scholars, or what equals a scholar but in ten seconds I was able to find Th.d’s (Whatever that means :smack: ) that argue for my argument. Not that I truely care about this single passage one way or the other. I just think it is not really debatable as it is open to interpretation.
http://65.108.250.230/Exodus_21_22.htm
Once again I really have no dog in this fight, just saying that translations and how you read something ultimately is up to you.
Abbie Normal I did read your link, but you can hardly call it unbiased.
However, taking some lingusitic points into consideration.
If the word does mean “live birth” rather than “miscarriage” or “still birth” (and even the scholar you linked to suggests that it could be used to mean stillbirth)- then it could also and equally be interpreted that if the child is born dead, NO injury has occurred, but that if the child died AFTER being born alive then murder would have occurred.
I went to Bible Gateway and read a bunch of different versions. Most use the premature birth translation. The added, and no more harm is done can be taken either way. Premature birth but no harm to the baby, or no harm to the woman. I’d have to say that the argument that it doesn’t nessecarily mean stillborn or miscarried is pretty legitimate. Does anyone have any other insight into Jewish law?
Slightly OT, but the “eye for an eye” commandment was never taken literally. Rather, an appropriate monetary fine was imposed.
No, that is the translation adopted by modern Jews. There is nothing in the Torah itself and no historcial evidence that it was initailly meant to be interpreted anything but literally.
Jewish law is fairly organic and manages to change with the times, but saying that ‘eye for eye’ was never taken literally can’t be justified.
My bad.
I recalled from a long ago cover to cover reading that the passage occurred during a period of conquest, so I assumed it was in Joshua or Judges.
'Twasn’t.
from BibleGateway
Now, immediately following this passage, Menahem becomes king of Israel, and does evil in the eyes of the lord, so it’s not clear that God condones the behavior in 15:16. This passage cross-references to:
Again, the doer of these deeds is painted in a bad light.
HOWEVER, it also cross-references to God’s words in Hosea 13:
And speaking of little ones dashed to pieces, 2Kings 8:12 cross-references to this passage where the Lord sizes up the can of whup-ass he will open on Nineveh by comparing to the destroyed city of No-amon:
which in turn cross-references to the list of the fates of Babylonians on the day of the wrath of the Lord:
as well as this psalm recalling the captivity:
So even though my original reference was wrong, I still feel borne out in my interpretation of God’s thought on the matter.
Thanks for your effort in getting those passages. Pretty interesting and scary. THat’s some nasty vengeful Jehovah.
How do those books rank when weighing in on on determining the will of God? Are they supposed to have been divinely inspired? I am not trying to limit their meaning…just genuinely curious how to place them on a continuum with the Bible at one end and a religious screed some dude on the street hands me on the other.
Just one word of caution though. I’ve also seen “all its women who were with child” translated as “Any woman who has borne a child”, which puts quote a diifferent complexion on those quotes. It isn’t saying that pregant women should be killed specifically, it is saying that all women who have ever given birth should be killed. That translation also gels better with other gems of peace and tolerance in the OT such as Numbers 31:17
IOW the passages about killing women with child is really referring to killing all women who have had children by enemy males. It’s based on a belief in telegenetics, essentailly that if a woman has a child by one non-Jewish man all future children will be slightly contaminated. By killing all such women you prevent contaminatoon of the Jewish people just as you do by kiling “every woman that hath known man by lying with him”. You eliminate all the polluted women and take the rest as sex slaves.
This is also consistent with he views expressed elsewhere in the OT that any any animal that a man has sex with is to be immediately killed and not eaten. The idea once again being that the animal is corrupted by the act of sex.
Of course killing all women who have had children by enemy males doesn’t make such a God any more pleasant, but it does mean thatthose passages have no real relevance to abortion beynd the fact that some of the womern killed would surely be pregnant at the time theyare killed.
AFAIK, this is the correct way to understand the story of Onan. That hasn’t stopped people from using it to argue against contraception in one form or another. I think some folks are simply ignorant of the context of Onan’s actions (his failure to keep his part of the bargain), while others are already opposed to contraception and are looking to Scripture for backup.
It is not a modern interpretation. It is the Talmudic interpretation.
http://www.aishdas.org/toratemet/en_mishpatim.html
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Weekly_Torah_Commentary/mishpatim_hillel2002.htm
As far as Jewish tradition goes, you are wrong. Now it is possible that this tradition is covering up historical reality, and the ancient Hebrews were in fact poking each others eyes out. But to state that “eye for and eye’ really means 'value of an eye for an eye” is a modern interpretation is erroneous.
sciurophobic I hope that tyou reliase that posting Jewish religious opinion as historical fact is no more valid than posting the Book of Mormon or Roman Catholic Tradition as historical fact. Jews don’t get some special pass.
The fact is that any translations of the text as being other than literal are recent inventions not in any way found within the original text. Your own references admit that.
This is OT but I find it interesting that in the bits you talk about above it is the men doing the corrupting but the blameless women, children and animals suffering the consequences.
It’s no more or less reasonable than posting quotes from any other religious work. One poster asserts that since the Bible doesn’t say otherwise, we must assume that the Hebrews really were, as **sciurophobic ** put it, “poking each others eyes out.” sciurophobic asserts that since case law (Talmud) says something else, we may assume that the Hebrews did not routinely mutilate each other for this purpose.
We have neither the tablets nor Moses at our disposal. I suggest that we regard all renderings of the text in question, including the Hebrew, as being at some remove from the “original.”
Well, for most moderate-liberal Christians who don’t think the Bible is the literal word of God, these verses aren’t too problematic. We generally see them as reflecting historical and cultural contexts and we try to understand why they came to be in the Bible when they clearly conflict with our understanding of God as a loving and merciful God for all people. This usually seems like cherry-picking to both non-Christians and conservative Christians, but most liberal Christians would disagree, although that’s a discussion for a different thread. One example of this way of reading the Bible would be how I see Psalm 137, which I think is actually a beautiful psalm, one of my favorites.
When I read this Psalm, I see it as a prayer of desparation by the Psalmist during the period of Babylonian exile. The last line is not a godly thing to desire, nor does it reflect God’s will. Even so, as my study Bible puts it, “it is better to offer such sentiments to God in prayer than actually to enact such violence aainst the enemy. The anger needs to be vented and deserves attention.”
As for literalist and fundamentalist Christians, well, I don’t know what they would think of these passages. Back when I was fundamentalist, I didn’t really know much about them, and when I found out about them by actually reading the Bible :rolleyes:, I found them disturbing. Most fundamentalists I’ve talked to believe these passages either don’t mean what the translation says, or they use the argument that those people were all just pure evil without any good, and that their children would have grown up to be evil people, and therefore did not deserve to live. Needless to say, I found these interpretations somewhat dubious at best.
I agree. Then let’s look at the ealiest texts and see whether they say “eye for eye” or, as sciurophobic suggests, “eye for monetary value of eye”. That way we can know which is more recent. If the eraliest texts say "“eye for monetary value of eye” the I will retract my claim that such is more recent.
I am posting that it is a fact that there was an opinion, and that said opinion is markedly different from yours. What we have here is one definite fact (that the Talmud states that the “eye for an eye” rule was never taken literally) and one possible fact (it was taken literally, and the rabbinical compilers of the Talmud whitewashed history so as not to appear barbaric.) I am willing to accept evidence for this “possible” fact, as there are numerous instances of religious leaders lying (some on this board would say that’s all they do). Until such time I am going to take the not unreasonable stance that the rabbis of centuries ago knew Jewish history and law better than you.