I’m thinking of starting my own church, you are invited to participate.
Well, given that all those events occurred prior to the establishment of Judaism, at a time when whoever it was who became the Jewish people really were tribal peoples (with any number of people, especially on this board, tripping over themselves in their haste to point out that a lot of the events characterized in those works could not have happened), and that the people who did form what became Judaism have never actually based their core theology on those passages, I would say that the people who characterize the God of the Tanakh/Old Testament as merely a god of wrath are using a substantial amount of cherry-picking to make their case. I am not claiming that there is no reason to recognize the “god of wrath” theme in the Old Testament, but to pretend that there is some dichotomy between the Old and New Testaments demonstrates a serious amount of ignorance on the part of those who want to claim that the two versions of God are diametrically opposed.
Yep. I fear, daily, that a mob of Orthodox Jews are going to crash into my house looking to impose the Holiness Code on my family. (However, since most of my former classmates who specialized in Old Testament Scripture tend to be pacifists and supporters of Women’s Lib and oppose anti-SSM amendments and such, I think I will just chalk up your rant as one more example of cherry picking. Robertson and Dobson and Wildmon are not the only ones who admire the Old Testament, so I feel comfortable dismissing your attempt to extrapolate from the few loud people to anything resembling a majority.)
The problem with your broad brush claims are that they are not merely often wrong, they demonstrate that you are speaking from blind hatred unmitigated by knowledge and you splatter yourself with your own vitriol.
Why did Jesus say
if “an eye for an eye” was not something that was taught/practiced in the place where he was teaching?
He didn’t say, “you have seen it practiced,” he said, “you have heard it said.” He was referring to rhetorical views on justice, not literal legal practices.
The “eye for an eye” thing tends to get taken the wrong way in any case. I think another phrase from that same passag, “measure for measure,” more accurately coveys the intention behind that rhetoric. It wasn’t about over the top vengence and bloodlust but an admonition to keep penalties proportionate to the crime, i.e. “an eye for an eye,” not a LIFE for an eye. Also keep in mind that this language is largely figurative and penalties were not typically imposed in such a literal manner.
With regards to your OP, one of the scientists who was featured prominently in the NOVA special, Kenneth Miller, is a biology professor who is also a seriously practicing Catholic and has written extensively about how Evolution can be reconciled with Christian faith. He attacks creationism/ID not only from a scientific standpoint but as bad theology as well.
I didn’t say they were literal legal practices. I said that it must have been “something that was taught/practiced in the place where he was teaching”. So either taught or practiced (and by practiced, I did not necessarily mean it as “legal practice”, but general cultural practice)
In any case the “you have heard it said” construct was not an allusion to some “rhetorical views on justice”. From the Sermon on the Mount, we see that he uses the “you have heard it said” construct quite a bit, and it is not in a rhetorical sense. He seems to be referring to stuff that was part of the cultural/religious norm of his time. See below
Getting back to the OP, I guess my question is why isn’t this view promoted more than it currently is, within non-biblical-literalist christian circles in the US?
I may be wrong, but the impression I get from articles and documentaries on the subject, is that a lot of Christian Americans, who are not necessarily biblical literalists, reject evolution because
(1) They don’t want to be “descended from monkeys”
(2) It contradicts, in their view, what the Bible says.
If the ideas of people like Kenneth Miller are more effectively promulgated within the Christian communities in the US, point (2) above can be made to go away to a large extent. And in that case, maybe resistance to point (1) can slowly erode.
But, maybe peoples’ real reason for rejecting evolution is simply point (1), and they just use point (2) as an excuse.
First you should look at my (linked) earlier description of Lex Talionis. Then, you need to read through later Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy to find all the occasions in which specific remedies and compensations were expressly laid out that did not exact direct retriution in the manner of the Lex Talionis. Note that Jesus says, “You have heard,” not “You have been commanded.” The passage in Exodus to which he alludes is not a general rule for injuries, but a specific case of retribution for injuring a pregnant woman. The phrase made it into the Jewish vernaculkar much as it has come down to us as an aphorism that indicated limits on retaliation and he invoked it to distinguish between simple retatliation and responding with love to hatred. Nowhere in the Old Testament, in contrast, does it call for a man to hate his parents, his spouse, his siblings, and his children in order to follow God:
Luke 14:26
Quote mining–particularly in the absence of context–is a dangerous practice that can lead one astray.
My guess would be that the various churches do not make a big deal about it because they do not see science as an attack on their faith. The people who do raise a ruckus do see it as an attack on their beliefs. There are plenty of Christians who speak in favor of the scientific approach to evolution, but church leaders do not make the same public issue over it that they make over justice for the poor or morality in treating one’s neighbors, family, employers/employees, etc. (And when a Christian leader speaks out in favor of taking a scientific approach to studying evolution, the mainstream news media does not bother to report it. I do not recall seeing the article to which I linked in my first post repeated in any major news outlet, yet the talk was reported in many Christian outlets. And when did anyone hear from the mainstream media about Evolution Sunday?)
Agreed, but looking at the Sermon on the Mount is hardly obscure “quote-mining”
From my response to Diogenes, here are the things Jesus says that “you have heard it said”:
- 'Thou shalt not kill
- ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’
- ‘Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement.’
- ‘Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths.’
- ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’
- ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.’
I understand that you are more familiar with the biblical texts, and that I would gain more understanding by studying them, but, if we focus on Sermon on the Mount for now, in the above list, how does ‘eye for an eye’ fit with all the rest?
The other items in the list are clearly stuff that people were instructed to observe. Why would Jesus bring up the “eye for an eye” thing if it was in reference to retributions for injuring a pregnant woman? It makes no sense, when taken in context of what he says after that.
And regarding your assertion that “The phrase made it into the Jewish vernaculkar much as it has come down to us as an aphorism that indicated limits on retaliation”, besides the quote from Exodus about the pregnant woman, what about this quote from Leviticus 24:18-24:20
*“Anyone who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered.”
*
and this quote from Deuteronomy 19.21
*“Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”
*
It’s pretty clear in these cases that “eye for an eye” is meant in exactly the same way people think it means. It is not an “aphorism that indicated limits on retaliation”.
Is any part of the Old Testament considered to override the “eye for an eye” from Leviticus 24:18-24:20 and Deuteronomy 19.21?
Actually, I would say the opposite: Given that there is scant record of Jewish Law being enforced in that manner, going about crippling persons who had crippled others, it seems pretty clear to me that that language was, in some sense, metaphorical. The Leviticus passage follows on from an incident of blasphemy with an admonition to treat the Hebrew and the foreigner in exactly the same way without partiality and the Deuteronomy passage follows on from a description of the establishment of the cities of sanctuary and describes the actions to be taken against one who bears false testimony against another, inflicting on the liar the punishment he sought to inflict on the victim of the lies. These desert passages do not reappear as punishments actually meted out to persons once the Promised Land was settled or after the establishment of the kingdom(s) or referenced by the prophets. (I am not saying that such punishments were never imposed, but they hardly make up a serious point of any subsequent story and there are not passages in which it is mentioned that so-and-so was missing a tooth/eye/hand for having inflicted that injury on another in his youth.
It still seems to me that they were set as limits on how far punishment should go (neither seeking excessive vengeance nor allowing partiality to let offenders escape judgment), not as explicit commands. Note that this appears to be the case in Judaism as explicated within the Talmud (as reported in Wikipedia) where retribution is established in terms of compensation, not in terms of carrying out the maiming.
I doubt that there is any passage in the Tanakh that overrides explicit Lex Talionis; I suspect that the Jewish nation (particularly following the Exile) simply looked upon those passages as the conceptual guidelines presented to their nomadic tribal ancestors and carried out those rules using compensation rather than maiming.
It’s important to place the bloody passages in context. They were written at a time when Judah was weak, and on the verge of being absorbed by its larger neighbors. It’s not surprising, or unprecedented, for the authors of the Bible to emphasize or invent events in the past where the Hebrews kicked butt. It gives pride, just the way a college team in the cellar is going to remember the years they went to bowl games.
I’d feel a lot worse about my ancestry if I thought a lot of the stuff in the Bible had actually happened. As it is, I can just enjoy the moral advantages of being a victim.
???
Are you saying that all the bad stuff that happened to the Jews in the Bible happened (“I can enjoy the moral advantages of being a victim”), but all the bad stuff that the Jews did in the Bible were invented as part of a pep-talk (“the authors of the Bible to emphasize or invent events in the past where the Hebrews kicked butt. It gives pride”) ?
I was referring to the bad stuff long after the Bible was written. My great grandfather didn’t have to read the Bible for bad stuff - all he had to do was look for Cossacks. In any case, much of the bad stuff in the Bible, like the destruction of the first temple, was historical. The fables were full of the good stuff.
I don’t understand why believers, who accept a lot of improbable stuff in the Bible, can’t accept that evolution was part of God’s process of creation.
Because they like the improbable stuff, but don’t like being told the truth; evolution, in this case. And they accurately see theistic evolution for what it is; capitulation. A means of saving face, while in essence admitting that Darwin was right, and the Bible is wrong.
Informed believers (and on a worldwide basis, most believers in general) don’t have a problem accepting this. It’s just thatn in the US, vocal evangelicals have been successful in clouding, the issue, hindering education and engedering the utterly false perception that evolution is at odds with theistic beliefs. A lot Americans believe (due in no small part to a laxity of public eduction about it) that evolution is a necessarily atheistic theory. I think it’s ironic that many Catholic school science curriculums will take care to debunk this falsehood while many public schools are afraid to talk about it.
Religious bullshit.
If you would bother to check there is actually so much evidence for evolution that you’d pretty much have to be an idiot or willfully ignorant to deny it.
Seriously. It’s like someone saying they don’t believe the sun is at the center of our solar system.