The alleged Amelekite offense against the Israelites occurred centuries before the ordered genocide. It also can’t justify the infanticide. You can’t save this passage from barabarism, so why are you trying? Why can’t you just admit that a body of literature written 2600 years ago might be a little backwards in its morality? Do you believe that the Bible is morally perfect in every respect?
It’s perfectly valid to attack them when they are still held up as a perfect, inerrant moral guide for today.
False. It was no crime for a man to rape his own wife or slave. Rape was a property crime.
Give it a rest with your persecuted posturing. Nobody has said “Jews are evil,” and the Hebrew Bible is Christian scripture too. Criticism of the Hebrew Bibles has fuck all to do with antisemitism or with any commentary on modern Jews. That’s just an attempt to poison the well.
That was mostly Paul’s doing.
I agree with every word of this. The Bible is the collected literature of an evolving and changing culture. It’s not monolithic or consistent in its moral outlook or in its view of God. It changes. It can be as transcendent in some areas as it is barabaric in others.
Well, actually, the Pharisees (with whom Paul allegedly studied) had something to do with this too. Even Jesus quoted Rabbi Hillel.
You really need to go here: http://www.starfall.com/
before you post about anything at all.
It does NOT say to try to make peace. It says to “proclaim peace,” which is perversely defined as enslaving the people of the cities that surrender, and killing the men and enslaving the women and children of those that don’t. And that’s only if they live far from the land you want to live on.
"15 Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby. 16 Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you, 18 so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God. "
If they had the temerity to be born and raised, for generations, on the land you want, then you are to kill every man, woman, child, and infant of them. You are NOT to try to make peace, or even “proclaim peace,” with them.
It is nothing less than a call for genocide. Entire nations are to be wiped out, and the only reason is that they have been living for centuries on the land that the voices in Moses’ head tells him are promised to the Israelites. And enslaving the former occupants, or expelling them, is not good enough, because any survivors might lead Israelites away from the One True Religion.
That is what the passage quoted by the OP says. It makes me physically ill to think that anyone would try to justify it.
Correct. But if he rapes a virgin, he can then marry her.
So if some disgusting old geezer wants a pretty, 16-year old wife, all he has to do is rape her. Oh, and pay her father 50 shekels (Deut 22:28).
Women are property. The law has nothing to do with protecting women; it is all about protecting the line of men. If you rape a married woman, you cast doubt on the paternity of her husband’s sons. Death penalty.
If you rape a virgin, you damage property that her father could have sold (Ex 21:7). Pay a fine and marry her.
Of course, this assumes that the rape took place outside the city. If you rape a betrothed virgin inside a city, she must be stoned to death. The fact that she didn’t scream loud enough for people to hear is proof that she wanted it (Deut 22:23).
But it is in perfect accord with the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. So all these claims of anti-Semitism when people call the ancient Israelites barbaric is a red herring. The entire Bible, Hebrew and Christian, is morally disgusting.
And I see that we agree about rape in the Hebrew Bible being a property crime, but it’s too late to edit my earlier post, that cites the same verses you did.
All the more reason NOT to base a moral system on those people/events/situations.
These guys want it both ways.
They want the Ten Commandments posted in schools and courthouses, and cite Leviticus as justification for discrimination against gays. Then, when defending the genocides of Moses and Joshua: “Hey, you can’t judge ancient Israelites by modern standards of morality! Everybody was like that 3000 years ago! They didn’t know any better! You’re anti-Semitic!”
That is said to be the actual translation of that Commandment.
Believing that it is wrong to deliberately slaughter noncombatants is not equivalent to pacifism. If it were, 99.99% (or more) of our armed forces would be pacifists. Now, doing this kind of thing was quite common at the time, but you’d think that an actual God would be beyond it. But God is exactly as moral as the person writing the story - interesting, that. I understand why the story was written - a downtrodden nation like reading how big and tough they were back in the golden age.
As for the babies, God as father of us all could have taken care of them somehow. Being omnipotent means you can’t whine about the job being too tough.
Well, the Christian version of God has never actually done anything, has he? He supposedly somehow installed himself in a human body and got himself killed before doing much of anything, and sometime in, the future he will rapture people, but that is about it. So, no wonder anyone saying nasty stuff about God has to quote passages where God did something.
Not that it matters, since these massacres never actually happened. You might as well condemn Tolkien’s family for the wholesale slaughter of orcs.
Alexander the Great, who came after, only destroyed cities who were being obnoxious, and relatively speaking was considered a caring guy.
Now that’s not quite true. By the time it was tie to leave Egypt, the Hebrews were able to walk out ina calm, dignified fashion, though there was likely the occasional pause for the Bronze-Age Semitic equivalent of raspeberry flinging.
I’m not sure where you are (it’s different in Israel, of course, because of the Orthodox stranglehold), but in my experience this tends to be more characteristic of conservative Christians than Jews. The Ten Commandments (or Ten Declarations) aren’t privileged in Jewish discourse. A sect during the development of early rabbinic Judaism did start to elevate them over the rest of the five books, but the rabbis slapped that thinking down fairly hard and fast.
I’m quite angry that in the UK same-sex marriages are not permitted to be performed by any religious authority, thanks to the Church of England, even though every Liberal and Reform synagogue I know of, and many Masorti ones, would be happy to perform them.
The prophesy in which Israel will fall to her enemies and the women will be raped? Isn’t that in Isaiah as well?
How is that God telling the Hebrews to rape?
Where women are spared and married.
Where women are spared and married.
…and we covered that.
(Btw, Deut. is a matter if repeating all that has been said here…)
Where women are spared and married and given a mourning period. If they do not marry, they go free.
I’m not familiar with this passage. Are you? Just through your distorted Catholic lens?
God did not have his wives raped.
“In sight of the sun” or “in public” is generally a euphanism for consent, though I’m not sure exactly if God was saying what he could do or what he may do.
Not very well.
No thanks.
I tried to make that point once with Hillel and you said that it doesn’t matter since Jesus is a fable.
How the fuck is it NOT?
Nope, kidnapped and raped, kidnapped and raped, but you know that. You can’t possibly believe your own bullshit.
Kidnapped and raped.
That’s not what it says. It says the guy can let her go if he gets tired of raping her.
Then read it.
I cited it, didn’t I?
I’m not Catholic. I have never been Catholic. Where are you getting “Catholic” from I am an atheist, dude. I have no lens. I don’t have to scramble to defend the indefensible the way you do.
God threatened to, so what’s the fucking difference?
No it isn’t. It just means in daylight, in public sight Did you google that or something? It’s a load of shit.
God was making himself pretty clear. He meant what he said. What’s the point of trying to make excuses for it?
Quite well, actually. I have a shiny little degree to prove it. You’re in over your head here.