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Ah, but you have yet to show where God said not to kill (under any circumstances). If you’re going to quote me the Ten Commandments, then I will tell you that “Thou shalt not kill” does not appear there.
The key is in the original Hebrew. The sixth commandment is lo tirtzach. Translated to English, this is “Do not murder.” If the meaning was “do not kill,” the Hebrew words would have been lo taharog.
Zev STeinhardt
I have heard and reheard this statement until I’ve got to say, I’m tired of it. I have no idea what your qualifications are as a translater of the Hebrew, or Greek, that was spoken and written at the time the Bible was finally reduced to writing. A cite from a recognized Bible scholar would be nice.
I do think I am safe in saying that those who translated both the King James and the Revised Standard versions were widely experienced people who had no more reason to mislead the reader as to the original meaning of the text than do those who would revise those translations on this board. Furthermore, those versions are the result of a lot of study by groups within which there was doubtless a lot of give and take and discussion before troublesome phrases were finally rendered into English. In addition, my copies of those two books have footnotes for certain phrases, as does the 12 volume Abingdon Press Bible at our local library, that give possible alternative translations.
All of the translations I cite render Exodus 20:13 as “Thou (You in RSV) shall not kill” with no equivocation in the form of a footnote. The same thing is true of the version of the Decalogue given in Deut. 5:17 and again with no footnote. I would expect that if there were some question as to the meaning of the original text in this commandmant there probably would have been a footnote to that effect since that is the general practice in other instances.
Many of those who make this argument are those who have bought some $50 computer software on Bible translation, or those who are quoting them, and have become instant Bible translators. The number of revisers who are trying to make the words of the Old Testament fit modern ideas of justice seems to be endless.
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My qualifications as a translator of Greek – none. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.
My qualifications as a translator of Hebrew (as written and spoken at the time of the Bible) – 12 years of Yeshiva study through high school, an additional three years in beis midrash (post high-school study) and continuing independent study to this day. This includes both the original texts, as well as commentaries and elucidations covering the gamut from the Talmud through present-day Jewish authorities. I’d venture to say that I have a bit of a grasp on this subject and did not get my translation from any “$50 computer software on Bible translation.”
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And, nonetheless, I maintain that they were mistaken in that translation (among others).
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And they still translated it wrong.
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Never heard of it.
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I can’t speak to what the editors/authors of Christian bible translations do. I can only tell you what the word means in Hebrew, as per my qualifications, listed above.
Zev Steinhardt
Just for the record; the NIV translates the passage as ‘You shall not murder’; here’s a (warning: PDF file)link detailing the rigour of the translation.
Oh, and BTW, check this out.
The NIV, NASB, AMP, NLT, NKJV and YLT, all translate it as “murder.”
Zev Steinhardt
Woops! You’re right. The bit about covering your face and crying “unclean!” was if you were diagnosed with an infectious skin disease.
However, what happens while you’re on your period – or, more specifically, for the 7 days following the onset of your period – isn’t much better:
“'When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean. Whoever touches her bed must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. Whoever touches anything she sits on must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. Whether it is the bed or anything she was sitting on, when anyone touches it, he will be unclean till evening. If a man lies with her and her monthly flow touches him, he will be unclean for seven days; any bed he lies on will be unclean.”
– Leviticus 15:19-24 (NIV translation)
It’s not nearly as bad as you make it sound. The primary hinderance of being tamei (translated as “unclean,” but that’s really not a great translation. I’m afraid that there really is no English word that really conveys the term), is that one could not go to the Temple Mount or partake of sacrificial foods. Otherwise, there is no “sin” in becoming tamei. I eat the food my wife cooks when she has her period (and yes, she touches it) and I sit on the same couches/chairs that she sits on.
In addition, one can become tamei in any number of ways, not just from contact with a menstruating woman.
Zev Steinhardt
Deuteronomy 30:15
See, I [God] have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil.
Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.
As I understand the position of the folks who believe in the Bible, everything that ever was, ever will be, or ever could be, only exists because their god wills it to be so. Nothing can exist that he did not make.
Aassuming this to be true, the most important implications for me are basically 2 things:
In addition to love, rainbows, and butterflies, he also created pain, evil, suffering, rapists, and hatred. He intends to torture billions of people for an infinite amount of time because they chose a different morality then his.
Number 1 makes him not worthy of love, but instead hatred, contempt, and secures him as the last being I would ever worship by choice. (I may give in if he kept torturing me, but it would be the same way a woman chooses not to fight a rapist with a gun to her head).
Just making me, while I am greatful, does not mean that any action you make should instantly be accepted and loved by me. My parents concieved and birthed me (my mother anyway on the latter count), but were they to abuse, murder, torture, or spread hate through the world I would not love them nor respect them even though I owe my very existence to them.
I hope there is a creator. And I feel like there may be one who helps me in my life (a celestine prophesy type of entity is what it seems like). I do feel this. I understand that it may be a trick of perception. If it is not, I wish with every fiber of my being that the entity which could be called god is far, far away from the entity described in that disgusting book “The Bible”. Not to say that it doesn’t have some nice things to say, but when that book is bad, it’s just pure evil. I’ll throw out some passages if anyone cares to know why I feel as such. A nice reading of Deuteronomy will help you see what I hate so much about that book for starters.
DaLovin’ Dj
Joel said: “If its a nice enough restaurant, they make plently of money and so replacing the silverware would be no problem, so stealing isn’t that bad”
To us Yippie!s this is called “liberating the silverware”.
Granted.
Which makes it an argument among experts. We laymen are excluded as unqualified to judge which is correct.
I guess we’re even because the string of initials you put out further down the page are just as meaningless to me.
I still am forced to believe that to the ancient’s “kill” was meant as just that and that changing it to “murder,” even by all the savants in those initialed sources, is a modern rendering, possibly intended to soften the barbaric and primitive nature of much of the Old Testament. One clue that all “killing” and not just “murder” was thought to be punishable is contained in Deut 19 in which “three refuge cities” are to be set aside on command of God so that those who have killed someone accidently could flee to them and escape punishment.
In any case, this is a sidetrack to my post which was in answer to Joel’s question about moral relativism. I still think that if someone wants to defend that, the Christian Bible can be used to do it in the cited passages and others that I didn’t mention. In addition, I said and still say, that the message of the Old and New Testaments both is that God is to be obeyed, no matter what He commands.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. I understand what you’re saying a lot better now.
We are born with a sinful nature, and there’s nothing that we can do about it. Humans have always sinned, and we always will, that’s why Jesus had to come to us. Because we can’t live sin free lives. And since sinning is part of our nature, that we can’t do anything about (according to the bible everybody sins “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”). And since it was God that started life and nature and the laws that govern life and nature, then it’s ultimately he who gave us a sinful nature. We have free will, and he is not responsible for the chooses we make in life, but our sinful nature sometimes influences our chooses, and since it’s part of the human design, and since he designed humans, it’s because of him that we have a sinful nature. Right?
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Sorry about that. They are different bible translations. Go to the page I linked to and you will see which translations are which acronyms.
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Doubtful. The reading throughout the ages of Jewish literature, from the prophets and the Talmud down to modern-day mean it be murder.
After all, how could the original meaning be “do not kill,” when there are crimes for which the death penalty is mandated. How could the original meaning be “do not kill” if there are situations where one is allowed to kill (war, self defense, etc.)? Clearly, the intended meaning is murder, meaning not to kill illegaly.
Zev Steinhardt
Very logical. The difficulty is that when logic and reason are applied to the Bible it exposes a collection of contradictory writings, many apparently based on ancient legends of other tribes in contact with the Hebrews, the original purpose of which has long been lost and is now unrecovereable. These writings were gathered together for a purpose which is also a little obscure, maybe to hold the Jews together as a separate group during the Babylonian captivity, but I would suspect it was certainly not to analyze and explain the ancient Hebrew justice system. To try to use logic and reason to decipher the social interactions of a primitive society of desert semi-nomads and prove that it corresponds to today’s European style mores seems far fetched to me.
I guess it really doesn’t matter though. Whether the original meant “kill” or “murder,” I don’t get my aversion to killing someone from the Bible. If someone else does, that’s fine as long as that aversion is present.
I’ll leave the subject here, in peace. Or maybe it’s totally exhaused and breathing it’s last.
Thanks Thunderbug. What that tells me is that God created the world the way it is (with good and evil) and that we are to deal with it that way. God does not owe us an explaination as to why it is this way, in fact it just might ruin the point of doing it if He did reveal the reason. We bitch about it too much in my opinion.
What the hell kind of logic is that? We’d bitch too much? A lot of us bitch about the way things are now. So if we’re going to do it anyway, it would be nice to know what we’re bitching about.
Thanks for clearing that up joel. just one thing? these rules, did you hear these from god directly or are they mereley man-made assumptions for a moral code book?
The first half of what I said came from church fathers who studied the scriptures vary carefully. The second half is speculation. Some believe in people being eternally burned, some think that the punishment is living in the absence of God. The only thing known for sure, at least as far as Catholicism is concerned, is that if somebody dies with mortal sin on their soul, and they’re unrepentant, they go to hell, whatever hell may be.
if there was an all powerful god, creator of the universe and its infinity, i really find it hard to believe that he would deal with sinners in the same way that they are dealt with in our society,(to be cast aside, shunned and put out of mind) i have always found it interesting that people who believe in god percieve him to be human and that he thinks on the same level, and runs by the same “rules and regulations” system that dictates our society, and that was created (obviously) long after gods existence came to being.
if there was a divine creator, he would not be so easy to understand as mankind so pompously thinks.
whether it is the catholic rule book(which was forced upon me for most of my early life), the morman rule book, islam, judaism, whatever, these are all manmade codebooks built on interpretations by man on ancient writings who in turn were written by men thousands of years ago( note the word man is written here three times, there is a lot of room for error here i think!)
any way bare with me because i think i might be trying to pull a point out of all these bablings!
the point i was trying to make earlier with the scenario of the serial killer was that we have very little control in our early life of who we are going to be, influence of our parents, friends, relations, idols not to mention the behaviour data that is already imprinted on our genes. who we are is predetermined by external influences and a huge multitude of random events all of which are beyond our control( for instance all our fears and pet hates come from events that left us in shock or feeling discomforted or perhaps one inherits them from an over the top reletive who never stopped talking about “how scary spiders are”) so even after early life has forced us into an identity we still continue to change in our later years untill we die, but its the early implantation of imformation( which we had no control over) that makes us who we are. so i dont think that we are 100 % responsible for who we are( let alone the chaotic nature of human kind----instincts, violence all the traits of our former primal existence)
JOEL: you said that all you know is that if someone dies with mortal sin and is unrepented they go to hell, that seems more like the law from the middle ages than the law of an eternal intellegent being(intellegence that we could never comprhend). what if the guy had been one of the most devoted good guys in the entire existence all his life, then one night gets depressed gets really drunk hits someone with his car, then in a panic drags the body to the river, or whatever. but then a week later he dies and goes up to the pearly gates having never repented, and god sends him off the heaven, “oh lord, if only if only!”. now… thats the way it would happen if god WAS a human being, but something that set the motion of existence then subsequently life then somewhere along the line a kind of evolved ape called man, wpuld be a bit more intellegent than this and would not resort to punishing a spirit that does not even know its true self. i think that in light of an eternal being its pretty cruel to send it to hell judged on how it led a life captured whithin a retarded beast such as a human being, not too mention being stuck in this hell hole of a world!