Raf

It occurred to me later that this observation loses its punch when you recognize God as the One who set it up that way. God could very easily have devised a way for a man to prove he is a virgin on his wedding night, especially if virginity is SO important that it's worth executing a woman over.

Well to Yahweh, of course. God first. First and great commandment. If you love him, you will keep his commandments. Love your neighbor as yourself? Secondary.

But in love...

Keeping money from the Man of God is a greater sin than raping an unbetrothed woman? The former sin gets instant death penalty. The latter, a wedding to the raped woman.

why does he kill two people on the spot for withholding money from the church, yet he cannot stop a pedophile priest?

The sleepy part of Iron Man 3 ?

Without delving into the notion that these might be maximum penalties rather than mandatory ones (and I think WW will agree that the language is assuredly mandatory -- you SHALL stone her with stones), the issue remains simple: Under what circumstances is the maximum penalty justifiable? Please note that in Numbers, a man WAS stoned to death for picking up sticks on the sabbath. Yahweh's direct order. No lenient sentence for a first offense. Stone him! With stones. Until he dies. And they DID! Not "they could have." They did. How, in ANY culture, is that moral? How can any moral person consider that law and that punishment, directly ordered by (as I call him) Yahweh himself, and still say "I don't have a problem with the law"? You don't? You don't have a problem with ordering a rapist to pay a 50-sheckel fine to the father of the woman he violated, and to marry the woman? You don't have a problem with holding a man's wife and son hostage unless the man agrees to be your slave for life? You don't have a problem with stoning a non virgin woman to death if there's not enough blood on the bedsheets when her husband sleeps with her the first time? You don't have a problem with ending a man's life violently for the victimless crime of sabbath breaking? You don't have a problem with any of these things... but you DO have a problem with selling animals for sacrifice at the temple... let's discuss THAT instead? Really? Because I don't believe you.

We have been over this. This thread is NOT a survey of the Mosaic Law. It is not about whether anyone ever followed or applied it. You are not welcome to discuss any subject you want so long as you tie it to the Law. You ARE off topic. You are being asked to stop and you are refusing to do so. This ends NOW. It is not about whether you agree with me or not. It is about staying on topic, which you openly refuse to do. This. ends. Now.

You're half right. ;) It's Cobra

How to tell whether you are on topic. 1. Ask yourself: if I am right, does it validate Raf's argument? 2. Ask yourself: if I am right, does it INvalidate Rat's argument? If the answer to both questions is NO, you are off topic. Mark, in the case of your last two posts, the answer to both questions is no.

So it's about time is what you're saying?

Mark, the Mosaic law prescribes the death penalty for a woman who is not a virgin when she marries. When you say you do not have a problem with the Mosaic Law, you are saying that you do not have a problem with stoning a woman to death if her husband learns she was not a virgin when they got married. If that's how you feel, we have nothing to discuss. You're a moral monster and I don't wish you well. The sins of the money changers in Jesus' day ARE TOTALLY IRRELEVANT TO THIS POINT, OFF TOPIC AND A TRANSPARENT ATTEMPT TO DERAIL THE THREAD. I thought we got past this diversionary tactic. You know better. Knock it off.

As Raf calls God...? Are you suggesting that I made that name up?

What's it about?

The husband has wiggle room to report her harlotry. There's no SHALT where he MUST turn her in. But in terms of the "this wasn't meant to be carried out" argument, yeah, agree with you. It WAS meant to be carried out. There is no indication otherwise.

Anyone wishing to explore issues with me privately is invited to do so via DM/PM. I'm sure my "debate opponents" are open to the same. If you don’t want to discuss issues publicly, it's ok.

Agreed, WW. The man is not required to turn the whore in (Bible's language; don't blame me). The moral outrage is that he can. As for men not having a virginity test, the horror of the punishment is not that it is unequally applied, but that it is a punishment in the first place. Applying it to men equally only compounds the moral injustice. We don't stone whores to death. It's not an option. We don't have the death penalty for sluts incorporated into our laws, not even with a "just kidding" clause.

yeah. Yeah that.

Reposting because of the (false) accusation that I've misrepresented the Torah by accurately quoting Deuteronomy 22. As you can see, there is no subsequent clause stating "Now don't actually implement these punishments. That wouldn't be loving!" The barbarian mindset that concocted these atrocities saw no conflict in telling people to love their neighbors as themselves while at the same time killing non virgin women (non virgin MEN face no such threat) and punishing rapists by making them marry the women they rape! We see a contradiction, because we are more moral than the misogynistic Bronze Age brutes who came up with this garbage. To accuse me of misrepresenting this scripture is NOT honest debating. Appealing to John 8 is interesting in that the scripture you cite is an interpolation and therefore not authoritative in any way. You might as well quote Galatians 7. Added: This assertion of mine was challenged before, in this thread, so I feel a further need to document it. Rather than post a lengthy copy/paste, I'll just refer you to this link.

Funny how scholars who study the language, culture and scripture agree with my position and not yours. More false accusations about how I approach this and other debates. "If it can be taken in a positive light you ignore it." Bulls hit. You want to talk about a dishonest approach? Look at the lengths you go to in order to defend blatantly immoral laws. You would never do that if we were debating the Quran. Dishonest? How about failing to refute Yahweh's vicious prescribed punishments by citing platitudes like "God is love," and then having the GALL to accuse me of employing a straw man argument when I predicted that was precisely what you would do? THAT'S dishonest, if you must know. You read instructions on selling your daughter into slavery, insist despite total lack of evidence that it's talking about the bride-price despite the absence of that term and the presence of the term for female slave, inject STDS into the discussion in a bid to create a false dilemma to distract from the fact that Yahweh is treating this woman with a level of disrespect no moral person would dare accept, and I'M the one reading into scripture? Because I actually did what you asked and looked into additional scholarship that shed light on the culture? It's not an opinion. It's a fact: the verses about escaped slaves are not talking about Hebrew slaves. They're discussing foreigners. There is no provision for Hebrew slaves to escape. They are property, not some sanitized form of unionized employee. The Bible never speaks of hired workers as being owned property. Yahweh lets masters beat slaves as long as they don't maim or kill them. He holds wives and children hostage unless a freed slave agrees to return to slavery FOR LIFE. And I'm the one who's not handling our subject honestly? Bulls hit. Uh... no. Just, no. Wow, what a warped sense of cultural relativism to compare slavery with... oh never mind. I'm done. If anyone thinks you're even making valid points, much less proving them, I simply don't have respect for the quality of the argument.

This is pointless. Yahweh actually imposes a law saying stone a woman to death if she's not a virgin when she's married, and your defense is "it doesn't mean it," effectively. Well, carp, if we get to just dismiss inconvenient verses with a wave of the hand...

Good enough for me. Take it Hw/oB!

Bliss, your post has been weighing on me. I don't know where you're headed spiritually and while I would be happy for you if your journey took you the same place my journey took me, I really want to see you get there on your own. And if you're happy being a Christian, I think that's wonderful, and I would encourage you to be the best Christian you can be. We might disagree on a lot of things, but so what, right? Folks like Mark S. and Steve Lortz work so hard to make sense of all this stuff, and I encourage you to hear them out when they post about the things they're learning and discovering. I no longer buy what they're selling, but that doesn't mean I want to see their "goods" taken off the market. Investigate. Ask questions. Don't settle for pat answers. Whenever you get an answer, ask another question. Wierwille taught us that Eve's first mistake was questioning the integrity of the Word. Humbug. Question EVERYTHING. If it's God's Word, it can withstand the questioning. (In my opinion, it can't, and therefore it's not. But that's MY opinion). Peace.

The word translated "maidservant" in Exodus 21:7 is amah. Here's a word study entry on it: http://lexiconcordance.com/hebrew/0519.html In the New American Standard Bible, it is translated female 15 times, female servant (4), female slave (2), handmaid (2), handmaids (1), maid (8), maids (5), maidservant (19), servant (1), servants (6), slave (4), slaves (4). In the King James, it's maid, maidservant, bondmaid etc. It's never associated with the bride price. It is distinct from it. The master in Exodus 21 could marry her not because he had paid the bride price, but because he owned her.

Why not