Raf

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

I resorted to commentaries for three reasons. First, to show I had not made it up. Second, to show that there is a sound biblical basis for the conclusion. And third, to show that the same conclusion had been reached by scholars who would presumably be biased AGAINST my opinion, lending weight to the integrity of THEIR conclusions. It's easy to call someone unbiased when he agrees with you. But when he DOESN'T agree with you and STILL admits you're right about something, that demonstrates he has overcome his own bias in favor of the truth. That's valuable. The verses about escaped slaves don't support the contentions TnO claims they support. There are no verses to support such contentions.

Take the Money and Run. Free post.

Still mulling Eddie Murphy travels from Detroit to California to find out who killed his old friend. He enlists the aid of two detectives who can't seem to solve a case without breaking into a song and dance routine.

Because you are more moral than Yahweh.

Selected commentaries on Deuteronomy 23: 15-16 SOURCE: HTTP://WWW.FREEBIBLECOMMENTARY.ORG/OLD_TESTAMENT_STUDIES/VOL03OT/VOL03OT_23.HTML Source: http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/matthew-henry-complete/deuteronomy/23.html Source: http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/jamieson-fausset-brown/deuteronomy/deuteronomy-23.html Source: http://www.christnotes.org/commentary.php?com=wes&b=5&c=23 Source: http://www.studylight.org/commentaries/guz/view.cgi?book=de&chapter=023 Not one of these commentaries is written by an atheist seeking to discredit the Bible. They are all written by faithful believers who have a vested interest in promoting the notion that Yahweh did not allow Israelites to return ANY slave. That they interpret the verse in a manner less favorable to their bias is evidence that their conclusions have integrity. A biased person upholds his bias: he doesn't hand ammo to the other side. These verses don't refer to Hebrews who "quit" being slaves. The use of the term “within thy gates” in v. 16 is the tipoff that we're talking about foreigners, as stated or implied in all the commentaries. Some Bible translations incorporate this understanding into the very text: So the notion that a Hebrew slave could just walk off the job without consequence is without scriptural support. The Bible gives instruction not to return foreign slaves to their masters. It makes no such allowance for Hebrew slaves to run away without consequence. It doesn't even anticipate the scenario.

I'm sitting in a courtroom right now and I just heard a judge tell someone how much freedom they have in prison. You are clothed, fed and housed. They check up on you, make sure you're healthy, drug free. Lots of time to exercise. No overly burdensome work. Free! Yeah.

Jack Byrnes Captain Shakespeare Neil McCauley

Regarding Exodus 21 supposedly NOT talking about slavery, please do a word study on the relevant verse, look at previous and later usages of the word, and say again with a straight face that it is talking about a regular "bride price" and not the selling of a slave. Note that her going free is not accompanied by a certificate of divorce. She just goes free. Not to defend promiscuity, but do you believe a woman who is not a virgin when she gets married should be stoned to death? Yahweh does. Please tell me you are more moral than Yahweh.

Totally skipped the issue of polygamy. Totally misrepresented the sale of a slave as a bride price. Totally went full False Dilemma with selling a virgin being preferable to sleeping around with an STD infected whore. Totally ignored the (now completely relevant) fact that in the Torah, a woman who is not a virgin when she is married gets bleeping stoned to death . There are so many errors, fallacies and moral outrages in that one post that I think you have singlehandedly validated everything my thread title promises. I shudder at the thought of you having a daughter if you think the verses we're discussing describe a moral way to treat her.

Jack Crawford would have been a good one for a reverse clue. The other two names would have been Scott Glenn and Dennis Farina. Neither of them ever played Judah Iscariot. But Harvey Keitel did.

Nope. White guy. VERY well known.

One more time: when my employer has the right to keep my wife and son from me unless I agree to be an employee for life and have an awl driven through my ear to prove it, MAYBE I'll concede our employers own us rather than merely purchase our work product. This is no longer a serious conversation. Defending the selling of daughters and saying it's not slavery ... just WOW.

I stopped reading when he defended selling your daughter into slavery and claimed women have more rights than men. Maybe he is not more moral than Yahweh. But decent people are. I am honestly shocked. Define owned. Please.

I'd love to see my employer keep me from my wife and kids until I sign a contract vowing to be a lifetime employee. I see nothing honest about equating employment with being owned. Rather, I see a desperate effort to deny that this ghastly practice was approved by Yahweh. I know people who've practiced yoga for a decade who cannot do a better job of bending over backwards.