Posted on 07/31/2010 6:26:07 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
A document written on two cuneiform tablets around the time of the patriarch Abraham, containing a law code in a style and language similar to parts of the famous Code of Hammurabi, has been discovered for the first time in an Israeli archeological dig.
The code, dating from the Middle Bronze Age in the 18th and 17th centuries BCE, was found at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s excavations this summer at Hazor National Park in the North. However, it has not yet been determined whether the document was written at Hazor – where a school for scribes was located in ancient times, or brought from elsewhere, said Prof. Wayne Horowitz of the HU Institute of Archeology.
Horowitz, who heads a team that is preparing the Hazor law code fragments for publication in book form, said this week that the discovery opened an interesting avenue for possible further investigation of a connection between biblical law and the Code of Hammurabi.
The Hazor excavations – known as the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in memory of Israeli archeologist and politician Prof. Yigael Yadin – are being held under the direction of Horowitz’s colleagues Prof. Amnon Ben-Tor and Dr. Sharon Zuckerman. Yadin directed previous excavations at the site in the 1950s and 1960s and found numerous documents in the palace area.
(Excerpt) Read more at jpost.com ...
Without defending Islam, which inferred that the Bible was the word of God, only to find out that illiterate Muhammad critically contradicted it, perhaps you have read that an “eye for an eye” was a restriction of justice, rather than 2 eyes, etc., for an eye.
There is also the issue of reading a higher standard of morality later made possible into a different era where more basic means of justice were needed.
Not to say that what liberalism advocates represents that higher standard, as while the strict morality of the Bible worked to save lives, the anti-Christ revolution of moral rebellion which began to be most pronounced in the 1960’s, has has and is costing America mightily in souls, lives and money. http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/RevealingStatistics.html#Sec4
It’s one thing for a god to take the life of something that was created by that god. That is understandable.
The whole thing changes when innocent lives are ordered to be slaughtered by some supposed deity. Sorry, there is a gross violation of the Golden Rule here, and to rationalise and provide divine sanction to such vile acts is exactly what Islam does.
“Deuteronomy 22:30: A man shall not take his father’s wife, nor discover his father’s skirt.
They had cross-dressers in the 13th century BC?”
Solomon said a true thing when he sais, “there is nothing new under the sun.”
Hank
“What “context” exactly justifies the slaughter of children and infants, not to mention donkeys and asses?”
Exactly! Barbarism is barbarism, period.
Hank
“What “context” exactly justifies the slaughter of children and infants, not to mention donkeys and asses?”
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You two may find this helpful:
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Hard Sayings of the Old Testament
http://www.jimmyakin.org/2007/02/hard_sayings_of.html
The Golden Rule is older than the any religious text, and appears repeatedly in several distant and disparate civilisations, in antiquity.
Check your assumptions.
What you give with one hand, you take with the other. The issue then is, did God in fact order the extermination of an entire people, if rarely, due to their terminal moral degeneration (note that it is not seen that God ever did so simply because they worshipped false gods, but due to the iniquity that such was sanctioned), or did writers attribute Divine sanction to this action, ala Islam (and which even the RC commentators to the official Catholic Bible resort to).
Once you start sliding down that slope, then their is little stopping you, and the source ceases to have much authority, and thus it is a path which pro homosexuals travel.
However, that is why my first question was on authority, as unlike Islam, the God of the Bible did not just communicate by visions, etc., but abundantly manifested Himself by manifest miracles, in both the O.T. and the N.T., which served to establish His authority, and confirm His word and manifest His character (miracles were not just for show, but of mercy or justice). And He is still confirming His word, with signs of various types, (Mk. 16:20), though, as in Moses’ time, the devil, who seeks to operate at the same level as God, has his laying wonders.
As would be often declared in Israel, (Ps. 105; 106) so Nehemiah recalls of God, Thou “didst see the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and heardest their cry by the Red sea; {10} And showedst signs and wonders upon Pharaoh, and on all his servants, and on all the people of his land: for thou knewest that they dealt proudly against them. So didst thou get thee a name, as it is this day.”
“Thou camest down also upon mount Sinai, and spakest with them from heaven, and gavest them right judgments, and true laws, good statutes and commandments:” (Neh 9:9-10,13)
Moreover, the N.T. refers to such accounts as historical events, (Mt. 12:40; Acts 7; 2Cor. 11:3; 2Pet. 2:16; Rev. 12:9)
Islam, by contrast, has no such, outside of some notable military victories, but nothing on the order of what Israel has seen. And yet its reliance is on the arm and the mind of the flesh, not that of the Spirit of God, by which and essentially only by which, true Christianity has grown.
Thus, going by the Bible, the source of the accounts at issue, it is according to your first premise that is the reality, and a just, and merciful one.
In addition, even on a finite human level, do unto others” presumes a sound mind, and if i was Hitler, and would raise up a thousands years of thousands of disciples like me, and who would die like myself, unrepentant, then i should, if rational, favor my own destruction as well as those who would carry on my legacy. (Forbidden planet?)
Actually, not, or at least not the way it is presented in the Gospels. In most of these other cultures, it was presented in a negative format - "don't do unto others what you don't want them to do to you." The Gospel rendition turns it around to a positive injunction to do good, rather than merely refrain from doing harm.
It is typical for the uninformed to simply assume that Islam got its moral code from the Old Testament. Actually, it didn't. Islam's shari'a law is a direct descendant of the legal code of Justinian dating from the 6th century, which was in force in the ANE by virtue of Late Roman control over the area (you know, the people the Arabs kicked out when they took over). Justinian's code was modified by native Arabic traditions, and the Islamic fiqh gradually took its present form over a couple of centuries of development.
Even the Old Testament didn’t have women beated/ostracized when she was the victim of a rape. Also, I don’t recall anywhere in the Bible advocating suicide raids and using children and woman as combatants.
The OT has none of these for the simple reason that the OT legal code, as we find it dealing with interpersonal interactions and interactions between the individual and the community was intended to be both fair AND decisive. The "barbaric" eye for an eye routine was intended to stop the otherwise typical series of escalating retaliations from happening. In essence, it was intended to both punish the offender, AND keep the victim's extended family (his beit 'ab) from initiating a cycle of violence that could eventually result in widespread wars between entire tribes (as often happened in other Semitic tribal groups such as the pre-Islamic Arabs).
I'm not sure I really agree with the proposition that eye for an eye and so forth is "barbaric." After all, we in the USA still practice "life for a life" (or at least, we do in theory). Most everybody understands that it is fair and just that if somebody intentionally murders somebody else, then that person has forfeited their own life, and can be liable to judicial execution. The only ones who don't understand this principle are the insipidly stupid among us, the sort of people who think that child rapists are just "misunderstood" and "need guidance," rather than serious punishment.
If we actually practiced "eye for an eye" in this country, I can guarantee you that we would not see the crime problem in this country that we have. And what, really, is barbaric? Putting somebody's eye out when they intentionally put out somebody else's, or following the route that our current criminal justice system pursues, which is to house such people (at tremendous taxpayer's expense) among other criminals, from whom they can learn to be better, deadlier, more violent criminals, and then releasing them back into society a few years later so they can prey on more innocent victims.
THAT is barbaric.
Such questions are typically asked by those who spend too much time reading second-rate "freethinker" websites, and not enough time actually educating themselves about the issues of which they speak.
“It is typical for the uninformed to simply assume that Islam got its moral code from the Old Testament. Actually, it didn’t. Islam’s shari’a law is a direct descendant of the legal code of Justinian dating from the 6th century ...”
Perhaps someone else did, but I said nothing about sharia law. I said most of the Koran is stolen from or corruptions of Biblical teaching. I’m sure Abraham is not mention in Justinian’s legal code.
“If we actually practiced “eye for an eye” in this country, I can guarantee you that we would not see the crime problem ...”
Why not just draw and quarter criminals, or burn them at the stake—practices Christianity has employed from occasionally in the past. I’m sure that would reduce crime as well.
There has always been a vicious barbaric streak in the Judeao-Christian heritage that makes its appearance from time to time. I see it’s still there.
Hank
“Such questions are typically asked by those who spend too much time reading second-rate “freethinker” websites, and not enough time actually educating themselves about the issues of which they speak.”
There you go. Insults and ad hominem trump rational answers every time—especially when you don’t have one—a rational answer that is.
Hank
Hmmm... maybe a case of pearls before swine.
Perhaps you might consider that the poster already had received a rational response to an attack on either the character of the Bible or that of God Himself. Ad hominems are not out of place, except as a substitute for lack of valid reproof, and the TQC’s observation has substance.
Quality responses as usual, thank God, and another link within the one you posted deals more with the Amalekites. http://www.christian-thinktank.com/rbutcher1.html
Immaterial. It works either ways. The point is that it existed at all.
Aside from the authority issue i dealt with in #20 and #28, and its corruptions of Biblical morality, additional problems with Islam are that it is suited for a 7th century theocracy, and the closest thing to a new covenant is seen in his premedenic revelations, which came when Muhammad was in the minority.
In addition, unlike the Bible with its extensive historical context and theological treatises, the Qur’an - which is smaller than the entire New Testament - critically lacks such, and with the Hadith, can more easily allow a Bin Laden to justify making war with the unbelievers all the religion of the land of of Allah, rather than peaceful coexistence.
As for your retort, “Why not just draw and quarter criminals,” and indiscriminately i assume, the why is what TQC referred to, because the command limits recompense, while it also governs the type of punishment.
And the death penalty does work as a deterrent, which is why AIDS is not even worse, but with over half a million Americans dead because of it, and at least 1 out 4 infected with an STD, and other costs of the new morality quantified here, http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/RevealingStatistics.htm, i think the moral laws of the Bible are looking better all the time.
As regards the “vicious barbaric streak in the Judeao-Christian heritage”, if that refers to the use of the sword of men to rule over those without, and to suppress her enemies, or even discipline her members, then that is contrary to the New Testament.
“Perhaps you might consider that the poster already had received a rational response to an attack on either the character of the Bible or that of God Himself. Ad hominems are not out of place, except as a substitute for lack of valid reproof, and the TQC’s observation has substance.”
I have not attacked either the Bible or anyone’s God, unless you think quoting the Bible is an attack on it, or commenting on the obvious nature of the text quoted.
I have no animosity at all toward religion, but I have a profound allegiance to the truth and reason, which is the only thing I ever fight for. What other’s believe does me no harm, and if it helps them, I’m all for it. Only when someone wishes to force their beliefs on me or anyone else would I object.
I am quite familiar with all of Christian’s “explanations” of the passages quoted (which are rationalizations to me, but I’m not interested in convincing anyone else to my view).
Ad hominem is a fallacious means of argument and is always an admission of faulty reasoning and is always wrong.
http://usabig.com/iindv/articles_stand/perm/fallacies.php#adhom
Most people do not understand the difference between a well deserved insult and ad hominem. An insult is not an ad hominem, only repudiating the character or intelligence of an arguer, with the intention of repudiating his argument thereby, is an ad hominem.
I appreciate it when someone can make a well deserved insult, but ad hominem is just ignorance.
By the way, I appreciate your sincere and honest arguments that have been without ranker—thank you.
Hank
I appreciate your effort at trying to explain to me why it was okay for the children to be slaughtered in that manner, but divine manifestation or not, why couldn’t they have been eliminated just the way they various other places of immorality were zapped out of existence. Such an act would reinforce the authority of the divine entity’s sovereignty, and wouldn’t require the people to be the surrogate for the same. I shudder to imagine how it must have affected the people, to hack off at children and infants, in mass, like that. It would harden any heart to beyond the point of repair. It is plainly vile and contradicts everything that the New Testament is about.
The moral flaw which the others and I are unable to assimilate, is exactly the above. For the divine to be giving the authority to take life on such a massive scale, and that too when the victims are deliberately named - the children and infants - arouses suspicion in anyone with a rational mind.
Your justification is basically that the divine entity presented itself to the people in a very “real” sense. The only problem with that is you are resorting to the words of the source to justify the source. To that end, it requires blind faith, and its understandable.
However, I would have wished for a deeper justification than that. I tried to peruse through the other link that was posted in response, but all I got was evasive non-reasoning, coupled with this standard strategy: “Amalakites were vile, they were evil!... etc., so all had to be exterminated!”
But children and infants? Animals, too? There has got to be better explanations than all these.
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