starling

There have been a few brave souls who still try to draw moral support from Moses's teachings (presupposed to be the word of God), and find interpretations of Leviticus 17 that don't condemn everyone and their mother who lies with uh... everyone and their mother. I offer my praise to their efforts, and their successful establishment of a Xian belief system that isn't against unusual sexual relationships.

...but what about Leviticus 20? I was flipping through Leviticus today (just a little catharsis for being forced to watch The Ten Commandments yesterday by my kid brother) and I went a few chapters past 17, reaching as I said chapter 20. I've got the NRSV bible, which I've heard is an okay translation from the Hebrew, but in very clear and graphically violent terms, it states exactly what is to be done with all the people mentioned in Leviticus 17.

Basically, burn them all to death. Just going to see a medium or magician gets you excommunicated, the magician themself gets burned to death. Both parties who commit adultery get put to death. Gay men get put to death. (As the phrase continues "their blood is upon them." Does that mean it's their fault they got murdered by their kindly, devout neighbors?) Lessee... anyone boinking sheep gets offed, and not just that the animal gets killed too. As for family relations, I think if you lie with your brothers sister, mother, mother's daughter, daughter's... why didn't they just say cousin or something... then both you and your relative get put to death. You get exiled from seeing your sister naked, and vice versa. If you have sex with someone and their mother, it's the pre-funeral pyre for you.

Interestingly enough, they phrase lying with someone's wife as a homosexual act ("Then you have uncovered his nakedness"). I guess since women are considered property, just a bit lower than livestock, then it really is an act of gayness to mess with the equivalent of somebody's blow-up doll (forgetting that she's an actual living person of course).

Gah, the bible is pretty holey (holy! I meant holy, really.) but Leviticus is a chapter I honestly and truly detest. All these killings and plagues and punishements and horrors, I think the biggest lesson I get from that story is that I'm very very grateful Moses's god isn't still around. I hate to think Moses lied about seeing God, and was just a hateful man trying to free his enslaved people, but lost in his own hatred and pessimism, desperately trying to find ways to condemn and hate people.

Granted, back then there was disease and famine, and every virile woman had to be operating those reproductive factories around the clock not to get wiped out as a people, but the consequences of all those people followers of the Bible have to burn and kill have haunted us in modern times with horrors such as Nazi germany, the Salem witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition, the KKK.... yeah.

So how does a bible following Xian interpet Leviticus 20? Is there some way to understand that wording without having to go burn and kill adulterers, homosexuals, and bestialists? I mean, sure I might not agree with what they're doing, but I don't really want to take a torch to them. Nor do I want my Xian neighbors to take a torch to them, but, according to Leviticus aren't all Jews and Christian communities required to murder people like that? Seems pretty hard to interpret differently to me.

Al Kafirun

Xtians use to bark at me, 'why do you hate God?' And I'd reply, 'I don't hate God... I just...' But to be truly honest, if that's God, then I hate God. And I'd glady bash his big ugly Hebrew head open with a rock and shit into his skull if I thought it even remotely existed in any form.

paradigm9

i think in a few more lines it harps on not eating fish without scales...and somewhere near lev12 or so no 2 crops in the same field.

women who are menstrating are an abomination and if they enter the church...the shit hits the fan!

talk about being forced to hate your body for natural processes that are responsible for spawning LIFE of all things

TrueQ

Yeah there's a part in there that declares shellfish an 'abomination' and about half of a chapter is devoted to proper real estate sales procedure. Not really following all of those rules with the same gusto eh?

Javaman

Although the standard response to this has to do with Jesus "fulfilling the law", I wonder what Romans is saying. I'm no Biblical scholar so I need help but this passage seems to say that if you know of The Law (Mosaic/Levitican), you shall be punished according to it. Or have I got that all wrong?

Romans 2
12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.
13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.

So, does this cause problems for those that don't follow? I would have thought that a good Christian would try to follow all of God's laws but could be forgiven for not doing so by Jesus... but not all at once! You should still try to be good according to The Law.

Calzaer

If a woman is menstrating, that means she's not pregnant. And since it's ALWAYS a woman's fault for not being pregnant, it means she's slacking off and not fulfilling her function. Which means she's an abomination and therefore unclean.

Al Kafirun

There's no good explanation for why Christians choose to follow one law and ignore the other. Actually, I take that back. They choose the ones they want to flog and then ignore the ones that conflict with their personal yin.

'God hates fags, now hand me that cheese-burger while I yank on my foreskin.'

Javaman

So, am I reading Romans correctly? The Law should still bind?

Boomeister

Paul (author of Romans) danced around this issue. Basically, he wanted Christians who were not originally Jews (for instance, gentiles from Rome) to not have to follow the old Jewish laws. He contradicted himself, but I think it depended on the audience. He was a Jew to the Jew and a Gentile to the Gentile.
So, I guess the Law would still bind, in Paul's eyes, if you were Jewish before converting to Christianity.
I think Peter had a "dream" or vision from God that it was okay to not have to eat Kosher...and I think that was for Christians of both camps (originally Jews and originally of the pagan, Roman influence).

Jesus, which I would think would be more of an authority than Paul and Peter (since he is supposedly God), stated that the Law (at least the 10 commandments) should be kept. Some can argue that he doesn't mean the old Leviticus laws. But then again, Jesus stated the Sabbath was made for man, rather than man made for the Sabbath. I think it's customary for many Christians (not all Christians, and not only Christians) to pick and choose what they want to believe in and rationalize why they don't follow some of the laws, even the big 10.



Boomeister

Javaman

Thanks, Boomeister. I'm still not sure if I'm making too big of a deal about this.
You'll get no argument from me there... and I doubt an argument from many here.