Dharma

Moses was directed by God to kill all the first born non-Jewish male babies...

Abraham was directed by God ready and willing to kill his first born son.

So Moses and his God were baby killers...I wonder what the Bible thumping anti-abortionists would say to this-- I guess God says it's all right to kill babies and children AFTER they are born, just not before. :Cheeky:

John A. Broussard

Don't be so hard on god. Undoubtedly many of the women who were butchered at his command were also pregnant, so he really didn't distinguish between the born and the unborn.

Fair's fair.

Avatar

Oh, that makes it okay then.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

John A. Broussard

Inevitably this brings up the matter of free will. Persumably both Abraham and Moses had free will. So, if Moses had wanted to, he could have refrained from killing those babies.

Quit blaming god. You don't have to do what he tells you to do. Nor did Moses. It's a poor defense for a hit man to claim he was just following orders.

Anat

I don't think Moses would have blamed God. He would have taken pride for being able to follow God's instructions so accurately, regardless of his personal feelings towards his victims.

John A. Broussard

I suspect you're right. He would have said, "I was just following orders, and I'm proud of having followed them so well."

LiquidHAL

hard to reconcile the morality of past civilizations with our own. when tried by this light, most records of years past find themselves wanting in many respects, great and small. even the societal standards of no more than one or two generations past seem horrific when measured by our own ever-evolving sensibilities.

lee_merrill

The first question I would ask in reply is "Does God have the prerogative to determine the time and manner of a person's death?" The question here seems to essentially involve the question of whether God ever has a right to decree this.

2 Kings 5:7 As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, "Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life?"

Then a second question can be asked, "Does God involve people in carrying out his decisions?" We do see this in the Bible, with Abraham, and with the Israelites, now carrying out Hitler's orders was a war crime, but we must ask and answer the first question, before we can conclude that carrying out a judgment of death prescribed by God must be similar.

Regards,
Lee

Anat

Look at some discussions of the law of the Beautiful Captive Woman:
Beauty and a Beast?
How to Treat a Woman Right!

I don't know if these laws were ever in practice, as Deuteronomy was composed at the earliest in the late days of the kingdom of Judah, when it was declining, and the next Jewish battleground victories were under the Hasmoneans, but centuries later men who considered themselves to be civilised were debating under what conditions rape could be acceptable, because a book they considered holy dealt with the issue. For me this is a demonstration of the dangers of ascribing divine origin to words.

lee_merrill

Maybe some would insist that they first have a Hollywood moon ride? We have some odd ideas about love in our culture, it's not actually a feeling, or a flutter in the diaphragm.

But the limits of the laws were not always set at the actual boundary between sinning and not sinning, just as in some properties, there are fences outside the fences.

And the real boundary is not so much between actions, but between motives.

If the motive is love, that keeps the law, if it is not, that breaks it, says Paul the Jewish rabbi:

Romans 13:10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

So yes, the law forbids rape, and forcing a woman to be married to you just to suit you...

Regards,
Lee