Deut. 22:The Bible cannot be a divinely inspired moral guide

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Expand view Topic review: Deut. 22:The Bible cannot be a divinely inspired moral guide

Re: Deut. 22:The Bible cannot be a divinely inspired moral g

Post by jimwalton » Mon Jun 25, 2018 11:59 am

> Honestly, you're inferring so many things I don't see any scriptural support for at all

I don't know what specifically you are referring to here. Most of what I said is that the law of Moses is casuistic. This comes from OT scholars like John Walton, Jacob Milgrom, Keil & Delitzsch, and Brevard Childs.

> I'm dumbfounded by the assertion that "they are to be put to death" is code for "they are to be shamed, forced to marry a woman, or excommunicated."

I didn't claim it was "code" at all. I fear you've missed the point. Case law gives hypothetical situations to guide judges in how to render verdicts and issue sentences. Judges discern the principles, evaluate the evidence, calculate the threat to the community, and render what they consider to be a fair verdict and sentence. Even in our country and culture murder was for many years considered to be a capital crime, but not every murderer was executed. The judges were allowed to imprison for life if they wanted, for instance (still "taking their life" away, so to speak). The judges could even set them free later if they wanted, if they felt the perpetrator had been reformed (as we witnessed Leslie Van Houten, from Charles Manson's group, paroled). This was also the case in ancient Israel. "They are to be put to death" isn't code for anything else. It's case law.

Re: Deut. 22:The Bible cannot be a divinely inspired moral g

Post by Chill Out » Thu May 31, 2018 10:33 pm

Honestly, you're inferring so many things I don't see any scriptural support for at all, that I have no idea what to say. I'm dumbfounded by the assertion that "they are to be put to death" is code for "they are to be shamed, forced to marry a woman, or excommunicated."

Re: Deut. 22:The Bible cannot be a divinely inspired moral g

Post by jimwalton » Thu May 31, 2018 3:04 pm

> Casuistic, apodictic, and Lev. 20.13

All of the law of Moses (Ex, Lev, Dt) lie solidly in the camp of casuistic law. The "Book of the Covenant" (Ex. 21.1-23.19) is probably the oldest example of casuistic law in the Bible. They are laws, for sure, but they anticipate a wide range of life situations. they regulate business, marriage practice, and personal responsibility, but all from the worldview of casuistry. While the text certainly seems to be making rules, they are always in the context of case law, not apodictic commands. Even what we call "The Ten Commandments" are not viewed that way in the Bible. In the Bible they are called the 10 words. The tone of the Mosaic law has to be seen in its cultural context and in their worldview, which was that they were principles, not orders. As I said, they are not legislation, but legal wisdom.

Regarding Lev. 20.13, an ancient judge would see very clearly the intent behind the law, but would have the judicial freedom to do what he deemed appropriate. We see the same kind of thing in Matthew 1.18-19. Even though the prescribed penalty for adultery was death by stoning, Joseph "had in mind to divorce her quietly." And that was his prerogative. They understood the law to be casuistic.

The biblical ban on homosexual acts must be considered in the context of all other forbidden behaviors.

> Your position seems to be that the above isn't a moral command that must be obeyed.

That is correct. This command would be what was considered to be the fullest extent of the law, but the judge was able to render his own sentence. You see, the mindset of the ancient world was completely different than ours. They thought in terms of order, disorder, and non-order. We think in terms of science and math. They thought in terms of honor and shame. We think in terms of guilt and blame.

> What is the case law interpretation of this verse?

In Israelite society, the concerns were order vs. disorder, honor vs. shame, the covenant, and the family/clan. Their judgments would come against what would defile the people and land, thus repudiating the covenant and forcing God to withdraw his presence. Homosexuality would be treated with intolerance because it was viewed as undermining the family (and thus the community), and it jeopardized the presence of God, as did adultery. My guess is that a person would be shamed into keeping his gayness to himself, and that person would even be married off to a woman in the community. If he refused that, my guess is that he would be excommunicated and expelled from the community and clan and sent down the road. In that way he would become "dead" to the clan.

> Can you provide an example of when homosexuality was to be punished with death and when it wasn't?

As I mentioned, we have no record that anyone was ever killed for it.

> You seem to be saying that the morality of killing gay people is dependent on the culture you're in. In Israel's culture at the time it was moral, but in other cultures and time periods it is immoral. I don't know how else to read that, so please let me know what you think.

I guess I'd agree with this, but I'm always reticent to let other people put words in my mouth. It almost always gets me in trouble. In Israel homosexuality was a capital crime, yes, and the laws of Israel apply to no one else anywhere else in any other time.

Re: Deut. 22:The Bible cannot be a divinely inspired moral g

Post by Chill Out » Thu May 31, 2018 1:56 pm

> The Levitical text is casuistic law (case law of hypothetic examples), not apodictic law (inviolable commands). The law codes of the Torah (Pentateuch) are not lists of God's mandatory moral commands or lists of rules to be obeyed.

Leviticus 20:13 "If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

Your position seems to be that the above isn't a moral command that must be obeyed. The prima facie interpretation of this verse would be "apply this punishment for this crime." What is the case law interpretation of this verse? Were the Israelites free to allow homosexuality under certain circumstances? Can you provide an example of when homosexuality was to be punished with death and when it wasn't?

> Also, those laws were for Israel in the time of their theocracy and do not apply to any other culture or any other time.

Let me clarify that I'm not asking you whether you think the OT laws should be instated in today's culture. I'm asking you whether killing gay people is moral. You seem to be saying that the morality of killing gay people is dependent on the culture you're in. In Israel's culture at the time it was moral, but in other cultures and time periods it is immoral. I don't know how else to read that, so please let me know what you think.

Re: Deut. 22:The Bible cannot be a divinely inspired moral g

Post by jimwalton » Wed May 30, 2018 6:30 pm

> but it seems like you're claiming that gay humans were somehow fundamentally different several hundred or thousand years ago and didn't desire love and such relationships never happened.

What I'm saying is that on the basis of my research it seems that long-term love relationships between gay men were neither part of their practice nor part of their worldview. I haven't come across evidence of it.

> I think the rest of your argument boils down to "killing gay people is moral because my holy book says it is" and then you provide some personal interpretations of how you feel that men and women complement each other better than men/men or women/women.

Oh, no, no, that's not fair. I do everything possible to research the culture and the biblical text to determine not only what it says (letter) but what it means (principles, themes, reasons).

The Levitical text is casuistic law case law of hypothetic examples), not apodictic law (inviolable commands). The law codes of the Torah (Pentateuch) are not lists of God's mandatory moral commands or lists of rules to be obeyed. They are not legislation. It is better to view them as legal wisdom, to give judges ideas about how to handle particular kinds of cases. They are therefore not intended to be read as rules, but as wisdom to circumscribe the bounds of civil, legal, and ritual order. They are hypothetical examples to illustrate underlying principles (much as we use word problems to teach math). The purpose is not to teach about trains, buildings, running, or apples, but to learn trigonometry.

But the underlying principles are not moral commands either. It is wisdom to guide, not a list to identify a moral code. When fans read the baseball rulebook, it's not to follow them but to understand what is happening as they watch the game. We don't expect a referee to show up at the house to penalize spectators; we also should not expect God to show up handing out judgments on individuals or institutions because they have not behaved according to the principles that were set down for Israel. This legal wisdom was to shape Israelite society, not to provide a set of instructions by which anyone in any place or time can construct God's ideal society.

There is no, I repeat, NO, detailed scene of stoning to death in any ancient literature. The only incident recorded in the Old Testament is in Numbers 15.36. If the ancients didn't kill gays, then I'm not arguing that it's OK to kill gay people because my holy book says it is. Also, those laws were for Israel in the time of their theocracy and do not apply to any other culture or any other time. So, please, that's not what my argument boils down to.

> you provide some personal interpretations of how you feel that men and women complement each other better than men/men or women/women.

The argument of complementarity is not an argument the Bible makes. We are not told why homosexuality (or adultery, or incest, or any other sin) is regarded as an abomination. We are left to speculate. All we know is that they were considered to not conform to the character of God. I used the word "possibly" to couch my statement. It's not just "some personal interpretations." Deep study has been made on this subject in the Bible.

>Let's imagine some third party is trying to convince the two of us that his god is true and is perfectly moral, but that his god commands that any married couple who chooses not to have children should be executed. When we point out that there's no moral justification for this, he could simply point to his holy book that contains the command and explain how having children is his god's divine plan. Having children reflects the image of his god and parents/children complement each other spiritually, intellectually, and morally. We both (I assume) would find that to be utterly insufficient justification for killing another human.

Please. I didn't go here. I feel unfairly pigeon-holed. Civil law (the capital crimes) was intended for Israel as a theocratic state. When Israel/Judah fell (586 BC), the civil law became defunct with it. The civil law was not intended to be carried out by every government in history. It is no longer something secular governments are responsible to carry out, or that Christians would even consider carrying out.

The NT doesn't have the job of either affirming or disaffirming the information from the OT. The NT is there to reveal Christ, and therefore it's not a criteria for determining OT law. The more pertinent question is "What is the nature of the OT law?" First of all, it's pertinent to ancient law. Secondly, it's situated in the old covenant, and pertains to that covenant. It's telling how Israel should act based on the culture of the day. Third, it pertains to sacred space. We can't extract the law from those contexts. Just because it's in the OT doesn't mean it's a law for all time. It doesn't legislate for us.

Re: Deut. 22:The Bible cannot be a divinely inspired moral g

Post by Chill Out » Wed May 30, 2018 6:05 pm

First off, I just wanted to say I appreciate the amount of research you're willing to put into the discussion.

> From my reading I gather that long-term, intimate homosexual relationships were unheard of in the ancient world.

I'll grant you that ancient writings may not attest to many (or any) such relationships, but it seems like you're claiming that gay humans were somehow fundamentally different several hundred or thousand years ago and didn't desire love and such relationships never happened.

I think the rest of your argument boils down to "killing gay people is moral because my holy book says it is" and then you provide some personal interpretations of how you feel that men and women complement each other better than men/men or women/women.

Let's imagine some third party is trying to convince the two of us that his god is true and is perfectly moral, but that his god commands that any married couple who chooses not to have children should be executed. When we point out that there's no moral justification for this, he could simply point to his holy book that contains the command and explain how having children is his god's divine plan. Having children reflects the image of his god and parents/children complement each other spiritually, intellectually, and morally. We both (I assume) would find that to be utterly insufficient justification for killing another human.

Re: Deut. 22:The Bible cannot be a divinely inspired moral g

Post by jimwalton » Tue May 29, 2018 3:10 pm

> Can you tell me how you quantified that pederasty "may have been the majority" of homosexual relations in history?

Quantification is difficult. From my reading I gather that long-term, intimate homosexual relationships were unheard of in the ancient world. Particularly in Greco-Rome it was an expression of how to show power over another individual: whether slaves, children, women, or another man.

> Because ancient sources show that ancient people also had biases against it (at least for the receiving party)

In many cultures of the ancient Near East, homosexual expression was accepted. Each culture had some societal rules about it; the Israelites were one of the few to ban it altogether. In the ANE, it wasn't as much social stigma against it. It was common and expected practice. There's no evidence of which I'm aware of anyone writing or claiming that they wanted a long-term gay relationship. That doesn't seem to have been part of their culture. Mesopotamian scholar Jean Bottero writes that when the Mesopotamians write about sexual abilities and prowess, "We find not the slightest declaration of love, no effusion or sentiment or even tenderness. Such impulses of the heart … are suggested rather than openly expressed." If you're aware of such writing, I'd be more than glad to add it to my database of information on the subject.

For instance, from the Summa alu:

- If a man copulates with his equal from the rear, he becomes the leader among his peers and brothers.
- If a man yearns to express his manhood while in prison and thus, like a male cult-prostitute, mating with men becomes his desire, he will experience evil.
- If a man copulates with an assinnu [a male cult-prostitute], trouble will leave him (?).
- If a man copulates with a gerseqqu [a male courtier, or royal attendant], worry will possess him for a whole year but will then leave him.
- If a man copulates with a house-born slave, a hard destiny will befall him.

That different kinds of homosexual relationships will occur is taken for granted. There doesn't seem to be any social stigma. what mattered was the role and status of the partner, especially the passive partner.

In the temples, Norman Sussman explains that "male and female prostitutes, serving temporarily or permanently and performing heterosexual, homosexual, oral-genital, bestial, and other forms of sexual activities, dispensed their [sexual] favors on behalf of the temple. The prostitute and the client acted as surrogates for the deities."

> And of course none of this addresses gay women. Were lesbians primarily pederasts and rapists as well?

You're right. Lesbianism doesn't really show up much of anywhere in ancient writings. It seems, from all we know, to have been a guy thing. One scholar writes that lesbian love is seldom mentioned because of the low social status of women in ancient times. Again, I'm glad to be corrected. I'm always after a better picture.

> At what point in history did gay people switch over from being primarily rapists and pederasts to being people in regular consensual relationships as we see today?

Good question. I don't know the answer.

> And you didn't provide a justification for killing gay people who aren't rapists/pederasts.

You're probably referring to Leviticus 20.13. I'll assume you're aware that many actions of the community, both sexual and not, were punishable by death in Lev. 20 (child sacrifice, cursing parents, sexual sin). Jacob Milgrom, Jewish scholar, writes that "The biblical ban on homosexual acts must be considered in the context of all other forbidden behaviors of Lev. 18 & 20. Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that these regulations were binding only in Israel, but not in other countries. It is illegitimate to apply these prohibitions on a universal scale. However, it cannot be argued on the basis of perorations (18.1-4, 24-30; 20.22-26) that their purpose was solely to distinguish Israel from the nations. Note that lesbianism, though prevalent and known, was not banned."

Capital crimes in Lev. 20 are idolatry (which was perceived as religious prostitution), child sacrifice (perceived as murder), treating parents with contempt (perceived as an act of treason), and many various sexual sins (perceived as making the persons and the land unclean, and therefore a voiding of the covenant). Other sins resulted in being "cut off".

These sexual sins were labeled as "perversion" (v. 12) and "detestable", meaning they did not conform to the holy nature of God, nor did they contribute to the health, wholeness, and purity of the elect community. Our lives are supposed to reflect the character and nature of God. In Genesis 1.27 we are told that when God created "in his own image," the result was "male and female." Something about the differences between them, and yet them being one seem to be behind the meaning, possibly reflecting something about the Trinitarian nature of God: different, and yet one. The male and female complement each other physically, as well as spiritually, intellectually, and morally. There is something about heterosexuality and sexual differentiation that is "the image of God." Ultimately, we do not reflect God's image on our own, but in relationship and community, and that relationship is actually spelled out for us: male and female.

The ubiquitous image throughout Scripture of a lost relationship to God is a plethora of sexual metaphors, but primarily adultery and prostitution. Sexual "deviance" (anything other than a marriage relationship between a man and woman) is used as "Poster Boy #1" that something is wrong spiritually.

Notice that all bans here are against males. The text is talking about heterosexuals performing homosexual acts. The rationale here is to honor procreation. It’s about family and community, but also about purity before God.

The violation of sexual codes (adultery, incest, homosexuality, bestiality) is placed on a par with idolatry in this law code and thus requires the sentence of death. Both defile persons and the land and cannot be tolerated. Crimes of this nature are also punishable in Hammurabi's Code (adultery requires trial by ordeal in #129 and 132; rape is a capital crime in #130; incest is punished by exile in #154), the Middle Assyrian Laws (homosexuality punished by castration in #20), and the Hittite Laws (bestiality with pigs or dogs punished by death in #199). In the Hittite treaty between Shuppiluliuma and Huqqana, the latter is charged not to take his sister or cousin sexually because among the Hittites people are put to death for such behavior. Such inhibitions, however, were certainly not universal. In the Persian period, for instance, men were encouraged to marry their sisters, daughters, or mother as acts of piety. In Israelite practice, however, these were all believed to undermine the family which was the foundational element of Israelite society. To undermine the family was to undermine the covenant.

Re: Deut. 22:The Bible cannot be a divinely inspired moral g

Post by Chill Out » Tue May 29, 2018 2:25 pm

Can you tell me how you quantified that pederasty "may have been the majority" of homosexual relations in history? Because ancient sources show that ancient people also had biases against it (at least for the receiving party)? Do you think in the face of this social stigma, we should expect to see ancient sources from gay writers proudly professing their consensual love for other men? Less than a century ago in the U.S. homosexuality was seen as a mental disorder and they were often slandered as pederasts as you are now doing.

And of course none of this addresses gay women. Were lesbians primarily pederasts and rapists as well? At what point in history did gay people switch over from being primarily rapists and pederasts to being people in regular consensual relationships as we see today?

And you didn't provide a justification for killing gay people who aren't rapists/pederasts.

The rest of your post seems to just be saying "No, you're wrong," so I'll leave it alone.

Re: Deut. 22:The Bible cannot be a divinely inspired moral g

Post by jimwalton » Sun May 27, 2018 5:00 pm

> I'm going to need sources with statistics on that claim if you want me to take it seriously.

From http://epistle.us/hbarticles/neareast.html, we can see that homosexuality in the world of the ancient Near East was not totally pederastic, though that may have been a majority of it. It, along with heterosexual prostitution, was part of their pagan religious system, as it was in the days of the NT as well (notably, but not exclusively, Corinth). A third expression of homosexuality seems to have been homosexual relationships between consenting adults by choice. According to the research, the end of that was not a marriage relationship, or even an enduring one, but merely another way to express one’s affections.

It is in this cultural context that Leviticus was written, where God is defining his own holiness and making an appeal to the holiness of those who claim his name (Lev. 11.44-45). Chapters 18-22 are written to show that because of God's holy nature, there are many behaviors that break fellowship with Him. Homosexual behavior is one of them. It is "detestable". Why? There is no immediate explanation, but the tenor and teachings of the Pentateuch gives us clues. The lives of God's people are supposed to imitate and reflect the character and nature of God: that we must always be attentive to holiness, whether physical, ritual, or moral.

In Romans 1.24-28, Paul speaks of homosexual "indecency." Sarah Ruden, an expert is Greek and Roman literature (B.A. from Univ. of Michigan, M.A. at Johns Hopkins, PhD from Harvard, now a research fellow at Yale Divinity School) says, "For more than 300 years before [Paul] was born, first the Greeks and then the Romans had ruled his home city of Tarsus and made it as similar to the cities of southern Europe as they could. But however much of the Greco-Roman worldview Paul might have adopted, what he heard at home and in the synagogue would not have led him to tolerate homosexuality. Jewish teaching was clear: homosexual acts were an abomination.

"But another teaching mandated circumcision for all males in God’s covenant. Paul put this aside; Judaism would not always hand down what Christianity would practice. Perhaps, in the matter of homosexuality, what he saw as a boy influenced him more than his tradition did. Among the female prostitutes on the streets, or in the windows or doorways of brothels, were males, on average a lot younger. At any slave auction he found himself watching, there might be attractive boys his own age knocked down to local pimps at high prices, to the sound of jokes about how much they would have to endure during their brief careers in order to be worth it. A pious Jewish family, as Paul's probably was, would not have condoned sexual abuse of any of its slaves, but he would know from his non-Jewish friends that household slaves normally were less respected as outlets for bodily functions than were the household toilets, and that a sanctioned role of slave boys was anal sex with free adults.

"Flagrant pedophiles might have pestered him and his friends on the way to and from school, offered friendship, offered tutoring, offered athletic training, offered money or gifts. But adults he trusted would have told him that even any flirting could ruin his reputation, and at worst get him officially classed as a male prostitute, with the loss of all of his civic rights. After his conversion, as he preached what Jesus meant for human society, he wasn’t going to let anyone believe that it included any of this.

"The Roman poet Martial uses 'to be cut to pieces' as the ordinary term for 'to be the passive partner.' The Greeks and Romans thought that the active partner in homosexual intercourse used, humiliated, and physically and morally damaged the passive one. Heterosexual penetration could be harmless in the Christian community, in marriage; homosexual penetration could be harmless nowhere. There were no gay households; there were in fact no gay institutions or gay culture at all, in the sense of times or places in which it was mutually safe for men to have anal sex with one another.

"In 5th-century Athens (the gay paradise we hear of), one of the most common insults in comedy was 'having a loose anus,' meaning depraved—not just sexually, but generally.

"It was a system of ethics that locked people into this cruel regime, a regime which also included the erotic oppression of women. While Paul may seem to mention lesbianism, this was such a rare or little-noticed phenomenon in the ancient world that it is likely he instead means anal penetration of women by men. That did happen often, but men valued it less than penetration of boys: women were made to be penetrated anyway; a real man needed to transform an at least potentially active and powerful creature into a weak and inferior one.

"The Greeks and Romans even held homosexual rape to be divinely sanctioned.

"No wonder parents guarded their young sons doggedly. It was, for example, normal for a family of any standing to dedicate one slave to a son’s protection, especially on the otherwise unsupervised walk to and from school: this was the pedagogue, or 'child leader.' Since success with freeborn, citizen-class boys was rare, predators naturally turned to those with no protectors, young male slaves and prostitutes. Besides that of the pedagogue, another telling slave profession—perhaps only among Romans—was that of the deliciae ('pet') or concubines ('bedmate'), a slave boy whose main duty was passive anal sex with the master. The public acknowledged such a child's status, as well as his vulnerability to being retired at a young age. His retirement was not likely to be a happy one; he kept the stigma of passive sodomy, but he lost the protection of his close relationship to his master, while usually remaining bound to the same household and the other slaves with the accumulated grudges. They may have refused him, as he would have passed his 'boom,' even the status of a sexual plaything. (She continues her chapter with pages and pages of information.)

"Paul could have, like generations of Greek and Roman moralistic and cynical commentators, lit into passive homosexuality, into the victims. But in Romans 1 he makes no distinction between active and passive: the whole transaction is wrong. This is crucially indicated by his use of the Greek word for 'males,' arsenes, for everybody; he does not use the word for 'men.' The Classical and New Testament word for a socially acceptable, sexually functional man is aner. In traditional parlance, this could mean an active but never a passive homosexual. But Paul places on a par all the male participants in homosexual acts, emphasizing this in Romans 2.1 (which see), and clearly implying that they are all morally degraded and that they all become physically debilitated from the sex act with each other. Such effects were unheard of among the Greeks and Romans when it came to active homosexuals: these were thought only to draw their passive partners' moral and physical integrity into themselves.

"According to all of the evidence, Paul’s revolutionary message stuck. This may be in part because he told his audience a more resonant truth than that of sexual misconduct in itself. First look at what he immediately passes on to in Romans 1.28-2.1. I picture Paul flushed and sweating in his rage as he writes that everyone is responsible for what pederasty has made of society: especially those who, egging one another on in an insolent, boastful clique, damage others with active sodomy and then blame them. These acts are 'the very same things,' no matter who is doing what to whom. Compare the list of horrors in vv. 29ff to Gal. 5.16-21."

> I'm referring to the Flood, but I recognize some Christians don't believe the Flood literally happened.

I believe the Flood literally happened, but it wasn't global.

> There is also the wholesale slaughter of children when the Israelites conquered a town.

Actually there wasn't, but there isn't enough room on this post to go into it. It was warfare rhetoric, not what was actually done.

> This only applies to taking fellow Israelite men as slaves. I'd suggest reading Exodus 21 and Leviticus 25.

I've read them. Again, no room on this post. It would take the character limit all by itself.

> Dt. 22.21: If she can't prove her virginity (her innocence), she is stoned. That's actually guilty until proven innocent.

You've misread the text. Vv. 13-14 start off with a false and slanderous accusation. In v. 15 evidence is provided, and the truth starts to come out (16). A counter accusation of slander is offered (17). When the evidence is presented (17), the slanderous man with the false accusation is punished, and the girl's reputation is both protected and vindicated. If, however, there is no evidence or testimony to counter the accusation, then the girl is punished for her promiscuity.

> All of your arguments against the passage being read as-is can be seen as: "The inspired word of God is confusing if taken at face value and following it as it is written, without inserting our own caveats and qualifiers, would be a mistake."

What I'm saying is that we shouldn't be satisfied to read the Bible superficially.

Re: Deut. 22:The Bible cannot be a divinely inspired moral g

Post by Chill Out » Sun May 27, 2018 4:52 pm

> In the ancient world homosexual expression was mostly rape and pederasty

I'm going to need sources with statistics on that claim if you want me to take it seriously. And even if that were true, there should be laws against rape/pederasty and not homosexuality. You went on to state that different cultures had different moral norms and views of survival and community. I didn't see a justification for murdering homosexuals in there though.

>Who's drowning babies?

I'm referring to the Flood, but I recognize some Christians don't believe the Flood literally happened. There is also the wholesale slaughter of children when the Israelites conquered a town.

> The Bible never condones slavery... slavery in the ancient world was debt slavery or corvee labor, not the chattel slavery of the later Greco-Roman world or the Colonial West. Slavery in the ancient Near East was much more like our employment

This only applies to taking fellow Israelite men as slaves. I'd suggest reading Exodus 21 and Leviticus 25. You could sell your Israelite daughter and she would not be allowed to go free (Exodus 21:7). Foreigners could be bought and kept as slaves for life (Leviticus 25:44-46). The children of slaves would also become slaves (Exodus 21:4). It was legal to savagely beat your slaves as long as they didn't die (Exodus 21:21).

> It's not a totally useless test...

A person can obviously be a virgin without an intact hymen, can have sex without rupturing the hymen, or can rupture their hymen without any blood getting on any particular sheet.

In other words, virginity can result in either a bloody sheet or clean sheet and non-virginity can result in either a bloody sheet or clean sheet. Can you explain how to differentiate between a clean sheet resulting from virginity and a clean sheet resulting from non-virginity?

> The principles are solid: innocent until proved guilty...

Deut 22:21 "If, however... no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found... the men of her town shall stone her to death."
If she can't prove her virginity (her innocence), she is stoned. That's actually guilty until proven innocent.

> [The bloody sheet] was used as evidence, but it wasn't the only evidence...
> I don't have any [other methods of proving virginity].

I'll just leave your two statements next to each other here.

All of your arguments against the passage being read as-is can be seen as: "The inspired word of God is confusing if taken at face value and following it as it is written, without inserting our own caveats and qualifiers, would be a mistake."

Let's also consider this: If you or I were to write down one single example to be given to all mankind for how to determine whether a woman should be killed for her lack of virginity, we would say "Well, a bloody sheet is actually an unreliable indicator so I better leave that out and go with some better example." And you and I are just regular, fallible humans. I have higher expectations for an omniscient god.

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