Yes, a lot of people will think hard before committing adultery.
Is it worth being stone to death.
As far as the Watchtower goes, how should an adulteress be punished?
by I_love_Jeff 23 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Cold Steel
It's like Clint Eastwood said, "There's nothin' wrong with stoning
someone...as long as it's the right person who gets stoned."
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Jeffro
KateWild:
IMO, the bible was written by men to control women, and the vulnerable.
The Bible was written by people who lived in a society that already took advantage of women and the vulnerable.
The Bible's attitudes towards women are a symptom of that culture, not the cause.
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Jeffro
I_love_Jeff:
Should we use Jesus' advice John 8:7 or God's advice Leviticus 20:10?
If it's a choice between only those two options, go with the fable attributed to Jesus.
Better still, how about people mind their own business.
The 'adulteress' and her husband can decide whether they want to remain in the relationship and get past the affair, or whether they would be better off divorcing. It's pathetic that in this day and age, individuals can be convinced by religious groups that their private actions need to be overseen by the local shaman.
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144001
A far more severe punishment than stoning an adulteress to death would be to compel her to have sex with each of the reptilian subhumans comprising the WTBTS' "governing body."
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JWdaughter
I would say the OT version because in the NT, John 8:7 has been removed.
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JWdaughter
I'm sorry, I mean really, they took it out of the Bible. They aren't the only bible version to do that in the NWT, btw. Just FYI.
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blondie
Bath-sheba was an adulteress but she wasn't put to death. Instead she married the King of Israel after the king had her husband killed and she was blessed with being mother to King Solomon.
She managed to sidestep the punishment for adulteresses under the Law, death.
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Cold Steel
Yes, the Bible was thought up by men who hated women, committed genocide and was bloodthirsty and capricious. It’s easy to write it off if you believe everything you read on atheistic websites. I don’t see many people who have thoroughly studied the law of Moses (which contains principles which are contained in the foundations of Greek democracy, Roman law and even our own republican form of government) who complain that it was too harsh. No system of rule is perfect, but the law of Moses was what the people needed at the time, was incredibly just and is easily misunderstood by people who take it superficially. As one professor put it, it’s not an eye for an eye, but the threat of an eye for an eye. Yes, parents had legal rights that included the threat of the death penalty for recalcitrant and rebellious children, but there’s not one record of a parent who actually had a child killed, and there was enough judicial oversight to make it virtually impossible. But the Lord wanted the threat there.
At the time the law was given, the Israelites were a fallen people who had lost much of their culture in Egypt. After the Egyptians enslaved them, they were quickly assimilated into that culture which, in the eyes of God, were profligate and degenerate, and they spent the next 40 years proving it. Even after they witnessed the miracles and saw the presence of God on the mount, when Moses gave them the opportunity to see God in all his glory, the people were terrified. They said, essentially, no, you and Aaron go. We’ll do what God tells you to! And this was after the rebellion and after the Lord had divided the people into those for and those against him. Then Moses ordered the Levites to slay the rebellious, even if they were personal friends or family members. Was this just? Well, I can’t see what was in their hearts so I can’t judge, but Yahweh always dealt justly with his people only to have them later turn him over to the Romans for crucifixion. When Moses went up the mountain, they rebelled. When he returned they threatened to kill him and Aaron but were themselves killed. Later, they allowed themselves to be seduced by the women of their enemies and take part in their degenerate worship of other gods in which they openly defied Moses and God. When one of the princes took one of these women into his tent, an Israelite priest rushed in and impaled them both. The Lord subsequently told Moses that that action prevented a punitive action by the Lord against the whole people, so it was a constant struggle.
The law itself was made to be lenient when the people were righteous. At night you could kill an intruder, but during the day you had to have a good reason or face the judges. Crops had to be left open so people who were hungry and had no money could take what they needed; and provisions were made to protect only some fig trees against birds so that birds could share the figs when they were hungry. There were limits on how much debt a person could go into and automatic celebrations in which the debt was forgiven. The people were also forbidden to deny a debt for fear that a coming celebration would cancel the debt; so it left a lot to the people to make it work, and the law made it clear that the Lord wanted compassion shown to one’s fellow man and to animals.
The law could be hard nosed at times, especially from a modern Western cultural standpoint, but some of the harsher penalties in the law were established because of the seriousness of the crimes in relationship to how easy they were to avoid. They also were rarely carried out over the years and, of course, weren’t applied to Bathsheba, who committed adultery with King David and later became the mother of Solomon.
In Jesus’ time, the law also had become corrupted in its application by countless rabbinical commentators who sought its application as a means of gaining power and thus to controlling the populace. Hence, these commentators and their teachers attracted the ire of the Son of God, who complained of its corruption.
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Pistoff
" The punishment ought to be the scorn of her family and the community, and nothing more than that."
? Wha? What about it's none of their business?
