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REAL PAGAN HOURS, MONOTHEISTS OUT
(lemmy.world)
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Ok wow. That is above and beyond, and downright fascinating as Hell (no pun intended).
This is the kind of stuff that blows me away, since modern Christianity (at least them Southern Baptists) seem to gloss over. My (lack of) religious beliefs would probably be a lot different if they taught all of this stuff and not that crap from the King James.
My favorite bit of absolute nonsense from a whole bunch of American Christian groups is that they developed their own theology to explain how/why abortion is evil.
Problem: The New Testament never mentions abortion. You cannot find a direct mention of it there, you have to go to extra biblical sources or non canonical writings from the first few centuries AD/CE.
Modern American Christian Theologians will say that it didn't need to be mentioned, because they just carried forward the common Jewish beliefs of the time.
But uh... most modern Jews believe that life begins at first breath, ie, birth, and generally do not have anywhere near as hard a line against abortion, and they mostly claim theological descendancy from those Jews the Christians are referring to.
Oh, and the Old Testament actually directly spells out when you are supposed to force a woman to miscarry, ie, perform an abortion.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%205%3A11-31&version=NIV
Basically the set up here is: What if a man suspects his wife cheated on him?
Well, you bring her before the priest, complete with proper offerings, and the priest concocts a potion of dust, holy water, (referred to as bitter water) and the ensuing ritual:
.. The priest then takes the ritual offerings, does some more steps with them in the ritual...
...
Yeah so basically the Bible, in the Old Testament, actually specifically ordains and condones abortion when a woman is suspected of infidelity.
Some will argue that this is a mistranslation and what is actually being described is uterine prolapse (which would almost certainly kill the woman), or that this is all metaphorical or something, that its too vague and only refers to an inflammation of the thigh or belly...
But it seems kind of obvious (to me and the NIV translators) what its referring to in this context, and ancient Hebrew very often relies on greater context for words to have more specific meanings.