Judges 19-21

[wolfpurplemoon]

Judges has been a pretty grim read, but these last three chapters really up the revulsion.

* A man gives his concubine to a mob and they rape her until she dies. He then cuts her body into 12 parts and sends a part to each tribe of Israel. Which is awful enough.

* They come and ask him why he sent them body parts and he explains, so the tribe that the mob came from (the Benjaminites) is then slaughtered (not without losses for the other tribes though) leaving just 600 men. What the mob did was awful, but the reaction is ridiculously over the top as women and children are included in the slaughter.

* Noone wants to give these 600 men any women to marry, but they can't let a tribe die out so find some virgins in a city of Israel who didn't send any men to join in the slaughter. So everyone is killed expect the 400 virgin women. And then to make up the numbers the rest of the Benjaminites have to kidnap girls from the city of Shiloh.

The excuse for everything that has occurred in Judges seems to be this:

In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Yes so you therefore do agree with the verse?
I said ultimately the ruler of everything is god and judges can be viewed in this way. Not that the verse said this but we can see without a ruler/king we do as we want and that can cause chaos. Christians would call god their ruler and king of everything.
I'd argue that our fundamental laws are from god - god gave Moses the ten commandments and are laws today are still based on these, though more are added and changed. Also u may not have come to read it yet but the bible says god puts those in power.

[yukinoomoni.livejournal.com]

In "Judges", it's no secret that the majority of the judges involve actually use the visage of "God" as a mouthpiece, an image and anecdote, for what they, the judges, actually want. By saying that "God is ruler above all" is misinterpreting the entirety of Judges as a text, because in fact the Judges themselves were abuses of the "name of god" when they invoked "him" as their ruler.

The fact of the matter is that there is/was no god, and that these people abused the idea of it to play on people's hopes, dreams and beliefs in order to gain obedience in the name of that god, when really it was more about themselves. using scare tactics, mutilation, murder and rampage, all in the name of this god, was all false; it was in the name of power, for power, for the judges, and god is merely the figurehead, the invisible excuse, to control the populace.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Actually, our laws are based on Roman Imperial law, the main text of which was codified by Justinian in the Codex Iuris Civilis in the mid 500s, was rediscovered and adapted in the Middle Ages. Roman law was developed from Greek and other regional legal traditions, not from biblical ones. Even church canon law was derived from the legal tradition of the Empire.

Jewish halakah, or Torah law is based in the OT commandments, all 347 or so of them. In fact, there are three versions of the '10 commandments' in the OT which differ widely.

But even those were not new or unique. Ancient Mesopotamian law codes (like those of Eshnuna, Hammurabi, etc.) predate the biblical commandments, and in most cases were far more sophisticated. Mayan law codes, which were developed entirely independently of 'Western Civilization' are also far more comprehensive and sophisticated than the biblical laws.

Humans make laws because laws are the foundation of society. Society is, almost by definition, the act of surrendering some individual freedoms in exchange for the benefits of living as a group. Laws are the mechanism by which individual needs are balanced with the needs of a group. Period. Even social animals could be said to have 'laws,' or demands upon behavior which are imposed by the group. Single lions, or wolves, for example, exhibit different behaviors than those living in a social group. It has nothing whatsoever to do with god, or gods, or even 'morality.'

In fact, history tends to demonstrate the fact that only when laws (or rulers) are associated with a god or a religious faction do they become monstrous. The reason Roman law became the foundation for law in the western world was that it was an almost purely secular law code, designed to maximize the actual, living , practical benefit to all its citizens while keeping disorder to a minimum (the goal of all societies) It neither sought nor claimed any divine endorsement. It was therefore free to be revised, improved, expanded, as the need arose.

When a legal system or a ruler fancies itself to be somehow divine in origin or sanction, it hovers dangerously near to megalomania, and can no longer see its own shortcomings. It becomes free to murder, plunder, annihilate as it wishes, having, after all, the supposedly highest authority to do so. The violence of the OT reflects this.

[saveau.livejournal.com]

*cough*

[troll]

You are clearly an anti-Semite and a Very Poor Philosopher.

[/troll]

:-P

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry, did you have a substantive factual point to discuss? And what part exactly makes me anti-Semetic?

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

(Pardon - I accidentally replied anonymously.)

So tell me, what exactly I said that makes me anti-Semitic? I'm quite interested to know, since I minored in Jewish Studies, and one of my areas or research is the Jewish experience in the middle ages. Did you have a factual point to debate? Do you have a quibble with my history, or is this a personal issue for you?

[mythfish.livejournal.com]

I think that was sarcasm or some other attempt at humor. :)

[saveau.livejournal.com]

There is a group of trolls that hang out in the atheist comms and love to throw those accusations about, especially when someone makes a substantive point (one of their contentions is that to be against religion is inherently anti-Semitic). They then run back to their own comm to congratulate each other for having done so. I was sarcastically imitating them as an ironic salute to your very articulate post. I thought they were sufficiently well-known that the ironic humor would be be self-evident; that they are not so known to you makes me a bit envious of you. I apologize for the misunderstanding.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Sorry, and I'm so glad! (I actually went to your profile, and was quite baffled!) I half-wondered if that were the case, but I have gone on the assumption that someone was joking before and been wrong, so.... ROTFL!

Thank you, and I'm glad to meet you!

Roman Law a success?

[(Anonymous)]

And what happened to Rome, the epitome of a "law" state? I would argue that when a legal system or ruler fancies itself to be free of divine sanction or origin, it is doomed to fail. Even worse, if it goes against Israel or blasphemes God.

Re: Roman Law a success?

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Well, considering that the Christian Church from about 300 or so onward built its own laws on those of Rome, as did what you would no doubt refer to as 'Christendom,' I'd say that Roman law was pretty successful. In fact, all of Christian Europe clung to the idea (to say nothing of the socio-political, legal, and administrative structure) of Rome well past its demise in fact. Given that the last "Holy Roman Emperor" abdicated the throne in 1806, I don't think 'Rome,' in its totality as concept, ideal and methodology was really what one could call doomed.....

Nice try. Why don't you crack a history book once in a while?