Interpretation of Texts (General)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, September 25, 2010, 23:57 (4980 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Balance,
> ...I would also point out again, and this is for Xeno, that there is some misrepresentation of the scripture he quoted in Deut. due to the fact that he has removed it from its context. In Israel, a woman was supposed to be a virgin when she married. In fact, it was so serious an issue that if she were not a virgin when taken to her marriage bed, she could be put to death. Now, if a virgin is raped, under that law, her life is in jeopardy, because if she marries, her husband could have her killed for not being a virgin. By forcing the rapist to marry her, it does a double service, though modern day thinking would disagree I'm sure, of sparing her life because the man can not make a claim against her virginity, and can not divorce her so therefore must provide accommodation for her for life. So that law that you interpret as so bad saves the woman's life, and offers some pretty serious discouragement to a man to prevent him from raping a woman. Paying off a pissed off father, 50 sheckles, a pretty hefty sum. Being married to a right bitch the rest of your life, priceless.-But earlier in the exact same chapter (v 25) we have "But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. 26 Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor, 27 for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no one to rescue her. "--You also... took the wrong point. My overriding point was (like in instances purported by Aramaic Primacists) that there is clear instances where a slight shift in translation results in two different passages. Again, I quoted from ASV and the NIV verses. I realize that ethics have changed over time--I'm not trying to claim the Bible was barbaric--I am after all a moral contextualist--but that any claim of inerrancy or "to be read literally as truth" is relying upon a bed of nails--and every instance like this digs a hole in your back. But the NIV version reads more like "If you're caught having sex out of wedlock, guess what?" Whereas the other again, is downright barbaric to our standards. But without access to the original manuscript--and professional translators apparently have differing opinions--we cannot conclude with any certainty whether or not it applied to rape or sex out of wedlock.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"