OT vs NT vs Homosexuality vs Common Sense...

Sorry, I meant Human Sacrifice, and Judges Chapter 11 is shocking , out of ten different translations that I checked Jephthah kills his daughter. JST, Godsword, AB, KJV, Webster, TS1998,& WEB bibles all have almost the same text, JST removes a few terms like "Vow" but it's the same.
Is this story in the Torah?
Judges feels more like heroic folklore, rather than actual word of God.

reply to post by Cuervo


You can not use JUST "Leviticus" for your arguement. The OT and the NT is the same book. You confuse the laws of men and the laws given to men by god. All you people that use a few key verses of the bible for you arguement error in not knowing the bible or the wiil of god. The bible also told a man to sacrifice his son on an alter. Kind of harsh, no? But there was a much deeper reason and meaning.

None of you can understand this because you are blinded by hate. A Christian can not explain it to you because being a Christian is a much longer journey than a 30 second reply to a post. Why don't ypu all actually read the bible front to back, then ask silly questions?

That said, sin is sin. We will all be judged for or own sin. But god gave us a way out. The bible talks of those that will seek a way out of their sin and those that will "willingly die in their sin".

It is pretty cut and dry.... what part of "shalt not...." Is hard to understand?

reply to post by SmikeS

Is this story in the Torah?

No, it's in Judges which isn't part of the Torah. But the Jephthah story is too long to go into. The end of the story isn't there. It doesn't explicitly say what Jephthah ended up doing. He had other options. Like consecrating her to the Lord and she would have just been a nun basically.

This is the view many commentators take because of her obsession with never getting married in the story. I mean if my dad was going to kill me I wouldn't be running around lamenting because I was never going to get married. I'd have more important things on my mind. Like ya know, my father setting me on fire?

But in the story she's all like, Oh I'll never get married! Boo Hoo! And the story ends with "and she knew no man." Seems pretty obvious if he sacrificed her. So, why mention it? So this leads lots of people to assume that instead of sacrificing her, he consecrated to the Lord as a nun basically. But marriage was so important to them at the time it's hard to say what she was upset about.

However, human sacrifice is forbidden in the OT, so to keep his vow he would have still had to sin, so he really couldn't win. He would have broken his promise to the Lord, or broken the commandments and therefore broken his promise to the Lord?

So if it's lose lose, why kill your daughter? In fact the only option he had where he could have done right by the Lord is not to kill her and consecrate her instead. So many believe that's what he did.

But early commentators imagine he did kill her but they're still arguing about it today. But again the context of the story is what NOT TO DO. It's not like God told him to do it. It's pretty clear from the context of the story that the moral message, if you will, is to NOT make rash vows to the Lord like Jephthah did or bad things like this can happen.

For all I know it's an allegorical story to illustrate a point, like an after school special with a drug addict to show you what drug addiction is like. It's not like the people that wrote the story approve of drug addiction. In fact it's the opposite. They DON'T approve of it, that's why they told the story lol.

That's why the story is in there. To show you Jephthah's foolish mistake and to show you what not to do.

Judges feels more like heroic folklore, rather than actual word of God.

Maybe I dunno.

Originally posted by benrl

the WAGES OF ALL SIN is death, not just being "Gay"

Looking at my fellow man with Hate in my eye is according to Jesus the same as MURDER.

ALL sin is bad, And all sin can be forgiven.

You just get Fundamentalist banging this one drum making all of Christianity look like hate mongers.

You didn't wait till marriage to have sex? guess what the bible says your as bad as a Homosexual, Look in the sin in your eye before you remove the one from your brothers.

edit on 27-7-2012 by benrl because: (no reason given)

I believe this is generally the correct view.

Also worthy to keep in mind is that many of the OT mosaic laws (like homosexuality, slaves, pork, etc) were very much products of their culture, and most were designed to keep the community healthy in some way. Example: Ancient jews didn't understand stuff like trichinosis and have refrigeration, as such, eating pork is not the most fantastic idea. If you follow the biblical prescription for sex between a man and wife, you will be aiding conception. A man who is not out having his fun with other guys (or in a woman's non-reproductive places) will be more likely to have frequent reproductive sex with his wife, thus expanding the community.

If you understand their times and culture, a lot of those rules actually make sense. They are, IMO, mostly for practical reasons and not moral prohibitions. As such, I'm not sure they still apply.

In either event, Christ implied that OT mosaic law both does, and does not matter.