When the Ten Commandments said, "Thou shalt not kill," the meaning of the Hebrew word for "kill" was "murder." It did not in any way forbid war, the death penalty, or the killing of animals. Is this really new, unknown information to most people, or is my suspicion correct that people are just blowing smoke when they try to call people hypocrites for supporting the war or the death penalty or whatever?
And I speak as one who believes the Gospel of Christ forbids killing for any reason, as one who believes the Gospel of Christ CHANGED God's edicts in the Old Testament, and as one who believes the Ten Commandments were abolished as God's law when Christ died on the cross.
While I think Paul was a better thinker than Augustine, City of God is a good treatise on the issue. One of the common responses to this "theological problem" is that justice performed against a nation or carried out by a nation is different from justice carried out by an individual. That line of thinking comes from a reading of Romans 10.
(Tune in next week where I'll talk about the historical development of Maryology.)
Re:Law and Theology
jdavidb on 2003-08-27T18:42:42
Yeah; there are many good arguments both ways. I'm mainly saying that people need to quit assuming Bible-believers are irrational or hypocritical if they support war/the death penalty/whatever. "Thou shalt not kill" never had anything to do with these issues, and I think it's been said often enough that the only reason some people don't know is willful ignorance.
Re:Law and Theology
djberg96 on 2003-08-27T19:00:06
I'm curious how some other editions of the Bible, such as the NIV, translate it.Re:Law and Theology
jdavidb on 2003-08-27T19:21:55
My Bible site will get you three translations; you can find others at Bible gateway and the unbound Bible. The ten commandments are recorded twice: once in Exodus 20, and once in Deuteronomy 5. Major translations you might want to compare would be the KJV, NASB, NIV, followed by ASV, NKJV, RSV, NRSV, and others. Note that I haven't personally done an exhaustive translation comparison study on this, so I couldn't tell you what you'll find.
I googled for thou shalt not kill murder hebrew and found some relevant information. I'd suggest you read several of those for a balanced view and to see what's out there; the first link looks horrible, but the second looks pretty good.
Note that the uneducated among us religious folk are sometimes very confused about principles of translation. Many don't seem to realize that the Bible was originally not written in English. When a translation contridicts one of their favorite doctrines as taught in their favorite translation (usually the KJV), they complain that the Bible has been "changed," even if the new translation is more accurate, because they are usually not knowledgeable enough to realize the issues involved. The question is not how do the translations put it, but what did the original Hebrew word mean. I think you'll find most are agreed that that word has reference to murder, an illegal taking of human life, not the taking of animal life or any of several possibly legal senses where it might be just to take a human life (self-defense, just war, death penalty, or whatever).
Even if you don't dig into the Hebrew, the context makes it pretty obvious that the Ten Commandments were intended to prohibit murder, not the several forms of killing which are debatedly justifiable in some senses. The same God who commanded "Thou shalt not kill" also commanded the death penalty for many reasons. (In the Old Testament; I hope I've made it clear I don't believe any of that applies today.) There are plenty who would like to stick their fingers in their ears and whine that God or the Bible is self-contradictory on this, but the majority of reasonable people can see why some killing might be considered justifiable and legal, even if they don't personally agree with the conclusion.
On translations
rafael on 2003-08-27T20:23:59
Translations of the Bible are indeed a fascinating subject. I'm pretty disappointed when I see people claiming that one traduction is elected over the others -- the Catholic Church teached for centuries that there was Only One True translation of the Bible (in Latin, the one of St Hieronymus) (and even nowadays, there are people who think that a Mass not being said in Latin is an heresy. sic.) Note that I'm completely unfamiliar with the English translations of the Bible. But I own several Bibles in French. Confronting them is very interesting. One of them is filled with traductors' notes : for example, did you know that the name of the prophet Jonas is in Hebrew the same word for the bird that announces to Noah the end of the flood ? And that the "boat" on which Jonas sails (before encountering the Fish) is in Hebrew not the usual word for boat, but a word that in English would be "she-self" ? Those things can't be rendered accurately in a traduction in a non-semitic language.That said, the Bible is probably one the most difficult books to translate, because the very notions of "sin" or "law" or "redeem" have evolved since Moses, due to layers and layers of commentaries by generations of theologians. Nowadays the scientific progress of philology and archaeology help us to understand the original meaning of the Hebrew/Greek text more than ever before. (I have to underline the great work of the Jesuits here. Unlike most other Catholics, they never were dogmatic about the translations of the Bible ; as missionaries in Japan, China, America and Africa they had to produce accurate translations, and that led them to dig the original text. Even nowadays there are great archaeologists who are also members of the Company of Jesus.)
Neat
jdavidb on 2003-08-28T12:47:57
Thanks for sharing all that. Someday, if you're ever in DFW, I'll have to show you my large collection of English translations.
:) I think I have about 25! [I'm jealous of my dad, though, who recently acquired a paperback copy of the translation of William Tyndale, updated only to modernize the English spelling. It looks very readable. Tyndale's always been one of my heros. For the record, modern American Protestantism has an "inspired KJV" movement that very much resembles the old Catholic belief in only one translation. While the KJV has some great features to recommend it, and I use it as one of my main three translations, it is not The Word of God in the sense that the original Hebrew and Greek were.
Re:Neat
rafael on 2003-08-28T14:40:59
Inspired KJV ? I guess that every religion has its share of extremists, but this is a weird hobbyhorse. I mean, I can understand a muslim who thinks that classical Arab is a sacred language, or an Hindu who thinks that Sanskrit is a sacred language, because their respective sacred books were originally written in those languages. But a translation ?And we're speaking about Christianism, which commands IIRC to spread the word of Jesus (hence the speaking in tongues, for example). (That's one of the reasons why I disapprove Mel Gibson's last project, a movie about Jesus with dialogues in Latin and Aramaic. To me, obfuscating Jesus' words behind a language noone speaks doesn't sound very Christian. No wonder Gibson is one of those Catholics who still want to hear the Mass in Latin.)
What's "DFW" exactly ?
Re:Neat
jdavidb on 2003-08-28T19:51:28
Hey, I didn't say it made any sense.
:P There's a history link somewhere on that page I linked to before that tells a little bit about how it spread. In addition to the ones who actually believe the KJV is the word of God, there are many who still treat it like "original." Others have "changed." Some claim the KJV is "under attack." And I read a very old review of the American Bible Society's Today's English Version that stated, "Like all modern translations, this version is desperately corrupt." In other words, even if a faithful Christian made a new translation without any mistakes or false doctrine, it would still be corrupt in his opinion. (I don't think he really believed that, but he just didn't think.) Of course, the inspired-KJV folks don't realize the 1611 KJV was quite different from the one we usually see in stores now. It was revised about five times and still called "KJV"; I think the one we see is from the 1800's.
It's been interesting hearing about this Mel Gibson film; I was under the impression it was all Aramaic, for authenticity. I thought that would be kind of interesting (as long as I could get subtitles). But knowing a little bit about Gibson's religious beliefs, it doesn't seem to be for what I would call historical authenticity.
DFW is Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas.
