Is it good to ignore the bad in the Bible?

[marco]

Let's take Deuteronomy's advice on how to deal with a disobedient, drunkard of a son.


Deuteronomy 21:18-21 "If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear."

How can we read this advice and still have regard for the Bible as a holy book?
Is it even correct to allow such advice to be printed in a modern society?
Or can anyone see ANY good in these verses?

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by marco]

The question is based on a false premise ie that there is "bad in the bible". I don't believe there is any bad in scripture and since many will argue there is no universal standard of good and evil (bad) then anybody that does is just sharing their beliefs as well.

How can we read this advice and still have regard for the Bible as a holy book?

I see the punishment as befitting the crime but that probably has a lot to do with what I understand the verse to be saying. There is nothing unholy about punishing criminals; in fact it would be unholy not to.

Or can anyone see ANY good in these verses? (see above)

Is it even correct to allow such advice to be printed in a modern society?

Is this a question regarding the advocation of censorship? In any case: Yes, I believe in freedom of speech, the press and religion. I do not believe we should begin down a road that suggests any human authority should decide what should be printed and what should not be. Individuals have the right to decide for themselves what is appropriate reading material for them and their children.

I'm against banning the bible full or in parts (Such measures have been tried in the past: I believe they call that period "the dark ages")






JW

[JLB32168]

How can we read this advice and still have regard for the Bible as a holy book?

I have to agree with HW here. There is a presupposition that an ancient societys methods for dealing with breaking a norm/more is bad. Granted, we might think that such treatment is barbaric by todays standards but some people are already calling todays capitalist economy the same as wage slavery.

[theophile]

[Replying to marco]

How can we read this advice and still have regard for the Bible as a holy book?

Two things:

1) I think a key word here is "stubbornness." I'd have to look at the semantic range of the actual word used, but immediate sense is that forgiveness has occurred multiple times and second chances provided...

The question we should really be feeling here is: how many times can we turn our cheek before we need to do something about it? That is a fair and respectable question with no easy answer, and so the presence of this text should not cause us to lose regard but increase it for making us ask the hard questions.

2) Related to this is that with any of the 'laws' expressed in the bible we need to be careful not to let them become too hard. Hence Jesus' "let him/her without sin be the first to cast a stone" to the adulteress.

This new testament story is as relevant to drunkenness as it is to adultery, and the 'stoning' prescribed here. The point is that the law isn't to be religiously applied without question, but to provide guidance to a people in need of it, until they are mature enough to know the way themselves, i.e., the law is burned onto their hearts. It doesn't trump more important motions such as forgiveness, which break the oppressive rule of such a draconian approach.

I think if we read the texts you're questioning in that light, it enables the regard for them that you're asking about.

[Elijah John]

Let's take Deuteronomy's advice on how to deal with a disobedient, drunkard of a son.


Deuteronomy 21:18-21 "If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear."

How can we read this advice and still have regard for the Bible as a holy book?
Is it even correct to allow such advice to be printed in a modern society?
Or can anyone see ANY good in these verses?

No good can be found in those particular verses, but they are an historical context. A reminder that the Bible was written by primitive but Spiritually evolving people. Those verses are a snapshot, the Bible as a whole, and the subsequent faith history of the people of the Bible, is a dynamic. Best not to judge by a moment in time.

The Bible can still be regarded as a Holy Book because of the good that it does contain. It is redeemed by it's good parts.

Yes, we should ignore the absurd and atrocious in the Bible. Don't you think it is a good thing that modern believers do not embrace such passages? They ought to be ignored.

But the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater.

Again, the context of that passage was a law for a primitive, Theocratic society.

Does that mean the modern believer should not mine the Good Book and extract the "Diamonds from the dung"?

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 1 by marco]

The question is based on a false premise ie that there is "bad in the bible".

False premise? Marco just demonstrated that there is some bad in the Bible. And that is just one example. Another is the passages that indicates it is OK to keep and even beat your slaves half to death, because they are "your property".

It is amazing to me that anyone would attempt to defend or justify such passages, but there ya go.

If this is not an example of something "bad" (among the good) that is in the Bible, do you advocate reinstating such laws in modern society?

Does your oganization?

[Divine Insight]

The question we should really be feeling here is: how many times can we turn our cheek before we need to do something about it? That is a fair and respectable question with no easy answer, and so the presence of this text should not cause us to lose regard but increase it for making us ask the hard questions.

There are huge problems with this. For one thing this assumes that everyone is totally healthy in mind. This assumes that the person who is behaving abnormally should be able to behave better. But is that even necessarily true?

The Bible fails miserably to address an possible mental illnesses, or any other conditions of situations that could lead to such behavior. It also leaves the door wide-open for subjective judgements concerning precisely what constitutes stubbornness, and drunkenness. I've known people who have been accused of being alcoholic "drunkards" when in fact, they were actually quite capable of handling the alcohol they consumed.

So these Biblical verses are wide-open to subjective interpretations, as well as totally ignoring mental illness. And they also ignore the possibility of some people being genetically disposed to become victims of alcohol addiction in a serious manner that even they cannot choose to control. Yet the Bible doesn't even address the possibility of diagnosing these conditions much less treating them in any productive and intelligent manner.

The directive to just take the person out and stone them to death is the epitome of ignorance. Yet this is what the Bible advocates: The epitome of ignorance.

This was my complaint about the Bible very early on when I started to study it with the intent of actually teaching it as the "Word of God". I quickly realized that it never give wise or intelligent solutions to anything. All it ever advocates are extremely shallow assumptions and violent solutions. This is one of the major reasons I began to realize that the Bible cannot be the word of any intelligent God because it's simply not intelligent at all. It was written by ignorant people and it shows.

As for the question of the thread: "Is it good to ignore the bad in the Bible?"

Absolutely not. To ignore it is the same as ignoring the fact that the Bible requires that its God be ignorant. And to support it is to support ignorance.

So full rejection of the Bible as being the word of any God is in order.

If anyone wants to believe that there is a "Good God" who would support some of the more rational and sane parts of the Bible more power to them. But for them to pretend that this then represents "The Biblical God" is absolutely absurd. All it truly represents is their own personal views and opinions of what they wish God were like.

To support the Bible is to support ignorance, immorality, and unjustified violence. And the same holds for the Qur'an as well.

[ttruscott]

An excerpt for how the Jews themselves interpreted these verses is at
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/js ... 16525.html

REBELLIOUS SON

"If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, that will not hearken to the voice of his father and [not "or"] the voice of his mother and though they chasten him, will not hearken unto them, then shall his father and his mother lay hold of him and bring him out unto the elders of his city They shall say unto the elders of his city: This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he doth not hearken to our voice, he is a glutton and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones that he die; so shalt thou put away the evil from the midst of thee; and all Israel shall hear, and fear" (Deut. 21:18"21).

It appears that this law was intended to limit the powers of the pater familias: the head of the household could no longer punish the defiant son himself, according to his own whim, but had to bring him before the elders (i.e., judges) for punishment. In earlier laws (eg., Hammurapi Code, nos. 168, 169) only the father had to be defied; in biblical law it must be both father and mother, and the father cannot act without the mother's concurrence. If either was dead (Sif. Deut. 219) or refused to join in the prosecution, the son could not be indicted (Sanh. 8:4), but it was not necessary that father and mother should be validly married to each other (Sanh. 71a).

There is no record of a rebellious son ever having been executed, except for a dictum of R. Jonathan stating that he had once seen such a one and sat on his grave (Sanh. 71a). However, it is an old and probably valid tradition that there never had been, nor ever will be, a rebellious son, and that the law had been pronounced for educational and deterrent purposes only, so that parents be rewarded for bringing their children up properly (ibid.; Tosef. Sanh. 11:6).

Interpreting every single word of the biblical text restrictively, the talmudic jurists reduced the practicability of this law to nil. The "son" must be old enough to bear criminal responsibility, that is 13 years of age (see *Penal Law), but must still be a "son" and not a man: as soon as a beard grows ("by which is meant the pubic hair, not that of the face, for the sages spoke euphemistically") he is no longer a "son" but a man (Sanh. 8:1). The period during which he may thus be indicted as a "son" is three months only (Sanh. 69a; Yad, Mamrim 7:6), or, according to another version, not more than six months (TJ, Sanh. 8:1). The term "son" excludes a daughter (Sanh. 8:1; Sif. Deut. 218), though daughters are no less apt to be rebellious (Sanh. 69b"70a).

Does this interpretation mitigate the superficial harshness of the law?

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 1 by marco]

The question is based on a false premise ie that there is "bad in the bible". I don't believe there is any bad in scripture and since many will argue there is no universal standard of good and evil (bad) then anybody that does is just sharing their beliefs as well.

So slavery isn't bad? Please explain.

How can we read this advice and still have regard for the Bible as a holy book?

I see the punishment as befitting the crime but that probably has a lot to do with what I understand the verse to be saying. There is nothing unholy about punishing criminals; in fact it would be unholy not to.

So a one-day old child killed in the global flood deserved to be punished?

Or can anyone see ANY good in these verses? (see above)

Is it even correct to allow such advice to be printed in a modern society?

Is this a question regarding the advocation of censorship? In any case: Yes, I believe in freedom of speech, the press and religion. I do not believe we should begin down a road that suggests any human authority should decide what should be printed and what should not be. Individuals have the right to decide for themselves what is appropriate reading material for them and their children.

I'm against banning the bible full or in parts (Such measures have been tried in the past: I believe they call that period "the dark ages")

JW

You and I are in full agreement here.

[Divine Insight]

The Bible can still be regarded as a Holy Book because of the good that it does contain. It is redeemed by it's good parts.

It makes no sense to try to do that because that requires confessing that major parts of the Bible are clearly false and untrustworthy. Therefore there is no support left to try to support that the good parts came from any God.

But the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater.

In the case of the Bible the baby and the bathwater are precisely the same thing. They cannot be separated. The Bible is both the baby and the bathwater.

Again, the context of that passage was a law for a primitive, Theocratic society.

Does that mean the modern believer should not mine the Good Book and extract the "Diamonds from the dung"?

The fact that the Bible contains dung is proof positive that it's not a "Good Book".

Moreover, if the reader has to "Extract" their own moral values from the Bible then they most certainly aren't getting their moral values from the Bible. To the contrary they are pushing their own subjective moral values onto the Bible by their own choice of what they consider to be "diamonds or dung".

Any person who does this has actually elevated themselves to become the "God" of the Holy Book that they are "picking and choosing" from. If the reader is the one who is determining what is moral and what isn't then the reader becomes the "God" and has already dismissed the God described by the Holy Book itself.