Let he who is without sin...

[Willum]

Christians are fond of the tales where Jesus (Joshua) abrogates the Judaic punishment for adultery with the wisdom... “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.�

Now adultery was one of the Commandments, and like the others, violation of it demanded death, according to God.

But some guy named Josh abrogated it with a bit of Hellenic wisdom.
Odd, to say the least.

Judaic law said the adulterer should be stoned, if I were Judaic, I wouldn’t see the problem.

But let’s expand the reasoning, shall we?
Say someone worships another god?
Should they be killed? Or should only those without sin kill them?
How about bearing false witness?
Should their sin be abrogated by “let he who is without sin, cast the first stone�?

How about murder?
Or is adultery the only Commandment that can be ignored in this way?

How does this all work out?
How does one address the hypocracy?

[Willum]

[Replying to post 48 by tam]

I ain’t God. I don’t have a compunction for stoning adulterers, your God does.
One of the Ten Commandments.

So say all you want about it being wrong to bash the brains out of adulterers, God disagrees with you, not me.

As you have specially ignored: sin is levied on you by God. He is a real prince to not send you to Hell for what are, 90% human nature.

Remind me to send him a card.

And if I am not permitted to use the bible without also showing real life examples, then why are you using the bible without showing real life examples of your claim? You cannot have it both ways

Of course I can, you believe the Bible, I think it is a comic book. You see, if I think it is a comic, then I require additional proof. If you think it is reality, you do not.

[Tcg]

[Replying to post 40 by Tcg]

I am amazed.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Surprisingly, you are still misquoting this phrase even after I have provided you the proper statement and it's implications. You seem to have a point you desire to make and will push it even though it isn't supported by the text you have misquoted. Perhaps you continue to misquote it because you know if you presented the correct words it would destroy your argument.

Jesus didn't change the commandment concerning adultery or any other commandment. He simply pointed out that in this case, stoning was not justified. It really isn't much of a big deal. On occasion, juries determine that the evidence presented in a murder trial don't support a guilty verdict. It doesn't mean they are suggesting the legalization of murder.


Tcg

[Willum]

[Replying to post 52 by Tcg]

No, I just don’t see that your correction was a significant difference that “everyone� wouldn’t recognize what was being said.
Anyway you are behind the conversation.
What he said and meant can be divined from his audience.

People who knew it was a ruse were offended for one reason.
Those who didn’t, another.
And Greeks and Romans a third.

It explains all data, you can deny it all you like.

[FWI]

[Replying to post 50 by Willum]

I am amused that you think your interpretation of this fable is somehow better than mine.

So, now the story has become a fable, thus it seems that you are creating your own interpretation here. Therefore, since you claim that the story is a fable, then it is also a fable that the Christ abrogated a commandment of God…This changing from one explanation to another seems to be a clear indication of an unreliable rebuttal.

That is bearing false witness. Jesus should have had those false witnesses stoned.

Yet, you haven't shown who the false witnesses are and where it is recorded that the Christ had the authority to do what you are suggesting. Where, you actually claim that the Christ really couldn't do anything related to this matter! Hence, as you suggest, he had no authority to abrogate a commandment of God and he didn't. You also agree (now) that Pilate was the authority in Jerusalem and he was the one who could order the death penalty, not the Christ.

Then we are left with the challenge of who was suckered.

Well, it seems clear that it wasn't the Christ…Who, was minding his own business, doing the work of his Father (in the temple). When, the scribes and Pharisees "produced" a situation to try and have something to accuse him of, which failed miserably! Which, seems similar in our interactions, as well.

So, at the end of this "recorded event" there are only the Christ and the accused. There are no eyewitnesses and no accusers, thus no crime. This is the truth of the event and all the "spin" doesn't change that…

[Willum]

[Replying to FWI]

Yeah, that works for me. It’s a fable, that is proven by it not being able to hold itself together as a story.
As for who was fooled, Christ isn’t important except he failed to act appropriately. There is a bit of logic you refuse to face, and as I have already repeated myself, I am content to leave you in your current state.

[ttruscott]

I am curious how everyone knew it was a trap. Did they admit it later, and so get themselves stoned? Wouldn’t the adulterer be stoned for complacency? Etc., etc..
However as DI mentioned, he DID NOT know the law.

They understood they too were condemned by the law for something or other without necessarily knowing that the Pharisees were trying to trap him.

And some people's glasses are mirrors reflecting back to them only their own assumptions. They can only see a murky, distorted and backwards version of the truth because they have chosen to commit to a false reality and so define everything from that mindset in which everything is filtered thru their self distorted understanding...Rom 1.

[Willum]

[Replying to ttruscott]

TS, tell me about the adulterer, did she commit adultery, say she did, or falsely accused?

[Athetotheist]

"Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whosoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kindom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches [them], he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:17-19)

This is what Jesus says to his audience while delivering a particular sermon. For his teaching to be consistent, he would have to have said the same thing to the men in John 8. Imagine those men bringing the adulteress to Jesus right after he had finished saying what he says above. If he answered them in the same way, what would the crowd be forced to conclude about what he had just told them about following the law? With the crowd in Matthew watching, how could Jesus give the same answer he gives in John without making himself least in the kingdom of heaven by his own definition?

It's been claimed here that Jesus didn't violate the law in dissuading the men from stoning the adulteress, so let's clarify the specific part of the law he violated. Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 command that nothing be detracted from the law; Jesus takes from the law a penalty which it commands. And it can't be argued that he meant the detraction even for a special circumstance, since he himself states in the passage above that BY NO MEANS would anything pass from the law.

Neither can it be argued that the woman's accusers would have to be in on her adultery in order to know about it. Deut. 22:22 is clearly addressed to individuals who have caught someone in adultery and who are not involved in it themselves; they're the ones who are commanded to mete out the punishment for it, and no one is subsequently commanded to punish them. There are no witnesses against the men in John on that count, so we must presume them innocent on that count.

It also fails to have Jesus call off the crowd because the Romans wouldn't have allowed the execution, because then you have the mere earthly Roman empire thwarting the heavenly design of having the divine Messiah fullfill the law perfectly (to keep the law perfectly, he would have had to keep it with complete consistency).

Given what Jesus says to the men in John 8, it would have been their duty under the law to regard him as cursed (Deut. 27:26). If they had ignored what Jesus said, stoned the woman and then reminded Jesus of what he himself had said about the law, what could he have said against them? Anything he tried to use against them would simply have been a tu quoque argument which could by no means have justified his own violation of the very law he had so vehemently endorsed.

I've read that different translations of the Christian Bible put the story of the adulteress in different places. That and the difficulties listed above, I believe, support the conclusion that the story of the adulteress is apocryphal.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 58 by Athetotheist]

Yes, well, some of us believe the entire Bible is apocryphal, so that position isn't very useful here.

The goal is to show the Bible is divided against ITSELF and so is not a valid work.
In this particular, how the adultery story applies to the rest of Jesus' wisdom,

and that it falls flat everywhere else.

For indeed, no one would be able to enforce the law under this preposterous step...

It is this observation theists don't seem to be able to address. Or anyone for that matter.
Just a demo on the silliness of the entire work.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to post 59 by Willum]

You don't seem to have a clear idea of what kind of theist I am.

If Moses didn't exist, then Jesus didn't exist? Don't you recognize non sequitur when you write it?

As for the law of conservation being "proof" of no creator, you would have to employ an elephants-all-the-way-down argument to account for any natural law.