Should Christians Who Commit Adultery Be Stoned To Death?
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All on Thu Aug 8 03:16:58 2024
XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.atheism
The bible is very supportive when it comes to the idea of painfully killing Christians with rocks.
Stoning for Adultery According to Christianity
The Old Testament (King James Version) prescribed death punishment by
stoning for several crimes (Jacobs, 1964) including stealing (Joshua, 7:20- 26), Sabbath breaking (Numbers, 15:32-36), preaching or practicing a
different religion, blasphemy (Lev, 24:10- 16), cursing God and the king (Kings, 21:1-16), being a medium or a wizard (Levi, 20:27), being a
stubborn or rebellious son (Deut, 21:18-21), and other major crimes.
Stoning was one of the primary methods of capital punishment in the Old Testament.
The basis for punishment of stoning specifically for adultery is clearly provided in Leviticus (20:10-12) which reads: "If a man commits adultery
with another man's wife, even with the wife of his neighbour, both the adulterer and adulteress must be put to death...." Further, in Deuteronomy (22:22-24), it is stated that, "If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you should take both of them
to the gate of that town and stone them to death."
Most Christians do not regard the penalty of stoning as a religious
teaching. Some Christians argue that the law of stoning has been abolished
by acts of Jesus (John, 8:1-11). However, according to Metzger (1994), a prominent Biblical scholar, this entire section, John 7:53-8:11,
traditionally known as the pericope adulterae, is not contained in the
earliest and best manuscript and was almost certainly not an original part
of the Gospel of John. Among modern commentators and textual critics, it is
a foregone conclusion that the section is not original but represents a
later addition to the text of the Gospel. Metzger summarises: "The evidence
for the non- Johannine origin of the periscope of the adulteress is overwhelming" (p.187).
This fabrication is also confirmed by Westcott and Hort (1998). According
to them, the section on the woman taken in adultery (John, 7:53-8:11)
requires an exceptional treatment. No interpolation is more clearly
Western, though it is not Western of the earliest type. It was expunged by
the Armenians, and not the slightest allusion to it has yet been discovered
in the whole Greek theology before the 12th century. It is absent from the better manuscripts of all the Oriental versions except the Ethiopic, and apparently also from the earliest form of the Old Latin versions. Westcott
and Hort (1998) maintain that "It has no right to a place in the text of
the Four Gospels: yet it is evidently from an ancient source, and it could
not now without serious loss be entirely banished from the New Testament" (pp.299- 300).
Another significant reason why Christians do not implement this particular
law is the issue of how to deal with the teachings and the law of the Old Testament. According to Paul, not following the law of the Old Testament is compensated by having faith in Jesus. This can be understood by looking at Paul's statement based on what he claimed to be revelation from Jesus
(Dunn, 1993, pp.51-131), where the Christians are no longer to keep the law
of the Old Testament. Paul's statement reads:
A man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.
So we too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus in order that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by
observing the law no-one will be justified (Galatians, 2:15-16).
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