Originally posted by FresnoBob:
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I lost you after the double negative. Given that the words Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai were "Thou shalt not commit murder;" or a reasonable Hebraic facsimile thereof, the question would be, "What does that mean?"
I was merely pointing out that the old quote I learned many years ago--"Thou shalt not kill," was, apparently, an overstatement or overbroad translation of the original.
You seem to be saying that we craven Christians (actually the Semetic tribesmen who guarded these words since 1445 B.C.) took the word "murder" and came up with a definition to circumvent God's will. Personally, I figure the legal definition is the proper definition, as I will not dispute the learned scholars who developed either the Talmud or the Christian schools of thought on the contents of Exodus.
Of course, I realize that you, unlike them, obviously understood what God really meant.
I'm sure that had you been around to educate the Pharisees, Sadducees, the Sanhedrin, St. Jerome, Martin Luther, and the entire translation team for the King James version, all these misunderstandings would have been avoided and we could all share your personal knowledge of what the Almighty actually intended.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I just looked into the translations involved here, and it seems there is a lot of dispute over whether it means "kill" or "murder".
But looking at Numbers 35:27-30 we see using the same word:
27 and the avenger of blood finds him outside the city, the avenger of blood may kill the accused without being guilty of murder. 28 The accused must stay in his city of refuge until the death of the high priest; only after the death of the high priest may he return to his own property.
29 " 'These are to be legal requirements for you throughout the generations to come, wherever you live.
30 " 'Anyone who kills a person is to be put to death as a murderer only on the testimony of witnesses. But no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.
This last in other translations is:
"Whoever shall smite a person mortally, at the mouth of witnesses shall the murderer be put to death; but one witness shall not testify against a person to cause him to die."
"whoso smiteth a person, by the mouth of witnesses doth [one] slay the murderer; and one witness doth not testify against a person -- to die."
"Whoso killeth any person, the murderer shall be slain at the mouth of witnesses: but one witness shall not testify against any person that he die."
"Death is the penalty for murder. But no one accused of murder can be put to death unless there are at least two witnesses to the crime. "
What this shows to me is several points:
1) Translations vary and open up the text to interpretation and controversy, so as to make the 'gospel' truth unreliable.
2) Generally the Old Testament supports the death penalty as legal and is far from pacifist. The New Testament, with "love they neighbour as thyself" and being concerned with the crucifiction of Jesus which emphasises the non-judgemental nature of the New Testament, does not support legal killing.
3) These Commandments are so imprecise compared with modern laws that they serve a very poor platform to build a legal structure on.
4) They're quite clearly pragmatic, temporal and relevant to their place and time and culture that to take them out of it and try to apply them is absurd.
5) They're man made laws, not Divine Eternal Unchanging Gospel.
If we take the practical guideline that one witness isn't sufficient to prove guilt and look at it in light of modern law, with dna, forensics, video, and the incredible variation in multiple eye witness accounts, we can see that it was a primitive attempt to make the law less subject to lying witnesses and didn't take into account conspiracy or that even 2 or more witnesses could be wrong, or the credibility of witnesses etc.
What it does show is the concern for reliable judgements, and that if reliable, then execution can be a just penalty. What Jesus showed was that this was flawed, and, allegedly, that only God could make such reliable judgements, and even He was forgiving and merciful, something which we should aspire to be.
This basic principle of uncertainty, and "do unto others as you'd have unto yourself", seem appealing to me, but have no more weight to them for being Jesus's philosophy than that of any other imho.