Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Chechnya's President Ramzan Kadyrov defends honor killings of women

Vicki, regardless of what you thinks of Phyllis Trible, she scrutinizes the biblical texts to see what they mean. She has presented a lot of evidence that her reading is correct. You have presented no evidence that your reading is correct. You have presented not a shred of evidence from the biblical text that Jephthah's daughter was dedicated by her father to become a servant of God. Your entire reasoning hangs on the biblical use of the word "whatever", and you argue, without presenting any biblical or linguistic evidence whatsoever, that this word can't possibly refer to a person. The only other 'evidence' you have presented is the assumption, which is blatantly false, that the Old Testament, particularly the oldest parts of it, treats sons and daughters the same. From that you infer, falsely, that if it was forbidden to sacrifice a son to God in the early days of the Old Testament, then it must have been equally forbidden to sacrifice a daughter. You infer, falsely, that if it was possible to dedicate a son to be a servant of God in the temple, then it must have been equally possible to dedicate a daughter to be a servant of God in the temple. You present not a shred of evidence to back your claim up.

My point has been that the Bible is sexist. I have done my best to present evidence that it is. You counter that the Bible isn't sexist, and therefore it isn't sexist.

Vicki, I'm unimpressed.

Ann

I know I won't change anyone's mind, but I want to point out that I know the Bible and I want to clarify some details:

Burnt offerings HAD TO BE male and couldn't be any animal. It HAD TO BE of the beeves, of the sheep, or of the goats. (Lev 22.18-19)

It WAS forbidden. Human sacrifices were abomination and STRICTLY forbidden for God. There's no doubt about it. The text is clear, specifically about sons and daughters (Deuteronomy 18:10; 12:31):
It was ABOMINATION the sacrifice of sons and daughters.

Jephthah's daughter didn't lament her life. She lamented her virginity. If she was going to die, why would she care about her virginity???? Imagine this:

JEPHTHAH'S DAUGHTER: Oh, boo-hoo! Daddy is going to sacrifice me tomorrow!

FRIEND: How awful!

JEPHTHAH'S DAUGHTER: Yes, but you know what the worst part is? I'm ALWAYS going to be a virgin! BOO-HOOOO!

It would make NO SENSE.

It WAS possible to dedicate a daughter to be a servant of God in the temple. There're women who served at the door of the tabernacle:

According to Leviticus 27, anything (or person) could be offered to the Lord as a gift, but just acceptable animals were burnt on the altar. Articles, unclean animals, and even fields could be "devoted" to God and thus become
holy items for sacred use or in temple service. As there was no temple in those times, she should live in reclusion, therefore it meant the extinction of Jephthah’s family line, what was a tragedy to an Israelite.

After Jephthah "did with her according to his vow", it's added: "she knew no man". If she had been burnt, this comment would have been superfluous.

This comment after the fulfilling of the vow indicates that she lived and remained a virgin.

This is all.

Andreia

Thgis passage is from 2 Kings 16:3:

Yes, the Bible does say, more than once, that it is forbidden to sacrifice one's son and one's daughters. However, as the above passage shows, a man could certainly be censored for sacrificing his son, but to the very best of my knowledge, no biblical character is ever censored for having sacrificed his daughter. Only the sacrificing of a son was bad enough to warrant special mention. The importance of not sacrificing one's son is made clear enough in the story about Abraham and Isaac. The comparative triviality of sacrificing one's daughter is made clear by the story about Jephthah and his daughter.

Like I said, too, there was a clear difference between men and women, in that only really the men had made a covenant with God. The men in Israel belonged to God, including their sons, but their daughters and women belonged to God by proxy. They belonged to men who belonged to God, and God needed them to make more sons for him. Because of that, it was definitely an inconvenience for God if the men killed their daughters, because that made it harder for new generations of Isreaelis to have sons.

As for the observation that Jephthah's daughter knew no man, it just means that she was a virgin when her father killed her. That is all it means. The only thing that can be added is that she died without producing a son for God.

There is no celebration of celibacy in the Old Testament. Women were meant to have children, preferably sons. There are no virgin priestesses or other female virgins who serve God in the Old Testament. God didn't want the women's virginity. He wanted their sons. The idea that Jephthah would allow his daughter to live yet force her to remain a virgin is ridiculous. Certainly Jephthah could have forced her to do this, but he could never do it to please God, or to give God a gift or a sacrifice. In biblical times, an old childless virgin was no blessing. If anything, forcing Jephthah's daughter to become an old childless virgin would be blasphemy. Therefore it is not at all strange that Jephthah's daughter would lament her viriginity. The Bible is full of women who want to have sons, and there are several who grieve and pine because they can have no children. Producing children, particularly sons, was the purpose of a woman's life. Dying without having been given the chance to have sons was indeed a horrible thing for a woman. Her life would be a wasted life, a life without purpose. No wonder Jephthah's daughter lamented her virginity.

If Jephthah wanted his daughter's life to be a blessing, he would have given her away in marriage, so that she could have sons. If he killed her - and he did - it was because he had vowed to give God a burnt offering, and his daughter was the one who had to be that burnt offering.

Ann

Also, Joy said:

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

:rolleyes:

I'm sorry, but I don't think the specific instruction to beat your wife (lightly or otherwise) really compares with anything Paul said. I've read the New Testament multiple times. It's just not in there.

Ann... you and I are obviously not going to agree about Christianity and its treatment of women. Okay, fine. You have the right to believe whatever you like. I'm not that familiar with Buddism and Hinduism, so I can't say. But can we at least agree that Islam (as written in the Koran and the Hadith) is sexist and abusive? Seeing as that's what the topic was originally about, and all.

PJ

You know what I think, Pam? As I was reading the Koran - and I didn't make it all the way through, because I was bored out of my skull, and later when I made a new attempt I gave up at about the same place again - but anyway, as I was reading the Koran, I was struck by how much it resembled the Bible in several ways. Oh, it was different too, no doubt about it. The biggest difference was that the Koran is told by a single voice, which may have been what eventually made it so mind-numbingly boring to me. The Bible is told by a chorus of voices, and there is a lot of variation there.

As to the Bible's and the Koran's views of women, here is my impression:

1) There is more and worse misogyny in the Bible in than in the Koran. On the other hand, there is not more misogyny in the New Testament than in the Koran.

2) There are more women - we may even call them heroines - in the Bible than in the Koran. There are a couple of heroic and likable women in the Bible, but I found none in the Koran.

3) Some of the laws in the the Pentateuch are downright scarily misogynic and horrible. Some of the laws in the Koran are also scarily misogynist, although not quite as horribly so as the worst laws in the Old Testament. (The worst one I found in the Koran was one that seemed to say that a man had the right to lock his wife up until she died if she had done something to offend him and wouldn't make amends.) There are some sexist teachings by Paul in the New Testament, but they are nowhere near as detailed and punitive as the worst laws in the Koran.

4) What makes the Christian West so comparatively non-sexist - well, I don't mean to imply that it isn't sexist, but it is less sexist, I think, than the rest of the world - may be that we have more or less dumped the horrible laws of the Old Testament, and because of the Enlightenment and the rise of democracy, the most sexist of Paul's teachings are not binding for most women here in the West. To put in another way: here in the West, we generally have separation between church and state. If you are a woman here in the West and you don't want to obey the misogynist teachings of the Bible, you don't have to do so. It's your choice.

In large parts of Muslim world, the religion, whose laws are at least partially very misogynist, has more or less merged with the state. Religious laws are the laws of the land. It is often not possible for women to say no to religion. Whether or not you are religious is not your personal choice. Obviously no one can force you to believe in God in your heart of hearts, but you can certainly be forced to obey religious laws. And if those laws are sexist and you are a woman, you are going to find yourself the prisoner of a very, very sexist society.

I'm just thankful that I live in a part of the world where the horrible laws of the Old Testament and the sexist teachings of Paul - or, for that matter, the sexist laws of the Koran - are not the law of the land.

Ann

When I was a freshman in college (way back when we studied in the shade of Diplodocus beside the school's swamp), our dour old professor told us about a master's candidate whose thesis was that Beowulf was gay.

Yes, that Beowulf, the English folk hero who slew Grendel and his mother and saved a mead hall full of Scyldings from death, destruction, and the heartbreak of psoriasis.

The premise of the thesis was that Beowulf slept in a large common area with a lot of other men but no women (the mead hall where Grendel attacked him), fought Grendel hand to hand (personal contact with a male) but chose to fight Grendel's mother with a sword (no contact with a female), went on an epic swim with a male companion, and as far as we are told in the original poem, never married.

He also told us of Shakespeare "scholars" who had gleaned an incestuous affair between Hamlet and his mother from the pages of the play. I once asked another English teacher (same college) for some examples of this evidence, and she replied, "Oh, the play is full of them." But she chose not to share any of them with me. I have yet to find any such evidence on my own, and no one has ever pointed any examples out to me.

I view these as "moments of finding what I'm looking for" in works of literature. Never mind the social, political, historical, or religious context of these tales. If you look hard enough, you can find evidence of what you seek, even if you have to ignore some pretty blatant evidence which disagrees with your pet theory.

This is what Ann does in her crusade against religion, specifically Christianity. She decides that she's right and then goes looking for evidence to support her conclusions. She also does it in her crusade against the "misogyny" inherent in Western culture.

I do not say that she does not make some valid points, because she does. And I do not say that she does not state her position clearly and eloquently, because she does. But she ignores evidence which does not support (or which undermines) her position. The impression I receive from her arguments is that she takes the positions she takes and comes to the conclusions she arrives at because of her feelings on such matters, not necessarily because of the facts.

As such, I do not feel compelled to continue a dialogue with a brick wall. I am withdrawing from this and most future discussions of such subjects in order to save the lining of my stomach from further acid abuse. Thank you.

In reply to the title of this thread and the first portion of the initial post within it, I deplore so-called "honor" killings. They are generally holdovers from cultures where women are considered chattel and given no legal rights. And we should all be appalled by such ill treatment of half the human race.

By the way, just to clarify for any lurkers who may not know: Just because something's in the Bible does *not* mean that God approves of it. A lot of the Bible is history, and, more specifically, a history of all the awful sins the Israelites committed, because they were forever breaking and abandoning the rules that God had given them. God sent prophet after prophet trying to get them to realize how badly they were screwing up, but they mostly didn't want to listen.

King David, "a man after God's own heart", the guy who wrote lots of Psalms and was God's personal pick to replace King Saul, committed adultery and murder. This Does Not Mean that adultery and murder are a-ok with God. They're not. God forgave him because he repented, but what he did was totally wrong.

The societies of the day were hideously sexist. And brutal, for that matter. War was much more normal than peace. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" was actually a big improvement on the previous culture, which was more like "you knock my tooth out, I murder your family." Human sacrifice was common in the "pagan" nations, as mentioned above. They'd take their own babies and throw them into a fire, as a sacrifice to Molech. How sick is that?

God's standards were way higher than that. Also, more difficult to meet (impossible, actually), which is why the Israelites went for the selfish self-serving easier route so much.

So, anyway, when reading the Bible, don't assume that because it talks about someone doing something, even doing something in the name of God, that it was the correct thing to do.

For instance, maybe Jephthah really did kill his daughter to fulfill his vow to God (I don't think so, but the text is ambiguous) - that still does not mean that God wanted him to do it, or that God approved of it, unless it specifically says so. Elsewhere, God specifically said he detested human sacrifice.

Yes, that still leaves hard areas to understand, where God specifically directs certain acts that seem horrible and unjust, from our perspective. But what God commands and what people actually do are mostly two very separate things (then and now), so try not to confuse the two.

PJ

Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Pam. I could argue some points in it, but that would do little good, since it would ultimately boil down to us stating our respective positions here in what might turn out to be a hurtful and contentious way. You have stated your position gracefully and argued for it in a way I must respect. So if you don't mind, let's end this discussion here - for now, at the very least!

Ann

Fair enough, Ann I was never hoping to change your mind, anyway; it was all about presenting my viewpoint to the people reading the thread. I think we've both accomplished that, so now's a good place to quit.

One of the things I love about these message boards is that we always manage to debate even contentious issues like this with at least some amount of civility. I usually learn something, too.

PJ

I've come very late to this thread, so I hope you don't mind my adding one other comment. Earlier, Ann said, She then adds, However, that isn't exactly correct. The general statement, "No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations," is the command. The examples explain what else is included in the command, primarily for those who might think that it only referred to not having sex with one's children (a person's closest relatives):

"What about my daughter-in-law? She's not blood kin." --Nope, she's a close relative, too.

"Well, what about my uncle's wife? That's another generation away, and she's not kin, either." --Nope, she's a close relative, too.

"I've got it--what about my half sister? After all, we all know Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, was married to his half sister, Sarah." --Nope, she's a close relative and covered under the commandment, too.

"Drat. You mean not only my daughters but all those other women, too, are off-limits? God didn't have to be so specific, did He?"

Despite my lightness here, the original topic of this thread is not something I regard lightly. The honor killings are appalling in themselves, but having a government approve of them is so horrible that it is almost beyond words. As distressing as I find it, thank you for bringing an event like this to my attention, Ann.