Thou Shalt Not Kill

As a new member I would like to pose a question that has bothered me for a long time. Actually used to discuss with my minister before leaving the church and religion for good.

The question being how we as a supposedly Christian society can ignore the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill". Not only does this appear to be widely ignored but it seems the more religious the individual the more likely to support the death penalty and to be a war supporter

Now, I am familiar with the argument that says actual Hebrew was thou shalt not commit murder but be honest and agree that killing civilians (euphemistically called collateral damage) is killing plain and simple.

 

I'll explain it.

Thou shalt not murder meant that no Hebrew could kill another Hebrew unless one of the guys in the pointy hats said it was okay because god told them so.

It also didn't include non Hebrews, whom could be killed for any reason whatsoever.

Because we're ALL Yahweh's children, just that some are chosen children and others are not.

 

It said "Thou Shalt Not Murder" - murder requires intent.

Plus the God of the Bible did support capital punishment. So it doesn't contradict the scripture - whether you agree with capital punishment or not is a separate issue.

 

Here's a well known but little referenced fact. When Moses first came off the mountain with god's commandments, one of which was "thou shalt not kill/murder" Moses saw that many of the Hebrews were worshiping the Canaanite god Baal (golden calf) and Moses and his family worshiped the Canaanite god El who was the father of Baal. Moses then directed the Levites to kill anyone and everyone who was doing so and the death count as recorded in the bible was 3000. Women and children as well as men.

Because god told him so.

The "Hebrews" worshiped may gods, up until the Hebrew king Josiah decided he only wanted the Hebrews to worship one god, who by then had a name change from El to Yahweh. That was around 500 or so BC. Shortly after the Babylonians invaded and killed most of the Hebrews and the rest were carted off to Babylon as slaves. It wasn't until the Persian king Cyrus defeated the Babylonians, with the help of the Hebrews, that he allowed them to return to Judea to rebuild their temple when the religious PTB of the Hebrews decided the reason they were invaded and carted off was because they shouldn't be worshipping more then one god that the canon of monotheism known as Judaism was firmly ensconced in the culture of the Hebrew people.

 

There is the commandment that says 'Thou shalt not 'murder,' (not 'kill' as the early translations picked the word).

ratsach, Strongs H7523

1) to murder, slay, kill

a) (Qal) to murder, slay

1) premeditated

2) accidental

3) as avenger


b) (Piel) to murder, assassinate


In the NT:

Mat 5:21
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not [kill]; and whosoever shall [kill] shall be in danger of the judgment:

NOTE: "In danger of judgment"..

Murder is defined as illegally taking a life;

mur·der (mûrdr)
n.
1. The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice.
2. Slang Something that is very uncomfortable, difficult, or hazardous: The rush hour traffic is murder.
3. A flock of crows. See Synonyms at flock1.
v. mur·dered, mur·der·ing, mur·ders
v.tr.
1. To kill (another human) unlawfully.
2. To kill brutally or inhumanly.
3. To put an end to; destroy: murdered their chances.
4. To spoil by ineptness; mutilate: a speech that murdered the English language.
5. Slang To defeat decisively; trounce.


but, as war and now thru legislation, killing is/has become 'legal.' As also God 'sanctioned' killing according to His will...

 

Do you have any idea how many civilians we killed in WWII? Should we have allowed the Axis to just take the Pacific and Europe? My point is... in war civilians will be killed... there is no way to fight a safe war in a city. I think we should look more at the conflicts we get into and ask is it really worth it. IMO we had to enter WWII, but in hind sight Iraq was a monumental blunder.

I do agree and it has been my experience that Christian conservatives are more prone to endorse killing... and killing in the name of God... or at least with His blessing and support.

 

It is thou shall not murder. God wants us to kill for justice and in cases of war. There are many instinaces in the Bible where certain crimes are mandatory to sentence the criminal to death, like in Bestiality and Homosexuality. God commanded Joshua to siege cites and kill every one in them so they could inherit the Holy land. It is the situation the killing is done in that makes it villainous or Gloryus.

 

Your ignorance of this is only matched by your certainty. The story of the is told often and referenced all the time. The commandment is clearly to not murder and the Hebrew bears that out in no uncertain terms. The golden calf was not Ba'al as Ba'al was not a cow god. It was clearly meant to be an Egyptian god ( golden calves were in fact used in worship in Egypt). Ba'al was a generic name of god like El. Both have Cananite roots. The killing for the worship is not white washed from Jewish teaching at all.

Actually the religion worshiped one but the people dabbled in the gods of their surroundings rather regularly which was not uncommon in the ancient near east. It sounds like you are trying to discredit Judaism with this. That is funny.

 

"In the Canaanite pantheon as attested in Ugaritic sources, Hadad was the son of El, who had once been the primary god of the Canaanite pantheon. El and Baʿal are often associated with the bull in Ugaritic texts, as a symbol both of strength and fertility.[2]"

Both El and Baal were associated with the "bull" but Baal being the son of El was associated with the junior version of a bull, the calf.

Here is some more interesting research into El and Baal,,,

Funny, when citing historical and archeological evidence for the evolution of the Hebrew god Yahweh (El/Baal) I am accused of "descrediting Judaism". Can calling me an "anti semite" be far behind?

 

Surely, the criticism doesn't lie in the killing that has taken place, but the certainty with which the Bible draws a straight line where clearly some thinking is required?

 

Killing by accident is not murder.

Killing in self defense is not murder.

Unless those civilians were deliberately targeted, it is not murder, even if it is the result of negligence. Murder requires an intent.

 

The semantic differences have been explained. You may be struggling with the apparent conflict between the central message of Christianity about love for others while at the same time being comfortable with the idea of killing on a wholesale level. Fear not, refer to Augustine and Aquinas and the theory of Just War. This is why Christian theology exists, to get Christians out of difficult situations like that. It doesn't matter that Augustine and Acquinas were pre-mediaeval and mediaeval thinkers, what matters if that they used mental and logistical gymnastics to solve the problem.

When Constantine wrapped up his empire in the cloak of Christianity he was sowing the seeds for the demise of the central message preached by Yeshuah who is known as Christ. It went downhill from there. There are a few holdouts - the Society of Friends being one - but for the most part Christianity has been coopted by generations of government all over the world.

 

Are you an anti-semite? Like I said Ba'al is a generic name of god in lord in the ancient near east. It is much later that Ba'al is associate with the bull and never a calf. But that is not relevant i guess.

 

Okay, Haddad. I used Ba'al because that is the more commonly used reference and because christians might recognize the name as it is used so frequently in the bible.

The point is the Jewish god "Yahweh" is a mishmash conglomeration of gods and religious tradition from wherever Hebrews cast their tents...Canaan, Babylonia, Persia, Egypt to name a few. There is no Yahweh anymore then there is an El, Ba'al, Marduk, Ptah, Zues, Jupiter, Amun or Ahura Mazda.

They're all the same dude, changed and rewritten throughout history to accommodate the political religious and economic necessities of whatever dirt eating power structure was on place at the time.

 

I am probably not the best person to answer that as I see to many contradictions in the Bible and many interpretations by those who read the Bible.

 

As you can already see by the Christians in this thread what is written in the bible will always mean whatever they want it to mean which is why it means nothing.

Taking a life for no good reason is obviously wrong....kinda like flooding the world and killing millions of children for the sins of others.

 

Jews, christians and muslims would be aghast to know their utterance of the word "amen" is in fact a tribute to the egyptian creator god Amun (Amen). The christian concept of the trinity came from Egypt.

 

What is killing because "god told you to"?

 

No that is just another pseudo-historical interpretation of the word, sorry we have the Etomology of the word.

 

I wonder where Henri Frankfort got his info?

 

The old testament God clearly did: ( an eye for an eye etc.). Not sure if you can prove your point with the New Testament kinder, gentler God.

 

Sadistic Savior,
So by your caveats to murder the Firebombing of Dresden and the bombings of Hisroshima and Nagasaki were clearly murder?

 

Are you kidding? OT Hebrews were pikers next to NT Christians. 50k people were burned at the stake in Europe alone not to mention all the religious wars and millions of New World natives executed.

 

The point of those bombings was Defense. We were attacked. So they were not murder.

The target was the nation as a whole, and the structures specifically, not the individuals.

 

Probably good, if you really believe it is God telling you that. If you accept God as the source of all morality, then whatever god tells you to do is good by default.

I'm an atheist. I'm not defending religion.