Abortion advocated biblically!

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Provita

Provita
Registered Senior Member
Numbers 5: 11-31 (NAB)

I have read this bible passage and have seen that it is a description of the act of abortion, the killing of a human inside a woman's womb (who is SUSPECTED of adultery), advocated as a law by God, since it is His word.

What does anyone else think? And how on earth is this a SYMBOLIC story? It seems it should be taken literally to me... thoughts?
 
There is absolutely no talk of abortion in the Chapter. The woman would be under a curse if she was unfaithful to her husband. But it does not state the unborn child would die. The chapter does not even mention an unborn child at all.

Read it again.


You are right about one thing. It is not symbolic.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days
 
I agree with Adstar. Killing the child is not mentioned. My impression of the text is that it is a precautionary rite performed by a priest that, depending on how it goes, exonerates or points a finger of guilt at the woman. A husband suspects his wife of cheating, takes her to a priest who performs some mumbo jumbo ceremony, and if in due time she shows signs of being pregnant, well, you know. A woman in touch with her ovulation cycle might want to take the test and risk a dalliance or two without being caught. Consider this passage as the first indication of women understanding the rhythm method, a natural form of birth control. Guys brains have evolved to such an extent that they reside in the groin area whereas women have figured that out, and it seems, a long time ago.
 
I could have sworn talk of withering away her thighs meant an abortion... forgive me for wasting a topic.
 
Not a waste. People who analyze biblical passages do this all the time. You see what you think you see and a lot of time its what you want to see. For instance, give someone like Adstar time and he could probably interpret that whole passage as something wonderful.
 
Mosaic Law

Provita said:
Numbers 5: 11-31 (NAB)

I have read this bible passage and have seen that it is a description of the act of abortion, the killing of a human inside a woman's womb (who is SUSPECTED of adultery), advocated as a law by God, since it is His word.

What does anyone else think? And how on earth is this a SYMBOLIC story? It seems it should be taken literally to me... thoughts?
Click to expand...

Numbers 5:29 This is the law of jealousies, when a wife goeth aside to another instead of her husband, and is defiled;

That is punishment so that other married women (in Moses Time) will not do acts of concubinage.
 
LOL I read the passage for what it says. Not like an anti-Christ hell bent on interpreting everything the bibles says in a negative way.

Some of the posts in here get the bible so twisted all you can do is sit back a shake your head and move on to the next topic.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days
 
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M*W: Abortion has been going on since the beginning of history. The nomads would put apricot pits in their camels wombs to prevent pregnancy while on the caravan. For women, twigs were used to stick in the cervix to interrupt a pregnancy. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. Most Jews are not opposed to abortion, and Muslims permit it as long as it is with 40 days. (Correct me samcdkey, if I'm wrong).

Women in the middle ages would sit on a pot of boiling water to draw out the conceptus. This didn't work too often, but for some reason, it stayed around. The only thing I could see it doing was relieving menstrual cramps.
 
An interesting thing I found on this page (where you can also find a bunch of other Biblical passages in some way concerning abortion):

Genesis 2:7 God made Adam's body out of the dust of the earth. Later, the "man became a living soul" only after God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." This seems to state clearly that Adam's personhood started when he took his first breath. Following this reasoning, a newborn would become human after it starts breathing; a fetus is only potentially human; an abortion would not terminate the life of a human person. The most important word in the Hebrew Scriptures that was used to describe a person was "nephesh;" it appears 755 times in the Old Testament. It is translated as "living soul" in the above passage. One scholar, H.W. Wolff, believes that the word's root means "to breath." He argues that during Old Testament times, "Living creatures are in this way exactly defined in Hebrew as creatures that breathe."
Click to expand...

This interpretation seems to have demonstrable credibility. From Wikipedia:

The Psyche was the Greek concept of the self, encompassing the modern ideas of soul, self, and mind. The Greeks believed that the soul or "psyche" was responsible for behaviour.

[...]

The verb 'psycho' meant 'to blow', and psyche is the last breath before death. This has come to signify the part of life that escapes a corpse upon death.
Click to expand...

For reference, Genesis 2:7, in the King James version, says: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

For cross reference, the same passage in the New International Version says: "The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."

And in Young's Literal Translation (hey, seems promising) the passage is: "And Jehovah God formeth the man -- dust from the ground, and breatheth into his nostrils breath of life, and the man becometh a living creature."
 
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