Abortion and the Bible

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Right. That's kinda the point I was making with abortion. It's not written "thou shalt not have an abortion." Also, I never said Scripture spelled out "God places a high value on human life." My quote referring back to the Bible was that it places a high value on human life, and there are examples demonstrating this throughout.

I mean, even in cases where people "have it coming," the Bible protects them. If a thief breaks into your home at night, you can kill the thief on the spot and the Law says he had it coming, "his guilt is on his head." But if a thief breaks into your home in broad daylight, you are NOT allowed to kill him. The implication is that a menacing force in your home can be identified and brought to justice, or at least cut off from his people if he is unrepentant or resists arrest. At night when the attack is unsuspected and defenses are naturally down, a thief presents more of a threat. There are any number of other reasons, but basically a daytime attack is more likely to be thwarted by other means than killing him than at night. Apparently the Bible values even the life of criminals.

How much more so the lives of the innocent unborn!

Anyway...

It's an emotional topic, and it makes me think sometimes because my daughter, before she was born, was VERY MUCH "unwanted." She has certainly changed our lives, and we don't even want to think right now about what life would be without her.

The one thing you have to remember is the emphasis that Jesus placed on mercy. As a man, I cannot even BEGIN to presume to know what it is like to be a woman with a baby on the way, nor can I rightly claim to understand all the difficult issues a woman who is put in the position to consider abortion must face. I do not judge women for that, nor as a man do I have the right to speak on behalf of women. But I am deeply angered by those who have a careless and even casual disregard for human life. I may not agree with abortion in the case of rape or incest, but I can appreciate how that would lead a young woman to abortion. But dismissing an embryo as a person-less blob of cells, denying it of its humanity, and robbing it of all the potential of a human existence? Unacceptable. Having an abortion after making the decision to engage in irresponsible behavior knowing full well the consequences, just because you simply don't want a child? Intolerable, because it could have been prevented. I'm less angry at the women who go through with abortions than I am the radical abortion activists that encourage poor behavior.

Yes, and I think that makes a great point: We should not have to be told to not abort our own kind.

The Bible is as silent on abortion as it is on nuclear weapons. I says not to kill, it says children are the greatest blessing and that God knows us from the womb. If one wants to get technical, there are four of the non canonical works that specifically prohibit abortion (though not considered divine, they do show us some of what early Christianity believed) and throughout the Gospel of Luke the same word for unborn is used for child. This is also frequent in the OT as well, spcifically in the Book of Judges.

It's ok, Kiran! The point is that you try to understand what the meaning really is. When we say something is open to interpretation, we mean exactly things like the abortion issue. We don't "know" Biblically whether abortion is strictly forbidden or not because the Bible doesn't SAY explicitly that it is. Whether this is the case or not IS a matter of interpretation, and since, as it seems to me and many other Christians, that the Bible emphasizes the principle of "sanctity of life," it makes sense to interpret the Bible as being anti-abortion. You aren't going to hell if you don't believe that way, any more than you're going to hell for believing/not believing the "gap theory" of the opening verses of Genesis. These are dangerous grounds we're treading, so we have to be very careful and slow to judge people--but unafraid to discern truth and bold to speak what we feel is right.

Facts themselves are not really open to interpretation when it comes to the Bible due to the principle of Biblical inerrancy. Torah is black-and-white in most cases, allowing for mercy when it CAN and providing swift judgment in order to render justice and protect the innocent. Your passage in particular addresses injury to the woman, not the baby. Your Swedish translation is probably just fine. "Death accidents," as it might translate literally in your language, can refer to a number of things when we're discussing Torah: Negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter, or murder. All three must be decided by the elders, but involuntary manslaughter does NOT invoke an automatic penalty of death. Negligent homicide is tricky, but it does risk the death penalty. I mentioned King David earlier. The way he went about killing Uriah might be construed as negligent homicide. David being the king, he got off easy.

I am glad, though, that you do look through the Bible and try to support your opinions Biblically. Don't be afraid to be "wrong." I'm wrong about a lot of things, and exploring where we are mistaken or misled only helps us reach a better understanding.

Well, God did wipe out the rest of the species, which would suggest little value for human life. Plus, he did sentence us all to die because Adam had listened to his wife, and he did limit our life span to 120 years.


David's punishment was the death of his first-born from Bathsheba, who would have been a bastard of adultery. His kid was punished, rather than David. God also chose to kill 70,000 Israelites merely because David had taken a census.


Your verses, please.

Not conscious as a human person is conscious. An adult mouse is more conscious than a newborn human. Humans are so underdeveloped at their birth they need constant nurture for the better part of a year just to survive. We are born half baked. If we came out with all our brains our heads would be so big they could no egress the birth canal of the mother.

ruveyn

Only because the depth of human wickedness far exceeded any worth they might have had if they had been obedient. The Bible also mentions the Nephilim, which suggests that the human race was further tarnished by interbreeding with demons. There are other ways to interpret this, of course, but it seems the level of human depravity had gone so far it couldn't be redeemed as it was at the time. If God DIDN'T value human life, He could have ended it, Noah and family included, and that would have taken away all the time that has passed since Noah for anyone else to have lived and decided for themselves whether to follow in wickedness or obedience. The fact that we are the ones who survived the flood (through Noah) shows the depth of God's value for our life.

Also, I'm unsure of the correct interpretation of the 120 year life span. It could mean that from the point in time that God observed the near-total depravity (save for Noah) God allotted 120 years until the Deluge. Moses said that man lives 70 years, 80 years if he's strong. A max age of 120 years doesn't work because Noah lived more than 120 years. But even 70 years for most of us is a good, long life and people are living longer and longer lives now.


Untrue. David was punished, not Bathsheba's first-born. There are a lot of issues with this, including inheritance issues with the firstborn child to Uriah's widow, to whether David's firstborn would have been the proper heir to the kingship. There are a lot of directions that could go, but it suffices that the way things were ended up being more merciful to that child for an early death, not to mention it paved the way for Solomon and the continuity of the Davidic line to the birth of Jesus. While we may not always understand it or agree with it, all things work for good.



Some have already been quoted in this thread. Kiran quoted a verse from the Psalms. thechadmaster quoted Jeremiah 1:5 "Before i formed you in the womb i knew you..."

Biologically speaking, it's a human life. You have to be very intellectually dishonest with yourself to believe otherwise. Thou shalt not kill is the fifth commandment. Therefore, it's wrong.

I think that one of the reasons abortion isn't mentioned in the Bible was that the taking of an innocent life to those believers of the Hebrew Bible was prohibited by the commandment "thou shalt not kill" found in Exodus 20:13.

Exodus 21:22-25 signifies a particular circumstance in which fighting men unintentionally injure a pregnant woman in a fight. As a result of the injury from the fight, the woman goes into an early labor, causing a premature birth.

And if no harm was done to either the mother or child, then the law (Mosaic law) was to levy only a fine against the person who caused the premature birth; however, if the fight caused injury or death to either the mother or child, the law then was to apply an equivalent retribution.

(Many Hebrew people during the Old Testament times believed that the Messiah could perhaps come from within their own family, and therefore injuring a pregnant woman and possibly destroying the child she was carrying was considered to be a very serious matter.)

And so I take Exodus 21:22-25 to mean that an unborn child is considered to be alive and fully human and that the law actually gives the unborn child the same rights as the Mother.

Mistranslation: The commandment is don't murder (which means wrongful killing).

I think all translations from the Hebrew should be burned. So many translations are just plain wrong.

You can start to get straight on what is in the TNKH by tossing your KJV which is a thoroughly putrid translation.

ruveyn

Is that the only reason? Exactly how "disobedient" were they? The Nephilim were half human and half immortal, like Jesus and Hercules. The Bible doesn't say that the fathers of the Nephilim were "demons."


Well, why didn't God just send Jesus then, instead of the flood, so that people could believe in him and be "saved?"



David's first child with Bathsheba was certainly not David's first born child. "more merciful to that child an early death?" You are such an apologist for God.


Chad is cherrypicking--taking verses out of context and claiming that they support a particular point of view. The full verse is:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

God is speaking specifically to and about Jeremiah, and not offering a blanket condemnation of abortion.

Genesis 6:4--"The Nephilim were on the earth both in those days and afterwards, when the sons of God came to the daughters of man, who bore children to them. They were the powerful men of old, the famous men."

"Sons of God" can refer angels. That wicked people resulted from such unions suggests this was not something God intended. Only fallen angels would have dared do such a thing.


It wasn't the right time for that.


No, but apparently David also had a deep love for Bathsheba and deeply cared for any child that was his. This also looks forward to a time in which his older children would die.

The issue is convoluted because technically Bathsheba's firstborn belonged to Uriah, but only a close relative can redeem a widow. David effectively caused Uriah's name to disappear from the families of Israel. And then you have the child being born under shameful circumstances. While Jesus did have a few skeletons in His closet, King David's error wouldn't have been quite so easily resolved. The Davidic line of succession would have been through his firstborn--and remember, David's oldest heirs were killed. The child would not have been fit for the throne, nor could have fulfilled God's purpose. An early death was an easy and merciful relief for the child as well as a traumatic experience for David in the way of punishment.

I completely neglected the 70,000. 2 Samuel 24 starts out "The Lord's anger burned against Israel again..." I take this to mean they were doing things they shouldn't have been doing. David wasn't punished for "merely" taking a census. First of all, why did he need to take a census? In those days, taking censuses was more like what we call drafting soldiers for military service. By raising up a massive army, David is relying on sheer numbers rather than God to protect Israel. David realized too late that he had erred. Second, there was protocol to be followed in registration. Exodus 30:12-13--"When you take a census of the Israelites to register them, each of the men must pay a ransom for himself to the Lord as they are registered. Then no plague will come on them as they are registered. Everyone who is registered must pay half a shekel according to the sanctuary shekel (20 gerahs to the shekel). This half shekel is a contribution to the Lord." It goes on to say that this ransom is a STRICT policy and that no more and no less may be payed.

As to whether the punishment was appropriate, consider David was given a choice. 3 years of famine might have resulted in greater loss of life and a longer period of civil unrest. 3 months without leadership might have resulted in chaos and outside invasion. 3 days of plague, while destructive, was the quickest and, relatively speaking, the safest alternative, not to mention consistent with the Exodus mandate. David made the right choice, endured lighter losses than what COULD have happened, maintained control over the nation, and stayed consistent with the Law in terms of appropriate punishment. That "the Lord's anger burned" tells me that divine wrath was coming, that David was complicit through his own wrongdoing and impure motives, and David's mistake provided the vehicle through which God executed His judgment.

Even these two issues are consistent with a high value placed on human life in God mercifully taking a child when being allowed to live would have been more unjust, and when according to 2 Samuel 24:16, "...but the Lord relented concerning the destruction and said to the angel who was destroying the people, 'Enough, withdraw your hand now!'"


Who says it offers a blanket condemnation of abortion? I never said the Bible offered a blanket condemnation of abortion. I said that the Bible often affirms the sanctity of life. By providing the complete context of the verse, you just proved my point. Even if God is only speaking to Jeremiah here, it still demonstrates that God knows all people and sets them apart for His purpose, whatever that purpose may be. Jeremiah was a prophet. I'm a musician. David, son of Jesse was a king. Jesus is Messiah.

Last edited by AngelRho on 28 Jan 2011, 12:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

The Bible doesn't say anything about abortion. There's no mention of it in Judaism or Christianity until you get to the Didache, a Christian document not in the Bible but contemporary with it. (The Bible does mention first-trimester John the Baptist "leaping for joy" - clearly not a nonreactive clump of cells.) Quite possibly it wasn't even 'on the radar' when the Mosaic Law was written down. It just wasn't imaginable. Yet.

Why do you ask?

I partially agree. Though in order to actually get the most out of Bible study one has got to understand, not just the languages, but the history and culture as well. It's a tall ask for the average person trying to put food on their plate.

Take it from a Catholic, forcing people to read a holy book in a language that is not their own, might seem like a good idea but it does not end well.

As for the KJV, it's actually not that bad, I enjoy the fact that it strives to maintain the poetic language of the document. So many of the new versions make the language about as dull as that of an IKEA catalogue.

way more human lives are ended than spared in the bible... way more.

to this god-thingy-thing human life is completely worthless.

if a murderer (e.g. cain) is spared... and only this noah guy is saved later on, while all other human beings are killed, because they were "wicked"... than this god-thingy-thing is a very, very weird sick being who should get its priorities right in a hurry.



and also:




it assumes that the pusher is not the husband... because only the husband can crave the pusher to be fined.... so... why should he do that if he himself is the pusher?

morale of that example:

the husband can cause an unborn to die without any punishment or consequences, which means that unborn life in itself has no value at all according to the bible.

it is the loss of the value of a future child-worker and pension-provider which is something worth to the husband, that has to be compensated for....

and if an unborn child is not of any value to the husband, he may push his pregnant wife at his harts content. not even she is of any significant value and her opinion on this matter is not accounted for.


religion. wow.

the bible doesn't state:

thou shall not be wicked

but it does state:

thou shall not murder*

so if the entire human population is getting killed for being wicked... maybe it should have been included in the 10 commandments...

if wicked means they were all at least murderers... then why would this god-thingy-thing kill them? they were doing the job all by themselves anyway... no need to help them!

religion. wow.

always deprived of any logic.

EDIT:

*corrected kill to murder - see ruveyns post earlier, because he is correct.