I don’t know that the most common translation of “her thigh shall rot” makes more logical sense.
It’s either an abortion, causing a thigh to rot, or some other translation I’m not aware of.
This might be better to be moved to the Roe v. Wade thread however, it’s not really humorous.
I am confused at the mention that “most infidelity does not result in pregnancy” however. It seems like it’s just… sex? Which logically produces a baby at times.
I didn’t say it was impossible for pregnancy to occur from infidelity. But even without birth control, most sex acts do not have pregnancy as the end result. Regular unprotected intercourse has a 75% chance of resulting in pregnancy within a year which means any single act has a very low chance: low single digits I’m guessing.
Either way, I’m not trying to make the Bible logical. I’m just repeating what it says re: abortion/“thigh rotting” and the relative value of a fetus to an adult woman. Until we get an expert in Hebrew-English translation in here, we’re stuck with abortion or rotting thighs as a result of a Biblically-recorded ceremony.
I disagree.
Nerding out over whether the The One True God who created the Universe has given us a magic abortion potion or a thigh-rotting potion is comedy gold.
By the way guys, there is an obvious solution here.
We just need holy water, tabernacle dust, and an adulteress.
We could also use some faithful women as a control.
This is the twiggest thing I’ve read in a long time. Thanks for the chuckle.
I mean if you’re going to claim that the Bible contains instructions on how to perform an abortion… it seems like an abortion should be the result of following the instructions.
Or is that an unreasonable understanding of the meaning of words?
Perhaps it is because you are requesting scientific backing to prove something in a religious text. Do you have scientific backing that it is possible to raise the dead?
I don’t think anyone was claiming that. I think the claim was “the Bible is okay with the concept of abortion”, of at least that it isn’t “not okay” with it.
I could be wrong though.
This is one of those cultural type phrases that becomes near impossible to “translate accurately” in today’s culture.
No, but I don’t go around claiming that the Bible contains “instructions” on how to raise the dead either. Because it doesn’t do that any more than it contains instructions on how to perform an abortion.
I was responding to a post containing a quote of someone purporting to be a pastor who made that precise and verbatim claim.
As part of a larger argument about the Bible not prohibiting abortion.
God saying, “do this to induce an abortion” is evidence of the authors of the Bible being okay with the concept, even if the instructions don’t actually work.
It ostensibly does if the Bible is to be believed.
Holy water, dust off the floor, uncover the woman’s head, put the offering of jealousy (with no frankincense) in her hands, priest takes the bitter water in his hands, put the woman under oath, woman says “Amen, so be it”, priest writes curses in a book, scrapes them into the bitter water, she drinks it.
There is almost surely a secretive step of something like silphium (perhaps this is scraping the curse into the water?), but it very much has a step by step instruction for abortion/thigh rotting.
If this is not abortion (or thigh rotting), we might agree that the Bible is at best inconsistent, and by extension consider it possibly not a basis for modern ethics.
If that’s what it actually says, which given that it doesn’t work (pregnant women drink muddy water all the time in the third world because that’s all there is to drink) doesn’t seem likely. That’s my point.
