You know why? When the Bible was written, crimes against children were considered property crimes against their father. Thou shalt not steal, and thou shalt not covet, both indirectly protect kids about as much as they’re intended to. Which isn’t much.
Interesting take, and not entirely wrong either imo. Though, I think the real reason is simply that such a commandment wasn't necessary, because it was already implied from the very beginning. God gave Adam and Eve the mandate to care for his creation, and in conjunction with the fact that "Love the Lord your God" is the very first commandment (which means to follow his commandments), respecting the people that God created in his image would have absolutely unquestionable in the mind of the ancient Israelites.
The really hard to accept part is how this respect for what God made included the destruction of what is not of him, which included people. It's a very alien concept to us today in our culture. The important part is that what you read in the Bible (esp. the Old Testament) cannot be taken at face value. Everything is seeped in historical context that often makes things seem at a glance to be the opposite of what they actually are. The translation from Hebrew and Greek compounds this problem.
TL;DR: If you want to take solace in confirmation bias, it's not hard to do, and to blame you for doing so would be incredibly hypocritical of me. Remaining truly objective is the most grueling exercise in self-awareness and accepting uncomfortable possibilities anyone could ever undertake.
Interesting perspective. But yeah it seems like they danced all around the subject altogether.
Just as they don't mention animal abuse, those morals don't keep people in line.
The ten commandments are just part of the whole.
They do talk about animal abuse, along with slave prices, death penalty etc.
See Deuteronomy. Very fun read.
Indeed, and really there ought to be a few more commandments, such as:
'Thou shalt not abuse earthly environmental resources beyond necessity'
Or something like that anyways. Really, if there's only 10 commandments, they should be simplified and boiled down to only a couple or few commandments or so that encapsulate them all, as the late George Carlin presented..
Here's another one based on the general conversation here:
Thou shalt not exploit or abuse a vulnerable person or creature.
Open to some interpretation, of course. But concise enough to cover the brush strokes if those who are obsessed with the Ten Commandments were to really follow through on implementing them.
I'd replace 'a vulnerable' with simply 'any', to be more broad about it, almost nobody deserves abuse.
Well, except serial killers, cannibals, leaders that orchestrate genocide, etc. in the worst of the worst fields of evil people. I'm not God, I'll turn a blind eye to giving them a dose of their own medicine..
When the Bible was written is a very abstract concept covering a large timeframe
The ten commandments are a old testament thing, textually written by Moses as he attempted to copy the ones God had written and that Moses shattered after the golden calf.
Christianity extended the Jewish scripture with the gospels, which include a story where God Himself Slumming As A Human was asked what the most important part of the law was, and Jesus said "love" twice.
If "love everyone as you love yourself" doesn't lead you to not abusing children, I don't think any book of good behavior is going to stop you.
People and cultures have very different ideas about what constitutes abuse of children. Some cultures would consider it abusive not to cut off parts of their children's genitals.
What's your relationship with proverbs 13:24?
It's on the 5 that Moses dropped.
"Thou shalt not rape" just didn't make it onto the top 10 list.
Did they even have a definition of 'rape' back in biblical times?
Sorry I'm not exactly a biblical expert, but I refuse to believe that Jesus' mother Mary was a virgin, someone had to have fucked her over 2000 years ago.
Please mods don't crucify me for this comment..
Rape is mentioned in Deuteronomy of course.
I mean, there's only ten of them. It's not called God's Comprehensive List of All 283092893936 Immoral Actions.
“Father, bless me for I have sinned, I did an original sin… I poked a badger with a spoon.” --Eddie Izzard
Well 10 commandments are part of Deuteronomy, older than christian religion, and the book was nitpicked by those who institutionalized Christianity.
Even before then. They're originally listed in Exodus. Fun fact, after the tablet smashing incident when Moses goes back up the mountain to get a new set carved in Exodus 32, several of those listed by god in the process of creating the replacements are different from the first ten. Depending on where you split the clauses, there are as many as 18 commandments between the first and the second sets.
Deuteronomy is a recap, including only the first ten, but also manages get the explanation for the sabbath wrong as compared to previous chapters. Then it goes on to claim "these are the ten commandments and god added no more" which as we just saw is an untruth.
Even in Ye Olde Testament Times, an effort was afoot to deliberately mutate the terms and conditions in order to suit the current authority.
Depending on where you split the clauses, there are as many as 18 commandments
And here I thought it was fifteen.
Neither in Judaism nor Christianity are the Ten Commandments the only religious rules that exist.
Damn bro you really owned em
That's why the Republicans want them in classrooms, instead of "love thy neighbour as thyself". Because that would imply that racism is bad, and that's something they do not want to hear.
Lots of people treating the Torah as exclusively Christian in here.
Probably because when it was written, marrying off kids and having them reproduce pretty much as soon as they hit puberty was the norm.
It wasn't the norm, that's a myth. Child birth is dangerous, having children that young was even more dangerous. Children of rich families were married off young for political reasons, but even they waited with having children until they were older.
Do you have a source? I was always told that Roman patriacians were allowed to marry 12yo girls, but most girls married at 16, and that puberty was around 14-16.
And they still study that today.. ☹️
Real quick Google, absolutely none of this information vetted so take it with a pinch of salt.
10 commandments written around 1300-1600 BCE. Average life expectancy 20-35 years.
You're not an adult for very long before you snuff it, and if you wanna have kids you gotta start as early as possible.
Average “life expectancy” in the past is misleading because it is skewed by high rates of infant/child mortality. If you made it to past your first few years, you stood a much better likelihood of reaching old age.
they are probably covered by other biblical laws that apply to adults... like, if you rape one you just have to marry it because you can't burden the father with damaged goods, unless it didn't scream enough, then it shall be stoned to death.
No shit, the christian bible is absolute trash. Teaches you how to treat your slaves, can rape women, sell your daughter for foreskins. Daughters get their dad drunk and rape him. People that believe that shit have ZERO place in my life, and I will judge you. You can't have critical thinking and believe skydaddy is there with a grand plan while children are being raped, people murdered and diseases running rampant. Absolute disgrace of a leader.
If it's gods will, why the fuck are you praying? Are you telling your God he's wrong? What was his plan for babies born missing their skin? Was that a punishment for their parents? Why is God hanging out on the field for your favorite team and not helping feed starving, innocent children? If you can answer these questions with a straight face, you're a terrible human being and deserve to burn for it.
But the first four are about how much of a sad loser god you are praying to.
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.