Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Very good question, Karl, and probably way too philosophical for this list. 
But let's take a little example, which I hope nobody on this list considers 
to be contemporary. In the decades leading up to the American Civil War, 
people on both sides of the pro and anti-slavery debate, many of whom were 
God-fearing Christians and Jews, used and quoted the Bible to support their 
views. Now, 150 years later, all (I hope) civilized people consider slavery 
to be abhorrent, and to quote the Bible to support it would be considered to 
be perverted.

No doubt that human values have evolved and (hopefully) advanced over time. 
The Bible has had an immense influence on this evolution, but the Bible has 
also constantly been reinterpreted over time in pace with that evolution. 
The Bible is a huge collection of works, and every generation "connects" to 
those parts in which it finds meaning and comfort. In part, this is what 
makes the Bible relevant to so many millions of people, thousands of years 
after it was written.

Yigal Levin


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
To: "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 5:14 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Dinah raped?


> Yigal:
>
> "We must be very careful of assuming that the authors of the Bible shared 
> the
> same views on "morality" that modern-day Jews and Christians do. This is
> especially true for matters of sexual behavior."
>
> The question is, how much of the modern mores are based on Biblical
> ones? In other words, how well have people understood the Biblical
> ones and translated them into their own? Or how much of the modern
> understanding are taken from contemporary mores and eisegeted back
> into Hebrew?
>
> Karl W. Randolph.
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>
>
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