To: bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] xrm and the Canaanites' VIP treatment
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 14:54:32 -0800
----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Bill Rea" <bsr15 AT cantsl.it.canterbury.ac.nz>
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Received: 1/16/2008 12:44:47 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] xrm and the Canaanites' VIP treatment
You wrote:
*I gave you an example. Read it. Its offensive to most modern people.
*A
*woman gets raped and the rapist has to marry her with no chance of
*divorce. Who's that punishment for? Here if you did what's in those
*verses
*you could been facing time in the slammer if your lawyer doesn't
*defame
*and slander the victim sufficiently well to convince the jury she was a
*slut. I doubt you could even find on New Zealand's statute books a law
*which forbids a man to seduce a married woman. Morally its still
*wrong,
*but not legally. The laws in the Torah aren't there to look pretty. They
*were living law codes which were actually used.
It is safe to say that the concepts of rape and adultery have evolved quite a
bit since the Torah was written. Our present-day notions of what adultery is
would probably look quaint or totally out of touch to the Israelites, and
well they should.