There are two common modern myths about the Bible, one conservative, the other liberal. The liberal myth is that the Bible never condemns homosexuality. In fact it clearly does, both in the Old Testament and the New. The conservative myth is that the Bible condemns abortion as murder. In fact it clearly does not—it classifies it as a mere property crime against the expectant father, and thus as written would permit a mother to have a legal abortion merely by paying a small fee to the father thereby dispossessed, and a small tax to the public. Which is sexist. But it’s still not murder. Here I’ll lay out the refutation of both myths so you can just point people here whenever they make either claim at you again.
That the Old Testament Condemns Homosexuality
A typical example of attempting to deny this is the article “The Bible Does Not Condemn ‘Homosexuality'” by Adam Nicholas Phillips. Another example is the Wijngaards Report.
The Old Testament is quite clear on the matter. And Jesus did say “not one jot or tittle of the law” will pass away until the world does (Matthew 5:18; interlinear), so the New Testament clearly endorses the Old Testament (and even before then, the Law there had to be followed in order to be saved, i.e. resurrected rather than left to rot at the end of times). That most Christians ignore this is simply another example of them not doing what their Bible actually says. And we are here talking about what the Bible actually says, as its authors intended it. And the infamous Old Testament law plainly says “it is an abomination” for a man to lie with a man “as one does a woman” (Leviticus 18:22; interlinear; the literal text is the same in the Hebrew and ancient Rabbinical Greek: “you shall not lay the laying of a woman with a man”), and any men who do this are to be executed (Leviticus 20:13; interlinear; the literal text is again the same in the Hebrew and ancient Rabbinical Greek: “whoever lays the laying of a woman with a man, they have made an abomination; both are subject to death”). And that a sexual connotation was meant is undeniable from the context of both verses, where the same words are used in preceding or following verses to condemn other sex acts, from bestiality to incest.
The attempts to “get around” this are little more than specious apologetics. One argument is that because this appears in a list of laws relating to “all kinds of connotations of adultery, promiscuity, and idol worship from the surrounding nations” that therefore it refers only to such things. That’s illogical. Those things are separately covered, and nowhere here stated. Therefore this verse cannot be a mere repetition of laws already listed. It is, to the contrary, quite clearly stating additionally that gay sex (and that means men sleeping with men; the Old Testament never mentions lesbians) is to be included among those other things as equally bad. And no, these were not “temporary” laws meant only to apply during the Exodus. They were always meant to be eternal laws—just as Jesus was made to say, in accord with every orthodox Jew, then and now (Jesus only allows that they might end when the world does, but this is the same Jesus who implies we will be sexless angels in the afterlife). A similar argument is that this verse only meant male-on-male adultery or sex with a male relative (incest or child molestation); but adultery and incest are already covered by separate laws, and are nowhere mentioned in this law: it says any man, not certain specific men (much less boys).
All these apologetics completely ignore the most authoritative source for understanding what the Bible meant: the people who wrote it, and enforced its laws for a thousand years. If ancient Rabbis said it meant any gay sex, and never said it meant anything else (much less the things these liberal apologists just made up), then it meant any gay sex. Period. See Judaism and Homosexuality: A Brief History. There are also decent articles on the point at Wikipedia and the Jewish Virtual Library.
Talmudic Rabbis were against even masturbation, ruling that it violated the commandment against adultery. So it can hardly be surprising they’d be against guy-on-guy. And indeed, they regarded both as the same kind of sin, discussing them together in tractate Niddah 13b. By contrast, as long as they were married to them, women were legally allowed to have sex with boys as young as nine (Yevamot 51b), and men were legally allowed to have sex with girls as young as three (Mishnah tractate Niddah 5:4; b.Talmud, Niddah 45a). So there was clearly not any real concern with child molestation. As long as you declared a marriage, you could bang kids. And the Bible says nothing the contrary. By contrast, any man having sex with any man was explicitly declared an abomination worthy of death. That’s just how it is.
That the New Testament Condemns Homosexuality
When we get to the New Testament, we have, as just noted, Jesus declaring the whole Levitical law valid until the End Times. No real way around that. And then we have Paul. He clearly regards gay sex as sinful in Romans 1:26 (interlinear) through 1:27 (interlinear), including it with all “unnatural” sex—which would then have meant anal and oral, regardless of genders involved. That is most likely what he means by even women being damned for “exchanging the natural use” of their sex organs “for that which was against nature,” rather than lesbianism, although he probably would have agreed that counted. The idea is: it is a sin to use your sex organs for anything other than procreation, the purpose for which God designed them. That automatically classifies gay sex as immoral, and Paul clearly elaborates here on that being indeed the case.
The same specious apologetics are attempted here, too, claiming Paul “meant” something other than what he says, like “idolatry, promiscuity and shrine prostitution,” but if that is what he meant, that is what he would have said. To the contrary, what Paul says is that because pagans gave themselves up to idolatry God gave them up to sexual sinning. He makes no exceptions for “committed relationships.” Any unnatural sexual act is a sinful abomination, akin to adultery and every other sin. Period. That’s what Paul says. And he clearly describes this as God’s law, not just his own opinion: “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things are worthy of death, they not only continue to do these things, but also approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:32; interlinear).
This becomes especially clear when we look at Paul’s other condemnation of homosexuality, in 1 Corinthians 6:9 (interlinear): “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men” (nor thieves etc.) “will inherit the Kingdom of God.” That’s an explicit condemnation. And it clearly demarcates the merely promiscuous from homosexuals. So he is not saying only promiscuous people are damned. He is saying promiscuous people and homosexuals are damned (along with every other sinner).
The apologetics that tries to deny this tries to “reinterpret” the words Paul uses entirely contrary to their actual usage and meaning. The word Paul uses here is explicitly “sleepers-with-men” (or, to be frank, “manfuckers” or “sharers of the marriage bed with men”); this same word was re-used in the forged text of 1 Timothy 1:10 (interlinear), which likewise classifies gay men among murderers and other sinners as those acting contrary to the gospel. And do note, the real Paul even thinks men having long hair is disgraceful (1 Corinthians 11:14; interlinear). This is in accord with his comment in Romans: he is very much against anything he thinks is “against nature,” deeming that as signaling against God (since it goes against God’s design). And Paul explicitly describes homosexuality as such. And as just noted, so does yet another canonical New Testament book.
The liberal critic is correct that the other type of person Paul puts on his list of the damned, the “unmanly” (sometimes translated “effeminate” as if meaning “gay” for example), in Greek the malakoi, did not refer to gay men, but “soft, cowardly, morally weak” people of any gender, i.e. not the effeminate but the profligate; so this had no particular connotation against gay men, nor should we expect it to—Paul already listed gay men, so he would not list them twice. But list gay men as damned he did. And in the most literal way one could manage in Greek, using the word arsenokoitai, a compound word arsen– (men) and –koitai (“to bed,” which has a different root meaning but the same valence as the Latin coitus): literally, man-fuckers, “bedders of men.” Hence this word refers to any man who has sexual intercourse with another man. It’s pretty clear what Paul means by this: gays are damned.
The apologetic escape again is to make shit up and claim the word arsenokoitai “is about economic abuses and exploitation.” There is absolutely zero evidence of that. It only ever refers to gay men in ancient Greek. Another tactic will be to claim it refers only to pederasty, sex with boys, or prostitution, but those are explicitly not the words Paul uses. The word he chose is all-encompassing. It is not restricted by any other qualifier, whether age or commerce. He is not talking about prostitutes. He is not talking about children. Though those would be included, certainly, they are not what he is limiting damnation to. He would have said so otherwise. Ancient Greek afforded him ample vocabulary for the purpose. Moreover, note Paul also does not single out female prostitution in his list, yet surely was including them under the other categories he does list (sexual immorality and adultery), so he cannot be singling out male prostitution either. So there is no way to get Paul to be referring to only male prostitutes. He means all men or boys who have sex with men or boys. Period.
It is sometimes speculated Paul invented the word arsenokoitai as it first appears in his text, but this is flawed logic. Such a colloquial and disparaging word may have been widely used in spoken Greek, like any other slang, and just not happened to have survived in earlier extant texts; after all, nearly all ancient literature was lost, and what survives is mostly elevated literature likely to avoid such vulgar colloquialisms. A clue to this fact is that the Septuagint—the Greek Old Testament, translated by Rabbinical experts centuries before Paul—in both Levitical passages uses the same words that Paul does, just not in compound form, condemning koitên with an arsenos hence “fucking a man.” And we know Paul routinely employed the Septuagint. There might even have been variant texts of it that compounded the word (we know there were many variant readings in the Bible that don’t survive in extant manuscripts: see On the Historicity of Jesus, Ch. 4, Element 9). Paul, in other words, may have been directly lifting this word from the Septuagint (or Jewish commentaries thereon or paraphrases thereof).
In the extant text of the Septuagint, Leviticus 18:22 reads καὶ μετὰ ἄρσενος οὐ κοιμηθήσῃ κοίτην γυναικός βδέλυγμα γάρ ἐστιν, “and with a male you shall not sleep [as if] fucking a woman, for it is an abomination,” and Leviticus 20:13 reads καὶ ὃς ἂν κοιμηθῇ μετὰ ἄρσενος κοίτην γυναικός βδέλυγμα ἐποίησαν ἀμφότεροι θανατούσθωσαν ἔνοχοί εἰσιν, “and whoever shall sleep with a male [as if] fucking a woman, both have committed an abomination, they are liable, and shall be put to death.” Here arsenoskoitên (as it would appear then; Greek texts did not include spaces between words) looks an awful lot like Paul’s arsenokoitai. In fact, it differs by a mere single letter (the final sigma in arsenos, dropping which converts the two word phrase into a single compound word), and the suffix, which merely converts an act (-ên) into a plural of persons (-ai). It seems evident Paul is either just riffing off the Septuagint, or using a variant text of it. He clearly is referencing the Levitical law.
So there is no honest, credible, or competent argument against the conclusion that the whole Bible condemns homosexuality (for good take-downs of specious efforts to deny this, see G.R. Jepsen, “Dale Martin’s ‘Arsenokoite¯s and Malakos’ Tried and Found Wanting,” Currents in Theology & Mission 33 [2006], pp. 397–405 and George Hollenback, “An Overlooked Backdrop to the Coining of
ἀρσενοκοίτης,” Early Christianity 8 (2017), pp. 269–273).
I should even add that you can’t make a distinction between the actual sex and the orientation either. Being celibate doesn’t get you off the hook. The New Testament condemns even sexual thoughts. As Jesus is made to say, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:26-28; interlinear). The same rule would extend to anyone, man or woman, lusting after a man. Likewise in that Romans passage Paul explicitly condemns “sinful desires” and “shameful lusts,” not just acts. He even condemns as sinners those who “approve of those who practice” the sexual acts he condemns. So yes, even merely being gay is condemned in the New Testament.
That the Bible Permits Abortion
The New Testament never mentions abortion; except when Paul metaphorically calls himself one in 1 Corinthians 15:8 (which Bible translations conceal behind euphemisms: see the interlinear), but he wasn’t discussing its legality or morality. There is in fact only one passage in the Bible that does mention anything applicable to the notion: Exodus 21:22-25. And that passage actually permits it. For a contrary example of attempts to argue the Bible condemns abortion, see Five Reasons Abortion Is Murder by Doug Potter, where the other four reasons are bad philosophy and worse science, and the fifth is “the Bible says so.” But it doesn’t.
Besides that verse, Potter tries to adduce evidence from other verses that don’t even mention abortion. Bad literary analysis is pretty much all he has. Job 3, Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 139:13-16, Galatians 1:15, and the like, never say a person was conscious or legally a person when they were in the womb, only that God made plans for them when they were, or that historically that’s where they came from. And that the word brephos in Greek meant both babies and fetuses tells us nothing about their being the same in every respect, much less respects pertinent to laws about murder, any more than including humans and cows in the word “mammal” means cows are humans. So there is no sensible way to get the Bible to condemn abortion with dismal reasoning like that. As Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg aptly put it, “Most of the proof texts that they’re bringing in for this are ridiculous.”
No, all we have is that passage in Exodus 21. Potter quotes the NASB translation (the older, 1995 version) thus (and I am here putting in brackets the words even the NASB admits are not in the Hebrew):
If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges [decide]. But if there is [any further] injury, then you shall appoint [as a penalty] life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
This is of course obscure. What does “there is no injury” mean? This passage appears to be making a distinction between “injury” and “no injury,” and “no injury” outcomes are a mere property crime against the father (the mother has no legal standing in the matter), such that all one need do is pay him for the privilege (and perhaps a tax to the court); and only the “injury” outcome results in a felony (such that if there is a death, you will be executed; if there is a mutilation, you will be mutilated).
If you look at a literal translation interlinear with the Hebrew it says:
And if men fight, and hurt a pregnant woman, so that she gives birth prematurely, and yet no harm follows, surely he shall be punished accordingly as the husband of the woman imposes on him, and he shall pay as the judges; but if harm follows, then you shall give life for life [etc.]
So again, what constitutes “harm following” and “harm not following”?
One way to figure out what this text originally meant is to go look at how the ancient Rabbis translated it into Greek in the Septuagint, which for verse 22 is as follows: ἐὰν δὲ μάχωνται δύο ἄνδρες, “if two men fight,” καὶ πατάξωσιν γυναῗκα ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσαν, “and strike a woman carrying in [her] womb,” καὶ ἐξέλθῃ τὸ παιδίον αὐτῆς, “and her baby comes out,” μὴ ἐξεικονισμένον, “and it is not fully formed,” ἐπιζήμιον ζημιωθήσεται, “a penalty he will suffer,” καθότι ἂν ἐπιβάλῃ ὁ ἀνὴρ τῆς γυναικός δώσει, “giving according to the judgment of the woman’s husband,” μετὰ ἀξιώματος, “as is befitting,” ἐὰν δὲ ἐξεικονισμένον ἦν δώσει ψυχὴν ἀντὶ ψυχῆς, “but if it was fully formed, he will give life for life.”
Here it is clear what is meant by “harm following” and “harm not following”: if a fully-formed fetus comes out, meaning a viable baby who dies from the premature birth, that’s “harm follows,” and anything else is equivalent to a mere miscarriage, in which case “harm does not follow.” No viable baby was lost. This makes clear that only what we would call a late term abortion is murder; and indeed, the Bible doesn’t really even say that as such, since this is an involuntary abortion (an assault), but it’s reasonable to assume Jewish courts would deem a woman who sought an abortion as then the one committing the crime—either a property crime against her husband if she aborts before the third trimester, or murder if afterward. So this passage does support declaring late-term abortions murder; but it actually is declaring all other abortions permissible—all you need do is compensate the father for the resulting financial loss and (maybe) pay a tax. Essentially, as worded, women could legally pay their husbands and the state to let them have an abortion. That’s God’s law.
It’s worth making clear here: the ancient Jews understood their own text better than we ever could, and they understood it as referring to killing the baby in both cases—but only killing a “fully formed” baby warrants death, whereas any other pre-formed baby (what we’d call a fetus) can be killed and that is a mere property crime. This makes sense as the immediately preceding verse also refers to injuring people as a property crime. In that case, the killing of a man’s slave is murder, but injuring them is a mere property crime; and here, killing a “fully formed fetus” is murder, but killing a “not fully formed fetus” is a mere injury, and only to the father. The text does not say, for example “and if the baby lives, a fine, but if it dies, death.” There is no surviving child in either case. Nor is intent the issue, as in both instances the death-causing blow is accidental. Nor is the issue “rendering the woman barren” or killing the woman, as some have tried to reinterpret it. The Septuagint makes that very clear.
And we have no less an authority than Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Paul and renowned Rabbinical commentator, confirming this fact:
Moses…implicitly and indirectly forbade the exposure of children when he pronounced the sentence of death against those who cause the miscarriage of mothers in cases where the fetus is fully formed. No doubt the view that the child while still adhering to the womb below the belly is part of its future mother is current both among scientists … and also among physicians of the highest repute, who have made researches into [matter] … But when children are brought forth and are separated from what they come out with … and are set free and placed by themselves, then they become real living creatures, deficient in nothing which can contribute to the perfection of human nature, so that then, beyond all question, he who slays an infant is a murderer.
Philo, De Specialibus Legibus 3.117-18
And that even follows his previous remark:
But if anyone has a fight with a woman who is pregnant, and strike her a blow on her belly, and she miscarry, if the child which was conceived within her is still unfashioned and unformed, he shall be punished by a fine, both for the assault which he committed and also because he has prevented nature, who was fashioning and preparing that most excellent of all creatures, a human being, from bringing him into existence. But if the child which was conceived had assumed all its proper connective and distinctive qualities, then he shall be executed.
Ibid. 3.108-109
We likewise have Josephus, the later first century historian, who has a slightly different take on (we must suppose) the Hebrew text:
He that kicks a woman with child, so that the woman is caused to miscarry, he shall be fined in property by the judges, as he has reduced the population by the destruction of what was in her womb, and let property also be given to the woman’s husband by the culprit. But if she die from the blow, let him also be put to death, since the law deems right that life should be paid for life.
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 4.278
Here Josephus is clearly deviating from the earlier Rabbinical translation, and interpreting any abortion as a property crime, and only classifying the act as murder if the blow kills the mother. So here we have no abortion as murder at all. All abortions are mere misdemeanors. And Josephus was a man of some prominence and authority, both priest and general in the Holy Land. So evidently there were Jews seeing it so. Elsewhere (in Against Apion 2.202), Josephus does make clear that a woman who seeks an abortion would have to be fined under this same law, so it was still a property crime against her husband and against the community (for “reduction of population”). But in practice that merely meant she just had to pay what amounts to basically a licensing fee and a public tax to get an abortion. And this liberal reading is indeed confirmed in the Talmud (Bava Kama 42a; see also the pertinent article in the Jewish Virtual Library and Larry V. Amsel’s Yale dissertation, “Abortion and the Jewish Ethical Tradition”).
Josephus’s interpretation (which is even more liberal than Philo’s and the Septuagintal Rabbis) is also confirmed in Targum Onkelos, which paraphrases the Exodus verses in just the way Josephus imagines. Astonishingly, the Latin Vulgate—the official translation of the very Catholic Church itself—is yet even more liberal still: it doesn’t even say the death of the baby is a property crime; only the injury to the woman is. And only her death counts as murder. But Thomas McDaniel has demonstrated “The Septuagint Has the Correct Translation of Exodus 21:22-23,” meaning even the original Hebrew intended that sense, and the current Hebrew we have has resulted from a slight etymological corruption. McDaniel confirms several scholars concur: the Bible says an under-formed fetus is not a person, so killing it is only a property crime; only a premature baby, one “fully formed,” counts as a person, and thus killing it becomes murder. And as we saw, many ancient Jews read the text even more liberally than that, as never qualifying abortion as murder.
Conclusion
So there just isn’t any way to get the Bible to say what you want here. No matter how much you want the Bible not to have damned gay men to execution and hell, it simply did. There is no way around it. And no matter how much you want the Bible to have condemned abortion as murder, it simply didn’t. It very clearly classified it as a property crime, rendering it entirely permitted to anyone who paid the appropriate taxes and fees.
Look at Numbers 5:21-29 the Law of Jealousies… it is an abortion induced by a voodoo ritual carried out by a shaman chanting magic incantation and making the woman suspected by her husband to be pregnant by other than him, to drink a Hexed Potion that makes her “belly swell and genitals rot” and thus abort … otherwise if the “seed” is from her husband then she will not abort and will be free to carry on to term.
That passage is unfortunately too vague. Commentators note that it doesn’t explicitly mention her being pregnant (the word “miscarry” is not actually in the text); and the “outcome” seems to be a destruction of her womb, whether something is in it or not. In other words, she will become infertile (whereas if she passes the test, she “will be able to have children”). I don’t consider that debate resolved in the literature. So it’s too hard to get a definitive evidence out of if regarding abortion. Hence I didn’t reference it.
Note of course the ritual is obviously bogus. No such effects would ensue from any such potion and magic. The theatre of it is a well-known type of ritual in anthropology. It’s largely meant to satisfy everyone and pacify anger. It doesn’t actually do anything. Basically, a woman willing to go through with it, has earned a plus mark and should just be assumed innocent; the few women who happen to be infertile and undergo the ritual and thus get condemned and executed for adultery unjustly are just “acceptable losses.” Barbaric. But then, the Bible is a barbaric text written by a barbaric society.
See Wikipedia for more. Note that Maimonides thought a failed test meant she died from the potion. It does not appear that was the view when it was still practiced (the practice was abolished in the 1st century). But had it been, there can be a more sinister reading of the passage: since the priest delivers the potion, the ritual could have been a means of allowing the priest to decide her guilt, and if he thinks her guilty, slip her a literal poison. The theatricals then just made it look like the judgment of God.
I think the passage implicitly implies that the reason the husband has become suspicious is because “she has become defiled” a euphemism for pregnant from other than he husband and that is the source of the Jealousy …. and finally if she passes the test in verse 28 it says she will go free and CONCEIVE SEED… i.e. carry on with her pregnancy… also the BELLY SWELLING and genitals (thigh is only a euphemism) rotting is all together a euphemism for the abortion…. just as thigh is a euphemism for genitals, the entire thing of the genitals rotting and belly swelling is all together a euphemism for her aborting her SEED which she will be free to bear if she does not undergo the rotting and swelling… in other words the SEED is aborted if she fails the test and if she does not then she is allowed to carry the seed to fruition.
⬛ Numbers 5:11-31 And YHWH spake unto Moses, saying speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man’s wife go aside, and commit a trespass against him, and a man lie with her carnally, and it be hid from the eyes of her husband, and be kept close, and ??????she be defiled, and there be no witness against her, neither she be taken with the manner; And the spirit of jealousy come upon him [the husband]…. then shall the man bring his wife unto the priest,….YHWH make thee a curse …. YHWH doth make thy thigh [i.e. genitals] to rot, and thy belly to swell; And this water that causeth the curse [i.e. HEXED POTION] shall ???go into thy bowels, to ???make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh [i.e. genitals] to rot [i.e. Abort]…. And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it shall come to pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people. And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and ?????????????????????shall conceive seed. This is the law of jealousies, when a wife goeth aside to another instead of her husband, and is defiled;
No. The word for “defiled” is “made unclean”, it refers to contact not condition, i.e. it means she came into contact with something that renders her unclean (even when it applies to menstruation, it is contact with the blood that renders a woman unclean, not the mere condition of menarche). And the Numbers passage explicitly says there is no evidence of the infidelity (so it can’t be a pregnancy), nor would an adulteress only be defiled if she got pregnant; the sex defiles her (and need not be PIV sex for that to be the case either, so pregnancy wasn’t even relevant to the crime, though “adulterating” a womb as property may have been in the ancient past the originating seed of the whole notion).
Likewise the only reference to her conceiving is if she is not an adulteress and it refers to the future not the past. So the passage is talking about fertility not pregnancy.
Nor does a “belly swell” from an abortion.
And so on.
So your interpretation simply doesn’t track the Hebrew or the sense.
Of course the whole thing is a primitive claptrap and you are tight about it being not AN ACTUAL abortion since most likely if the Shaman did not poison her she did not really have a rotted anything.
But… is it not possible also that the Shaman did administer some herbs or mild poisons to induce abortion???
Though such things existed, I doubt that’s what the passage refers to. The Hebrew doesn’t mention anything about abortions or miscarriages or any evidence of that kind.
OK you points are valid!!!
This article is now so much more important. Thank you Dr. Carrier!
“The idea is: it is a sin to use your sex organs for anything other than procreation, the purpose for which God designed them.”
I am curious, is it a valid interpretation then to say that it is a sin of equal proportion to have sex with someone you know is infertile, (as it is to engage in gay sex)?
Probably. I think some of the Talmudic passages I linked to do discuss that. There are disputes, but by and large the sentiment is you should divorce an infertile wife, not continue to have sex with her.
The Rabbis argue however over the “equal proportion” thing. Conservatives said yes. Liberals wanted degrees of sin acknowledged (hence you’ll find a debate in the Talmud over whether masturbators should be executed, or “merely” have their hand chopped off, or if a beating would suffice). So I don’t know where they would land on the specific scenario you describe.
The interpretation of the Exodus passage about “harm following” as the subsequent death of the mother in a miscarriage has one thing in favor of it: How does anyone centuries ago know what an otherwise viable fetus looks like? A standard where some unspecified persons just decide whether the baby looks like it could have lived? The only objective, reliable test is that the premature baby survives. A “standard” that cannot be consistently applied is not necessarily to be accepted as a standard.
No doubt, the notion that this is just another example of bad law, like the Electoral College, is no more acceptable to the Christian. It is doubtful that they concede to any demonstration, any more than a conservative will deny the (divine in some eyes) wisdom of the Framers.
As to homosexuality, the issue really has been the selective application of Old Testament law. Circumcision and dietary laws are neither regarded as “a jot or tittle.” The epistles of Paul are rather dedicated to explaining how not all jots and tittles are preserved.
And as for Paul, the proclamation that being an idolator will make you sexually immoral is really quite stupid, even then. It is notable that this discussion is quite close to his discussion of alleged controversies with Greek philosophers—who often had a sentimental attachment to traditions of military homosexuality passed down from when their cities were free from the romans.
In fact, the confusion betweenthe antinomian and the “judaizing” readings are why the texts so often relied upon to condemn homosexuality are the Sodom story, especially as interpreted by Jude. This tack is the one most amenable to apologetics I think.
Yes. The standard was straightfoward: if it doesn’t look strange (an “ektrôma” as Paul puts it), if it looks like it would have been a healthy normal baby but for the incident, then it counts as a person, not property.
The Talmud has much to say on the point. Note that the Rabbinical rule was that life begins when the head leaves the mother’s body. So it wasn’t only that it had to come out and look like a regular baby; it also had to be alive a little before dying (in other words, a premie: it must show signs of life, then die). This meant that if you kill a fetus in the womb and then extract it it would never be a person, at any stage of pregnancy. And the interpretations I note where that’s the case (where no stage of pregnancy qualifies the death as murder) reflect that. Likewise later Rabbinical writings on abortion: it’s pretty much always just a property crime against the father (and sometimes, the community), unless necessary to save the life of the mother (and over time the definition of “necessary” in Rabbinical thought expanded to include things like financially). There were disputes over all that, but even those on the other side agreed it was usually that.
And yes. Christians mostly ignore what their own Bible says. Indeed, Paul does not actually say the law “doesn’t apply,” that the acts it condemned are no longer immoral; he said we don’t need to follow the law to be saved because of the mojo of the Jesus atonement auto-forgives us. But he is very clear about not tempting fate about that; even Gentile Christians should not eat forbidden food if they do it in a sinful mindset. And Jewish Christians, even more so, as they have explicitly covenanted with God not to do that.
There is a common conflation of what Paul said about circumcision, which was not a moral thing but simply a ritual initiation into the covenant, and what Paul said about “what is permitted” in a moral sense. He doesn’t ever outright say immoral acts condemned in the OT are moral now. Pious people should still be heeding the moral intent of the OT law. It was only gradually later that his thin-line walking on that simply moved the Overton Window until Gentile Christians started disregarding most of the OT law as irrelevant, rather than instructive of moral behavior. Paul would have been appalled at what Christianity became. But, alas.
One bizarre apologetic I’ve heard regarding the Leviticus passage is that it doesn’t condemn homosexuality. That the proper context to understand it that it’s a condemnation of pederasty as practiced by the Greeks. So it’s totes cool everyone! It’s just meant to protect kids.
They kind of gloss over how the passage in question calls for the death penalty for both parties. A very strange way to protect kids.
Crazy how much cherry picking there is, as you’ve pointed out they very next verse then calls for the death of both parties. It also forgets the context of Romans Chapter 1 Verse 26-27.
Indeed. And of course, it says nothing about kids. This Christian tendency to insist the Bible says what it doesn’t say is always vexing. The authors had words to use to say the things Christians want them to have said. They chose to say something else instead. Own it.
Astonishing, I must say, the same defense has been used in the case of Engels apparently condemning homosexuality. However, it is a matter of translation.
When I was still Catholic and struggleing with my sexuality I clung to arguments like those and forced myself to believe them, when even as someone with no biblical knowledge I could see they were at least flawed. Now I’m just frustrated, saddened and almost a little betrayed to see other LGBT people stay in the church and try to pretend that they aren’t helping support the very institution trying to destroy them. The Bible doesn’t support homosexuality just because it makes you feel better to pretend it does. Thank you for a well written piece.
Christianity eh? You couldn’t make it up.
Ooops Someone did!
Currently reading OHJ – it is amazing. I’m spellbound, Richard. It is everything I thought and hoped it would be. Thank you.
Can’t the Leviticus verse also be translated “Isha (Israelite woman) is not to lie with zakar (non-Israelite male)”? Look at it again with this as an alternative and accurate option.
Since that was never how it was interpreted by all ancient Rabbinical authorities, clearly not. They know their own text better than we do.
And that’s to be expected. The grammar is clear: it says “you” (meaning all those of Israel) shall not lie “with a man” not “an Israelite woman is not to lie” with a man (non-Jewish or otherwise). And the latter condition was already a death penalty (all adultery gets death), so they would need no additional law for adultery “with Gentiles.” And on top of all that, zakar routinely refereed to Israelite men. So it could not have carried any such connotation here as you want to imagine.
Hi Richard, how do you see the contradiction in Matthew 5 between the total endorsement of the Old Testament in the “jot or tittle” line of verse 18 and the rejection of Mosaic Law in verse 38? That verse says “You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil.” This leads to the theological line that the new covenant in Jesus Christ that replaces the covenant of Moses involves a paradigm shift from revenge to compassion as the basis of morality, with lines like ‘he who is without sin cast the first stone’ from John 8:7. That focus on forgiveness is then seen to justify a shift in attitude toward homosexuality, as an implicit result of the morality of Jesus.
There is no rejection of Mosaic law in Matthew 5:38. Jesus is interpreting the law even more harshly than liberal Rabbis did. That is the opposite of rejecting it. He is saying that the Torah is so strict that you risk sinning if you seek Torah-authorized vengeance (because you might sin against the innocently accused or carry out the law incorrectly, for example), so you should avoid doing that.
And John is not Matthew. Nor did John even write that line (that was a later interpolation). And on top of that John still has Jesus tell the adulteress “go and sin no more.” He is not saying adultery is kosher. He is saying she should stop. And as long as she does, she will have forgiveness. That is not abolishing the law against adultery. It’s reinforcing it.
The only thing Jesus does differently is that he replaces the temple. The Torah says to get that forgiveness you have to pay for an atonement sacrifice at the temple—and/or wait to benefit from the annual bulk atonement ritual at Yon Kippur, but as Talmudic Rabbis point out, it was believed that if you died before that you would pay penance in the grave by remaining conscious as your body rots, so the inclination was to get the micro-atonement done as soon as possible and not wait. Jesus is saying you don’t need to go through all those expensive bureaucratic steps to get forgiveness, because Jesus is already a Yom Kippur, so if they appeal to him directly they get instant “karma cleaning.” But it was negated if you sinned again and didn’t repent. The contradiction between easy forgiveness and still condemning sin has always plagued Christianity (it’s just one of many illogicalities of its system), but at no point have Christians concluded this means sinning is no longer immoral. Neither did Jesus ever say that in the canon.
Does the Greek word “pleroo” mean to “make full” in the sense of “obey it perfectly” ?
I don’t think so. See Perseus. Unless what you mean is that “being filled” can mean “being fulfilled,” as in, what was predicted “perfectly coming true” or something, in which case it can loosely mean something like that. Likewise “completely proclaim” a message or the like. But it doesn’t usually pertain to obedience. Greek had other words for that.
On the subject of condemning homosexuality, when did the story of Sodom and Gamora become interpreted as a story about god killing two entire cities because they were (all?) gay? From what I’ve researched the original story says they were guilty of many sins but mainly it was their inhospitality that tipped god over the edge and melt them. Even when Jesus talks about S & G in Matthew 10 he talks about it in the context of not being welcoming to future disciples. So even in the first century they still seem to be viewing this story as about that, rather than about homosexuality.
Any thoughts on that?
I don’t know. “Sodomite” as homosexual and the story as being particularly a condemnation of homosexuals as abominations appears in the Talmud, and I think the Rabbinical sources there referenced could go back to the first or second century, and several pre-Christian or first century Jewish texts make the equationm including Philo of Alexandria. I haven’t researched this beyond that. But the notion sometimes is that usually ascribed to the Christian Augustine or his era, but it’s clear from that other evidence the idea long preceded him, preceded even Christianity.
Thanks for those links.
I was also wondering – does the bible give any support to the usual claim from christians that everybody has a soul, a soul is what makes you alive, fetuses have souls, and so therefore abortion is killing a human with a soul and is alive so it is equal to murder.
From what I can tell, the NT has kind of describes what we would call a “soul” when it talks about “spirit” but I’m now sure if that is even right. And in the OT, I find it hard to find any explicit mention of what people these days think of as a “soul” – as in an invisible life force that contains your personality and will survive to be either tortured or rewarded when you die.
Any perspective you could provide on this would be appreciated. Cheers
The Jewish view (evident in the Talmud) was that God breathes a soul into the body the moment the head leaves the mother and contacts external air.
We have no discussions from early Christians when they thought a soul was imbued into the body. And the NT never says.
Earliest Christians were never clear on the matter of the soul. For example, Paul speaks of souls as incapable of consciousness without a body (so you need a new body to live forever in the future), but also once says he does not know if souls can be conscious outside a body (read 2 Cor 12). But one thing is certain: the modern idea of an “immaterial” soul did not exist at all in antiquity. Most Pagans, Jews, Christians all agreed souls were made of stuff, and thus were in a sense their own bodies. I discuss all the evidence regarding this in my chapter on The Spiritual Body in The Empty Tomb. The rare exceptions did not believe in souls in the modern sense either: the early Christian scholar Origen, for instance, believed that a soul was just an idea in the mind of God, kind of like a set of instructions for making an individual (like DNA but including one’s memories, personality, etc.; the analogy is pretty close to what we mean now by “downloading” our minds into a computer, to live in a virtual universe: the program alone, unactivated, would be what Origin called a soul). So souls could not be conscious without a body. To experience, think, etc., you have to be in a body, but any body would do (hence Origen agreed God will replace out bodies with better ones). This I also cover Ibid.
Needless to say, none of this helps with answering when “the Bible” thinks a “soul” comes into existence for any given individual. Or when it is sent into a body (as its existing and being installed are not the same thing: see Guf). No matter what kind of soul is meant.
I should add, it seems pretty clear Paul was an annihilationist, as in, he believed unsaved persons just stay dead (there is no hell; they just cease to exist). Salvation only rescued you from oblivion, by reinstalling your soul into a new, unbreakable body that could live forever.
But by the time the Gospels were written, the Pauline sect was already promoting non-annihilationist doctrine. And after that, countless divergent views disseminated.
Mark’s Jesus speaks of the damned suffering eternally in hell; but does imply they will retain their bodies there. Luke tells the Lazarus story that entails the hell-bound are suffering there even now, before the end of the world, which must mean they are bodiless souls. Some later Christian doctrine would agree all the dead get resurrected, and so the damned go to hell not as naked souls, but as reanimates; but eventually the dominant view was that they didn’t, but were tormented forever as bodiless souls somehow, because that allowed continuing to teach that they suffer even before the end times. Other Christians assumed the damned sleep in the grave, untormented, until the end times; others assumed the damned suffered as souls in hell until the end times when all things, even hell, are disintegrated; others held that the damned are then saved (having undergone a “purgatory”); and so on.
Abortion is defined as “The DELIBERATE termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy.”
Since what is described in Exodus 21:22-25 is in reference to an accidental miscarriage I don’t think that this passage is even relevant to the question of what the Bible says or doesn’t have to say about abortion.
On a somewhat related note someone recently pointed out that it is a legal contradiction to allow a woman to have an abortion (for the sole purpose of terminating an unwanted pregnancy), but then charge someone else with murder for deliberate actions leading to the termination of a pregnancy (death of a fetus). I tend to agree with that sounds like a pretty sound argument from a strictly logical standpoint. I’m curious as to what your thoughts are on that from a sheer logic standpoint.
Exodus makes no exceptions for deliberately causing the miscarriage, nor says anything about it being unintentional, or its being unintentional being a requirement of the outcomes prescribed, or changing any of the outcomes prescribed. Thus, even if you deliberately struck a woman to do this, the same law would apply. There is no other law. And that’s pretty much exactly how the Talmud reads it.
As to modern law, classifying killing a fetus as murder is a Christian anti-abortionist notion. It is indeed absurd. But they made that up, not us. Such a law should not exist, but for third trimester deaths (as that then would consistently be murder even under Roe v. Wade, which stated that only killing a fetus in self-defense, e.g. to protect the welfare of the mother, would be constitutional in the third trimester, and that is my position as well). In any sane society, pre-third-trimester fetal killing would be a crime against the mother, not the fetus (not just for the assault but causing the loss of a future expectancy, e.g. it should upgrade the “degree” of murder charge, not multiply the murder charge).
P.S. In formal terms as well, note that the law makes no statement about intention being an element of the crime. So its existence or absence is not a condition for either outcome. The law states what the conditions are for the distinction between murder and property crime, and intention isn’t listed. The law is as the law says. Our notion of intent is a modern anachronism. It doesn’t exist in OT law. So it is not at issue here.
Jeremiah 1:5 is frequently quoted as if it indicates divine concern with all fetuses when the author clearly means to communicate that it is only about himself. God picked ME to be a prophet before I was born! Not you losers.
Right. The statement is not about being a conscious person when formed in the womb. It means before God even started building the fetus that would eventually become the prophet, God already had in mind that he’d be a prophet. Just as God could “choose” him before he even existed, he obviously could “form him” before he became a soul-imbued person. So it doesn’t tell us anything about the metaphysics or ethics of fetuses.
Owing to unintentional negligence of two men fighting, a pregnant wuman suffers an incidental miscarriage (presumably she was trying to break the fight up?) – as a fine is imposed because of the fetus status and not any lex talionis
It follows therefore Bible purmits the deliberate destruction of the human being as a fetus?
Wait, wot?!
Gawdawlmiti – this is terribly weak.
And how does making a human being property means its OK to kill them – be they a fetus or a slavewuman (hammurabi 214) or black pursun -since only a property fine might be levied if they’r killed?
U dismiss unintentional / intentional aspects all too hastily Dr Carrier:
Josephus, for example calls someone whu intentionally kills the baby in the woom a
“CHILDKILLER” τεκνοκτόνος – (Apion 2:10:202)
-as a matter of law.
Just as he describes Herud killing his sons (Antiquities 16: 392; Jewish Wars 1 543.)
Philo? I thought he (& Alexandrian Judaism) was against feticide – ie the killing of a conceptus per 5th commandment as homicide, using this as an argumunt against infanticide….
‘Feticide, The Masoretic Text, And The Septuagint ‘
https://www.galaxie.com/article/wtj74-1-03
Cheers.
First, I already address all that. For example, Philo agrees with me: early fetal death is not murder. And Josephus never says it is murder at all. If you were misled on these point, you should pay closer attention. I already cover Philo and Josephus in my article. You are citing a Christian apologist who is misleading you as to what the texts actually say. Pay attention to the evidence. It’s in my article. Directly quoted.
And none of what you are saying about intent is in the OT law; none of it employs our concept of intent as a condition of any crime, hence why intent is not mentioned as a condition for murder or any other distinction when feticide occurs. The only condition stated is the state of the fetus. Intent is irrelevant. That’s what the Bible says. And Philo agreed. Josephus agreed. Talmudic Rabbis agreed. Every ancient Jewish source agreed. You can’t anachronistically re-interpret the Bible as if they assumed modern legal concepts. All the evidence shows they didn’t.
where do you address Josephus calling a woman who aborts ‘a child killer’ – Apion isn’t ‘modern’ ?
where do you address Philo using the fifth commandment against feticide?
Josephus and Philo are totally against the murdur of babies in the woom.
You do realize “child killer” just means “child killer,” not murderer, right?
You seem to be confusing the valence for the ancient word “child” with the valence for the modern word child. We aren’t talking here about what words were used anciently to refer to a fetus, we are talking about whether they regarding killing a fetus murder or a property crime.
And on that point I directly quote both Philo and Josephus as classifying fetal killing as a property crime, not murder. Read the article. The quotes are there. And they are explicit: mere fetal killing, they both say, is not murder. It is, at most, a property crime. Which means one need merely pay a tax and licensing fee to do it.
PS Dr Carrier: I assume you’ve read:
“The Bible’s Yes to Same-Sex Marriage: An Evangelical’s Change of Heart”
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bibles-Yes-Same-Sex-Marriage-Evangelicals/dp/0664239900
?
No. Does it have any evidence I don’t already address?
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2020%3A20-28&version=NRSV
24 When the ten heard it, they were angry with the two brothers. 25 But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 26 It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; 28 just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
1.In your opinion, are jesus’ words about gentiles ethnocentric?
2.apologists say that this verse is doing away with slavery because “Those who are great in the kingdom serve, instead of being served. Slave owners are served, rather than serving.”
is this verse even applicable to slave owners?
Jesus only says here that if you want to be great you will be humble (and serve your slaves rather than be served by them); he says nothing about rank and file believers, or abolishing ownership of slaves. Note that even pagans reversed the slave-master relationship at Saturnalia; so what Jesus is describing is not even unusual, other than that he proposed that if you maintain that year round you will be an especially “great” person. He does not say everyone need do this. As to ethnocentrism, sort of; insofar as “the rulers of the Jews also lord it over them and their great ones are tyrants over them” too. The author of this text probably doesn’t mean to imply Jews didn’t also do that, so much as he means to shame Jewish readers (and by implication Jewish rulers) into not acting like Gentiles. But the author also uses that same argument against the Jews a lot too (the “don’t act like haughty Jewish leaders” argument can be found many times throughout the Gospel).
Hi, Dr. Carrier. On the topic of abortion, I’ve recently read your debate with Jennifer Roth. It’s pretty good but I’d like a quick clarification, since the debate is rather old.
Your main argument for why early-term abortion is okay seems to be what I’ll call the Argument from Personhood (fetuses aren’t people, women who need early-term abortions are). As you know however, there’s also what I’ll call the Argument from Bodily Autonomy (having to carry a pregnancy to term would violate bodily autonomy, since the mother didn’t consent to letting the fetus use her body, so she should be allowed have an abortion). It seemed that during the debate you agreed with Roth that the ABA didn’t work (assuming that the fetus was a person), which I found very interesting considering how popular it is with pro-choicers.
My question is: do you still think this? The debate was so long ago that I wouldn’t be surprised if your views had changed, and it seems that they might have, judging by some of what you have said in blogs in recent years.
And hopefully this article is relevant enough to ask this. I went to the ‘abortion’ category of your website and this is the only article that popped up.
This is as good a place to ask that as any.
I think you are referencing the Violinist Argument.
That is easily refuted with the case of Siamese Twins:
Does one Siamese Twin have an autonomy argument for murdering their twin, when separation would kill one of them? Obviously not. Yet they did not choose to be in that dependency situation. The analogy to the Violinist case is complete, and this is a real thing that actually happens (unlike the Violinist case). They are simply stuck having to go it together, with neither having any right to kill the other.
Bodily autonomy is a right held by a person. So when there are two persons mutually dependent on each other, neither’s right trumps the other’s; until you have a self-defense situation (e.g. killing a viable fetus to save the life or limb of the mother).
Consequently, elective third trimester abortion has no logically valid defense. But non-elective third trimester abortion does. And per Roe v. Wade, only a medical professional in consultation with their client—not legislatures—can make a reliable judgment as to when an abortion is no longer elective.
That said, elective third trimester abortion could be defended by an empirical argument, but only of the form “a viable fetus is not a person,” which is hard to prove without also establishing “a newborn is not a person” and thus justifying elective infanticide. I see no viable prospect for this. The evidence simply doesn’t support such a project. The only remaining move is to bite the bullet and make a principled values-based argument for elective infanticide. And it’s hard to see how one could pull that off. Socially necessary human values simply don’t seem capable of such legerdemain.
Note that there is a neglected side issue in the Violinist Argument: to maintain the analogy, the condition is temporary, not permanent, so “riding it out” is an available lesser evil (just like retreating rather than “standing your ground” is a lesser available evil than killing someone in self-defense), and the persons subject to criminal prosecution for creating that condition are whoever conspired to connect someone against their will to the violinist. It is not usually the case that one crime warrants another crime, e.g. killing the violinist, unless, again, it’s self-defense, e.g. if the violinist actually is part of the conspiracy, rather than another victim of it.
Another real-world analogy is a kidnapper who arranges the captivity of two victims such that the escape of one kills the other. It is generally against all sensible mores and laws to kill your innocent co-victim merely to escape, especially given certain knowledge that you will both soon be released anyway. Meanwhile, whoever put you both in that situation ought to be arrested and tried for their crime, because it was in fact a crime.
Great reply. Even though I’m an atheist, I was fairly pro-life before reading your debate (and your work in general) but you definitely helped change my mind.
While I was a pro-lifer though, I’ve always had a problem with the ABA, but I couldn’t quite articulate why. You’ve definitely helped me with that. So thanks.
But just to be clear, that last paragraph kinda makes it sound like you’re against third-trimester elective abortion even in cases of rape. Is that what you’re saying? (Sorry if I’ve misunderstood.)
Yes. Just as I would be against infanticide “in the case of rape.” That your dad was a rapist is not a justification for killing you. “I want to kill the fetus to avoid rewarding my rapist” can be a psychologically valid reason to abort, but it could never have had any moral force over the rights of another human being. So it really comes back to whether you are killing a human being or not.
Just as with the violinist: “This other person has forced me to be your Siamese Twin, so I get to punish them for that by killing you” has never been a logical line of reasoning. It was largely contrived by anti-abortionists to wriggle out of the cognitive dissonance of their twisted morals forcing women to be the slaves of their own rapists. But only antiabortionists have that problem. The rest of us aren’t forcing women to have babies in the first place. So we don’t need an “exception” for them to do it in the first half-year of their pregnancy. We just let them do it, so we don’t have to carve out any “exceptions.”
Interesting take. I would encourage you to read this article I found. It does a great job making the case that abortion is actually murder.
https://endabortionnow.com/abortion-is-murdering-humans/
That’s bogus. It uses a standard equivocation fallacy to switch between “human cell” and “human person” to produce its results. Which is a violation of logic. Typical irrational antiabortion propaganda.
If you were taken in by that, you need to fix your epistemology, because it’s broken.
If you are actually serious (and not a dishonest troll) I recommend you read a real debate about abortion, not vacuous rhetoric: The Carrier-Roth Abortion Debate.
Hi, Dr. Carrier. On the topic of abortion (similar to my question a long time ago about euthanasia) I was wondering if you knew about or could recommend some good articles/papers/books that defend your position on abortion (or something similar to your position). I was looking on the Philpapers website and couldn’t find much.
And to be clear, I’m looking for defences of the pro-choice position on the basis of personhood, preferably your model of personhood. I’m asking because your recommendations last time were really helpful.
Thanks
It’s been too long since I looked into that. The violinist argument has gained more popularity in the literature, but arguments against it (but that still advocate pro-choice) likely do take the personhood position, so you might try that keyword. But there is too much in the literature now for me to vet it all. See my search on Google Scholar for example. Somewhere in those 46,000 articles is likely stuff on par with my position.
But frankly, if you want the seminal philosophical argument on point, it’s literally Roe v. Wade.
Thanks, I’ll try and check some of those out
If you find good examples, please post them here. I can then give the next guy or gal asking this question a more useful answer.
I think i found a good article that somewhat agrees with your position. It’s called
“Where’s the Body?: Victimhood as the Wrongmaker
in Abortion” – https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10516-022-09650-2
Hopefully this helps somebody. It was a bit hard to find other good articles, even though i know they are out there.
That’s a great article. Thank you for calling our attention to it!