General<\/h2>\n
The Hebrew Bible or\u00a0Tanakh<\/a>\u00a0(the source for the Christian Old Testament), which forms the core texts of the Halakha, or corpus of\u00a0Jewish<\/a>\u00a0divine\u00a0law<\/a>, include a surprising number of\u00a0crimes<\/a>\u00a0which merit the\u00a0death penalty<\/a>\u00a0as\u00a0punishment<\/a>. These laws were believed to form an integral part of the overall “Covenant” between the\u00a0Israelites<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0YHWH<\/a>. When the Christians adopted the Old Testament as their canon, neither they as a body, or\u00a0Jesus<\/a>\u00a0as the\u00a0Messiah<\/a>\u00a0revised or redacted any of these laws, for all they edited the Hebrew texts.<\/p>\n Crimes that merit the death penalty are generally crimes against God. A smaller, but no less important set of capital crimes are sexual transgressions. It should be noted that things we consider crimes (like rape and child abuse) are not what the Old Testament is talking about. Sexual transgressions typically relate to a failure to comport oneself (sexually) in a manner that adds to the community. Adultery and masturbation are as bad or worse than modern crimes of molestation or rape – simply because they challenged such moral issues as “Who of my children is really mine, so gets my land”, and “The more sons I have the more land I can work, so the more money I own.” Taken by the word of God alone, however, one just has to assume that God cares if you touch yourself or find someone sexy before you are married. Though exactly\u00a0why<\/em>God should have such a deep and abiding interest in the sexual and marital predications of his creations is not clear. The religious laws describe the various rituals and taboos involved in the proper way of worshipping the Israelite\u00a0God<\/a>, and also seek to prevent\u00a0apostasy<\/a>. At least in this case, the reasoning behind assassinating anybody who stepped out of line is clear.<\/p>\n The rules in the\u00a0Torah<\/a>\u00a0still form a part of the body of the\u00a0Jewish<\/a>\u00a0law, though they fortunately cannot be considered a complete description of Jewish law. This is because no legal system can be fully understood without also considering the way its rules are being interpreted and applied in practice by the courts and other institutions of its\u00a0society<\/a>\u00a0– or, for that matter, the body of rituals and social conventions surrounding such institutions. For example, a Jewish court could not say that it was acceptable to sell your daughter into slavery, even if that is the alternative to killing her for a misdeed. Today, only a few isolated\u00a0Islamic<\/a>\u00a0courts have ever actually applied the death penalties for apostasy and sexual crimes in the modern era, despite the fact that many\u00a0honor killings<\/a>\u00a0occur claiming to be legally sanctioned.[1]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n There are also a few\u00a0fundamentalist<\/a>\u00a0Christians<\/a>\u00a0such as the followers of\u00a0Dominionism<\/a>\u00a0who feel that the death penalties as described should to be enforced today.[2]<\/a><\/sup>[3]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n “And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you.” \u2014George Carlin<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A couple of these demand that the “sinners” be burned to death rather than stoned \u2014 which was the more usual form of capital punishment. One can wonder why these crimes in particular merit this especially horrible fate.<\/p>\n The following carry the punishment of being “cut off from his people”. Some people seem to feel that this is the same as the death penalty, although the ancient Israelites may simply have interpreted it as exile.<\/p>\n WARNING. Watch this video will disturb you. It is horrific. But I ask that you do so, Christian, Muslim, atheist or other. You will never watch it again, and it will scar you. But remember, this activity was divinely decreed by an all-loving God. Yes, all-loving. And for what? For all of the actions below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,14],"tags":[504,140,393,503],"class_list":["post-1900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biblical-exegesis","category-gods-characteristics","category-morality","tag-capital-punishment","tag-old-testament","tag-omnibenevolence","tag-stoning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Sexual activities<\/h2>\n
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Religious laws<\/h2>\n
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Parents and Children.<\/h2>\n
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Violent and legal crimes<\/h2>\n
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Things that don\u2019t go anywhere else.<\/h2>\n
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Possible grounds for execution.<\/h2>\n
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