? God tells Moses how to cause an abortion?

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waynergf

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In Numbers 5:11-31 the Lord tells Moses how to cause a woman to miscarry. How should this be interpreted, given the Church’s teaching on abortion?
 
It’s more a way of shutting up vexatious husbands.

A man lays charges against his wife, the wife has to drink an unpleasant but harmless concoction, nothing happens, end of story.
 
Oh, wow, I never understood those trials by ordeal, but this makes total sense!
 
Would the woman who cconfessed be stoned to death? That would be a problem with this…
 
Well, I disagree, I think our Bronze Age female ancestors were a lot less - shall we say - innocent than that. Not only that, the idea of trial by ordeal might have existed in ancient times but you’re talking about concepts that are much more in line with Medieval Europe.

This bit of nonsense is the one bit of ‘sympathetic magic’ in the Torah and we Jews don’t do ‘sympathetic magic’, it’s sort of against the rules. So, you have to ask yourself, how did this passage get there, what’s the purpose?

It’s about keeping the peace in a Bronze Age tribal community.
 
Which says more about Christian interpretations of Judaism than about Judaism itself. 😉

Judaism interprets Torah with what is known as ‘Oral Torah’ (which might be described as argument, commentary, case law) in mind.
  1. You assert that Bronze age females were less innocent than medieval females?
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With regards to certain groups, certainly,
 
To an extent we’re talking at cross-purposes (no pun intended) because, while we’re looking at the same text, we’re looking through Christian v’s Jewish ‘lenses’. I’d suggest that the only people likely to ‘believe’ it would be the husbands (to whom the workings of the female body would be very mysterious - no change there then) and I expect they became rather cynical.
 
Kaninchen said:
It was rather hard to get yourself executed, even in ‘biblical times’.
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This is interesting, since it seems like a fair number of things called for it–adultery, misbehaving teens, etc. So how do modern-day Jews know it was hard to get oneself executed back then?

And did the commentaries which now exist exist way back then?

Thanks!
 
St_Francis said:
This is interesting, since it seems like a fair number of things called for it–adultery, misbehaving teens, etc. So how do modern-day Jews know it was hard to get oneself executed back then?
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Because it’s what the sages reported.
And did the commentaries which now exist exist way back then?
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Thanks!
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Yes - you’ve even got glimpses of it in your own scriptures, parts of which could be described as Jesus’ commentaries on the Law and its application.
 
Kaninchen said:
Because it’s what the sages reported.

Yes - you’ve even got glimpses of it in your own scriptures, parts of which could be described as Jesus’ commentaries on the Law and its application.
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Thanks, Kaninchen 🙂
 
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