How are Catholics supposed to interpret the parts of the Bible (mainly in the old testament) which call for crazy actions on the part of the believer. e.g Deut 22:28 seems to condone rape but of course this is not the reality. There are many other crazy stuff in it that i’m unable to quote but how are we suppose to read them? as a peoples interpretation of God in the times they lived in?
Would love feed back as this is really bugging me
The problem is that non-Jews read the Jewish scriptures with no knowledge and understanding of Jewish law concerning marriage, divorce, women rights including financial rights in marriage, obligations of the husband toward his wife in Jewish law, and come to conclusions and interpretations that can only lead the Jewish reader to pause in wonderment.
Think about what his obligations are toward her in Jewish law, what it means that she has no obligations toward him but full rights, understand that this obligation is for a lifetime, understand what her status would be without this law, compare the situation of this woman under Catholic Church law and Catholic society, and then I believe you will come to an opposite conclusion.
Many of the things that are thought to be “harsh” are merely misunderstandings of the Jewish scriptures
some examples:
A Christian reads Judges and believes that a man turned his daughter into a human sacrifice
Of course, she could not be sacrificed, but she also could not work in any capacity, or marry, or be “used for breeding”, for the rest of her life. She lived the rest of her life in seclusion, devoted herself to prayer, never married or had children and never knew a man.
Similarly, an “eye for an eye” in Judaism is not mutilation of a person who has blinded another (nor impunity to the offender if he happens to be blind) but monetary compensation
The Christian reads of a “death penalty” for a particular sin, but has no knowledge of the almost impossible conditions (committing the act in front of at least two witnesses, being warned and continuing to commit the act despite the warning) which made a conviction in a Jewish court virtually impossible. Nor do they have knowledge of the Jewish Sages attitudes against the death penalty (quite rightly you have never heard of a convicted terrorist, no matter how many people he killed, ever being sentenced to death and executed by the Jewish State of Israel). Often they do not differentiate between a “Divine punishment” from God and one to be carried out here on earth.
