Thou shall not kill?

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Israel was a tiny nation war was a way of life back then to survive - they were not like people today - uneducated and very superstitious and brutal you had to be. It was a different world that you would not want to live in.
 
Wow! How condescending and patronizing to the holy Children of Israel! These are God’s chosen people, they are not superstitious, they are pious! They are not brutal, they are merciful. They are not uneducated, they are immersed in the Word of God, as the Psalmist writes, “on my bed I remember You, on You I muse through the night.”
 
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Ok yep they are just like the people of today - no worries of warring nations - they saw all the miracles of God and still ended up praying to a golden calf - God wanted to destroy then not once but twice during exodus
 
How about all of the saints, pre-Reformation? The approach to the sacred writings by the early fathers and mothers, late antiquity and the medievals was heavily spiritual and allegorical. It was Modernity itself that ushered in simplistic literalism. But such a literalism as that is unjustified by the 1500 years of interpretation that preceded it.

But you asked for a specific example. One of my favorites is from St Gregory of Nyssa in his Contemplation on the Life of Moses, particularly the killing of the Egyptian firstborns. Check it out:
  1. Let us proceed to what follows in the text. We have learned through the things examined already that Moses (and he who exalts himself by virtue in keeping with his example), when his soul has been empowered through long application and high and lofty life, and through the illumination which came from above, considered it a loss not to lead his countrymen to the life of freedom.
  2. When he came to them, he implanted in them a more intense desire for freedom by holding out worst sufferings to them. Intending to remove his countrymen from evil, he brought death upon all the first born in Egypt. By doing this he laid down for us the principle that it is necessary to destroy utterly the first birth of evil. It is impossible to flee the Egyptian life in any other way.
  3. It does not seem good to me to pass this interpretation by without further contemplation. How would a concept worthy of God be preserved in the description of what happened if one looked only to the history? The Egyptian acts unjustly, and in his place is punished his newborn child, who in his infancy cannot discern what is good and what is not. His life has no experience of evil, for infancy is not capable of passion. He does not know to distinguish between his right hand and his left. The infant lives his eyes only to his mother’s nipple, and tears are the sole perceptible sign of his sadness. And if he obtains anything which his nature desires, he signifies his pleasure by smiling. If such a one now pays the penalty of his father‘s wickedness, where is justice? Where is piety? Where is holiness? Where is Ezekiel, who cries: the man who has sinned is the man who must die and a son is not to suffer for the sins of his father? (Ezek 18:20) How can the history so contradict reason?
  4. Therefore, as we look for the true spiritual meaning, seeking to determine whether the events took place typologically, we should be prepared to believe that the law giver has taught through the things said. The teaching is this: when through virtue one comes to grips with any evil, he must completely destroy the first beginnings of evil. [The Life of Moses, Paulist Press, pp. 75-76]
 
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Even . . . some expressions of Protestant . . . Christianity was influenced by superstition wasn’t that long ago Christians searched for witches - some of the tests were brutal like holding a red hot stone if burned you were not a witch if if didn’t you were a witch. Same with the water test if you floated you were a witch and if you sunk you were not.
 
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BT3241 said:
Even Christianity was influenced by superstition wasn’t that long ago Christians searched for witches - some of the tests were brutal like holding a red hot stone if burned you were not a witch if if didn’t you were a witch. Same with the water test if you floated you were a witch and if you sunk you were not.
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Do you have a point in repeating black legends and deriding our fathers in faith?
 
They are not legends but believe that if you want and Evey nation around Israel was a warring nation trying to dominate the area at the time everyone was a war a very brutal time. War was a part of life.
 
Well, not quite. Btw, I highly recommend this text. It’s an amazing example of a patristic allegorical interpretation of scripture. St Gregory goes on,

“100. Do not be surprised at all if both things – the death of the firstborn and the pouring out of the blood—did not happen to the Israelites and on that account reject the contemplation which we have proposed concerning the destruction of evil as if it were a fabrication without any truth. For now in the difference of the names, Israelite and Egyptian, we perceive the difference between virtue and evil. Since the spiritual meaning proposes that we perceive the Israelites as virtuous, we would not reasonably require the first fruits of virtue’s offspring to be destroyed but rather those whose distraction is more advantageous than their cultivation.
101. Consequently we have been taught by God that we must destroy the first fruits of the Egyptian children so that evil, in being destroyed at its beginning, might come to an end.” (Life of Moses, p.77)

Do you see what Gregory is doing here? He’s seeing the text primarily as that which gives us spiritual insights and guidance. He doesn’t even concern himself with the “history” except in that moment when he acknowledges, as we all do, that the killing of unborn children for the sins of their fathers is an injustice of the first order. It wouldn’t even be worthy of humans to behave that way, much less of God. He knows this. We all know this. But it’s not a problem for him bc he’s not stuck in a paradigm of rigid literalism, as if he’s reading Tacitus or Herodotus. He knows better than that—he’s reading a much more ancient text than the Grecian or Roman histories—and one whose primary purpose is to connect man with God (not the relation of historical facts).

If you’re reading the OT like a history book, you’re definitely missing the forest. I’m not even sure you’re seeing the trees. Like the Gospels, every single parable and every story of what Jesus did was carefully chosen for a purpose (which doesn’t include the minutiae of historical facts except inasmuch as they serve a higher spiritual purpose).
 
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His earlier quote already acknowledged that to kill the innocent is not worthy of God. So he doesn’t even bother trying to defend the indefensible. He wants you to not concern yourself with wondering about whether it historically happened as we read it bc you’ll miss the spiritual richness in the text. Gregory asks that if God kills innocent children in that way how is he just, pious or holy? The answer is that God isn’t any of those things, if that’s how He behaves, as all reasonable people understand.

God doesn’t get a “mystery” pass bc He’s God. He cannot act in an evil way and we call it good. Nor is the moral law outside of himself as if he’s subservient to it. God is Goodness itself. As the Good, He would not act contrary to it. So for Gregory, there is no “history” to consider here. Trying to do so impugns the goodness of God and absolutely misses the spiritual lessons to be conveyed.
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Obviously the Council of Trent takes place within Modernity.

I do love St Thomas. One of my favorite quotes by him on literalism occurs early within the ST.
In article 10 of question one of the first part, in his reply to objection three he says “the parabolical sense is contained in the literal, for by words things are signified properly and figuratively. Nor is the figure itself, but that which is figured, the literal sense. When scripture speaks of God‘s arm, the literal sense is not that God has such a member, but only what is signified by this member, namely, operative power.”

Nice one, Aquinas! So when we read that God has an arm, to understand this “literally“ is not to conclude that God actually has a body with an arm attached. Rather, the sacred writings are literally referring to His operative power when the word “arm” is used? 🤔 That is a curiously figurative, “literal sense,“ as far as I can tell. Stands to reason that the medievals might have meant something different by “literal” than how Modernity has reductively truncated it.

And anyway, this is all a less than stellar exercise in missing the point. The “forest” of the sacred scriptures is God and Man and how to connect the two. God is up to something good in the Bible, and that is aiding Man in living holiness and getting Man to his final end, which is beatitude. Anything outside of that is weeds.
 
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Nice, non-rigidly-literal interpretation. You’re on the right track!
 
A more accurate translation of that commandment is “thou shalt not murder”.

Killing in self-defense has never been a sin, and killing in defense of others can even be a moral duty.
 
I see someone edited my post it wasn’t me I said Christianity leave my posts alone you can ban my post if you don’t like but you should not be editing for your view
 
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Anesti33 said:
You have not provided titles of the documents you so liberally cherry-picked and quoted, so they can safely be ignored as insignificant.
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Were you able to navigate to the links for Verbum Domini? Can you comment on Benedict’s thoughts?
 
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