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Leviticus evil?

Leviticus evil?

Spirituality

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@eladar said
Leviticus instructed the Jews to execute homosexuals. Was this instruction evil?
Christians, surely, would think that executing homosexuals would be "evil" nowadays, yes? Just to be clear.

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@fmf said
While I understand that you think of homosexuality as a "sin" I think we can agree that executing homosexuals nowadays would rightfully be seen as being "evil" by both you and me, correct?
Of course it is evil today.

So you think it was an evil command then. Just making sure. As far as I can tell there has been general consensus among those who have responded to me that the command was evil then.

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@eladar said
So you think it was an evil command then.
It was a reflection of the essentially "evil" norms of those times. But it was what it was: thank goodness for moral progress with regard to this issue.

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@eladar said
Of course it is evil today.
When ~ a decade/century will suffice ~ did it become NOT "evil" to your way of thinking?

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@fmf said
When ~ a decade/century will suffice ~ did it become NOT "evil" to your way of thinking?
It has been evil to me since I was a child.

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@eladar said
It has been evil to me since I was a child.
But when you look at the sweep of history, when did executing homosexuals become NOT "evil" to your way of thinking?

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@fmf said
But when you look at the sweep of history, when did executing homosexuals become NOT "evil" to your way of thinking?
I answered your question, be happy with that.

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@eladar said
I answered your question, be happy with that.
No, you are evading my question.

For you, executing homosexuals was NOT "evil" back in the times of Leviticus.

But it WAS "evil" when you were born and has been during your lifetime.

The question you are cowering away from is this: according to your concept of "evil", at what point in history between Leviticus and your birth did executing homosexuals become "evil"?

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@fmf said
No, you are evading my question.

For you, executing homosexuals was NOT "evil" back in the times of Leviticus.

But it WAS "evil" when you were born and has been during your lifetime.

The question you are cowering away from is this: according to your concept of "evil", at what point in history between Leviticus and your birth did executing homosexuals become "evil"?
Sit on your thumbs.

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@eladar said
Sit on your thumbs.
Do you ever worry about coming across as a bit of coward?

It seems so easy to find topics that you simply don't have the courage to discuss.

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@fmf said
Do you ever worry about coming across as a bit of coward?

It seems so easy to find topics that you simply don't have the courage to discuss.
No

You are a blowhard who does not know boundaries. I am setting the boudry. I will answer what I answer.

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@eladar said
You are a blowhard who does not know boundaries.
Be that as it may, but it doesn't alter the fact that in the last 12 hours or so you have demonstrated yourself to be an abject coward with regard to [1] the definition of a Christian and [2] the "evil" of executing homosexuals.

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@FMF

I hear what you believe.

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@eladar said
I am setting the boudry.
This is what posters with no courage do. They set "boundaries". It's especially amusing in your case because YOU asked me about the definition of a Christian and YOU asked about the morality of executing homosexuals!

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@fmf said
"Evil" is a matter for subjective perception and opinions. By contrast, it is an objective fact that Leviticus 20:13 was part of ancient Hebrew law and that there were similar laws in other cultures.

It was not "evil" to execute homosexuals according to the prevailing norms and values of the people who wrote down the 'rule'. And they framed it as somehow being an instruction f ...[text shortened]... ny objection to that: the notion of "sin" is just a moral opinion rooted in superstition, after all.
By contrast, it is an objective fact that Leviticus 20:13 was part of ancient Hebrew law and that there were similar laws in other cultures.

As a matter of fact the ancient Israelites were pretty unusual in this regard. Almost none of the really ancient law codes mention it, although there are gaps where tablets are broken or missing, so we can't be sure. The only one that does is the neo-Assyrians which had a law: "If a man have intercourse with his brother-in-arms, they shall turn him into a eunuch." [1] - it apparently only applies to the military.

After the bronze age collapse Canaan became depopulated and immigrants, probably from Cyprus, moved into what became Philistia (roughly the Gaza strip) and Greeks into Pheonicia, who merged with the remaining Canaanites there. The central Canaanites became Israel and Judea. What happened then was ethnogenesis as they distinguished themselves from each other. So while pig farming was a bit of a loser in Canaan, as it's not good pig farming country, the Philistines would eat pork and to prove "we're not them" the Israelites made their normal practise of not pig farming a religious commandment. I suspect that the Pheonicians were more open minded about homosexual relations, as the Greeks are known to have been, and so the Hebrews banned it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_law

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