Fallacy of Improper Hermeneutics
Yet another logical fallacy among
people is the desire to interpret a religion based on their own inability to
properly interpret the scriptures. Can an untrained man who was raised in the
modern world, of a different geographical location, different economical status,
different worldview (Postmodern, modern, and classical) understand the writings
of the ancients?
This is not to suggest that the
general teachings of any religion cannot be understood by anyone, on the
contrary, they can. What is often overlooked in the proper understand of how
language has changed and evolved.
For instance, in recent years the Christian
Bible has been attacked for its teachings on slavery. Also this argument has
been used to further the homosexual agenda (Rudnick, 2012). Essentially the argument is that we as
a society have outgrown certain biblical principles such as slavery and that
now we can also ignore other biblical principles such as homosexuality.
First, is the concept of slavery
biblical? Yes it is. Before you suck in all the air in the room you must
overcome your 21st century way of thinking and realize that biblical
slavery is still in practice today even in the United States of America, and it
is completely legal.
It is important to understand that
God set forth strict guidelines on the owning of slaves and that over the years
the system that God created had indeed been abused by man as has so many other
biblical systems. Scripture teaches "He who kidnaps a man, whether he
sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death."
(Exodus 21:16). No one could just be made a slave in the biblical society the
punishment for doing so was death. No one had a right to enforce their will
over another.
The issue of slavery in the bible
was a method to handle certain social and economical problems with the
community. If a citizen, after making several bad financial decisions, finds
himself in a state of bankruptcy, he could sell himself off in order to pay his
debts. As scripture says: 'If a countryman of yours becomes so poor with regard
to you that he sells himself to you, you shall not subject him to a slave's
service. 'He shall be with you as a hired man, as if he were a sojourner; he
shall serve with you until the year of jubilee. 'He shall then go out from you,
he and his sons with him, and shall go back to his family, that he may return
to the property of his forefathers. 'For they are My servants whom I brought
out from the land of Egypt; they are not to be sold in a slave sale. 'You shall
not rule over him with severity, but are to revere your God. (Leviticus
25:39-43)
The nomadic Israelites did not have
prisons to hold criminals. You either committed a capital offense in which the
punishment was death or you owned restitution to your victim. If you could not
pay the restitution, you were sold into slavery to pay in manual labor. This
was a very effective criminal justice system. And again the godly system did
not make a person a slave for life but as scripture teaches: "If you buy a
Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall go out
as a free man without payment." (Exodus 21:2).
When you consider the absolute need
for a system of criminal justice within either and agrarian or nomadic society
(and not out 21st century society), one sees the wisdom of this
system. I would implore people to learn the proper rule of hermeneutics before
making rash judgments against age old biblical wisdom.
Work Cited
Rudnick, A. (2012, May
1). TimesUnion. Retrieved May 4, 2012, from Anti-bullying advocate:
‘ignore the bullsh*t in the Bible’:
http://blog.timesunion.com/rudnick/anti-bullying-advocate-bullying-ignore-the-bullsht-in-the-bible/2749/
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