Vigilante Justice and... the Bible? wut?

[Kai]

http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/ ... e-one.html

The Brave One

In the Biblical epoch, there was little other than vigilante justice. Murders were not resolved by impersonal criminal investigations by professional police, and tried by professional judges or impartial juries of the accused's peers. In the Biblical era, and in particular that of the Hebrew Bible, justice was in the hands of the local community, and of the family. If a member of your family was murdered, you were responsible to exact justice and carry out vengeance. The statement that vengeance is the LORD's was a reassurance that, even when there was no human being to carry out justice, God would not leave the guilty unpunished. But such cases were hoped to be the exception.

This puts the modern reader of the Bible, viewing The Brave One, in something of a predicament. Is the Bible's vision of how justice is to be carried out better, simply because it is in the Bible? Or is it appropriate to acknowledge that this was simply the way things were done then, and our way is legitimately different? Can we go even further, perhaps, and suggest that our society has improved upon the Bible?

How do we decide which is "better"? Do we even have a clear concept of what "justice" is and why it is important, and what it is supposed to accomplish?

Check this one out. Any thoughts?

Edit: Fixed the link so that it'll take you to the article.

[Besyanteo]

Misinformation: The bible doesn't say the "Vengeance is the Lord's" as some kind of assurance that if we're too meager or otherwise unable to go out and do it, he's got it for us. It means that it's not our business to go out and seek vengeance; Wrath is a sin, not a virtue to be uplifted and honored. It means that God, knowing all things, will see to it that the person in question gets everything they deserve, no more or less. It also means that we don't have the infinite knowledge to know what it is that that person deserves.

Eye for an Eye existed in the old testament as a measure of the very most a person was allowed to do; Go this far, or significantly less far, and no farther. If you're a new testament Christian, that got tossed aside with the sacrifice of Christ; If every man, no matter what they've done, is fit to seek redemption, then it's actually worse for us to go out and kill them.

Long Story Short: Lawl, fundies reviewing movies.

[Kai]

The original link didn't work, so I lend my apologies to anyone who actually tried to read more of that article than what I quoted here.

http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/ ... e-one.html

My personal knowledge of this writer aside... what leads you to classify this guy as a "fundie?"

[Besyanteo]

From the quote provided, it's mostly that he appears to be ignoring large swaths of the bible as it's convenient for him to reach conclusions he wants to reach; In this case, the idea that people were meant to go out and hunt people down for their crimes. To be more concise, it's the presence of doublethink in that quote. I'd label pretty much anyone who doublethinks as a fundie, though I suspect for others it takes a little more.

Anyway, reading the article now.

Edit: And now I'm not sure what to think about him. Eh. Give me a while.
Edit x2: He makes some valid points at the end about human psychology, but it doesn't change anything I said before. He's taking the Bible out of context to arrive at a point that he wanted to arrive at before he read anything. You can take the article as a whole any way you like, but the references and explanations about Christianity are simply incorrect.

[Kai]

It's interesting to me that you would label him a "fundie" based on this, though. Part of this is that I know his writing well enough to see him from a different perspective (for example, the other thread I posted on RPGWW about evolution was written by this same guy). Part of it is also that "fundie" is actually a more specific term than most people seem to realize. That's a rant for a separate thread, though.

I agree with you that the whole "vengeance is the Lord's" thing is probably better read along the same lines as "eye for an eye," but even "eye for an eye" seems to presuppose that folk are avenging themselves on one another instead of depending on a detached legal system to do it for them. Not only does it presuppose this, it doesn't say that it's wrong, just that you need to exercise self-control.

Perhaps this is a question of definition. "Vengeance" may be the Lord's, but "justice" in the sense of proportional punishment/retribution is okay for people to do. From that perspective, people are allowed to revenge themselves as long as they're not out for revenge. OMG VAGUE WORD CHOICE. The only one who's qualified/allowed to go out and actually wreak some havok for sheer spite's sake is God. People have to leave that to Him and do their best to keep order in the meantime.

[banthee]

What does the bible say about someone who dies without confessing? I know that no matter what, God has the final say in this. But what does the bible say regarding death without confession? What would happen if i die without confessing my sins? What if i am really humiliated and regretful about the sins, but i fail to confess to a priest?

[Besyanteo]

That's catholicism, which isn't my bag. Also, wow this thread is like two years old now.

[Kai]

What does the bible say about someone who dies without confessing? I know that no matter what, God has the final say in this. But what does the bible say regarding death without confession? What would happen if i die without confessing my sins? What if i am really humiliated and regretful about the sins, but i fail to confess to a priest?

Catholic dogma involves a lot of things which have little to no Biblical basis. This is what happens when you designate a person who's still living as the infallible mouthpiece of God. The Bible also doesn't say anything about Papal indulgences, or services needing to be in Latin. Soo.....

[PriamNevhausten]

I'm having a hard time finding "vengeance is the LORD's" in any version of the bible, and searches for "vengeance" alone yield mostly specific examples against civilizations (Deuteronomy 32:35, Jeremiah 50:15, for instance) or persons who have wronged the speaker or subject (Judges 16:28).

A search on the Code of Hammurabi dates it in the 1700s BCE, and the Bible is said to be around 6,000 years old (at least, the Old Testament)--that would definitely predate most legal practices beyond the practice known as common law, which, without fairly diligent tracking of precedents, is essentially vigilante justice on a community-wide scale. Not unrealistic.

Also, a modern human saying what the bible means is pretty funny, but saying that

The bible doesn't say the "Vengeance is the Lord's" as some kind of assurance that if we're too meager or otherwise unable to go out and do it, he's got it for us...It means that God, knowing all things, will see to it that the person in question gets everything they deserve, no more or less.

is possibly even funnier.

[Idran1701]

A search on the Code of Hammurabi dates it in the 1700s BCE, and the Bible is said to be around 6,000 years old (at least, the Old Testament)--that would definitely predate most legal practices beyond the practice known as common law, which, without fairly diligent tracking of precedents, is essentially vigilante justice on a community-wide scale. Not unrealistic.

Assuming for the sake of this argument that you take a literal interpretation of the Bible, while the creation of the universe does date to about 4000 BC or so, it looks like it's only everything up to the death of Abraham - which in terms of major events comprises Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham and Isaac on the mountain - that dates before the Code of Hammurabi, which was closer to 1800 BCE than 1700. Genesis ends at just about 1600 BCE, everything else in the Bible postdates Hammurabi.

[Idran1701]

Also, it looks like the person that bumped this was probably just a spam account, so since this is like two years old, I'm going to lock it. My apologies if you're not, banthee.