Adulterer in Chief?

[bailewen]

The term "adultery" is problematic because that is a translation and not a very accurate one at that. It's misleading in that "adultery" refers to any sex between a person who is married and someone who is not their spouse.

As to the actual biblical injunction, no, both parties do not have to be married. The man could be single and the woman married. It is a prohibition against lusting after another man's wife. The man could be single and it would still be a violation of the 7th commandment if the woman was married. It may not be politically correct that it is perfectly fine according to biblical law to go chase after a woman who is not your wife but bigamy is also not very fashionable these days and yet there is not only no biblical prohibition against it (in the original testament) but there are many examples of it.

Fact is, Abraham kept slaves. Not only did he keep them, on at least one occasion he had sex with one of them, Hagar. His "sin" in that case was not sex out side of marriage. There is no negative comment on that part at all. Certainly no prohibition against slavery as long as you set them all free during the Jubilee. The only traditional criticism leveled at Abraham in this case is that he did not trust G_d's word that Sarah would bear a child as his motivation for sleeping with Hagar was that his wife was already 90 years old or so and he still had no children.

[edededed]

Sarah bore Isaac when she was 90?!

I guess "adultery" kind of sounds like the opposite of "kiddery"

Interesting stuff, I did not remember that Hagar was Abraham's slave... It is true that people reinterpret the Bible to match current ethics for sure (and sort of avoid talking about things like allowed prostitution, slavery, etc. in the old testament).

[bailewen]

Sarah bore Isaac when she was 90?!

Genesis 17:17
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0117.htm

17 Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart: 'Shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?'

And then in Genesis 21:2, exactly 1 year later in the story.

2 And Sarah conceived, and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.

So yeah, she was 91 years old.

[edededed]

Ha ha, cool, well, I guess I haven't read the Bible in a long time...

[Darth Rock&Roll]

Yeah,I'm not too confident in there being many "facts" in the bible.

There is a huge amount of information that helps us understand religious thought in particular.

There are various versions of the bible as well. Some with more texts, some with subtle translation differences and others with huge translation differences.

Needless to say, it isn't exactly what I would call a reliable historical document and shouldn't be treated as such for many self evident reasons, not the least of which being it has been considerably altered over many centuries and was originally put together by an almost singular source some 1700-1800 years ago by a particular bishop with a real known issue with the church in his day and what was practiced within. I am of course speaking of Irenaeus.

So, if you look at the Hebrew, vs the english versions, you will see marked differences.
Most Jews are more familiar with Christianity than the other way round I would also say.
Many christians are oblivious to their blatant jewish religious roots and even many of their rituals are quite jewish in flavour.

It's interesting to take part in synagogue and then to take part in a christian service. Fascinating to say the least.
It would be very helpful if interfaith meetings were more of a regular occurrence in all churches, temples and mosques.
It would probably help us all rise above these stupid human things we do.

[Chris Fleming]

Sounds to me like people just want to take a word from the Bible like "adultery" and do mental/philosophical gymnastics with it. That and for some strange reason, people seem to not understand that everything mentioned in the Bible is not a positive example, even if the instance is done by a big name patriarchal figure. Abraham, for instance, attempting to fulfill Gods word to him on his own and of his own power is NOT a positive example, and so on, not a justification of taking another wife or sleeping with another woman. The principle goes back to the beginning--Adam and Eve. One man for one woman.

[bailewen]

Silly wabbit. Nobody took the word "adultery" from the bible. Maybe since I am on ignore you missed the previous post where I cited the original Hebrew. We are not trying to play word games. "Adultery" is problematic because Exodus 20 simply does not mention it. That is your own Christian projection onto the thing. The word used is תַחְמֹד.

http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/emagazine/041.doc

תַחְמֹד (tahh-mod)
The base word is the verb חמד (hhamad) meaning “to desire” or “covet.” The prefix ת identifies the verb tense as imperfect - will desire - and the subject of the verb as second person, masculine, singular - you will desire. Because of the preceding word this would be translated as “you will not desire.”

That is why Orthodox Jewish sources translate it as "desire" or "covet". Look at the freaking context for *cough* Christ sakes. The context makes it as plain as day that it is a commandment against theft. Do not desire that which belongs to someone else. Sheesh...I thought you were supposed to be educate about this sort of thing.

...people seem to not understand that everything mentioned in the Bible is not a positive example, even if the instance is done by a big name patriarchal figure.

Not only is it understood, I even addressed the sin in question in my last post: Lack of faith in G_d's promise to give Sarah a child. Tradition holds that she was originally destined to live to be 175 but 50 years were taken off of her life as punishment for this lack of faith. OTOH, no mention is made whatsoever about adultery.

Again, if your going to cite scripture as the basis for the criticism, then you need chapter and verse and in this case, you got bupkis.

613 commandments. Not one of them say that you can't sleep with a single woman. . . or at least no one on this thread has come up with one yet.

[D_Glenn]

Really Omar? How about the 7th commandment?

"Thou shalt not commit adultery."

Like I said in the post you just quoted, as the other woman is single.

Forgive the irony of the citation but the content is accurate:
http://atheism.about.com/od/tencommandm ... ment07.htm

[b]The ancient Hebrews in particular had a very restricted understanding of the concept and limited it to just sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who was either already married or at least betrothed.

Since I actually remembered the command as saying something more like "Thou shalt not covet your neighbors wife..." I went and checked an Orthodox Jewish source for another translation. Sure enough:

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_c ... Part-3.htm

[Exodus 20:14] states: "Do not be envious of your neighbor's wife."

So like I said, no biblical prohibition against sleeping with a single woman.

Just for the sake of being thorough, I also went to the original Hebrew where I found it does not even mention sex at all. "Do not covet" is actually a closer reading.
Citation: http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/emagazine/041.doc

The actual line is:
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0220.htm

יג לֹא תַחְמֹד, בֵּית רֵעֶךָ; {ס} לֹא-תַחְמֹד אֵשֶׁת רֵעֶךָ, וְעַבְדּוֹ וַאֲמָתוֹ וְשׁוֹרוֹ וַחֲמֹרוֹ, וְכֹל, אֲשֶׁר לְרֵעֶךָ. {פ} 13 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house; {S} thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's. {P}

From the context, you can see that the about.com explanation is accurate. It is clearly discussing the theme of theft, not sex.

edited many times because formatting when Hebrew is in the post is a bitch.

QF -TH

quoted for thoroughness


.

[Chris Fleming]

"Thoroughness"...in the sense of becoming willingly and utterly blinded. When a person takes great lengths to fit what they want to see into their own reading of it, no matter how "scholarly" and "intellectual", the result is always darkness and error. It's a simple matter, no matter how much mental gymnastics are played. Anything more is just:

[bailewen]

Who's reading what into what?

I made no implications whatsoever. I only presented a direct reading of the source, in the source language, and supplied plenty of references from academic and religious sources.

The post actually in no way reflects my personal morals or even the moral position of any Jewish community or teachings that I am aware of. There are many sources of morality and many texts besides the bible. The proscription against extra-marital sex in my tradition is halachic, not biblical. It is an extrapolation of existing mitzvot made by rabbinical scholars. The irony here is that your position is based exactly on what you accuse me of. Even more ironic, our values in this matter (the relative morality of extramarital sex) are the same.

I did not wade into this topic to defend Obama's hypothetical affair. I waded in to attack the weak thinking and misrepresentation of a subject I am vaguely familiar with. I am vastly more offended with people "becoming willingly and utterly blinded" by religious dogma because "when a person takes great lengths to fit what they want to see into their own reading of it, no matter how 'scholarly' and 'intellectual', the result is always darkness and error."

I am not attacking your moral position. I am attacking the faulty ground your position is built on.

Faith, I am into. Blind faith....not so much.

[edededed]

Chris, uh, actually, YOU seem to be trying to read what you want to read, not Omar. Doing the research is a good thing, clinging to your expectations in the face of research, well... (I don't blame you, though, my whole family (including uncles, aunts, etc.) think in the same way.)

I think that any real Christian would be extremely interested in the older (closer to original) texts and thus would be obliged to try to learn ancient Hebrew. Being satisfied in the NIV seems to demonstrate a lack of thirst to know about the Bible, for one. (Heck, look at how many people we have on the boards who have learned some level of Chinese (including classical Chinese) - it is inevitable, since we are really interested in this stuff.)

As anyone who knows more than one language knows, much is lost in translation - you cannot understand the original meaning without reading the original.

[Chris Fleming]

"Chris, uh, actually, YOU seem to be trying to read what you want to read"

And, uh, heh, uh, huh, how is that? Every Bible I've come across translates it "adultery" and now we have mental gymnastics on what the "original intent" of the word "adultery" means. The Bible is the most studied and researched book, from translation and onward. Only in certain circles (usually pseudo academic, self professed types, and by that I am referring to people I saw back in college) say that there are mistakes/omissions in translation. The studies on rendering Hebrew and Greek into English have been exhaustively done, with the principle being that each translation should have the goal of becoming better than the shoulders it has stood on. There's no secret, there's no "da vinci" code translations, no hidden spooky bullshit, the work has been done. Like I've said before when on this similar topic, I always find it amusing that we can translate Plato with certainty but the Bible's plain words are "lost in translation". Sure.

More often than not, people, and I'm not even referring to specific persons here, cloak their own motivations in their "scholarly studies". Want to say there's no cause for adultery in the Bible in the way that you want to get away with it? Just "study" and make word games. All to easy to do, in the name of "knowledge". "Always learning, yet unwilling to come to the truth".

[bailewen]

Now your just being intentionally obtuse. Either that or you simply refuse to look into non-Christian sources.

I provided several Orthodox Jewish translations. I'm talking about people who, in many cases, have Hebrew as their native language. I provided not only a translation but the etymology of the word.

חמד

Look it up. Three letter root, just like all Hebrew verbs: Heh, Mem, Dalet. Same verb used in Proverbs 12:12 where the King James translates the exact same verb as "desireth"

12The wicked desireth the net of evil men: but the root of the righteous yieldeth fruit.

Here is the original Hebrew:
חָמַד רָשָׁע, מְצוֹד רָעִים; וְשֹׁרֶשׁ צַדִּיקִים יִתֵּן

Here is Exodus 20:13 in the original Hebrew:
יג לֹא תַחְמֹד, בֵּית רֵעֶךָ; {ס} לֹא-תַחְמֹד אֵשֶׁת רֵעֶךָ, וְעַבְדּוֹ וַאֲמָתוֹ וְשׁוֹרוֹ וַחֲמֹרוֹ, וְכֹל, אֲשֶׁר לְרֵעֶךָ. {פ}
The relevant verb is the 3 word in the verse.

Every Bible I've come across translates it "adultery"

Here is the American Standard Version translating the term as "covet":
http://bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseact ... ersion/ASV

Here is the King James version of 20:17 where, yet again, the verb is translated as "covet"
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=KJV

Jewish Publication Society
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0220.htm

New International Version
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=NIV

New American Standard
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... rsion=NASB

So you've never come across the American Standard, The King James, The Jewish Publication Society, The New International Version, The New American Standard Version... .

Just what bible are you relying on. I am actually finding it kind of difficult to trace down a version that actually translates the term as "adultery". You must have a pretty narrow cannon.

[edededed]

Sorry, Chris - don't mean to rile you. I don't think Plato, or any other translation is really reliable - I mean, the Daodejing is one book with many translations as well, but I cannot equate any of them to the original - so we try to get to the heart by reading the original.

Translation is intrinsically doomed to failure - you can only do your best to reduce the amount of fail. I mean, my Japanese is near native, and of course my English is native, but I still cannot translate many things 100% - simply because languages are not equivalent. Exhaustive translations does not mean correct translations, although they can be better translations (some of the shit out there... ).

Something like "blue whale" (specific nouns) can be translated 100% because it is a particular species of an animal (species being defined by scientists, so there is no vagueness there). "Adultery" (for example, there are better examples) may be more difficult, as it is a construct/idea created by humans, with a less defined boundary (for example).

[Chris Fleming]

"I don't think Plato, or any other translation is really reliable"

I hope you get my example. But then again, I wonder why you said the above. Considering that there isn't much discussion (that I've heard anyway) regarding mistaken translations and "lost meanings" in Plato's works or whatnot, but there are those who say such things regarding the Bible. To me it's all sophistry, and I find it funny. Like of like asking what the meaning of "is" is.