Let’s open our Bibles to today’s scriptural reference in Proverbs chapter 20, verse 30:
(Prov 20:30 NRSV) Blows that wound cleanse away evil; beatings make clean the innermost parts.
A long time ago when people were still savages (in the year 2003) the US began running some non-domestic prisons by these Biblical principles, that beating and wounding people is really swell.
This fell in line perfectly with the new motto: “the end justifies the means.” The thinking goes like this: if we want to spread freedom, liberty, and human rights in the world, we need to engage in secret spying, rounding people up, holding them without trials, and torturing them so we can be successful in forcing our ideas on their people after we’ve conquered their country. This has become a central concept in what has become known as “Neo-Conservatism.”
BTW, “Neo-Conservatism” sounds a lot like other swell words such as “Neo-Nazism,” “Neo-Fascism,” and “Neo-anderthalism.”
Isn’t that kind of insulting to the Neanderthal?
Yes, I agree.
My apologies to the Neanderthals.
There is also that gret line in Proverbs about child abuse:
Proverbs 23:13-14 “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.”
Right. If you abuse your child with a stick, then he wont go to hell. Presumably when he dies, he’ll go to heaven. (the other imaginary place) . So you dont REALLY need faith in Jesus to get saved, you just need to have been abused….
Yet more contradictory BS.
“Sympathy For Onan”
Still there’s people that feel they need to injure themselves if they masturbate or look at porn because they have “sinned.”
My next question would be “Loving savior or Pathological Liar?” That is if “he” exists in the first place, other than some collective consciousness thing.
Don´t worry Capella, I bet no Neanderthal alive has taken ofense. :D
Now, the book of Proverbs is general outline of composure. Proverbs 20:30 is not saying go ahead and beat people it’s good for them. I am sorry if that’s how it came across. “Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being.” That doesnt say, beat people and cleanse them. It is saying that people who have gone through some hardships and been through pain have a good understanding of themselves and the world that they live in. Plant Gaurdian touched on that in his response. It’s is of course sad that those things happen, but because of pain a lot of people have been made better. But again that verse doesn’t say to beat people, that much is clear. If anyone has children or neices or nephew, little brothers etc, do you not discipline them. For lack of discipline would not teach them that life has it’s consequences. Proverbs 22:15 “Folley is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.” The “rod of discipline” can be various things, the belt, the switch, time outs restriction etc. We need to teach children that their actions have consequences. Always tell them how much you love them, and WHY they were punished. Because the world is going to be a lot harsher on them if you don’t discipline them when they are young. THAT is what the Bible is saying.
Thank You all for your time.
Yes it does clearly say beatings and blows are “good” for people. It also says as you pointed out that child beating is a good thing:
(Prov 23:13 NRSV) Do not withhold discipline from your children; if you beat them with a rod, they will not die.
(Prov 23:14 NRSV) If you beat them with the rod, you will save their lives from Sheol.
(Exo 21:20 NRSV) When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished.
(Exo 21:21 NRSV) But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property.
Again, the Bible authors were primitive people who were operating on a lower moral ground. Unfortunately as I said, commentaries, concordences, convenient translations such as the NIV, etc… attempt to project a higher morality onto these passages by retranslating them or reinterpreting them. As I said, one could also retranslate “Mein Kampf” or any other book with such horrible passages into a “feel good” book to their satisfaction by using such tricks.
It is all about how you interpret it. If someone tells you it is ok to drink; so long as you do it in moderation. Then what exactly is moderate drinking? 2, 4, 8, 16 beers?
We need to come to the conclusion that the Bible does exist and does sway people in their thinking (as much as that is laughable, considering the evidence that…well, that there is no evidence!) We can’t escape the fact that god-believers are among us and profess to know what is right for us based upon this tale. What is to be done?
There is no context, overall view, or subject surrounding the Prov 20:30 or Prov 23:13-14 verses except that they appear to be one of several random nuggets of “wisdom” being presented. In these cases that beating children is a good thing or that beating and wounding people in general (men, women, and children) is a good thing.
I disagree with the author.
I do have an advantage over this author however because I live in a modern society in a country where some people are civilized enough to know that this isn’t a good thing.
The ancient author of this passage and ancient authors of other passages in the Bible that say to beat people or kill people over trivial things lived in primitive cultures that were sometimes brutal by today’s standards.
These are the same people who authored verses in the Bible that indicate they were positively impressed with the magnitude of killing by Bible heroes. In today’s modern society in the US, the warmongers that are leading our country at the moment (Oct of 2006) are at least trying to deceive us on the magnitude of killing of civilians in the Iraq war because they know that in general, people in the US today, unlike the original ancient recipients of stories in the Old Testament look down on “too much killing,” especially of women and children.
Not so in the Bible. Beating and killing, even of women and children were something that many Bible authors thought was a great thing. Why? Because these authors lived in primitive ancient societies.
As bad as it is, some modern day people look to this text written by people from much more primitive ancient societies on how to live their lives today. This is one reason why so much beating of children and killing in general is tolerated today.
What does the Old Testament “claim to be?” What is the message that it’s trying to convey?
The problem with these sorts of questions is that they assume the Old Testament was laid out as some kind of unified text.
What really happened is that the Old Testament is a conglomeration of various religious oral traditions and texts that were created over a very long period in primitive ancient times, most likely at least a thousand years. The religion and culture of the Jewish people who created the Old Testament oral traditions and texts meanwhile changed heavily over this time.
There are no unified messages that this text is trying to convey. This is a collection of text that is mythology, “history,” “wisdom,” and laws written down over centuries by many different authors that often contradicted each other and obviously were trapped in the different primitive cultural ideas and knowledge of their day.
These texts weren’t even assembled together until hundreds of years after Jesus. Before that they were scattered about among many other religious texts that were rejected for canonization by the early Catholic Church.
For most Christians and Jewish people, selective parts of the Old Testament are paraphrased to the gatherings of people on Saturdays and Sundays to fit into whatever the particular variation of their religion believes. Once the people are trained to believe certain things, if they want, they can paraphrase as they read the Bible themselves so that any uncomfortable items are rationalized away.
To sum up: the Old Testament as we have it today, has many different and sometimes conflicting messages, some good, some bad, and some horrific (by today’s standards).
One reason is because the genocides of Canaan never happened. See:
The Exodus never happened
This means that the Israelites *created* these genocide stories and other gore stories themselves as grandiose explanations of their origins and early history. In the Canaan genocides they carefully mentioned that everyone was slaughtered in each city they conquered and in one city they even had the Israelites hanging the king they killed up in a tree and in the morning throwing his body down in the gate of the city.
Genocides of Canaan by the Israelites
Here’s a few verses that speak for themselves. David and Saul return from David killing Goliath (David cut off the Philistine’s head to bring back for display) and Saul becomes jealous because the Israelite women are joyfully singing about how David killed tens of thousands of Philistines and Saul only killed thousands of Philistines:
(1 Sam 18:6 NIV) When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing, with joyful songs and with tambourines and lutes.
(1 Sam 18:7 NIV) As they danced, they sang: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.”
(1 Sam 18:8 NIV) Saul was very angry; this refrain galled him. “They have credited David with tens of thousands,” he thought, “but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?”
Later they have David killing two hundred men so he can bring their foreskins back to impress Saul so David can marry his daughter:
(1 Sam 18:27 NIV) David and his men went out and killed two hundred Philistines. He brought their foreskins and presented the full number to the king so that he might become the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him his daughter Michal in marriage.
etc…
Sorry but not much. Another OT author has Yahweh coming out of the sky and “rocking and rolling” on Amorite men, women, and children fleeing for their lives (Yahweh was crushing them with boulders). Whether he was supposed to be taking pleasure in this is irrelevant. Obviously this was implanted in the story to be impressive to the reader.
I find the stabbing to death of whole populations of men, women, and children extremely negatively impressive. Obviously the primitive Bible authors thought this sort of thing was positively impressive to their primitive audience at the time.
Excellent point. They have the Children of Israel receiving commandments to not kill and not steal and later they have them going to the Canaanite cities to stab to death every man, woman, and child and take their land and all their possessions from them.
Either they didn’t think this through very carefully or they only intended these commandments (and the one about adultry since in some raids they were commanded to steal the wives after they stabbed the husbands and their children to death) for the tribes of Israel only.
No, I would consider a theoretical God living in his theoretical universe acting the way these ancients imagined as being a self-absorbed blood thirsty pig parent.
The OT Bible stories clearly show that the God imagined by the primitive ancient people who created these Bible stories (not surprisingly) had the same inferior level of morals that they did.
Capella, thanks for an excellent site.
I just have one thing to add, mostly directed at some of the commenters on this page: beating children is WRONG. If you cannot teach your child critical thinking, if you cannot make your child understand the value of self-scrutiny, without physically or mentally ABUSING your child, then you have no business being a parent. My parents never laid a hand on me (ok, mum pulled my hair once when she was really really angry and couldn’t control herself), and I turned out alright. Seeing people in any way defending child abuse makes me SICK.
Sorry about the screaming.
Thanks again Capella, I’ll be watching this place. ;)
furiku,
Please feel free to scream here anytime. I think you are right on the money.
Beating is not being defended. Spanking or grounding or whatever type of discipline is what is being defended.
But the spanking alone is not what corrects the child, furiku. It’s telling them Why, and let them see that you love them and hear that you love them. Let them see the consequences of their actions, letting them know what the world is like gradually. Is that disagreable to you?
Again, it’s saying if you love your child to discipline them, give them some boundries do the learn self control and can have a much better life, please try not to twist the message by hanging on to trivial things. No disrespect furiku, just trying to address the comments. Have a good night. You too Capella.
Beating Children is disgusting and cowardly. The Bible wants to teach discipline, not going around punching your child in the head whenver you feel like it.
Zulla, in my view spanking is physical abuse. I wasn’t talking about random punches, I was talking about disciplining your children physically in any way. I’m from Sweden, where physical discipline is outlawed, and we have one of the safest, soundest societies on earth. You can teach your kid to be a good person without inflicting pain and humiliation. I’m sure parents for the most part love their children and do what they think is the best for them, but I still think it’s despicable. (Similarly, male circumcision for religious reasons is an abhorrent practice that ought to be outlawed.)
Here’s an interesting blog post on how christians can easily take the bible’s words too far.