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0 pointswwtrv4y ago0 comments

I think outright religious bans on murdering, raping or enslaving people outside of your community are fairly recent developments. Even the old testament is fairly ambiguous on this.

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wolverine8764y ago

I think it's much more complex than that. The Old Testament both insists you must treat strangers well, but also describes slaves and conquering Jericho. 'Thou shalt not kill', etc. however, are blanket statements.

We need more evidence and research; the Bible is long and we can find a statement here or there that supports almost anything. But as I said, while there are variations, much is the same.

I'll even speculate that it's predictable - I doubt I could walk into 99% of human communities in the history of the world and not have a reasonable sense of the morals (social customs might be tricky though!).

wwtrvOP4y ago

I don’t necessarily think there is a contradiction, “thou shall not kill” should be be translated as “thou shall not murder” in the context of the old testament. The word for “kill” used in the commandment was not used in any passages of the bible related to warfare. There is even a clarification that this does not apply to killing other people in warfare or unarmed combat*

While the literal meaning of the 10 commandments has changed relatively little (mainly due to mistranslation or the shifting definitions of words) almost all of them mean would mean very different things to modern christian pacifist, a with burning 16th century calvinist, a 2nd century christian or a 6th century bc. jew.

I mean even regarding killing, while it’s easy for us, living in the modern world, to interpret it as a general ban on killing, a society which did not kill people under any circumstances would likely have been inconceivable in ancient times, it simply could not have existed since it would had been conquered and it’s members enslaved or exterminated by neighboring tribes.

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_kill