QUOTE(Deadlocks @ Dec 14 2015, 04:06 PM)
While the motivation behind the barbaric acts could possibly be a good thing, but does it justify the methods that were used?
**snip**
I think bro, just be at peace.
You will be surprised that our modern view of women and children had his root in Jesus. I will start with them.
It is unfortunate that people who claimed to be "modern" don the "coloured glasses" of modern morality which has its root in the New Testament to condemn the Old Testament text. This has seriously misrepresent the Old Testament text.
For example:
The idea of the equality of all human beings was not "self-evident" to the ancient world. Aristotle did not think all men were created equal. He wrote that inequality masters and slavery was the natural order of things: "For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule."
Plutarch wrote that until that time the child was "more like a plant than a human being".
In the 19th century, novelist George MacDonald answered on a question of what is a "princess". He answered, "Very well, then every little girl is a princess." Every human being is the child of a King. What happens in between?
In the ancient world, unwanted children were often simply left to die, a practice called “exposure.” The head of the household had the legal right to decide the life or death of other members of the family. This decision was usually made during the first eight or so days of life. The most common reasons to expose a child would be if the family lived in poverty, or if a wealthy family did not want the estate divided up, or if the child was the wrong gender, or if the child were illegitimate. Abandoned children were often left on a dump or a dung hill. They most often died; sometimes they were rescued, but usually this was to become enslaved. This happened often enough that hundreds of ancient names are variations of the word kopros, which was Greek for “dung.”
Babies that were disabled or appeared weak were often disposed of by drowning. An ancient Roman law said that a boy who was “strikingly deformed” had to be disposed of quickly. One archaeological dig found “a gruesome discovery,” the bones of “nearly 100 little babies apparently murdered and thrown into the sewer.”
John Ortberg, in his book, "Who is this man", states:
QUOTE
One day Jesus was asked the question, “Who … is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Matthew wrote, “He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: ‘… Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’”
Jesus said it wasn’t the child’s job to become like Herod. It was Herod’s job to become like the child. Greatness comes to people who die to appearing great. No one else in the ancient world—not even the rabbis—used children as an example of conversion.
Then Jesus said the kind of thing that would literally never enter the mind of another human being to say: “And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
Kopros has a new name.
There were many clubs and associations in the ancient world. None of the qualities associated with children — weakness, helplessness, lowliness—qualified one to join any of them. There were no clubs for children. Until Jesus.
Another time Jesus acted out a little parable of this teaching. Children “were brought” to Jesus. The language says they could not even come themselves: passive, dependent. The disciples rebuked the parents. Jesus rebuked the disciples. “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
A kingdom for children. Before Walt Disney. And the little children came.
As the movement that Jesus started spread, it created an alternative community for children. Early instructions among his followers, such as the Didache in the second century, prohibit the widespread practices of abortion, exposure, and infanticide.
Infanticide during antiquity has usually been played down despite literally hundreds of clear references by ancient writers that it was an accepted, everyday occurrence. Children were thrown into rivers, flung into dung-heaps and cess trenches, “potted” in jars to starve to death, and exposed on every hill and roadside, “a prey for birds, food for wild beasts to rend” (Euripides, Ion, 504). To begin with, any child that was not perfect in shape and size, or cried too little or too much, or was otherwise than is described "normal" was generally killed. Beyond this, the first-born was usually allowed to live, especially if it was a boy. Girls were, of course, valued little, and the instructions of Hilarion to his wife Alis (1 B.C.) are typical of the open way these things were discussed: “If, as may well happen, you give birth to a child, if it is a boy let it live; if it is a girl, expose it.” The result was a large imbalance of males over females which was typical of the West until well into the Middle Ages, when the killing of legitimate children was probably much reduced.
G. K. Chesterton wrote that the elevation of the dignity of childhood would have made no sense to the ancients. It came into the world through Jesus, and even where belief in him has eroded the elevation of childhood, Jesus’ thought remains: “The pagan world, as such, would not have understood any such thing as a serious suggestion that a child is higher or holier than a man.-----------------------------------
One example from John Ortberg's book on view on woman.
QUOTE
Moreover, in the ancient world, a woman’s highest calling was to bear children....
In ancient Sparta, a mother who gave birth to a son would receive twice the food rations as a mother who gave birth to a daughter. The only women who got their names on their tombstones were women who died in childbirth.
For much of Rome’s history, even freeborn girls (unlike boys) lived under guardians throughout their lives. Caesar Augustus decreed that a woman could be liberated from her guardian after the birth of her fourth child.
One day Jesus was teaching. “As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, ‘Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.’”
Someone was complimenting Jesus’ mother. We could expect a polite reply: “Thank you. My mom’s the best ever. She was a virgin, you know.”
Instead, Jesus offered a sharp rebuttal: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
Jesus deliberately gave an edgy response: “No; you’re wrong.” For Jesus, the highest calling of a woman was no longer to bear a child. Motherhood, like fatherhood, is a noble calling. But it’s not the ultimate calling. If you don’t have children, you have not missed out.
Not on Jesus’ call. And by the way, if you do have children, you are not defined by how they “turn out.”
Because they share a common humanity, the highest calling of a woman is also the highest calling of a man: The glorious adventure of coming to know and do the will of the God in whose image they are created. Through Jesus, this calling is now available to any woman regardless of her age, marital status, or child-bearing capacity.
....
We actually have a remnant of Roman customs in our language tradition: the phrase to “give one’s hand in marriage.” In Rome marriage could involve something called manus — Latin for “hand.” (That is why a manuscript was handwritten.) A wife could be given into “hand” of her husband (he got control of her) or could be given “without hand,” which meant her father retained control of her.
She was in somebody’s hands. If she was given into her husband’s hand, she was expected to renounce her father’s religion and worship at her husband’s altar.
In Jesus’ movement, women had a God who is higher than the state or their husband. They defied custom and sometimes risked their lives by following this Jesus. This was the source of serious concern in the ancient world. This faith was not simply a different religion to Rome; it involved a different idea of religion, one that might threaten social structures rather than strengthen them.
.... (Elsewhere in Mary and Martha's home)
Many people in our day turn this into a little story about busy-ness: it is better to be the quiet contemplative Mary than the busy activist Martha. No one in the first century would have read this that way. The phrase “to sit at someone’s feet” is a technical term meaning to be someone’s disciple. Paul used it when he was defending himself after being arrested at the temple in Jerusalem: “I am a Jew … brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law.”
Stereotypes die hard. While attending a Marriage Weekend, a husband and wife I will call Max and Esther listened to the instructor declare, “It is essential that husbands and wives know the things that are important to each other.”
....
In our day, we have seen this a thousand times: men gathered around the grill or the television set, and women in the kitchen. These patterns are strong in our day; they were stronger in Jesus’ day. For a woman to join the men around the grill was unheard of back then.
Mary came to the grill. Jesus smiled. Martha did what the culture valued in women: cleaned the house and cooked the food. Mary did what the culture valued in men: became a disciple.
Jesus said Mary got it right. Jesus was inviting women to be his disciples.
In the Gospels, it was women who followed Jesus to the cross when all the men were afraid and ran away. The early church father John Chrysostom wrote that here is where womanhood “most shows its courage. When the disciples had fled, these were present.”
As O. M. Bakke has documented, it was where the church spread in the early centuries after Jesus that girls ceased as a matter of routine being disposed of at birth and being enslaved and sexually exploited in childhood.I will respond later on the Ancient Near East's culture and (if can) also address the misrepresentation the Old Testament literature, by portraying God as an "jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, (etc etc ... you get the point
)" without considering His other complex multi layered attributes of God.
Aug 15 2015, 01:26 PM
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... the goal is to correct a misconception - so bear with me.)
I will edit this message if I have violated anything.
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