hi pluckyali,
i am not misunderstanding many things about the new james version or international version of bible found in the
www.biblegateway.com.
well, that may very well be the case, but it is not for me to say whether either the new james or the international versions are any good as translations. all i can say is that from my PoV, merely the text ot the Torah in isolation, let alone a translation of it, will lead a modern reader like yourself to conclusions entirely at odds with the conclusions drawn in jewish law, precisely because they are reading it without the benefit of commentaries and the Oral Law.
adultery is taking place not explicitly rape but it's still given punishment of stoning to death.
that's right - it's a stoning offence, but firstly it is effectively impossible to actually get a conviction even assuming you had an authorised court in capital cases such as this. even so, the stoning itself is very difficult to carry out without falling foul of the restrictions on it; basically the Oral Law makes it so difficult to execute someone that it is hard to see, despite the number of capital crimes in the Torah, how anyone ever *was* executed.
It's not actually considered pre-martial sex?,where it's written in the bible?.It's sure in the adultery space according to verse 23.
it's considered "sex that establishes a marriage" - ie you're not married before, but by the end of it you are, providing the woman is not already married, in which case it would have been adultery. i hope i've made the distinction clear.
So hebrew is so complex that you can't translate it in english
not exactly - it is complex, but when you translate it you are effectively interpreting it. it's like the difference between reading a surah of Qur'an and what would actually happen if you were up in front of a qadi in a shariah court; he would use the hadith, commentaries, precedents, all of that. either way if i read an english translation of the Qur'an and then tried to work out how muslims ought to behave based on that, i'd make some pretty large mistakes i expect. does that make sense?
or the translation i am reading is from a dump source?
it's not really for me to say except insofar as it makes you draw the conclusions - and, actually, i think your conclusions are based on a lack of knowledge of the Torah's interpretative methodology rather than translation issues.
If former is true then one can guess Torah is only for people who know hebrew and has nothing to do with people of other races,culture and society.It's simply incompatible for people other than jewish.
that's not exactly how i'd put it. i would say the Torah's *primary* intended audience, certainly as far as commandments are concerned, is the jewish people and, as such, it should be studied as far as possible in the original in order to approach the thought of its Source. however, that does not say it is not a source of inspiration and guidance for non-jewish people, only that 606 of the laws in it are *not binding* on them; the other 7, the "noahide" laws, are. without the Oral Law that accompanies and in some cases predated the giving of the Written Torah, it is basically impossible to live according to only that which is explicitly mentioned, which doesn't stop people trying, both inside judaism and without it. historically, however, these attempts have not been successful. and, even if you do take it upon yourself to follow the whole thing correctly, it is really, really hard work - and if you've not been saddled with the commitment by your ancestors, like us, why take it on? this is why judaism is not a proselytising religion.
Verse does not say father objects and it doesnot say men is rich or not,
i know it doesn't say that; i'm interpreting it according to the stuff i know from the Oral Law about this subject, which would also have to be considered.
it can be reverse women is rich and having sex before marriage with some other men,
i suppose so except that in such a case, if either a woman or a man was having sex to establish a marriage, you wouldn't end up having more than one partner, otherwise the first one would count as marriage and the others as adultery, with the attendant penalty.
consequently how could a poor man pay her father
that is a really good question, pluckyali! as it happens, when the marriage occurs by contract, the man becomes financially obliged to support his wife, so i think this stipulation must be the way to ensure that the man has sufficient funds before he thinks about getting married this way without the consent of her family. plus, of course, it is an additional disincentive if you're poor.
of course some girls can make this their new business.
no they can't - once you start talking money either it's prostitution, which is not allowed, or the divorce process has to be gone through each time. i suppose theoretically you could be a serial monogamist, but the financial disincentives on the man are extremely stringent and unless you were very rich, you would end up paying a hell of a lot of alimony, even 3000 years ago. nowadays it would be prohibitive. and, before you ask, alimony does have that long a history; it's not a recent addition. wow, you're really making me think!
And my interpretations have nothing to do with jewish legal commentators.
i realise that, but when you ask how something could make sense to me that doesn't make sense to you the logical thing for me to do is to refer to the things that bridge this gap - in other words, the jewish legal commentators.
how could one know she actually screamed or not which is very important to know cuz based on screaming you have to decide only guy should be stoned to death or both.
another excellent objection. what you would do is first look at what counts as a "scream" - the answer the interpreters would undoubtedly come up with is anything that can reasonably be considered an objection, even if it's not an actual scream. then, when the case comes before the court and the woman says, "well, i didn't scream, but i did throw something out of the window to alert the passers by", the court would count it as a "scream equivalent" and get her off.
You mean bible is talking about something of it's age and that's fine.
well, yes, but you'd also have to consider that in a modern situation, you'd have to judge the case based upon what constituted a modern interpretation of a "city" or a "field" as legal categories. so, an alley or another area where there are few people might count as a field and so on.
To understand 24,we need to read 23,in 23 man is meeting a virgin who is promised to be married and thus not already married.In fact this means another man's wife is used as a symbol in bible,it could mean a women who is pledged to be married to some men and she is regarded as his wife without actually being married to her.
now you have done something *really* 'talmudic' - in other words, you have hit upon the precise way that the Torah thinks about such things. the question becomes "when might there be a doubt about whether she is married or not?" and the answer is that jewish marriage is made up of two ceremonies - betrothal and marriage. breaking an official betrothal is actually more or less as complicated as getting divorced, which is why nowadays you get officially betrothed a few minutes before the marriage, but in ancient times a year or so might have elapsed between the two, during which, i imagine, the couple might actually have even got to "know" each other (although this would be frowned upon) - therefore this situation might arise if a betrothed girl started effectively cheating on her fiancé, whether the man involved knew about it or not. either way he would have to make dam' sure that the girl he was about to get entangled with was permitted or not!
i have to say, pluckyali, that you and i are engaging in a process that is almost exactly similar to the conversations that make up the Oral Law - if you were to read the Mishnah or Gemara, the two parts of the Talmud, you'd find discussions in there exactly like this one!
b'shalom
bananabrain
