COMMENTARY: Taking the Bible at its word: Be careful what you wish for

c. 1998 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) UNDATED _ In today’s religion-soaked America, politicians love to cite the Bible to justify public policy positions on a host of issues, including capital punishment, women’s rights and homosexuality. Some officials mindlessly invoke Bible verses without acknowledging that […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ In today’s religion-soaked America, politicians love to cite the Bible to justify public policy positions on a host of issues, including capital punishment, women’s rights and homosexuality. Some officials mindlessly invoke Bible verses without acknowledging that countless, often conflicting, interpretations of those same verses have emerged among Jews and Christians over the past 2,000 years.


Some officials actually believe that reciting Scripture provides full validation of their position. It does not. And when elected leaders piously declare,”If only Americans followed the Bible literally, we would have a truly just society,”I know for sure they haven’t studied the Bible.

It’s not only the devil who can quote the Bible, but political demagogues, too.

I wonder if any public official would accept as law these ordinances from Leviticus and Deuteronomy:”If any man insults his father or his mother, he shall be put to death. … If a man has a wayward and defiant son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them after they discipline him … the parents shall say to the elders of the town, `This son of ours is disloyal and defiant.’… Thereupon, the men of the town shall stone him (the rebellious son) to death …” If these injunctions were carried out today, it would surely mean the mass execution of millions of youths who regularly”insult”their parents during the tumultuous teenage years.

But before such executions could take place, a vast legal industry would have to be created to define exactly what is meant by”insulting”one’s parents. Was the”insult”verbal or physical? Were”insults”pre-mediated by children or were they spontaneous acts carried out after being provoked by a parent?

Are the executions dependent upon the age of the”insulting”child? Would condemned children have the right of appeal once they had been legally convicted of”insulting”their parents? Do”insults”of step-parents count, or does the biblical injunction apply solely to one’s birth parents?

These are precisely the kind of questions the ancient rabbis grappled with when they confronted these troubling verses. As a people of profound faith, the rabbis could never change the words of Scripture. Instead, they developed an extraordinary system of interpretation to mitigate the severity of the original texts.

In the case of a rebellious son, the rabbis determined the laws applied only to boys of a specific age; those younger or older were exempt from capital punishment. The rabbis further ruled that a rebellious son had first to be warned of his offense and reliable witness had to testify that a son’s alleged actions met the carefully constructed definition of”rebellious.” And take the 20th chapter of Leviticus as public policy:”If a man commits adultery with a married woman … the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death …” While the rabbis were extremely concerned about sexual purity and strong family life, they also eliminated capital punishment from Jewish life and today the State of Israel continues this tradition. In 50 years, Israel has executed only one person: Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann.

But if America enacted a policy of executing adulterers based on a literal reading of the Bible, it would certainly decimate the ranks of our elected officials. And if all adulterers were sentenced to death, offending politicians never again would worry about voter backlash since capital punishment is much worse _ and more permanent _ than being impeached or losing an election.

The Bible is a magnificent spiritual treasure, but those who really love and know Scripture recognize that a literal reading is just the beginning of an authentic understanding of the sacred text. As the rabbis like to say:”Go forth and study.”


DEA END RUDIN

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