An interesting thing about Exodus 21 is that it not only can used to justify stoning murderous Orcas to death (provided you see no difference between oxen and killer whales) but it can also be used to justify slavery. Consider how the chapter opens:
Exodus 21
1 “These are the laws you are to set before them:
Hebrew Servants
2 “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything.
3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him.
4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.
5 “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’
6 then his master must take him before the judges. [a] He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.7 “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as menservants do.
8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, [b] he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her.
9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter.
10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights.
11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.
Now, these rules might have been the best that Moses could do at the time. These rules may have been quite progressive in their time. But I think it’s silly to cite Exodus to argue that we should start stoning killer whales. Now, if you want to debate whether Jonah was swallowed by a fish or a whale…
Actually, there was a reason for that. A man who had been a slave, but was set free, basically got to start with a clean slate. He could get work as a laborer or servant somewhere else, he could make a new life for himself, because he was male, and the society had niches where single men could fit in and support themselves and keep from starving.
There was no such niche for single women — except one, prostitution. A woman without a family – a father, a husband, or other relative willing to give her a home and respectability, had no good means to support herself. A woman who had been a slave was pretty much assumed to have been ‘dishonored’ by her master, and therefore not a ‘suitable’ wife for anyone else.
So I tend to see this less as God being sexist than recognizing that the society itself was sexist, and what the fate of a discarded woman ‘servant’ was likely to be — what at least some of these laws in Leviticus basically boil down to is: You sleep with her, you are now RESPONSIBLE for her — you can’t throw her out in the street to starve or sell herself to survive, you must at least feed and clothe her, and let her sleep under your roof, even if you don’t want her sexually anymore.
It’s not very progressive by our standards – but by the standards of the day, it probably saved a lot of women’s lives.
What did Paul Bunyan and Harry Potter have to say about whales? Might as well let all the mythical beings chime in.
Since this orca killed before, the person responsible for the animal should die along with it. Whether that means its owner or its manager, and whether its owner is the CEO of Sea World, all its shareholders, or the corporation itself, is a matter our Supreme Court should be able to determine, with due deference to original intent.
And that’s assuming that they didn’t commit adultery or something.
i think one big reason why the Bible is still so popular is that most people who “believe in it” have never actually read it. what a bunch of outdated nonsense.
Ummmmm – the Book is thousands of years old. You expect it to be current?
your statement is absurd by its very construction: obviously i don’t expect a thousands year old book to be current. especially the exoteric mainstream stuff. the esoteric texts or inner teachings of various religions are often timeless, which is a whole other conversation altogether.
what i do expect, however, is that human beings think for themselves. this is the world’s biggest problem; people swallow, hook/line/sinker, the outdated exoteric tripe of the Bible which was only created in the first place to keep the masses under control.
what i do expect is that the people of this world, all of whom share a common destiny and a common humanity, stop accepting the thousands of years old dogmas that SEPARATE and DIVIDE us. especially in light of the fact that so many of the rules in that book/those books are utterly irrelevant to modern society.
there is a great urgency in this throwing off of the old dogmas; these wars between the brainwashed extremist followers of various major religions threaten to destroy the planet in an irrevocable fashion. violent extremists may always exist, but they must be marginalized and marginalized quickly, by the masses. this goes for all religions.
these outdated texts have long outlived their usefulness, but their destructive power has never been greater. the powerful quote their holy books to justify their murderous actions, but ignore the parts that would hamper their goals. hence they are no longer effective as moral guides. that clear it up for you?
Wait … Jonah Goldberg got swallowed by a whale? .. How come I am only hearing about this now?
If only…
As to stoning murderous orcas, read the text itself:
In other words, if you own an animal and it kills someone then you’re not to be held responsible, although the animal is to be put down. If, on the other hand, the animal has a history of killing or injuring people and you know about it yet do nothing to leash them or pen them in so that they don’t repeat that behavior and they kill again then you are to be charged with negligent homicide and the animal is to be put down.
As to slavery, Exodus 21 doesn’t attempt to justify it – it simply regulated a practice that already existed in order to ensure that a system of employment didn’t turn human beings into chattel.
Christians are not bound by Mosaic Law. That is all.