Stoning does not mean stoning (Translation fallacy?)

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2006-07-25 03:38pm

I was chatting with a friend of mine who is a born again Christian and try as I might whenever she pisses me off (and I was in a truly foul mood last night) I tend to slip out little gems that sort of piss her off about her religion.

Last night I decided to give her ye old Deuteronomy Ch 21: v17 -21 IIRC where essentially it says stone the stubborn child to death. At first she denied without even looking at the citation that the bible would ever say somethng like that. Then thought about it and said "Anyway, that's the Old Testament." to which I replied "So I can ignore the parts that predict the messiah Jesus coming, Original Sin and the Ten Commandments too? Thanks."

She backpedaled quickly and then read the passage. I could tell her wheels were turning at that point, disbelief obviously bugging her about this passage then like a light bulb went off in her head she replied "There's a translation issue here obviously. There are some words in ancient Hebrew that don't translate into modern english so they find an equivalent so stoning might mean chastise."

"Uh...it says stone him with stones. I don't think you can get mixed up with the word stone. I'm sure the ancient Hebrews had a word for stone. And Stoning him with stones as redundant as that sounds --"

"Look, let me read to you from my concordance on this passage" Turns out these born agains have a little book that goes with the bible that 'helps' them with some of these troublesome passages. She reads it to me and it essentially boils down to "Children should be obedient because that is pleasing to good" COMPLETELY glossing over the whole "stoning with stones until he is dead." bit.

She held firm to it being a translation issue because you know, God would never ask us to stone our children.

I rarely if ever debate these issues with fundies, I have no fundie friends save her, but has anyone run across this stupid cunting cop out. If it doesn't say something we like suddenly its the translation? Anyone seen or read this fucking concordance that helps them understand that stoning a child until they are dead means obeident children are pleasing to God?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-07-25 03:42pm

She's just being a moron. Even most fundies don't pull something that stupid. They generally play the "that rule doesn't apply to us any more" trick, not the ""stone him to death" actually means "lightly reprimand him"" trick.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2006-07-25 03:56pm

There are genuine translation issues in the Old Testament, but fundies tend to not talk about them because most of them are actually damaging to the fundamentalist viewpoint. Probably the biggest of these is that the entire concept of Hell doesn't really show up in the OT in the original Hebrew. The one specific example that springs to mind is "burning in Ghenna", which a fundie would tell you means your immortal soul burns forever in the underworld, but seems to literally mean a corpse being burned at Ghenna, which was Jerusalem's garbage dump. The ancient Hebrews seemed to believe that if a sinner died, he is simply dead and gone (and some passages, some of which have kept their meanings in English, seem to indicate the Hebrews had no concept of an afterlife at all).

I've never heard someone claim the laws in Deutronomy were mistranslated, though. I've heard a bunch of bullshit about the difference between Jewish law and the so-called Noachide laws, which are the basic ones like don't kill people, and that when Jesus said not one word of the law was being changed, he meant only the Noachide laws, but never a claim that "stoning" meant anything besides "throwing rocks at the kid until he dies".

EDIT: The Talmud moderates a lot of these laws for modern Jews, but that's no help to Christian fundamentalists.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2006-07-25 04:05pm

And anyone who says that this particular commandment doesn't apply anymore, refer them to Romans 1:28-32:

Romans 1:28-32; KJV wrote:And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, awickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,

Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:

Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

But then the standard fundy response is that "death" just means "spiritual death". There is no arguing with such people.

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2006-07-25 07:19pm

I always found it amusing that the best thing an atheist could do to a Christian was Bible thump.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2006-07-25 07:40pm

Wicked Pilot wrote:I always found it amusing that the best thing an atheist could do to a Christian was Bible thump.

Find the right passages, keep 'em coming, and they wind up spinning like a top. Bonus points if their ears go red.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2006-07-25 08:56pm

The "appeal to translational error" is just an application of circular logic. Start from the assumption that the Bible must be every bit the good book it's cracked up to be, and if the black-and-white text in any way contradicts that initial assumption, it must be a "translation error" or some other bullshit rationalization.

Cos Dashit · Post by **Cos Dashit** » 2006-07-25 09:04pm

Her translation makes sense unless there are instances of child-stoning (for being stubborn) written in the bible.

Civil War Man · Post by **Civil War Man** » 2006-07-25 09:35pm

Cos Dashit wrote:Her translation makes sense unless there are instances of child-stoning (for being stubborn) written in the bible.

Here's the law in question:

Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Douay version, wrote:If a man have a stubborn and unruly son, who will not hear the commandments of his father or mother, and being corrected, slighteth obedience

They shall take him and bring him to the ancients of his city, and to the gate of judgment,

And shall say to them : This our son is rebellious and stubborn, he slighteth hearing our admonitions, he giveth himself to revelling, and to debauchery and banquetings

The people of the city shall stone him : and he shall die, that you may take away the evil out of the midst of you, and all Israel hearing it may be afraid.

Pretty cut and dry. It pretty clearly calls for the death of the disobedient child.

Cos Dashit · Post by **Cos Dashit** » 2006-07-25 10:55pm

^^ Ah. Yeah that makes it pretty clear indeed.

So Stravo, your friend was just making an excuse, which turned out to be crap.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2006-07-25 11:57pm

Darth Servo wrote:But then the standard fundy response is that "death" just means "spiritual death".

—leaving out the bit about said "spiritual death" being aided by large rocks.

Flagg · Post by **Flagg** » 2006-07-26 12:30am

Yet translation errors that we know are probably true (and just happen to challenge basic tenets of Christianity) such as Mary not being a virgin, but a young woman, Christ being the "son of man", not the "son of God", and Moses parting the Reed Sea, rather than the Red Sea are not in fact errors according to fundies. No, rather it is God fixing errors made by the original writers of the biblical texts through the translators!
I'm sure Jehova will get around to changing all that sacrifice, and stoning business when he's through killing gays with AIDS, directing Hurricanes at horribly immoral (yet oddly enough, Red) states, and aiding Israel in its endeavor to kick Arab ass.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2006-07-26 12:43am

Woah, yeah. That's a new one. I've had them pull the translation card whenever scientific absurdities in the creation or flood myths come up, but never this. All the fundies I know are well aware that the Bible says to stone insolent children to death. And they agree wholeheartedly.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2006-07-26 12:48am

I don't think this could be called a fallacy so much as a lie. It isn't a false logical connection, it's just a statement of something which is blatently contradicted by facts. Everyone knows that fundies lie, so I'm not so surprised.

Flagg · Post by **Flagg** » 2006-07-26 02:57am

Zero wrote:I don't think this could be called a fallacy so much as a lie. It isn't a false logical connection, it's just a statement of something which is blatently contradicted by facts. Everyone knows that fundies lie, so I'm not so surprised.

Yes, but they lie for Jesus, so it's not only OK, but a sin not to.

Spetulhu · Post by **Spetulhu** » 2006-07-26 10:41am

Flagg wrote:
Zero wrote:I don't think this could be called a fallacy so much as a lie. It isn't a false logical connection, it's just a statement of something which is blatently contradicted by facts. Everyone knows that fundies lie, so I'm not so surprised.
Yes, but they lie for Jesus, so it's not only OK, but a sin not to.

Hey, they're trying to save your soul! In times past it was OK to kill people rather than let the Devil have them so what's a few lies?

But back to the topic of translations. I have to admit I've never had someone use bad translations as an excuse for the nasty stuff in the bible. Well-read fundies sometimes explain things with Christ bringing a New Covenant to the people, thus making many OT nasties obsolete. The NT describes some things we still shouldn't tolerate, such as gays.

Talanth · Post by **Talanth** » 2006-07-26 11:06am

Can someone please show this pasage to a fundie and ask what happens when the parents comand the sone to worshil the Devil.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2006-07-26 11:50am

Stravo, as much as it agrivates you, keep talking to her. You actualy made her stop and think. Challenge her enough times with these questions and you could very well get her to think through the situation rationaly.

Elric · Post by **Elric** » 2006-07-26 01:43pm

Just in case anyone is wondering, a concordance is pretty much just an index to the Bible. Nowadays concordances will usually have useless definitions for all the words in the back, although there are other types of concordances out there (mini-concordances in the back of some Bibles, for example). Typically, a concordance is the first step someone (if they don't know Greek or Hebrew) will take when studying a specific word.

And, no, the concordance can't do what your friend acted like it could. Ever.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2006-07-26 03:06pm

Spetulhu wrote:Well-read fundies sometimes explain things with Christ bringing a New Covenant to the people, thus making many OT nasties obsolete.

See my above post referencing Romans chapter 1

The Aliens · Post by **The Aliens** » 2006-07-26 03:23pm

I went to a Catholic high school, and we generally used the Concordance to look up a single word, ie 'joy' and get a list of Bible passages that contain either the word joy or ruminations on the general topic. Your friend seems to think the Concordance behaves in the same was as the Talmud, ie. a book of commentary on the Bible. This is not the case.

Faqa · Post by **Faqa** » 2006-07-26 03:44pm

I call huge, steaming bullshit on that as someone who's read the OT in Hebrew.

The term is "Skeila", which does literally mean to throw stones at. It's a modern term for precisely that nowadays. Oh, it can also be used as a term of disgrace, maybe, "I'm being stoned here!", but it means "throw geological artifacts at subject of verb at high velocity".

But hey, whatever. Truth has always gotten in the way of fundies....

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-07-26 03:58pm

Zero wrote:I don't think this could be called a fallacy so much as a lie. It isn't a false logical connection, it's just a statement of something which is blatently contradicted by facts. Everyone knows that fundies lie, so I'm not so surprised.

I think it is a fallacy, since it assumes god is good, and disregards any evidence against that assumption. It's basically drawing a conclusion before the evidence is presented.

A lie would presume the fundie knows anything about the Bible beyond what the Church tells them, and that they are cognizant of the more repugnant Biblical passages.

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2006-07-26 04:37pm

My favorite part of this story is that if we change biblical stoning into chastisement renders one of Jesus's finest moments meaningless. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" changes to "let he who is without sin be the first to verbally chastise this woman or inflict light corporal punishment such as a spanking".

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-07-26 05:17pm

wolveraptor wrote:
Zero wrote:I don't think this could be called a fallacy so much as a lie. It isn't a false logical connection, it's just a statement of something which is blatently contradicted by facts. Everyone knows that fundies lie, so I'm not so surprised.
I think it is a fallacy, since it assumes god is good, and disregards any evidence against that assumption. It's basically drawing a conclusion before the evidence is presented.

A lie would presume the fundie knows anything about the Bible beyond what the Church tells them, and that they are cognizant of the more repugnant Biblical passages.

If it's a fallacy at all, it'd be begging the question. This person assumes that there must be an error because she doesn't think it could possibly mean that. Despite the fact that there's no available evidence to show as much.