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by mschuster91
1300 days ago
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Disagree a bit here. The Bible and other religious texts were not necessarily decrees by "hostile overlords", they were the back-then equivalent of what we would call a Constitution these days - the foundational rules of society. Particularly what Christians call the "Old Testament", the Jews the Torah and whatever Muslims call the foundations prior to Quran today... it's essentially the same text, the same rules. It's micro-managing every aspect of their lives to the same degree modern laws do - everything from a basic criminal code (Ten Commandments) over food safety laws (e.g. the ban for Jews and Muslims to eat pork) and employment regulation (work-free Sabbath) to providing answers to specific legal questions (inheritance, paying damages for livestock or raped women) and prescribing religious rituals. Even how to properly wage war was written down there... all of that was stuff the old tribes learned the hard way or decided upon and documented. For the Quran, a good example for that is the love of Prophet Muhammad on cats - the tribes learned that cats keep grain storages free from pests! The problem is that over the millennia, the original context of these rules being tribally discussed and agreed-upon laws or some of these being the documentation of dispute resolutions got lost, and dogmatic / religious interpretations took favor, leading to entrenchment of rules that no longer made any sense (e.g. the mentioned pork ban or ridiculous interpretations of the work-free Sabbath). Additionally, some of the contents got lost or modified in translation - the best example is the "72 virgins" that await a Muslim martyr in heaven, which may very well have rather meant "vine grapes" [1]. FWIW, the Christian "New Testament" can also be seen as a reform-oriented amendment of the Torah. Religious texts make way more sense when viewing them as "this is the collection of hundreds or thousands of years of tribal knowledge, order and jurisprudence", which is (IMO as an atheist) the only way these texts should be interpreted as. And yet, it still makes sense to also see the part of the rules and regulations that haven't gotten outdated as a foundation of how even our modern societies should look like (e.g. parts of the Ten Commandments, Jesus' teachings on how to view and help the poor and discriminated). [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/opinion/martyrs-virgins-a... |
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A constitution is what a ruling class formalizes as foundational rules of the state. Society is mostly made up of the subjects of states.
This is perhaps more of a gray area these days - as most states are official democracies and have elections and such - but I would argue it is still essentially the case. But regardless of the present - this was certainly the case in more ancient times, where some well-armed and well-connected person or family declared itself to be the rulers. The majority of the population were simply conquered, lorded over, by such kingdoms; and whatever codex of rules was put down in writing (if at all) was not even known to them, let alone constrained to agree with their mores and customs.
About the (Jewish) bible specifically - the legislative part of it is a collection of different, and partly contradictory texts from different periods in the history of ancient Judea and the holy land, that was put in writing only much later. Most subjects of the Judean kings were not even that committed to Yahweh as a god. Naturally, such decrees and commandments were not written to be entirely divorced and contradictory to surrounding society, but they were first and foremost impositions in the interest of the rulers, not representation of the views of the ruled.
PS - From my (admittedly partial) familiarity with devout muslims, I very much doubt people going on a martyrdom (istish'haad) missions here in Palestine expect to get virgins after they die, nothing of the sort. There isn't a "piety and modesty now, promiscuity and debauchery after death" kind of a perception. Again, AFAIK. I can't access the NYT link, there's a paywall.