Moses, menstruation, homosexuality and G. T. Hobson

ואישׁ אשׁר־ישׁכב את־אשׁה דוה וגלה את־ערותה את־מקרה הערה והוא גלתה את־מקור דמיה ונכרתו שׁניהם מקרב עמם׃

“‘If a man has sexual relations with a woman during her monthly period, he has exposed the source of her flow, and she has also uncovered it. Both of them are to be cut off from their people"
Leviticus 20:18 NIV

G. Thomas Hobson (Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, MO) has written a 74 page study to demonstrate that this kareth commandment does not mean death sentence but rather expulsion from the people of Israel.

"CUT OFF FROM (ONE’S) PEOPLE”: PUNITIVE EXPULSION IN THE TORAH AND IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST

The paper is not a theoretical study of the law on sexual purity in Leviticus but participation on the ongoing discussion on homosexuality. The basic hermeneutic idea is that there are several categories of punishments in the Old Testament and this distinction is critical for our Christian morals and ethics. So the "minor" sin of sleeping with a woman during her time of menstruation ("sickness" in King James Version) deserves only expulsion while homosexual act deserves death.

The distinction in the severity of the law is used to show the commandments in Torah that are still binding also in the New testament as "moral principles".

In contemporary ethical debate, it is common to hear commands from the Torah being indiscriminately lumped together: “The Torah forbids homosexual behavior, but it also forbids wearing mixed fabric, and eating leavened bread during Passover.” Those who make such an argument wish to construe all three of these Torah commands as being of equal seriousness.The first prohibition carries a death penalty, the second carries no explicit penalty, and the third calls for the offender to be “cut off from his/her people” (known in Judaism as the kareth penalty). Such a wholesale mixture of texts is not a legitimate way to characterize the intent of the Torah’s teaching, because it inappropriately ignores distinctions in Israelite law that are clearly signaled in the text itself.
Hobson op cit. p.1 

Hobson studies the concept of kareth carefully and provides a good bibliography on the subject. He reaches the following conclusions:

The conclusion of this paper is that kareth is an expression of relative mercy, which preserves the possibility of repentance. It also removes a source of ongoing moral contamination from the community that puts the community at risk. Kareth is the equivalent of a life sentence in a prison without bars.

The conclusion that kareth is a form of punitive expulsion makes more sense out of the data than the theory that kareth is a divine extermination curse, for which there is no evidence as a threatened penalty in the legal provisions of any ancient Near Eastern law code.
Hobson op cit p. 68 

Three themes in the study
We can notice in the above quotes at least three basic themes in Hobson's study

1. There are different levels in the Law of Moses concerning sexual ethics and family relationships. Sex during menstruation - even between husband and wife - is forbidden on the threat of expulsion and not of death sentence. (While homosexual act is forbidden on the pain of death and this is confirmed in the New Testament. See the quote below).
2. The commandment forbidding sex during menstruation represents "relative mercy". 
3. Comparative study shows that sexual act during menstruation is not cause of death in any known law code from the ancient Near East

My counter theses are

1. Sex during menstruation is forbidden on the pain of death because the man, even if he is the husband of the woman, reveals the source of blod. This commandment is not about sex but about blood, which is tabu.
2. The law of Moses explicitly forbids "relative mercy" when it sentences to amputation of hand a woman who during a fight defends her husband and touches the genitals of his enemy.  (No pity - off with her hand!)  IMHO Hobson brings here "strange fire" from modern Western ethics to the furious Law of Moses beside which even the Islamic Sharia law pales in severity and which killed Christ. 
3. Torah contains also many other prohibitions and commandments that do not have parallels in other codes of law known from the Near East. 

Interpretaing Laws of Moses according to Hobson 
A consistent Biblical ethic G. Thomas Hobson, Ph. D.
Hobson is a PCUSA pastor and adjunct professor at Morthland College in IL.

Hobson carefully explains the link between OT interpretation of the Law and the NT interpretation. Hobson writes, "In contemporary ethical debate, it is common to hear commands from the Bible being indiscriminately lumped together. We hear people say, “The Torah forbids homosexual behavior, but it also forbids wearing mixed fabric, and eating leavened bread during Passover. It’s all a hopeless jumble, useless as any reliable source of ethical guidance.”
Many are those who claim that the Bible teaches no consistent sexual ethic, but endorses polygamy, concubinage, prostitution, and even incest." He continues, "Every Torah command that carries a death penalty, is reaffirmed by the NT as a binding moral principle. The NT does not command us to execute incorrigible teenagers, but it does affirm the command, “Honor yourfather and mother.” Commands in the Torah that do not carry a death penalty, such as the kosher food laws, are not reaffirmed in the NT, and may be taken as commands that are just for Israel."
Presbyterians for Faith, Family and Ministry: Theology matters (link)

The quote provides a key to Hobson's hermeneutics. He emphasizes that the Law of Moses contains lesser sins and sins that are dead serious. Every deadly sin in the Old Testament is confirmed in the New Testament as a "moral principle".  This hermeneutic key provides Hobson with a bridge from the Mosaic Law to the world of New Testament and thus to modern Christianity. Torah is in this way in force and universally valid also to non-Jewish people. We can therefore condemn homosexuality on the basis of the Bible which demands death to those who do homosexual acts. On the other hand, sleeping with a woman during her menstruation is a lesser sin that does not need to be regarded at all with the same severity in modern day Christian teaching.


Apostle Paul
The question of Torah was extremely important to Apostle Paul, himself a former Pharisee and student of the famed Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder. He himself had used the Laws of Moses to persecute and exterminate followers of the Nazarene - Cursed is anyone hanged on a tree!

In comparison to Paul, the hermeneutics of Hobson seems to me to be based on over-simplistic reading of the Torah, pragmatic rationalism and is mixed with an underlying agenda on sexual ethics and politics. Such an approach is not helpful in understanding the Word of God properly.

For the great message of the Bible to humanity, Jews, Greeks and pagans alike 

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth
Romans 10:4 KJV


"I beg to differ..."
The following blog post by ez duz it may help us better to understand the generic framework within which T.G. Hobson works with Jewish law and Christian ethics.

Just a few reflections from a quiet, middle-aged teacher and Gay activist who also posts comments on “The Huffington Post” under the same name. Monday, April 25, 2011
G Thomas Hobson: His Anti-Gay Rhetoric and Misuse of Ἀσέλγεια Relative to Jewish Mishna
ez duz it

Slavery back in the name of God!

In search of life in the fullest of Torah, to walk the Way of the King Derekh HaMelekh some people endorse not only the confiscation of land and property by various means from those non-Jews happening to live in the Promised Land but also the cutting down of enemy olive trees, burning enemy wheat fields a la Samson, population transfer and even the killing of enemies who are trying to prevent the fulfilment of God's laws. All this and more in the light of holy Torah which not only accepts but actually commands such things in the name of God.

But why be selective and choose from the corpus of the texts only those parts that are now politically and strategically convenient and fit current goals of conquering the Promised Land? For Torah endorses also many other things that modern society represented in the United Nations and non-Jewish nations with their often godless laws do not necessarily accept.

If it is acceptable to base the rules of engagement in the conquest of the Promised Land directly on Biblical laws and examples without two thousand years of rabbinical cushioning in oral tradition and Talmud it is acceptable with the same logic and hermeneutics also to apply other aspects of Biblical life, social order and habits, justice system and patterns of behaviour. For example death sentence, amputation of limbs, polygamy and also slavery.

Why not?


Death sentence

If a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you. Leviticus 20:14

And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire. Leviticus 21:9

Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt. Genesis 38:24

He that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath. ... And Joshua ... took Achan ... and his sons, and his daughters ... And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire. Joshua 7:15, 24-25

Physical punishments including amputation of hand of the sexually offending woman, stoning to death, burning alive and other methods are not only accepted but actually commanded in the Torah. So it is not only shari'a of Islam but also the religious teaching of Judaism that can be used to authorize such actions by the law enforcement system.

That modern Israel has no death penalty is not because of the Torah which allows and commands death sentences in several cases, but for other reasons.


Polygamy

King Solomon loved, in addition to the daughter of Pharaoh, many foreign woman, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the Lord had warned the Israelites. "You must not cohabit with them, nor they with you, for they will certainly turn your hearts to their gods". Solomon held fast to them in love. He had 700 official wives and 300 concubines.
1 Kings 11:1-3

Even the story of Creation is strictly monogamous the case of King Solomon and the Patriarchal narratives about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob demonstrate that Torah does allow man to have more then one wife. The Bible tells about Sarah who introduces an Egyptian slave woman to her husband in order to bring offspring and the touching story of Rachel and Lea has its worthy place among the finer pieces of world literature. Torah does not forbid the man (or even the woman) taking more than one wife. But this habit seems to have died out already in antiquity as the society changed. (As far as I know the Bible does not know Matriarchal society in which a woman would have more than one husband)

It continued among the tribes in the Arabian Peninsula where Muhammad limited the maximum number of wives to four. The champions of Islam, Ottoman sultans, became famous, however, by having harems that compete with that of King Solomon in the Bible who had 700 wives.


Slavery

In the Ancient Near East, captives obtained through warfare were often compelled to become slaves, and this was seen by the law code of Deuteronomy as a legitimate form of enslavement, as long as Israelites were not among the victims (Deut 20:10-16); the Deuteronomic Code institutes the death penalty for the crime of kidnapping Israelites to enslave them. (Deut 24:7)

Yet the Israelites did not get involved in distant or large scale wars, and apparently capture was not a significant source of slaves. The Holiness Code of Leviticus explicitly allows participation in the slave trade, with non-Israelite residents who had been sold into slavery being regarded as a type of property that could be inherited. (Lev 19:33-34) Foreign residents were included in this permission, and were allowed to own Israelite slaves.

It was also possible to be born into slavery. If a male Israelite slave had been given a wife by his owner, then the wife and any children which had resulted from the union would remain the property of his former owner, according to the Covenant Code. However, the text does not specify the wife's nationality, and Baptist theologian John Gill (1697–1771), referenced Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (Jarchi) as holding that this refers to marriage to a Canaanite woman, as a concubine. 18th century theologian Adam Clarke stated that there was an Israelite law instructing that if an Israelite slave "had children by a Canannitish woman, those children must be considered as Canaanitish only, and might be sold and bought, and serve for ever."
Slavery in the Bible. wikipedia

The phenomenon of slavery is rather complex in the Bible and includes commandments and stories about enslavement, foreign and Israeli slaves, debt slavery, sexual and conjugal slavery, permanent slavery and freeing slaves.

So it is permissible according to the Torah to reintroduce slavery. It is not forbidden in the Mosaic Laws. On the contrary, God of Israel accepts slavery and the Torah gives specific commandments on how to treat slaves. Note also that Biblical slavery does not concern only prisoners of wars or people bought or captured from other countries but under certain circumstances also having slaves from the children of Abraham.

Accordingly, in a Jewish settlement living to the fullest of the Way of the King of Israel there could be Jewish men, women and children who are enslaved by their Jewish owners as was the case in the Iron Age and later. Torah gives specific orders, for example, in case the owner hits his slave so that he or she dies.

Famously, Koran does not forbid slavery and Islamic slave traders are an important part of East African history.

Few people remember, however, that also the New Testament accepts slavery. In fact, the King of Israel is said to have lowered Himself to the level of a slave. Apostle Paul sends a slave Onesimus who ran away back to his owner Filemon. The short letter to Filemon he sent with the runaway slave is very interesting in this sense.

Accordginly, the spread of the Kingdom of God did not mean the end of slavery. On the contrary, Justinian law code has important sections modifying and extending the Roman laws concerning slaves.

Christian Frenchmen, Britons and Americans were actively involved in the African slave trade that lasted well into the 19th century and was the cause for US civil war. True, Christians were crucial also in the end of trade slave in the western world, famously so Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

However, human trade and especially trade in women continues also in Europe and America with full force today despite of the efforts of United Nations and other international bodies to stop it.


Slavery back in the name of God!
The Bible does not forbid slavery and both the Old and New Testaments accept it as a fact of everyday life. God of Israel gave laws and commandments concerning slavery in ancient Israel. The example of Christ who took the form of a slave, everyone's servant, and the Letter to Filemon are powerful statements about slavery in the Roman period.

If the purpose of a group of people living together is to apply Derekh HaMelekh in its fullest, it is thus permissible under certain circumstances to kill non-Jewish enemies. It is also permissible, on the same logic and hermeneutics, to take foreign and even Israeli slaves to work in the house and in the fields with no other salary than the hope to avoid the master's whip.

Exodus!
Torah is very rich in content. Much therefore depends on the Rabbi of Israel who is interpreting its contents to the believers.

Let us not forget that the Book of Exodus is among the most inspiring stories about people getting freedom from bondage as it tells in unforgettable way about the people of Israel escaping from the harsh slavery under the whip of the mighty Pharaoh of Egypt.

"Go down, Moses, way down to Egypt land, tell ol', Pharaoh, to let my people go!"