A recent issue of The Forum has several letters recommending the Bible as a guide to proper behavior. I wonder how familiar the authors are with its dark side. A few samples:
"Should handicapped people be excluded from the congregation of the Lord? Perhaps not all but certainly those with certain specified disfigurements."
Deuteronomy 23:1
"Should a descendant of a bastard be admitted? Not if one had such an ancestor among about a thousand of the most recent." Deuteronomy 23:2
How should one treat slaves from one's own people?
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"Manumit them in the seventh year but if one was acquired as a bachelor and had children by a wife provided by the owner he must leave without them. If he objects his ear must be bored through with an awl and he shall never go free." Exodus 21:6
"What should be done with the children of an unrepentant 'Jezebel?' They should be killed." Revelations 2:23
"What should parents do with an unruly teen? Take him to the city commission to have him stoned to death."
Deuteronomy 21:21
"How should prisoners of war be treated? Instructions vary, from killing "the men, and the women, and the little ones," Deuteronomy 2:34; I Samuel 15:3; II Samuel 11:1, to allowing to live only most of "the women children."
Numbers 31.
What lessons are to be drawn from the behavior of King David, one of the Lord's favorites? When he observed a beautiful neighbor taking her bath, he had her brought to him. Was she kidnapped? When she forthwith became pregnant the king attempted a cover-up by ordering R&R for her husband, Uriah. He returned from the battlefield but refused to enter his home. He explained that he would not live in comfort while his comrades in arms suffered at the front. The king then reverted to Plan B, ordering Uriah to return to the hottest spot in the front ranks where he would be killed. The Lord was merely displeased, and David married Bathsheba. The child was delivered, but it soon died; the next one was the famously wise Solomon.
William Treumann, St. Paul, Letter: Understand that Bible has dark side 20080109
