In a blog titled, "The Top 10 Shocking Things that Christians Don't Know about the Bible," David Stockin asserts that there are a number of things that Christians don't know about the word of God. He then goes to great lengths in some cases to show how ignorant Christians are, and to a large degree, I concur. Largely we have a society that is biblically illiterate. As a result, I have thought that it would be interesting to engage in a little dialogue about Mr. Stockin's claims in order to see how accurate he really is.
Claim #4 "Thou Shall Not Kill is NOT a commandment."
He is correct. The translators of the King James Version of the Bible, working up to its publication in 1611 translated the Hebrew word tirezah as "kill," but this clearly isn't the indication of the text. Certainly there are times when the government, acting in the authority that God has given it will enter into war. There are times when policemen and women will have to use deadly force to keep evil people at bay. God certainly values life, and as men and women we are created in the image of God, and as a result we are to be respecters of human life. The Hebrew word translated "kill" in the KJV is better rendered as "murder" in most modern translations, because the word, coming from the Hebrew root word razah means "premeditated, vengeful, unlawful, killing." (see Brown, Driver and Briggs Hebrew Lexicon pages 953-954.
No comments:
Post a Comment