Wes Groggins didn’t mince words when he testified to a Missouri Senate committee Monday in support of legislation expanding legal protections for embryos.The executive director of Abolish Abortion Missouri invoked the Bible’s Old Testament in his justification that anyone who has an abortion or assi...
  • Australis13@fedia.io
    104·
    4 days ago

    Please be aware that those are common misrepresentations of those texts popularised by the NIV translation.

    Many translations show Exodus 21 demands life for life and a fine if the child survives but suffers injury. The NIV is one of several exceptions (although probably the most popular one) that instead translates it as a fine for a miscarriage (the original NASB also said this, but the 1995 revision corrected it).

    Numbers 5 is a religious test and requires God to enact punishment. The “potion” has no abortifacient components and commentaries suggest that the punishment was infertility. The NIV is again an exception here suggesting miscarriage when most other translations (eg. NKJV, NASB, RSV, ESV, Amplified, Young’s Literal, etc.) do not.

    By all means call out their misuse of the Bible or their lack of consistency with it, but please be careful making claims like this – it just undermines credibility.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      11·
      3 days ago

      Wait, this was a defense of the Bible and the people who use it to inform their beliefs about abortion???

      The fact that the meaning can be the complete opposite depending on what (modern) translation you use? Who’s credibility is being undermined here again?

      • Australis13@fedia.io
        1·
        3 days ago

        No, it’s pointing out that these sort of claims are flawed and the need to be careful not to undermine one’s own argument. People on both sides of the argument use the Bible incorrectly or are unaware of the nuance of the text.

        As I said, I’m all for calling out the hypocrisy, but it’s important to get it right. And if different translations have different views (and one isn’t willing to get into the weeds of what the original text actually says), then perhaps we shouldn’t be using those passages as a “slam dunk”?

    • HailSeitan@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 days ago

      This doesn’t seem to be a NIV issue.

      When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands

      —Exodus 21:22, NRSV

      May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.

      —Numbers 5:22, NRSV

      What translation(s) are referring to that seem to suggest something different?