According to scripture, life begins... when?

[The Pixie]

This came up in a recent discussion.

Let us start by looking at this verse:
If the woman miscarries, the man gets fined. If the woman is herself harmed, then the man pays, life for life, etc. The implication is that the unborn child is not considered a human, and so does not warrant the man paying the "price" he would otherwise.

See also here:
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/arti...in-jewish-law/
http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/Fo.../judaism1.html

So when does life start?


A month after birth?

An argument can be made that you only become a person a month after birth.
In Judaism in Jesus' time a baby was not considered a person until it was a month old:

We do not mourn for fetuses, and anything which does not live for 30 days, we do not mourn for it.
- Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Mourning 1:6

See also:
This was presumably because it was all to common for babies to die in the first few weeks of life.


At birth

Nevertheless, the point at which life starts is when a baby takes a breath. In Biblical times breath and life were intimately connected. For a starting point, look at the Brown-Driver-Briggs definition of the Hebrew word "nephesh" on Bible Hub:
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/5315.htm

1 = that which breathes, the breathing substance or being = ψυχή, anima, the soul, the inner being of man ...
2 The נפשׁ becomes a living being: by God's breathing נשׁמת חיים into the nostrils of its בשׂר; of man Genesis 2:7 (J) ...

Also consider these verses:

Acts 17:25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

Job 33:4 The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

Job 34:14-15 If it were his intention and he withdrew his spirit and breath, all humanity would perish together and mankind would return to the dust.

Genesis 2:7 Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Genesis 7:22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.

Proverbs 20:27 The human spirit is the lamp of the LORD that sheds light on one's inmost being.

(in Hebrew, the word here translated as "spirit" is the same one that elsewhere is "breath")

Isaiah 42:5 This is what God the LORD says-- the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out, who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it:

Revelation 11:11 But after the three and a half days the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them.

Psalm 104:29 When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust.

Psalms 33:6 By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

Ezekiel 37:5-6 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.'"

I appreciate most of these are about when life ends, but even then they show the connection between breath and life - so much so that the Proverbs verse has the word for breath translated as spirit. Note in particular the last one in Ezekiel when God specifically says he will put breath into a body and that will make it come to life. And of course in Genesis, it was putting breath in Adam that brought him to life.

The Bible does state for us when a baby is considered alive, but it does make clear that life and breath are essentially one and the same, and the clear implication is that life begins when God gives the new born its first breath.

[Sparko]

The way I read it is if the man causes her to have a premature birth (the child comes out, but there is no harm) then he is fined but if he causes the death of the mother OR the child, then he must pay a life for a life.

[Cow Poke]

The way I read it is if the man causes her to have a premature birth (the child comes out, but there is no harm) then he is fined but if he causes the death of the mother OR the child, then he must pay a life for a life.

Yeah, I just looked at about 20 translations, and there's no indication that "life for life" applies only to the woman. In fact, several of them (including the KJV) state "And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life"....

[The Pixie]

The way I read it is if the man causes her to have a premature birth (the child comes out, but there is no harm) then he is fined but if he causes the death of the mother OR the child, then he must pay a life for a life.

This seems to be interpreted quite differently by Jews and Christians, and the second link in the OP suggests this is due to Christians using the Septuagint
http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/Fo.../judaism1.html

The critical text [Exodus 21:22], to begin with, has an alternative version in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible produced in Alexandria in the third pre-Christian century. A change of just one word there yields an entirely different statute on the subject.

Two schools of thought emerge, depending on whether one follows the Hebrew text, as did the religious traditions that emerged as "Judaism" in the 4th ct. C.E. [Common Era = "A.D."] - or the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, i.e., the Septuagint used as scripture in the early religious communities that root what becomes "Christianity" in the 4th Ct. C.E. Feldman refers here to Viktor Aptowitzer's analysis of the Exodus passage as translated into the Greek Septuagint:

The school of thought it represents he calls the Alexandrian school, as opposed to the Palestinian - that is, the talmudic [and thus Jewish] - view set forth above. The word in question is ason, rendered here as "harm"; hence," if [there be] harm, then shalt thou give life for life." The Greek renders ason as form, yielding something like: "If [there be] form, then shalt thou give life for life." The "life for life" clause is thus applied to fetus instead of mother and a distinction is made - as Augustine will formulate it - between embryo informatus and embryo formatus. ...

[Sparko]

This seems to be interpreted quite differently by Jews and Christians, and the second link in the OP suggests this is due to Christians using the Septuagint
http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/Fo.../judaism1.html

if there be form? that doesn't even make sense. And how would that make it apply to the fetus and "harm" does not? The english versions of the bible I see all have "harm" or "mischief" (old english for harm) so if the Greek septuagint has it as "form" that really doesn't make sense in regard to what Christianity believes.

I think you are actively searching out only sources that support your view no matter how odd the source, Pixie. A definite example of confirmation bias.

[Adrift]

This came up in a recent discussion.

Let us start by looking at this verse:

If the woman miscarries, the man gets fined. If the woman is herself harmed, then the man pays, life for life, etc. The implication is that the unborn child is not considered a human, and so does not warrant the man paying the "price" he would otherwise.

This has been discussed ad nauseum on this forum already, but here we go again,

Source: Is God a Moral Monster by Paul Copan

The key issue is this: should the hebrew word yalad be translated "give birth prematurely" or "have a miscarriage"? If the mother miscarries, then the offender only has to pay a fine; the implication in this case is that the unborn child isn't as valuable and therefore isn't deserving of care normally given to a person outside of the womb. Apparently, this Old Testament passage shows a low(er) regard for unborn life.

Let's skip to another passage, Psalm 139, which strongly supports the value of the unborn:

Keep this text in mind as we go back to the Exodus 21 passage.

Contrary to the above claims, Exodus 21 actually supports the value of unborn human life. The word yalad means "go forth" or "give birth," describing a normal birth (Gen. 25:26; 38:28-30; Job 3:11; 10:18; Jer. 1:5; 20:18). It's always used of giving birth, not of a miscarriage. If the biblical text intended to refer to a miscarriage, the typical word for "miscarry/miscarriage" (shakal/shekol) was available (e.g., Gen. 31:38; Exod. 23:26; Job 21:10; Hosea 9:14). Miscarry isn't used here.

Furthermore, yalad ("give birth") is always used of a child that has recognizable human form or is capable of surviving outside the womb. The Hebrew word nepel is the typical word used of an unborn child, and the word golem, which means "fetus," is used only once in the Old Testament in Psalm 139:16, which we just noted: God knew the psalmist's "unformed body" or "unformed substance."

This brings us to another question: Who is injured? The baby or the mother? The text is silent. It could be either, since the feminine pronoun is missing. The gist of the passage seems to be this:

If two men fight and hit a pregnant woman and the baby is born prematurely, but there is no serious injury [to the child or the mother], then the offender must be fined whatever the husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury [to the baby or the mother], you are to take life for life, eye for eye.

© Copyright Original Source

See also here:
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/arti...in-jewish-law/
http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/Fo.../judaism1.html

Bill the Cat dealt with that Jewish Learning link here: http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...383#post272383, and while Rabbi Feldman might have been a fine bioethicist, he wasn't a historian, and he was relying on a late Rabbinic view of the subject.

So when does life start?

A month after birth?

An argument can be made that you only become a person a month after birth.

In Judaism in Jesus' time a baby was not considered a person until it was a month old:

See also:

This was presumably because it was all to common for babies to die in the first few weeks of life.

At birth

Nevertheless, the point at which life starts is when a baby takes a breath. In Biblical times breath and life were intimately connected. For a starting point, look at the Brown-Driver-Briggs definition of the Hebrew word "nephesh" on Bible Hub:
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/5315.htm

Also consider these verses:

(in Hebrew, the word here translated as "spirit" is the same one that elsewhere is "breath")

I appreciate most of these are about when life ends, but even then they show the connection between breath and life - so much so that the Proverbs verse has the word for breath translated as spirit. Note in particular the last one in Ezekiel when God specifically says he will put breath into a body and that will make it come to life. And of course in Genesis, it was putting breath in Adam that brought him to life.

The Bible does state for us when a baby is considered alive, but it does make clear that life and breath are essentially one and the same, and the clear implication is that life begins when God gives the new born its first breath.

And before Josephus we have passages from manuscripts like the 1st-2nd century BCE Sibylline Oracles, "The godless furthermore shall to all ages perish, all who did evils aforetime, and committed murders, And all who are accomplices therein,...All who caused abortions, and all who their offspring cast unlawfully away..."

And the turn of the century BCE/CE work Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, "Do not let a woman destroy the unborn babe in her belly, nor after its birth throw it before the dogs and the vultures as a prey."

Within very early Christianity we have passages like these from the 1st century Didache "And the second commandment of the Teaching; You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born."

And the 2nd century Apocalypse of Peter, "And near that place I saw another strait place into which the gore and the filth of those who were being punished ran down and became there as it were a lake: and there sat women having the gore up to their necks, and over against them sat many children who were born to them out of due time, crying; and there came forth from them sparks of fire and smote the women in the eyes: and these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion."

And also the 2nd century writings Athenagoras of Athens, "And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God s for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very foetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God's care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it."

So, no. This sort of goofy skeptical argument to get orthodox Christians to accept abortion by playing around with passages dealing with breath life isn't going to stick.

[Cow Poke]

This has been discussed ad nauseum on this forum already, but here we go again,

Source: Is God a Moral Monster by Paul Copan

The key issue is this: should the hebrew word yalad be translated "give birth prematurely" or "have a miscarriage"? If the mother miscarries, then the offender only has to pay a fine; the implication in this case is that the unborn child isn't as valuable and therefore isn't deserving of care normally given to a person outside of the womb. Apparently, this Old Testament passage shows a low(er) regard for unborn life.

Let's skip to another passage, Psalm 139, which strongly supports the value of the unborn:

Keep this text in mind as we go back to the Exodus 21 passage.

Contrary to the above claims, Exodus 21 actually supports the value of unborn human life. The word yalad means "go forth" or "give birth," describing a normal birth (Gen. 25:26; 38:28-30; Job 3:11; 10:18; Jer. 1:5; 20:18). It's always used of giving birth, not of a miscarriage. If the biblical text intended to refer to a miscarriage, the typical word for "miscarry/miscarriage" (shakal/shekol) was available (e.g., Gen. 31:38; Exod. 23:26; Job 21:10; Hosea 9:14). Miscarry isn't used here.

Furthermore, yalad ("give birth") is always used of a child that has recognizable human form or is capable of surviving outside the womb. The Hebrew word nepel is the typical word used of an unborn child, and the word golem, which means "fetus," is used only once in the Old Testament in Psalm 139:16, which we just noted: God knew the psalmist's "unformed body" or "unformed substance."

This brings us to another question: Who is injured? The baby or the mother? The text is silent. It could be either, since the feminine pronoun is missing. The gist of the passage seems to be this:

If two men fight and hit a pregnant woman and the baby is born prematurely, but there is no serious injury [to the child or the mother], then the offender must be fined whatever the husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury [to the baby or the mother], you are to take life for life, eye for eye.

© Copyright Original Source

Bill the Cat dealt with that Jewish Learning link here: http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...383#post272383
And before Josephus we have passages from manuscripts like the 1st-2nd century BCE Sibylline Oracles, "The godless furthermore shall to all ages perish, all who did evils aforetime, and committed murders, And all who are accomplices therein,...All who caused abortions, and all who their offspring cast unlawfully away..."

And the turn of the century BCE/CE work Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, "Do not let a woman destroy the unborn babe in her belly, nor after its birth throw it before the dogs and the vultures as a prey."

Within very early Christianity we have passages like these from the 1st century Didache "And the second commandment of the Teaching; You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born."

And the 2nd century Apocalypse of Peter, "And near that place I saw another strait place into which the gore and the filth of those who were being punished ran down and became there as it were a lake: and there sat women having the gore up to their necks, and over against them sat many children who were born to them out of due time, crying; and there came forth from them sparks of fire and smote the women in the eyes: and these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion."

And also the 2nd century writings Athenagoras of Athens, "And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God s for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very foetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God's care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it."

So, no. This sort of goofy skeptical argument to get orthodox Christians to accept abortion by playing around with passages dealing with breath life isn't going to stick.

Thanks a LOT, Adrift!!!!

I was preparing a lengthy response to this, but you summed it up way better than I was doing......

[Adrift]

if there be form? that doesn't even make sense. And how would that make it apply to the fetus and "harm" does not? The english versions of the bible I see all have "harm" or "mischief" (old english for harm) so if the Greek septuagint has it as "form" that really doesn't make sense in regard to what Christianity believes.

I think you are actively searching out only sources that support your view no matter how odd the source, Pixie. A definite example of confirmation bias.

Yeah, the Dead Sea Scrolls translated into English bear that out as well. You can check it here: http://dssenglishbible.com/exodus%2021.htm

[37818]

From our modern understanding we know that from the 17 day on of conception the growing unborn has his/her own blood separate from the mother.

The earliest Biblical commandment against murder reads, ". . . And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man." (Genesis 9:5-6.)