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There are a lot of actions prohibited by the Bible. How many have you done? Can you count them all?

Vote up if you've done the thing in question and vote down if you haven't. Vote neutral where the question doesn't apply to you (e.g., posed to any gender you don't identify as, posed to a slave and you live outside of North Korea, unsure if you've sacrificed to Baal, etc.).

Overview [ edit ]

The biggest single set of crimes are sexual in nature, usually punishable by the death penalty, followed by a whole set of religious prohibitions. It should be noted that things we consider sexual crimes (like rape and child abuse) are not what the Old Testament is talking about. Sexual transgressions typically relate to a failure to comport oneself (sexually) in a manner that the Israelites approved of. Adultery and masturbation were regarded as worse than modern crimes such as molestation or rape — arguably because they challenged such moral issues as "Which of my children is really mine, so gets my land?" and "The more sons I have the more land I can work, so the more money I own." Taken by the word of God alone, however, one just has to assume that God cares if you touch yourself or find someone sexy before you are married.

Though exactly why God should have such a deep and abiding interest in the sexual and marital predilections of his creations is not clear. The religious laws describe the various rituals and taboos involved in the proper way of worshiping the Israelite God, and also seek to prevent apostasy. At least in this case, the reasoning behind assassinating anybody who stepped out of line is clear.

There are also a few fundamentalist Christians such as the followers of Dominionism who feel that the death penalties as described should to be enforced today.[2][3]

Old Testament [ edit ]

The Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh (the source for the Christian Old Testament), which forms the core texts of the Halakha, or corpus of Jewish divine law, includes a surprising number of crimes that merit the death penalty as punishment. These laws were believed to form an integral part of the overall "Covenant" between the Israelites and YHWH. When the Christians adopted the Old Testament as their canon, neither they as a body, nor Jesus as the Messiah, revised or redacted any of these laws, for all they edited was the Hebrew texts. Many of the following belong to the ceremonial and civil categories of the Mosaic Law, which Christians regard as defunct and Jews regard as binding on themselves only.

Sexual acts [ edit ]

All of these used to merit death in ancient times; however, with the destruction of the second Jewish temple, the Jewish Sanhedrin courts all but abolished the death penalty. In Israel (where Judaic religious courts still exist), capital punishment is allowed only during wartime and only for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and treason (and has been employed only twice: against Meir Tobianski, who was later found out to be innocent, and against Adolf Eichmann, who deserved it).

-375 Being one of the majority of women who don’t bleed when losing their virginity (Deuteronomy 22:20–21).[4]

A few of these crimes demand that the "sinners" be burned to death rather than stoned to death, the more usual form of capital punishment. One can wonder why these crimes in particular merit this especially horrible fate.[note 9]

Food and drink [ edit ]

3854 Eating a cheeseburger or anything that mixes meat and dairy (Exodus 23:19).

3034 Eating leavened bread (bread with yeast) during the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 12:15).

2736 Eating aquatic creatures lacking fins or scales (Deuteronomy 14:9-10).

3317 Eating any meat not killed according to the Kosher practice (Deuteronomy 12:21).

Religious [ edit ]

-2021 Not being a priest and going near the tabernacle when it is being moved (Numbers 1:51).

474 Going to the temple in an unclean state (Numbers 19:13).

-2358 Engaging in ritual animal sacrifices other than at the temple (Leviticus 17:1-9).

Violent and legal crimes [ edit ]

1112 Ignoring the judgment of a judge or a priest (Deuteronomy 17:8-13).

-2301 Not constraining a known dangerous bull, if the bull subsequently kills a man or a woman (Exodus 21:29).[note 18]

Parenting [ edit ]

Daily life [ edit ]

790 Planting more than one kind of seed in a field (Leviticus 19:19).

2890 Wearing clothing woven of more than one kind of cloth (Leviticus 19:19).

1442 Cutting your bodies for the dead or putting tattoo marks on yourself (Leviticus 19:28).

Things that don’t go anywhere else [ edit ]

New Testament [ edit ]

Although many — probably most — Christians maintain the New Testament ultimately served as an abrogation of the stricter forms and practices of the Mosaic Law, it did codify a few new prohibitions unstated in the text of the Old Testament.

Note that none of these can be demonstrated to have been said by Jesus himself — indeed, as nobody was taking notes when Jesus was speaking, we have no real way of knowing what Jesus may have said about these things. For that matter, there is even debate about whether Jesus even existed.

However, it is also worth noting that, notwithstanding certain episodes where he is claimed to have interpreted laws in a relaxed way (e.g., the Sabbath working law), Jesus did not explicitly say the old laws were now invalid, and dispensations from following them largely came as a result of the spread of Christianity to non-Jews by Paul of Tarsus. On the contrary, Jesus endorses Mosaic Law in Matthew 5:18, where he says, "For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished."[note 22]

Slaves [ edit ]

Women [ edit ]

Men [ edit ]

See also [ edit ]

Notes [ edit ]