Who gave these rules?

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2513c AM, 3223 JP, 1491 BC


Leviticus 18:1-20 BBE
{1} And the Lord said to Moses,
{2} Say to the children of Israel, I am the Lord your God.
{3} You may not do those things which were done in the land of Egypt where you were living; and you may not do those things which are done in the land of Canaan where I am taking you, or be guided in your behaviour by their rules.
{4} But you are to be guided by my decisions and keep my rules, and be guided by them: I am the Lord your God.
{5} So keep my rules and my decisions, which, if a man does them, will be life to him: I am the Lord.
{6} You may not have sex connection with anyone who is a near relation: I am the Lord.
{7} You may not have sex relations with your father or your mother: she is your mother, you may not take her.
{8} And you may not have sex relations with your father's wife: she is your father's.
{9} You may not take your sister, the daughter of your father or of your mother, wherever her birth took place, among you or in another country.
{10} You may not have sex relations with your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter, for they are part of yourself;
{11} Or your father's wife's daughter, the child of your father, for she is your sister.
{12} You may not have sex connection with your father's sister, for she is your father's near relation.
{13} You may not have sex connection with your mother's sister, for she is your mother's near relation.
{14} You may not have sex relations with the wife of your father's brother, for she is of your family;
{15} Or with your daughter-in-law, for she is your son's wife, and you may not take her.
{16} You may not have sex relations with your brother's wife, for she is your brother's.
{17} You may not take as wife a woman and her daughter, or her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter, for they are of one family: it is an act of shame.
{18} And you may not take as wife a woman and at the same time her sister, to be in competition with her in her life-time.
{19} And you may not go near a woman or have sex relations with her when she is unclean, at her regular time.
{20} And you may not have sex relations with your neighbor's wife, making yourself unclean with her.

Probably a couple of guys who had nothing better to do.

O RLY?

ROFL , :High five:

No thought toward genetics or just no thoughts whatsoever?

I don't get what you are trying to get across ...

Yes, mine!

I gather that ideas crop up all the time but only certain ages are ready for them, or only accept them in certain guises. I think it is perfectly possible that an early equivalent of Mendel, with exactly the same information to go on, plants and animals around them, came up with this and it was incorporated in law.

O RLY?

Incest good? Incest not bad?

Adultery good? Adultery not bad?

And what was the level of science in Egypt or Mesopotamia back in 1500 BC? They hadn't even gotten to the Four Elements hypothesis yet. They thought if you got cut that you should apply fly dung to the cut.

I don't know if this is really an early Mendel, so much an evolutionary meme that proved to be successful. Societies that discouraged inbreeding, saying that god didn't like it, would be less prone to disease and so would do better then societies that didn't. There doesn't actually have to be any understanding of why inbreeding is bad in order for this meme to become successful.

God gave them to Moses, and Moses read them to the people.

I believe they had invented mathematics by then, astronomy, and some engineering, aswell as money, writing, and the use of the disinfectants/antibiotics qualities in spices etc etc etc.

There is no reason at all to think that someone from that or an earlier era could not have worked out genetic tendencies, for instance in observing breeding products in goats etc on which many relied for their livelihoods.

Last edited by ouinon on 16 May 2008, 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Without microscopes? Without sterilization?

How could they even know what a germ was?


I have some serious doubts about that whole thing.

Last edited by slowmutant on 16 May 2008, 12:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Not arguing about whether it was a successful meme, we know it was and why, but why on earth would anyone think of inventing this kind of restriction, unless they had reason to believe in its importance for some reason?

And I think it was well within intellectual capacities of the time, in fact likely to be more clear to someone then than 2000 years later, when humans were no longer seen as animals like all the others.

What would they need microscopes for? Mendel didn't need one. He just looked at plants he was breeding. He hypothesised the existence of something like genes but was laughed out of court at the time.

How could you have any concept of the microscopic without microscopes? How to explain "gene" if they they can't be detected by the naked eye?