Are there passages of the Jewish Torah that, like the Bible, would be considered unenthical by today's standards?

by [deleted]

I.E. the homophobic rhetoric, justification of slavery, inbreeding and misogyny and so on that can be found in the Bible? (DISCLAIMER: I do not mean to offend and am not stipulating anything about any religion. Just inquiring on with purely fact-seeking motivation. This is not a matter of "interpretations" of the text but rather how it literally reads. Thanks!)

talondearg

Firstly, the Jewish Torah, while standing on its own as a religious collection of texts, is also a component part of the canonical Christian Bible(s), so anything 'unethical by today's standards' in the Torah will also be true for the Bible.

Secondly, I think your question either shows a naivety about interpretation, or a rhetorical dishonesty about it. Charitably, I'm assuming the former. There is no such thing as "how it literally reads" apart from "interpretations". All reading is an act of interpretation. Even your opening statement about 'homophobic rhetoric, justification of slavery, inbreeding and misogyny' is a clear set of interpretations about what you can read in the Biblical texts.

When you say "how it literally reads" and "purely fact-seeking motivation" this is what I would call a rhetorical appeal to 'plain reading'. It comes across as an attempt to privilege one type of interpretation as more foundation, basic, or not-open-to-being-contested than other interpretations.

To answer your question really requires the answering of three subquestions:

  1. Distinguishing between what the Torah describes and what it prescribes.
  2. Arguing for a contemporary ethical viewpoint that is widely held.
  3. Correlating 2 with 1.

I think question one is a question that can be answered reasonably well, by examination of specific texts in the Torah. But given that your question is merely "give examples", I'm uninclined to go through picking examples just for the sake of it.

However, question two is highly subjective. What are "today's ethical standards"? Whose values? I could hypothesise about your background and ethical viewpoint, but what legitimises that viewpoint so that I can answer question three.

I apologise if my tone has been too harsh, but your question is a minefield of problematic assumptions and approaches, which I think you ought to be aware of before proceeding anywhere with it.