And I can ask the same thing about homosexuality: what about it back then was so dangerous for the people that those that participated were to be stoned? Apparently
you think that homosexuals back then carried some kind of dread disease that if left alive, it would spread to the rest of the people, yes?[/QUOTE}
Not just homosexuals! ....... all people, and all creatures, which is why marriage...... no adultery, no homosexuality, no sodomy, no fornication, not eating of carnivores and carrion eaters ..... NOTHING... could be tolerated which could lead to mass infections. The punishments were there to hammer home the law...... dreadful but absolutely necessary.
That being your theory, what do you think changed by the time Jesus came that made it ok to allow the practice in the nation--where it didn't endanger other people anymore?
All the above was still unnacceptable in Jesus's time. The risks had not reduced. Trouble was, the Priesthood, Levites... the upper ruling class had mostly turned 'quisling', excuse that Nordic 20th century term to describe Greedy, Hellenised, corrupted, hypocritical turncoats who were copying invader fashions, cultures and bad habits and forgetting about the old ways and laws which had protected everybody for eons. John the Baptist put it very nicely.
But some laws were changing. Jesus took the Passover meal a day early and he did not eat it in a Temple refectory (hall) as the law required, since half a million folks now needed to be 'fleeced' and got away, so visitors took rooms around the city to take that meal and probably not all during the same day. 2000 priests, 6000 Jewish Temple guards plus the Roman garrison which patrolled the Temple outer wall-tops (only). No wonder every satellite town around Jerusalem was booked up solid at major feasts. We know that count from a census taken by Augustus which counted the kidney pairs of sacrificial lambs, important since Rome took a cut of Temple bureau-de-change rates, a corrupt system which infuriated Jesus. No wonder he demonstrated in and picketed the Temple Courts two days running.
Old laws were being changed or ignored, and the upper-class was ignoring the lot when possible. Hypocrites.
But today any couple should have the right to happiness, regardless of their sexuality. But if you want redundant laws back, take them all........ and surely only Jesus's word should have the authority to change a line?
I hope, too that we can be friends, as that is the best way for us to compare ideas, and hopefully find the better ones. But if we are basing the goodness of laws on our own understanding, and not on the greater understanding of God, we run the risk of missing important information about the effects of sin. Surely we would not have autonomously come up with the idea that the tree of knowledge of good and evil would be bad to eat from, would we?
Ah...... I see Genesis as beautiful metaphor, and I do know that this can irritate some Christians ......... I once asked a Christian (Unitarian) if in a World dominated by his church, did he want to see mass executions, stonings and burnings in public every week. He answered,'Oh we wouldn't stone them anymore..... it would probably be by injection.' And I know people who would like to see Sharia law in localities where the elected council is Muslim. There are people out there who would take OT laws and terrify even your followers with the consequences.
I recently asked some Christians if homosexuality is a mental condition, and they mostly answered 'yes' and still believed that hanging, stoning or any slow painful death would be a suitable sentence. So now some Christians are telling me that they would kill mentally disabled people. That won't help the expansion of Christianity. Let's try for any common ground. I don't want a world where religion, creed, nationality, colour, race, sexual orientation, disability, age, marital status is discriminated against, let alone mass executions taking place at half-time during soccer matches............. Well that's what happens in some mid-East countries as the norm, and their laws are exactly the same ones which we debate here, with a few additions sent by God to their prophet, or so they say........