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This article uses texts from within a religion or faith system without referring to secondary sources that critically analyze them. Please help improve this article. (February 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
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According to the TorahorLaw of Moses, these are some of the offenses which may merit the death penalty.
It is arbitrary to assert on the basis of biblical authority that some of them, such as sex between men, are intrinsically wrong, whereas others, such as wearing clothing made from wool and linen, are not: the biblical writers themselves make no such distinction. Few who argue that homosexuality is wrong – to say nothing about incest, adultery and bestiality – because the Bible says so, would enforce the death penalty for these offences as the Bible also commands.
My view is that everyone already picks and chooses what they want to accept in the Bible.6 The most egregious instances of this can be found among people who claim not to be picking and choosing. I have a young friend whose evangelical parents were upset because she wanted to get a tattoo, since the Bible, after all, condemns tattoos. In the same book, Leviticus, the Bible also condemns wearing clothing made of two different kinds of fabric and eating pork. And it indicates that children who disobey their parents are to be stoned to death. Why insist on the biblical teaching about tattoos but not about dress shirts, pork chops, and stoning?
