Honor Most Foul: Honor Killings In The Bible

Superior Essays
Honor Most Foul
Amanda Price
Charleston Southern University Honor Most Foul To honor or dishonor one’s self or family is a practice in many religions in both Eastern and Western religions. To honor yourself or your family is to bring prosperity and life to your family name. However, to bring dishonor to yourself or your family typically brings destruction or death to not only the dishonor, but also the cause of the dishonor (Reed, 2015). An example of this type of ideology includes murdering a victim of rape due to the fact she was inadequate in her practices (of taking care of herself) and fell to victimization. This type of murder is called honor killing (BBC-Ethics-Honour Crimes, 2016). Honor killings are an unfortunate part
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There are three specific verses that old-testament extremist Christians use in context to their justification on honor killings within the Christian religion. These verses include: Exodus 21:17, Leviticus 20:9 and Leviticus 21:9 (Honor Killings in the Bible, 2016). The first example is Exodus 21:17. “And he that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death” (Exodus 21:17, King James Version). The ideology these extremist pull from this verse is that the purity of what the child says is a form of their parents’ success and purity within the home. The success and purity is the family honor. The failure to teach their child not to curse is the dishonor. To rid themselves of their dishonor, they simply take out their child through the practice of honor …show more content…
“And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father; she shall be burnt with fire” (Leviticus 21:9, King James Version). TO breakdown this verse, these people first look at the section where it says “she profaneth her father, she shall be burnt with fire.” To this, they see that she burns or diminished her father reputation (as a holy man). This verse specifically talks about the act of her “playing the whore.” However, to extremist, this can mean more than a woman who willingly offers herself. It can also mean that she has had sex even if she did not consent to sex. In the eyes of an extremist, they only see that she is no longer pure and to protect her father’s reputation and position, she must be burned. Because she is burned and now deemed undesirable she is put out of

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