Flip to the back of any of the fancy, leather-bound Bibles that are so common in evangelical churches these days, and chances are there is an index. Called a concordance, it offers a list of specific words mentioned in the Bible and where they are referenced in the text.Fair enough. The Bible doesn't mention abortion specifically, but it certainly does mention child sacrifice to the Canaanite gods Baal and Molech. That was abhorent in the eyes of God. And why? Because those parents were sacrificing their children for selfish reasons, thinking they could gain something by doing so. And isn't that basically what abortion is about today? It's not as though there are not thousands of qualified families waiting to adopt. But people don't want to be shamed or inconvenienced by an unwanted baby.
There a reader can find, for example, how many times Jesus talked about the poor (at least a dozen), or what the Apostle Paul wrote about grace (a lot). But those who turn to their concordance for guidance about abortion will not find the word at all.
But back to the point of this post, which was the absurdity of the New York Times playing Bible scholar. Really, did they think they could pull it off? The article made it seem as though abortion is a modern problem and that early Christian thought is not clear on the issue ... simply because the word "abortion" isn't used.
Aha. There I have something to add. In the Epistle of Barnabas, authored in Alexandria between 70 A.D. and 100 A.D., it says this:
Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion, nor again shalt thou kill it when it is born.The same passage is again quoted in the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, which is one of the early Christian writings I've been reading and where the abortion passage stood out for me. Anyway, you can read the Epistle of Barnabas for yourself here and the Wikipedia entry on that book here. The abortion verse is Barnabas 19:4.
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