Some progressive defend a pro-choice stance, pointing to Exodus 21:22 as evidence that the fetus is not a person:
"When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman, so that she miscarries, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman's husband demands, paying as much as judges determine."
They point out that the next verse applies the law of a life for a life if the woman in question is killed and they argue that the mere fine for killing the fetus implies that it is not human in the same sense that the mother is. Conservative Christians counter this argument by noting that 21:22 is not referring to murder because the assailant is not likely to have intended to kill the fetus. They then point to biblical texts that celebrate the sanctity of human life and God's role in creating babies: e. g. "You knit me together in my mother's womb (Psalm 139:13)." Please add your favorite Bible verses on this point.
But the Bible never explicitly prohibits abortion. For this reason, no ancient text is more important to the abortion debate than the Teaching of the 12 Apostles, better known as the Didache (the French word for "teaching). The Didache was written around 95 AD, probably in Syria, but its first part called the 2 Ways was written much earlier, probably prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. So the Didache was likely written in the NT era and its 2 Ways section was likely composed before our NT Gospels. This fact makes the prohibition in its 2 Ways section particularly important for the abortion issue: "Thou shalt not procure an abortion (Didache 4:2)." So Christians adopt a pro-life position in the apostolic NT era.
It is not well known that there was a Jewish consensus in Jesus' time that the soul preexists prior to birth. Indeed, a Bible-based argument can leveled against the view that, for most of its existence, the embryo and fetus can be viewed as mere tissue:
(1) Jesus' disciples embrace the possibility that a man can be born blind because of sins committed in his pre-birth existence:
"His disciples asked Him: `Who sinned, this man or His parents, that he was born blind' (John 9:2)."
The possibility of character development prior to birth seems to be implied by the Wisdom of Solomon in the Catholic OT:
"A good soul fell to my lot, or rather, being good, I entered an undefiled body (8:19-20)."
(2) The call of Jeremiah seems to presuppose not only divine foreknowledge, but the preexistence of Jeremiah's soul:
"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you and I appointed you a prophet to the Gentiles (1:5)."
God knew (and didn't just foreknow) Jeremiah prior to his birth.
(a) And when did God create these preexistent souls? Prior to the creation of the universe according to 2 Enoch 23:
"All souls are prepared for eternity before the composition of the earth (2 Enoch 23)."
(b) And how do these souls infiltrate the human embryo? The Jewish Essenes answered that question this way:
"Emanating from the finest ether, these souls become entangled, as it were, in the prison house of the body, to which they are dragged down by a sort of natural spell (Josephus, Jewish Wars 2.8.11)."
The Jewish writer, Philo of Alexandria, and later rabbinic Judaism also embrace the preexistence of the soul. In Jesus' day there is a Jewish consensus on this point.
"When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman, so that she miscarries, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman's husband demands, paying as much as judges determine."
They point out that the next verse applies the law of a life for a life if the woman in question is killed and they argue that the mere fine for killing the fetus implies that it is not human in the same sense that the mother is. Conservative Christians counter this argument by noting that 21:22 is not referring to murder because the assailant is not likely to have intended to kill the fetus. They then point to biblical texts that celebrate the sanctity of human life and God's role in creating babies: e. g. "You knit me together in my mother's womb (Psalm 139:13)." Please add your favorite Bible verses on this point.
But the Bible never explicitly prohibits abortion. For this reason, no ancient text is more important to the abortion debate than the Teaching of the 12 Apostles, better known as the Didache (the French word for "teaching). The Didache was written around 95 AD, probably in Syria, but its first part called the 2 Ways was written much earlier, probably prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. So the Didache was likely written in the NT era and its 2 Ways section was likely composed before our NT Gospels. This fact makes the prohibition in its 2 Ways section particularly important for the abortion issue: "Thou shalt not procure an abortion (Didache 4:2)." So Christians adopt a pro-life position in the apostolic NT era.
It is not well known that there was a Jewish consensus in Jesus' time that the soul preexists prior to birth. Indeed, a Bible-based argument can leveled against the view that, for most of its existence, the embryo and fetus can be viewed as mere tissue:
(1) Jesus' disciples embrace the possibility that a man can be born blind because of sins committed in his pre-birth existence:
"His disciples asked Him: `Who sinned, this man or His parents, that he was born blind' (John 9:2)."
The possibility of character development prior to birth seems to be implied by the Wisdom of Solomon in the Catholic OT:
"A good soul fell to my lot, or rather, being good, I entered an undefiled body (8:19-20)."
(2) The call of Jeremiah seems to presuppose not only divine foreknowledge, but the preexistence of Jeremiah's soul:
"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you and I appointed you a prophet to the Gentiles (1:5)."
God knew (and didn't just foreknow) Jeremiah prior to his birth.
(a) And when did God create these preexistent souls? Prior to the creation of the universe according to 2 Enoch 23:
"All souls are prepared for eternity before the composition of the earth (2 Enoch 23)."
(b) And how do these souls infiltrate the human embryo? The Jewish Essenes answered that question this way:
"Emanating from the finest ether, these souls become entangled, as it were, in the prison house of the body, to which they are dragged down by a sort of natural spell (Josephus, Jewish Wars 2.8.11)."
The Jewish writer, Philo of Alexandria, and later rabbinic Judaism also embrace the preexistence of the soul. In Jesus' day there is a Jewish consensus on this point.
