Submitted by Jack Shattuck, Sep 26, 2007 18:22

The Sixth Commandment in Hebrew does NOT read "Thou Shalt Not Kill" - it states that you shall not commit MURDER - a deliberate homicide. (E.g., in the Hebrew scriptures, the only discussion of an aborted fetus is specifically not a capital offense, and cities of refuge are established for the one who commits an unintentional act of manslaughter.) The difference becomes multiplied in today's world when trying to apply the definition of murder in cases such as abortion and other issues in which Judaism differs from Catholicism in the understanding of what is or is not prohibited conduct, based on a different interpretation and translation of scripture. This has been and continues to be at the heart of some of our most crucial debates about values in our varying religious traditions, and is not a picayune argument about "mere words".

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