Analyzing Bible's 10 Commandments- A Good Definition Or Not?
Analysis of Bible's 10 Commandments - A Good Definition Or Not?
In the Bible, one of the Ten Commandments states: “Thou shalt not kill.” Regardless of religious preferences and beliefs, everyone knows of this Supreme command; but do they know what it means? Consider this: does “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not murder” mean the same thing? By its common definition, to “murder” means to kill unlawfully or at least unjustifiably. However, centuries ago, the Ten Commandments handed to Moses simply mentioned "kill". There was no mention at all whether “to kill” distinguished between the lawful or unlawful taking of a life, or for that matter if the life even had to be that of a human. In today’s society, it appears “Thou shalt not murder” is more appropriate than “Thou shalt not kill,” as “kill” denotes a just and lawful reason to take a life.
It then becomes clear that the way each person defines a certain word affects the meaning and intent of a statement or discussion. It is essential that a word be defined in a way that clearly illustrates its true essence. To make a definition successful, three criteria must be followed to avoid confusion. Possibly the most difficult condition to preserve when explaining a word’s meaning to someone is to not give that person only examples of the word. When an example is the only source of knowledge of a word’s meaning, a problem occurs. One must take into account that those examples could encompass ideas other than the true nature of the word, or perhaps not fully cover other characteristics of the word. This leads to the second criterion of a successful definition. A definition cannot be too general, yet at the same time it cannot be too limited. Finally, the third condition of a successful definition dictates that a form of the word or an equally obscure word cannot be used to redefine the word. To break the cycle, terms more familiar than the one being defined must be used. Though these three conditions are not absolute, they do lead to a clearer, less vague definition of words.
As seen in the initial example, “murder” is commonly defined as killing unlawfully or unjustifiably. However, it is not specified if this definition is dependent on what...