Abstract

There exists a tension between the categorical prohibition of killing in the Decalogue and the claim for or toleration of homicide, and of killing animals, in other passages of the Old Testament. This tension can be made understandable if we see in the Decalogue an attempt to formulate the ethical foundations of given legal bases. The ethica/ dictate of not killing seems to have given an impulse to the development of the law to Iimit bloodshed as much as possible. The conviction that bloodshed can only be ))atoned for« by renewed bloodshed expresses a >>reverence for Iife« which sets free and, at the same time, restricts the tendency to avoid bloodshed in the ethics and laws of the Old Testament.