However such verses do make clear that God is relating to us throughout our lives, and is expecting us before we are conceived, which at least implies that even the early embryo must be part of a process in which God is already involved.
David admits that he was 'sinful from the time my mother conceived me. The context here is clearly a discussion of original sin rather than of the early embryo, but the Hebrew word translated 'conceive' here is only otherwise seen in the Old Testament in the context of 'becoming pregnant', usually among animals.
Perhaps the clearest exposition of God's work through all stages of our lives is in Psalm The meditation on God's knowledge of us expresses both awe at the depth of his knowledge, 19 and asks him to search us and lead us in the right way. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. There is no specific reference to conception or implantation. Though the author was almost certainly not thinking foremost of embryology when the Holy Spirit inspired these words, God would have known that we might come back to them with these questions more than 2, years later.
But once again, the context of the whole psalm is more clear evidence that God is aware of, and indeed relates to us, throughout our life. Soon after Mary heard that she was pregnant with Jesus, she visited her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. We don't have exact gestational ages. But we do know that Elizabeth was in at least the sixth month of her pregnancy; 21 Mary stayed with her three months, and appears to have returned home before John was born.
John then probably at least 26 weeks gestation reacts to the presence of Jesus, 23 showing that it clearly is Jesus that is present in Mary's early pregnancy, not simply an anonymous group of cells. Of course we should take care when extrapolating the miraculous conception of Jesus to other humans. Conceived of the Holy Spirit rather than of Joseph, we should exercise caution in extrapolating every presumed detail of his conception to our own.
But we can nevertheless see clear evidence of life having value in the womb, very early in pregnancy. You may be reading this concerned that I have not treated texts you have seen referenced in regard to early life as 'proof'. Or you may wonder whether Bible texts where early life conclusions are implied rather than explicit can be relied upon at all.
God knew the exact workings of early human life when these texts were inspired by his Spirit, and knew that Christians in this era would ask the questions we ask.
It is important to let Scripture speak for itself, and understand the primary meaning of a text to be that which it speaks about itself, rather than try to make it say what we want to, to further a given argument.
But none of this takes away the clear suggestion in Scripture that God is intimately involved with our lives not only in utero , but before we are even conceived. This may not give an absolute answer to the question 'when does life begin? Otherwise, there is a risk that the persons created in God's image may not be afforded the treatment God would want us to give them. There are a number of logical and philosophical considerations outside the scope of this article.
A masterful rebuttal of both secular and Christian objections to a 'life begins at conception' position can be found in Peter Saunders' article 'Deadly Questions … on the status of the embryo' which is available on the CMF website.
Student conference Healthcare Sunday. Join one of our. Although the Hebrew Bible does not mention abortion, it does talk about miscarriage in Exodus It imagines the case of men fighting, injuring a pregnant woman in the process.
If she miscarries but suffers no additional injury, the penalty is a fine. Since the death of a person would be murder or manslaughter, and carry a different penalty, most rabbinic sources deduce from these verses that a fetus has a different status.
An early, authoritative rabbinic work, the Mishnah, discusses the question of a woman in distress during labor. If her life is at risk, the fetus must be destroyed to save her. It prohibits setting aside one life for the sake of another. Other Jewish scholars point to a different Mishnah passage that imagines a case of a pregnant woman sentenced to death.
The execution would not be delayed unless she has already gone into labor. In the Talmud , an extensive collection of teachings building on the Mishnah, the rabbis suggest that the ruling is obvious because the fetus is part of her body. In this paper we show that the question, "When does human life begin?
The first question is, "When does human biological life begin? A brief review of embryology is provided to answer this question.
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