• uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 months ago

    The Torah notes a child who does not survive thirty days after birth does not get full funerary rites (a grim implication of infant mortality of the age).

    Dan McClellan notes the current positions on the point of ensoulment come from Greek positions: Conception (Platonian?), Quickening (Aristotlean?) and birth (Epicurean? It’s all Greek to me.) For most of Christian history, the quickening was the standard (about 22 weeks). The conception became popular after the 1970s when abortion access was made accessible and the controversy was used as a rallying point to unify Christians to conservatism as a voting bloc.