If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father...
<snip>
Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city...
<snip>
And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die...
.................
Just getting in from a bike ride.
Like Caesar returning in triumph to Rome, heat, in all its relentless glory, has decisively arrived here in the northeastern US.
Regarding the question of how Biblical literalists would field a challenge about Deut 21...
As I've mentioned before, I was raised in two evangelical traditions: Baptist and Seventh Day Adventist. The SDA years started at around 12 when my parents sent me to an Adventist religious school. One day, during an after school sermon, I became convinced I was hell bound unless I joined the SDA church.
So I did. It was good decision; church girls are often quite luscious.
One of the non-carnal benefits of this deep immersion in two American evangelical traditions was the extensive Bible reading I was forced to do. Like most protestant denominations, both the Baptist and SDA churches take Timothy 2:15 passionately to heart, "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."
Lovely passage. King James Edition I believe.
The reading wasn't done for reading's sake; we (church members, students at the religious school, etc) were being taught theology. And not to fill idle hours but to fortify our faith and have the necessary arguments ready when non-believers questioned us.
That's why I can easily provide a counter argument to your question about Deut 21.
Which goes as follows: when Christ, after living a sinless life, died on the cross and rose from the dead on the third day, he became a second Adam, reestablishing the covenant between man and God broken by The Fall in the Garden.
This new covenant superseded the harsh formulas of the Old Testament. So, Deut 21 can be safely ignored because it's not the sort of thing Christ would condone.
Of course, this interpretation is not universally accepted amongst evangelicals; some churches are indeed Old Testament obsessed (perhaps because its legalistic primitivism appeals to a certain sort of mind) and only steer clear of Old Testament solutions in everyday life because the State would step in.
And that's one reason why some groups retreat to separate communities.
.d.