Tag: Joshua

Why Did Listverse Let Andrew Handley Write On This?

Were these people in the Bible immoral? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have been enjoying going through this book by Listverse. There are a lot of interesting claims in there I check up on to see what is going on with them. No doubt, a lot of writers have done excellent research.

Andrew Handley is not one of them.

Recently I read his list of 10 biblical characters with bad morals. Being a seminary student and someone who has spent decades studying the Bible, nothing he said surprised me. People with bad morals could be best read as “People who did things I don’t understand and/or like.”

So let’s see. The first one, not a shock, is Elisha. What does Handley say?

Here’s what happened: Elisha was walking into the city of Bethel when a group of kids ran out and started making fun of his bald head. It’s the only mention in the Bible that Elisha was bald, which is probably good, because the next thing Elisha did was curse the children to death. Immediately, two bears ran over and tore the kids to pieces. The most important—most Godly—prophet in the land brutally murdered 42 children because they laughed at him. He is now a venerated saint.

Frater, Jamie. Listverse.com’s Epic Book of Mind-Boggling Top 10 Lists: Unbelievable Facts and Astounding Trivia on Movies, Music, Crime, Celebrities, History, and More (p. 539). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Ha! What a wimp! Elisha couldn’t take some kids laughing at him because he was bald so he had 42 bears tear them to pieces!

Well, no.

First off, Elisha’s baldness was intentional. He shaved his head to demonstrate his life of consecration as a prophet to YHWH. Second, these weren’t kids. The word is used to refer to soldiers in the military also and likely, these were teenagers at least, and a crowd of at least 43, since it doesn’t say all were mauled, would be sufficient to be considered a threat. Third, go on up too, is saying that this is a generation telling the prophet that he should get lost like his master Elijah did, a reference that they don’t care about YHWH at all. Fourt, these kids weren’t torn to pieces. The bears in that area are Syrian Brown Bears and they weigh up to 550 pounds.

Next question. How do two bears that weigh that much hurt 42 people? Note. The text never says that they were torn to pieces. The word can refer to any number of injuries. Still, either a bear would have to move at supersonic speeds or else something else would happen.

Like the kids staying behind and fighting the bears. Why would they do that? Meat and honor both. Either way, the bears were powerful enough that 42 of the kids were injured, a good warning to a generation that could grow up denying God.

My ministry partner has two videos on this here.

Next up is the story of Jael. Who was she? She told the fleeing commander of the Canaanite army to come into her tent when he was on the run after being defeated by Israel in battle. One would have thought Jael would be an ally, but no. As he slept, she took a tent peg and ran it through his temple killing him on the spot. Never mind that Israel was the one being oppressed and Sisera was on the side of the oppressors.

Keep in mind that in Judges 5, a song is sang and an account is given picturing Sisera’s mother waiting for him to come back from battle.

28 “Through the window peered Sisera’s mother;
behind the lattice she cried out,
‘Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why is the clatter of his chariots delayed?’
29 The wisest of her ladies answer her;
indeed, she keeps saying to herself,
30 ‘Are they not finding and dividing the spoils:
a woman or two for each man,

I want you to keep this in the back of your mind.

Next is David.

In 1 Samuel 27:8–11, David takes an army and invades several neighboring lands. The Bible doesn’t give any reason for him to do this, other than a side note that the people he killed were “of old the inhabitants of the land,” so it seems he was just wiping out the indigenous people. David’s army killed all the men and women in the towns he defeated, then carried all the livestock back to their own land, leaving the towns in ruin.

Frater, Jamie. Listverse.com’s Epic Book of Mind-Boggling Top 10 Lists: Unbelievable Facts and Astounding Trivia on Movies, Music, Crime, Celebrities, History, and More (p. 540). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Handley is one of these people who expects the Bible to spell everything out. An Israelite reader would know that these were the people who were hurting the people of Israel at the time and were their enemies. David was on the run and hiding in Philistia from Saul. He knew that if word got out about what he was doing, the king of Philistia would not take it well, so he left no one behind who would tell the king what David was really doing while he was there. He was still fighting the enemies of Israel.

But Handley doesn’t understand that and assumes these people must have just been peaceful people minding their own business and David was just a great big meanie.

Next is Samson who killed 30 Philistines just for their clothing. Handley tells us this is just short of the 35 people Ted Bundy killed and not even counting the 1,000 Samson kills later with a jawbone. Never mind of course that Philistia is the bad guy in this scenario and they are oppressing the people of Israel. Israel is wanting deliverance from them. Apparently, Handley thinks people suffering under those who are mistreating them should just shut up and take it.

What about Elijah? Well, he has that famous contest with the prophets on Mt. Carmel and ends up killing all of them.

Mean! Mean! Mean!

Except Israel was a theocracy at the time and leading people away from God is an act of treason in such a situation. These people were also in service of an evil king as well. Elijah is protecting the people so they can get back to the covenant. Israel is in an agreement with God that they will abide by the terms of the covenant or judgment will come on them. Those who are leading the people astray are guilty of treason. There was no separation of church and state.

Handley isn’t too happy about Elijah calling down fire to burn those who come after him later, but again, this is the same kind of scenario.

Jephthah is the sixth. We know the story. He allegedly sacrificed his daughter in the flames. Of course, it’s not that cut and dry. My ministry partner has the lowdown on that one again. You can see the first video here and a second response video here.

Jehu is the seventh and his crime? He killed a lot of the prophets of Baal. Again, this is a case of people leading Israel into treason, much like Elisha.

Eighth is Joshua and this is what Handley says:

What the story doesn’t tell is that this an isolated battle; Joshua was on a zealous tirade all across Israel. Here are five meaningless words: Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir. Each one of those is a city filled with people, which, according to Joshua Chapter 10, the army of Joshua completely devastated. He “utterly destroyed all that breathed.”

Frater, Jamie. Listverse.com’s Epic Book of Mind-Boggling Top 10 Lists: Unbelievable Facts and Astounding Trivia on Movies, Music, Crime, Celebrities, History, and More (p. 542). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

They were filled with people?

Too bad he never demonstrates that.

No. The story of Rahab tells us that it was known that the people were coming for decades. A city would be more likely a more fortified region where the hardiest of warriors would live. Women and children would easily flee before any combat started. Also, the language of battle is extremely hyperbolic. This was the way ancients wrote about their conquests.

Ninth is Moses. Why? Well, look at Numbers 31 where he left alive the women who had not slept with a man! Why would he do that? Oh yes! The men wanted to sleep with them!

The text never says that happened and that Handley jumps to that conclusion first tells you more about how he views women than how the text does. “Gosh! The women who were virgins were kept alive! Obviously it was for sex! What other reason could there be?!”

Um. Handley. Women who aren’t virgins can have sex too. In fact, they already have!

I have written about this here.

So why were the virgins spared? Because they were innocent! This is about what happened in Numbers 25 and the women had seduced the men of Israel into abandoning YHWH. The women spared were young children who would be taken into the Israelite community. Sex slavery was not allowed and Deuteronomic law said even if a man wanted to take a woman in combat to be his wife, he had to give her a 30 day mourning period so no, these guys weren’t getting it hot and heavy that evening.

Oh by the way, think back to Sisera.

Israel defeats a man who will be seen as dividing up the women for spoil among his men.

BAD!

Israel is dividing up women allegedly?

ALSO BAD!

So I guess Israel was supposed to do nothing about people doing that then. Right?

And wouldn’t you know it? The last on the list is God. God has outrageous morals.

No, Handley. God doesn’t have outrageous morals. He has no morals.

Come again?

Yeah. That’s what I said. God does not have morals in the sense that he has a code that is called morality that He has to follow. There is nothing that God “ought” to do. No one can come after God and say “Well, God. Were you a good boy today? Did you preserve justice today?”

That does not mean God is evil though. God is good. All moral behavior is good but not all good behavior is necessarily moral. After all, morality is doing what you ought. Acts that go above and beyond what you ought are good acts, but they are not moral in the sense that you are commanded to do them.

Now God takes a life. Okay. Question. Who does God owe life to? On what grounds could someone go to God and say “You had no right to take the life of XYZ?”

None.

Most of Listverse’s material has been good, but lists like this can really damage their reputation. I have emailed them once before about a list they got the facts wrong in, but it was ignored. Hopefully they will change this one.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: Did God Really Command Genocide?

What do I think of Copan and Flannagan’s newest book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

godcommandgenocide

First off, I wish to thank Dr. Copan for sending me a copy of this Baker book for review purposes. I will state up front that I see Flannagan and Copan both as good friends, but I earnestly desire to avoid allowing any bias to cover my review. It will be up to the reader of this review to determine if I have done so.

The book starts with a question of what atheist Raymond Bradley calls the Crucial Moral Principle. This principle goes as follows:

It is morally wrong to deliberately and mercilessly slaughter men, women, and children who are innocent of any serious wrongdoing.

Most of us would in principle have no problem with that statement. In fact, in principle, neither would Copan and Flannagan. Yet that is the statement that must be dealt with as it looks like the text does have commands from God to do just that. Now of course it could be that some might say those events are just a made-up history, but in the book, Copan and Flannagan do take the task of assuming for the sake of argument that this is a real historical narrative. In fact, so do the atheists they interact with in the book. It is a way of saying “Let’s assume that there was a conquest of the Promised Land as the Bible declares. How do we reconcile that with the idea that God is a God of love?”

Some people reading the start will be wondering about the beginning. Why are we having a discussion on inerrancy? Why a discussion on what it means for the Bible to be the Word of God? All of this is important, because it is about how we are to process the information in a text and too many people have an idea that if the Bible is the “Word of God” then somehow the ordinary rules of language don’t apply and everything must be applied in a “literalistic” reading.

From there, we get into the conquest itself. Is the text using hyperbolic language? Copan and Flannagan argue that it is simply because if you take in a literalistic sense, the accounts immediately contradict. For the sake of argument, one could say there are contradictions in the text, but let us not say the writers were fools who would notice a blatant contradiction right in their midst. Many of the commands also involve not destroying, but rather driving out. The commands were also limited to war within the holy land itself.

Naturally, the authors argue against those who want to use the Bible to argue against the hyperbolic interpretation. They conclude this section by looking at legal and theological questions concerning genocide and show that by legal definitions used of genocide today, the events that took place in the Conquest really don’t work.

The third part of the book starts with Divine Command Theory. I will state that while I believe everything God commands is necessarily good and we are obligated to do it, I do not hold to DCT. I think this section does deal with several bad arguments against it and that makes it worthwhile in itself. It’s also important that you can be someone who does not hold to DCT and it will not detract from the overall position of the book.

For instance, let’s suppose you take my position and yet think that if God commands something, it is good. Then the rest of the part will still work for you. It asks if God could command events like the deaths of innocent human beings. The authors use some excellent examples about how in even our time we could picture a president commanding such an order and not condemn them. For instance, suppose on 9/11 three of the planes have hit and we know the fourth is on its way to the target. This plane no doubt commands innocent human beings, but would we understand a command from the president to have it shot down knowing innocents will die? Note that is not saying it is necessarily the right decision, but that it is an understandable decision.

The authors also deal with what if someone claimed this today. For the authors, the principle known earlier as the crucial moral principle holds if all things are equal, but if you think God is telling you otherwise, you’d better have some excellent evidence. Most Christians today would say you do not because even if you hold to God guiding people personally today and even personal communication today, most would not hold to prophecy on the level of Scripture being given today and if God commanded you to kill someone, that is not a position to hold to.

So what makes Moses and the conquest different? One is the preponderance of what are called G2 miracles. These are miracles that you could not just explain away as sleight of hand if true. For instance, when the water of the Nile turns to blood, the magicians can repeat that so yeah, no big deal. When the Red Sea parts and the whole of the Israelites pass through on dry land and the waters drown the following Egyptians, yeah. That’s not so easily explainable. The same for manna falling from the sky every day for forty years and the wonders that took place around Mount Sinai. The average Joe Israelite soldier had good reason to think Moses had some divine communication going on.

I personally found the last section to be the most fascinating and this is about violence in history and its link to Christianity. The authors cover the Crusades particularly and show some contrasts between Islam and Christianity and also point out that the Crusades have not been hanging over our heads for centuries. If anything, the usage of them is a more recent argument.

They also deal with the idea of religious violence and show that much of the violence we have seen is in fact political though often hidden under a religious veneer. Included also in this section is a piece on the question of pacifism and if there can be such a thing as a just war.

Copan and Flannagan have provided an excellent gift to the church in this book. Anyone interested in studying the conquest of the holy land and wanting to deal with the question of religious violence in general will be greatly benefited by reading this book and keeping it in their library.

In Christ,
Nick Peters