Tag: Old Testament

Book Plunge: The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Part 6

What about God in the Old Testament? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Iqbal now turns to the Old Testament. The first part worth noting is when he talks about how Mark 1 quotes Isaiah. Iqbal points out that this quotation is actually a combination of a quotation from Isaiah and Malachi. He ignores that there is actually scholarship on composite quotations which occur not just in Jewish and Christian writings, but in writings in greater Greco-Roman antiquity.

He also says Jesus never refers to Himself as the Son of Man. This is a strange argument because it assumes the only way He can is if He comes out and says “I am the Son of Man.” He also rarely says “I am the Messiah.” One example that shows Jesus saw Himself as this figure is in Matthew 19 when He tells the disciples that they will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. It’s thought to be authentic since He says the twelve will which would be problematic with what Judas did. The question is, “If the apostles sit on twelve thrones, where does Jesus sit?”

There is some discussion on what the word Echad means. He does say that it can refer to a compound one, but sometimes it doesn’t.

Okay.

But sometimes it does.

Thus, just saying echad isn’t sufficient to show that this is a one that is absolutely solitary in nature. You can point out that there are many cases where this doesn’t happen and yet, that doesn’t matter. Each time it is to be interpreted based on the context of that passage.

He also asks why it refers to three in the case of God if that is the case. Why not three?

Because three persons is the number revealed throughout the Bible….

He says that the plural means the plural of majesty. In some cases, I am open to that entirely. In some cases, it doesn’t apply. Why should I think echad refers to a plural of majesty? Iqbal gives me no reason to think so.

He also says that Paul explicitly says he didn’t get information from the original apostles of Jesus on the gospel. He ignores that in Galatians 1, Paul speaks to them and presents the gospel to make sure that his race had not been run in vain. I can’t help but wonder if Iqbal has ever truly read the New Testament for himself.

So once again, we have a Muslim who tries to argue against the Trinity and really demonstrates he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. When dealing with these arguments, I tend to hit only the highlights….errr…..lowlights? It would be too much to go over every argument and some of them have been done over and over again and I try to trust on newish arguments that I have not dealt with before.

But, there are other books, so we will soon begin going through another such book sometime to see what else Muslims have to say on the topic.

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

 

 

Spiritual Deception in the Highest 4.2

How did we get the Old Testament? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We saw yesterday a statement that I could not describe as anything less than blasphemous. Today, Johnson is going to tell us some about textual transmission. (Perhaps if you wanted to write about Bible translation this would have been a better place to start.) The link can be found here.

“The Bible was written from 1650 BC to 90 AD” [S4P96]. (These dates include both the Old and New Testaments). As to the Old Testament:

“The Hebrew Scriptures were written by Moses and the prophets and other inspired men to whom God had given prophetic gifts” [S8P7].

The Old Testament text (Hebrew scriptures) were passed down both orally and in the written form. As to the oral tradition, we know the following:

“The original Hebrew manuscripts were not ‘pointed’, that is, the written text was made up of consonants, without the vowel sounds that make words pronounceable. The spoken text was passed down through the centuries by the Hebrew priests, who by their public reading of the Scriptures gave full understanding to the consonantal text” [S15P7].

Okay. Nothing really objectionable so far.

This oral tradition continued until:

“… a Jewish sect known as the Massoretes, concerned that the demise of this oral tradition would make the Hebrew Scriptures incomprehensible, set out to produce a standardized copy of the Hebrew Old Testament complete with vowel sounds” [S15P7].

Thus, the Massoretes standardized the Hebrew Text, giving us the ‘written tradition’.

The Masoretes did a valuable service, but we should not ignore the Dead Sea Scrolls either. Those were people trying to be faithful to the text as well.

In Alfred Levell’s book “The Old Is Better”; we are told how the Old Testament was copied and passed down in written form:

“For the Old Testament, the copying was done with extreme care by the Jewish priesthood in the centuries before Christ … After the time of Christ, copies were made by Jewish scribes, and especially by those from the 6th century onward called the Massoretes, who took extraordinary pains to ensure the correctness of their copies” [S13P17].

I tried to find the scholarly credentials of Levell. I found none. We have a KJV-onlyist quoting another KJV-onlyist.

The extraordinary pains that the Massoretes used included:

“… many complicated safeguards … such as counting the number of times each letter of the alphabet occurs in each book” [S8P13].

David Fuller expands on the care which went into copying the Hebrew manuscripts. He says:

“The Jews cherished the highest awe and veneration for their sacred writings which they regarded as the ‘Oracles of God’. They maintained that God had more care of the letters and syllables of the Law than of the stars of heaven, and that upon each tittle of it, mountains of doctrine hung … In the transcription of an authorized synagogue manuscript, rules were enforced of the minutest character. The copyist must write with a particular ink, on a particular parchment. He must write in so many columns, of such a size, and containing just so many lines and words. No word to be written without previously looking at the original. The copy, when completed, must be examined and compared within thirty days; if four errors were found on one parchment; the examination went no farther – the whole was rejected” [S2P112-113]

Fuller is at least a scholar, but he wrote this book back in 1970 and we have learned more sense then. He is also another KJV-onlyist. Still, there is really nothing wrong with this statement.

In his book “God Wrote Only One Bible”, Jasper James Ray also speaks about the carefulness of the scribes:

“In making copies of the original manuscripts, the Jewish scribes exercised the greatest possible care. When they wrote the name of God in any form they were to reverently wipe their pen, and wash their whole body before writing ‘Jehovah’ lest that holy name should be tainted even in writing. The new copy was examined and carefully checked with the original almost immediately, and it is said that if only one incorrect letter was discovered the whole copy was rejected. Each new copy had to be made from an approved manuscript, written with a special kind of ink, upon skins made from a ‘clean’ animal. The writer had to pronounce aloud each word before writing it. In no case was the word to be written from memory. They counted, not only the words, but every letter, and how many times each letter occurred, and compared it to the original” [S4P94-95].

I can find nothing on Ray, but once again, Johnson is only echoing his own side. He has thus far not studied anyone on something as simple as textual transmission except those who agree with him.

Notice: These 2 previous historical accounts differ slightly in a couple of places: namely did 1 or 4 errors cause the rejection of the whole copy; and did the copy get examined almost immediately or within 30 days. Suffice it to say that, even though these 2 quotes differ somewhat, the copies were made with extreme care. And, that is the point.

Therefore, we can have confidence in the Massoretic Old Testament text, because of what we have just learned, as well as:

“… the extreme reverence with which the Jews regarded their Scriptures affords a powerful guarantee against any deliberate corruption of the text” [S2P118].

And the Massoretic Old Testament has also been confirmed through other means, namely the:

“… many secondary witnesses … including translations into other languages, quotations used by friends and enemies of biblical religion, and evidence from early printed texts” [S18P153].

Again, still no problem.

Additionally, David Fuller points out (about the Massoretic Old Testament text):

“The Old Testament, precisely as we have it, was endorsed by Jesus Christ, the Son of God … The Old Testament was our Lord’s only study book …. Five hundred and four times is the Old Testament quoted in the New” [S2P113-114].

In the booklet “God’s Inspired Preserved Bible” the author says (of the Massoretic Text):

“As a summary we may say that 10% of Christ’s words were taken directly from the Old Testament” [S7P7].

Thus, the Massoretic Old Testament Text has been carefully reproduced and has been attested to by Jesus Christ. It is this Massoretic Text, which forms the Old Testament, of our King James Bible.

I have no problem with using the Masoretic text, but I have no desire to throw out the Dead Sea Scrolls.

We shall continue next time with the New Testament.

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

Ignorance Is A Weak Excuse

Should you know what the other side says? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have been going through Raymond Bradley’s book God’s Gravediggers and I plan to do a fuller look chapter by chapter, but I saw one quote that I wanted to highlight. It is about Christian philosophers who hold to inerrancy.

“”Are these guys serious? What would be their line when confronted by 2 Chronicles 4:2, which gives a false value for the mathematical constant pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter)? What would they say about countless inconsistencies the Bible contains? For example, between 2 Samuel 24:1, which says the Lord commanded King David to “number the people of Israel”, and 1 Chronicles 21:1, which says it was Satan, not the Lord, who issued the command. What account would they give of scientific absurdities such as that of a six-day creation, the fixity of species, and the world-wide flood, an event that some biblical genealogists calculate as occurring on the 27 February 2267 BCE, an event that, as Australian geologist Ian Plimer points out, was “spitefully” ignored by the Egyptians of the time? I simply don’t know what answers these notable theistic philosophers would give. They proclaim inerrancy as a general doctrine without considering its specific applications. They preach it from their pulpits yet ignore it in their philosophical writings. Yet where inconsistencies abound, so does falsity; for at least one of each inconsistent pair must be false.”
There’s one part in here worth highlighting.
“I simply don’t know what answers these notable theistic philosophers would give.”
Anyone should really know at this point to not take Bradley seriously.
Unfortunately, Bradley is not in the minority. Normally when I speak to atheists, I ask them if they have read such and such that disagrees with them and I am told that they have not. Most usually make some excuse and it really is presuppositional atheism. After all, everyone knows science is the only way to truth and anything that disagrees is automatically stupid. Why bother looking into a case for a miracle if it’s just so obvious they never happen?
Getting back to Bradley, he is talking about Old Testament questions. No one is saying that these questions shouldn’t be asked, but these are not new. The early church often debated passages that seemed to contradict and tried to work out apparent discrepancies.
The problem is that Bradley has no idea what would be said and this is too often something that can happen. A person can come up with what they think is an objection to a position and say to themselves, “I can’t think of any possible counter to this, therefore there isn’t one.” Consider what happens with the problem of evil. “Why would God allow this evil?” If no answer can be found immediately, well then there just obviously isn’t an answer. Right?
By the way, this is not to say that Christians don’t do the same thing. Christians absolutely do and that’s a travesty on our side. The mindset of Bradley is one that no one should really have.
Also, I would encourage Bradley to instead go to some Old Testament scholars instead of philosophers. Go to people like Walton or Longman or Christopher Wright or others. Go to a seminary and ask to see the library and read some commentaries on the passages in question.
When it comes to the age of the Earth, even the rabbis had been debating the interpretation of Genesis 1-2. Rudimentary forms of evolution were even discussed in those times. The information we can have is new, but the debates are really old. While it looks like Bradley grew up with young-Earth creationism, even the most ardent YEC would know other Christians have other interpretations and while they don’t agree, I hope they would say they understand these people are trying to be faithful to Scripture who disagree.
Something I often say about skeptics I encounter is they are not true skeptics. They believe what agrees with them 100%. They only question what disagrees with them. This also applies to politics also where it’s easy to go in with a bias and find something that supports your side and ignore the rejoinders to it.
Bradley is not a skeptic. He honors it with his lips, but his head is far from it. He has simply abandoned one loyalty to a position and replaced it with the same loyalty to another position.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: 7 Things I Wish Christians Knew About The Bible

What do I think of Michael Bird’s book published by Zondervan? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have to say that every time I read something about Michael Bird, I get a treat. Michael Bird is an author with keen insights and a pastoral heart as well, but he also has a great touch of humor and will say so many statements that make you laugh all throughout the book. I would be thrilled to see him team up with Andy Bannister to write a book.

This is a book written for Christians, though I think it can be helpful for non-Christians as well. In it, he gives seven different statements that many of us might think are old hat, but in reality, there are people who treat the Bible this way even if they know it’s not literally so. For instance, the first one is that the Bible didn’t fall out of the sky.

Really, even if we don’t know how the Bible came about, somehow, we all know that it didn’t. In reality though, we do often treat it that way. The Bible is a divine book to be sure, but it is also a very human book. That’s actually the second, This gives us more of how the Bible was written by people and has their own personality styles in the text.

Third is that the Bible is normative and not negotiable. In this, he wants us to realize that Scripture is the place of authority. We don’t just pick and choose. Too many “churches” today have the idea that the Bible is authoritative when it speaks properly, which by the way, happens to be the times that it agrees with them. Amazing!

Next is that the Bible is for our time, but it’s not about our time. This is especially the case with modern prophecy experts who think everything going on is talked about in Scripture, they are shown to be wrong, but then a year or two later, the exact things happen again. I am not just talking about so-called prophecy experts. I am also talking about laypeople who read the Bible this way. (Sometimes, they sadly commit the unpardonable sin of calling the final book “Revelations.”)

The fifth is that the Bible should always be taken seriously, but not literally. Somehow, we live in a time that thinks that literal interpretation is the best way to read the Bible every time. The early church really enjoyed allegory, for example. Too many atheists also make a big deal about literal interpretation.

The sixth is that the purpose of the book is to give us faith, hope, and love. Now here, I would have liked to have seen Bird say something about the fake view of faith as belief without evidence or something similar. Still, Bird’s point is entirely valid. As much as an academic like myself wants to gain a lot of knowledge and as much as some people might go to the Bible wanting to get personal advice on how to live, and neither of those are bad in themselves, the main goal is to produce the character of faith, hope, and love.

Finally, Christ is the center of it all. However, saying that, he wants us to be careful to not forget the Father or the Spirit. He also wants us to make sure we don’t just read Christ into everything without first understanding what the text says in itself. Also, he thinks we should be able to teach Jesus as Messiah from the Old Testament, which I agree with.

Bird’s given us a great gift in this one. I highly encourage you to go and read this one. You’ll laugh a few times and you’ll learn something.

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

 

Sexuality and Shrimp

How do we handle the law today? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This is not an easy topic as thousands of pages have been written on the topic of the role of the law in the life of the Christian. Much of the epistles in the New Testament is all about this problem really as Paul and others have to quote the Old Testament often to establish their points. Jesus Himself in the Gospels had to explain how the Old Testament was being misunderstood so it is not a shock that we today can struggle with it at times.

For instance, we have all these rules on sexuality, but then we have rules on not eating shrimp. What’s going on with that? Shrimp is an abomination and so are two men sleeping together. Why do we forbid the latter and yet happily go to a place like Red Lobster and dine our hearts out?

As I’ve said, I should not be expected to be the final word and answer all questions, but I do want to give some general guidelines.

First, we must always remember that the Law was given to Jews in a specific time and a specific place. The Law was never given to the church in the sense that God directly covenanted with the church through the Law. The covenant with the church is done through Jesus.

However, this does not mean that we dispense with the Law entirely. Paul tells us in the New Testament that everything that was written was written for our benefit. Even if we are not bound by it, we can still learn from it.

Second, the Law often had meanings behind the surface level. Paul uses this in 1 Cor. 9 where he quotes about not muzzling an ox while it’s treading the grain. God’s principle concern is not with the ox, but with the idea that one who works should get to partake in some fruit of the work.

Let’s consider another idea. What about building something on the roof of your house to serve as a barrier? In this case, this was done because the roof was often treated as a separate room and people would regularly go up there. You build a barrier to make sure no one falls off and suffers injury or death. We don’t do this today because we don’t use our roofs this way, but if you have an apartment complex with a balcony of some sort, there will be a barrier to prevent falling.

So what about mixed fabrics and clean and unclean animals? The animals could be because some of them contained a mixture of different locales in that they were creatures of earth and water or water and air or air and earth. We might not know the reason entirely, but they did. Mixed fabrics were to avoid a similar mixture and remind the Israelites of purity. We are to take this as having moral purity.

Third, most all of us follow the Law to some extent. Last I saw, many atheists are not going out and championing murder since the Bible says “Do not murder.”You can be an atheist and think the idea of “Love your neighbor as yourself” is a beautiful command and should be followed, but it comes right between Leviticus 18 and 20 with its sexual rules. Atheists accusing Christians of picking and choosing can be just as guilty. Both sides can easily use prooftexts for their own benefit.

Fourth, we can see how the New Testament handles this. While John 8 with the woman caught in adultery was not likely written by the author of John, I do think it shows a real event in the life of Jesus. In it, Jesus never questions the statement of the law that an adulterous woman should be stoned, but he does say that if you want to play that game, how many of you deserve a punishment as well?

In 1 Cor. 5, we have a man sleeping with his stepmother. The couple could have had a similar punishment, but this time Paul says to remove the man from the church. It’s worth noting in that day the man could not just go down the block to another church. The exclusion was to make him come to his senses.

Paul as a good Pharisee knows the law, but while he still upholds that sleeping with your stepmther is wrong, he doesn’t uphold the punishment of the Old Testament. It’s not because he’s opposed to the Old Testament. It’s because he sees things through the lens of Christ now instead.

Several times in the epistles, homosexual practice and sex outside of marriage is condemned. There’s no hint that these have changed. Yes. I have read some of the revisionists trying to say otherwise and I just find their cases extremely weak.

Let’s also return to Leviticus 18. In the final section, God tells the people that for these kinds of practices, the people are being driven out. This means that they should have known better.

In the same way, in Romans 1, Paul speaks about general revelation and says “Because of that, people should have known idolatry was wrong.” Why? Looking at the universe, you should be able to tell that it was made by something greater than something like an animal.

After a vertical error, he then moves to a horizontal one. Just like people got the nature of God wrong, they got the nature of God wrong and same-sex relations were his prime example. We should be able to look and tell that male and female go together and no other combination does.

These are just some general guidelines. Does this answer everything? Of course not. There are many books on these subjects. For homosexuality in particular, I recommend Robert Gagnon and books where he does take part in a counterpoint discussion are some of the best.

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

Sex on the Period

Why did God forbid sex during a woman’s period? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This is one rule that really doesn’t make sense to a lot of us in our modern culture. Why could you not have sex during a woman’s period? Part of the problem that we have with this is that we don’t see the world as the ancients did, not because of something scientific, but because we don’t think of purity that way. At least, we say that we don’t, though in many ways we do.

Suppose I come over to your house to visit you with a can of unopened soda in my hand. While I sit on your couch talking to you, I open the can and then start pouring it profusely on your couch and carpet. I would not be surprised if you say a various number of words to me and throw me out.

This isn’t because the damage I have done is anything physically harmful necessarily. It’s more because I have damaged an idea of purity you have about your house. You don’t want a stain to be right there on the carpet even if there was nothing harmful about it. (Even if there is, I suspect most people are worried about the stain instead.) We have a reason why we sell stain removers for our clothes before we go on a date or another social outing.

This is the same kind of thing behind this command. It’s why the verse refers to her uncleanliness. This is also something that is done intentionally. It’s not an accident that this happens. In some ways, you could call this the sin of the high hand where one openly tries to defile God.

So what does that mean for us today?

Well, we don’t live in a society that focuses on ritual purity that way. However, there are some guidelines we can consider. This is for every married couple to decide for themselves.

First, assuming one wants to abstain during this time, you are talking about a few days really. If you are someone who cannot go a few days without having sex, you probably have bigger concerns. For those who think I can talk that but don’t walk it, I am divorced now and I am having to go without sex. That is no cause of joy whatsoever for me, but I can contend that is doable.

Second, if your wife is in intense pain from her period and is not feeling sexy, you should probably be considerate and not have sex with her then. Personally, any time she doesn’t want to have sex at all you should avoid it. This is just personal consideration.

Third, the whole point for them was avoiding blood and this might be something you want to take into consideration as well. Again, this is something debatable and especially in an age where we can use the pill to avoid the flow of blood that can happen. Of course, even the morality of the pill can be debated.

Those are just my general recommendations, but if there’s one rule in this list that is exceptional, it would be this one.

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

What Can You Get For Your Daughter?

Why would anyone sell their daughter? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

It sounds bizarre to us really. Why on Earth would someone sell their daughter? Do they want money more than they want a daughter? That does seem to be what is going on in Exodus 21.

7 “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. 8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

The problem here is too many of us are reading this from our cultural perspective. We might think of something like sex trafficking going on or people turning their children into prostitutes at their home. This sounds like a family that really doesn’t care for their daughter.

However, when we look at the ancient world, by and large, marriage was about survival and continuing in the family name. This would be more like indentured servitude. serving someone for an amount of time in order to get something out of the deal. This was done by many people at first to get to America.

Okay. So how does that tie into survival? A poor family would have to work extra hard to provide for every family member. For us, we don’t understand this in a world where if we want bread, we can just drive down to the supermarket. For them, just getting a meal was long and laborious and it took time and energy to make bread.

By selling their daughter, they were selling her into a family that could afford her and could provide for her and make a better laugh for her. She would be moved into a new family unit. This doesn’t mean the old family could no longer have any contact with her, but essentially today when a family gives their daughter to a man who wants to marry her, they do the same. When my former in-laws gave my ex-wife to me, they realized that I was going to be the new primary family unit and my parents realized she would be my new primary family unit. I was the one meant to provide for her.

And notice, the new family is meant to do that, especially the husband. He has to provide food, shelter, and yes, marital rights. The man is to consistently love his wife. A man cannot sell her because that would be breaking the covenant promise to her. If the man’s son marries her, the master must treat the new girl like a daughter. If the son marries another woman, this one is not to be deprived and if she is, she can go her own way. In other words, for a book supposedly sexist, the woman has all the freedoms here and the man has all the responsibilities.

Again, we are not really at marriage for love yet, but we will be getting to that kind of attitude. Even still, that needs some temperance as love is badly misunderstood. Keep waiting as that is a way’s away.

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

Marriage in the Bible Intro

How do we see marriage explicitly? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’re in the book of Exodus in our look through the Bible at marriage and as we get into this, we will see a lot of customs that don’t match up with a modern Western approach to marriage. This isn’t a culture that practices dating or marriage for love. You do not normally choose your spouse. Marriage seems to be a different kind of relationship.

At this point, skeptics of the Bible who tend to be left politically shout with glee about how much marriage has changed. Thus, we live in a time also where marriage is changing and it is changing so much that it is no longer supposedly a union of a man and a woman. We have already changed marriage since then, so why not?

So for this, I want to give a brief overview. Some matters will be acknowledged. Why people enter into marriage has changed. Why people got married has changed. How people got married has changed. There is something that hasn’t changed.

Marriage hasn’t.

But what about polygamy?

This was a borderline practice that was allowed in the Old Testament. Still, if anything, this could count as one man having multiple marriages. When Joash was the last surviving member of the line of David that was able to rule, he was granted to have two wives. After all, they needed to produce more children again.

So in the Old Testament, most marriages were arranged. This is still common in much of the world today. A person doesn’t know their spouse sometimes until the day that they marry them and then they are to give to the relationship and make it work. In many cases, it really does work.

Marriage was mainly about the uniting of the families together and the survival of the family. This was to pass on the heritage of the family and ensure that they would not be forgotten in Israel. Producing children was a must as that was the way to make sure this would take place and you needed a lot. Today, we take it for granted that our children will live and start saving for college while they’re in the womb. Not so in those days. Child mortality was very common.

While love was not the basis, there was no doubt that it was hoped for. If you read Proverbs, a man is told to delight in his wife. Song of Songs is a very passionate poem about love and especially sexual love in a marriage relationship.

Divorce did happen, but it was not a practice that God celebrated in Scripture, even when He did it Himself to Israel. The breaking of a covenant is always a tragedy. Now I realize some people are saying, “But my spouse abused me. Are you saying that the divorce was a tragedy?” Yes, and hear me out on this please. It is a tragedy that one person broke a promise to love and cherish the other and treat them like a partner in life and wound up abusing and/or betraying them. While the divorce was sadly a necessity in this case, the first tragedy is that the betrayal had already taken place. It is sad the situation was so bad that one person had to remove themselves from it to protect themselves when marriage was meant to be a relationship for the growing of love between the two.

So as we go into this, I’m not going to say every time about how different the union was entered into and the different purposes it served. I figure it’s easier to do this upfront than to do that. Still, we will see differences between our day and theirs. The past is a strange place. They do things differently there.

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

Jacob’s polygamy

Where did Jacob’s troubles begin? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Jacob is the patriarch who embraced polygamy. To be fair, he was kind of tricked into it, but still, he had more than one wife. Unfortunately, as we go through the story, we will see that this leads to trouble for Jacob. After all, some siblings of his will not get along with others and considering they call different women, “Mom” that could explain some of it.

For the positives, it looks like when Jacob comes in at one point, Rachel has borrowed some mandrakes from Leah to increase fertility for herself and says Leah can sleep with Jacob tonight in exchange. Thus, one can understand that it looks like Jacob knew that when he came home that evening, he’d be sleeping with someone.

It wasn’t just Rachel and Leah. They also gave their female servants to Jacob to sleep with to continue their family line. Thus, four different women in the text become mothers and all do so through Jacob.

One reason for this is that Leah was being neglected by Jacob because he had a greater love for Rachel. As a result, God allowed Leah to get pregnant more often and closed the womb of Rachel. Leah is the one who in the end provides Jacob with half of his sons and has a daughter as well.

Still, polygamy is one of those practices that never seems to end well for those involved in Scripture. Rachel always carries a position of the favorite and thus, her children carry positions of favor with Jacob as well. As we go through the history of Jacob and his family, we will see this play out more and more. In the account of the birth of most of Jacob’s children, you find some squabbling taking place and if this was the worst of the effects of polygamy, there wouldn’t be much of a case, but later on, we’ll see more.

It’s also worth noting that Jacob’s brother, Esau, also had married multiple women and they were a source of grief to Rebekkah. Esau’s solution was not to get rid of them, but to marry another woman he thought his mother would approve of. Later on in Israelite history, getting rid of wives that are outside of the covenant would be more necessary.

Thus, aside from perhaps Pharaoh and Abimelech who have harems in Genesis, Lamech, Esau, and Jacob are the only ones I can think of at least that have multiple wives. We don’t know enough about the inner workings of those other families to speak about them, but we do know enough about Jacob.

Polygamy was one of those borderline practices God tolerated in the Old Testament, but in the time of the new covenant, He was much stricter on. Most Jews at the time of Jesus were highly monogamous. Paul will later write that an elder needs to be the husband of one wife and yes, we will look at that passage a lot more when we get there.

For now, just know Jacob has rough times coming ahead.

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

Book Plunge: Sex, Wives, and Warriors

What do I think of Philip Esler’s book published by Cascade books? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Men tend to share a lot of common loves. Most men love sex, for example. For those of us who married, many of us love our wives too. Many of us also have a fighting spirit and love warriors, so naturally, a book called Sex, Wives, and Warriors is attractive.

I thought this would be a book about the conquest in the Old Testament since it was about Old Testament narrative. Nope. Still, I’m not complaining. The book is about a number of other passages in the text and giving them a good and hard look.

Esler also writes from a perspective for every person. If you’re a skeptic of the Bible’s historicity, it doesn’t matter. His goal is not to tell you what happened, but how an ancient Israelite would have seen the text at the time. If you’re a believer in the text, this will give you some insight still. If you’re not a believer, you’ll still get something out of it by seeing how the texts fit into the society.

Genesis 38 with Judah and Tamar is covered. This is a passage of Scripture I always found quite strange to have suddenly pop up in the text with no seeming relation to the narrative. After all, this portion of the text focuses mainly on Joseph and none of the other children of Jacob get a look like this, so why Judah?

I still am unsure of that, but this passage is seen in a whole new light. Esler brings out why it is that Judah wouldn’t give his third son to Tamar and why it is she seduced Judah instead. Many of us today are unaware of the social structure of society and are too quick to read our modern culture into the text.

So it goes with other stories in the Old Testament. How should we see the story of Hannah and her son Samuel? Why is Hannah treated the way she is by her husband and her rival wife? Why even have a rival wife?

What about David and Goliath? Is this just a story about overcoming your own Goliaths in your life? (Spoiler alert: No.) What does it mean of David that he goes and fights? What was it that made this fight so spectacular?

What about King Saul’s being crowned king? Why would he go and cut up an ox and run it through the streets of town? Why would there be hesitation on the part of the people if God chose Saul?

What about David and Bathsheba? This is one of those stories that if a film was made about it even if just for TV, you would have to send the kids to bed early that night. What all else is going on behind the scenes that we might not realize?

One outworking of this is the story of Amnon and Tamar. What is going on in David’s family to cause this to happen? What kind of relationship did David have with his kids? How did this affect the kingdom afterward?

We also step out of the Old Testament for a bit, at least if you’re a Protestant, to cover the story of Judith. If you haven’t read this as a Protestant, you should. This is one also that if you don’t believe it to be historical, you can still see how an ancient Israelite would have seen it.

I recommend this one for believers and non-believers alike. Non-believers will not think they are being preached to and won’t get an apologetics approach. This is all about interpretation and not historicity. Christians and others who hold to historicity, such as a number of Jews, will gain further insights into the text.

So if you love stories in the Bible about sex or about wives or about warriors, give it a try.

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