God and Genocide: An atheist answers Matthew Flannagan's trifles about Numbers 31

Atheist bible critics like myself constantly confront Christian "apologists" with disturbing stories in the bible in which God or his followers committed some type of moral atrocity that we are pretty sure the apologist would never try to morally justify, such as child massacre.  We do this in the effort to use the apologists common sense as a tool to get him or her to give up the bible or take a liberal position on it.

In Numbers 25, the Israelites fall into sexual sin with the Midianite, in a place called Peor.

6 chapters later, God tells Moses to take "full" vengeance on the Midianites because they had tempted Israel into sexual sin.  The following quote is long, but the part about killing children for the sake of convenience is found in v. 15-18:

 1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
 2 "Take full vengeance for the sons of Israel on the Midianites; afterward you will be gathered to your people."
 3 Moses spoke to the people, saying, "Arm men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian to execute the LORD'S vengeance on Midian.
 4 "A thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war."
 5 So there were furnished from the thousands of Israel, a thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war.
 6 Moses sent them, a thousand from each tribe, to the war, and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war with them, and the holy vessels and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand.
 7 So they made war against Midian, just as the LORD had commanded Moses, and they killed every male.
 8 They killed the kings of Midian along with the rest of their slain: Evi and Rekem and Zur and Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian; they also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword.
 9 The sons of Israel captured the women of Midian and their little ones; and all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods they plundered.
 10 Then they burned all their cities where they lived and all their camps with fire.
 11 They took all the spoil and all the prey, both of man and of beast.
 12 They brought the captives and the prey and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
 13 Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp.
 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
 15 And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women?
 16 "Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD. 17 "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately.
 18 "But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.
 19 "And you, camp outside the camp seven days; whoever has killed any person and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves, you and your captives, on the third day and on the seventh (Num. 31:1-19 NAU)

Most Christians are justifiably scared of this biblical bullshit, and quickly change the subject by talking about how the new covenant in Christ is one of Grace and we are not commanded to kill each other any more, etc.  Many Christians personally hate the OT.  We grant the concession of defeat.

But some Christians are die-hard apologists and would rather be slowly burned alive, than admit their bible-god was an unconscionably barbaric petulant asshole.  They will split hairs all day long like a jailhouse lawyer, just to get away from the obvious meaning of a biblical text.  Jesus is not found in scripture, he is found in playing word-games, and telling yourself that splitting hairs about what should be inferred or not inferred from what God didn't say, is what the seriously Holy Spirit filled Christians spend most of their daily lives doing.

Two such apologists would be Matthew Flannagan and Paul Copan, evangelical Christian philosophers and co-authors of Did God Really Command Genocide?: Coming to Terms with the Justice of God (2014, Baker Books).

In that book, Flannagan wastes the readers time with some trifling sophistry in the effort to arrive at the conclusion that the actions of Moses in Numbers 31 were more more barbaric than God had intended.  I reply to these absurd trifles in point-by-point fashion:

Number 31:15: “Have You Allowed All the Women to Live?”

The third example Morriston cites to make his point is the defeat of Midian as recorded in Numbers 31. The Israelites fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man (v. 7). After the battle, however, Moses commanded Israel to kill all the boys and every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. Morriston says Yahweh was angered by the fact that some young Israelite men had worshiped Baal alongside their new Midianite brides, writing, “Not only must the Israelites be punished, but the Midianites must be punished for causing the Israelites to be punished.” God’s stated reasons, according to Morriston’s thinking, are inadequate.

But Morriston appears to have misread the text. First, consider his claim that the text explicitly states that God’s reason for commanding the killing of the Midianite women and boys was “spiritual infection” because “some young Israelite men had worshiped Baal alongside their new Midianite brides.” There are several problems with this.

First is the fact that, in the text Morriston cites (Num. 31:17-18), God himself does not explicitly command Israel to kill all the Midianite women and boys. God’s command to Moses regarding the Midianites is actually recorded in Numbers 25:17-18 and 31:1-2. God explicitly commands Israel to respond to the Midianites’ spiritual subterfuge by fighting against the Midianites and defeating them. The reasons why Israel is to obey isn’t the spiritual infection of women as Morriston says, but rather the fact that Midian has been hostile toward and deceived Israel.

The Numbers 31 text does not explicitly attribute the command to kill the women and boys to God, but to Moses.

 Then maybe you missed the word "full" in Numbers 31:2?  Was that a superfluous word?

Morriston acknowledges this, but suggests three reasons why this observation doesn’t come to much. (1) Moses is regularly characterized as being very close to Yahweh, faithfully obeying his instructions most of the time; (2) Yahweh expresses no disapproval of anything Moses does in this story; and (3) Yahweh himself is the principal instigator of the attack on Midian.

I can give a better reason: first, the "full" in 31:2, as already argued.  Second, the fact that the Midianites successfully enticed the Israelites into sexual sin, just proves the Midianites were not one of the far away nations for whom Mose' rules of warfare allowed to be spared/enslaved, rather the Midianites were one of those "nearby" nations that must, under Moses' rules of war, be "totally" destroyed, since they proved to achieve the sin-enticement result that the mass-annihilation commanded was intended to preempt:

 10 "When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace.
 11 "If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you.
 12 "However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.
 13 "When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword.
 14 "Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you.
 15 "Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby.
 16 "Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes.
 17 "But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you,
 18 so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God. (Deut. 20:10-18 NAU)

Since the Midianites certainly did teach the Israelites to commit idolatry and other sexual sins, only a fool would trifle that because "Midian" isn't specified in the war-book's list of condemned nations, Moses "should have known" that 99% extinction of the Midianites was more than what God wanted.

Flannagan continues:

These responses, however, are inadequate. Consider the last point first. The fact that someone is the “principal instigator” of an attack doesn’t entail that he approves of every single action that takes place within the battle in question.

The fact that a woman is the mother of a 3 year old girl doesn't necessarily mean she loves the girl, but we are reasonable to presume this would usually be the case and require viewing of good evidence before we are obligated to think that any specific mother/daughter case is an exception.

Similarly with 2: the lack of explicit disapproval in the text does not entail approval.

 But the lack of approval also doesn't entail disapproval.  If you wish to claim God disapproved of the higher level of slaughter Moses called for, that is your burden to prove.  Your view of the text is hardly a priori.

31:2 has God saying Moses should take "full" vengeance on the Midianites.  If the result of the war comports nicely with "full" vengeance, then the burden of proof is on the apologist to argue that the the way Moses carried out the attack order was "too full". 

Morriston’s argument is an appeal to ignorance; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

There is no reason, other than fear of one's god looking stupid and sadistic, for pretending the "full" of 31:2 meant something less than the full-scale destruction Moses actually carried out.

It is not uncommon in biblical narratives for authors to describe sinful behavior without expressing explicit disapproval.

But the burden of showing the way Moses carried out this command of God was more extensive and sinful than God wanted, is on YOU.

In most cases, no doubt, the author expects the reader to know certain actions are right and wrong.

Not likely; the originally intended recipients were mostly illiterate, they weren't "readers".  Hence, they likely would accept the story at face value, like every Christian commentator on it did between the 1st and the 18th centuries,  and not trifle about what can be implied by God's failure to condemn something.

Finally, regarding 1, the fact that someone is portrayed in the text as close to God or faithful to him does not mean that every action he is recorded as doing is commanded or endorsed by God. Consider David, or Abraham.

Consider Jesus too.  Do Flannagan's trifles here justify a person's refusal to believe Jesus was always in conformity to the will of God?  After all, just because he was the son of God doesn't necessarily...and so you see the desperation in Flannagan's atomistic analysis.

A second instance of Morriston misreading the text is that not only does he attribute Moses’s reasons to God; he also misstates the reasons Moses does give in the context. The real issue is that the Midianite women had been following the devious advice of the pagan seer, Balaam, who had been explicitly commanded by God not to curse Israel. Balaam had led the Israelites into acting treacherously at Baal-Peor. This is the clearly stated issue (31:16). What occurs, when the background is taken into account, is not that some Israelites marry Midianite women, but rather these women use sex to seduce Israel into violating the terms of their covenant with God—an event that threatened Israel’s very national identity, calling, and destiny. This act was in fact deliberate.

 Then what's your problem with Moses' refusal to spare any except the virgin girls?  

So Morriston’s comments are far off the mark when he insists that the Midianites could not have been trying to harm the Israelites by inviting them to participate in the worship of a god in whom they obviously believed. The whole point of the exercise was to get God to curse Israel so that a military attack could be launched by Moab and Midian. The picture isn’t one of innocent Midianite brides, but acts tantamount to treason and treacherous double agents carrying on wicked subterfuge.

Sounds pretty serious.  But your trifles are still pointless:  If you are claiming Moses required more destruction than what God intended in 31:2, then say so and explain why, quit pussy-footing around with trifles about how God can condemn something without explicitly saying so.  What textual evidence is there to suggest God disagreed with the degree of death and destruction Moses called for? 

And Flannagan's skepticism seems more extreme than is warranted for a Christian bible believer.  n Numbers 31:14, Moses is "angry" with his military leaders for sparing the women.

Shouldn't a Christian believer in bible inerrancy like Flannagan first assume that Moses had expected his men to inflict total destruction?

Once again, if 31:2 has God decreeing "full" vengeance on the Midianites, what textual evidence makes Flannagan so positively certain that the full manner Moses carried out God's orders, effected more death than God wished?

Didn't this Moses and his Hebrews believe in corporate solidarity, the doctrine that holds you responsible for sins of your leader even if you were not personally guilty?  

Didn't this god hold entire cities responsible for murders that went unsolved or idolotry committed by a few (Deut 13:12-18; 21:1-9)?

Didn't the Israelites manifest the same observation of corporate solidarity when willing to spare anybody that might come under Rahab's roof (Josh 2:12-14; 6:22-25)?

Didn't this god refrain from revealing Achan as guilty of stealing the wedge of gold, until after God decided this sin, unknown to Joshua, should cause Joshua to suffer more than the expected number of battle casualties (Joshua 7, i.e., only Achan sinned this way, but God spreads the guilt to the entire nation saying "Israel has sinned...they have taken some forbidden things..." v. 11-12)?

Didn't this god kill off seventy thousand men of the people from Dan to Beersheba, all because David had chosen to take a census of Israel (2 Sam. 24:15 NAU)?

Doesn't this god condition his grace on the children confessing both their own and their fathers' sins (Leviticus 26:40)?

 

Didn't the god Moses served kill a bunch of toddlers and babies with a flood in the days of Noah?  Or maybe Flannagan will trifle that the flood waters  inflicted no harm on anybody below the age of accountability?

Didn't the god Moses served decree that the sin of Adam and Eve should inflict all of their descendants?

 Didn't this god visit the iniquity of the fathers up to the third and fourth generation (Exodus 20:5,6)?

Why should anybody think the killing of the babies in 31:17 was against the will of a god who routinely killed babies for other people's sins?

 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick. (2 Sam. 12:13-15 NAU)

There are solid reasons for saying Moses' actions in Numbers 31 didn't inflict more death than God intended in 31:2:

• Christians automatically presume the sinful human leader correctly conveys God's sentiments, always placing the burden on those who would cry for an exception (i.e., Flannagan blindly presumes just whatever the biblical prophets credited to God, really was from God, and requires liberals or skeptics to overcome that presumption).  So Flannagan cannot coherently pretend that an assumption of Moses' consistency with God is too speculative.
• Moses' god routinely killed children for the sins of their parents, so the call to take "full" vengeance, without further qualification, would naturally be taken to mean the children shall share in the guilt of the parents.
• Moses himself adhered to corporate solidarity.   God should have specified this case was exceptional and limited, if He didn't want somebody who believed in corporate solidarity to get the wrong impression about how extensive the vengeance should be.
• God obviously wanted the Midianite men to die, since he called for battle despite knowing the Midianite men would rise to the defense of their nation. 
• it would be stupid and foolish to suggest maybe God only wanted the guilty adult Midianites killed, and the Hebrews should just walk away from their war victory leaving the orphaned Midianite kids to fend for themselves
• God obviously wanted the death of the adult women who were personally guilty of the sexual sin at issue.  If he didn't what sense would it make to say God wanted Moses to make war with the Midianite men, but not the women who were instrumental in causing the idolatry to take place?
• God or Moses was the author of a war-book that included instructions on how to justify impregnating the female war captives (Deut. 21:10-14).  Moses' sparing of the virgin girls was in harmony with what Moses or God allowed elsewhere.
• God obviously wanted the male Midianite children to be killed, since a) raising them as foster children would likely give rise to possible blood-feud after they grew up (an excuse many Christian apologists hide under), and b) God never makes good on his promises, therefore, God's promises that kids will not depart from proper Jewish teaching if they are raised in it (Proverbs 22:6) could not possibly be taken seriously by anybody faced with such a foster care situation.

Flannagan has no basis whatsoever for his trifling suggestion that the massacre in Numbers 31 was somehow more extensive than God intended.

Therefore, the inerrantist who compares Moses' actions in Numbers 31 to everything else that can be known about him, his god, and his ideas about just war, has no other option but to admit the massacre of innocent children and babies in this dreadful story was the will of God.

my reply to 60 Second Bible Answers-Why does God command Genocide in the Bible?

Here are my replies to Pastor Paul Jennings of Stockport Evangelical Church, who tried, in a 60-second Youtube video, to defend the Copan/Flanagan thesis that the divine commands in the bible to slaughter women and children did not result in the killing of any women and children.

Jennings refused to answer my questions directly and simply contented himself largely with hiding behind a rather lengthy quote from William Lane Craig which raised the off-topic point that atheists have no justification for moral indignation toward other life forms.  Apparently exasperated, Jennings, indicated in his last comment that he felt whatever he had to say could always be responded to and thus lead to an endless discussion he didn't have time for. 

=================================

Barry Jones1 week ago

If the promised land was well watered with vegetation to accommodate these staples of ANE life, then wouldn't making the pagans flee to outside the promised land, constitute forcing them to resettle in parched arid desert of far less water and vegetation? MOving would mean losing everything they had and increasing the likelihood that they would starve or thirst to death, as the Israelites complained about during the exodus, would it not? In which case, your attempt to use the "give them a chance to flee" stuff actually makes God a greater moral monster than if he just required all Canaanites be killed. Really now, when you read the Pentateuch, do you ever get the idea that God would have the least bit of tolerance for the pagan acts which the bible characterizes as abominations? God would mercifully give the pagans a chance to perform their abominations outside the promised land?

Stockport Evangelical Church1 week ago

Barry Jones Nice try! Geographically speaking, Israel is in an area known as the Fertile Crescent. So unless the canaanites fled to the desert that the Israelites had just come from, which would involve them fleeing through the Israelie army, rather than from them, thats not too likely. Secondly, God is going to punish people for their sin, because He is a holy God, whether they are canaanites, Jews, Christians...whatever! So it is not because they were either in that land or out of it, its the fact they are still sinning against Him.

Barry Jones5 days ago

Mr. Jennings,

When Saul obeyed the divine order to slaughter Amalekites (1st Samuel 15:2-3 ff) he pursued the Amalekites as far as Shur, see v. 7. That means Saul pursued them to a place that was situated between Egypt's outer western territory and the promised land's western border.

Here's the problem: Shur was apparently a waterless desert that was part of Isreal's Exodus wilderness wanderings, such that thirst could only be remedied by divine miracle, Exodus 15:22. Every other time the bible mentions "Shur", it is a place that is not desired. Hagar was by a spring on water not in Shut but ON THE WAY to Shur (Gen. 16:7). Abraham settled BETWEEN Kadesh and Shur; (Gen. 20:1). Ishmael similarly settled in the same general area just before entering Shur (25:18). Shur is a desert wasteland with no water (Ex. 15:22, supra). The Amalekites who escaped Saul in 15:7, apparently regrouped, but when David meets them for battle, they are found not IN, but NEAR "Shur", 1st Sam. 27:8.

If the consistent biblical witness is historically and geographically accurate, this "Shur" was parched arid land utterly inhospitable to life. That is, Saul put Amalekites and their kids in the position of slowly starving/thirsting to death (or facilitating death by disease, since hunger and thirst would also inhibit the immune system), and Apologist Glenn Miller cites the inhospitable ANE as the reason why immediately slaughtering the Amalekite children was more humane.

Another possible definition of "Shur" in scholarship is the one that says this was a place of Egyptian fortresses, what Egypt would logically do with its military to protect its borders from invaders.

If that is the particular "Shur" to which Saul chased the Amalekites, then Saul was chasing them toward another enemy (If apologists are correct to say Amalekites were incorrigible brutes, Egypt would resist them with military force too, and not exactly bring camel loads of food and water), in which case Saul, a military leader, surely knew that chasing the Amalekites so close to Egyptian fortresses would subject Amalekites to further battle with Pharaoh, likely making the allegedly incorrigible Amalekites even more desperately barbaric to plunder any smaller bands or groups that might be found traveling along the way, so they could to avoid being wiped out by Egypt in that generally inhospitable region.

That is, the two most popular scholarly opinions about this "Shur" each does a fair job of justifying the theory that Saul intended for Amalekites to suffer a slow miserable death.

And apparently you didn't notice: the thesis of Copan and Flannagan, that pagans who chose to flee would not be wiped out, is disproved by Saul's chasing them such a great distance from Havilah to Shur, and one conservative Christian inerrantist commentator says Saul's "ambush" in 1 Sam. 15:5, 7 was intended to trap and kill any Amalekites who tried to flee the battle:

"His troops were now poised for a frontal attack on the major Amalekite settlement as well as an attack on the Amalekites attempting to escape the main Israelite force..." Bergen, R. D. (2001, c1996). Vol. 7: 1, 2 Samuel (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 169). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

For these reasons, I believe apologists are incorrect when they say the genocide-thesis is unreasonable and unscholarly. The more you have God intending only to "dispossess", the more this God appears willing to subject women and children to a method of dying involving far more misery and suffering than simple death-by-sword.

Stockport Evangelical Church5 days ago

Wow! That's a lot of copying and pasting! So Shur is an inhospitable land where no one can live, or survive, apart from the Egyptians, apparently! The video and remember, these are '60 second' answers...not in depth apologetics, concerns the accused genocide of the Canaanites by Joshua, not warfare by King Saul. Try and stay on topic...

Barry Jones3 days ago

If you believe you can defend the Copan/Flannagan thesis somewhat more in-depth than in a 60-second answer, contact me at my blog and we can discuss it there, or at any internet location of your choice. http://turchisrong.blogspot.com

First, the Egyptians did not live in "Shur", what they did was build military outposts between Egypt and Shur.

Second, it wouldn't matter if the Egyptians did live in Shur; they were a more advanced well-connected nation who could afford to take the supplies necessary to live there. This wouldn't change the fact that Shur was a waterless wasteland that would have caused the Israelites to die of thirst were it not for a miracle of God (Exodus 15:22). So if God intended for the Amalekites to be shooed into Shur, this would be a greater cruelty than death by sword.

Third, it doesn't matter if you are correct about Joshua never being commanded by God to commit genocide...the case of Saul and the Amalekites in 1st Samuel 15 shows God being sadistic toward Amalekite children nonetheless. If you think God didn't intend any cruelty to the Amalekites in 1st Samuel 15, maybe you'd like to do a 60-second video on that?

Fourth, there are absurdities and unlikelihoods in the book of Joshua. If the Canaanites were as evil as you say, how could Joshua's spies be so willing to spare Rahab and her house, when the only sign of her "faith" and turning from their allegedly evil ways was her willingness to save her own skin by helping the Hebrews successfully attack Jericho?

Fifth, my argument for divine genocide by citing the case of Saul is not off-topic. You were answering the question of whether God commanded genocide, and you chose to delimit your answer to the general question with the particular case of Joshua. The case of Joshua does not tell us what was true in the case of God, Saul and the Amalekites which occurred 400 years later. You cannot resolve the problem of biblical genocide by citing to the instance of Joshua

And I have to wonder why you have a problem with Canaanites burning their children to death anyway: Your God neither expresses nor implies any other method of executing a girl except by burning, should she lose her virginity while living in her father's house, Lev. 21:9. There's also no expression or implication of stoning to death first, in Genesis 38:24, where Judah's reaction to a girls' alleged sexual immorality is to demand that the girl be burned to death.

Some would argue that one's beliefs or motives don't matter; if you think it good to burn a child to death for any reason, you are just as sick in the head as any Canaanite who did this in effort to appease Molech. That would follow under Christian assumptions, so the problem remains for you even if you are correct that atheists cannot justify their own morality.

Why limit yourself to 60 seconds? Is that about all you can manage? Or are you just marketing your videos to the modern attention-deficit culture who cant' stay tuned to any subject longer than 60 seconds?

Stockport Evangelical Church3 days ago

Not all our videos are 60 seconds, there are over 1,000 videos on this channel that cover a multitude of topics, from Bible translation, to healthy relationships. But the purpose of this playlist is, yes, primarily engage with "modern attention-deficit culture who cant' stay tuned to any subject longer than 60 seconds!" If you don't like that approach, I would suggest you don't watch this playlist! With regard to longer answers in which I can deal with your presuppositions, particularly with regard to the Copan/Flanagan thesis, I guess I would cite Dr William Lane Craig's response:

"I find it ironic that atheists should often express such indignation at God’s commands, since on naturalism there’s no basis for thinking that objective moral values and duties exist at all and so no basis for regarding the Canaanite slaughter as wrong. As Doug Wilson has aptly said of the Canaanite slaughter from a naturalistic point of view, “The universe doesn’t care.” So at most the non-theist can be alleging that biblical theists have a sort of inconsistency in affirming both the goodness of God and the historicity of the conquest of Canaan. It’s an internal problem for biblical theists, which is hardly grounds for moral outrage on the part of non-theists. If there is an inconsistency on our part, then we’ll just have to give up the historicity of the narratives, taking them as either legends or else misinterpretations by Israel of God’s will. The existence of God and the soundness of the moral argument for His existence don’t even come into play. The topic of God’s command to destroy the Canaanites was the subject of a very interesting exchange at the Evangelical Philosophical Society session last November at the Society of Biblical Literature Convention in Atlanta. Matt Flannagan defended the view put forward by Paul Copan in his Is God a Moral Monster? that such commands represent hyperbole typical of Ancient Near Eastern accounts of military conquests. Obviously, if Paul is right about this, then the whole problem just evaporates. But this answer doesn’t seem to me to do justice to the biblical text, which seems to say that if the Israeli soldiers were to encounter Canaanite women and children, they should kill them (cf. Samuel’s rebuke of Saul in I Sam. 15.10-16). Old Testament scholar Richard Hess took a different line in his paper: he construes the commands literally but thinks that no women and children were actually killed. All the battles were with military outposts and soldiers, where women and children would not have been present. It is, in fact, a striking feature of these narratives that there is no record whatsoever that women or children were actually killed by anyone. Still, even if Hess is right, the ethical question remains of how God could command such things, even if the commands weren’t actually carried out. Whether anyone was actually killed is irrelevant to the ethical question, as the story of Abraham and Isaac illustrates. So even if Copan is right, I’m still willing to bite the bullet and tackle the tougher question of how an all-good, all-loving God could issue such horrendous commands. My argument in Question of the Week #16 is that God has the moral right to issue such commands and that He wronged no one in doing so. I want to challenge those who decry my answer to explain whom God wronged and why we should think so. As I explained, the most plausible candidate is, ironically, the soldiers themselves, but I think that morally sufficient reasons can be provided for giving them so gruesome a task. There is one important aspect of my answer that I would change, however. I have come to appreciate as a result of a closer reading of the biblical text that God’s command to Israel was not primarily to exterminate the Canaanites but to drive them out of the land. It was the land that was (and remains today!) paramount in the minds of these Ancient Near Eastern peoples. The Canaanite tribal kingdoms which occupied the land were to be destroyed as nation states, not as individuals. The judgment of God upon these tribal groups, which had become so incredibly debauched by that time, is that they were being divested of their land. Canaan was being given over to Israel, whom God had now brought out of Egypt. If the Canaanite tribes, seeing the armies of Israel, had simply chosen to flee, no one would have been killed at all. There was no command to pursue and hunt down the Canaanite peoples. It is therefore completely misleading to characterize God’s command to Israel as a command to commit genocide. Rather it was first and foremost a command to drive the tribes out of the land and to occupy it. Only those who remained behind were to be utterly exterminated. There may have been no non-combatants killed at all. That makes sense of why there is no record of the killing of women and children, such as I had vividly imagined. Such scenes may have never taken place, since it was the soldiers who remained to fight. It is also why there were plenty of Canaanite people around after the conquest of the land, as the biblical record attests. No one had to die in this whole affair. Of course, that fact doesn’t affect the moral question concerning the command that God gave, as explained above. But I stand by my previous answer of how God could have commanded the killing of any Canaanites who attempted to remain behind in the land."

If you wish to understand what Theologians call the Civil Law and/or the Moral Law found in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) I would recommend John Wesley's Notes on the Old Testament, which are available for free, online. Beyond entering into personal and frequent dialogue with you which (as a full-time Pastor and busy Father of five) I do not have the time to do, the only other option I can give, is that you visit our church and attend the meetings! I feel I have done justice to your questions with reasonable responses, but I cannot continue to endlessly answer specific (and sometimes off topic questions), when they are always going to be followed by another question. I also try not to let one person dominate the page...so, with all due respect, I thank you for your comments and hope my answers have been helpful.

Barry Jones5 minutes ago

Thank you for honestly admitting that your purpose on this channel is to engage with modern attention-deficit culture who can’t stay turned to any subject longer than 60 seconds”.

Your citation to Craig’s observation that atheism cannot justify moral indignation, remains a fallacious red herring even if Craig's arguments are correct. Us atheists have common ground with most modern Christians, we both automatically abhor a culture who treats their people the way Moses and Joshua treated the Canaanites. When us atheists therefore point out that God ordered the slaughter of children, we are bringing up for Christians a matter in their own bible that they quite naturally find repulsive, and the goal is to get the Christian to admit some of God’s ethics in the OT are contradictory to some NT ethics.

Exactly whether and how an atheist could rationally justify expressing moral indignation toward another atheist’s actions in an atheist universe, might be an interesting topic, but is not the issue here... though I am willing to explain to you how an atheist universe allows rational justification for its life-forms to accuse each other of immorality. We can debate that elsewhere, the problems with your genocidal god are quite enough for this particular discussion.

No, the whole problem does not evaporate if Paul’s thesis about Israelites imitating pagan literary methods of exaggeration is correct. If there is any historicity to the narratives at all, Moses and Joshua slew plenty of women and children in their lifetimes, even if the absolute wording in their war-records is “exaggeration”. The boxer who says “I’m going to slaughter you” is exaggerating, but that doesn’t mean he plans to entirely refrain from inflicting serious injury nonetheless.

Craig trots out the old “God-has-the-right-to-take-life” argument, but in actual fact, my criticism of OT ethics draws the conclusion that there is no ‘god’ inspiring the OT prophets or military leaders, rather, these people simply knew what all ANE groups knew, to acquire land and resources was key to survival, and most of the “god-told-us-to-do-it” stuff is later interpolation by the editors who patched these various barbaric strands of Hebrew history together.

And if you'd suspect a man of insanity for intentionally burning down his house and destroying everything he and his family own once per year just because he has the "right", then the fact that God has the "right" to take life, does not mean all exercises of that right are legitimately free from criticism. I have the "right" to swat flies, but what would you think if I took a flyswatter and just walked through my neighborhood trying to swat every fly I could see? Does my "right" to do this, insulate my actions from moral criticism? No.

Craig says “Only those who remained behind were to be utterly exterminated.” Well gee, given the harsh realities of the ANE and life within the allegedly “promised” land, we can expect that those most likely to stay behind would be those most unable to flee the battle…women and children, and further, that they would naturally move over to their cities’ military posts or other fortified places, using common sense to conclude they’d have a better chance there than in simply fleeing for parts unknown. So the more Copan and others argue that the Hebrews only attacked Canaanite military fortresses, the more likely the Hebrews intended to make sure the slaughter of women and children was as extensive as possible.

Craig says “There may have been no non-combatants killed at all.” That makes no sense; Moses’ command to slay the male babies in Numbers 31:17 indicates this wasn’t some traumatic decision he had to make for the first time in his life, slaying children was par for the course, and he clearly had expected his returning army to have done a complete slaughter anyway, that's why he was angry when they returned with POW's (v. 14).

Craig’s comment is also problematic under 1st Samuel 15:2-3, where God specifies that children and infants also be slaughtered. If we presume as Copan does that Samuel and Saul understood the divine order to be limited to a command to attack only military outposts were women and children likely wouldn't be (at least in Copan's view), then God’s specifying that even children and infants also be slaughtered (v. 3) makes no sense. Why mention children and infants, if in fact such human beings were not expected to be present? When pagans exaggerate their own war victories, do they always assert their massacring of women and children even when the battle involved no women and children?

You also fail to consider that there is no record of the Hebrews giving advance warning to the Canaanites (their assertion that God will send the hornet and his terror ahead to drive them out is absurdly ambiguous, and a failure anyway in most cases, apparently, when in fact God could have exercised the high level of power he wields in Ezekiel 38:4 ff and force the pagans to go wherever he wished them to). If in fact the Hebrews gave the Canaanites no advance warning, then if any Canaanites fled, they only did so when battle was imminent, which means they didn’t have time to pack, and thus they not only fled out of their settled areas, but did so with no supplies, which means “allowing them to flee” subjected the Canaanite children to additional unnecessary suffering of starvation and thirsting.

Maybe Copan and Flannagan's next book will be "Why God created food stamp and welfare offices outside the promised land, and why His people never knew this until just now" ?

Craig says “That makes sense of why there is no record of the killing of women and children, such as I had vividly imagined.” Apparently he never read Numbers 31:17 or Deuteronomy 2:34. While it is historically true that ANE people's exaggerated their war victories, it is equally true that children were killed in times of war.

Regardless, your god's desire to cause rape and parental cannibalism to those who disobey him, and his specifying that he would take "delight" to cause this no less than he delights to grant prosperity and peace to those who obey him (Deut. 28:30, 53-57, 63), limits your options:

1 - God's threats are real. He really does "delight" to cause rape.

2 – God's threats are empty. He wants you to believe he'll cause you to be raped if you disobey, but he actually won't make good on his word in this case.

If Copan/Flannagan are correct, we have to wonder how many other ways of the pagan history writers the Hebrews also imitated.

The pagans also lied about history...should we thus conclude that because they did this in the culture that the OT authors lived in, the OT authors thus likely imitated this pagan practice no less than they imitated the pagan practice of exaggeration?

If you ever wish to sustain your position on these matters in a more scholarly and comprehensive way, you can contact me. You have expressed desire to end the debate, so thanks for the discussion. Barry Jones

barryjoneswhat@gmail.com

http://turchisrong.blogspot.com

 

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William Lane Craig's dishonesty

Christian Apologist William Lane Craig in 2015 posted to youtube an excerpt from one of his lectures wherein he defends as morally good the ancient Israelites carrying out their belief that God wanted them to slaughter the children of the pagans who were originally living in that land.

As might be expected, comments are disabled for this video, so the reader will have to ask whether the uploader left this alone as the default position solely by accident, or intended to preempt comments.  One this is for sure, whoever posted this surely knew that the biblical commands of God that the Hebrews should slaughter children have horrified many Christians and not just the average unbeliever.

The video at time code 11:55 ff has an audience member ask a 2-part question, 1) if the bible is correct that God is not a respecter of persons, then why did God treat ancient Israelite children better than God treated the Canaanite children, and 2) at time code 12:07 ff, what is Dr. Craig's response to other Christian scholars who have interpreted the genocide texts as non-literal.

Unfortunately, this audience member could not finish the second part of the question after he said "genocide" because at 12:08 ff, Dr. Craig, in screeching voice indicating worry, interrupts him and from there until the end of the video, gives his reasons for saying God did not intend his "slaughter the Canaanite" commands to be taken by the Israelites as permission to subject the Canaanites to "genocide".

Dr. Craig's interruption of this audience member was dishonest, since the video ends after Craig ends his speech about how calling it genocide is incorrect, thus indicating either a) he intentionally avoided explaining why his explanation is rejected by other Christian scholars, or b) he answered that part too, but chose to avoid including it in the portion he chose to upload, which still smacks of dishonesty, since the fact that other Christian scholars of the evangelical persuasion reject Craig's "apologetics" on this issue, indicates that those atheists who likewise reject his apologetics, are not doing so merely because they are spiritually blind and rebellious, but the option remains on the table that they have solid objective reasons to reject Craig's thesis.

Craig's reply was also dishonest because whether ancient Hebrews slaughtering children technically justifies being characterized as "genocide" or something different, is useless semantics.  The biblical texts showing God commanded his people to slaughter children are not a problem merely due to the average person thinking these actions fulfill the definition of "genocide".  We have a problem with them for the same reason we'd have a problem with anybody asserting that God told them to slaughter children.  The problem would exist whether you characterize such divine commands as genocide or Gong Show.

It is clear the audience member had a legitimate question as to how Craig answers other Christian scholars who disagree with Craig, who say these kinds of divine commands were never intended to be fulfilled in an absolute literal sense of exterminating all pagan men woman and children.  Two such scholars the audience member likely had in mind are Paul Copan and Matthew Flanagan, who jointly authored a book in which they make explicit how wrong they think Dr. Craig is to take these slaughter-passages literally.

The fact that Craig has publicly acknowledged elsewhere why he thinks Christian scholars like Copan and Flanagan get this wrong, does not erase the fact that whoever posted the video conveniently ended it with Craig avoiding answering this rather important concern with the fallacious red-herring of "it's not genocide!".

Now beyond the issue of Dr. Craig's dishonest attempt to avoid having to publicly acknowledge that other people equally spiritually alive as himself, do not find his apologetic argument at this point very convincing...

a - The problem of biblical genocide cannot be solved by appeal to a technical definition of "genocide".  It is the average person on the street, whether unbeliever, atheist bible critic, or Christian, not merely the liberal college professor, who finds immoral the general idea that God would ever tell his followers to kill children. So a technical discussion of what genocide is and is not, is nothing but dishonest distraction.

b - at 5:10 ff, Craig absurdly argues that by bringing about the deaths of these Canaanite children, God ensured their eternal salvation.  However this does nothing but rip the door of Pandora's Box off the hinges:

If God likes the idea of giving people a shortcut to heaven (i.e., killing them before they reach the age of accountability) then we have to wonder why God thinks allowing most of mankind to grow past this age and thus endure the horrible risk of eternal hell fire, is supposed to be better than the guarantee of heaven that results from all infanticide.  Some would argue that if we can do anything at all that will motivate God to grant salvation to a person, we should dedicate our lives to doing exactly this, and our motive is the fear of hell that God himself placed in our hearts.  Salvation can never possibly cost too much.

If Craig's theology is correct, every "baby" that is aborted goes directly to heaven, a good result.  This creates another problem because the vast majority of people naturally adopt consequentialism (i.e., whether an act is morally good or bad depends on what kind of effect it produces).  If abortion sends the baby directly to eternal salvation, that is an effect of abortion too, and it is improper for Christians to ignore the higher spiritual reality involved here and simplemindedly focus solely on the fact that abortion is a violation of God's prohibition on murder.

Worse, God himself takes personal responsibility for all murder in general anyway, and for forced abortion-by-sword and infanticide in particular:

 39 'See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deut. 32:39 NAU) 

 15 Though he flourishes among the reeds, An east wind will come, The wind of the LORD coming up from the wilderness; And his fountain will become dry And his spring will be dried up; It will plunder his treasury of every precious article.
 16 Samaria will be held guilty, For she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword, Their little ones will be dashed in pieces, And their pregnant women will be ripped open. (Hos. 13:15-16 NAU)

So Craig's theology confronts us with the classical conundrum of why God wants us to believe murder and abortion are immoral, when in fact on biblical grounds that logically necessitates the conclusion that what God does is immoral.  How can our murders and abortions be immoral for us, if the biblical truth is that God is causing us to commit these acts?  Isn't that rather like the puppeteer condemning the puppet for doing what the puppeteer wanted?

Craig admits he adopts divine-command theory (i.e., if God commanded it, it is good by definition, end of discussion) and if that is true, then the acts of the pagans in subjecting the Israelites to infanticide and forced abortion-by sword (Hosea 13, supra) is morally good, end of discussion.

Here is my reply to Dr. Craig's article on the subject of atheists, Christian scholars and  the issue of the divine command to slaughter pagan children.