My reply to Apologist Dr. Robert Bowman on Gospel of John's historical reliability

The following is the reply I made to Dr. Bowman over at his blog.  My comments did not immediately appear, so I presume Bowman wishes to review replies to him before allowing them to actually post.

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Dr. Bowman,

I find that many conservative scholars have no difficulties with the Muratorian Fragment's listing of canonical NT books, and no problems with its testimony to the traditional authorship of the gospels, but when the MF specifies that John's first idea for gospel authorship was that the disciples first starve themselves for three days, then jot down what would be "revealed" to each disciples, then suddenly, conservatives are quite sure that this part of the MF is a later interpolation or an otherwise distorted view of how John reacted to the prospect of writing a gospel.  And suddenly, they aren't so sure that the MF really goes back to the 2nd century.

What would be wrong with an atheist saying the MF is truthful when it paints John as believing he should get his gospel material via more esoteric means than simply jotting down his eyewitness memories? 

Indeed, John 16:14 and the book of Revelation (if the author of those two books is the same guy), combined with Clement of Alexandria's explicit denial that John desired to write "external facts" about Jesus as the prior Synoptic authors had already done, would justify the historical conclusion that John was open to getting the truth about Jesus in more ways than just what he or others remembered Jesus saying, the method that most conservative Protestant scholars insist was the case.  Which then means that for any saying of Christ now exclusive to John's gospel, we cannot reach a reasonable degree of certainty on whether or to what extent these words of Jesus correctly represent in Greek the same information Jesus' hearers got when he spoke to them in Aramaic.

If such a case can be historically justified, then I don't see how the skeptic who makes such argument would be unreasonable to use it to further argue that the gospel of John contains an unknown mixture of historical truth and historical falsehood or theologizing which cannot be disentangled, and as such, he is disqualified from the list of independent witnesses of Jesus' resurrection.

So my questions to you would be:  If John is the only person saying Thomas' infamous doubting was cured by his touching of the risen Christ's crucifixion wounds (John 20), what makes you so sure this is based purely on eyewitness recall?  Shouldn't you remain open to what Clement said, and allow that John's unique material about the risen Christ was written for a "spiritual" reason that is not the same as writing out the "external facts"?

For what reason do you think skeptics are unreasonable to assert that the esoteric nature of the uniquely Johannine gospel material disqualifies it from the possibility of answering questions about literal history, such as whether Jesus rose from the dead?

Update: October 16, 2017

Dr. Bowman responded as follows:

robbowman says:
October 16, 2017 at 11:22 am
Barry,
 WordPress mistakenly treated your comment as spam, but happily I found it and was able to approve it.
 I tend to privilege internal evidence from the text itself as well as evidence from roughly contemporaneous sources over evidence from much later secondary sources. Both the Muratorian Fragment and Clement of Alexandria are much later than John’s Gospel and so their statements need to be assessed in the light of the more directly relevant evidence. Where those later secondary sources appear to confirm conclusions based on the text itself or secondary sources closer to the time of the Gospel’s composition, naturally I will agree with them.
 I don’t see anything in John 16:14 or the Book of Revelation that would support the claim that the Gospel of John is not providing biographical material about Jesus.
Reply

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I replied as follows:

Dr. Bowman, thanks for rescuing me from the spam heap. 

So I guess I got "saved"...?

If a case can be made that some sayings of Jesus in the canonical gospels did not exist until after Jesus died, then it would seem it is hopeless to try and disentangle these sayings of late esoteric origin from those which the historical/biological Jesus actually mouthed...which might provide rational academic justification to the unbeliever to simply throw up their hands and say the gospel of John is disqualified by reason of ambiguity from being viewed as the written recollections of eyewitnesses who heard the historical Jesus talk.

The reason I say John 16:14 indicates some of the Johannine material on Jesus isn't biographical or historical, is because the author makes it clear that Jesus would continue giving "sayings" to the church beyond the grave, by means of the Paraclete.

 12 "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

 13 "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.

 14 "He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you.

 15 "All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you.   (Jn. 16:12-15 NAS)

Notes:

a - The things the disciples cannot now (i.e., 30 a.d.) bear, are things Jesus has to "say".

b - So when v. 13 asserts the Spirit, who will be speaking later won't speak on his own but rather convey only what he "hears", the author clearly intends the reader to believe that the Spirit will, sometime after Jesus dies, continue to convey what Jesus has to literally "say" to the church, this cannot be watered down to mere "guidance".  Inerrantist scholars appear to agree:

"This spiritual guide’s task then is pointedly summarized as receiving that which comes directly from Jesus and passing it on or messaging it (cf. vv. 13–15 for a communication triad) directly to the disciples. This type of passing on of significant information reminds me of the rabbinic concept of the passing on of tradition and assuming that such tradition has been unaltered in the process."

Borchert, G. L. (2002). Vol. 25B: John 12-21. The new American commentary, New International Version (Page 170). Nashville: Broadman & Holman.

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c - "things to come" (v. 13), ok, so when the gospels have Jesus describing future events or "things to come" (i.e., Matthew 24), this statement in John would justify the view that Jesus' eschatological statements were provided to the church by the Paraclete after he died, despite the fact that they present them in the gospels as if they were things he said before the crucifixion.  These sayings of Jesus conveyed by the Spirit are a case of him taking them FROM Jesus (v. 14-15), reinforcing the above-cited conclusion that the Spirit is not merely "guiding" the church but conveying what Jesus actually has to "say" beyond the grave (v. 12).

The point is that when you apologists assert the gospel of John constitutes eyewitness testimony obtained by typical memory or "recollection" of what the historically Jesus said and did before he died, you are giving the impression to the unbeliever that the person who wrote that gospel drew upon nothing other than his own and possibly other's eyewitness memories, the same way that anybody normally does when writing down a description of an event years after it took place.

That impression conflicts with John's own testimony that Jesus would continue giving his sayings to the church from beyond the grave, naturally raising the question as to whether some of the Christ-sayings in John were things the apostles never heard Jesus say until after he died.

This then raises the problem as to which Johannine sayings of Christ were those that the biological/historical Jesus actually mouthed, and which sayings of Christ were those that the church never knew until the Spirit conveyed them to the post-crucifixion church.

Without a convincing alternative interpretation of John 16, and without coming up with a miracle to help us disentangle in John the pre-crucifixion sayings of Christ from the sayings he gave from beyond the grave, it would seem unbelievers have here a reasonable academic justification to consider the question of JOhn's eyewitness nature to be hopelessly confused and to thus disqualify John's gospel from the list of resurrection witnesses apologists typically depend on.

And all this is to say nothing of the equally significant objection that if Matthew, Mark or Luke or their sources (Peter?) had remembered Jesus talking in the high-Christological way he does in John's gospel, they would not likely have "chosen to omit" such powerful theological teachings anymore than a modern day author of a book entitled "Sexual Scandals of the Clinton Presidency" would be likely to "chose to omit" all mention of the Monica Lewinsky affair.  So the Synoptic failure to echo Christ-sayings now exclusively limited to John's gospel, is a rational reason to suspect that John's Christ-sayings originated in circumstances far more complex/esoteric than simply what somebody remembered the biological/historical Jesus actually mouthing before he died.

Update: October 24, 2017:  Dr. Bowman has indicated he would like to have the last word on the matters I raised, and that my messages will not be allowed until I more directly address his main post:

robbowman says:

October 16, 2017 at 5:52 pm
Barry,

Your argument from John 16:14 fails to support the crucial aspect of your claim, namely, that what the Holy Spirit would tell the apostles after he came would then be written in the Gospels as though they were pre-Crucifixion sayings of Jesus. There is no reason not to take John 16:14 to mean that the apostles were going to receive revelation from the Holy Spirit that would be presented as such. It does not present Jesus as saying that he will continue to give “sayings” through the Holy Spirit that were then to be reported as though they were given before the Holy Spirit came.
I’ve allowed the discussion up to this point, but any further comments will need to address one or more of the arguments presented in the blog piece.

Update November 2, 2017:  Bowman allow me one more post, as follows:

Barry Jones says:
October 24, 2017 at 8:06 pm
Dr. Bowman,
 Not sure why you are implying with your last sentence that I wasn’t addressing “one or more of the arguments presented in the blog piece”
 You say in your blog piece “In short, we ought to be somewhat skeptical when we are told that the “Johannine” Jesus speaks about himself in ways radically different from the Jesus of the Synoptics. The burden of proof should be assigned to those who make this claim in order to depreciate the historical reliability of Jesus’ speech in the Gospel of John.”
 Thus you argued that skeptics should be required to give argument why they deprecate the historical reliability of John’s gospel. Were my first two posts here not directly relevant to the task of deprecating the historical reliability of Jesus’ speech in the gospel of John”, even if you thought my arguments unpersuasive thereto?
 First, my comments about the Muratorian Fragment directly speak to what kind of person John was and whether his ideas about gospel history are similar to those held by modern conservative Christians. John was prone to obtaining his gospel material from visions induced by starvation. That surely is relevant to your first argument “#1: The Gospel of John has historical value as an ancient biography of Jesus”, unless you now clarify that when you say “eyewitness”, you also mean those people who get their material by vision?
 For example, my question to you from my first post: “What would be wrong with an atheist saying the MF is truthful when it paints John as believing he should get his gospel material via more esoteric means than simply jotting down his eyewitness memories?” Isn’t answering that question relevant to the proposition “The Gospel of John has historical value as an ancient biography of Jesus”?
 If the MF is telling the truth about how John desired to obtain his gospel material, then the more you paint him as an eyewitness, the more he becomes an eyewitness who wishes to mix material obtained by vision with material from his own eyewitness memories, to obtain gospel material…a point that surely is relevant to your attempt to paint John as an “eyewitness” and that “#1: The Gospel of John has historical value as an ancient biography of Jesus.”
 Second, if you wish me to rebut with new argument, well, one of your premises was
“#2: The Gospel of John was written by an eyewitness.”, but you didn’t make any specific arguments thereto, instead, you simply a) cited the chapter and verses references in John which you believe show eyewitness authorship, then b) assured the reader that rebuttals to skeptical attempts to explain away this claim could be found in the works of Andreas Köstenberger, and that Richard Bauckham “offers a variety of independent lines of evidence in support.”
 Did you intend to make argument to support the premise?
 Of critical importance is your allowing as possibly true the view of Bauckman that the author of John’s gospel was a “John the Elder”, when you say:
 “Note that the evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the author was an eyewitness even if there remains some uncertainty about who he was. Bauckham, for example, does not think the author was John the son of Zebedee but another disciple called John the Elder.”
 How do you propose a modern person can make an assessment of John the Elder’s general credibility, when in fact conservative Christian scholars disagree on whether he even existed? For example Dr. Monte Shanks argues in “Papias and the New Testament” (Wipf & Stock Pub, July 8, 2013) that it is only from Eusebius’ chiliast-biased “misunderstanding” of Papias, that such a figure as John the elder arises. Jerome in De Viris Illustribus admits the confusion problem in the church and denies that the Elder and Apostle are the same man.

Bowman replied, making even more clear his desire that the discussion be concluded:

robbowman says:
October 24, 2017 at 10:20 pm
Barry,
 You wrote: 

Not sure why you are implying with your last sentence that I wasn’t addressing “one or more of the arguments presented in the blog piece[.]” You say in your blog piece “In short, we ought to be somewhat skeptical when we are told that the “Johannine” Jesus speaks about himself in ways radically different from the Jesus of the Synoptics. The burden of proof should be assigned to those who make this claim in order to depreciate the historical reliability of Jesus’ speech in the Gospel of John.” Thus you argued that skeptics should be required to give argument why they deprecate the historical reliability of John’s gospel. Were my first two posts here not directly relevant to the task of deprecating the historical reliability of Jesus’ speech in the gospel of John”, even if you thought my arguments unpersuasive thereto? 

Your quotation from my post came from the conclusion of my fifth point, which was that Jesus sometimes speaks in the Synoptics in ways that are usually considered “Johannine.” Yet you did not address this point. Nor did you address any of the arguments presented in any of the other nine points of my article.
 You wrote: 

John was prone to obtaining his gospel material from visions induced by starvation. That surely is relevant to your first argument “#1: The Gospel of John has historical value as an ancient biography of Jesus”, unless you now clarify that when you say “eyewitness”, you also mean those people who get their material by vision?

 I gave three arguments in defense of that point. The Muratorian Fragment was not relevant to any of those three arguments.
 Your assertion in any case distorts what the Fragment states. It claims that Andrew, John, and others fasted for three days (not that they “starved themselves”; a three-day fast was not at all unusual in their culture) while they sought divine guidance as to which of them should write, and that Andrew — not John — received a revelation that John should write the whole text while the others reviewed it. Here is what the Fragment says:
 The fourth of the Gospels is that of John, [one] of the disciples. To his fellow disciples and bishops, who had been urging him [to write], he said, ‘Fast with me from today to three days, and what will be revealed to each one let us tell it to one another.’ In the same night it was revealed to Andrew, [one] of the apostles, that John should write down all things in his own name while all of them should review it.
 Do you see it? The Fragment says absolutely nothing whatsoever about John receiving any sort of revelation through the three-day fast. Only Andrew is said to have had a revelation. And it was a revelation concerning how they should proceed with producing a new Gospel text, not “visions” that supplied the actual content of the new Gospel.
 As to why I didn’t offer a detailed defense of my second point, which was that the Gospel of John was written by an eyewitness, there are two obvious reasons. First, it’s a blog, not a periodical article or a monograph. Second, this blog post addresses the issue of the historicity of the “I am” sayings in the context of evangelical scholarship on the Gospels (note the opening paragraphs). You might just as irrelevantly ask why I didn’t defend the existence of Jesus as why I didn’t defend in detail the view that the Gospel of John was written by an eyewitness. So I referred to some good work on the subject that most evangelical scholars would acknowledge as at least important and relevant work on the subject.
 Finally, whether the author was John the apostle, son of Zebedee, or another man named John the Elder, ultimately has no bearing on the cogency of the internal evidence that the author (whoever he was) was an eyewitness.

robbowman says:
October 24, 2017 at 10:22 pm
Barry, please be advised that we will not be engaging in any protracted discussion here. As far as I am concerned, this exchange should be considered to have come to a conclusion.
Reply

I wrote one more reply as follows, but for right now it sits waiting to be approved:

Dr. Bowman,
Are you willing to defend your theory of John's historical reliability, in a formal or informal written debate (or series of formal or informal written debates) online, at any location of your choosing, where I set forth the full panoply of reasons, one at a time, to justify viewing John's gospel as historically unreliable?  I am quite aware of, and have studied, conservative Christianity's best defenses on the matter from "An Introduction To the New Testament", D.A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo, Leon Morris, Zondervan Publishing House, © 1992, as well as those of Guthrie in his Introduction, and various online defenses by other evangelical Christians. 

The only reason I don't attempt to justify my use of the MF evidence is because you have now requested, immediately after accusing me of distorting the MF, that the matter be considered closed.  You clearly do not wish to allow me to defend my interpretation of the MF testimony HERE, so since that is your idea of scholarship, I'll comply.  But I provide point by point rebuttal to your latest over at my own blog, since apparently you and I don't agree on what constitutes serious academic discussion.  No, your blog wasn't a monograph, but then again, exactly how much a blogger will allow discussion of his controversial ideas at his own blog, is a very subjective thing.  That's why I offer you the challenge, supra.  If "blog" is the hangup, then pick whatever other internet forum you wish so we can launch all out war on this matter.

Surely you have to admit, there's at least one belief John had that I've disproven.  John 3:20.    

If the Jehovah Witnesses would be abusing John 3:20 in applying it to you, because of your willingness to debate their denials of Christ's deity, then under the same logic, you'd be abusing John 3:20 the same way in applying it to me, because of my willingness to debate your views about John's historical reliability.  Yet if you admit I'm free from the condemnation described in that verse, you part ways with pretty much all over theologically conservative evangelicals.

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. 

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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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my challenge to Henry B. Smith Jr. of biblearchaeology.org

After perusing Henry B. Smith Jr's attempts to deny that the Pentateuch has God ordering the Hebrews to commit genocide, I emailed the following challenge to him:




This was Mr. Smith's reply:




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First, my argument was simple:  How can the Copan/Flannagan thesis of "dispossession only" make God look morally superior to the popular "literal genocide" thesis adopted by so many conservative Christian scholars, when to flee the promised land was to end up arriving in inhospitable waterless land that would surely cause Amalekite children's deaths to be prolong with the suffering of hunger and thirst?  Wouldn't a war of absolute genocide have been the lesser of the two evils to inflict on Amalekite children?

Second, Mr. Smith says he suspects that his dialoging with me about this subject nwould result in endless back and forth, but why should this bother an apologist, who surely knows that Christianity itself is nothing but one big collection of ceaseless back and forth in-house debates about God's allegedly perspicuous word?  Why would Smith take the strong fundamentalist stance he does on his publicly accessible website?  Does he think his arguments are so conclusive that any back and forth arises solely from the willful ignorance of the atheist choosing to debate him?

Third, how else could I have worded my specific challenge so that Mr. Smith wouldn't think it likely to result in endless back and forth?  Should I have said the bible doesn't exist?  Would he have felt comfortable believing debating that proposition with me wouldn't result in too much back and forth?

Fourth, why did Mr. Smith bring up his belief that my denial of God's existence leaves me no justifiable grounds for my moral arguments?  What does an atheist's ability to ground their moral beliefs, have to do with the biblical data which indicate God's intent to dispossess the Canaanites would have caused more suffering to the Canaanites than a quick death on the battlefield?

Smith seems to be arguing that if I am an atheist, then I can have no reasonable or rationally justified moral objection to ancient tribes who force others to die slowly from starvation, thirst and exposure.

I think Smith has misunderstood the point of my argument:   When one takes the geographical realities into account (at least those involved in Saul dispossessing the Amalekites in the particular circumstances at play in 1st Samuel 15, God's "allowing" them to flee to outside the borders of the promised land would be to "allow" them to live in waterless desert regions already inhospitable to life, and to there endure threats from existing pagans who previously snapped up the few places that had water or vegetation.

So the apologists who think the Copan/Flannagan "dispossession only" thesis successfully defends God from the charge of being a moral monster, only think so because they never thought about what fleeing to outside the borders of the promised land would entail.

To dispossess the Canaanites in the circumstances described in the bible, is to send them running for their lives, leaving behind most of their food and water and farmland and cattle, and end up forcing them and their kids to live in territory that is far more inhospitable to life, whose few areas of vegetation/water would already be jealously claimed and guarded by other pagans who had previously been "dispossessed" by the Israelites.

Mr. Smith will have to excuse me if I believe I have good grounds for saying that his alleged fear that the conversation would result in endless "back and forth" was a bullshit excuse, and his real problem was a genuine fear that he cannot refute my argument that the "dispossession, kill only those who stay behind and fight" thesis makes God to be a more sadistic monster than the thesis that God ordered absolute genocide.

As far as my ability as an atheist to justify my moral belief that causing children to die slowly is a greater immorality than just killing them immediately, that is the belief held by Copan/Flannagan and their followers.  I'm merely pointing out that the Copan/Flannagan thesis ironically has God desiring the kind of result that these modern Christians themselves would have to agree involves more suffering of children than the quick death required under the absolute genocide thesis.

If Christians don't like the idea of their God commanding the immediate death of children, they likely think God would be more cruel if he wanted to force those pagan kids into circumstances that would prolong their suffering from starvation and thirst.

Since the moral problem detected by Copan and Flannagan is only exacerbated by their "dispossession" thesis, that is sufficient to critique them for it.  Exactly how an atheist could justify the moral belief that causing children to suffer is immoral, is utterly irrelevant.  I do nothing more than point out the irony that Copan and Flannagan's efforts to make god less brutish, ironically achieve the very opposite.   Such scholars would suffer defeat under that critique even if we assume atheism cannot allow rational justification for any moral viewpoint.