Distinguished Professor
of Old Testament
New
Atheists and the Old Testament
An
apologetics addendum on matters relating to the Old Testament can include a
great variety of items. Guided by the author of this volume and my own thoughts
as to what may be of most value, I have chosen to focus on three items that
might assist us in appreciating some of the major apologetics issues for this
era. I will begin with a consideration of some of the chief issues addressed
more popularly in recent pro-atheist books. I will then consider the so-called
minimalists and criticisms of the historical witness of the Bible. Finally, I
will look at perhaps the most important apologetic issue in the Old Testament,
that of Deuteronomy, Joshua and divinely ordained genocide.1
New Atheists and the
Old Testament
First,
I would like to deal with a few of the specific charges made by the “new
atheists.” Space does not permit me to examine the details of every issue that
is discussed. So I will attempt to focus on some of the main charges in three
well-known books by authors also famous for taking this position: Sam Harris,
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason; Richard Dawkins,
The God Delusion; and Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion
Poisons Everything.2
Harris
draws in references to the Old Testament here and there to sup- port his
opinion. A favorite text is Deuteronomy 13:6-16, partly quoted on page 18 and
partly on page 82. For Harris obedience requires that you stone “your son or
daughter” when they “return from yoga class advocating the worship of Krishna.”
It also justifies the Inquisition. The latter of course is an obvious error by
Harris. It may have been used to justify the Inquisition, but that does not
mean it was interpreted correctly. In fact, to apply this text to a young
participant in yoga is misleading. First, the text uses a verb for “entice” (Hebrew
root swt) that explicitly refers to those who are successful in leading others
to do something ( Judges 1:14), often contrary to God’s will (as in Jezebel’s
leadership of Ahab [1 Kings 21:25]). Second, the statements attributed to those
condemned to die are commands (first person cohortatives), “We must worship
other gods.” Third, the issue here is not one of personal belief, but
explicitly one attempting to lead the community away from its ancestral faith.
Fourth, all this ignores the ancient context of this legislation. Deuteronomy
is presented as an ideal set of laws and punishments in an ideal theocracy
where the nation follows God. This is not unique. The legal collection of
Hammurabi, hundreds of years earlier, functioned in a similar manner. It was an
ideal set of laws designed to demonstrate the justice and righteousness of the
king. Despite thousands of Old Babylonian texts, including court decisions, we
have virtually no certain example in which this legal collection was appealed
to in order to adjudicate a specific case. The same is virtually true of
Deuteronomy. In fact, if we were to read the history of Israel in the Old
Testament the picture is not that of a people fearfully observing this law lest
they face death at the hands of their own family. The reality as presented is
just the opposite. In every generation huge numbers of the people turn away
from God with impunity. In fact, the era of Ahab and Jezebel is one of the few
where their assassinations at the hands of Jehu are attributed in part to their
sin. Yet even here the later prophet Hosea promises divine punishment on the
dynasty of Jehu for the excessive brutality of Jehu’s massacre of the Baal
worshipers (Hosea 1:4). Mercy triumphs over judgment, as it does so often in
the Old Testament. Thus the most severe of commands may be set forth at one
place, but God’s mercy enables Israel to accomplish what they could not or
would not. At one point, in Deuteronomy 10:16, God commands Israel to
circumcise their hearts. But later God promises that he will circumcise the
hearts of the people (Deuteronomy 30:6). Yes, we can cherry pick harsh texts in
the Bible. However, in the larger context the picture is different. God is
characterized by mercy rather than judgment (Hosea 6:6; Matthew 9:13; 12:7).
The
first problem that Richard Dawkins addresses in his chapter on the Old
Testament concerns Noah’s generation. The morality of Genesis 6–9 is
“appalling” because God takes “a dim view of humans,” so he drowns them with
their children and innocent animals. A few points escape Mr. Dawkins’
thirty-six-word summary at the top of page 238. First, according to the text
God created all these people and thus holds an implicit right over their
existence. Second, the rationale for the flood was the violence that filled the
earth so that, with the exception of Noah, all the people devoted themselves to
violence (Genesis 6:11-13). Unlike the comparable ancient Near Eastern flood
account that Dawkins cites (Utnapishtim of the seventh-century b.c. Epic of
Gilgamesh), the flood did not come because the gods were fed up with the noise
of so many people (i.e., a means of population control). Rather, the Bible
ascribes a moral cause, uncontrolled murder. This, of course, is the reason for
the prohibition of murder immediately after the flood in Genesis 9:6. Third, in
a text very conscious of chronology and sequence, it is important to note that
Noah was five hundred years old (Genesis 5:32) at the point when the events
leading up to the flood begin, and six hundred years old (Genesis 7:6) when the
flood itself began. This would allow up to one hundred years during which Noah
was building the ark and preparing for the flood. The story thus presents a
century of mercy, during which everyone who cared to learn of the coming
judgment, symbolized by the ark that was under construction, could learn of it
from Noah. Unlike the Utnapishtim story, there was no command to keep this a
secret. That no one, aside from Noah’s family, turned from their murderous
violence (cf. Genesis 4:23-24) itself testifies to the wickedness of that
generation and their wanton destruction of what God had created. Finally, God
could not have ended that generation and its murderous inclinations without
destroying it entirely. Note that the text never states that children were
killed. This is not to deny that the picture evoked would have included whole
families. Rather, it stresses the terrible consequences of murder and violence
in the eyes of God. Neither the murders by Cain or Lamech ended in their own
deaths. But this merciful act of God only led to greater and greater violence.
Perhaps Mr. Dawkins has a better solution to end this growing cycle of
bloodletting. The author of Genesis did not. That world ended and a new one was
created, beginning with the righteousness of Noah.
Dawkins
then turns his attention to Lot and his daughters in Genesis 19. The focus of
Dawkins seems to be that of Lot offering his daughters to the angry mob who
wished to rape the “men” who had come to warn Lot and his family of the
impending judgment against their hometown of Sodom. This is paralleled with the
terrible Judges 19 story of the gang rape of the Levite’s concubine in Gibeon.
Describing this as a “misogynistic ethos,” Dawkins manages both to ignore the
purpose of these stories and to violate the basic canons of reading Hebrew
narrative. First, the purpose of these stories is not to present the ideals of
how women (or men) should be treated in ancient Israel. It is to describe the
ultimate in the lack of hospitality in both Sodom and Gibeon. Common morality
throughout the ancient world (and in Israel) demanded that anyone visiting a
town should be shown courtesy and hospitality. The evil men of both of these
towns were not lusty homosexuals but rather those who rejected this tenet of
common morality and sought to degrade and abuse visitors. In both cases their
utter violation of hospitality brought terrible judgment upon them, their town
and (for the incident of Judges 19) their tribe. This selfishness and lack of
concern for the vulnerable lies behind Ezekiel 16:49, which identifies Sodom’s
sin as “they did not help the poor and needy.” Its main concern was not
sexuality any more than these stories were intended as models on how to treat
one’s daughters or other female family members. No text in the Bible presents
Lot or the Levite as moral ideals. Rather, these texts describe corruption and
degeneration on both sides. It is probably for this reason that those who
constructed the order of the canon for the Christian Old Testament chose to put
Ruth immediately after Judges. The scroll of Ruth describes a beautiful love
story of faith in which a Moabitess freely takes on devotion to the God of
Israel out of love for her mother-in-law, and through this act comes to fall in
love with Boaz of Bethlehem. The presentation here is less about the role of
women or men, and more about living in a world where love, peace and family can
still exist as values despite the presence of cruelty and violence.
Hitchens
begins his attack on the Old Testament with a critique of the Ten Commandments
as found in Exodus 20.3 His first attack lies with the warning of Exodus 20:5,
where the worship of other gods invites divine punishment “to the third and
fourth generation.” For Hitchens this demonstrates the biblical rejection of
the “reasonable assumption” that children are not guilty of their parents’
offenses. The text does not make this claim. Actually, the text speaks of
“visiting or bringing the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth
generation of those who hate me.” First, note the term hate. In this context of
a covenant it refers to disloyalty, and the greatest disloyalty toward God is
the abandonment of this deity to worship other gods. Thus, this is not a slight
or insignificant offense. In treaty literature, hating someone creates an enemy
and provides justification for war against them and for their death. Second,
there is a reason for the third and fourth generation, rather than for the
first and second or some later set of generations. It defines the length of
time that people might expect to live so they could to see their grandchildren
and great-grandchildren. Thus the text is suggesting that the effect of someone
turning away from God will affect their family for as long as they live. The
impact of a person’s faith or lack thereof has a direct impact on his or her
own family, and that effect remains throughout a lifetime. This is not the
transference of guilt, which the Hebrew text does not claim. It is instead the
inevitable impact parents and grandparents have on their families; something
Mr. Hitchens does not mention. The following verse contrasts the effect of sin
to those in a person’s family while he or she is alive, with the effect of
faithfulness and loyalty for “a thousand generations.” There is no end to the
positive effect that one’s family can receive for one’s faithfulness. This is
clear from the manner in which Abraham was Promised Land, descendants and
blessing as he remained faithful to God in test after test (Genesis 12–22).
The
next complaint seems to be related to Hitchens’s view that the command for
everyone to keep the Sabbath must be the sort of thing that “a Babylonian or
Assyrian emperor might have ordered . . . to keep working and only to relax
when the absolutist says so.”4 However, there are no Babylonian or Assyrian
legal collections (or any other known ancient Near Eastern collection of laws)
that envisions a time of rest for anyone, least of all slaves and work animals.
The stipulation that this should take place one day in every seven is unknown
outside the Bible. No Babylonian or Assyrian ever mandated a period of rest
like this. It is unheard of and unique to ancient Israel. That such an amazing
mercy for the most vulnerable elements in society should be interpreted as
characteristic power madness by an ancient Near Eastern dictators demonstrates
just how far Hitchens has wandered from a correct understanding of the culture
the Bible was writ- ten in. Because of this ignorance the contextual
significance of the Sabbath law is turned upside down and ascribed the opposite
of the intended meaning, which would have been clear to any slave in the
ancient world.
I
could go on and examine each of the charges with a point by point refutation.
However, the limitations of space do not permit this. Instead, I have chosen
three well-known books and examined the first one or two charges against the
Old Testament in each. Repeatedly, misunderstandings of the language of the Old
Testament and of the culture of the ancient world lead to absurd allegations
that fit within a predetermined frame- work attacking Israel’s God as he is
portrayed in the Old Testament. Careful study of the text and its context
consistently reveal the opposite of the intended allegations. I will now turn
to three major issues of the Old Testament: minimalism and genocide.
Notes
1.
There are, of course, other important apologetics issues; for example, the
development of “monotheism” in ancient Israel. Was it early in Israel’s history
or something appearing only later in the seventh century b.c.? For more of this
see Richard S. Hess, Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007).
2.
Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New
York: W. W. Norton, 2004). Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton
Miff lin, 2006). Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons
Everything (New York: Twelve, 2007).
3.
Hitchens, God Is Not Great, pp. 98-100.
4.
Ibid., p. 99.
Source: Biologos
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