They shall be burnt with fire (various, burning)

So, because Steve Wells was not quite satisfied with my last post because he felt I didn't fully address the issue of What the Bible says about burning people to death (and I didn't, because I felt the burning in Isaiah chapter 33 was figurative language), I'm going to take a sidebar here and talk about that subject. I have already talked about capital punishment in Exodus and the nature of Hell in John, but I'm sure I'll need to revisit those topics.

Let's start with Genesis 38, and Judah's intent to burn his daughter-in-law to death. This is indeed cruel, and it is in fact unwarranted; this is not God's will, but Judah reacting in anger to a situation that he came to realize he was implicated in the matter. In Joshua 7, where we read about the killing of Achan, yes, he and his family were burned up, but note they were stoned to death first; this is not burning someone to death. 2Samuel 23 is David talking about certain "sons of belial" who are not explicitly identified; it seems reasonable that David is simply saying that evil people will see judgment, perhaps he's even talking about the fires of Hell, although the idea seems iffy.

With all that aside, the two verses from Leviticus are definitely capital offenses that are to be dealt with by burning the offenders. I don't think there's any getting around it, but it's possibly worth noting that both of these offenses are easy to avoid (and a woman who is a prostitute who isn't the daughter of a priest has committed adultery, and would also be put to death, I assume). For some reason, these particular acts--both of a sexual nature--are considered serious enough by God to warrant this punishment, and I don't know why. So what can be said about it? Well, some commentaries point out that the passage in Joshua about Achan suggests that these offenses are trated by first killing the offenders (probably by stoning) and then burning the bodies afterwards. Of course being stoned to death isn't painless either, but it's likely much less painful than being burned.

Okay, so God burned some people to death himself? Let's see those verses. In Leviticus 10, while it says God sent fire to burn Nadab and Abihu to death, if you look at the immediate context, their bodies had to be carried away afterwards, showing that there bodies were not consumed by the fire. This very likely was some sort of supernatural fire, and tradition has it that their bodies were actually unharmed; their death may have not been painful. While I of course can't say that with complete certainty, it is a possibility, and so it may also be the case in these other verses. (Remember Moses and the burning bush that wasn't consumed? It seems there is something that is a manifestation of God that looks like fire, but technically isn't fire.) The Numbers 16 and 1Kings 1 passages do say the men were consumed, so perhaps that's definitely real fire. The Deuteronomy 32 passage definitely sounds like figurative language, especially since it says "burned with hunger". Psalm 21, like much of the Psalms, is being poetic, not necessarily prophetic. Isaiah chapters 24, 33, and 47 are likely symbolic of destruction rather than literal fire, and also the Ezekiel 15 and Jeremiah 49 passages.

Now as I said above, I already addressed the subject of hell, and in that post, I believe I did find that Hell is a place full of fire. However, I also discussed two possibilities with respect to Hell: (1) it is possible that Jesus's death on the cross meant that Hell is no longer a place where people go, because Jesus paid the price for the sin of the world; and (2) it is possible that the burning in Hell is only temporary, and souls are consumed by the fires of Hell. However, I don't think it can be denied that there is an experience of burning on the part of (at least some of) the souls that are in Hell.

As the scripture hath said (John 7:53—8:11)

John 7:53—8:11 is an interesting little vignette for a number of reasons. One of them is that more recent scholarship than the King James Version suggests that it simply doesn't belong here. It's interesting to me that while common sense tells you the farther away from an original manuscript in time you go the less you can be sure of accuracy, in actuality, the reverse turns out to be true. The more time that passes, the more archeological evidence you collect, the more study of existing manuscripts, etc., and you actually get a better understanding. The ancient manuscripts that have been collected of the New Testament show that this passage was almost certainly not part of the original book of John, as some don't have it, some have it in other places in the book, and some even have it in a few places in Luke's Gospel. It doesn't belong.

That being said, there's something about this story that seems so appropriately Jesus-like. Jesus stands up against hypocritical morality. Jesus sides with an outcast. Jesus forgives a sinner. If it's fake, it's a remarkably authentic fake, and I, along with many other Christians, really like this story. Anyway, since it's in the KJV, we deal with it.

There's a number of noteworthy things about this story. The men who bring this woman supposedly caught in adultery seem to be missing something; adultery is usually committed with a partner, yes? Where is the man? Also, it's a great mystery what Jesus is writing on the ground, but many have suspected that whatever he wrote, it played a part in what unfolded. Perhaps he wrote the names of the men and their own sins? One more thing, and I admit I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think in the Talmud it actually says that when someone is to be stoned to death, the people throwing the stones must be free of sin, so Jesus is using their own rule against them. Oh and I thought of another: Jesus never says adultery isn't a capital crime, he simply refuses to carry out the sentence.

The SAB asks how should adultery be punished? Well, it's pretty clear there in Leviticus, isn't it? As I just said in the last paragraph, Jesus never denied the Law. However, the Law was for the Jews, and doesn't apply to anyone else. I'm surprised that the SAB only puts these two verses there as there are a lot of instances in the Bible of adultery both being punished and not being punished. When I eventually get back to finish the Old Testament, I've got a heck of a story for 2Samuel 11.

Does God approve of capital punishment? Without even looking at the given verses, I know the answer is yes. There are a lot of things in the Mosaic Law that are capital crimes. The fact that there are people who committed these crimes without being put to death (and as I said above about adultery, I'm sure there are more than two instances in the Bible) doesn't negate the fact that these penalties exist. Once again, these are laws specifically for Jews.

Now, back to verse 12, which should be immediately following chapter seven without interruption.

The sons of Jerubbaal, which are threescore and ten (Judges 8)

I guess it's fair to say that in Judges 8, we see a fair bit of Gideon's bad side. Clearly the man is a good military leader, but not a real "people person". Well, in general; he does manage to flatter some of the men of Ephraim enough to get them to lay off criticizing him.

Other than that, though, we're not really seeing the best of Gideon as he threatens to beat up the men of Succoth and tear down the tower of Penuel. After he finishes his military campaign, he does that and more. This is an unfortunate tendency particularly among Middle Eastern peoples, and really mankind in general: the tendency to view things in stark black and white, and declare that anyone who does not ally with you must therefore be your mortal enemy. This is an attitude not endorsed by the Bible, but often observed by it.

There's also a little vignette in which Gideon tries to get his son to do some killings, but his son isn't willing to do it. Honestly, I'm not sure what to think of this. On one hand, once again this is wartime, and the context shows that the men were killers themselves, and therefore may have fully deserved the death penalty. On the other hand, I do wonder how old this son was, as the Bible never says specifically, and what exactly was going through his and Gideon's mind. What sort of a man is Gideon, that he wants his sons to do his killing for him? Why does he have 70 sons, for crying out loud? Actually, the thing about 70 sons from "many wives" is that the time frame is not stated, but you might wonder if most of these wives and children came after the military conquest. Is Gideon taking advantage of his status as a celebrity? (My comments on polygamy here.)

Actually, there is an offer made to Gideon to become king of Israel, but he turns it down. Instead, he asks for a share of the plunder from the battle, and uses it to make a fancy shirt. This turns out to be a bad thing, because for some reason, people seem to start to worship the shirt like an idol. The one really good thing Gideon does is try to turn people back to God, but he somehow ends up doing the opposite in the end for many people.

Until the children of Israel have inherited every man his inheritance (Joshua 16-22)

Maybe I should have covered more material in the last post, as most of the issues, well, pretty much through the rest of the book are repeats of the ones I already covered. We see numerous notes of various Canaanites that couldn't be driven out, a giant or two here and there, casting lots to determine a course of action or division of land, etc. This is really the part of the book of Joshua that's much more on the dry side, being a list of a conquest here, a list of cities there, and I'm going to skim over it pretty lightly for the most part, pausing to comment on notable things.

I think actually, the latter part of Chapter 17 is notable in that it illustrates much more fully the principle of what's going on when conquests of parts of the land fail. The tribe of Manasseh complains to Joshua that they don't have enough land, and Joshua tells them that they'd have plenty if they'd just drive the Perizzites out of it. Manasseh complains that the Perizzites "have chariots of iron", and therefore they can't possibly win. Joshua tells them to buck up and just do the job they have to do, since God is on their side. It seems quite clear to me that the only thing holding back this conquest was the fear of the people.

Joshua 20, while having no notes in the SAB is an interesting one for reasons that I'll probably delve into more deeply when I go back to the Mosaic Law. The "cities of refuge" are a concept that has to do with the laws in Israel about manslaughter. If a person killed another by accident, they could be protected by going to one of those cities according to the law. There, a person would stand trial instead of being subject to vigilante justice from the victim's close relative, the "avenger of blood".

Joshua 21 contains what is claimed to be an error, but while I think there may indeed be an error here, I think the SAB has misidentified the error. Or, that is to say that the error is not here so much as it is in the parallel passage in 1Chronicles 6. If you look carefully at that chapter, there are two things to note. First, that chapter is not about apportioning the land by tribes, but about listing cities given to the Levites, so the precise locations are not so important. Secondly, and this is the real problem, 1 Chronicles as a chapter names every tribe of Israel except for Dan, which is the tribe mentioned in Joshua 21. I suspect the real error is the omission of Dan's name from the list. Whether that was a scribal error or an omission in the original document (which could have been on purpose, actually) we can't say, choose what you like, or give me another suggestion as many people have done.

Joshua 22 discusses Joshua giving an address to the tribes who had land on the West side of the Jordan, and it turns out that all these years (the conquest took somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 years to finish) these tribes stayed faithful in their promise to stand by the others, and Joshua commends them for this. I myself am rather impressed, as I don't get the impression that there was really a lot of unity among the tribes in general.

Well, It looks like I might be able to finish this book in one more post, we'll see when I get to it.

Achar, the troubler of Israel, who transgressed in the thing accursed. (Joshua 7)

So now we come to the topic of Achan. Yes, the title of this post is a correctly copied verse from 1Chronicles, and I'm surprised this typo was not noted in the SAB, as Bible critics love to point out scribal errors, which this might be, although it could also be a matter of several hundred years' difference in Hebrew dialect. It is notable that achar is the Hebrew word for "trouble", and the names Achan and Achor that are found in this passage are forms of the word.

The first thing noted in this chapter is that the Israelite leaders rip their clothes, fall face down on the ground and put dust on their heads. This is noted as being absurd and intolerant, and I don't know why it was marked with either. This sort of behavior may seem strange to modern readers, but it was common practice in those days, and in fact may still be among modern Orthodox Jews, though I am not sure about that. It's just a way to show extreme sorrow. As for intolerance, I'm stumped as to what that's supposed to mean

Unless it's referring not to the actions of Joshua and the elders, but to the situation they find themselves in that causes them to be upset. God allowed them to suffer their first defeat at the city of Ai because (as it turns out) one person had done something wrong. As I said in my previous post, whatever this "accursed thing" was that Achan stole is not specifically named (unless it's the garment and precious metal mentioned in verse 21, which is possible if not likely), but the language used to describe it indicates that whatever it was, it was something of some pagan significance that he had no right to have in his possession. Why is it such a big deal?

The Apostle Paul said "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," a saying similar to the modern "One bad apple ruins the whole bunch." This is the point of the extremes of Holy war. The people and culture of Jericho had to be completely destroyed, and Achan saving some item he'd taken from the city was simply not acceptable.

In fact, shocking as it seems, it was apparently so very unacceptable that Achan along with his family and possessions were stoned to death and then burned. It's my personal opinion that God decided to have Achan punished so particularly severely in order to make him an object lesson for the rest of the nation. Just as the very first battle they fought in Canaan was won in a particularly spectacular manner to impress upon the people that God was with them in power, so the first transgression was punished in a spectacular manner to impress upon the people that while God was with them, He wasn't going to allow moral compromise.

As for the question of who Achan's father was, that's a simple matter that I've touched on before with other individuals, but I'll repeat here since it's so simple. The word "grandfather" never appears in the Bible. It was customary, whether by culture or by linguistic necessity, for any male ancestor to be called the "father" of a person. Twice in the chapter, Achan is referred to as "Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah". While he is once referred to as the "son of Zerah", this labeling is customary despite the fact that Zerah was actually his great-grandfather (or great-great-great-etc., sometimes genealogies are telescoped).

And if a man shall lie with... (Exod. 22:19 et al, sexual immorality)

I thought I had covered beastiality in my post on animal rights. I guess not. It's hard to keep track of what I was intending to do sometimes, I guess, but I'll assume I was leaving it for this post, where I will try to go over the broad topic of sexual sins in the Mosaic Law. For those wanting to keep track, I'm going to assume that the SAB has covered the topic properly and draw from its notes, which implies the subjects I'll be covering here will be from Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, Deuteronomy 22 and Deuteronomy 27, although a brief mention is made here in Exodus 22 of one of many issues. I'm aware that those are not the only passages in the Law that relate to things of a sexual nature, but tangential things like menstruation and whatnot I will leave for another time. (I give an open invitation to keep me honest on this matter, it will actually be helpful for me because sometimes I miss a topic and don't realize it.)

Sexual sin is a difficult topic to address, because for most people, it's much more of a matter of opinion than things like murder or stealing. I'm pretty sure that everyone has an imaginary line they've drawn in their head that they feel to cross that line would be doing wrong. Some people think masturbation is a sin (although the Bible addresses the matter only indirectly) while others do not. Some people think homosexuality is a sin (which the Bible does address, although not in great depth) while others do not. Most people think sexual relations with someone below a certain age is wrong, although most people differ on what age that is, and it may be flexible in their minds depending on the age and gender of the older partner (for instance, a lot of people see a big difference between a 50-year-old man having sex with a 17-year-old girl and an 18-year old woman having sex with a 17-year-old boy, although both may have the same technical legal status). I don't know that I can do much better than to simply give the facts as listed in the Bible and address the surrounding issues as best I can.

So, who should a man not have sex with? (I've always noticed that there is a possible issue with sexism in that God gives all of these rules to men, but it's quite likely He means them for both genders, simply not addressing the converse.) Leviticus 18 gives a bit of list of people whose "nakedness...shalt thou not uncover" (a euphemism), starting with "any that is near of kin". This is a bit vague, perhaps, but the chapter continues and gives specifics. Your father or mother (v. 7), your stepmother (v. 8), your sister even if she's only a half-sister (v. 9), your granddaughter (v. 10-11), your aunt or uncle (v. 12-14), your daughter-in-law (v. 15), your sister-in-law (v. 16), or any of the above relations in regard to your wife (v. 17-18). In addition to relatives, men are warned not to have sex with a menstruating woman (v. 19), another man's wife, (v. 20) another man (v. 22) or an animal (v. 23).

Now, in response to these issues, the SAB says a few specific things. I don't see that it says that it outright disagrees with these, but neither is it in full accord, of course. In the matter of incest, I'm going to assume that the SAB is in agreement, generally. While in some places it is not considered wrong to marry one's cousin (and it's also legal in many places, including here in California) I think most people would agree that the relations listed above are just a bit too close to be comfortable, not for genetic reasons, but emotional ones. The SAB does think that this list has an element of absurdity to it. While it doesn't make it perfectly clear what is absurd about the list, the note next to the first group may be intended to be a clarifier. Perhaps it's funny to talk of "uncovering the nakedness" of someone. First of all, as I said and I think is easy to pick up from larger context, this is probably a sexual euphemism. However, if it's not a sexual euphemism, I'm not sure what's absurd about it. Should you go around tearing the clothes off of your relatives? Of course not! Perhaps the ridiculousness was the thought it had to be said at all? Also, the SAB repeatedly labels this passage with the "Language" icon, which as I said elsewhere, I don't really understand. I'm not seeing foul language in this passage myself, just frank discussion of the issue at hand.

The SAB also points to the issue of incest and apparent contradictions on the matter. I have addressed this before, but I think it's useful to address it again here. When God handed down the Law to the Israelites, it was the first time He said anything about incest. The fact that incest had occurred previous to this point doesn't make it right or wrong, it just happened. Both Abraham and Jacob had marriage relationships that would have been forbidden under this Law, but they weren't under this law, so at least they were not violating a command from God. I may be wrong, but I believe Moses' parents were the last incestuous couple mentioned in the Bible that were not punished for their relationship.

Well, one of the real issues when it comes to sexual sin in the Bible is that we later find out that these are capital crimes. Well, most of them are; the punishment varies. Some involve being stoned to death, some burning, a few involve being cast out of society, and a couple seem to invoke supernatural curses of childlessness. Why kill people for doing these things? Well, I did touch on the topic of capital punishment earlier, but I probably should address these sexual sins in specific. As I said in that post, there is an issue of the nature of an ancient society with no effective centralized government or infrastructure; it's hard to punish crimes with anything much between light monetary fines and execution. Israel had no prisons, especially in their days of wandering in the desert. My post on witches talked a fair bit about why people were killed for religious transgressions, and while it was not satisfying to many skeptics I'm sure, I'm satisfied with what I wrote there. Can I address this the same?

Oddly enough, religious and sexual transgressions seem to be the two main categories of reasons for execution. God thinks highly of our intimacy with Him and with each other. The fact is, there is actually a certain amount of overlap, too. In Leviticus 20, There is some talk about the pagan god Molech. There was a practice in those days among pagans of a particular stripe to have illicit sexual encounters at a festival for Asherah. If they happened to get pregnant during this festival, the baby that was born would be given to the god Molech. Molech's idols were, if I remember this correctly, made of metal, and had outstretched arms. A fire would be set under Molech until he glowed with the heat, and then the live babies would be put into his arms to be burned. Thus it was a pagan practice of the time that involved sexual sin, idolatry, and murder, essentially the three things that would result in capital punishment in Israel. This is considered by many to be both a symbolic and literal example of what said in James 2:10: "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." If you were participate in an Asherah festival, there's a good chance you're going to end up paying tribute to Molech as well. In sexual sin, you sin against yourself, against your partner, against God and in many cases against an as-yet unborn child who, though innocent, may have to suffer for your mistake. Sexual sin is indeed very serious, but sex kept within the confines of marriage is not only something that pleases God, but is something that cuts down one's chances of contracting STDs and creating unwanted pregnancies. While some scoff at the idea of "sexual sin", thinking it only a religious issue, the truth is that the way in which we express ourselves sexually has not just spiritual implications, but moral, physical and legal implications as well.

One last thing should be noted about this matter in stark contrast to many of the other aspects of the Mosaic Law. It's a common tactic among critics of Christianity these days to say, "Oh, you think X is wrong because the Bible says so? Well, why don't you (insert some oddity from the Mosaic Law like how one should supposedly kill one's neighbor for wearing mixed fabrics)?" It's true that the Law is full of items that sound strange to the ears of people living in a modern westernized world, but as I have said in numerous recent posts, the Mosaic Law applies only to Jews, and in some cases, only to Jews living in Israel. So why do Christians point to passages in the Law that denounce sexual immorality? Well, they're not wrong to do so, but don't worry critics, there's still an element or two of hypocrisy I think you can legitimately rail against.

In Acts 15, there's a story of the early Church fathers, and how they debated whether or not the Law applied to a gentile who became a Christian. If you become a Christian, must you therefore also be Jewish? They debated and finally came up with a decision. The essence is in Acts 15:29:

"That ye [non-Jewish Christians] abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well."

Thus, other than the Ten Commandments, the only thing that God expects from non-Jews is that they stay sexually pure and don't eat meat that has been (1) part of a pagan ritual, (2) killed cruelly or (3) not drained of blood. So next time a Christian tries to argue that the Bible condemns certain sexual practice, don't bring up the fact that his shirt is a poly-cotton blend (which in the end really is a non-sequitur), instead ask him if he likes to eat gravy, which is usually made from cooked fat and blood. I'll admit it: I'm guilty.

A nice bloody steak anyone?

Her witchcrafts are so many? (Exod. 22:18 et al., witches)

A girl I briefly dated in college with whom I was friends for quite some time used to always say of the Salem witch trials, "Why is it that people always say that it's a shame that these women were falsely accused of being witches? Does that imply that if any of them were actual witches (which a few of them may have been) that would make it morally acceptable to kill them?" It was a rhetorical question in her view; of course it would not be morally acceptable. I think when it comes to the Bible, these questions need to be given some more comprehensive treatment.

Exodus 22:18 simply reads "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." However, the issues brought up are far from simple. There are two terms here that need to be explored: "witch" and "live". The latter turns out to be the most simple. It may be that the command here is not to kill a witch so much as to cast her out of the community in some manner. The Hebrew verb here may actually have to do with prosperity rather than physical life, implying that if there is a woman offering some sort of service termed as "witchcraft", then you should not solicit her. (While the term is not used there specifically, King Saul solicits a woman who "hath a familiar spirit" to help him in 1Sam. 28. It seems pretty clear that this was a bad idea.) While the possibility exists, (and note that the way in which she should be killed is not specified) it is likely that the intention here is that witchcraft be a capital crime. Either way, be it "kill witches" or "ensure witches do not prosper", there's clearly a command here to be prejudiced sharply against them.

Having already discussed capital punishment, I therefore turn to a discussion of the term "witch". Even in modern English, the term is rather vague. Judging by the pop culture phenomena of "Harry Potter", "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" and "The Wizard of Oz", witches are human-like (but somehow not quite human) individuals that have the ability to change reality around them by waving sticks at things. While this particular idea of what witches are like is probably not, nor has ever been, realized in the non-fictitious world, the truth is that witches do exist.

While the term "witch" is used informally by many as an epithet for a woman who is ugly and/or spiteful, in a more technical sense, the term still refers more specifically to a person (more commonly female, but not always) who either practices magic in some unspecified manner, or more likely a practitioner of the religion known as Wicca. For those not familiar, Wicca is:

A polytheistic Neo-Pagan nature religion inspired by various pre-Christian western European beliefs, whose central deity is a mother goddess and which includes the use of herbal magic and benign witchcraft. (American Heritage Dictionary)

So which of these witches is the sort that is supposedly to be killed? While I think we can rule out the sort that is simply fitting of the epithet, it's worthwhile to note that the supposition that many have is that many of those who were killed in the Salem witch trials were of this type. (I don't like the way she looks/acts, so I'll call her a witch and let the authorities handle it.) I am going to assume the Bible however is not referring to this sort of person.

So this leaves two possibilities which are not necessarily distinct. Although Wicca as we know it today did not exist in those days, there no doubt were similar pagan religions, and magic, be it of the showy, supernatural sort or simply some sort of "herbal magic" could easily have existed at pretty much any time in history. What would make either of these wrong?

Well, the pagan one is easy. If I have talked about religious intolerance in the Bible before now, I don't recall, but this is as good a place as any to address it. As I've said in my other blog, here in America, we have a nation that promises by its Constitution certain freedoms, including freedom of speech and religion. I'm all for it. Despite being a "fundie" who will be among the first to tell you that I believe Jesus offers the one and only path to the salvation of your soul, I am glad to share this nation with atheists, pagans, Muslims and even Scientologists. But that's not what ancient Israel was all about. While we here are trying to build a society from a variety of cultures that will strengthen each other through diversity, God's aims in creating Israel was to have a nation that would be uniformly existing for the sole purpose of glorifying Him. Now that brings up other philosophical issues that libraries of books no doubt have been written about, this is the Bible, and this is God speaking to His people, and within that context, God is free to say essentially "My way or the highway!"

As I said in the post on capital punishment, there are essentially three things you could be killed for in Israel: murder, sexual impurity, and improper religious practice. The third category exists because especially in this case, God is trying to create a new religion more or less from scratch. His people have lived in the midst of pagan nations, well, since forever. Abraham lived among pagans in Ur, and he moved to Canaan where he lived among other pagans. His great-grandchildren, the sons of Jacob, moved to Egypt and spent 400-odd years there among yet another pagan society. Now that they are finally big enough to be their own nation and they are (supposedly) about to have their own land, God is demanding a cleansing. Many Biblical scholars have noted that there is a parallel in these stories to the concept of Baptism, a Jewish ritual that of course was taken up in a big way by Christians. This is a fresh start for the nation, and God has them pass through the waters of the Red Sea, drowning the Egyptians. God is washing the pagan-ness out of these people, and He wants them to stay clean.

As for magic, God simply doesn't want people to depend on any power other than Him. This may also be related in a more direct way to paganism, of course, but there is certainly a sense in which God is warning them away from anything supernatural that is not God Himself, because it is very likely something evil.

I hope this is coming across clearly enough. I've been stalling on this one not because it's a difficult one per se (in the way that the abortion and capital punishment posts were), but in such a small verse, there are some big issues to deal with, and I've spent far too much time mulling it over in my mind, and probably overcomplicated it in the end. I hope that's not entirely the case.

O thou oppressed virgin (Exod. 22:16ff; fornication, rape, virginity, marriage)

You know, I have to admit; I've been stalling on this one. There are different reasons that certain topics are less than savory to talk about. As I expressed previously, abortion is a topic that I hate to discuss because it seems to be impossible to discuss without starting a fight. This time however, there are multiple reasons for me to dread this post.

While the subject of the verse (Ex 22:16) that leads to me making this post is really premarital sex, it interrelates with a number of other topics, including rape. I don't know why it is, but on a purely personal level, rape disgusts me. I'm not just talking about moral indignation, the thought of somebody being forced into sex against their will makes me feel like vomiting.

On a less personal level, and more a matter of the nature of this blog, I admittedly am not happy with the way the Old Testament deals with a number of these issues. While I do intend to address them as best I can, I'm willing to say that I've never been completely happy with the Biblical treatment of most of the subjects I intend to cover here. Nonetheless, there are indeed things to be said in defense of them, and you can judge for yourself.

You of course have to understand that in most of the Middle East even unto the present, it is understood that women are akin to property of their fathers until they get married, at which time they become akin to property of their husbands. This is not to say that they are like livestock, with the owner having completely free reign in all things, such that he might sell her, beat her, or kill her at his own whim. No, wives are still human beings, and are treated better than slaves, concerning whose rights I have already written.

A big part of the cultural norms of the area and the time, as most of you probably know, is that a woman ought to be a virgin on the day she is first married. If a woman was not a virgin, then her husband had a right to reject her, which is covered in great detail in Deuteronomy 22. This was serious business, and apparently the possibility existed that a woman caught out in this way might end up being stoned to death. It's interesting to contrast certain verses from Exodus 22 with similar verses in Deuteronomy 22, and see that being engaged was considered as serious as being married. A woman who was still a virgin, but was "betrothed" would be considered to be adulterous if she had sex with a man that was not her husband. (No word is given that I can find stating what happens if she has sex with her fiance.)

Now one of the few things that I am going to go to the New Testament for in this matter is the story of Mary and Joseph, which I think illustrates an important point. In the beginning of Matthew, Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant, but he knows it's not his child. At this point, he has the right to ask that she be put to death, but he decides rather to divorce her (even though they have not yet married, as I said, that's the way engagement was treated) and let her live. While it may not be much of a plus, the fact is that stoning an adulterous woman to death was not quite required so much as an option.

In matters of both seduction and rape of a virgin, the offending man was required to face consequences of his actions. While a married or betrothed virgin would be considered to be off-limits, and therefore the man would be subject to the death penalty, in either case, a woman who was not married or betrothed would have to be married to the man she had slept with. (Interestingly, as noted in the Deuteronomy passage, he would not have the right to divorce her. It seems to me that this may be a hint as to the nature of divorce as described by Jesus much later. Divorce was intended to be a way to get out of a marriage with a person who had been sexually unfaithful to you. You can hardly complain about your wife being sexually impure if you were the one who originally made her that way anyway.) Some people tend to think of it as cruel that a woman would have to marry her rapist, and while I am strongly inclined to agree, I also understand the societal impetus behind it. Since women were largely dependent on the men around them in that culture--once again, either their fathers or husbands--then since a woman who was no longer a virgin would have a hard time getting married, it made some sense that the man who had "ruined" her would be required to provide for her the rest of her life. It's for her protection and his punishment; after all, a rapist is obviously not looking for a long-term relationship, is he?

Okay, I think one more thing can finish this out, and the plethora of other women's issues can wait for another post. The distinction made between a virgin raped in the city and in the country is an interesting one, but I think it is somewhat misinterpreted here. (I'm guessing.) I think most people assume that this distinction is unfair, and that there is an assumption that a woman who was raped within the walls of a city must have been a willing participant, "because she cried not". I don't think that this is the intent of the verse. The idea is not that there is an automatic presumption of guilt, but that if a woman is raped, she ought to do what she can to protect herself, which obviously includes calling for help if she is able. My guess would be that the purpose of this rule is so that a woman caught in the act of adultery can't claim rape as a defense.

Women's rights in general, along with moral laws about sexuality are definitely a controversial subject in the Bible, and are quite different from modern mores, I won't deny that. I'd definitely welcome a lot of discussion on this topic, but I don't come close to knowing all the answers.

And all the people brought every man his ox with him that night, and slew them there. (Exod. 21:28ff; animal rights and responsibilities)

The SAB finds the idea of capital punishment for animals absurd, apparently, and I suppose it sounds that way when you put it like that. Really, though, it makes a lot of sense to me that if an animal is dangerous, then it would be best to put it down. (If you're an animal rights activist, you'd more likely consider this cruel than ridiculous.) Furthermore, as verse 29 says, if a person who owns a dangerous animal knew it was dangerous and didn't do anything to control it, then they bear the responsibility of that animal's actions. While I doubt that people are given the death penalty for that today, I do believe it is the case that people are held responsible for the actions of their pets/livestock.

Now, this is probably not exhaustive, but my thought in coming across this verse was that in addition to answering commenting on the issue of punishments for animals, I might point out a number of things that the Mosaic Law says about animals. It's fascinating to me that while the Bible clearly considers humanity as being of a higher order than the other animals, the other animals are nonetheless not left out of the picture on numerous issues.

Sabbath? Animals get it as well. On Saturdays, there's no riding horses, plowing fields, and so on. I'm not sure whether this also covers milking goats and whatnot, as it is my understanding that dairy-producing livestock tends to need milking on a daily basis.

Deuteronomy 22 has a lot to say about animals (among other things). If you see a stray animal, you should take it back to its home if you know whose it is, and if you don't, then you take it home and take care of it until someone comes looking for it. If you see an animal in trouble, you're required to help it out. The SAB says these are good things, and I agree, however later in that chapter, verse 10 is labeled as absurd. While I think there are certainly more than a few things that are truly odd about the Mosaic Law, I think this likely has a practical purpose behind it. I'm only guessing, since I've never plowed a field myself, but if you were to yoke together two different kinds of animals to do the same job, I imagine you'd run the risk of injuring one of them.

The last thing I'll discuss here (although I know of at least one more specific law about animals that I'll address elsewhere) is how God provides welfare for animals, too. Deut 25:4 says not to "muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn." As the SAB rightly notes, this means essentially that when an animal helps in the production of food, they ought to get a fair share as well, specifically that they may eat while they work.

Before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee (Exod. 21:22-23 et al.)

Aside from being busy with other things both important and non-important, I've simply been...well, sort of the opposite of looking forward to this post. The next topic to be raised by the SAB in going through Exodus is that of abortion, and there seem to be few topics as highly-charged. I'm tempted to disallow comments on this post, but instead, I'll warn any would-be posters that I'm likely to ignore their comments and/or erase them if I think they're being offensive.

Also, I'm going to focus once again on what I think the Bible actually says about abortion (which personally I don't think is much) and not my personal political views, which may or may not align with what the Bible says. For an insight into my personal views on the abortion issue, read this post in my other blog. My plan here is to address issues raised on the SAB's "What the Bible says about Abortion" page.

Exodus 21:22-23 gives me fits. People looking to the Bible to make both pro-life and pro-choice arguments love to quote this one and say that it's clearly implying what they want it to imply. First of all, the verse does not clearly state that the fetus dies. Most translations make it a bit clearer that the implication is that the baby is born prematurely. The end of verse 23 does say "life for life", implying that a person should be put to death for killing. Are we talking about killing the pregnant woman, or killing the baby? It's not at all clear, but obviously, as I have said, either case could be made. (My next post should touch on "eye for eye" and similar phrases found in this passage, which I believe to be sorely misunderstood.) Anyway, the SAB's viewpoint on this passage is not conclusive, in my opinion.

Leviticus 27 outlines the monetary value of a human being, and I think people not familiar with this passage would be surprised that God places a finite value on humans. I don't think, however that the fact that children less than a month old have no monetary value implies that they therefore have no value at all. The idea here is that of making a vow of dedication, and outlines a substitutiary monetary value. If you said you were going to donate your house to the church, but then you realized, "Hey, but where will my family live?" you could of course instead get your house appraised and give an equivalent amount of money. If you wanted to dedicate your family, you can't appraise their value, so Moses here, supposedly speaking for God, suggests some equivalent values. In my estimation, the setting of the value of newborns at zero is not to say that they are non-people, but accurately reflects their status economically. Babies aren't worth money in any practical sense, they actually cost a lot of time and money to take care of and yet don't produce anything other than dirty diapers. Furthermore, the infant mortality rate at the time this was written may have been a factor.

Numbers 3 is referring to the taking of a census for specific purposes. it's significant to note that in this chapter, we're talking about counting members of the tribe of Levi specifically. Note that two chapters earlier, God tells Moses to count the other tribes, "From twenty years old and upward..." (Num. 1:3) This is not an implication that 19-year-olds are not considered people by God, but it is very plain in that verse that God is counting only those fit for military service. In the case of the Levites, this is not a count for military service, but a count for potential workers in the Tabernacle. It's not likely that very young children would serve, of course, but they would eventually; I suspect the exclusion of newborns is once again due to the infant mortality rate. Yes, women are excluded from both counts; feel free to cry "sexism!" if you wish, but it's not that they are not considered persons, only that they are not considered soldiers or priests.

The Numbers 31 passage and some of the following Hosea passages are disturbing, no doubt. Setting aside the verse on miscarriage, which is a slightly separate issue, there is some strong language here about killing children and pregnant women. First of all, what is being talked about in these and other similar passages is a matter of warfare. Killing people in warfare is not generally considered murder but...we're talking about women and children, aren't we, and as we just covered, women and children are not soldiers. The Hosea passages might be dismissed by pointing out that God is not commanding that this should happen, but foretelling through Hosea that it's going to come to pass, but Numbers 31? Not so much. Moses is telling the soldiers of Israel to to do this, and we tend to assume that Moses is speaking on behalf of God unless we're given reason to believe otherwise. We're not really given reason as far as I can see. It seems that God wanted to wipe out the nation of Midian, and in order to do this effectively, there needed to be no men alive, nor women who might be pregnant with male babies. (Steve Wells is right in assuming some must have been pregnant, after all, that seems to be the point.) I don't know what to say about this except that it is indeed in my estimation a point in favor of those who wish to make the claim that God is not 100% against killing babies. Pretty much every claim that the SAB makes against this story is true, with the possible exception of "injustice", which I'll examine in more detail probably when I get to Numbers 25, which is related.

2 Samuel 12:14 is indeed a case of God killing a child to punish parents. I may have said it before, but there is something different about the significance of God killing a person that sets it apart from a person killing another person. If I have, I'll edit a link into this to the post, but if I have not, I really ought to cover it. Either way, I do think this is a separate issue in many respects, and don't plan to go into it in this post.

Numbers 5 is a very strange passage, and one that really ought to have a post of its own. Actually, I don't see why it's here, because I see no mention of pregnancy or miscarriage there at all. I was recently discussing this passage with a Jew who told me of an interesting view on this passage which completely changes the way to see it. I'll leave you in suspense and tell you that I've come to believe that this passage is not what it appears to be at all.

Genesis 38 is the easiest one of all to respond to. I don't know if the commentary on the passage was not there when I covered it before, or if I just forgot to address it. Anyway, I feel like I've said it a million times, but just because the Bible says that something happened, that does not imply that God condones it. Yes, Judah ordered his pregnant daughter-in-law to be burned to death. No, this sentence was not carried out. No, Judah is not a shining example of morality, as reading that chapter will evidence. No, there is no such specific law ever given by God, although admittedly there are some similar ones. (Not everything on that list properly belongs there in my estimation, out of the first four, only the first two are actual laws, the third one I address here, and the fourth was a special circumstance.)

To sum up, the only passage here that I think says anything definitive about abortion is the Exodus 21:22-23 passage, but it's unfortunately not really clear what it's saying. (Ouch! That's a tough one to admit!) It may have been clearer in the time it was written for some cultural reason, but that doesn't really explain much for us now. The Bible does have a lot to say about infanticide, which I have no doubt that the SAB has a page both for discussing the topic and pointing out apparent contradictions. I'll actually be looking forward to examining that.

Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned (Ex 21:15ff, capital punishment)

Okay, I've been slacking on this, so let's kill off the year with a post on the subject of capital punishment. As I think I mentioned in my other blog (Hmm, it seems I mentioned it in a post that's in progress and has not yet been posted, oh well.) this is actually one of a handful of difficult subjects for me as my personal views are not fully lined up with the position the Bible seems to be taking. As a good Christian, one generally must defer to the Bible on difficult matters however, especially in a context such as discussing the Bible itself.

The first question that must be answered is the matter of possible contradiction. As the SAB puts it, "Does God approve of capital punishment?" The page given goes on to show verses supporting both the "Yes" and "No" positions. At the moment, I wish to focus on the "No" column, and dispute what has been put there. In the case of Cain, as I commented when I covered that passage, one issue is that God has already doled out the punishment for Cain, and He doesn't want anybody adding to it. Also, while I disputed that there were only four people on the earth at the time of that incident, I would like to say that I don't think the population of the earth at the time of this murder was very large anyway; it may have suited God's purposes to allow Cain to live and raise his own family despite the heinousness of his crime.

Now, as for the famous passage from John 8, it might be an easy way out for me to note that most modern scholars have some question as to whether this story really belongs in John's Gospel, but that's a whole can of worms I'm not planning to open until I get to direct commentary on the Gospels. I think it suffices (it certainly does for me personally) to say that the behavior we see exhibited by Jesus in this passage is consistent with his behavior on the whole, and while it may have been edited in later than the original, it's reasonable enough to believe it to be a true story. But what does Jesus actually say? He says, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." (John 8:7) There's an important thing to notice about this single line that Jesus says to the accusers that most people don't notice. It's not what he says, but what he does not say. He never says, "You know, capital punishment is an outdated concept, and I really don't like Leviticus 20." No, he's pointing out the hypocrisy of the accusers, and it's an important lesson that we all need to take to heart if and when we do apply capital punishment to our own society.

Probably one of the most popular verses in the Bible is Matthew 7:1, but how many people notice that that particular verse is only part of a longer sentence/thought? Jesus doesn't just say "Judge not, that ye be not judged..." but explains what he means in the next verse: "For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." In other words, Matthew 7:1 is not Jesus' way of saying, "Live and let live," but rather his way of saying, "Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," a much more apt metaphor for the John 8 passage. The men in that story brought a woman to Jesus and accused her of adultery, but did she somehow commit adultery all by herself? It's possible if not highly likely that the man that the woman had slept with was in the crowd, and that the others had been involved in a plot to entrap her and make Jesus look bad. After all, Jesus was known for associating with "sinners", but how many of those people would hang out with Jesus once the word spread that Jesus had ordered a woman stoned to death for adultery? On the other hand, if Jesus told them not to stone her, he really would be going against the Law. As so often happened in Jesus' interaction with people trying to bring him down, he circumvented the question by getting to the heart of the matter.

So, in the "Yes" column, the SAB does a pretty good job of cataloguing the various reasons a person could be put to death according to the Law. For the most part, other than murder, these sins break down into two main categories: people who practiced some banned form of religion, and people who practiced some banned form of sexuality. It's always been very interesting to me what extent religion and sexuality are interconnected--in this case being two areas that are considered serious enough to be put to death for--I might consider a piece on it for my other blog. In any case, these are two areas of life that God considers to be vitally sacred and intimate. One might wonder whether it's overkill to put the punishment that high for some of these, especially working on the Sabbath. I think God wants to show that He's serious about these issues, and certainly you can't deny that capital punishment at the very least gets the message across.

Darn it, I'm rambling here, because I don't have so much to say. As I said, I personally am not too keen on the concept of capital punishment. I think one of the reasons that capital punishment was used in those days, and why many punishments seem very harsh to our modern sensibilities is that it really was a product of the times. Not to say that the ancient Israelites were culturally backwards and barbaric, although there is some truth to that no doubt. Rather, as a society without a centralized governmental infrastructure, and being a nomadic people in their early days, they didn't have a prison system. If someone is a menace to society and you can't lock him away, your choices are limited. Exile him, put him in bondage, or execute him; there's not much else, unfortunately. As I may or may not have said previously, but I will be saying a lot as I cover the Mosaic Law, these were laws designed for keeping order in ancient Israel, and I think that numerous misguided individuals who want to call for applying these laws to 21st-century America are missing that living thousands of years later on the other side of the globe really is a significant consideration. As we have the option of punishing without killing, I think it would be preferable to exercise that option. As we live in a society that is pluralistic and not a theocracy, I don't think we have the right to enforce rules telling people how to practice religion, nor would I want to, myself. When we look at the Law, we need to question what the underlying moral principle is, and decide how it applies to us today. The Torah is neither inferior nor superior to any modern law, it's simply different.

Okay, we'll see you next time when I get to discuss the oh-so-pleasant topic of abortion. Happy New Year, everybody.

Wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. (Gen 9:5-29)

Does God approve of capital punishment? That's actually a very good question, and one that many of us wish had a simpler answer. The fact is, God's view of capital punishment in the Bible is a question that would require the study of far more verses than the two quoted here. You'd have to look at passages like the one in which a man is killed for gathering firewood on a Saturday, or where Jesus forgives a woman caught in adultery (but never denies that adultery is a capital crime!), and many others. The short simple answer is, yes, God does approve of capital punishment; the long answer would be an extensive study on what sorts of things God considers worthy of death, and why, and when and why God prefers mercy. I don't believe I'm qualified to give an adequate response of the long sort, but I'd be willing to discuss my views on it in the comments section if anyone really is curious.

Verses 8-17 talk about the covenant that God makes that He will never destroy the world again through a flood, and He offers the rainbow as a sign of that covenant. The main beef that the SAB seems to have with this concept is a scientific one, that being that rainbows are a natural phenomenon. Personally, I don't see why this should be a problem. Just because rainbows may have existed before this covenant was made doesn't mean that God can't use them as a symbolic gesture. Take the early Christians as an example. They were of the habit of using a simple drawing of a fish as a symbol of their faith. Fishes existed before Christianity did, but they decided to use the symbol for their own purposes.

However, my own personal theory that I admittedly have little scientific basis for goes back to the water canopy theory. It seems to me that if the entire earth was covered with a layer of water acting a shield of some sort, then sunlight may not have refracted in precisely the way it does today. Furthermore, regarding this theory, you might remember that I had briefly speculated that it may never have rained before the flood. If it never rained, then there would never have been a rainbow. All of this is in the area of wilder speculation, of course, and the more important aspect of this part of the story is the symbolic aspect. The rainbow, as we now know, is not an actual bow, but is instead a circle that we only see part of from our vantage point standing on the earth. God uses the rainbow as a symbol, knowing that when we look at it, it will look like a bow, but without an arrow on the string. The symbolism is that God has fired this weapon He has, and He intends to now set it down, never to pick it up again.

The rest of the chapter is pretty much all about the drunkenness of Noah and the curse of Canaan. This is obviously a very strange story, and a lot of it that nobody really fully understands. The SAB gives a link to an excellent article on The Straight Dope, a site that I have a great deal of admiration for in many of these matters. (Even when I disagree with their conclusions, I respect the scholarship that went into them and consider them about as unbiased as it gets on the Internet.) It does seem a little odd to me that they link to an article that gives some straightforward answers to many of the questions they raise right before the link.

First of all, being drunk doesn't necessarily mean that you're not righteous, and I think it's perhaps quite understandable that after seeing the entire world destroyed, Noah might feel the need for a good drink, whether out of shock or guilt or depression. Secondly, being naked is also not a sin, especially if it's in the privacy of your own home (or tent as the case may be).

"What did [Ham] do besides look at him?" the SAB asks. First of all, looking at him alone is not entirely inoffensive; I think Noah has a right to some privacy, and Ham's violating that. On top of personally violating his father's privacy, Ham goes and tells his brothers that this is going on, as if it's their business! Granted, on the face of it, there seems to be very little reason to go so far as to put a curse on someone, and even if Noah was justified, it's not too clear why he curses Canaan rather than Ham. The Straight Dope gives the only possibility that even begins to make sense to me, that being that since Ham shamed his father, Noah shamed Ham's son. I don't know, though really, although there are a number of interesting speculations given in the article there. Actually, something that occurs to me now is that since at this time Canaan is the only offspring of Ham mentioned, he may in fact be the only one at this time, and Noah may be using Canaan's name as a generic label for all the descendants of Ham. Not that it fully justifies the curse, but it might make more sense.

Does God approve of slavery? That's a tough question that has been struggled with for a long, long time. You may have heard this sort of response before, but I do think it's the correct one. Yes, God does approve, but it depends on the definition of slavery. In Exodus 21, it's made clear that among the Israelites that slavery is never to be a permanent thing, and furthermore, slavery is essentially a voluntary position. There are some exceptions that get complicated, but the idea is that if a person sank into poverty and could no longer afford food, one could sell oneself to another person (but you couldn't sell someone else), and then they were bound to serve that person for six years, or until their price could be paid back, whichever came first. Maybe it's not ideal, but it's not the same as we think of slavery from the early 1800s, not by a long shot. (For more observations on the nature of Biblical slavery, see this post.)

But the SAB asks the excellent question "Are we punished for the sins of others?" Yes and no. Sometimes, we end up having to take responsibility for the sins of our parents and grandparents just because it's the natural result of what they did. For instance, when a pregnant woman abuses drugs, her child is often born with health problems, and that's not a curse or a punishment, it's just the way things are. Some things are more subtle, like parents dying and leaving you with their debts to settle, parents doing bad things to you that leave you emotionally scarred, and so forth. In general, it's just a fact that people tend to follow in their parents' footsteps, and if you do something that you really ought not do, your children may be cursed for it not because God's angry at you, but because they decided to follow in your footsteps. This may not account for every instance on the page linked, but I think it accounts for a lot of them, and I'll discuss other ones when I get to them. In this case, it may be the fact that Ham's immoral act performed for Canaan to witness it may have led Canaan into a sinful life which in turn led his descendants into sinful ways of their own. So think about the example you set for your children, all you parents out there.