Moral monster or non-existent?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Steven Carr on April 9, 2011 at 19:21

Is this Paul Copan's latest excuse? Lord Voldemort does not exist?

 

It is a good excuse though. The fact that Copan is worshipping an idol which does not exist is a very good reason why he is not worshipping a monster who kills people (unless they have iron chariots  , works even better than garlic at warding off gods, I am told)

 

There must be lots of 'rhetorical flourishes' in the Bible. 'Son of God' for example.

Permalink Reply by Madeleine Flannagan on April 11, 2011 at 10:59

No I did not find it funny. I find Copan's position a far more coherent and consistent account of the text. The early parts of Joshua claim the Canaanites were totally destroyed, nothing that breathed was left alive, etc but then the later parts of Joshua and the book of Judges show the Canaanites are still there causing problems and there are discussions about dealing with them, not marrying them or making treaties with them - so they clearly were not wiped out. Further, there are about 3 times more references to them being driven out (same language as Adam and Eve being driven out of the Garden of Eden - so dispossessed as opposed to killed) than there are to them being totally destroyed. Given the common practice in the surrounding culture of blustering and exaggerating when it comes to battles and victories it makes more sense to read the total destruction passages as rhetorical flourish (or else assume the person who put these texts together to write the books was just an idiot).

It does not follow that just because there is good textural and cultural evidence to read specific passages this way that all passages must now be read that way. If I wrote a book of memoirs of my life that included a poem I wrote to be read out at my wedding, my favourite recipe for chocolate cake and my first hand experience of surviving an earthquake do you read the part of my memoirs recording my experience and observations of the earthquake as a poem? Do you take the chocolate cake recipe as historical narrative of a natural disaster? Do you assume I am an idiot for mixing my genres in a single text? Of course not! you can recognise the different genres as you read your way through the book and strike them - doing this is easy when we are reading texts from our own culture and time but when we talking about another culture and time written in another language, it is a lot harder but it does not mean that the we stop looking for genre and context clues and we start saying if we are to interpret passage x as rhetorical flourish then we have to interpret everything as rhetorical flourish.

 

In fact, your own statement demonstrates that you get this. You use the phrase "rhetorical flourish." Now rhetoric does not literally flourish - flourishing is not a property of rhetoric - so you are using the term "rhetorical flourish" metaphorically and not literally. Should I therefore assume that your entire sentence is a metaphor and that you are not in fact offering a criticism of Copan? Or should I conclude that because you stated that rhetoric can literally flourish that you are a moron? Perhaps I should apply different contextual approaches and genres to the different parts of your comment and take some of it literally and some of it metaphorically - that would make the best sense of what you are trying to say wouldn't it? 

For an online summary of how Copan's position on the so-called Canaanite genocide passages works, this three part series on my blog authored by Matthew Flannagan (whom Copan has co-authored a few forthcoming articles on the subject with) is a good place to start if you don't happen to have a copy of Copan's book handy:

God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argum...
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II: Ancient Near Easter...
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part III: Two Implications o...

 

Permalink Reply by Steven Carr on April 11, 2011 at 11:56

'I find Copan's position a far more coherent and consistent account of the text. The early parts of Joshua claim the Canaanites were totally destroyed, nothing that breathed was left alive, etc but then the later parts of Joshua and the book of Judges show the Canaanites are still there causing problems and there are discussions about dealing with them, not marrying them or making treaties with them - so they clearly were not wiped out.'



Nobody ever claimed the Bible was accurate. Good Lord, you'll be asking us to believe it next!



It's a bit like reading WWE wrestlers saying they are going to finish off their opponents in a career-ending bout. It doesn't happen.



'You use the phrase "rhetorical flourish." Now rhetoric does not literally flourish - flourishing is not a property of rhetoric - so you are using the term "rhetorical flourish" metaphorically and not literally'



Agreed.



The authors of the Bible really were filled with hate, and they showed that in their rhetorical flourishes.



A bit like the way Hitler said he wanted to kill all Jews. Pure rhetoric, as he never intended to kill all the Jews in the world.He knew many were beyond his grasp.



Same with the Bible. The authors hated people, but they were restricted in the evil they could do.

Permalink Reply by Paul Baird on April 11, 2011 at 18:44

HI Madeleine,

 

Given the common practice in the surrounding culture of blustering and exaggerating when it comes to battles and victories it makes more sense to read the total destruction passages as rhetorical flourish (or else assume the person who put these texts together to write the books was just an idiot).

 

Given that this is the Judaic text what is the Judaic view ?

 

I know that Matt has written extensively on the subject of DCT (I did post a comment regarding the audio and the unreadability of the powerpoint behind him due to the angle of the video), but I would far rather read a Rabbinic viewpoint compared to a Christian one.

 

Is Copan a Rabbi ?

Permalink Reply by Steven Carr on April 14, 2011 at 10:43

'Given the common practice in the surrounding culture of blustering and exaggerating when it comes to battles and victories it makes more sense to read the total destruction passages as rhetorical flourish'

 

Well, yes, it is well agreed that Christianity and Judaism were hugely influenced by surrounding cultures.

 

No reasonable person can deny the influences.

Permalink Reply by Brian B on April 15, 2011 at 17:23

Hi Madeleine,

I think you put it very nicely and I mostly agree.  I think one is wise when reading texts such as the Bible to try to understand the literary genres being used as well as the culture that the authors were living in as well as who their audience was.  Great example of your book of memoirs! 

At the same time I don't think Copan did a great job on sharing what he believed really happened compared to what the Biblical accounts recorded.  For example, we read of God sending the angel of death to kill the 1st born of all in Eygpt in order to let Moses leave with the Hebrews.  Now maybe that is hyperbole and not each and every 1st born was killed.  But were any innocent killed at all by God's angel?  If even 1 innocent was really killed by God then doesn't that give weight to the claim of God doing evil?  Or the story of the Noah's flood - maybe there is hyperbole there as well.  But, if God deliberately sent the flood to punish the wicked and even 1 non-wicked was included then how are we to understand an all good and all powerful and all just God doing such a thing?

Looking forward to reading the articles you supplied links to,

Brian

Permalink Reply by Steven Carr on April 16, 2011 at 11:28

Why does this alleged god need an angel of death? I thought that was Shiva?

Permalink Reply by Brian B on April 16, 2011 at 13:32

Hi Steven,

You are right the Exodus story doesn't say that God used an angel to strike down the first-born - just that God struck them down. God used the angel in 2 Kings 19:35 where "the angel of Yahweh went out and struck down a hundred and eight-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp." 

My point remains - I couldn't tell from the discussion whether Copan believed these were exaggerated non-divine events that were attributed to God by a victorious people - or if he felt God actually did at least some of the killing (even if the stories used hyperbole).  And if God did any of the killing were all the innocent spared?  If 1 innocent was harmed that could have been spared then that seems to lend weight to the claim that God does evil.

Maybe the author goes into this more in his book which I've not read.

Brian

Permalink Reply by Trevor on April 17, 2011 at 20:16

Madeline: No I did not find it funny

Well, it didn't get a belly laugh from me either, but there's at least an element of irony when a Christian demands archaeological evidence from an atheist that a Biblical battle took place.

Thanks for the write-up on exaggeration, etc. I completely agree that the Bible should be read in this manner. In fact, these days, we still talk about battles (well, football!) in similar terms, e.g., "We absolutely slaughtered them, 5-nil".

And I'm sure there are other rhetorical devices used in the Bible. We can possibly learn something from the way that some Christians talk today:

"...it all worked out fine" becomes "...the Good Lord protected us"

"I decided to..." becomes "The Lord told me to..."

I suppose I'm very happy to read the Bible bearing in mind that it was written by a very different people to us. If anything, I probably go a step further, and don't read anything into lines like "Then the Lord said to Joshua..."

And, like yourself, I don't think reading it with very flexible interpretation means that there is no information left at all.

However, the bits that most come under suspicion as rhetorical flourish (or embellishment) are the bits that are the least everyday. As such, it's very easy to confirm what you already believe to be true in the scriptures, but a little more difficult to get anything surprising out of it.

As such, there is a slight trade-off: the more open-minded you are about interpretation of the Bible, the more difficult it is to get solid information out of it.

It seems that you think there is a "Goldilocks" right amount of open-mindedness to interpretation, and perhaps you are right. It must be hard to distinguish that from selective open-mindedness, even for yourself. Good luck!

Permalink Reply by Trevor on April 17, 2011 at 20:21

A follow-up question: If these Biblical battles are so clearly exaggerated, why aren't they taught to be so in churches? When I learnt in Sunday School about how "Joshua fit the battle of Jericho", should the Sunday-School teacher have added "Of course, it didn't really happen!"?

If not, are some Christians trying to have their cake and eat it? Are these passages treated as literally true in some contexts, but exaggerated rhetorical flourishes when God's moral character is under question?

Permalink Reply by Madeleine Flannagan on April 17, 2011 at 22:09

I think the simply answer to that is that Christians suffer a similar inability to atheists when it comes to understanding genre, textual interpretation, hermeneutics. I am not trying to insult anyone or imply they are stupid, more I am acknowledging that Theology, competence in ancient languages and culture and interpreting texts from within that culture are not skills the average layperson picks up as they go through life.

 

This is normal in any field. Take Law - most people have a basic enough understanding as to how to go through life and understand enough of the law to stay on the right side of it without their holding a law degree and bar admission - does that mean they can pick up some statute and read it through and understand it accurately and immediately know how to imply it? Not always - especially not if the statute is old and is drafted verbosely in olde English with no punctuation. In fact, most people are not remotely likely to not be able to do this to the degree of competence I can do it to because I have both a degree in law and the New Zealand equivalent of the Bar exam. The best way for a lay person to understand an old statute is to go to a lawyer for assistance of head to a law library and pull out some commentary and guides to legal interpretation - you'd be nuts to do neither of these and instead proceed on the assumption that because you can read English you understand what it means and further you are so sure of what it means you are prepared to write books on it, teach other people, go onto the internet and defend it, and so on but people take this approach to theology all the time.

 

The problem of failing to appreciate that theology, like any subject, has its areas the lay person can easily grasp and has its areas where a specialist is needed is exasperated by a pervasive anti-intellectualism within the (protestant) church (at least in my corner of the world) where theology is a 'pharisaical [read: bad] thing that gets in the way of a relationship with Jesus and my own personal revelation from the Holy Spirit as to what this text written to the Israelites personally means to me today'. Further, some denominations seem to practice the idea that everyone can be a preacher/teacher if they love Jesus and can speak engagingly - they scoff at the idea that those teaching the church should be qualified and hold to the idea that if someone is qualified then they are automatically not likely to be an engaging teacher with a passion for Jesus.

Frustratingly I think we are now seeing a catch 22 - Sunday School teachers and children's books teach the Noah story, Jonah and the whale, Adam and Eve in the garden, the loaves and fishes, Jericho and so on complete with cartoonised pictures and glossing over of anything that might give children nightmares. There are reasons for this - Children are not any more capable of understanding the finer points of textual interpretation and hermeneutics than they are capable of understanding the finer points of statute interpretation. The problem is that as they grow in their capability to understand these things, this kind of simplified Sunday School reading of the Bible as a bunch of stories rather than as a canonical sequence doesn't seem to get left behind as the Sunday School student matures into the adult Christian. One should not need a degree in Theology to be able to grasp that the Bible is a book and that you need to read it as one. You would not pick up a novel and flick it open to a random page and begin dipping in and out and focussing only on a few paragraphs out of order, to fully understand the plot and get who all the players are you need to read the whole thing and keep in mind how all the parts and sub-plots fit together.

Permalink Reply by Steven Carr on April 22, 2011 at 9:11

'I think the simply answer to that is that Christians suffer a similar inability to atheists when it comes to understanding genre, textual interpretation, hermeneutics.'

 

Well, yes, it is not like they have the Holy Spirit to help them.

 

Inability to understand genre dates way back. Paul wrote 'For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned?'

 

Yes,Paul it was, and if you had read Madeleine's posts, you would not have been one of those Christians who were ignorant of genre, textual interpretation, hermeneutics.

 

But why should I believe Christianity when its own writers are as 'ignorant' as Madeleine says they are?

 

'The best way for a lay person to understand an old statute is to go to a lawyer for assistance of head to a law library and pull out some commentary and guides to legal interpretation - you'd be nuts to do neither of these and instead proceed on the assumption that because you can read English you understand what it means and further you are so sure of what it means you are prepared to write books on it, teach other people, go onto the internet and defend it, and so on but people take this approach to theology all the time. '

 

Clearly, if I want to understand the legal interpretation of the Law of Moses, I should not read what Paul had to say about the law on oxen. He was , I quote 'nuts'.

 

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