Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion
Page 27
the Hugenots was mostly the result of religious divisions and tensions" (p. 342).
24. To read about this devastating war, see C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years'
War (New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2005).
25. Copan, When God Goes to Starbucks: A Guide to Everyday Apologetics
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008), p. 192.
26. David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist-The Man Who Killed
Slavery, Sparked the Civil War and Seeded Civil Rights (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 2005).
27. To see what I mean, look at the collection of essays in Cotton Is King and
ProSlavery Arguments V2: The Bible Argument, in the Light of Social Ethics,
and in the Light of Ethnology, eds. Thornton Stringfellow, Chancellor Harper, et
al. (Kessinger Publishing, 2007 reprint); Williard Swartley, Slavery, Sabbath,
War & Women: Case Studies in Biblical Interpretation (Scottsdale, PA: Herald
Press, 1983), pp. 31-64; and Paul Finkelman, ed., Defending Slavery.-
Proslavery Thought in the Old South (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003).
28. Copan, in When God Goes to Starbucks, writes: "Not all professing
Christians are genuinely or consistently Christian" (p. 201).
29. On this I recommend J. Philip Wogman, Christian Ethics: A Historical
Intro duction (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993). There are
many others.
30. On the subject of genocide, be sure to read my blog post "Psalm 137 Is a
Genocidal Passage!" at www.debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com.
31. Gregory Boyd is writing a book tentatively titled Jesus versus Jehovah:
Understanding the Violent God of the Old Testament in Light of the God of the
Cross, where he will argue that "Jesus himself repudiated the violence of the OT-
despite his belief that this collection of writings was inspired." Boyd continues,
"In other words, if you obey Jehovah, you're not a child of God, according to
Jesus." Boyd rhetorically asks: "Is it possible that some divinely inspired
material is not supposed to reveal to us what God is like but what he is not like?
Is it possible that some material is inspired precisely because God wants us to
follow Jesus' example and repudiate it?" See "Jesus' Repudiation of Old
Testament Violence," Christus Victor Ministries, http://www.gregboyd.org/. This
is theological gerrymandering if I ever saw it!
32. See the book edited by Stanley N. Gundry, Five Views on Law and Gospel
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996).
33. See my blog "Calvinism Is Bullshit, and God Wanted Me to Say This,"
Debunking Christianity, January 31, 2009, http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot
.com/2009/01/calvinism-is-bullshit-and-god-wanted-me.html. As I wrote on
page 290 of my book WIBA: "If God decrees everything that happens, then he
can know the future of every human action since he decrees each one of them.
But there are serious problems with such a theology. It means God decrees every
evil deed that we do. It also means that God decrees every evil desire that we
have to do every evil deed that we do. We cannot do otherwise. We cannot even
desire to do otherwise. It also means God decrees everything that we believe.
None of us can believe other than that which God decrees. Therefore, God
decrees people to hell, since those who end up there could not have believed
differently. I only have the harshest kinds of comments for such a theology. That
God is an evil monster requiring nothing but disgust and loathing. Such a
theology creates atheists and motivates me like no other theology to attempt to
demolish the Christian faith."
34. Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary
on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), p. 11.
35. Ibid.
36. Two helpful books on these disagreements written by Roger E. Olson, an
evangelical, are The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition
and Reform (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic, 1999), and The
Mosaic of Christian Belief Twenty Centuries of Unity and Diversity (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2002).
37. See the book edited by Donald K. McKim, Historical Handbook of Major
Biblical Interpretations (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), which is
composed of 643 pages.
38. "The Parchment and Pen."
n an essay titled "Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? The New Atheists and Old
Testament Ethics," Dr. Paul Copan, a wellknown Christian apologist and
president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, attempts to combat the New
Atheists and their dim view of biblical ethics. (If the reader has not previously
read his article, it might be best to do so now; it's available online.)I However, it
soon becomes apparent that his critique repeats factual errors and biases found in
earlier biblical apologists. Copan reveals himself as just another Christian
apologist who supports biblical genocide and other injustices. He is definitely
not successful in demonstrating the superiority of biblical ethics over those of
other cultures in the ancient Near East.
MISREPRESENTING NEAR EASTERN
CULTURES
Copan begins by misrepresenting ancient Near Eastern legal materials in at least
three major ways:
1. The supposedly unique embedding of biblical laws in historical
narratives,
2. The use of motive clauses in law, and
3. Distorted portrayal of ancient Near Eastern slavery laws.
NARRATIVES IN LEGAL MATERIALS AS SUPERIOR
According to Copan, the Bible is superior because it embeds its legal materials
within a larger narrative that explains the history and principles behind the laws.
He specifically states: "The absence of such narratives is glaringly apparent in
cuneiform ANE [ancient Near Eastern] Mesopotamian law codes such as
Hammurabi ... By contrast, cuneiform laws such as Hammurabi are never
motivated by historical events: unlike biblical laws, no cuneiform law is ever
motivated by reference to an historic event, a promise of wellbeing, or ... a
divine will."
Copan does not show evidence of any complete reading of the Code of
Hammurabi (CH). If Copan had read the entire CH, he would see that his
statement is patently false. The CH does have both a very lengthy prologue and
an epilogue, which are narratives that situate the CH in a claimed historical
context. Consider the first paragraph, which is just a fragment of a much longer
narrative prologue:
When the august god Anu, king of the Anunnaku deities, and the god Enlil,
lord of heaven and earth, who determines the destinies of the land, allotted
supreme power over all the peoples to the god Marduk, the firstborn son of
the god Ea, exalted him among the Igigu deities, named the city of Babylon
with its august name and made it supreme within the regions of the world
and established for him within it eternal kingship whose foundations are as
fixed as heaven and earth, at that time, the gods Anu and Enlil, for the
enhancement of the wellbeing of the people named me by my name:
Hammurabi,
the pious prince, who venerates the gods, to make justice
prevail in the land, to abolish the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong
from oppressing the weak, to rise like the sun-god Shamash over all
humankind, to illuminate the world.2
Maybe Copan does not regard this as "history," but it differs very little from
the "history" given in Exodus, which also refers to a god (Yahweh) who called a
man (Moses) through whom the law was given to the people. After all, there is
much more evidence that Hammurabi was an actual historical figure, whereas
we have nothing about Moses outside of biblical manuscripts that are no earlier
than the first through the third centuries BCE in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Moreover, the prologue and epilogue of the CH clearly enunciate principles
for the laws. These principles can be summarized as follows:
1. to further the wellbeing of humanity;
2. to make justice prevail in the land;
3. to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers;
4. to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak;
5. to have as equal and as complete a rulership as the sun; and
6. to protect the orphan (or waif) and the widow.3
So, contrary to Copan's assertions, we do find in the CH the goal of bettering
humankind and a reference to the divine will (Shamash's will). Clearly, Copan is
simply wrong about the CH. That alone speaks volumes about how well he
knows these ancient Near Eastern materials, and how fair he is in making
comparisons.
MOTIVE CLAUSES AS SUPERIOR
Yet another misrepresentation of Near Eastern materials occurs in Copan's
discussions of motive clauses, which explain the reasons for enacting or
practicing a particular law. For example, the commandment to honor father and
mother in Exodus 20:12 is accompanied by a motive clause ("that your days may
be long in the land which the LORD your God gives you").
In the 1950s, a scholar named Berend Gemser argued that only biblical laws
had motive clauses, and so biblical law was superior.4 The supposed superiority
of motive clauses is particularly ironic because another stream of apologetics,
led by Albrecht Alt (1883-1956), the famous German biblical scholar, claimed
that apodictic laws made the Bible unique and superior. Apodictic laws, such as
"Thou shalt not kill," can be formulated without conditions or motive clauses.
Even at the time of Gemser, scholars knew that many Near Eastern laws also had
motive clauses, and so biblical apologetics eventually shifted to explaining how
biblical motive clauses were superior.
Rifat Sonsino, author of Motive Clauses in Hebrew Law, thought he found
what made biblical motive clauses superior. Copan relies heavily, and much too
uncritically, on the work of Sonsino. In fact, the quote I highlighted above from
Copan's essay derives almost directly from Sonsino, who wrote: "It is
noteworthy that, unlike biblical laws, no cuneiform law is ever motivated by
reference to an historic event, a promise of wellbeing or, for that matter, a divine
will. In fact, in these laws the deity is completely silent, yielding its place to a
human lawgiver whose main concern is economic rather than religious." -5
Copan states, "Also unlike the Code of Hammurabi and other Mesopotamian
law codes are the various `motive clauses' in the Sinaitic legislation that ground
divine commands in Yahweh's historical activity." Yet, as we have observed, it is
simply not true that the CH does not view itself as grounded in historical events
or in a narrative. The general motives are made explicit in the prologue, and so
they do not need to be repeated in individual laws.
One has to go to footnote 23 of Copan's essay to see that Sonsino has a more
nuanced position. While the main text of Copan's essay gives the misleading
impression that the CH contained no motive clauses, Sonsino actually argues
that the relative number of motive clauses is higher in the Bible. Sonsino further
argues that that difference lies in the "form, content, and function" of motive
clauses.6 More important, Copan does not explain why we should accept laws
with motive clauses as superior in any way. Can we say that the commandment
to honor your father and mother is superior to the one forbidding killing (v. 13:
"You shall not kill") because the former has a motive clause, while the latter does
not?
If motive clauses make a law superior, then why are they not supplied for all
biblical laws? Of course, Copan assumes that the motives should be deemed
good in biblical law, where someone else could see some of them as appealing to
self-interest. The motive for honoring one's father and mother in Exodus 20:12 is
so that the Israelites can have a long life in the land. But is that sort of self-
interest really a good motive to honor our father and mother?
If we regard the welfare of others, rather than self-interest, as the standard of a
superior law, then I can find a much better motive clause in law 137 of the CH:
"If a man should decide to divorce a priestess or a shugitu [priestess] who bore
him children or a naditu [priestess] who provided him with children, then he
shall return that woman her dowry, they shall give her half (of her husband's)
field, orchard, and property, and she shall raise her children." 7 English
translations do not reflect the fact that the last clause can function as a motive
clause (i.e., it could be translated as "in order that she raise her children").8 Here,
a law is given for the good of the children, not for the self-interest of the man
commanded to follow this law.
Copan shows his religionist biases when he assumes that having religious
motivations is somehow superior to having economic motivations. But that also
depends on how one sees economics. If the economic laws are supposed to
protect the weak from the strong, as the CH asserts, then what is wrong with
that? This fact must be considered in light of the types of laws that have motive
clauses. Sonsino himself admits: "Most of the motivated laws deal with
cultic/sacral sphere. Out of 375 motivated legal prescriptions, 271 can be
assigned to this category. This represents ca. 72% of the motivated laws, but ca.
27% of the cultic/sacral instructions in the Pentateuchal legal corpora. The cultic
sacral laws, in turn, constitute 78% of all the legal prescriptions in the Bible." 9
In other words, many of the motivated laws have to do with why someone
should sacrifice in a particular way, or not eat impure foods. Here is a typical
cultic law with motive clauses (Leviticus 17:3-5):
If any roan of the house of Israel kills an ox or a lamb or a goat in the camp,
or kills it outside the camp, and does not bring it to the door of the tent of
meeting, to offer it as a gift to the LORD before the tabernacle of the
LORD, bloodguilt shall be imputed to that man; he has shed blood; and that
man shall be cut off from among his people. This is to the end that the
people of Israel may bring their sacrifices which they slay in the open field,
that they may bring them to the LORD, to the priest at the door of the tent
of meeting
, and slay them as sacrifices of peace offerings to the LORD.10
So how or why would the motive clause in verse 5 be superior to that of law
137 in the CH, which is motivated by the welfare of a divorced woman's
children? Indeed, Sonsino calculates that there are only 51 "humanitarian
admonitions," or 14 percent of all the motivated laws in the Hebrew Bible.11 As
we examine the specific list of socalled motive clauses by Sonsino, it also
becomes dolorously apparent that many of these motives offer us nothing
particularly more ethical than what could be offered by the laws of other
religions.
Moreover, the impressively high counts of motive clauses in the Bible,
relative to those of other ancient Near Eastern cultures, evaporate once you look
at how those motive clauses are being counted. Consider the fact that Sonsino
counts the statement, "I am Yahweh (your God)," as an entire motive clause in
the following biblical passages: Leviticus 18:1, 22:8, 26:1-2.12 Yet, is saying "I
am Yahweh" really a better ethical motive than saying "I am Allah" or "I am
Shamash"? One can see that the motive counts can rise dramatically in the Bible
by defining these sorts of formulaic statements as motive clauses.
ADVANCES IN SLAVERYLAWS?
When comparing the Bible to Near Eastern cultures, Copan assures us that: "On
the other hand, Israel's laws reveal a dramatic, humanizing improvement over
the practices of the other ancient Near Eastern peoples." Within the Bible, he
says we also find improvement: "What is more, the three main texts regarding
slave legislation (Exod. 21; Lev. 25; Deut. 15) reveal a morally improved
legislation as the text progresses." So, what was so improved in the Bible
compared to Near Eastern laws? It is difficult to see, given that Copan admits
that: "Pentateuch's legal code in places does differentiate between Israelite and
non-Israelite slaves (for example, Exod. 12:43, where non-Israelites are not to
partake in the Passover); it grants remitting loans to Israelites but not to
foreigners (Deut. 15:3); it allows for exacting interest from a foreigner but not
from a fellow Israelite (Deut. 23:20); Moabites and Ammonites are excluded
from the sanctuary (Deut. 23:3)." Nonetheless, Copan offers us this reassurance:
"To stop here, as the New Atheists do, is to overlook the Pentateuch's narrative
indicating God's concern for bringing blessing to all humanity (Gen. 12:1-3).
Even more fundamentally, human beings have been created in God's image as
corulers with God over creation (Gen. 1:26-27; Ps. 8)."
If we used the intention to bring blessing to all humanity, then it is clear that
the CH would also satisfy this requirement. Recall that the prologue to the CH
includes this motive: "for the enhancement of the wellbeing of the people." In
contrast to this more altruistic motive, if we look at what the "blessing" of
humanity means in the Bible, then it is also not as benign as it appears. Copan
quotes Genesis 12:1-3 for support. But Genesis 12 foreshadows the fact that the
native population of Canaan mentioned in verse 6 eventually will be slaughtered
to make way for the Israelites. Genesis 12:3 indicates that those who do not
agree with the Abrahamic plan will be cursed. And it will eventually become
clear that the ultimate goal is for Yahweh to be in frill control of all humanity,
and humanity will be his slaves, and slaves to his people (see Isaiah 14:1-2
discussed further below). In short, Copan is already working with a very biased
view of "blessing."
When we examine more specific supposed improvements, Copan does not tell
the whole story. For example, he says: "Hammurabi called for the death penalty