[Music] the Old Testament in the Bible contains many very challenging passages for modern Christians some of the rules and regulations just seem arbitrary such as the well-known dietary laws prohibiting foods like pork and shellfish or laws prohibiting the mixing of different types of fabric some of these seem very cruel such as commands to Stone disobedient children to death or to cut off the hand of a woman who touches a man's genitals some of these passages are actually disturbing such as verses which Des describe the proper treatment of slaves and implicitly endorse the acceptability of capturing enemies and turning them into slaves more troubling still are verses which seemingly approve of capturing enemy women and forcing them to marry Israelite soldiers and of course most troubling of all are the commands from God to wipe out the Canaanites including non-combatants like women children and even infants this video will explore these issues and how Christians have respond responded to the challenges they pose I will caution against various extremes before proposing what I see as being the most promising way to understand them most Christians vaguely know about these challenging Old Testament texts however most also seem to conveniently forget about them and the challenges which they raise as a child in Sunday school I remember singing about how Jesus loved the little children of the world I remember memorizing verses like John 3:16 and how God so loved the world and I would fervently be taught that God wanted each and every individual to be saved I remember when I first learned about these troubling texts and how there seemed to be an inconsistency between God commanding the slaughter of infants and my firm belief that Jesus loves the little children of the world I remember the first time I asked my Sunday school teacher about the issue and she seemed very uncomfortable with my question I was told to ask the pastor instead when I did he likewise seemed quite uncomfortable he spoke about God's mysterious ways how God was the author of life and so had the right to take it whenever he wanted to and that I should be very careful about ever questioning God again so I never brought up the issue again but I certainly wasn't satisfied with anything that my pastor had said the fundamental problem was never addressed how could the same God who had sent his son to die for the sins of the world command the genocide of entire people groups for Better or For Worse worse I eventually let the issue go like most other Christians these troubling texts sank away into the depths of my subconscious mind I vaguely knew about them but I didn't really focus upon them I was content enough to just ignore them however once I became involved in Christian apologetics and began interacting with Skeptics it became clear that I was not going to be allowed to just ignore these texts Skeptics would raise this as a fundamental inconsistency in the character of the out of the Bible as Paul Copan and Matthew Flanigan observe if one takes these passages literally they record the divinely authorized Commission of a holy war a total war fought at God's command not only against enemy combatants but also against non-combatants such as women and children in light of this critics of Christian theism often ask how could a good and loving God command the extermination of the Canaanites unfortunately I had no answer to the challenge and so I was forced to confront the question again as a brand new Christian apologist I knew just what to do I would turn to read what other respected Christian apologists had written on the matter surely someone had solved this problem and sure enough I soon discovered several books addressing the issue but to my dismay there didn't seem to be a unified answer I got answers as diverse as that God was actually doing these Canaanites a favor to that the fundament Al historicity of these texts should be denied a spectrum of different options emerged on the very conservative side there were Scholars like Eugene Merill emphasizing God's absolute sovereignty to do whatever he pleases Merill writes the issue then cannot be whether or not genocide is intrinsically good or evil it's sanctioned by a holy God settles that question we argue here that biblical genocide was part of a Yahweh War policy enacted for a unique situation directed against a certain people and in line with the character of God himself a policy whose design is beyond human comprehension but one that is not for that reason unjust or immoral the moral and ethical dilemma of Yahweh war must also remain without satisfying rational explanation at the risk of cliche all that can be said is that if God is all the Bible says he is all that he does must be good and that includes his authorization of genocide while Merill is of course right that God has the power to do whatever he wants these sorts of answers leave the fundamental inconsistency unaddressed sure God can command the death of infants however biblical statements about God's Universal love seem to mitigate against the idea that he ever would command such a thing less Hardline but still conservative Scholars like Paul Copan and Matthew Flanigan tried their best to alleviate my worries by assuring me that the commands to kill the Canaanites were hyperbolic and not meant to be read literally atheists do have a point when they say that if we read such verses in isolation from the rest of the narrative and do so in a straightforward literal way it appears that Israel committed genocide at God's command slaughtering every last inhabitant of the land of Canaan there are however good reasons why these passages should not be read in a straightforward literal way first it's quite implausible that those who authorized the final form of the text were affirming that all Canaanites were exterminated at God's command second the accounts that appear to say otherwise are utilizing extensive Hyperbole and are not intended to be taken literally this helped for a little while but once I realized that Copan and Flanigan's proposal still acknowledged that God was commanding the deaths of children albeit not as as many as a literal reading would suggest the problem still emerged even if God was only commanding the deaths of some Canaanite children rather than all of them this still creates conflict with the idea that God loves everyone furthermore I found some of the other things which copen and Flanigan said very off-putting for example in defense of God commanding the deaths of some children copen tries to play it off like this was actually a good thing saying if any infants and children were killed they would have entered the presence of God though deprived of Earthly life these young ones wouldn't have been deprived of the greatest good enjoying Everlasting friendship with God but this is no defense even if God did not deprive the infants and children of the greatest good he is still depriving them of a very significant good moreover he is doing so without any apparent reason the deaths of all Canaanite infants could be avoided just by offering a command to not kill any infant and why is this sort of reasoning only being employed in this one instance surely Copan would not think that a modern-day Slaughter of infants wouldn't be all that bad just because the infants would go to heaven so his reasoning here begins to look very much like a post Haw rationalization whether sanctioned by God or not the death of an infant remains a terrible thing as a final Point cop's reasoning here seems to afford him very little grounds for claiming that something like abortion is not a good thing for if it was a good thing for the Canaanite infants to get a one-way ticket to Heaven due to dying in infancy wouldn't this be a good thing for modern infants as well he pushes back against this suggestion by saying when the killer takes matters into his own hands he is acting presumptuously the Killer is not benefiting the infant he is only harming the infant the killer brings only death not benefits it is God who bestows the benefit of heavenly life the Killer isn't responsible for getting an infant to heaven but it's hard to see how this gets Copan off the hook the original question asked why it is not a good thing for modern infants to die if that was a good thing for the Canaanite infants saying that the killer has no God sanctioned right to do this or that the benefits are bestowed by God does not answer that question presumably Hebrew soldiers who slaughtered infants also did not bestow eternal life upon them but rather God did so this is not the defense for the killing of helpless babies that Copan seems to think that it is on the more liberal side of the spectrum Scholars like Greg Boyd affirmed the essential historicity of the conquest narratives but maintained that a loving God could not have commanded such things so for Boyd the biblical authors must just have misunderstood God's commands as he explains God thus chose the lesser of two evils when he decided to block the pole towards polytheistic Idol idolatry by stooping to allow the Jews to make their sacrifices to him in doing this God was thereby allowing his people to continue to believe that Yahweh like all other ancient neare Eastern Gods actually wanted if not needed violence and since this is how his people viewed him this is what got recorded in the biblical narrative while this solution does avoid the inconsistency it does so at a rather high price it entails that God's Revelation in scripture can represent fundamental misunderstandings of God and this creates serious challenges for biblical theology for once it has been admitted that scripture when properly interpreted does not infallibly communicate God's intentions there arises a challenge regarding how to know which parts of scripture can be relied upon as truly revealing God and which parts cannot it's difficult to come up with a non-subjective solution to this dilemma more more extreme Scholars like Randall Rouser maintained that Christians ought to flat out deny the historicity of the conquest narratives altogether because our moral intuitions tell us that God would never command such things he argues and so as I have reflected on these issues I find that for me it most certainly is the case that my conscience forbids consideration of the notion that God commanded the historic genocidal eradication of entire societies from this it follows that whatever the biblical texts May mean to teach us they cannot intend to teach us that and in so far as your conscience likewise forbids the idea that God commanded such apparent moral atrocities you ought not believe it instead of relaying actual Divine commands for Rouser God must have some other purpose for including these non-historical stories in scripture what that purpose might be one can only speculate but more fundamentally Rouser account incurs all of the same problems as Boyd's and potentially even more I needed a better answer fortunately there is a middle way between the extreme of affirming that God really commanded the deaths of non-combatants and the extreme of saying that God's commands were misunderstood or non-historical furthermore the approach which I will propose has the benefit of not merely explaining the genocide text but actually has the potential to explain all or most of the difficult material in the Old Testament in this next part of the video I am going to propose a hermeneutic for reading these sorts of passages I will then proceed to apply it to some of the difficult texts in the Old Testament the method for reading these troubling text which I will offer has been called the Redemptive movement hermeneutic it has been masterfully developed by the biblical scholar William web who applies it to a number of biblical texts including the genocide texts this approach begins with two foundational assumptions first it assumes that mankind is very depraved and alienated from God by sin second it assumes that God although he is Holy genuinely desires to enter into loving relationship with sinful humans God ultimately desires that humans would act in accordance with his perfect standard of Holiness however being as sinful as we are if God were to demand instant Perfection as a condition for loving relation ship hardly anyone perhaps no one at all would be willing to enter into that relationship with God so according to the Redemptive movement model God instead chose to incrementally call human beings to a higher standard a few steps at a time rather than demand that human beings transform completely overnight God chose to accommodate some of their sin for a time for the sake of slowly improving their behavior as Greg Boyd says the primary strength strategy for explaining violent portraits of God in the Old Testament centers on the fact that God has always had to accommodate his Revelation to the limitations and Fallen state of his people his strategy was to gradually increase his people's capacity to know him as he truly is the revelation of God within the god breath written witness to God's covenantal faithfulness thus unfolds gradually God's willingness to stoop to whatever level was necessary at the time in order to remain in a transformative covenantal relationship with his people is a motif that runs throughout both Testaments under this model the laws set forth in the Old Testament do not represent God's ideal standard instead they represent a Divine calling to a higher standard relative to the societal Norms of the time in which they were given which still fall short of God's perfect will they represent a sort of compromise between the utter depravity of man and the holy Perfection of God that God might have acted in this way is eminently plausible from a straightforward reading of the text itself after all even after God had miraculously worked to bring his people out of slavery we constantly read about them complaining and rebelling against God even after God gave them the promised land his people still rebelled against him and constantly fell into idol worship so there is ample biblical evidence that ancient people were hard-hearted towards God and that therefore God may have had to make some compromises in order to have relationship with them to get an idea of what I'm talking about let's consider Deuteronomy 2110 through1 14 as a concrete example the verse reads when you go out to battle against your enemies and the Lord your God hands them over to you and you take them away captive and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and are strongly attracted Ed to her and would take her as a wife for yourself then you shall bring her into your home and she shall shave her head and trim her nails she shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house and weep for her father and mother for a full month and after that you may have relations with her and become her husband and she shall be your wife but it shall be if you are not pleased with her then you shall let her go wherever she wishes and you certainly shall not sell her for money you shall not treat her as merchandise since you have humiliated her to Modern readers this looks shameful it looks as though God is endorsing the forcible marriage of captives to their captors moreover if the captor is displeased with the captive he can simply disown her is that the kind of treatment we would expect a good and loving God to endorse William web and Gordon osty explain sometimes we talk with Christians and non-christians who are extremely Disturbed when they encounter the pretty women War text of Deuteronomy 21 we encourage them to begin by reading scripture from an entirely different Vantage Point namely the ancient neare east context within which they originally emerged once people do this they discover that the ancient treatment of women in war was utterly horrendous it often included bodily mutilation of women cutting off their breasts and displaying them on poles torturous deaths multip rapes and a type of concubine enslavement where women would be required to perform Perpetual sexual favors and or produce Offspring for their owners in ancient Siege Warfare the fate of female captives was considered so Dreadful that if it looked like a city was about to fall men at times killed their own wives what an utterly ugly world the treatment of humanity by humanity is sometimes staggering placing the biblical text within that sort of War War context of the ancient world allows us to see Deuteronomy 2110 through1 14 in a different light during the battle conflict and post battle context of gathering Spoils of War Israelite warriors were not permitted to rape or sexually mutilate women that restriction alone when understood against what was normative in Ancient Warfare provided a major difference and tangible movement in a positive direction by reading the biblical text within its ancient context one begins to hear its incremental Redemptive movement now Deuteronomy 2110 through1 14 is a further development or a greater fulfillment of this core Redemptive Trend the better treatment of female prisoners in war that ought to carry Christians forward en forging new practices and policies that help offset or minimize the atrocities of War so the upshot is that when we grasp the historical context within which Deuteronomy 21 was written we see that although this text does represent less than ideal and unfair treatment of women it nevertheless represents a significant step forward in the treatment of women from what was common place at the time God is incrementally calling his people to a higher standard one step at a time and Deuteronomy 21 is but one step in that longer process viewed in this way the Old Testament law is a sort of artifact from a previous time in the history of God's relationship with Mankind and when it is seen in this way much of the concern regarding the perceived tension between God's commands in the Old Testament and his unfathomable love in the New Testament is soothed this is because through the Redemptive movement lens we see that the difference is due to God having succeeded in purifying his people in the past and so has moved on to the next stage of purification in the present the advantage of this approach is that it allows Believers to recognize real problems with the Old Testament but it also allows them to see why these problems exist as well as the purpose that they are serving in God's overall Redemptive plan as web and oste conclude when Christians and non-christians read the biblical text from a present-day Horizon where contemporary ethics have developed further ironically sometimes due in part to scriptures broader Redemptive influence we often see only one thing its ethical downside we become acutely aware of its ethical shortcomings however the journey toward reading the Bible redemptively means learning to see these ethically Troublesome texts also through the lens of the ancient world therein lies an opportunity to see and hear a different side of the story a Redemptive side which often contains partial or incremental movement toward the betterment of human beings now that's a very Broad overview of the Redemptive movement hermeneutic while I'm not going to address every difficult text in this video I will apply this hermeneutic to a few of the most troubling cases and show how this model can make sense of them my hope is that this will enable viewers to apply the hermeneutic to other troubling texts for themselves at the end of this video I will refer viewers to William web's excellent work on the topic for a more comprehensive application of the hermeneutic to the darker text of scripture so let's return again to Deuteronomy 2110 through1 14 we have already noted the problems with this text in that it allows captured women to be mistreated that is the ugly side of this text reflective of the ugly world in which it was written but is there also a Redemptive side I think that there is again consider the normative treatment of captured women in the ancient world they could be repeatedly raped completely mistreated tortured turned into sexual slaves and then they could be sold off for the benefit of those who had mistreated them at the end of it all notice that this is not allowed in Deuteronomy 21 Israelite soldiers can only have sex with captured women if they are prepared to marry them and provide for them they cannot just indiscriminately rape captives without consequence as sexual activity seems to have been prohibited for Israelite soldiers during wartime as web and OST remind us in an ancient world where the battlefield rape of women was common practice we encounter one of the most dramatic differences within the biblical story for Hebrew Warriors No rape no sex of any kind was allowed on the battlefield or on the journey from the battle site back to Jerusalem this military difference is huge no sexual ravaging of women typical of Ancient Warfare none this Israelite practice of abstaining from sexual intercourse during war makes David's sexual immorality with basba even more hideous because it happens at the time when kings go off to war this subtle comment about what Kings generally do in war is the narrator's way of raising the question of why King David is at home having sex and not out on the battlefield with his men when David invites be sheba's husband UAH back home from the battle he hopes that Uriah will sleep with his wife and thus cover up the pregnancy instead uah's Behavior serves as a contrast of foil to David's wrongful Indulgence Uriah sleeps on the palace floor with the servants he does not go home and sleep with his wife in his explanation to David UAH points to the presence of the Ark on the battlefield and suggests that he could not have done otherwise considering the conditions of his fellow Warriors the text implied question is obvious how could Uriah possibly engage in such sexual enjoyment when his fellow Warriors could not furthermore Deuteronomy 2113 specifies that an Israelite Soldier cannot have sex with the woman for a full month to provide the woman with time to mourn the loss of her family and while it is true that the soldiers are allowed to divorce the women if they are ultimately not pleased with them they are directly forbidden from selling them into slavery or making any sort of profit off of them again I am not saying that this is fair or good or ideal treatment of women on the contrary it is very regressive the point is just that it is comparatively quite generous treatment towards captured women by ancient standards and that it is without precedent in the ancient world we thus see that although this text does not represent God's ideal treatment towards women and there are genuine problems with it it nevertheless represents an early step towards progress in how women were treated as Webb and oi argue an Israelite Warrior has to wait one month before marrying a female War captive the biblical text explicitly ties the waiting time to the right of the captive to mourn the month of mourning was a relatively long period of time within ancient world grieving patterns where one week was the cultural norm for grieving family loss the biblical legislation required four times that standard length of time this comparison is helpful but not quite accurate we must understand the Redemptive element in the text in much larger proportions the ratio is 4 to0 not 4 to one after all the comparison of four weeks with one week involves compassion extended to one's family and fellow citizens not to Once defeated enemy ancient war captives were typically granted no mourning rights zero this biblical requirement of a morning time for enemy captives stands alone as a monument an unrivaled statement of compassion within Ancient Warfare but what about the genocide texts what are we to make of the the Old Testament Divine commands to utterly annihilate the Canaanites including non-combatants like women and children here it will be helpful to realize that although violence was common place in the ancient world so too was Hyperbole and exaggeration this sort of hyperbole was expressed in a variety of ways ranging from the numbers of soldiers which were involved in combat to the length of time across which battles took place to the severity of the casualties historical accuracy was not the point so much as making one's Heroes look as impressive as possible in their book bloody brutal and barbaric William Webb and Gordon o go through examples of this sort of exaggeration in Egyptian Assyrian Samarian Syrian and other ancient neare Eastern War literature the accounts are replete with the same sort of total kill statements that we find in the Hebrew Old Testament and yet everyone agrees that these sorts of statements are exaggerated in the literature surrounding Israel so why would wouldn't we think that the similar statements in the Old Testament should be read in the same way John and Jay Harvey Walton reached similar conclusions saying ancient narratives do not attempt to provide the audience with information to reconstruct what a video camera observing the event would have recorded this understanding of the genre allows for some fluidity in the documentation in regard to such things as the circumstances of the battle including the date and even the identity of the participants but most most notably these accounts tend to exaggerate the magnitude of the Victory and the scale of the slaughter inflicted on the enemies and in fact a careful reading of the biblical text will show that the descriptions of killing everyone in various cities must be taken as hyperbole if contradiction is to be avoided again Webb and oste observe several indicators within the Book of Joshua itself also show that the Israelites did not completely destroy all the Canaanite cities and the people living in the cities other people groups are described as having no survivors and being completely destroyed by Israel's war initiative and yet survivors existed people who clearly were alive and not completely destroyed that is put to death in Israel's Southern campaign Joshua 10:33 indicates that Haram king of gazer had come up to help lakish but Joshua defeated him and his army until no survivors were left which complied with the summary in Joshua 1040 indicating that in Joshua's Southern campaign he not only subdued the whole region but left no survivors he totally destroyed all who breathed just as the Lord the god of Israel had commanded yet a few chapters later we learn that the ephraimites did not dislodge the Canaanites living in gazer to this day the Canaanites live among the people of Ephraim but are required to do forced labor thus plentiful evidence within the the Book of Joshua itself shows that at the end of Joshua's life significant numbers of Canaanites still lived within the land some in the very places where Joshua is said to have left none alive furthermore Not only would reading these total kill passages literally create contradictions within the details of the text but they would also create contradictions within God's Own commands for the Old Testament text does not merely describe God as commanding the annihilation of the Canaanites but it also describes him as commanding the Israelites to drive the Canaanites out of the land but if the annihilation commands are taken literally this makes God command two mutually exclusive courses of action as Webb and oste argue we have seen that the pentat and Joshua Judges use the language of both destruction and expulsion when describing the fate of the Canaanites at times Conquest Texs use drive out language and other times the language of total killing sometimes these two ideas are located in the same texts we have argued that the evidence best aligns with understanding the expulsion of the Canaanites from the promised land and the destruction of the Canaanites as two alternative options for how Israel could come to possess the land of Canaan if total kill and drive out instructions are both acceptable options for achieving the primary goal then this provides yet another good piece of evidence for understanding the total kill language in a hyperbolic not literal sense in summary then we ought not understand the total kill language in the Old Testament literally it represents a sort of rhetorical exaggeration which was common place within wartex of the time as Webb and OST conclude yes the rhetoric of Israel's battle language sounds genocidal to us and it would be genocidal if taken literally but since the inflated War language anguage simply meant a sound defeat of the enemy as in other ancient near East War texts it is inaccurate to label the biblical account as genocide if one insists on labeling Israel's battles as genocide then we must logically attach the same label to all Warfare throughout the entire ancient world labeling all Warfare in the ancient world as genocidal misunderstands the ancient war genre and blunders into a single Horizon and anachronistic ethical assessment Webb and OST also argue that even in the descriptions of ancient Israelite Warfare in the Old Testament there is still a Redemptive side to the story they examine various lines of evidence supporting the Notions that the Nations surrounding Israel engaged in appalling treatment of their prisoners of War this involves stripping them naked to shame them binding them in cruel and painful positions mutilating their bodies putting out their eyes cutting off their body parts skinning them alive selling entire communities into slavery and desecrating their dead as well as forcing the captives to participate in the desecration many of these actions are explicitly forbidden in the Old Testament this is not to pretend that Israelite soldiers never carried out any atrocities on their captives whatsoever it is merely to point out that they were more Humane than their neighbors towards their prisoners of War which again fits well with the Redemptive movement hermeneutic God was incrementally improving the character of his people as Webb and ostd point out while unpleasant to reflect on an accurate picture of the grizzly nature of ancient war is important for reading the biblical War texts the war atrocities listed above are either explicitly or implicitly denounced within the biblical text unlike the praise and glory given these acts of extreme Violence by Foreign Gods artworks and animals such war crimes were not considered Yahweh approved War actions for Israel to put it another way the clear movement away from well-known War atrocities of the ancient world betrays significant incremental movement in a good Redemptive Direction unlike many in the ancient world the biblical writers viewed the above War atrocities as a list of shameful War actions and not something to be proud of this incremental Redemptive War ideology within scripture as read Within the social context of its day advances a greater respect in dignity even for one's enemies on the battlefield but what about slavery doesn't the Old Testament allow people to own and sell slaves the answer here is undeniably affirmative but once again consistent with the Redemptive Movement hermeneutic we also see a Redemptive side to biblical slavery compared to the treatment of slaves elsewhere at the time for example there were penalties for excessively beating your slaves restitutions had to be made to Slaves who suffered serious injuries and Hebrew slaves had to be released every seven years I am not at all trying to pretend that being a slave in ancient Israel was a desirable thing on the contrary the conditions are still harsh and it still falls short of God's ideal the point is merely that even in the ugliness of ancient Hebrew slavery we can still see incremental steps to improve life somewhat for the slaves and to give them a measure of dignity this evidence is therefore consistent with the Redemptive movement approach as William web argues the way that the Bible deals with slaves as well as numerous other topics should convince us of the influence of culture on the formation of the text scripture does not present a finalized ethic in every area of human relationship God challenges his Covenant people to act redemptively in the area of slavery for example example release for Hebrew slaves every seventh year Provisions upon release limitations on beatings and slave free equality statements the text takes us on a journey that clearly involves restoration of the society to which it was given however to stop where the Bible stops with its isolated words ultimately fails to reapply the Redemptive Spirit of the text as it spoke to the original audience it fails to see that further Reformation is possible and that further Reformation must happen in order to fulfill the spirit-based component of meaning within the text words while scripture had a positive influence in its time we should take that Redemptive spirit and move on to an even better more fully realized ethic today lastly we shall consider an extremely difficult text found in Deuteronomy 2511 and 12 the verse reads if two men a man and his countrymen have a fight with each other and the wife of one comes up to save her husband from the hand of the one who is hitting him and she reaches up with her hand and grasps the man's genitals then you shall cut off her hand you shall not show pity given the close literary parallels between this verse in a similar text in contemporary ancient Assyrian law codes we may conclude that this verse is likely not talking about merely touching a man's genitals but rather about damaging them as web says while not expl itly stated the primary concern or offense appears to be that of injuring the asent testicles to the extent that he is unable to procreate still the prescribed punishment cutting off a woman's hand for trying to help her husband seems incredibly harsh and it certainly is I do not wish to pretend otherwise but we must remember the world in which this text was written it was a male-dominated world where the continuation of one's family line was viewed as as being of Paramount importance causing a man to become infertile thus would have been considered a much more serious offense than perhaps it would be today and sadly the mutilation of women was a fairly common punishment during this time in his book corporal punishment in the Bible William web surveys the Contemporary penal codes of that time and finds that women were allowed to be punished for even lesser offenses by having their fingers removed having their teeth broken having pegs driven into their mouth having their ears and nose removed having their breasts removed cutting out their eyes and tongue or cutting off their feet given the pervasiveness of this ghastly practice it does need to be emphasized that this is the only text in the Old Testament which allows for mutilation as Webb observes the most striking component of Redemptive movement has to be the comparative scarcity of Mutilation laws within the Bible of course I would would be delighted if there were no amputation or mutilation texts at all However the fact that Deuteronomy 25 11- 12 is the only prescribed Corporal mutilation punishment within the Bible is rather incredible given the ancient world in which it was written in short reading scripture within its broader Horizon helps us sense its Monumental Spirit of restraint I must reiterate that I am not trying to say that this is not a terribly brutal punishment or that losing a hand is not all that bad the point once again is merely to show how restrained the biblical text is compared to the sort of violence that was allowed to go on unchecked in the world in which it was written returning to the similarities between Deuteronomy 25 11-2 and the Assyrian law codes we once again do see the Redemptive side of the story as the removal of one hand pales in comparison to the punishment prescribed for the same offense by the Assyrian as web argues another way we encounter Redemptive development within scripture is through comparing the hand amputation text of Deuteronomy 2511 and 12 with its closest parallel namely the testicle grabbing text within the Assyrian law codes we are left with a comparison of three alternative punishments for roughly the same crime the amputation of one hand the Bible the gouging out of both eyes Assyrian option one or the cutting off of both breasts Assyrian option two what I'm going to suggest as gruesome as the thought may sound is that cutting off one hand is actually much less harsh than the two Assyrian options first if one considers losing both eyes this comparative waiting can easily be made blindness in both eyes severely damages a person's capacity of Performing almost all daily tasks the amputation of one hand however does not bring a about anywhere near the same amount of damage or hardship second a similar case can be made when we consider cutting off a hand compared with cutting off both breasts for a woman the need for maternal milk in a premodern world was much greater without powdered Alternatives and Refrigeration also the inability to raise children in the ancient world was viewed as a huge economic threat to family stability and intergenerational Care furthermore the value of procreation was accentuated through the greater focus in the ancient setting on providing a lasting family name given these losses and accompanying values most ancient women would probably have considered the amputation of both breasts as a far more devastating punishment than the cutting off of one hand due to the severity of all three punishments one hand two breasts or two eyes this sort of value comparison is not something any of us really want to talk about let alone Ponder what ancient women actually experienced by way of loss from such mutilations however when we reflect on the nature of the damages in each of the three cases especially as they would have been understood and valued in the ancient near East world the least harsh punishment by a significant measure is that of losing one hand once again there is at least a certain degree of movement and the movement is in the right direction toward greater compassion and dignity in the midst of what is still admittedly an extremely harsh social environment one final point to make is that we have no record of this penalty ever actually being inflicted upon a woman perhaps the text alone served as a sufficient deterrent and no Hebrew woman ever actually had her hand amputated in this way I realized that this isn't a satisfactory response to the question of why God allowed such a horrifying law in the Bible in the first place but here I again remind viewers that I believe that God was attempting to incrementally improve his people and that this text must be seen in that light let me close by considering one final concern perhaps many of my viewers are concerned that the Redemptive movement model has a suspicious whiff of liberalism about it perhaps there is a worry that it can be used to dismiss any text of scripture which one does not like this is certainly a legitimate concern to raise we certainly don't want to be engaging in post ha talk rationalization or even worse blatant dismissal of any and all texts which offend modern sensibilities but two points must be raised in response to this concern first the Redemptive movement hermeneutic is not dismissing these uncomfortable biblical texts it accepts that God really did Issue these commands it merely tries to make sense of them within the world in which they originated as well as within the overall trajectory of God's revelation culminating in Jesus Christ as Steven D young reminds us the ultimate revelation of the Triune God is the Incarnation of Jesus Christ God the son it is perfectly correct to interpret the actions of Yahweh the god of Israel in the Old Testament in light of who we know him to be through those who knew Christ and wrote the New Testament scriptures he is after all the same yesterday today and forever second I think that scripture itself supports the idea that the Old Testament is imperfect and includes some divine an accommodation of human sinfulness a good example here is the old testament's clear allowance for a divorce in Deuteronomy 241 yet when Jesus comments on this passage in Matthew 198 he expressly says that God allowed this because of the hard-heartedness of the people of Israel but that this was never God's ideal so it is absolutely taught within scripture itself that the Old Testament law contains divinely permitted imperfections as a result of man's sinfulness as Greg Boyd comments frequently the Old Testament reflects God accommodating the weak and Fallen state of his people by compromising his ideals a clear example of This concerns God's ideal for marriage to be monogamous and for life because of the hardness of people's hearts Jesus tells us Yahweh at some point decided to allow for divorce so long as the husband was willing to write his spouse an official certificate of divorce in all likelihood this concession was made as a way of slowing down the divorce process thereby forcing the man to consider the consequences of his action rather than halfhazard kicking his wife out of the house leaving her vulnerable and without the possibility of re marriage seeing that his Fallen people would sometimes fail to achieve his marriage for Life ideal Yahweh stooped to offer a provision to protect the women who were being divorced concessions such as these reflect the merciful heart of a Heavenly missionary who is willing to compromise his ideals whenever it was loving to do so perhaps even more striking is the book of Hebrews which repeatedly Compares Jesus to various aspects of the Old Testament law arguing that he is superior but one cannot be superior to Perfection so the entire argument of the book of Hebrews presupposes that the Old Testament is imperfect again Boyd says the author of Hebrews does not deny that God truly spoke through past prophets but it is nevertheless clear that the author views these previous Revelations as inferior to the revelation of God in Jesus indeed as inferior as a mere Shadow is to the substantial reality that casts it and he goes on to say the author of Hebrews Begins by stressing how the revelation of God in his own son contrasts with and surpasses all previous Revelations by virtue of the fact that the son alone alone is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being in fact the very fact that a new covenant was made through the crucified Christ suffices for this author to conclude that there was something wrong with the first Covenant now in this video I know I have only addressed a small handful of the troubling texts in the Old Testament I refer those seeking a more in-depth and comprehensive treatment of the issue to William web's excellent books on the subject my aim here has been more modest I am merely trying to equip viewers with the tools to understand these difficult biblical passages once again I feel the need to emphasize that I am not attempting to downplay the harshness of these Old Testament texts or the problems present within them the point is merely to emphasize that when they are compared to similar literature of the time the biblical texts represent a move away from the cultural norms moreover the move is in a Direction which is superior to those cultural norms while still in a way that falls short of perfection I have suggested that the best way to make sense of this phenomenon is to see God as incrementally and progressively improving the character of human beings viewed in this way we can admit that there are genuine problems and Imperfections in the Old Testament moreover we can admit that these problems are in congruent with the character of the god revealed by Jesus Christ but it also doesn't require us to reject those texts or say that there are mistakes in the Bible instead we recognize that God had a greater plan to improve human behavior above the barbaric practices which permeated the ancient world however God did not do this overnight he did this slowly and surely over time right up until the present when we see the Old Testament in this light we are able to see God's overarching strategy and to appreciate God's wisdom while everything is not perfect in the Old Testament law God used those barbaric and violent codes to bring us to the place where we can recognize this fact that in an ironic way was the whole point of God giving those laws to ancient Israel in the first place Humanity on this model was always intended to outgrow [Music] 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