When the Bible doesn't say what the Bible says it says
So, this comes from a tangent on p.3 of this thread, and is primarily for my own curiosity and clarification. Hosts, if this is too well-trodden ground, I apologize.
The OT book of 1 Samuel includes the story of King Saul and the Amalekites. According to the text, God, through the prophet Samuel, commands Saul to annihilate the Amalekites. Every man, woman, child, infant, and beast owned by the Amalekites is to be put to the sword. There are to be no exceptions.
Here's exhibit A, clipped form a longer post:
So, this seems a little freewheeling to me. The Bible says God ordered it, but we can just decide we don't think so? How does this work? I prodded:
It seems it works via straightforward rejection in the face of clear text. But why do this? The questionable historicity disclaimer is interesting, but that's a pretty slippery slope, and includes far more important things for Christians like the census requiring Joseph to take his family to Bethlehem. Anyway, @Nick Tamen to the rescue re: the Amalekites:
So, the failure of Saul & the Israelites to achieve the directive renders the directive itself as questionable? Saul and the Israelite people did spare the Amalekite king (Agag) and the best of the livestock, the latter intended for sacrifice, but the most important consequence was: Saul lost his kingship. Later in the book of Esther, Haman, an Agagite (allegedly Agag had a bit of fun during his captivity) caused a whole new set of issues for the Israelites in Persia, but we don't need to go there. @Nick Tamen continued a few posts later:
A different angle on the idea that the text may well say a particular thing, but can't we do better than that? What do we make of the traditions that don't reject literalism? If the standard moral of the story is that God prefers obedience to sacrifice (hello, Abraham and Isaac), does nothing else matter as long as we get that bit? How much Bible should we feel free to disregard?
The OT book of 1 Samuel includes the story of King Saul and the Amalekites. According to the text, God, through the prophet Samuel, commands Saul to annihilate the Amalekites. Every man, woman, child, infant, and beast owned by the Amalekites is to be put to the sword. There are to be no exceptions.
Here's exhibit A, clipped form a longer post:
The bloodshed to me is just sort of par for the course in terms of the time period. I don't think God ordered such things either way, but it's not like other Near East/Middle East civilisations of the time didn't also carry out such things.
So, this seems a little freewheeling to me. The Bible says God ordered it, but we can just decide we don't think so? How does this work? I prodded:
I didn't say that the text doesn't say that God ordered such things, I said that *I* don't think that God ordered such things. I don't see why I'm somehow obligated to believe that everything that the Bible says that God ordered actually was ordered by God. There is also debate about the historical reality portrayed in the OT - for example, it's generally agreed by historians that the Hebrews were not enslaved in Egypt and that pyramids were built by paid workers.A plain reading of the OT demonstrates that God explicitly ordered such things. There's really no way around that. And the idea that genocide was just a product of the time or that since it was commonly done we can just shrug it off doesn't help.
It seems it works via straightforward rejection in the face of clear text. But why do this? The questionable historicity disclaimer is interesting, but that's a pretty slippery slope, and includes far more important things for Christians like the census requiring Joseph to take his family to Bethlehem. Anyway, @Nick Tamen to the rescue re: the Amalekites:
Nick Tamen wrote: »To me, the interesting thing is that despite the (reportedly) divine commands to annihilate entire nations, the text makes clear that those commands were not followed, and that unlike other failures to follow other commands in the Hebrew Scriptures, the failure to follow the command to annihilate entire nations appears to have brought no consequence on the people of Israel. That’s one reason I’m reluctant to take those parts of the Hebrew Scriptures at face value.A plain reading of the OT demonstrates that God explicitly ordered such things. There's really no way around that. And the idea that genocide was just a product of the time or that since it was commonly done we can just shrug it off doesn't help.
So, the failure of Saul & the Israelites to achieve the directive renders the directive itself as questionable? Saul and the Israelite people did spare the Amalekite king (Agag) and the best of the livestock, the latter intended for sacrifice, but the most important consequence was: Saul lost his kingship. Later in the book of Esther, Haman, an Agagite (allegedly Agag had a bit of fun during his captivity) caused a whole new set of issues for the Israelites in Persia, but we don't need to go there. @Nick Tamen continued a few posts later:
Nick Tamen wrote: »“Reportedly” was simply an acknowledgement that the text does indeed say God commanded the annihilation of nations, but that I come from a tradition that does not require me take that literally or at face value, but that instead encourages some wrestling with the text to try and discern what’s really going on and what the church is to do with those texts.What is 'reportedly'? Pay not attention to the man behind the curtain!
A different angle on the idea that the text may well say a particular thing, but can't we do better than that? What do we make of the traditions that don't reject literalism? If the standard moral of the story is that God prefers obedience to sacrifice (hello, Abraham and Isaac), does nothing else matter as long as we get that bit? How much Bible should we feel free to disregard?
Comments
We can’t really harmonise those views, nor should we try. It may be a controversial word, but a perfectly proper reading of the Bible shows that the understanding of God has evolved. Not in a straight line way, but nevertheless it has changed.
Of course for some people this raises big questions of what it means for the Bible to be inspired, authorised, trustworthy. I think it’s better to face those questions honestly, rather than try to formalise the whole text on the basis that it must present a consistent view of God.
As someone who would probably be seen as very much on the "liberal" side (though I hate labels and have refused for many years to be restricted by them), I would gently challenge the use of the word "disregard".
All of the Bible helps us to understand the story of how the Jewish faith came into existence and gradually evolved. Along the way, we can see (especially in the light of the teachings of Jesus) that people went down a wrong path, even while claiming that God had told them to do it.
Are there bits of the Bible where we can now say "that was wrong"? Of course. The instructions to carry out genocide; the commands for Jews returning from exile to abandon non-Jewish spouses - just to mention two. But this is not disregarding but using the light of Christ to show us better ways to be and to act. We need to pay attention to these bits of the Bible precisely so that we can say "In Christ - no! There is a better way."
So, it’s not that the failure to carry out the command makes the command suspect. It’s that the fact that the failure incurred no consequences can lead to questioning whether the commander was accurately recorded to start with. Is it reporting what God actually commanded, or are the authors’ own understandings and biases creeping in, and do we need to recognize and work through that?
Beyond that, I generally agree with what @Barnabas62 said. Beyond that, I’d say we all have a starting place when it comes to reading and understanding Scripture. For some, that starting place involves understandings of literally accuracy throughout, and/or what is sometimes called infallibility, though that term can mean different things to different people. For myself, I don’t come from a tradition that expects either of those things.
For me, the starting points include, in no particular order:
- When I was ordained a deacon, and later when I was ordained an elder, one of the questions I had to answer in the affirmative was “Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to you?” For me, that sets up a guiding framework that starts with the understanding that the purpose of Scripture is to witness to Jesus, and that witness to Jesus must be the lens through which everything is read and understood.
- Figurative language, including things like metaphor and exaggeration/hyperbole, are a thing and have always been a thing. Cultural differences may make it harder for us to pick up on those aspects of ancient writings. I think myth (in a strict sense of the word) is often at play. All of which is to say, I think there pets of Scripture we’re not meant to take literally.
- I think it’s noteworthy that the new name given Jacob, which will be born by the people descended from him, is Israel, a reference to Jacob’s wrestling with God. I think the Scriptures, perhaps the Hebrew Scriptures in particular, are designed to be texts we wrestle with, struggle with, work through, meditate on, to try to figure out what’s really going on beneath the surface.
I could say more, but that’s probably more than enough for now, except to add that like @Rufus T Firefly, I’d challenge the idea that we can disregard parts of Scripture when we want to, or that that’s what people who don’t take a particular bit of Scripture at face value are doing.It all requires interpretation, without exception. And it may say what it says, but that does not equate to God saying it.
It does make me think, though, of something that I meant to put in my earlier (long) email, and that is I find it can be helpful to examine how rabbinic Judaism has interpreted these difficult passages, particularly in the Talmud, the Midrash and the like. My experience is such writings rarely take such texts at face value.
The New Testament is a collection of documents that the early church considered to have been written by eyewitnesses to Jesus or by those with direct access to eyewitness testimony or by Paul.
As with all documents, the meaning of the text depends on the questions you put to the text. The Church continued to use the Jewish scriptures and gathered them into the Old Testament on the belief that if you put the question, 'what witness do you bear to Jesus?' you'l could get a meaningful answer. There was no guarantee that the answer would come from a literal face value reading of the text. (This was the classical world: allegorical readings of texts were habitual.)
Only problem is that by that measure, historically the church has largely failed.
Then again, with all the crusades and religious genocide and everything else, that checks out.
A story
The Parable of the Two Portraits
There once was a village painter named Miriam who was famous for her portraits. One day she unveiled a massive canvas of the King—stern eyes, square jaw, thunderclouds gathering behind him. The villagers gasped. “He looks terrifying!” they whispered. “Best behave.”
Years passed, and Miriam unveiled a second portrait of the same King. This one showed him laughing with children, kneeling beside the sick, sharing bread with beggars. The villagers gasped again. “This can’t be the same man,” they said. “One of these must be wrong.”
So they marched to Miriam’s studio and demanded an explanation.
Miriam sighed, set down her brush, and said, “You’re judging the King by two snapshots taken at different moments. The first portrait shows him riding into battle to protect you. The second shows him at rest, revealing his heart. Same King. Different moments. You just didn’t see the whole story.”
“But why didn’t you paint the gentle one first?” they asked.
“Because,” she said, “you wouldn’t have trusted his gentleness until you knew he could fight for you. And you wouldn’t understand his strength until you saw how he chose to use it.”
The villagers looked back and forth between the portraits. Slowly, the two images began to merge in their minds—justice and mercy, power and tenderness, one King all along.
And Miriam smiled, because at last they were seeing him clearly.
I'm not sure what there's so much confusion about. The plain reading of the text as you present it has God ordering genocide. For me, no God worth worshipping would order such a thing.
I'm also not sure why there's the implication that I ought to believe that God ordered a genocide. Why is it my responsibility to believe that everything that the Bible reports about God is true?
That cradle happens to have a lot of straw and other dross in it. Just because Jesus calls Herod a fox does not mean he is a fox. The six day creation is not a scientific treatise. I really don't care that the Israelite GPS system caused them to be lost for 40 years. Much or the Bible is not to be taken literally but it does present truths about who God is and who are. Christian take a look at the stories of the Bible through the eyes of the resurrection.
An historical analogy may be the Iconoclast controversy which lasted around a century - around the 700s - (although there were later manifestations of it within Christendom post-Reformation of course).
One of the triggers for Iconoclasm was the post-facto observation that the Muslims were winning all the battles and taking territory. They didn't have figurative religious imagery and that seemed to accord with the 10 Commandments.
Therefore God must be rewarding the Muslims and punishing the Christians for going against them witness of the scriptures. Perhaps by getting rid of the icons things could get back on track and Christian imperial armies might be victorious again.
Make Byzantium Great Again.
Ok, I'm simplifying but that was how the argument ran. Things got pretty heated and nasty on both sides.
Eyes put out. Hands chopped off. People exiled etc.
In the end the Iconophiles won, with a little help from the Pope as the Western Patriarch (I think).
Hence the 'Triumph of Orthodoxy' and us parading around outside the church as Lent kicks off bearing icons and chanting, 'Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy and Immortal have mercy on us ...'
That and other things.
So, by apology, dare I suggest that something similar was going on way back. 'Hmmm, things aren't going as well as we feel they ought. We must have gone wrong somewhere. Let's think, what haven't we done? We haven't driven out all the Amalekites for a start ... perhaps God intended us to do so as he's clearly given us the land promised to our father Abraham ...'
And so someone writes that down.
Again, a gross oversimplification but you get the drift.
And, with even more oversimplification we might say 'Well, just as in the end Holy Church got it right and iconography was reinstated to show that "matter matters" and as a witness to the Incarnation and all that flows from that ... then our understanding of these difficult passages can be improved or resolved if you like if we look at then through the lens of the incarnate Word of God - God the Word - our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who along with the Father and the Spirit is worshipped and glorified now and ever and unto the ages of ages, Amen!'
Which is a bit like what Luther was saying but with bells on.
Topol voice: 'Tradition... Tradition ...'
A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
And Mark makes it to say what it doesn't say.
As a side note, I don’t think even the most thorough literalist has ever argued that Jesus meant Herod was a literal fox, or even a furry. It is an amusing image, though.
Which raises a potential sidebar for this discussion: what the text actually says (in context) versus what the text is popularly believed to say.
Can you expand on how you see Mark making it say what it doesn’t say? Do you mean how Mark says “As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,” and then cites a passage that is a composite of Isaiah and Malachi?
Speaking in hyperbole, @Nick. Throughout both the Old Testament and New Testament the number 40 is used. The Flood was caused by 40 days and nights of rain (Gen 7). Moses was on Sinai 40 days (Exodus 24, 34). Israelite spies spent 40 days in the new land (Numbers 13); it took 40 days for Elijah to travel to Horeb (1 Kings 19); then there was the 40 days of Jesus' temptation, Matthew 4; Luke 4 and the 40 days between Resurrection and Ascension.
The point is, 40 is a narrative device, not a stopwatch. It is used to indicate a full cycle, the right amount of time, long enough for change, a generation. It is used to convey a theological truth, not a precise chronology.
This goes to the point that not everything in Scripture is meant to be taken at face value.
I nearly spat out my drink reading this 😆
Isaiah is saying that the voice is saying build the way of the lord in the wilderness.
Mark is saying that the voice is in the wilderness.
Wilderness for where the way is to be built, vs wilderness as the place for the where the command is said.
I’m no expert in Koine Greek or ancient Hebrew, but comparing the online Septuagint I can find to the Greek text of Mark I can find online, Mark seems to repeat the Septuagint text of Isaiah almost word for word. Like Mark, English translations of the Septuagint I can find have the voice rather than the path in the wilderness.
I do wonder if Mark’s reliance on the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew might be at play here, along with the lack of punctuation in either language.
But it is not mutually exclusive with actual 40 days, years, etc. being the time that was taken in various cases, either. I’m sticking with the literal 40 days/years etc., at least from Moses on. (The Flood is in its own mythical situation, in my understanding…)
That may well be the case. I realised that I hadn't checked the LXX after I posted.
That could be self-serving. Is he Jewish? What does your friendly neighborhood Rabbi say about the interpretation of that verse?
Though wasn't virgin used for unmarried women?
And Matthew pointedly includes women with questionable histories in his genealogy. Though, of course, he gave in the story of Jesus' birth, parallels to that of Moses for those who believed Jesus was the expected prophet like/greater than Moses.
Many significant people in Jewish history had significant birth stories.
But the Bible isn't a book. It's an anthology or a library written by a lot of different people over a span of maybe a thousand years. Yet people who start with the expectation that the Bible is a single, univocal book get all wrapped around the axle when they discover that the author of the Book of Joshua has radically different ideas about God's opinion of Moabites than the author of the Book of Ruth.
This is true, but of course there are many people whose theology requires them to see it as having a single univocal author - God. God can't change his mind about Moabites between inspiring Joshua and inspiring Ruth.
So did Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha). And Muhammad. Nearly takes the significance out if it.
I'm not understanding what you're trying to say. Yes, "virgin" is normally used of unmarried women--at least, a married virgin is a rare creature indeed. Why do you ask? And what do the significant birth stories and women with questionable histories have to do with the LXX translation of a word?
Please explain, I'm very confused.
That’s just one of a number of places in the Torah where Moses or others challenge God, and do so successfully.
Jesus himself made it clear that the law of Moses was not the final, perfect statement of what God wants in Matthew 19:8, "He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." He then goes on to explain the real standard, if I can put it that way. But it's clear from what he says that the law is to some extent "dumbed down" for the people, because God himself realized that they weren't ready for anything more. So this becomes another thing to keep in mind in the constant debates over slavery, misogyny, etc.--the question of whether any of what's being said is accommodating the weakness of the people at that time and place.
And Mary specifically asked how she would be with child since she “did not know a man”…
The question of whether or not it “could have” gone down a different path might depend on how much one believes the Holy Spirit has been guiding the Christian church in its understanding of these things.