Avalos treats this matter with a bare three paragraphs and nothing therein counters the above. If he wishes to charge translators with dishonesty he will have to do a lot better.

46-7 Next, Avalos hurls accusations at the NIV for its rendering of Gen. 2:19....again, been there, done that. Avalos only argues against the pluperfect rendering by saying that in Genesis 1:7, "the Hebrew shows no difference in the form of the verb" and yet it is not rendered the same way, so the NIV is "soley motivated by an attempt at nullifying the contradiction." From what I found, however, "the form of the verb" is not all what is at issue:

For quite some time now the classical solution to this problem has been to do what the NIV (but no other version that I know of) has done, and that is to render the verb in verse 2:19 not as simple past tense, but as a pluperfect, so:

Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air.

Thus, it is asserted by various proponents, for example, from Leupold's Exposition of Genesis:

Without any emphasis on the sequence of acts the account here records the making of the various creatures and the bringing of them to man. That in reality they had been made prior to the creation of man is so entirely apparent from chapter one as not to require explanation. But the reminder that God had "molded" them makes obvious His power to bring them to man and so is quite appropriately mentioned here. It would not, in our estimation, be wrong to translate yatsar as a pluperfect in this instance: 'He had molded.' The insistence of the critics upon a plain past is partly the result of the attempt to make chapters one and two clash at as many points as possible.Hey, if Avalos can say it...so can Leupold.

Likewise, others have noted that the very context of the passages indicate that the pluperfect should be used, and this was the simple solution which I offered in an initial analysis of this verse, in reply to claims of contradiction by Jim Merritt.

However, in stepped at this point a member of the Skeptic X school, who, having apparently found a copy in the street (it is hard to imagine any of them going to a library to look this sort of thing up) consulted the revered Gensenius' Hebrew Grammar and asserted that "such a reading is NOT POSSIBLE in the Hebrew since (starting after Gen. 2:4) the form of the narrative consists of a number of temporally consecutive clauses, linked by a special marker known as "WAW CONSECUTIVE". And what is this item? Citing "section 49a, note 1, page 133" of that grammar, they said:

"This name best expresses the prevailing syntactical relation, for by WAW CONSECUTIVE an action is always represented as the direct, or at least temporal CONSEQUENCE of a preceding action."

Thus, they said, "the Genesis 2 narrative literally takes the form of a series of clauses WHICH OCCUR IN A TEMPORALLY ORDERED SEQUENCE" and because the "Hebrew syntax tells us that the actions performed in such a clause are '...the direct, or at least temporal consequence of a preceding action', the only preceding action for which the creation of the beasts and birds can reasonably be considered 'a direct consequence' is God's declaration that He will make a helper for 'the man'. " And that is that -- or is it?

In fact, our Skeptic has simply done no more than show us that while complete ignorance is rather dangerous, a little knowledge is even more so. They have certainly reported the text of the grammar correctly, but the "waw consecutive" is rather a more complicated beast than this person supposes, for it does not ALWAYS indicate temporal sequence, as indeed the grammar indicates. There are examples in the OT, NT, and in Egyptian and Assyrian literature of "dischronologized" narratives where items are arranged topically rather than chronologically, and this would justify our own use of the pluperfect for the sake of context; indeed, even commentators that prefer to keep the simple past tense suppose not that these is a contradiction, but that G2 is reporting the order out of sequence purposely in order to stress man's dominion over the created animals. An older commentary by Keil and Delitsch made this point nicely:

The consecutive arrangement (in Gen. 2:19) may be explained on the supposition that the writer, who was about to describe the relation of man to the beast, went back to the creation, in the simple method of the early Semitic historian, and placed this first instead of making it subordinate; so that our modern style of expressing the same would be "God brought to Adam the beast which He had formed."

A striking example of this style of narrative is in 1 Kings 7:13. The building and completion of the temple we noticed several times in chapter 6, and the last time in connection with the year and month, chapter 6:9,14,37,38. After that, the fact is stated that the royal palace was 13 years in building; and then it is related that Solomon fetched Hiram from Tyre, to make 2 pillars. If we are to understand the (WAW/VAV) consecutive here, Solomon would be made to send for the artist 13 years after the temple was finished. It only expresses the thought, "Hiram, whom Solomon fetched from Tyre. -Also note Judges 2:6.

More than this, there are also various "exceptions" which crop up in Hebrew grammar where the waw consecutive is used. Greenberg, citing the grammar of Jouon, notes [Gree.UE, 37, 168n] that the waw consecutive "sometimes occurs when there is no idea of succession" and that there are places where a pluperfect can be rendered in accordance with a summarizing or recapitulating use of the waw consecutive. Collins [Coll.WAP] points out that there are cases of unmarked pluperfects in the OT, and that the specific verb in question in this verse itself often warrants a pluperfect translation. Furthermore, another contributor to this debate observed:

Gen. 2:19 begins with VaYYiTSeR; the verb "YaTSaR" in the imperfect with a WAW consecutive. Waltke and O'Connor ("Introduction to the Syntax of Biblical Hebrew", pp. 544-546) say that "It (imperfect with a WAW consecutive) shows in Hebrew meanings equivalent to those of the suffix (perfect) conjugation." Earlier, on p. 490, they had already shown that the suffix conjugation can have a pluperfect meaning; later, on p. 552, they show that the imperfect with a WAW consecutive can also have a pluperfect meaning, giving as examples "The Lord *had said* (Hebrew: VaYeDaBBeR) to Moses" (Num. 1:47-49) and "The Lord *had said* (Hebrew: VaYYoMeR) to Moses" (Ex. 4:18-19).

I have not been able to check the accuracy of this cite, but assuming it is true, we have now as many as four indications that the use of the waw consecutive in no way diminishes the argument for the use of the pluperfect. It remains untouched by the critic's argument. (Put another way, "form of the verb" doesn't make the argument -- context does, and Avalos doesn't deal with that. But if he wants to whine, he can face this too:)

So the pluperfect is a more than acceptable reading; but since we are facing the sorts who believe that merely quoting versions is a way to prove that one is correct, and since most versions do use the simple past tense (although as we have noted, even commentators who use it do not necessarily agree that it constitutes actual contradiction!), we had better have another line of defense for them to gnaw on -- and indeed, there is another, one that relates back to our indication of the garden as a special sort of "domestic creation" for man to do his service in.

The naming of the animals was not simply a pre-Linnean classification exercise; it was a demonstration of Adam's dominion over the entirety of nature. The giving of names, in ancient oriental thought, was an exercise of sovereignty and command. One may compare here the idea of bringing subjects before a sovereign, and this will come into play as we develop our argument that assumes reading "formed" as a simple past tense.

Now for recollection and rhetorical purposes, let's once again quote the key passage:

Gen. 2:18-20 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

Does anyone notice something? God "formed" beasts and fowl here -- but he brings before Adam beasts, fowl, and cattle -- the domestic creatures! Where did they come from? The answer, under this proposition, is that they were already in Eden (a place of domestic specialty set aside!), and that the "forming" of the beasts and fowl is an act of special creation, giving Adam "samples" of these beasts and fowls from outside Eden for the sake of presenting them to the earth's appointed sovereign. (For after all, why should a king have to wait for his subjects to wander in when he can have them brought to him at once?) In this passage the author clearly shows awareness of the cattle having already been created in G1, for he does not indicate their creation here, but rather assumes that they don't need to be created. Even without the pluperfect rendering, G1 and G2 demonstrate a perfect consistency. (This explanation is also supported by the chiastic structure of the report of the animals: They are cited in the order, "beasts...fowl...cattle...fowl...beasts" -- suggesting that the report is done by design, not because the writer was a knucklehead who couldn't see contradiction so plainly in front of him.)

So once again, Avalos' arguments -- and his charges of translator dishonesty -- are proven inadequately supported.

47-49 The inclusion of this next section in a chapter on translation is an oddity. Avalos rants upon the difference in the age of Jehoachin in 2 Kings vs. 2 Chronicles. Let us reprint our own answer to this:

Was Jehoiachin 18 years old, or 8 (per 2 Chron. 36:9) when he ascended the throne? 18 is more likely, and is supported by one Hebrew mss., some LXX mss., and Syriac mss. Gleason Archer ( Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties , 214-5) states: "A numerical system generally in use during the fifth century BC (when Chronicles was probably composed -- very likely under Ezra's supervision) features a horizontal stroke ending in a hook at its right end as the sign for "ten"; two of them would make the number "20". The digits under ten would be indicated by rows of little vertical strokes, generally in groups of three. Thus, what was originally written over one or more of these groups of short vertical strokes (in this case, eight strokes) would appear as a mere `eight' instead of `eighteen.'" See our foundational essay on copyist errors for general background.

The issue here is therefore not one of "translation" but of a textual-critical decision, and so including it in a chapter on "translation" is indeed most peculiar. Avalos is aware of the answer above (and apparently, a very wacky answer that must have come from his career as a child evangelist -- that Jehoachin reigned twice!), but waves it off as "mere supposition" because "we do not have the original manuscripts." This of course is not a worthy answer (especially since Avalos freely appealed to such activity to the benefit of his own case earlier). Conjectural emendation has always been a standard practice in textual criticism, regardless of the availabily of original manuscripts. The real question, which Avalos will not answer, is whether the conjecture made is reasonable. In this case, it certainly is, for reasons Archer explains. For example, here an author compares NT emendation practice to that of classical works:

The use of conjectural emendation in the classics -- especially those which survive only in single manuscripts -- can hardly be questioned. Even if we assume that there is no editorial activity, scribal error is always present. Thus, for instance, in Howell D. Chickering, Jr.'s edition of Beowulf, we find over two hundred conjectures in the text, and a roughly equal number of places where other sorts of restoration has been called for or where Chickering has rejected common emendations. All this in the space of 3180 lines, usually of four to six words!...

An example comes from Langland's Vision of Piers Plowman. In the editio princeps, which for a long time was the only text available, the very first line read

In a somer seson whan set was the sonne("In a summer season, when >>set<< was the sun")

"Set" is perhaps meaningful, but does not scan. Therefore attempts were made to correct it. The most popular emendation was "hotte," "hot."

The correct reading, as now known from many manuscripts, is "softe," "soft." Thus the proposed emendation, although perfectly sensible and meeting all the desired criteria, in fact gives a meaning exactly opposite the true reading.

Or we might illustrate an example from Beowulf, where we do not know the correct reading. Line 62, as found in the manuscript, reads (in Old English and translation):

hyrde ic [th] elan cwen

heard I th(at) ela's queen

Which doesn't make any more sense in Old than Modern English. There is a missing noun. The context is a list of the children of Healfdene; we are told there are four, and three have been listed (Heorogar, Hrothgar, and Halga); we expect the name of a fourth. Old English word order would allow the name to appear in the next line -- but it doesn't. And this line is defective, missing a stress and an alliteration.

What's more, there is no known King Ela for this unnamed girl to marry. This suggests an easy emendation: "ela" is short for "Onela." If we insert this likely emendation and the verb was, as well as expanding the abbreviation [th] for that, we get

hyrde ic [th]æt wæs Onelan cwen

heard I that was Onela's queen

Now we need a name. It must be feminine, it must complete the alliteration, it must fill out the line.

The moment I saw this, without a moment's hesitation, without even knowing Old English, I suggested the emendation "Elan," which meets every requirement. And it would explain how the error came about: A haplography elan1...elan2. In other words, our line would become

hyrde ic [th]æt Elan wæs Onelan cwen

heard I that Elan was Onela's queen

This conjecture has been proposed before -- and rejected because there is no evidence that Onela had a wife Elan. (Of course, there is also no evidence that he didn't -- if we had good evidence about this period, we very well might have another copy of Beowulf, and the whole discussion would be moot.)

As a result, at least two other conjectures were offered for the name. One suggested the name Yrse (Grundtvig, Bugge, Clarke). This, too, faces the problem of being a poorly-attested name. So a third suggestion was "Signi" (or similar). This is on the basis that the "real" Signi was the sister and bedmate of Sigismund, and our unnamed wife of Onela is also accused of incest. The problem is that, if we wish to preserve the alliteration, this forces further emendations to the line, changing (On)ela to "Saevil" or some such.

Still others propose to leave the line as it is and emend in a half line below this. (Though it appears that no such emendation really works). A fifth proposal is to emend the line to omit any name of the woman and just read "a prince," or some equivalent non-name, for Onela.

One would very much like to see Avalos burst in upon a meeting of classical scholars and harangue them for all of this "supposition" when they don't have the originals. What it boils down to is that Avalos is not a textual scholar -- and his resort to "we don't have the originals" is a childish answer conceptually derived from his former fundamentalist background, when thinking in black and white was acceptable. Canard responses here.

Avalos similarly dismisses a textual-critical answer to this issue, but treats it no more seriously than did Tim Callahan (and also apparently heard yet another wacky defense in his fundamentalist past, which claimed there were two people named Goliath). Either way he is misclassifying a text-critical issue with translation issues. He is also a hypocrite, for he used such a suggestion himself in spite of not having the original manuscripts.

49-50 Avalos' treatment of Eccl. 2:25 is a tempest in a teapot. He claims that "humanistic" tendencies were covered up by translators who changed the verse from, "for who will eat and enjoy, except for myself" to "for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?" Avalos charges that the change is meant to cover up a "radical" idea of pursuing humanistic happiness and of God being "irrelevant" in the happiness of human beings. "God," he says, is not in the Hebrew text, so translators must be covering up the truth.

Avalos' own retort, however, is laden with abject silliness. He does not discuss any reasons why translators have made this decision, but that it is to hide some sort of nascent humanism is an absurdity; such an individualistic, egocentric sentiment as Avalos imagines would hardly have emerged in an ancient collectivist society! Avalos is reading modern, Western humanism into the text.

So what would the text say and mean? Arguably the emendation to "God" makes better sense of the surrounding context:

24 A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? 26 To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

On the other hand, 2:25 could read "myself" and could then refer back to all of the enjoyments the author lists in 2:1-11 -- which would make sense as an ironic, sarcastic refrain to the former section detailing the futility of self-indulgence. Altogether, "God" makes better sense of the context, and either way, reading humanism into the text is a philosophical absurdity.

Avalos is clearly has something to hide here, and I found out what that was here (I have subbed in asterisks for Hebrew characters I cannot reproduce):

The MT reads [***] (mimmenni, “more than I”). However, an alternate textual tradition of [***] (mimmennu,“apart from him [= God]”) is preserved in several medieval Hebrew mss, and is reflected in most of the versions (LXX, Syriac, Syro-Hexapla, and Jerome). The textual deviation is a case of simple orthographic confusion between * (yod) and * (vav) as frequently happened, e.g., MT **** (tsv ltsv tsv ltsv) versus 1QIsaa 28:10 **** (tsy ltsy ts ltsy); see P. K. McCarter, Jr., Textual Criticism, 47. It is difficult to determine which reading is original here. The MT forms a parenthetical clause, where Qoheleth refers to himself: no one had more of an opportunity to experience more enjoyment in life than he (e.g., 2:1-11). The alternate textual tradition is a causal clause, explaining why the ability to enjoy life is a gift from God: no one can experience enjoyment in life “apart from him,” that is, apart from “the hand of God” in 2:24. It is possible that internal evidence supports the alternate textual tradition. In 2:24-26, Qoheleth is not emphasizing his own resources to enjoy life, as he had done in 2:1-11; but that the ability to enjoy life is the gift of God. On the other hand, the Jerusalem Hebrew Bible project retains the MT reading with a “B” rating The English versions are split on the textual problem: a few retain MT ****** (“more than I”), e.g., KJV, ASV, YLT, Douay, NJPS, while others adopt the alternate reading *****, “apart from him” (NEB, NAB, MLB, NASB, RSV, NRSV, NIV, Moffatt).

This is apparently another textual-critical issue upon which translators have made a specific decision, involving a single Hebrew character and fuller context. Why does Avalos not reveal this to his readers? Why is he playing games and hiding the whole story? The answer is clear: Avalos is little more than a paranoid humanist looking for problems where none exist. Aside from this, an answer to the claim that Ecclesiastes is self-contradictory may be found here.

50-52 Avalos here treats Luke 14:26, and nothing he says touches our own treatment:

Skeptics who really want to give Jesus a black eye are fond of quoting this verse, Luke 14:26:

The subject here is the word for hate, which is the Greek miseo. Dan Barker is typical of critics when he writes:

Most Christians feel obligated to soften the face meaning of the word 'hate' to something like 'love less than me,' even though the Greek word miseo means 'hate.'

In line with this comment, skeptics will stress the meaning of the word "hate" and insist that the word must be read literally, and that Jesus is truly preaching hate. But in fact, the "softening" is correct to do -- and is perfectly in line with the context of the ancient world, and the Jewish culture in particular.

For a background on the use of extreme and hyperbolic language in the Bible, I direct the reader first to my foundational essay on this subject. Abraham Rihbany (The Syrian Christ, 98f) points to the use of "hate" in the Bible as an example of linguistic extreme in an Eastern culture. There is no word, he notes, for "like" in the Arabic tongue. "...[T]o us Orientals the only word which can express and cordial inclination of approval is 'love'." The word is used even of casual acquaintances. Extreme language is used to express even moderate relationships.

Luke 14:26 falls into a category of "extreme language," the language of absoluteness used to express a preference, and may refer to disattachment, indifference, or nonattachment without any feelings of revulsion involved. To seal this matter completely, let's look at some parallel materials which prove our point. The closest example comes from Genesis 29:30-1:

And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years. And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren.

Here, "hated" is clearly used synonymously with one who is loved less. Let it be added that if Jacob hated Leah in a literal way, it is hardly believable that he would consent to take her as his wife at all! (See also Judges 14:16 and Deut. 21:15-17.)

Now here is another example from Jesus, Luke 16:13:

No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.

Such extremes of feeling would be atypical, but the extremes are not meant to be taken literally; the point is that one master will get more dedicated labor than the other. Now let's move into some secular works with the same sort of hyperbolic language. Fitzmeyer's Lukan commentary offers this example from Poimandes 4:6:

If you do not hate your body first, O child, you will not be able to love yourself.

Would critics suppose that this teaches literal hatred of the physical body? It does not -- it emphasizes the need to give preference to the whole self before the body alone. Literal hate of the body would have us cutting it with razors or hitting it with blunt objects -- an extreme practiced in some Eastern faiths, but not among the Greeks! Here is another example from a war song in the Poetae Lyrici Graeci (see James Denney, "The Word 'Hate' in Lk. 14:26," Expository Times 21, 41-42): it is said that in battle, men "must count his own life his enemy for the honor of Sparta" -- is this a literal hatred of one's own life being taught? No! It is emphasizing the need to make one's life secondary for Sparta's sake. Here's a final example from Epictetus 3.3.5: "The good is preferable to every intimate relation." This is just a more abstract version of Luke 14:26!

Avalos has answers to none of this, and accuses translators of "sugarcoating" Luke 14:26 by properly rephrasing "hate" to reflect the nature of the extreme language. He does offer one "answer" rooted in his fundamentalist mentality: He locates passages where he thinks "hate" is obviously meant literally, and thus, he implicitly argues, Luke 14:26 must be taken literally as well! Of course this is exceptionally foolish; one may as well try to say of the phrase, "it is raining cats and dogs," that we can prove "cats" and "dogs" are meant literally by finding someplace where the person who uses it also says, "I fed my dogs at dinnertime." This is not "arbitrary" as Avalos claims: Scholars have arrived at what he calls the "comparative interpretation" as we have: by comparison with parallel phrases; by seeing that a literal interpetation would be absurd (as well as not indicated by actual practice -- that is, there is no evidence Jesus or later Christians took it literally), and by the social data (as Rihbany indicates).

Furthermore, it is far from clear that all three examples Avalos offers actually indicate literal hate. He actually uses Judges 14:16 and Luke 16:13 as two of them, as we do above! The third, Amos 5:15, does refer to hating evil, and comes closest to what Avalos wants, but his attempt to compare Jesus to a cult leader here fails anyway as an anachronism; for he apparently reads "love" and "hate" in terms of modern emotional attachment rather than practical looking out for an interest (see here).

We do not need to address the matter of using the parallel in Matt. 10:37 (which rephrases Jesus' statement in a less hyperbolic fashion, as one of priority) as an argument, but we will anyway. Avalos says that Matthew can't be used to interpret Luke because we "cannot assume that Luke's readers had read Matthew at the time Luke was written." [51] Why this makes any difference is not explained. It is a given by nearly universal consent that Luke himself had read Matthew and used it as a source, so it hardly matters what any later reader might think -- including readers like Avalos whose fundamentalist mindset leads them to absurd claims such as that the Greek word for "hate" "does not vary and is not subject to as much flexibililty as other words may be." It is sad that someone like Avalos, who possesses scholarly credentials, is patently ignorant of such things as dramatic orientation.

52 -- Avalos then briefly rants about Matthew 19:12, and of course touches nothing we have written:

With that said, does the verse indeed encourage castration? Hardly, even on the surface -- what is made is a statement of fact and observation: some are born this way; some have made themselves this way for men; some have made themselves that way for spiritual purposes, and those who can accept this, let them do so -- it is not saying, "Go out and castrate yourself" or giving directions to the nearest medical facility. There is no opinion rendered either way. However, looking more deeply into the context, we see that this refers not exclusively to castration, but to celibacy as well. We know that the Jews were horrified by castration (cf. Josephus, Against Apion 2.270-1; though eunuchs were well-respected, and trusted, in some Ancient Near Eastern societies). Indeed, how could someone have been "castrated" from their mother's womb? And how would a response dealing with castration relate to a question as to whether or not it is better to marry (19:10), said in relation to putting away one's wife in v. 9 -- which is the "it" to receive that Jesus refers back to?

Barker is left to complain that Origen, the church father, castrated himself in response to this verse when he took it literally, and that an "omniscient deity should have known what Origen had in mind when he was inspired by Matthew 19:12 to pick up that knife." (I am assuming for the sake of argument that this is true; an alert reader has indicated that the story may have been invented by writers hostile to Origen.) The implication, again, is merely the begged question that what Origen did was (by Barker's contextual thinking) a meaningless act. In our view, if what Origen did to himself made him a better person, a greater servant, then it was worth it -- any interpretation of Matthew 19:12 notwithstanding. However, let it be added that Barker does not tell the whole story here. As noted here, "It was to remove any hint of scandal as he taught young women their catechism that Origen castrated himself, literally following Matthew 19:12. He later came to see his action as ill-advised and not to be taken as an example." Ask yourself: If the Kingdom of God is real, is it not worth giving up any part of yourself? I think so. Don't expect atheists to agree, though.

Avalos is left with weakly suggesting that the verse "might literally involve castration" [52] but "might" doesn't even come close to the truth; it doesn't, except by imagination of the fundamentalist sort.

52-3 There is next a brief analysis of Matthew 5:5 concerning the meek inheriting the earth. Avalos tries to turn this into a reference to Israel only, because, he says, the word used (ge) "probably" did not mean the whole earth. He calls upon the allusion to Ps. 37 as support, where clearly only Israel is meant. To some extent Avalos has a point; but it remains clear, whatever the geographic designations, that the "meek" will be specially favored. If Avalos wishes to argue somehow that the meek will only get Israel, who does he envision God giving the rest of the earth to under this paradigm? Matthew 5:5, even if it only means Israel, just as well grants the rest of the earth to the meek by extension. Avalos' whining here is pointless.

53-56 Avalos offers an extended rant on the TNIV with its gender inclusive language. While I sympathize with this to some extent, we do object to Avalos' ill-informed, one-sentence treatment of 1 Tim. 2:12, which is better analyzed here; see also our analysis here. Avalos is aware of this answer, for he mentions the critical work in an endnote [62], but he does not describe it, much less interact with it, only calling it an "attempt to deny" that this passage prohibits women from teaching. Obviously Avalos has no answer to the arguments made by the Kroegers and wishes to hide them from his readers.

56-8 The last section of this chapter is where Avalos provides data for his earlier brief rant on anti-Semitism. His criticism fails on two major points. First, Avalos makes the common error of equating "Jews" in the NT with the modern idea of a group identified with a specific religion. This is an absurdity since Christian apostles continued to call themselves "Jews". "Jews" in the NT actually means "Judaeans" -- as opposed to something like Samaritans or Galileeans or Romans, people whose origins were in the political entity known as Judaea. Second, Avalos commits a similar end-around as the one he did for Luke 14:26, thinking that if he finds places where "Jews" meant every person in the nation, rather than merely the leadership, he has proven that it must mean "every person in the nation" in the case he wants it to mean that! In particular, he wants Acts 13:50....

The Jews, however, incited the women of prominence who were worshipers and the leading men of the city, stirred up a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their territory.

...to mean not just Jewish leaders, or specific Jews, but ALL Jews as a collective identity group! Is Avalos truly so thick as to imagine that Luke is envisioning hundreds of thousands of Judaeans (however he defines them) leaving their home nation and crowding into the synagogue meeting at Antioch for the purpose of inciting a handful of people in that city against Paul??

There is no need to remove reference to "the Jews" in the NT, as some cited by Avalos suggest, in order to subdue violence against modern Jewish persons by anti-Semites (as if they would not make some excuse anyway, once told the truth); what is needed is clarity of meaning, and once we understand that this means "natives of Judaea" it becomes no more "anti-Semitic" than to say something like "the Germans" makes one anti-German. (Avalos may be aware of this answer; he cites Pilch in an endnote [63], but only briefly waves Pilch away by claiming it is he who is imposing his own understanding! Avalos claims that this is shown by the use of the word "Israelites" in Paul's speech, but fails to explain how this is proven by that usage.) Canard response.

Avalos also needs to get over himself and his claim that it is "anti-Gentile" for Paul to note misbehaviors among Gentiles. This is paranoia doused with political correctness, and beyond that, Avalos merely using Biblical studies, as West observes, as a "whipping boy" to further his agenda.

58 -- For Avalos to charge translators with lying and self-interest is truly the pot calling the kettle black. Avalos has purposely hidden that most of these issues are matters of textual-critical decision; he has also contrived ridiculous arguments to promote his own self-serving agendas (eg, Ecclesiastes teaches modern humanism!).

Discuss this article here.