From a series originally part of the E-Block.
With the arrogance borne of ignorant certainty informed only by emotionalism, Thom Stark recently issued a rather extended critique of Paul Copan’s Is God a Moral Monster? which we will hereafter be addressing in a series of E-Block articles, with Copan’s permission and blessing. We’ll strive to make this as efficient as possible, ignoring Stark’s many designations of Copan or other apologists as dishonest, deceitful, etc. and getting right down to fact claims. We’ll also note in advance (as I have in a prior Ticker review) that I do not agree with all of Copan’s arguments or solutions, and so will not find it needful to defend his arguments at certain points.
Stark’s largest failure – which was a lack in Copan’s, though not devastating to his arguments – is a continuing enslavement to anachronism, particularly in an anthropological sense. His reply to Copan shows no awareness that the values and concerns of an agonistic society differ widely at points from those of a modern American, especially with respect to some matters critical to the issues at hand. It would never occur to Stark, for example, that persons in an honor-based society might prefer death in battle – for themselves and their children – to the insufferable ignominy of defeat at the hands of a greater power. No doubt it would shock his sensibilities, and have him yelling about barbarity from the top of his lungs, at the very suggestion that someone might place honor above life. However, as we will see, this very failure to recognize alternative hierarchies in values crops up again and again in his response.
We will also note to begin that Stark does not address some parts of Copan’s book, legitimately, for they do not concern him (such as Copan’s evaluations of the New Atheists). We’ll take up our response past all the initial bluster and summary judgments, and to where the actual “meat” begins, which is with…
The Jealousy of God
We’ll begin with a review of our own assessment of this topic, which I offered as an analysis of Exod. 20:5, in which God is said to be jealous:
The word for "jealousy" in this form is used less than half a dozen times in the OT, and always is used to describe God. Nowhere is this word described as a sin. A related word is used to describe a husband who worries that his wife is walking out on him (Numbers 5). Sarna (Exodus commentary, 110) notes that the root of the word means "to become intensely red" and that it can refer to ardor, zeal, rage, or jealousy. Paul knows of a godly jealousy (2 Cor. 11:2), so is this a sin as we understand it? Jealousy is part of God's nature because it is demanded by who He is -- He is the only being who can indeed say He has a right to be jealous, since He is the only one who truly deserves utter respect and devotion. Malina in The New Testament World [126-7] adds that in the context of an honor-based world, jealousy was "a form of protectiveness that would ward off the envious and their machinations." It is a behavior that an honorable person is expected to "exhibit towards that which he or she is perceived to possess exclusive access." Thus for God to be jealous here is not a vice in context, but a supreme virtue and demonstration of His concern for Israel.
Copan’s own analysis, though lacking the social-science aspect observed by Malina, is more or less of the same sentiment, but with a few nuances I would not have used. For my part, I also do not accept Copan’s argument about YHWH’s jealousy involving vulnerability, as such a concept would not cohere with ancient personality models (a point Stark does not know about, either, even as he objects to Copan’s arguments). However, let’s respond to Stark’s assessment as it might affect our own views.
Unfortunately, Stark’s response is peppered with rather distracting side observations of no relevance to the issue of God’s jealousy. For example, in observing OT professions that God was “slow to anger,” Stark sidetracks into a single sentence commentary on the alleged failure of Jesus’ eschatology. The reason for this is not obvious, though one suspects it was so that Stark would have an excuse to insert a footnote referring readers to his prior book (which we have replied to as well).
It takes some disciplined reading to find actual counter-points between the rambling, which also includes a good deal of New Atheist-style “argument by outrage” in which acts of God in the OT are deemed cruel, unloving, etc without any actual argument, as well as summary positions on things such as e.g, the alleged source of Ex. 32 being controversies in Jeroboam’s age. Indeed, the bulk of the response amounts to Stark railing away like a New Atheist about how horrible YHWH was, not once engaging in any substantive analysis to show that any of YHWH’s acts were actually unjust.
In the end, Stark’s only direct comment on YHWH’s jealousy amounts to pointing out that other ancient gods were jealous too. True, but – so what? Based on the above definition, that’s exactly what any competent, qualified leader would be expected to be, whether divine or human. Stark doesn’t dispute that YHWH is jealous, he just rants incessantly about the reputedly unjust ways in which YHWH expresses that jealousy. The response amounts to one long and irrelevant argument by outrage.
So that’s how the main point is dealt with. I’ll conclude with a comment on one side issue where an actual argument is found, though one that also reveals Stark’s poor education on the subject matter.
- Stark asserts that Korah was wrongly judged for making a “good point” that all of Israel was holy, as an objection to the hierarchical priesthood. However, this is yet another example of Stark’s anthropological naivete.
To begin, all of Israel being holy did not mean all of Israel was thereby qualified to be elevated to the priesthood, or to challenge it. Indeed, Stark notably fails to quote the verse, which says:
They assembled together against Moses and Aaron, and said to them, "You have gone far enough, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and)the LORD is in their midst; so why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?"
Korah’s question is far from an honest one making a “good point”, as Stark claims. For one thing, Moses and Aaron were in their positions because YHWH Himself had assigned it to them – Moses as broker of the covenant, Aaron as broker of the priesthood. There is no reason to think that Moses and Aaron “exalted” themselves unfairly; indeed, since they had been given charge of representing God before Pharaoh, they were uniquely and solely qualified to be brokers above the assembly. Korah notably does not assert any specific qualifications on his part, and in fact, his question is nothing less than a challenge to the honor and position of Moses and Aaron. Korah was a Levite, so the challenge amounts to him indicating his own desire to occupy one of their positions.
Second, hierarchical structures are functional mechanisms of survival in a collectivist society. Korah’s objection (actually, as noted, a brazen and open challenge from someone without any stated qualifications, and no reason to think he had any, either) is little more than a contrived excuse in power-seeking for his own benefit. It is, thus, an act of treason, and Stark is entirely disingenuous to present it as though Korah were some early advocate of democracy who was just wanting diversity in government.
The Incremental Approach
Initially, I would explain this subject by way of an analogy I have frequently used to the differing approaches of two figures: Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Both of these men had roughly the same aims, but entirely different methods: King sought to undermine negative values through peaceful and subtle reform, while X took a much more hardened approach of demanding immediate and radical change, sometimes by violence if necessary.
The fact that only one of these two men has a holiday named after him is illustrative of which method is generally regarded as morally superior and more effective. As applied to our current topic, the argument would be that many of the Biblical laws and regulations were intended to gradually reform Israel in the way King proposed to reform society in his time. Skeptics frequently suppose that a “Malcolm X” approach should have been used, under the presumption that there is something morally and practically preferable about instant demands for reform. (Yet these same Skeptics often complain when they think God had not given people enough time to repent.)
In terms of Copan and Stark, what does this issue bring to the fore? Stark first tries an end around by declaring that this can’t be true, that the law was incremental, because the OT says that the law was eternal. He points to Is. 24:5, Ex. 31:16, and Deut. 29:29.
However, this is an error we have seen before from other quarters, but from a different direction. The word used in all three is ‘olam, and as we have said of that word:
The assertion is misleading: olam is used not of things that "will" end, but things that did end, but were meant not to. Specifically, it is used to refer to ordinances in the Jewish law which were to be kept by the Israelites.
The word olam is also used to describe the tenure of a slave, indicating that his service will last for the entirety of his life. One might argue that this indicates a time that ends, but the parallel usage of olam with the phrase "as long as he lives" in 1 Sam. 1:22-28 indicates that what lies behind olam in these cases is something of a figurative sense of "forever" that stresses the permanence of the person's condition.
Barr, as well, in Biblical Words for Time, the premier study on this subject, regards olam as meaning essentially "in perpetuity" -- i.e., forever.
In other words, though able to be defined in practical terms as “forever,” this word does not mean that some change cannot be made which ends the tenure of the event early. Thus there is also nothing that forbids future refining of the law as conditions change. Indeed, it would be rather idiotic to suggest (as Stark’s argument requires) that laws tied to specific cultural matters are meant to be applied forever without emendation. So, for example, using Stark’s absurd logic, the law requiring rails around roofs (Deut. 22:8), which was tied to the fact that people in Israel’s culture used a roof as a sort of second room, would have to continue to be observed even as Israel’s house design excluded use of the roof as a living space. Indeed it might even be taken to argue that Israel could design no house that did not use a roof as a living space, for otherwise, this law could not be kept! Stark’s approach to the law here is remarkably fundamentalist.
Other than that, Stark’s only jab at this matter is to appeal to Psalm 19:7’s praise of the law as “perfect”. This is absurd as an appeal for a number of reasons. The first of course is that it is part of a psalm – an item of poetry – and so Stark’s exegesis amounts to the sort that would be used only by the most literalist fundamentalist. Second, while the word used can mean “perfect” it can also mean things like “without blemish”. Finally, we may add that Ps. 19:7 does not say, “perfect for all times, circumstances, and cultures” – concepts that Stark is implicitly adding to the text. If it were otherwise, we have the absurd conclusion that the law could be rendered “imperfect” by (for example) stopping all construction of houses that use a roof as a living space, thus making Deut. 22:8 a useless piece of legislation.
Jeremiah 31
In this, Copan rightly notes that Jer. 31:31-4 promises a new covenant. Stark objects that it does not say that there is a new covenant to be offered because the old one was lacking, but this is merely a case of literalist semantics: The very offer of a new covenant implies an alternative, and the very offer of an alternative implies some reason to prefer the newer option. It is true, of course, as Stark notes, that Jeremiah indicates that the new covenant was offered because of inability by Israel to keep the old one. But this misses the point of the “incremental” argument: Certainly King did not think his acts of passive resistance would cause all bigots to reform into fair-minded people. Nor did he expect Congress to wait to pass civil rights laws until all those bigots were reformed, or support those laws because he supposed his passive resistance tactics were a failure. The nature of subtle, undermining reform is such that “failure” is expected and seen as part of the process of reform.
Stark makes much of Copan seeing Jer 31:31-4 as a literal prediction of the covenant. I am not as particular about this, though I would suggest (again) that Stark’s objections to the equation are rooted more in a fundamentalist reading of the text than any substantial objection. In Stark’s black and white worldview, it could not now be in fulfillment because Jeremiah says men will not teach one another, yet we still have teachers in the church. It does not occur to him that Paul’s own use of the passage, as one who himself teaches and appointed teachers, might indicate that the broad and dramatic language of a different culture might not be meant to be taken as a literal statement that there will be no teaching whatsoever in the new covenant community. At the same time, the subject of the teaching is rather narrow: “Know Yahweh.” Stark takes this to refer broadly to teaching of a great many subject matters, but contextually, this is little reason to stretch it beyond the simple premise that it is knowing Yahweh that will not be taught or said. (The word used, yada, is one of the broadest of meaning in the OT, and is even used as a euphemism for sexual relations!) To Jeremiah’s contemporaries, this would be taken to mean entering into a covenant, as is clear from the fuller context:
And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
Here the end result of “knowing” YHWH is not a forever pass from being taught in an educational setting, but forgiveness of iniquity. And it would be then argued that this is because God’s covenant community is indwelt by God’s Spirit – hence, the law of God is now written on their hearts. Stark’s expansion of the prophecy into didactic settings is simply the result of imaginative fundamentalist thought.
That is one alternative. The other is that, at the very worst, what this predicts rather is the end results of that covenant, as envisioned in what, as a preterist, I would place in the time after the general resurrection; and in that respect, Paul’s allusion to Jeremiah is not, as Stark supposes, an indication that Paul thought Jeremiah’s prophecy was already fulfilled, but rather a case of Paul applying the text in a thematic and creative way to describe events current to him – thereby using Scripture in an allusive way that would accrue honor, and was perfectly acceptable to contemporary readers and writers.
In the end, the most clear indication that the law was a tool for reform (though I do not say, exclusively that) is where Paul compares the law to a pedagogue. Further talk over whether this means it was “perfect” or not is ultimately beside the point, lacking in consideration of the question, “Perfect for or as what, exactly?” Stark’s retorts begs the question that the answer is, “perfect as a way to make humans good”. But there’s nothing offered at all to suggest that this answer was ever intended. Nor does Paul need to say, as Stark implies, that the law was “inferior” for the incremental argument does not need to make such an argument; it would still remain that the law, as is, would have to be regarded as “inferior” in some contexts (e.g., it would have been inferior if given to a society which lived in the Amazon jungle), and again, the very fact of a new covenant implies a moving on and a change which the older covenant was inappropriate for.
A few points follow where Stark is reliant upon an assumption of prophetic failure by Jesus. As a preterist, these arguments leave me unscathed and I am able to aver that “all was fulfilled” in 70 AD, and that at that time, the old covenant was officially broken and ended. Along the way, Stark also misappropriates Matt. 5:18 in a fundamentalist fashion, failing to recognize that when Jesus says, “when heaven and earth pass away,” this is equivalent to the modern expression, “when pigs fly.” Of course, we addressed Stark’s rather minor attempts on preterism in our reply to his earlier book.
I am uncertain where Stark gets the idea that Paul thought the law was “no longer applicable.” On the contrary, one of his warnings to the Galatians considering circumcision was that they would have to follow the whole law – he didn’t answer that the law was no longer applicable, and obviously conceived of the possibility of people still signing up for the old covenant. The social reality is that the only hard and fast sign of the covenant ending would be the destruction of the Temple – the very nexus of the covenant cultic apparatus. (In all of this, Stark is also lacking in explaining in what we he thinks within law still applies to the Christian – per our discussion in the link below. Instead, he later opts for a black and white idea that they must either all be applicable, or none are – and in so doing, shows no knowledge of such concepts as ritual purity which stood behind the laws.)
Next, Stark takes on Copan’s argument that certain of Israel’s laws were more progressive than those of surrounding nations. This particular horse is one I have no stake in riding; it matters little to me if they were any more progressive or not. Perhaps some were, and Stark himself allows for this, while also saying some were the same and some were worse, and that he plans to argue this in later chapters. For the present chapter, Stark is resolved to argue that an incremental approach really wasn’t that good, but in so doing, he once again is compelled to resort to emotional rhetoric and argument by outrage. He poses the query, for example, whether the laws against idolatry were really that good, since Israel disobeyed them and there was a lot of carnage because of it. But in this respect, Stark’s argument fails even the least burden of proof, because it requires him to produce a sound and logical counterfactual history. He must suggest some other incremental step along the way between idolatry which he supposes ought to have been taken. However, this would be a difficult proposition for the particular subject. Idolatry is a matter of a binary equation: Either you worship god X, or you do not. There is simply no “increment” between the two. Stark’s one suggestion in this regard is laughably naïve: he suggests that Yahweh could have allowed prayer to other gods for “certain kinds of things” to wean Israel off of polytheism and into monolatry. This, he supposes, would have caused less carnage.
One has to ask if Stark is serious here, or if he has consumed some illegal substance before composing this answer. For one, he has to prove, not merely assume, that his solution would have caused less carnage. Second, Stark needs to open his window of counterfactual history a little wider: If such a thing were recorded in Deuteronomy, then what would generations further on have made of later commands towards strict monotheism? As it is, atheists today think the OT text is frequently polytheistic, and mock theists for believing in a single god, let alone many more; and we have groups like the Mormons who would gladly make use of texts allowing prayer to other gods for “certain things” for their purposes. Third, Stark is here confusing the matter of provision with that of idolatry. God could certainly have told the people that e.g., if you want rain, ask Gabriel, my angel, I have assigned Him the task of broker of rain. But such would not amount to worshipping Gabriel, and of entering into a covenant agreement with him to serve him.
Finally, Stark here again lacks the perspective of honor so critical to interpreting Biblical texts: Such an allowance would be seen as an admission by God that He lacked the ability to provide those “certain things” (like what, one wonders??). This is turn arguably would lead to factionalism and violence even more grotesque than the Bible actually records. Indeed, Stark here shows little knowledge of the core principles that governed ancient covenant; it is summed up by Jesus in saying, a man cannot serve two masters. This would have been a case of mixed loyalties – it would be like suggesting that an Egyptian could have shown obeisance to the Pharaoh, but also shown some to the kings of Assyria, Moab, and Canaan, and that would have kept the peace between the nations and their peoples far better. Not only is such a concept of mixed loyalties foreign to ancient covenant relationships, it also reeks of difficulties that would inevitably be engendered when one side or the other demanded more and better loyalty. Stark surely does not think Chemosh existed in reality, but what happens when the Israelite permitted to pray to Chemosh to pray to him for “certain things” (like cheeseburgers, maybe?) claims to have received a revelation that now Chemosh wants to be prayed to for “other things” once the province of YHWH?
So in the end, Stark fails counterfactual history for lack of application: he merely assumes, but does not prove, that the best result was not had already.
As noted above, the matter of worship is a binary equation. For this reason, it is absurd for Stark to use this radical break to question why God could not have offered similarly radical commands concerning such matters as patriarchy and divorce. The equations in such matters, rendered into binary terms, do nothing to address the underlying assumptions of those concepts, which are deep, complex, and rooted in human relationships where multiple causes and effects have to be reckoned with. A command to not worship god x is a simple one rooted in YHWH declaring that god x is His inferior – a simple, binary matter. A command to not divorce involves a far more complex set of factors, having to do with assumptions about the role of women and men in a collectivist, agonistic culture where roles were very precisely defined for the sexes. A straightforward command to not divorce wives – as Stark thinks ought to have been used – would do nothing to resolve those assumptions, and if anything (as Malcolm X found out) would result in an equally radical reaction that in the end would hurt women more than it would help them: resentment, refusal to even marry, seeking out wives one could dominate easily while ignoring any that were stronger of will, and so on. Stark is once again simply too much of a fundamentalist to work out the results of his own solutions.
Equally oblivious is Stark’s note that not all nations killed the children of the enemy in warfare. That is true – usually they made them slaves, a fate of such disgrace that many would choose death over it in an agonistic setting. He asks rather naively whether it would not have made sense to Israel to be told to treat such children as orphans and adopt them. Well – no. He is importing modern ideas of sentiment and family closeness into the text, and is oblivious to the notions of patronage, collective identity, and honor that governed the Biblical mind. A straightforward command such as the one he suggests would have made no sense at all to the Israelite – not in terms of achieving the results Stark is hoping for. And if he wishes to object, that is too bad – no human society at this time was any more advanced than that.
At this point, little more needs to be said, as what is left of Stark’s chapter is simply variation on the same themes reported above. Much is made of alleged errors by Copan concerning Jesus’ teachings on divorce, but Stark could be 100% right here and it would not change the broader problem at all. The claim is: Some aspects of Biblical teaching were incremental. This is not answered by pointing to the fact that some aspects were binary instead, as Stark does, for it merely assumes that two issues are of the same simplicity, when as we have seen, they are not. Only a few issues remain to discuss from this chapter.
First, Stark suggests that Israel’s law could have been improved by allowing women to own property. Unfortunately, Stark doesn’t explain this to the necessary depth with respect to concepts of property ownership in the ancient world. No human owned land; the gods owned it, and humans were just tenants or brokers, not owners. He claims that scholars think the plight of women was much worse in Israel than in surrounding nations, but offers no documentation, reference, or substantiation. (In contrast, see Miller’s series below.) His one example from the Laws of Eshunna 59 provides that any man who bears children with his wife and divorces her to marry another will lose all his property, and he sees this as a step up from Israel’s laws. But it’s hardly the boon to the divorced wife he thinks it is: The man is question would have received a new dowry from the new wife’s family (hence, the law also says the man may seek someone else to take him in!), and would be able to start over if he chose his new wife judiciously (which we can fairly assume, he did!). In contrast, who does Stark suppose got the property left behind from the first marriage? Chances are best in that social setting that it would be returned to the woman’s father as recompense for the dowry he lost. Stark apparently envisions the wife as a Betty Broderick having the chance to blow the loot left behind, but here – as in Israel – the assumption is that the wife would return to her former family for support. There is no advancement for the sake of women in the Laws of Eshunna; rather, it is a provision for compensation for the father of the wife, and his family.
I stop there; more is in the chapter, but some is summary of what Stark will discuss in later chapters, and some is of arguments made by Copan that I either would not use or which I do not consider of significance. We’ll pick up with more next time.
Barbarisms and Crude laws
Stark’s next chapter is on alleged “barbarisms” and “crude laws,” and here, I am less inclined to argue (as Copan does) that certain laws are in some way progressive for their time. This is not necessary to a defense of these laws, for criticism of these laws of the sort Stark offers amount to crude and bigoted anachronisms, coated in “argument by outrage.” Typical of this, Stark writes:
… Copan claims, we should not judge the brutal laws and punitive measures against modern Western morality, but rather within the context of the ancient Near East. He then quips, reprehensibly, that if ancient Near Eastern people looked at us modern Westerners, they’d think we were a “bunch of softies” (89)
A bunch of softies? Are we supposed to feel embarrassed by that? Are we supposed to feel inadequate because we’re not as “tough” as ancient barbaric peoples who cut off hands, or stoned children to death for backtalking their parents?
In an nutshell – if that is the extent of your “argument,” then yes. Stark should be embarrassed and feel inadequate, because he pontificates as one whose most pressing daily need has been to decide which gas station to patronize. He has never experienced serious hunger; he has never had to scrape in a chaotic world to survive. If he were dumped unceremoniously into the OT world, he would be dead within a week.
As it happens, recent events provide an analogy. Much is made over whether or not torture should be used to extract information from terrorists. Many are against the use of torture, but from that number, there are quite a few who admit that if a terrorist knew the location of a nuclear bomb, even they would use torture to extract that information. By the same token, Stark is offering the pose that “backtalking their parents” is, as in modern times, nothing more than a harmless act of defiance made by Junior because he refuses to clean his room. In contrast, the ancient “backtalker” undermines the most essential mechanisms of survival and authority in the ancient world, and would be someone who refuses, for example, to participate in the daily work of farming that ensures that the family will not starve to death. An ancient “backtalker” in this case is not just mouthing off; they are betraying others and condemning them to a slow death by starvation – and not caring that they do so.
Put another way, Stark is ignorant of the contexts that rate these offenses as “mini-nukes” worthy of more severe measures. There is certainly a distinction to be made between torturing a terrorist to get the location of a nuclear bomb on Pluto, and the location of such a bomb in the heart of Washington DC. Backtalking in modern America rates with putting a bomb on Pluto – it won’t hurt anyone, but it makes for a good show.
Pulling out the tears again, Stark continues:
Some cultures still practice these sorts of punishments. Am I supposed to feel like a softy because my every inclination is to condemn them as immoral?
Yes, because “inclinations” are not arguments. Rather, they are bigoted, presumptuous value judgments made solely on surface impressions. To determine if a practice is truly immoral requires much more than simply a shallow “argument by outrage.” It requires showing that the bomb is on Pluto rather than in downtown Washington.
Further evidencing his shallowness, Stark decries such delineations as “relativism”. This is far too simplistic: It is not relativism, but collection and evaluation of data to determine which absolutes apply. It is not simply a matter of “back then” as Stark claims, but of achieving a realistic and holistic picture of what was done and why it was applied.
Deut. 21:18-21 is Stark’s first specific focus. I do not find it needful to defend most of Copan’s analysis, but Stark is manifestly unware of a very basic fact about ancient law codes of the Near East, courtesy of Hillers' Covenant: The History of a Biblical Idea:
..(T)here is no evidence that any collection of Near Eastern laws functioned as a written code that was applied by a strict method of exegesis to individual cases. As far as we can tell, these bodies of laws served educational purposes and gave expression to what was regarded as just in typical cases, but they left considerable latitude to local courts for determining the right in individual suits. They aided local courts without controlling them.
Stark complains that there is nothing in Deuteronomy of a trial or witnesses, but per Hillers, there didn’t need to be.
Stark’s further complaint that God ought to have come up with a penalty “more humanizing” is naïve in the extreme. His alternate suggestions for punishment are no less cognizant. Two suggestions, to reduce the son’s inheritance or disown him, are partly based on an idea of Copan’s, but amount to a slaps on the wrist in context and show that Stark has neither the knowledge nor the presence of mind to take the offense seriously. His most drastic solution, expelling him from the community, amounts to a death sentence in itself, but a slow one by starvation; apparently Stark conceives of the son starting over somewhere else like a modern person, when in reality he’d be cut off from all human support and would find it next to impossible to find acceptance in a new community (in which strangers were regarded with suspicion). At best, like the prodigal son, he’d end up working shameful jobs – and in an honor-based social world, might prefer the stoning for his penalty; that at least would be over with at once, and spare him a life of shame and struggle. (This, of course, is an example of what we alluded to in Part 1, where Stark lacks awareness of the agonistic dialectic.) He also again appeals to the Code of Hammurabi’s supposed parallel, but as we noted in Part 1, whether there is indeed a parallel situation is not at all clear.
Stark’s next specific complaint has to do with Deut 25:1-3, though strangely, he does not quote it, nor even offer a citation for it – which is especially odd inasmuch as he offers citations of Proverbs in the same paragraph. Here is the full quote:
If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked. And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number. Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee.
Stark apparently omits this because it notes that judicial discretion is used to decide whether the wicked man deserves punishment. This in turn implies directly that the reason for the punishment is that the wicked man has brought charges with the specific intent of getting the righteous man into trouble, so that it is he who will be punished. In that light, it is quite sensible that the wicked man receive whatever punishment the righteous man would have received if found guilty. (And of course, the law being didactic, “forty lashes” is merely exemplary of any punishment fitting the crime.)
The next section discusses lex talionis, and I am not particular about whether “eye for an eye” is literal or metaphorical. Even if it is literal, Hillers’ admonition above governs the context: Obviously, under such circumstances, one might opt to pay an equitable fine as compensation. Stark petulantly denies this, insisting that the text doesn’t ever say this in lex talionis cases, but here again he is merely reading the law codes like a modern fundamentalist, rather than as a didactic product. The main point, though, is that “eye for an eye” was probably meant to stop the offended from taking more than an eye in return for an eye, and Stark offers no comment in this respect.
Some time is spent commenting on Deut. 24:16 and related issues (link below). Suffice to say that Stark’s counter-examples utterly miss the point of Deut. 24:16 and are already refuted by the link below. There is thereafter mere dismissive commentary on Deut. 22:23-4, 28-9, with no serious argument or contextualizing (link below), and then yet extended commentary in which it is simply assumed that every law and penalty was applied with gross literalness (again, contrary to the spirit revealed by Hillers). Such is how the chapter closes – with little accomplished other than screaming.
Human Sacrifice
Quite naturally, Stark’s first move is an end around, as he declares Deuteronomic texts condemning human sacrifice to be late additions, though if you are looking for evidence or arguments as opposed to assertion, he won’t oblige. Instead, Stark rants for a while about how Copan allegedly misrepresented the work of Susan Niditch, a sideshow that interests me little and concerns me even less. It is space Stark should have spent arguing for late additions to Deuteronomy, but that seemed too much to hope for. Our own arguments finding such literary theories lacking is linked below.
It takes 5 pages for Stark to end his rant concerning Niditch, before he gets back on topic, starting with the usual resort on Jephtah and his daughter (though even this is just an accessory to the continued rant, now with another scholar, Hess, involved). However, Stark does not even touch on our own reply (link below) since it seems Copan does think the sacrifice did occur (where we do not). Thus we will not defend Copan here. Following this, another example offered from Numbers 21:1-3 is used to argue that here we have human sacrifice under the rubric of victims of war being dedicated to Yahweh.
Stark presents no actual argument for this equation, and no doubt would refer to Niditch’s case. In this issue, therefore, we also offer the argument that Niditch has merely presented the understanding of “human sacrifice” to rubbery rating levels.
Stark rants another few pages about Copan’s alleged misuse of Niditch (perhaps the chapter ought to be retitled at this point), and then some issue is made of Israel allegedly violating God’s command by attacking Moab. Stark sees this as in opposition to command to Israel not to take territory from other nations, but as far as can be read, Israel took none of Moab’s territory; they did not move in and settle down as they did in Canaan. Apparently Stark is confusing defeat in battle with occupation and resettlement. He then repeats an argument previously used in his earlier book about 2 Kings 3; our answer was:
One other textual abuse of note relates to 1 Kings 3:26-7. Of this we have said before:
Then he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice on the city wall. The fury against Israel was great; they withdrew and returned to their own land.
The "he" here is the king of Moab, who is taking on the Israelites and was losing pretty badly up to this point. Callahan sees this verse as evidence that Yahweh was at one time a mere tribal deity, not the overall Creator, and "the Israelites believed that Yahweh had no power in Moab" against Chemosh, the Moabite god - for otherwise, what is the "wrath" here, and why would they withdraw in the face of victory?
There is one big thing that speaks against this "wrath" being from Chemosh - in this war against Moab, Israel was not alone: They were accompanied by the Edomites and by the armies of Judah, and there is no indication that either of these armies had to take a break from the field.
However, Herzog and Gichon in Battles of the Bible [171] provide the answer: Child sacrifice was often performed in the ANE because of imminent plague. The Israelites would have interpreted the sacrifice as an indication that plague was already in the city, and therefore would have made haste to leave as soon as possible.
The word for "wrath" means indignation or strife, and "against" is a preposition that can mean among, between, concerning, or through.
HFG4 takes the other tack, of course, though using a translation which says that the “coalition” withdrew – which is not a warranted reading of the text. Nor is any answer given to our own, though it is vainly pointed out that the word “wrath” (qetseph) is never used of an army and is mostly used to refer to the wrath of a deity. This is meaningless for several reasons. First, there are no doubt many words never used of an army in the Bible, yet this does not restrict the use of that word to or from any party or person. Second, it is also admitted, humans are said to have qetseph in a handful of passages as well, which is sufficient to show that it is not the exclusive province of deity. Third, it may be noted that a closely related word, qatsaph, is used frequently of both deity and humanity. Finally, the text does not say anywhere that the qetseph is that of Chemosh, who is not even mentioned anywhere in the passage.
Copan’s own analysis does not match our own at all, and Stark repeats some of what he said in his prior book, so as of this stage, we consider him still refuted on these points.
Rounding off the perversity for this chapter, Stark repeats his arguments from his prior book concerning passages in Ezekiel and Micah, which we have already answered there.
Patriarchy and Misogyny
We’ll close with this one; nothing Stark offers overturns Miller’s excellent series (link below), and seeing as how Stark is still using the standard canard regarding 1 Tim. 2;11-15, and making the absurd non sequitur argument that wives are property because they are listed with other items regarded as property, it is clear he still has a lot of learning and thinking to do before he can make a respectable argument.
A point which has obsessed Stark for some time, even prior to his critique, is an alleged misuse by Copan of material by Susan Niditch in her War in the Hebrew Bible (WHB). I am not particularly interested to resolve Stark’s claim of abuse, as even if he is correct, there is little reason to enable or credit his obsession by doing so, given his own patent unreliability. However, we will look at some critical aspects of Niditch’s commentary on the so-called “ban” in the Old Testament – the total destruction of an enemy as an act of devotion to Yahweh.
Niditch and other critics have connected the ban to concepts of human sacrifice. I have always found this connection to be tendentious, and to be a likely case of illegitimate conceptual transfer. “Human sacrifice,” after all, has been used tendentiously to describe the deaths of Christian martyrs and even that of Jesus. It is manifestly little more than an effort to apply a term overbroadly in an effort to invoke images of hapless Aztec victims having their hearts carved out for the sake of pleasing a bloodthirsty and evil deity, and thereby identify Yahweh as one such as well.
I supposed that Niditch was unlikely to have approached the issue in terms of a correct social anthropology, taking account of honor, and the agonistic tenor of the Biblical world, as a defining factor in the ban, for after all, few scholars – even among the most competent in their specialties – have done so themselves. In this, I was correct. In the first chapter of WHB alone, “The Ban as God’s Portion,” Niditch makes two substantial blunders in this regard. The first is one in which she takes far too literalistically the boast of King Mesha of Moab that Israel “utterly perished forever.” We have learned that the dramatic orientation of this society was such that we are not meant to take such statements any more literally than we would take professions made at a typical sports event of prowess by team leaders. Niditch, however, blithely judges Mesha’s profession as “wishful thinking” (31) as though he truly wished to assert that Israel had literally “utterly perished forever.”
The second blunder is far more substantial. Attempting to explain why humans conceived of the idea of the ban, Niditch proposes that it was a way to assuage the “guilt” soldiers felt at killing others. If God ordered it, so the reasoning goes, they would not have to feel guilty about it, so the ban was contrived. As we have noted from relevant scholars, reading guilt into any Biblical passage is a “serious mistake,” for guilt did not exist as yet in the pre-introspective world of the ANE. Shame would be at the fore, but here, would be of little relevance, inasmuch as other societies surrounding Israel also had their own version of the ban, and so no one would be shaming the Israelites over it.
Rather than view the ban as related to concepts of human sacrifice, it seems far better to propose the following, much of which is contrary to Niditch:
First: The ban has not to do with sacrifice to appease God, or to buy victory from Him. Rather, it has to do with God acquiring honor by the performance of the ban.
A critical point is that Israel’s opponents were persons who believed that their own gods – the “landlords” and suzerains who owned their land, and were supposed to protect them from invasions and the acts of foreign gods – would protect them, and especially preserve their lineage. The ban served as a clear and indisputable demonstration that these pagan deities were helpless and useless in protecting these people and their land, for they permitted total destruction to occur. The leaving behind of even one survivor would be taken (desperately, to be sure!) as a sign that Baal, or Chemosh, or whomever, had in some way acted to protect the future of the defeated people, who had decided to stay in their cities and nation (rather than flee, as some did – thereby admitting that their gods would not be able to help them).
To that extent, the ban was the most clear message that could be sent to a much larger population that they would do well to flee rather than fight. Arguably, with a population committed to fight to the end using the “last man” to do so – as was the case in WW2 Japan – a message like the ban worked to save lives in the long term, much as the atomic bomb is well argued to have saved lives by compelling Japan to surrender earlier than they would have otherwise.
Comparative use of the word in question, the Hebrew cherem, we should point out, is equivocal in this regard. The word is also used of fishing nets (eg, Ezekiel 26:5, 14; 47:10; Hab. 1:15-17), which suggests that cherem indicates a setting aside or apart of something from some other larger collective. However, this also means that it has no innate sacral meaning; that is acquired by context.
Second: Sacrifice to Yahweh is better understood not as an offering to “feed” Yahweh but as a way to keep humans from having them for their own use. Skeptics routinely ask what God needed with sacrifices, and argue that sacrifices to Yahweh imply some more primitive notion of Him as being hungry and in need of food. (See second link below for more.) In this no one seems to ask the question of why a deity should prefer meat that has been burnt into ashes, which is hardly likely to be any more appetizing to a hungry deity than it is to a hungry human.
The idea of sacrifice, and of devoting certain things to Yahweh, then, ought to be understood in terms of making it so that humans cannot use the sacrifice for themselves; in turn, the sacrifice is placing themselves under the patronage of the deity, trusting in the deity’s resources rather than their own. It is not that Yahweh needed food, or gold, or even humans for that matter; it is that humans obliterated the sacrifice to demonstrate that it was the property of the god rather than their own. It is also important that no one will be able to accrue the honor of having the captured goods; all of that honor will be reserved for Yahweh alone.
Niditch herself quotes passages that indicate this. In most cases, the ban involves only total destruction of humans, while livestock and booty is kept by the people. If God “needs” food and booty, then surely as a deity His energy needs are vastly greater than those of a human, and He would need far, far more humans, livestock, and booty to keep Himself alive. Niditch struggles, however, to explain the disparity between different ban orders, supposing that humans are always devoted to God because they are the “best booty”. Really? Then why are they killed? What good, to put it bluntly, is dead booty?
Further forced reading by Niditch may be found in her effort to read Ezekiel 38-9 in terms of God making a “sacrificial feast” of slain enemies: Ezekiel plainly says that the slain are eaten by birds of prey, and apart from the assumption of a hidden code in such language, there is little reason to impose some “mythological framework” on the text and see some hidden suggestion of “divine satiation” behind the text. Clearly, Niditch’s explanations are yet again a tendentious effort to illegitimately transfer stereotyped concepts of “human sacrifice” into the Biblical text.
Third: Failure to enact the ban requires recompense not because God requires recompense, but because of the inviolability of one’s oath in an honor-based culture. Niditch tendentiously regards such matters as the punishment of Achan and his family (Josh. 7), or the oath of Saul that anyone who eats before evening will die (1 Sam. 14), as required substitution because “God has been denied his due.” But this is an interpretation that smacks far more of one bearing the “white man’s burden” of bringing civilized mentalities to barbaric savages. An unbigoted assessment sees in such instances rather an enactment of, “your word is your bond”. To go back on one’s word is dishonoring – even if that word involved a grievous mistake.
Further on, Niditch explores the theme of the ban as an enactment of God’s justice. She believes that this theme evokes a contradiction, between the concepts of the ban as a sacrifice, and the victims (like Achan) as unclean sinners. But this tension is the result of her assumption that the ban is a sacral offering; if it is seen, rather, as a matter of honor, then the tension vanishes. Under such circumstances, the ban as God’s justice is complimentary, not contradictory.
The remainder of WHB is beyond our interest, though we may note that Niditch also comments on the Numbers 31 story extensively, for which we refer, as usual, the reader to Miller’s treatment linked below.
In the end, Niditch’s arguments are performed in service of a misguided pacifism, laced with emotional rhetoric and tainted by a “white man’s burden” attitude which looks down upon ancient Israelite culture with the same regard as a fundamentalist atheist who rants endlessly about “primitive Bronze Age goatherders.” Though Niditch’s commentary has the backing of a credentialed scholar, there is little conceptually different from what can be found in any tome written by a New Atheist.
Polygamy
Past this point, our treatment of Stark becomes less detailed, as much of what he raises is already addressed in articles by Glenn Miller or myself (links below). Stark’s next chapter begins with an extended and uninteresting rant on Copan’s alleged inconsistent regard for Babylonian vs Biblical law on polygamy, and a few responses to Copan’s views, but none affect our own. (Copan argues that the OT forbids polygamy, which I would not agree with.) It seems clear that Stark is again wedded to his prior fundamentalism, and cannot see past any options other than polygamy being always approved under all circumstances, or never approved under any circumstances. (We’ll let Stark argue with Karen Armstrong on that one.)
The only academic point I would add is that though Stark recognizes that Solomon’s many marriages had political implications, he fails to reckon that David’s may have had as well, so that God blessing David with wives amounts to saying he was keeping the peace politically in a successful way. That said, there’s also an observation note: In his critique, Stark makes no effort at all to discuss, as Armstrong did, the social purposes of polygamy, or the value of Biblical example on the matter. Rather, his whole section on polygamy is a screed against Copan. One gets the immediate idea from this where Stark’s true priorities lie.
Rape
In this case, Stark does go after the Bible too, but his critique of laws such as found in Deut. 22 represent the same fundamentalist misconceptions as before, for example:
First, it’s assumed that just because a woman was in the city and didn’t scream, she’s not a rape victim but a willing participant. Unlike Hammurabi’s code, the woman is not allowed to take an oath swearing her innocence here. Apparently it was inconceivable that a rapist could cover the girl’s mouth, or threaten to kill her immediately if she screamed, or something like that. No. If you happen to be found under a man who isn’t your fiancé or husband, and you happen to be in the city, then you’re dead.
Er, no – once again, as Hillers observes, this is all case law, not some unbending moral code that is to be blindly followed to the letter. An oath is just the sort of thing the elders of a village would be asking for, in fact, when judging a case like this. Hammurabi’s code may have been more specific, but the OT is not deficient because of it. Indeed, the addition of the oath to the Hammurabi code just as much suggests that it was added because village elders in his land were prejudicially disposed to ignoring such oaths, whereas in Israel they were not. (I find it quite significant that Stark makes the same error in this regard made by C. Dennis McKinsey – one of the “fundy atheists” out there who is the least open-minded and most intolerant of that group.) A second criticism of the law makes the same error, before Stark goes on to spend three times as much space critiquing Copan’s argument (one I don’t follow, either).
Women as War Booty
In this case, however, Copan I find to be more on the right track in declaring Deut. 21:10-14 to be an advantage for the woman in question. Stark’s answer to this is little more than, “yeah, right, ha ha ha” which is about what is to be expected from someone whose harshest daily decision is whether to get his Slurpee in cherry or grape. Stark replies that the man doesn’t have to pay a bride price, so there’s an advantage. Uh, really? The man in question is one of Israel’s fighting men; he risked his life in battle – maybe Stark doesn’t think an equitable price was paid?
Copan’s second point, that the man was not motivated by lust, Stark derides as well by quoting the passage as noting that the woman was “beautiful.” Um, well, I won’t deny that lust may have been in the picture – actually, honor was the more likely motivation – but it seems to me that all the rules here are given as an alternative to what most armies would do, which is just rape the girl and be done with it. If lust is part of the issue here, it’s a MLK “managed solution” that teaches respect for the woman that would ordinarily not be granted. Other than that, Stark presumes yet again modern individualist values on the woman; here again, it fails him that if anything, the woman might be glad to have been given a second honorable chance at life rather than dying in battle, or being shamefully enslaved by a hostile nation, or being left alone to starve.
A Grab at the Gonads
Stark’s next complaint has to do with Deut. 25:11-12, a passage was have discussed before (link below). None of what he says has any bearing on our arguments, since he opts only to attack Copan’s contention that the passage prescribes genital shaving rather than the literal loss of a hand. (Stark actually offers a correct summary of what our view would be, near the end of the chapter, but does not as much as critique it.) Stark is compelled in this regard to take on not Copan, but Copan’s source: Jerome Walsh, author of an article in the Journal of Semitic Studies. I am not qualified to assess the veracity of the linguistic arguments here but I find it interesting Stark uses no scholarly sources to respond to Walsh’s arguments; the only “source” he offers is a “friend from Israel” (!) who claims “every Jew knows” the linguistics don’t support Copan’s view. Walsh’s argument is labeled “ridiculous” but Stark’s only authority for attacking Walsh’s article – written by a serious scholar for a peer-reviewed journal – is Stark himself, who doesn’t even have a doctoral degree yet and is certainly not sufficiently accredited to deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to someone like Walsh. One wonders if he would have the nerve to submit his response to the Journal of Semitic Studies or even Walsh himself (assuming he is still alive) for peer review. (Late add: Copan himself corresponded with Walsh on this; see here.)
Slavery
My gold standard on this subject remains Glenn Miller’s essay (link below) as well as my own e-book here, and I need say little because Stark does absolutely nothing to answer it. Indeed, his chapters on slavery read as little better than angry “is not, is not!” ranting, with no documenting footnotes on the issue. (What footnotes are offered are not for validating Stark’s claims about slavery, but for supporting points unrelated to the issue of slavery.) And needless to say, Stark offers nothing discussing the issue in terms of reciprocity or patronage, two critical components of ANE society that governed the relationships in question.
Canaanite "Genocide"
And yes, here as well on these issues, Miller sets the standard (links below), and Stark utterly fails to meet it. Apart from sections on archaeology upon which I can’t comment (though Stark picks his authorities there anyway, since he certainly is not qualified to assess the evidence himself), and some issues of authorship I’m not particular about (I have no objection to the book of Joshua as a collection of oral, collected source material), Stark fails the test miserably. So once again, my comments will be selective.
One critical point worthy of comment concerns the use of ancient war hyperbole (or “trash talk” as I call it, link below). Stark doesn’t really answer this point; instead, he evades it by explaining away perceived inconsistencies in Joshua as due to JEDP activity, and then engaging a long digression on redaction theories which is a failure in its own right in terms of grasping literary genre. (See for example link on Ecclesiastes below, which offers a far better explanation for the tensions in books like Job and Ecclesiastes than Stark’s inventive theories of warring ideological parties who had no choice but to include contradictory texts together – an especially silly thesis as well, in light of the fact that less than 3% of the population could read those texts, a point Stark himself admits, but fails to apply to his own theory.)
Later, however, he does admit to the use of such hyperbole in ancient war texts, but carefully spins the topic into commentary that says in effect, "well, even if this was hyperbole, what was actually done literally was still horrible." In other words, Stark purposely evades the question of alleged contradiction -- the reason why these other war texts were brought up in the first place -- in order to focus on an emotional rant. (He relates this to an argument made by Copan that Israel did not go after "civilian" targets. I would not follow this argument, for the perception of that social setting was rather that there are no "civilians" -- which to a great extent was indeed the case; every person in a society was either a fighting member of an army, or a potential draftee, or else grew the food or provided the supplies for that army. The functional social diversity that would permit someone to be classified as merely a civilian would not emerge for centuries.
In a few cases he does try to argue that some ancient texts are not being hyperbolic (as when Sennachrib claims to have killed every soldier in an opposing army), but these instances amount to Stark's fundamentalist attitude emerging, as he tries to interpret an ancient text in a modern way -- indeed, making an excuse for Sennacherib that is identical to the sort that he would have made for the Bible as a fundamentalist.
Much space is devoted to replying to an argument I would not use (see above), and the rants multiply like fungus. I also see no need to defend some of Copan's arguments, preferring my own: concerning why the Israelites trod seven times around Jericho, for example, I prefer this, from another article:
Finally, critics often ask what good it did for the Israelites to walk around Jericho so much....Herzog and Gichon note that this is in line with an ancient military strategem. Another example is offered by the Roman writer Frontinus:
When Gneaus Pompey on one occasion was prevented from crossing a river because the enemy's troops were stationed on the opposite bank, he adopted the device of repeatedly leading his troops out of camp and back again. Then, when the enemy were at last tricked into relaxing their watch on the roads in front of the Roman advance, he made a sudden dash and effected a crossing.
The "seven times around the city" was no mere game but a way of getting the Jerichoans relaxed and used to the procession and giving them a sense of false security -- making them that much less prepared for the eventual attack.
I thus see no need for the arguments of Copan (and Hess) that this was some sort of ceremonial procedure.
A particularly humourous point is where Stark tries to massage the war against the Canaanites into "genocide" even though the primary intention stated was to drive them from the land. Stark opines:
This is still genocide. Go back to the start of this chapter and check the definition. The point of driving people out of their land is to destroy them as a people.
However, as Miller points out:
Migration was not that big of a deal in that time period--the peoples are generally classified into the "mobile" terminological groups: pastoral nomadism, semi-nomadism, transhumance nomadism, etc. Migration and movement was a fact and way of life. With a little notice, whole tribes could migrate in days. The Canaanites had DECADES of notice--authenticated by the miracles of the Exodus--and any sane ones probably DID leave before Israel got there. Abandoned city structures are common all over the ANE and Ancient Middle East from that period.
No doubt Stark himself would be too weak of body and mind to survive such dispossession, but that is not sufficient cause to project his own weakness on others.
Amusingly, Stark makes much of the Joshua narrative being propoganda "written by the elite ruling classes in order to serve their imperial agendas ." It does not seem to occur to him that a correct history might just as ably service the agenda of such people; that it does serve their agendas in no way indicates that it is not genuine history. Like most critics who make this sort of point, Stark fails to see that truth and serving an agenda are not mutually exclusive categories.
Conclusion
Thus ends our evaluation, and a few words in close. As noted, I do not consider several of Copan's arguments sufficiently sound, but I daresay Stark is by far less informed, more judgmental, and less sound overall in his own presentation. In a closing statement, Stark obnoxiously suggests that his readers "email Paul Copan and ask for an apology for his apologetics. " I would suggest that Stark does this as a stunt to get himself unwarranted attention. He adds that his readers should tell Copan, "you’re not interested in easy answers; you want to know how to struggle. "
Struggle? I'm sorry, but there's no "struggle" here, save for those who are either too intellectually forlorn to comprehend the answers, or else too emotionally vested to let their rationality take over. I'd classify Stark as deficient on both counts, though it's hard at times to say with which he is more deficient.
Finally, Stark recommends that readers find a "community" that will self-confirm what they want to believe. No, that's not how he puts it; he puts a spin on it which I have corrected. Stark the "former" fundamentalist is just as much intent on insulating his fellow "believers" from dissent. As he puts it:
Find a community that doesn’t let experts speak over the top of the ignorant. Find a community that holds those who doubt in high regard, and one that treats those with all the answers with the kind of care appropriate to the mentally ill.
And yet like a fundamentalist never healed, Stark fails to perceive the innate self-contradiction here: He regards his own views as "the" answer -- even if that answer is, "doubt everything." By his own definition, he is therefore mentally ill.
The fact is that there are answers, and they are sound ones -- Stark simply doesn't like them.