Contradictions in the Oldie Testament

[_just me]

I didn't want to derail the Old Testament god thread, but this thread is on a similar topic.

There are several recorded incidents of genocide in the Old Testament. There are some interesting points about it. 1) archeaology does not support it, 2) some people are killed more than once or are still alive after being allegedly killed.

These are conflicts that I wonder how believers reconcile. I also wonder why there is the need to believe that god really commanded genocide and really has killed people. Why come up with justification and apologia at all? Why not be relieved that the archeaological record doesn't support that it ever happened afterall?

Here are some examples:

Judges 21:10 And the congregation sent thither twelve thousand men of the valiantest, and commanded them, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children.
21:11 And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man.

1 Sam. 11:1 Then Nahash the Ammonite came up, and encamped against Jabeshgilead: and all the men of Jabesh said unto Nahash, Make a covenant with us, and we will serve thee.

How can the men of Jabesh make a covenant when they were all slaughtered just a few years previous?

The pesky Amalekites:

In 1 Sam. 15 the Amalekites are "utterly destroyed" and their king is hacked to pieces. This genocide is led by Saul.

In 1 Sam. 27 David kills all of the Amalekites (among others) and steals all their property.

In 1 Sam. 30 the Amalekites invade the south, committing arson and took women and children captive (rather than murdering them like the Israelites would have, hmmm). But, David with his 400 (200 men lagged behind) spend 24 hours(ish) slaughtering all the men...but 400 escape on camelback.

So, after being slaughtered TWICE the Amalekites are still in such great numbers that they can raid a village and take a whole day to slaughter the men (other than 400!). How does that work?

[_Aristotle Smith]

There are several recorded incidents of genocide in the Old Testament. There are some interesting points about it. 1) archeaology does not support it

This is correct. The archaeological record doesn't support the genocides in Numbers and Joshua. There are two main reasons archaeologists believe this. The most powerful is that in many cases the areas which were epicenters of the genocide were completely unpopulated during the time period of the supposed genocide. For example the slaughter of the Midianites in Numbers is highly dubious based on the fact that Midian was basically unpopulated during the time of Numbers and remained so for centuries thereafter. The destruction at A.I. in Joshua also suffers from the same problem, it seems to have been unpopulated during the required time period, but was destroyed centuries earlier.

The second reason is lack of destruction layers in the archaeological record. In many cases the sites can be shown to have been continuously populated during the time period, with no trace of a destruction layer. If there were only one or two sites which had this pattern, it could be written off as missing destruction layers (there's no law that every ancient destruction is accompanied by a destruction layer). But, since Joshua identifies many sites, and a large percentage of them have been identified and excavated, there should be some destruction layers present for a significant percentage of the sites. There isn't any.

2) some people are killed more than once or are still alive after being allegedly killed.

Yes, you see this in the Bible with the Amalekites. You also see it in Joshua/Judges. If you read Joshua, it's very clear that the invasion of Canaan was a huge wipeout. But, read the first two chapters of Judges, you get a very different story.

My conclusion is that there were probably multiple accounts of what happened and both were weaved into the story for completeness. The Bible includes multiple contradictory accounts, some minor contradictions, some fairly major. The modern response is to cry that this proves the Bible is unhistorical. Actually, I think it proves the exact opposite. Ancient history is full of multiple contradictory accounts. It's a modern presumption that unless a history is univocal, it doesn't qualify as history. The problem is that you just flushed a ton of ancient history down the toilet with that approach.

These are conflicts that I wonder how believers reconcile. I also wonder why there is the need to believe that god really commanded genocide and really has killed people. Why come up with justification and apologia at all? Why not be relieved that the archeaological record doesn't support that it ever happened afterall?

In general, I don't provide apologia when the evidence suggests that it did not happen. I just say, it didn't happen. The more you are married to the idea of a completely inerrant Bible, the more you have to defend this kind of stuff.

But there's something else interesting here. For most of Christian history, these stories have not been seen as a great idea, but have been read allegorically. This is a good thing, but something that I think most people get completely wrong nowadays. The standard idea nowadays is that everyone read the Bible as straight history up until science showed it was all crap and now only ignoramuses and baby eaters like the Bible. The problem is that allegorical readings of the Bible achieved a high point during the middle ages, long before science had any traction in the marketplace of ideas. Current modernist and fundamentalist views of the Bible are both remarkably similar and remarkably at odds with how the Bible has traditionally been read in Christianity (and Judaism for that matter).

But the problem is that most people are so steeped in modernism/fundamentalism (at the level of Biblical interpretation they are exactly the same) that they can't envision reading the Bible any other way than flat, literal, history. Nor do they see any value in reading it any other way.

[_Morley]

Current modernist and fundamentalist views of the Bible are both remarkably similar and remarkably at odds with how the Bible has traditionally been read in Christianity (and Judaism for that matter).

+1

[_just me]

Thanks AS! That pretty much sums up how I felt about the Bible right before ditching it completely. I think that when read as myth/allegory it can be food for meditation. When read literally, it doesn't edify...me anyway.

Love your comments.

[_Aristotle Smith]

Thanks AS! That pretty much sums up how I felt about the Bible

:)

right before ditching it completely

:(

[_just me]

Thanks AS! That pretty much sums up how I felt about the Bible

:)

right before ditching it completely

:(

No, it's a happy thing, I promise!

[_huckelberry]

Just me, I believe you asked me about out side sources for destruction of Amalikites on a different thread. This thread tells what your question is about.

I think it historically highly plausible that a group of Amalikites were destroyed in warfare associated with consolidating social political unity in the area. I doubt that everybody whom could be associate with the name was ever destroyed. You point out good reasons to doubt such.

Similarly I find it very believable that some Midinites were killed in a battle in the desert. Obviously not all.

I am happy to believe that there was no universal flood and that that story is 100 percent fiction. I am happy that I believe that because of excellent and overwhelming evidence, not simply because I find the story distasteful.

Generally I think consideration of the nasty warfare stories is important to understanding the actual human history involved. It is important to understanding war role in human existence. It plays such a huge and inescapable part of who we really are.

[_just me]

Just me, I believe you asked me about out side sources for destruction of Amalikites on a different thread. This thread tells what your question is about.

Yes. I figured it might be easier to keep track of it in its own thread. :)

I think it historically highly plausible that a group of Amalikites were destroyed in warfare associated with consolidating social political unity in the area. I doubt that everybody whom could be associate with the name was ever destroyed. You point out good reasons to doubt such.

Similarly I find it very believable that some Midinites were killed in a battle in the desert. Obviously not all.

I am happy to believe that there was no universal flood and that that story is 100 percent fiction. I am happy that I believe that because of excellent and overwhelming evidence, not simply because I find the story distasteful.

Generally I think consideration of the nasty warfare stories is important to understanding the actual human history involved. It is important to understanding war role in human existence. It plays such a huge and inescapable part of who we really are.

I think that looking at war narratives and tribal stories in their actual historical context is important. I also think that looking at the actual record of what really ocurred is important (insofar as we can determine).

The problem I see is when one group is given the title of "god's chosen ones" or the "good guys" and everyone else, or other, are deemed "evil" and the "bad guys." This doesn't give a clear, accurate picture at all. All it gives is a biased opinion.

From what I understand, wars have primarily always been about land and resources (food/water). Survival has been a beast for humans. Sometimes, in order for their tribe to survive they would resort to killing/war with other tribes. Naturally, every tribe believed they had the favor of their god and would perform ritual prior to engaging in warfare, and after as well.

And, of course, we can still see this today. There are groups who believe their god has told them to kill people and be at war with people. When it is our group, we call ourselves the good guys. When it is the other group(s) we call them evil or the bad guys.

[_huckelberry]

The problem I see is when one group is given the title of "god's chosen ones" or the "good guys" and everyone else, or other, are deemed "evil" and the "bad guys." This doesn't give a clear, accurate picture at all. All it gives is a biased opinion.

From what I understand, wars have primarily always been about land and resources (food/water). Survival has been a beast for humans. Sometimes, in order for their tribe to survive they would resort to killing/war with other tribes. Naturally, every tribe believed they had the favor of their god and would perform ritual prior to engaging in warfare, and after as well.

And, of course, we can still see this today. There are groups who believe their god has told them to kill people and be at war with people. When it is our group, we call ourselves the good guys. When it is the other group(s) we call them evil or the bad guys.

I can see what you mean about the distortions created by the easy pattern of thinking us good guys and them bad guys. There is a steep and treacherous slope between conflict and war. Good guy bad guy thinking greases that slope towards war. There clearly are aspects of the Old Testament which would encourage such black and white thinking. On the other hand there are other aspects of the Old Testament which are critical of that kind of thinking. Jeremiah, which is no small and insignificant book, does so extensively.

Land and resources are clearly an aspect of human warfare. I think that there are some much larger issues usually at stake however. In human behavior cheating stealing, highway robbery and pirating of shipping have always been huge temptations. A major portion of why people bother with governmental power is to curb these forces and allow productive business to flourish. It has required war to establish centers of police power. Once such centers of power (cities, kingdoms, empires) are established competition for the advantages of control over law become a major source of war. Consider for example the American cival war. It was a conflict over how law was to be administered which generated the war. For people to have persued that conflict to such bloody awful extremes some things very important must have been involved.

It is a bit of a puzzle or irony that something positive and necessary such as the rule of law become the occasion for the profound evil which is war.

I do not suppose any of us like the fact that there was an American cival war which stacked up dead young boys and men like logs at the saw mill. Perhaps there was a different way to resolve the legal conflicts. Modern intelligent educated free citizens failed to find it however. Much of the Old Testament is about conflicts of who has legal power and how that should be decided amongst a mixture of people living sort of together is a small area. I do not think we moderns should feel too superior to those people then who fell into war over those conflicts when such tragedy happens now.

[_just me]

I do not think we moderns should feel too superior to those people then who fell into war over those conflicts when such tragedy happens now.

Too true. I was just discussing this a couple days ago with someone. The fact that we are still unable to resolve conflict without resorting to shooting each other to death is just beyond the pale.

We still feel superior to our enemies. That goes for every nation, every group. We make our enemy the other. That is what makes it possible to kill them.