Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible

Lesson 6 Ethical Discrepancies

Rationale: The student will encounter (some) ethical discrepancies and will become familiar with plausible explanations that reconcile the alleged ethical discrepancies with scripture.

I. The Bible teaches divine love. Joel 2:12-13 (NASB) 12 "Yet even now," declares the LORD, "Return to Me with all your heart, And with fasting, weeping and mourning; 13 And rend your heart and not your garments." Now return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness And relenting of evil.

•Joel's message was aimed primarily at the people of Judah and Jerusalem. It is likely, though, that he prophesied of the Assyrian invasion of Israel (Northern Kingdom) which would take place in 722 B.C. •The immediate historical purpose of Joel was to turn the hearts of God's people back to the Lord.

•For those who hold to a pre-exilic date for Joel, this prophecy of the invading northern army likely points to Assyria or Babylon, or perhaps to both. In 722 B.C., the Assyrians would conquer the Northern Kingdom (Israel), and in 586 B.C., the Babylonians would conquer the Southern Kingdom (Judah). Both enemies invaded from the north, so Joel could have had either one in mind.

•Regardless of the army or invasion being prophesied, this purpose does not change. God's people needed to repent in the midst of their present crisis, and they needed to repent because an even greater crisis was coming. Quite clearly, the warning applies to all generations of God's people, present and future.

•Notice that the audience and the historical and doctrinal purpose present the context in which certain attributes of God are featured by Joel:1. God is gracious.2. God is compassionate.3. God is slow to anger.4. God is abounding in Lovingkindness. 5. God does not delight in punitive wrath.

I. The Bible teaches divine love.Jonah 4:1-2 (NASB) 1 But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD and said, "Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.

The Historical Purpose: Jonah's message of judgment was preached in Nineveh to bring the people to repentance.

Why, then, was the book written and preserved for the Israelites, God's specially chosen people at the time? Several reasons seem likely: •First, to remind the people of their duty to bear witness for the Lord. The Israelites had long forsaken their call to be a light to the nations.

•Second, to remind Israel of God's great love for all people, even their enemies. •Third, just as Jonah repented from his disobedience and hard-heartedness, so it was God's desire that all of Israel repent.

•The Doctrinal purpose of the book of Joel and Jonah is consistent with other books of prophecy. It contains the basic pattern and key themes presented throughout the Old Testament. These are:1. The message or warning of God's judgment for sin.

(Punishment, discipline, chastisement).2. The command or call to repent.3. The promise of forgiveness and future blessings for

the repentant (deliverance, salvation, and restoration).

•Again, the audience, and historical and doctrinal purpose is needed in order to establish the context in which Jonah presents some key attributes of God:1. God is gracious.2. God is compassionate.3. God is slow to anger.4. God is abounding in Lovingkindness.5. God does not delight in punitive wrath.

I. The Bible teaches divine love.John 3:16 (NASB) "For God so loved the world,

that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

•Jesus, speaking to Nicodemus presents the following facts:1. Some people will perish. (Due to their free will, they

will refuse to believe in Christ as Lord and Savior).2. Some people will receive eternal life, through belief

in Him.3. God provided for “all” of mankind the only means of

salvation.4. God’s motive for providing the means of salvation is

His “love” for all of mankind.

I. The Bible teaches divine love.1 John 4:8 (NASB) The one who does not love

does not know God, for God is love.

•The fact that God is love describes only one relational attribute of God within His entire essence.•Where one side of God’s moral nature is holiness, and that holiness has a positive side and a negative side, the other side of God’s moral nature is love. This is how the goodness of God expresses itself toward his free-will creatures: God is love.

•A non-biased, objective, inductive study of God’s love will be defined with four basic elements:1. Self-Giving; in many ways God is self-giving,

but ultimately His self-giving act is that He gave us Himself in the incarnation of the Logos as Jesus Christ, who gave Himself up to death on our behalf.

•A non-biased, objective, inductive study of God’s love will be defined with four basic elements:2. Concern; God is genuinely interested in us

and cares about us; He is concerned about our well being. He sincerely and unselfishly wants to bless us, He will not ignore us or be indifferent toward us.

•A non-biased, objective, inductive study of God’s love will be defined with four basic elements:3. Action; This is the third element of God’s

love. Divine love does not remain internal to God; He externalizes it by acting on behalf of those whom He loves. His love is embodied in His providential blessing:

4. Affection; this is the fourth aspect of divine love. An element often omitted by those who exclude all feelings from God or who forget that God’s love is broader than agape. Scripture often uses analogies that embody tender affection.

•The relationship of a father to a child. (Hos 11:1,4; Rom 8:5)•A mother to a child. (Isa 49:15; Isa 66:13)•Husband to wife. (Hos 3:1; Eph 5:25)•A shepherd to the flock. (Ezek 34:11-22; Isa 40:11; John 10:11)

•Surely these analogies teach us that God’s love is warm and tender and deeply personal and infinitely rich.

II. The Bible teaches divine genocide (allegedly)•Genocide is the deliberate and systematic extermination, murder, or mass homicide of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.

•Consider the following:Deuteronomy 9:3-5 (NASB) 3 "Know therefore today that it is the LORD your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, so that you may drive them out and destroy them quickly, just as the LORD has spoken to you. 4

"Do not say in your heart when the LORD your God has driven them out before you, 'Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,' but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you.

5 "It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

•One of the new primary attacks on the Bible, and leveled against Biblical Christianity is the divine genocide committed against the Canaanites and the Amalekites. Perhaps the Christians and atheists that stage such attacks do not understand the depth of Canaanite sins. Could it be that the reason why such attacks are directed against God and the Bible in terms of the Canaanites is because our culture today commits these very same sins?

•Could it be that the abhorrence of God’s ordering the destruction of the Canaanites and the Amalekites comes from the fact that God hates sin but his opponents do not? Perhaps the accusation of divine genocide is an attempt from the unregenerated sinful heart to rationalize its spurning of God’s prescription for the way the people and nations are to behave.

•To have an understanding of how to reconcile the divine loving nature of God with the alleged discrepancy of divine genocide, one must have an understanding of the Canaanite sin. The Bible is unmistakable concerning what sins they committed, including idolatry, incest, adultery, child sacrifice, and bestiality. (See Lev 18:3; 24-30; Duet 12:31; 18:9-14)

1. Idolatry: Idolatry is not some private religious hobby that a person engages in; to the contrary, it can form an entire group identity and a way of life because those who commit idolatry do so as a result of being idolatrous. Idolatry is a form of worship because it involves ascribing attention and affection to something considered worthy. Worship, regardless of its object, is inescapably whole-life formational.

•Idolatry produced a mentality that was theologically conducive to the formation of Canaanite practices, including incest, adultery, child sacrifice, homosexuality, and bestiality.

2. Incest: Like all ancient Near East pantheons, the Canaanite pantheon was incestuous. The god El (considered the father of the gods) had seventy children by Asherah. From that union came Baal and his sister Anat with whom Baal had sexual relations.

3. Adultery: Canaanite religion, like that of the entire ancient Near East, was a fertility religion that involved temple sex. Inanna/Istar, also known as the Queen of Heaven, became the woman among the gods, patron of eroticism and sensuality of conjugal as well as adultery, of brides and prostitutes, transvestites, and pederasts.

Jeremiah 7:18-20 (NASB) 18 "The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me. 19 "Do they spite Me?" declares the LORD. "Is it not themselves they spite, to their own shame?" 20 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, My anger and My wrath will be poured out on this place, on man and on beast and on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground; and it will burn and not be quenched." (See also Jeremiah chapter 44)

4. Child Sacrifice: bear in mind: Leviticus 18:21 (NASB) 'You shall not give any of your offspring to offer them to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God; I am the LORD.

•Molech was a Canaanite underworld deity represented as an upright bull-headed idol with a human body in whose belly a fire was stoked and in whose outstretched arms a child was placed that would be burned to death. (Albright, Yahweh and the gods of Canaan, 236.)

•It was not just unwanted children who were sacrificed. Plutarch reports that during the Phoenician (Canaanite) sacrifices, “the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums so that the cries of the wailing should not reach the ears of the people, (Plutarch De Superstitione 13). And it was not just infants; children as old as four were sacrificed, (Shelby Brown, Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice and Sacrificial Monuments in Their Mediterranean Context).

5. Homosexuality: Leviticus 18:22-25 (NASB) 22 'You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination. 23 'Also you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion. 24 'Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. 25 'For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants.

6. Bestiality: also cited in Leviticus 18:23, forbids sex with animals, which is the ultimate form of depravity. Hittite Laws (Canaanite) 199 states, “If anyone has intercourse with a pig or a dog, he shall die. If a person has intercourse with a horse or a mule, there is no punishment.” (Hoffner, “Incest, Sodomy, and Bestiality in the Ancient Near East 82)

•There should be no surprise that bestiality would occur for the Canaanites since the god they worshipped practiced it. Both male and female Canaanites practiced bestiality, having a culture with animals that were accustomed to having sexual intercourse with these, is it any wonder that God’s command to kill everything thing that breaths is in response to such depravity.

III. Reconciling the matter Israel was warned not to let the Canaanites live in their land but to completely destroy them (Exodus 23:33; Deuteronomy 20:16-18) because otherwise the Canaanites would be a snare to the Israelites, the Israelites would intermarry with the Canaanites and would consequently learn the Canaanite ways.

•The Israelites did not obey God and as a result they ended up practicing all of the Canaanite ways, therefore God sent prophets to warn them of impending doom if they did not repent. As a result of a divided Kingdom that refused to repent, God exercised punitive judgment on Israel in 722 B.C. and latter on Judah in 586 B.C. then later in 70 A.D. forty years after Jesus was killed the Roman emperor Titus destroyed Jerusalem.

•God does indeed extend divine love, for this is an extremely important part of His essence, however, God superlative attribute is holiness, and because God is holy He will not allow individual sin, or the sin of a nation go unpunished.

•In terms of the Canaanites, Israel, and the USA this is important for three reasons:1. What God commanded the Israelites to do to the

Canaanites was not genocide, it was capital punishment. God held Israel to the same standards; God is no respecter of persons.

2. There is a cosmic lesson: God hates sin because sin leads to rebellion and the worst kinds of evil.

3. There is no discontinuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. In both testaments God hates sin and will punish it.