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Deuteronomy 13-15 Skeptics Annotated Bible
We start off (again) with God commanding that any one that follows another god should be put to death.
A sharp contrast from the teachings of Jesus wouldn't you say?
On some level I can understand why God is being so tough on his chosen people. The forty years in the desert have been like a bootcamp to toughen them up. But I can't for the life of me reconcile the homicidal jealousy that keeps coming through. Every time I read this I visualize a violent husband beating and then consoling his battered wife. Sick stuff.
I maybe getting ahead of the reading, but I wonder if Jesus "went rogue" and was actually working against the God of Abraham. Perhaps he was the rebellious son of God and started teaching Peace, Love and Understanding to piss off his dad. ;-)
Chapter 14 gives us a rehash of the Levitican laws but goes into much greater detail. Evidently Rabbits are unclean because they chew cud. And bats are birds (I think we can cut God some slack for thinking a bat is a bird, right?).
I found 14:26 interesting in that it allows lusting after things and intoxicating beverages.
And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth.
Chapter 15 gives us a review of the seventh year forgiveness plan.
Bruce,
ReplyDeleteA sharp contrast from the teachings of Jesus wouldn't you say?
Nope Jesus preached the same thing. Matthew 22:35-40. :-D
@Edward, I don't think the "love god and love your neighbors" in Matthew 22:35-40 is "the same thing" as the "kill anyone who talks of following another god" in early Deut 13.
ReplyDeleteBut maybe there's an alternate Christian definition of "same thing"?
Wow, I guess I had Jesus all wrong.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to take him off my list of people to look up to. ;-)
But seriously, from what I know of Jesus's teachings, he was a more compassionate leader. Don't recall him threatening his followers with death and plagues.
@Bruce,
ReplyDeleteEvidently Rabbits are unclean because they chew cud. And bats are birds
As for rabbits when they eat does it look like they are chewing the cud? Can you see two guys arguing over it?
And as for bats. Do you know how old the classification system is for animals?
I like how the first law in ch. 13 says to stone prophets... even if their prophecies come true(!), if they happen to regard some other deity.
ReplyDelete13:12 is a pretty nasty order for ethnic cleansing those who don't follow YHWH.
14:3-21 is almost identical to Lev. 11:1-23. Interesting occurrence of both D and P legislation sharing a source. (One quoting the other seems unlikely.)
Then "You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk", from E's Covenant Code and J's 10 Commandments.
Ch. 15 has a nice expansion of the Covent Code's slavery law (Ex. 21:2); clauses are added regarding lavish parting gifts you should give them. Awww.
15:20 specifies that sacrifice is only taken yearly; this is a realistic accommodation to centralization.
As for rabbits when they eat does it look like they are chewing the cud? Can you see two guys arguing over it?
ReplyDeleteAnd as for bats. Do you know how old the classification system is for animals?
Funny how a book supposedly "inspired" by God nevertheless authentically records the erroneous beliefs of the people who wrote it.
I mean, I'm sure God didn't really care that bats weren't birds, but don't you think he would have been like
"Hey Moses... I don't want this book to look bad, so I should probably tell you... bats aren't birds. Yeah, I know, its crazy, but TRUST ME... they're flying rats. Just write that down. I want people to trust my word forever, and I can't have your folk-knowledge clouding up my holy book. If you say bats are birds, they'll never respect me."
@e. ebullient,
ReplyDeleteYou are correct, Jesus did not tell us to go out and kill people, He taught quite the opposite (Matthew 5:44). At this point Hell is coming quick enough for many, no need to send them any earlier (Mark 16:15,16). The reason that i don't like "love" only being mentioned is that i feel, from seeing how people act, that when they posit love on God He is now their puppet. Everything that is sin in His eyes is now perfectly fine, it has become my "personal choice" my "lifestyle". And that since God "loves" me and wants "me" to be happy He is okay with this. It's just not the case. God is also Holy and Just.
Jesus fulfilled the Law given by Moses. Now He has reconciled man to God if they will choose. (John 14:6;Acts 2:21;Romans 5:10). Yet man still wants to fashion God in their image.
@Abbie,
ReplyDeleteReally that is your reply? Come on your smarter than that, i know you are. You did not even answer my question.
The classification system we have for animals was first developed in the 18th century AD by Carl Linnaeus. So you want to take a something developed in the 18th century and apply it to a document written 3400+ years ago? Do you think maybe they had a different classification system back then? Yet because you have a different one it is superior to theirs? By whose perspective? This page does give a few different classification models over time. The groupings here do show signs of their classification system at that time.
Granted that site could be wrong, please correct me if it is.
Abbie i expect more from you. You have appeared as a researcher, someone that will look for answers. Heck, you have me reading more stuff now that i never had heard of until i joined this project and started reading your comments. And i honestly mean all the above, however this reply... well you must be tired or something. I hope you're not one that looks only for the answer that you want.
14:1 "Ye are the children of the LORD your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead."
ReplyDeleteI take it god likes unibrows. I take back what I implied a few weeks ago about his fondness for nice drapes and interior decorating. No self respecting gay man would tolerate a unibrow. EVER.
@Abbie
ReplyDelete13:12 is a pretty nasty order for ethnic cleansing those who don't follow YHWH.
How are you getting that from the text?
@Abbie and Edward,
ReplyDeleteWhile I tend to agree with Abbie on most posts, I would have to agree with Edward that +3000 years ago, any flying creature could have been classified as a bird and every swimming creature considered a fish. While we would expect an all knowing being who created these animals to know that there are differences, for a pre-science people such as the Israelites, he may not have wanted to spend to much time with details. they couldn't even follow the simplest of his rules to begin with!
@Brian,
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty obvious that 13:12-13:17 is a call for God's scorched earth policy. If ethnic cleansing is to harsh a term for you, we can go with genocide.
And why would God demand the killing of the cattle?
Sadly, this intolerance for those with different beliefs and lifestyles is still alive and well in the 21st century, and the intolerant ones usually use the Bible as their reason.
Chapters 12 and 13 are really the heart of Josiah's reforms: centralization of the cult and destruction of anything having to do with the worship of other gods. Does it seem a bit anachronistic to have laws about centralization before they even have a place to centralize at?
ReplyDeleteThe idea in chapter 15 that giving to the poor and to freed slaves is good for everyone seems kind of like the polar opposite of trickle-down Reaganomics (maybe trickle-up Deuteronomics?)
"15:23 Only thou shalt not eat the blood thereof; thou shalt pour it upon the ground as water."
Ritually returning the blood (life) to the ground perfectly parallels ancient Greek religion. We see many examples of this in the Homeric epics.
jeez I was being facetious.
ReplyDeleteI guess it could just be semantics. If the word we translate as "bird" (צפר) in Hebrew meant "animal that flies", then, bats would indeed be צפר.
Curse you, tower of babel!
@Edward, this is why a lot of people think Christians are either pretty confused, or just full of it. You're basically double talking - in your first post, you claim that Jesus said the same thing as Deut 13, but after I challenged that, you say he said the opposite. So which is it? The same thing, or the opposite thing?
ReplyDeleteI understand what you're saying about people taking what you feel is a too lenient interpretation of loving God (if you love God, you should try harder to follow his rules, seems to be your logic which I agree is internally consistent). But it's not relevant to the argument you were making before, which is that the teachings of NT Jesus are consistent with the genocidal demands of the OT God. They are not - Deut 13 literally encourages Jews to take matters into their own hands and kill anyone who talks of following another god, and the NT reserves the damnation and death to be dealt by God himself. Maybe you feel that's not a distinction worth making, but I think it is a pretty significant change.
@Bruce
ReplyDelete"...it's pretty obvious"
It isn't obvious to me that this is ethnic cleansing, because there is nothing to indicate ethnic bias here.
@Brian,
ReplyDeleteIt's obvious when the Israelites are ordered to exterminate anyone else that is NOT an Israelite (i.e. Following their god and their rules).
This discussion is just a distraction from the fact that God demands, encourages and revels in the mass murder of everyone the Israelites come into contact with to claim their promised land.
I thought it was interesting to read about the original meaning of tithing, compared to what I was taught in church growing up. It seems that the Israelites actually got to eat their own tithes, but they just had to do it in a celebratory and ceremonial way. That seems very different than just turning it all over to the church. It also seems to only apply to food, and not to other things that the people might have gained or produced.
ReplyDeleteI would like to award Edward this shiny gold medal for Olympics-level mental gymnastics. It really takes a strong desire to believe to reconcile such ridiculous things.
ReplyDelete@Bruce
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with you that this is based in ethnicity because the text never says that. My original question is about this specific verse and it seems like your answer is broader than that.
And there is never a mandate to exterminate anyone who is not an Israelite.
This passage of Deut. 13:1-18 is where Moses is issuing warnings against apostasy, first concerning false prophets.
Yup, Yahweh is definitely commanding genocide. It's hard for me to see this as an exceptional circumstance demanded by Yahweh for theological purposes since it reads pretty much like most of the literature that survives from ancient Mediterranean cultures. Warfare between tribes with extermination of men, enslaving of women and children, burning, raping, pillaging was pretty ubiquitous. Most of it was done in the name of and with the ostensible aid of various deities.
ReplyDelete"Funny how a book supposedly "inspired" by God nevertheless authentically records the erroneous beliefs of the people who wrote it."
I'm thinking pi=3, luminescent moon, tiny stars set in a firmament, flat earth with ocean beneath, four legged insects and fowl. . .
This reminds me of a story my thesis advisor told our lab about visiting his wife's Mormon family in Utah (we sent him with caffeine-free coke bottles refilled with Guinness). He went to a Mormon Sunday-school-like meeting with them where a woman was talking about Joseph Smith's reputation as a great storyteller. Apparently in his stories, one of his favorite words to use was "exceedingly." The woman pointed out that the Book of Mormon also uses the word "exceedingly," well. . . exceedingly, which she interpreted as a sign that God really did have a special relationship with Joseph Smith and chose him especially as a prophet, since he put similar language in Smith's mouth and on the sacred tablets.
Yyyyyeah. . . that's definitely the most likely explanation. For those who haven't read any of the BoM, it's a knee-slappingly hilarious attempt to mimic Biblical language (or English translations thereof). Lots of "And it came to pass"es thrown in.
@Brain,
ReplyDeleteWhat is your definition of ethnicity?
I'll concede that this chapter does not have God telling them to kill non-Israelites. That was an over generalization on my part. But it still commands genocide. I think we can all agree on that.
It isn't obvious to me that this is ethnic cleansing, because there is nothing to indicate ethnic bias here.
ReplyDelete"Ethnic cleansing" does seem the wrong term to have used. It seems the edict could apply to Israelite cities as well. But really- that's splitting hairs. It still called for the wholesale of destruction of places where the wrong god was worshipped. Maybe I should have used the term "cultural genocide".
It's unconscionable.
@BHitt - my husband did a project in Salt Lake City several years ago and we swiped the Book of Mormon from the hotel. Agree - it is HILARIOUS reading b/c it is so badly written. For quite a while after, everything we said was prefaced with "And it came to pass."
ReplyDeleteBut I digress.
Does the general intolerance for worshiping any other god prove that there were/are other gods around to be worshiped?
@Susan
ReplyDeleteDoes the general intolerance for worshiping any other god prove that there were/are other gods around to be worshiped?
Prove to whom?! (I know you know that I know that gods are imaginary) I often wonder what life would be like if the other side had won some of these conflicts. For instance what if the Moors had kept moving north instead of being kicked out of Spain. Closer to the time frame at hand what if the Northern Kingdom had conquered all and Jeruselum hadn't become such a touchy spot. Just thinkin' out loud
Maybe "prove" wasn't quite the right word. But the constant reminders do seem to indicate that other gods exist (in the framework of the book, that is) and that the Israelites know this and that even Yahweh knows it. But somehow we are all expected to...what? Ignore that? Do some more mental gymnastics and see something else in the text?
ReplyDeleteI agree. The point seems to be your gods are pretend my mine is real! Solomon himself worshipped other gods so they stick around for quite a long time
ReplyDelete@e. ebullient,
ReplyDelete"you claim that Jesus said the same thing as Deut 13, but after I challenged that, you say he said the opposite. So which is it? The same thing, or the opposite thing?"
I should have been clearer on what i meant by Jesus teaching the same thing. :-D I will try to explain my Olympic level thoughts. ;-)
13:3b "ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul." Jesus in NT
Matthew:22:36-38 Jesus was asked by a lawyer "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus answered "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment."
When i said same thing that is what i was referring to.
Just for fun:
John 8:3-11 Did Jesus forbid the law from being executed or speak against it? Nope, just "7b He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
:-)
kk all joking aside, you say "Deut 13 literally encourages Jews to take matters into their own hands and kill anyone who talks of following another god,"
We need to take the whole law. Deut 17:4 tells them to go "enquire diligently" does it not? So no they are not to take matters into their own hands. And 17:7 says "The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death,..." And not just one witness, but two or three.
I do think, using the reference from John 8, that many people were taking the law into their own hands and not following the instruction that God gave Moses.
I hope that helps to clear things up.
@bananacat1,
Thanks for the medal i will be here all year. :-D