The former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca once said: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”  This simple advice has wide-ranging application—whether we’re settling personal disagreements, planning our schedules, or trying to build bridges with non-Christians.

One area of bridge-building has to do with the creation-evolution “debate.”  In my book “That’s Just Your Interpretation” (Baker, 2001), I deal with a variety of philosophical and apologetical questions such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, Eastern monism and reincarnation, foreknowledge and free will, predestination, and the like. One question I address has to do with the Genesis-science issue.  I note that the fundamental question is not how old the earth is (although I do believe it is billions of years old); nor is the issue how long God took to create the universe (if we insist that God’s creating in six 24-hour days as more miraculous than a process of billions of years, this still wouldn’t be as miraculous as God’s creating in six nanoseconds…or just one!).  I also mention in the book that the fundamental issue to discuss with scientifically-minded non-Christians—the main thing—is not “creation vs. evolution”; rather, it is the question of “God vs. no God.”  There are, after all, evangelical theistic evolutionists such as theologian Henri Blocher and the late Christian statesman John Stott, and the theologian J.I. Packer seems quite open to theistic evolution (consider his endorsement of theistic evolutionist Denis Alexander’s book Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?).

Now I have my questions about evolution, but then again, a number of naturalists do too!  For example, the biochemist Franklin Harold writes: “We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity….but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”^[1] Hmmm…interesting.  At any rate, if evolution turns out to be true, then the Christian should embrace it as one dedicated to following the truth wherever it leads. This might mean reworking his interpretation of Genesis on the subject—much like Christians have had to rework their interpretation of biblical passages referring to the sun rising and setting, the earth not moving, or the earth resting on foundations.[2]

As I speak to secular audiences on university campuses and elsewhere, I don’t raise the creation vs. evolution issue.  Rather, for the sake of argument, I grant evolution and begin the discussion there. I don’t want people turned off to the gospel because I’ve lost sight of the main thing—the centrality of Jesus; unfortunately, a lot of well-meaning Christians do just that and end up running down this or that rabbit trail and never getting back to the main thing. Evolution is a secondary concern; we Christians should remember this when engaging with unbelievers rather than getting side-tracked.  Keep the main thing the main thing.

I typically highlight the following two points when speaking with naturalists.

1. If humans evolved from a single-celled organism over hundreds of millions of years, this is a remarkable argument from design!  Indeed, a lot of naturalists themselves utilize design language when referring to biological organisms—“machines,” “computer-like,” “appears designed” (a point I’ll address in a future blog posting). As believers, we shouldn’t be surprised to see God’s sustaining and providential hand operating through natural processes—though unfortunately even some believing scientists are reluctant to acknowledge this.  Alvin Plantinga’s recent book on God and science, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (Oxford), points out that the conflict is between naturalism and science, not God and science, even if this involves guided (not unguided) evolution. 

Now, the atheist Richard Dawkins has claimed that Darwin made it possible to be a fulfilled atheist.  Well, that’s not quite right. For one thing, Darwin himself didn’t see God and evolution in conflict with each other.  Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species (1859), “To my mind, it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes . . . .” And again: “There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one . . . from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”^[3] But there’s more for the atheist to consider.

2. Several significant steps or hurdles must be overcome before evolution can get going:  Many naturalists claim that “evolution can explain it all.” For example, Daniel Dennett asserts that Darwinistic evolution is a “universal acid” that eats through everything it comes into contact with.  The problem, however, is that a number of massive hurdles must be overcome before self-replicating life can even get a running start.  Here are the key hurdles:

• The origin of the universe from nothing: evolution’s no good without a universe in which it can unfold, and the universe began a finite time ago; it hasn’t always been around.
• The delicately-balanced, knife-edge universe requires many very specific conditions for life;
• The emergence of first life (and eventually consciousness): how life could emerge from non-life (or consciousness from non-conscious matter) continues to stump scientists; moreover, if humans could somehow produce life from non-life, this would simply show that this takes a lot of intelligent planning! Just because we have a life-permitting universe, this is no guarantee that it will be a life-producing universe.
• The continuation of life in harsh early conditions: even if life could come have into existence on its own from non-living matter, there would have been immense obstacles to initial life’s continuation, development, and flourishing.

When we’re looking at the odds in terms of probabilities, this is what we have:

Many naturalists will simply deny design at every stage (and for all of them).  It seems that no matter how much the odds are ramped up, design would never be acknowledged—an indication that the issue isn’t scientific after all.  This is a theological and philosophical issue.  At any rate, from the literal outset (the beginning of the universe) the falsity and folly of an “evolution did it all” explanation is apparent.

So the main thing is to keep the main thing: God vs. no God—not creation vs. evolution.  And if evolution turns out to be true, why couldn’t this be one of the means by which God brings about his purposes on earth? Indeed, God has revealed himself and his nature through two “books”—God’s Word and God’s world—and Christians should view them as ultimately in concord with one another.

Similar Posts:

• Expelled: Evolution vs. Intelligent Design – A Review
• Inferring Design from Anti-Design Scientists
• The Creation-Evolution Debate in a Nutshell
• The Language of God: Some Reflections on Francis Collins’s Perspectives on God and Science
• Six Views on the Creation/Evolution Debate

I. A Reality Check

Here’s a true-false quiz:

1. Mary and Joseph had to travel as quickly as possible to Bethlehem because Mary could have given birth at any moment.
2. The Bethlehem innkeeper was fully booked, and so Mary had to give birth to Jesus in the barn/stall nearby/behind the inn.
3. Initially, this experience must have been frightening and lonely for Mary and Joseph.
4. “The little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.”
5. The angels who appeared to the shepherds had wings.

How’d you do on the quiz? Check your answers below. (Some of these thoughts are taken from a talk I gave on what really happened that first Christmas.)

Marcus Borg, a member of the liberal Jesus Seminar, claims that the Gospels are in serious conflict: Jesus was born “in a stable” in Luke but in a home in Matthew (Marcus Borg [and N.T. Wright], The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions [San Francisco: HarperSF, 1999], 180). As it turns out, this isn’t really a conflict at all. Contrary to the traditional Christmas story, Jesus was indeed born in a home! Borg’s claim is based on the notable King James Version’s mistranslation of Luke 2:7: “there was no room for them in the inn.” But the KJV rendering goes against Luke’s in(n)tention.

Over the centuries, the Christmas story has been re-cast and romanticized into a kind of Christian “mythology.” But what do the Scriptures really tell us about Jesus’ birth?

1. There would have been no inns in a backwater town like Bethlehem. They would be found along main roads or in cities.

2. The word for inn (katalyma) is the same one as the “guest room (of a private home)” mentioned in Mk. 14:14 and Lk. 22:11—the room where the last supper was eaten.

Mark 14:13-15: “Go into the city, and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water; follow him; and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is My *guest room* [katalyma] in which I may eat the Passover with My disciples?”’ And he himself will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; prepare for us there.”

Also, this word in Lk. 2:7 (“guest room”) is different from Lk. 10:34 (pandocheion = inn), where the beaten man was taken by the compassionate Samaritan. This inn had an innkeeper (pandocheus), and such inns would unquestionably located on a main thoroughfare between Jerusalem and Jericho. One commentary puts it this way, “The traditional picture of a surly innkeeper refusing admission to the needy couple is somewhat dubious.” (I. Howard Marshall, “Luke,” in *The New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition*, eds. R.T. France, D.A. Carson, et al. [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994], 984).

3. Joseph, no doubt being a considerate husband (cp. Mt. 1:19), would have taken ample time to find Mary a place to give birth, which is what Luke 2:6 indicates: While they were there [in Bethlehem], the days were completed for her to give birth. Mary gave birth after she had “fulfilled her days”—a duration of time. Although people seem to miss this, the passage clearly indicates ample passage of time in Bethlehem before the birth of Jesus.

4. In a culture that so valued hospitality, Joseph would have insulted his relatives by going to an inn. Rather, he would stay with his relations, who would readily have made room for his expectant wife—even if the guest room was crowded and the birth had to take place in the main living area. It would seem ludicrous, given the importance of hospitality in the Middle East, that Joseph would have no place to stay among his relatives—especially if he was “of the house and line of David” and if his wife was expecting. And if Joseph could not find a place for Mary after a few weeks or so, they could have gone back to Mary’s relative Elizabeth, who lived in the same region.

5. In Jesus’ day, animal sheds were typically attached to houses. In Palestine a manger was not normally found in a separate stable; rather, it was “in the main living room of a peasant house, where animals are brought in at night” (R.T. France, *The Evidence for Jesus* [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986], 159). New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey (from whom I borrow heavily in this blog) notes that the manger Christ was laid in was “built into the floor of the raised terrace of the peasant home” (Kenneth Bailey, “The Manger and the Inn: The Cultural Background of Luke 2:7,” *Evangelical Review of Theology* 4 [1980]: 201-17). This stall-next-to-the-house arrangement is what Luke 13:15 presupposes: “. . . does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead him away to water him?”

6. When the wise men show up in Bethlehem, they come to a house. Matthew 2:11 states: “After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

These gifts are highlighted as indicating the fulfillment of what the Old Testament scriptures anticipated. A new covenant was in the making—one involving Gentiles (cp. Zech. 14:16: “all those who survive of the nations . . . shall go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts”). So when the Gentile wise men/magi come from afar to visit the newly born king Jesus, they bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Of course, there were probably other gifts, but these are highlighted because of certain Old Testament references anticipating the coming in of the Gentiles to worship the true God and to honor his Messiah/King. Isaiah 60:6 speaks of the dawning of the restoration (when the “glory of the Lord has risen upon you” [60:1]). It mentions exiled “sons” coming “from afar” (4) and “the wealth of the nations will come to you” (5). Camels from Midian, Ephah, and Sheba (the south) will come: “They will bring gold and frankincense” (6). In the kingship/messianic Psalm 45 (cited in Hebrews 1), the king’s garments are fragrant with “myrrh” (45:8). This psalm speaks of Israel’s king as being over the “princes in all the earth” and “all peoples [Gentiles] will give you thanks forever and ever” (15-16). The magi’s coming signals the coming in of the Gentiles because the day of the Messiah has dawned. The end times have arrived.

Furthermore, the magi saw Jesus’ star rising in the east (Mat. 2:2). We anticipate this from Balaam’s prophecy of “the days to come” (Num. 22:14)—that “a star shall come forth from Jacob, and a scepter shall rise from Israel” (Num. 24:17).

The Gospels portray a Jesus who is reaching out to the Gentiles. He is telling the Jewish people to give up their nationalistic and social agenda and follow His agenda (N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,1999], 27). Jewish leaders were preoccupied with traditional symbols: land, temple, law (especially Sabbath and food laws), kinship (ethnic heritage) and blessing (material possessions). Jesus criticizes the entire temple system and pronounces judgment on it (symbolized by the temple-cleansing). It was necessarily tied to the old covenant with national Israel; Jesus complained about the failure of the ruling priests in when He cleansed the temple. Instead of being a place of prayer for Gentiles and for regathering Israel’s exiles, it fostered oppression and neglected the needy (Marvin Pate, et al., The Story of Israel: A Biblical Theology [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004], 167-8).

II. What of the Angels?

In a verse of the Christmas carol “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” we come upon these words about angels:

Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O’er all the weary world.

In the carol “Angels from the Realms of Glory,” they are called to “Wing your flight o’er all the earth.”
The Bible speaks of angelic beings such as cherubim and seraphim, which have wings (e.g., Isaiah 6). However, what most people don’t know is that the specific usage of the word “angels” in Scripture indicates that they do not have wings. They always appear in the form of men.

• Gen. 18-19: Three representatives of Yahweh come to check out the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The three appear to Abraham and then Lot (two come to him while the third goes to Gomorrah). Although they appear as “three men” (Gen. 18:2). Abraham immediately recognizes them as manifestations of the Lord. When they appear to Lot, (they are called “two angels” (Gen. 19:1), and Lot takes longer to recognize them. In Heb. 13:2, which refers to these passages, the author writes that some have “entertained angels without knowing it.” This suggests that these angels appear as men—without wings. If they had wings, they would surely be recognized!
• Judges 13:3-6: First, we read that “the angel of the LORD” (v. 3) appeared to Manoah’s wife (Samson’s mother). Then she reports to her husband: “A man of God came to me and his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God, very awesome.”
• Daniel 3:24-28: Nebuchadnezzar sees “four men” in the fiery furnace (v. 25). He then says, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, who has sent His angel and delivered His servants who put their trust in Him” (v. 28).
• Resurrection narratives: Although we read in the two of the Gospel resurrection narratives that angels are at the tomb (Matthew 28:1-5; “an angel of the Lord”; John 20:12: “[Mary Magdalene] saw two angels in white”). The other two Gospels speak of them as men (Mark 16:5: “they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe”; Luke 24:4 “two men . . . in dazzling clothing”).
• Acts 10: An angel of God (10:3) appears to Cornelius in Acts 10, the angel is later on referred to as a man in shining clothes (10:30).

III. Docetism in Our Hymnody and Theology

This line from “Away in a Manger” is quite familiar to us: “The little Lord Jesus no crying he makes. . . .” This picture presents a Jesus who apparently never cried as an infant—and perhaps that he never soiled his diapers and never made a mess eating as baby. However, we must be careful about overemphasizing Jesus’ deity and underemphasizing his humanity. This is the heresy of “docetism.” (The word docetism is a derived from the Greek dokeō, meaning “(I) appear, seem.” The Christ seemed human but really wasn’t.

This is a version of Gnosticism, which came to full bloom in the second century AD. It emphasized the following ideas: (a) a secret, saving knowledge (gnōsis) or illumination is available only to a select “enlightened” few; ignorance, not sin, is the ultimate human problem; (b) the body/matter is evil, and the spirit/soul is good—a belief that tended to produce extreme self-denial (asceticism); (c) an eternal dualism exists between a good Being/God and an inferior evil being/god (who created matter); so the creator in Genesis is an inferior intermediary between the ultimate/true God (the Pleroma—“Fullness”) and this world; (d) history is unimportant and insignificant; if Jesus (the Christ) played any part in Gnostic belief systems, he only appeared to be human but was really divine; God couldn’t take on an evil human body or suffer on a cross.

We can commit the same Gnostic error by focusing on Jesus’ divinity and downplaying his humanity. The same applies to Jesus’ temptation. We may say, “Of course Jesus didn’t sin. He was God.” The Scriptures portray Jesus as someone who struggled; it was not a breeze for him to do the will of his Father. He was not play-acting:

• Hebrews 4:15: For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.
• Hebrews 5:8: Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.
  So, when you sing “Away in a Manger” this Christmas season, you may want to do what our family does—adjust the words a bit: “The little Lord Jesus *some* crying he makes”!

IV. Lessons from the Christmas Story

Let me summarize some lessons from this retelling of the Christmas story.

• Keep on reading and examining the Scriptures (cp. the Bereans in Acts 17). Let us make sure that we don’t let tradition prevent us from gaining fresh insights from Scripture or from adjusting our theology when this is called for.
• We must be careful not to Gnosticize/Docetize Jesus—as though he didn’t or can’t really identify with us.
• On the other hand, we should make not Jesus’ birth more pitiful or lowly than it actually was.
• We can still celebrate the condescension of Immanuel—God with us—even with these adjustments in our understanding of the first Christmas story.

Similar Posts:

• Too Cool for Christmas
• The Most Amazing Verse in the Bible
• The Virgin Birth: Why It Is Important
• An Early Christmas Present
• Paul, the New Socrates in Athens: Paul as Philosopher (Part III)

I have asked a few respected Evangelical scholars and authors to contribute one paragraph each on the issue of Christians and doubt. I am grateful to each one of these men for not only contributing here, but being the type of scholar who deals with such issues with openness. I am posting them one at a time over the next couple of weeks.

Most of you know Paul, but let me give you some information anyway. Paul is a Christian philosopher, apologist, and author. Copan holds the Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University. More about Paul below.

Paul, if you were talking to someone who is having significant problems with their faith, doubting whether or not Christianity is true for whatever reason, what would you say to them if you only had one minute?

Paul, if you were talking to someone who is having significant problems with their faith, doubting whether or not Christianity is true for whatever reason, what would you say to them if you only had one minute?

Sometimes doubts stem from a personal or relational insecurity that manifests itself in the wrong-headed insistence of having only 100% certainty in order to believe.

Knowledge can be defined as warranted true belief, but one can have knowledge without having 100% certainty.  For those who question that “knowledge” does not always equal “100% certainty,” we ask: “How can one know with 100% certainty that knowledge requires 100% certainty?”  Indeed, we can know various true things that rise to the level of “very plausible” or “highly probable” in our minds.  (Isn’t it logically possible that my typing right now is just an illusion?  It doesn’t follow from being logically possible, however, that this illusion is therefore likely true—far from it.)

One doubter with whom I’ve recently engaged acknowledged that his “100% certainty requirement” was really a defense mechanism that enabled him to feel comfortable in a state of neutrality—to justify his insecurity and lack of persisting in the hard work of committed belief.  He confessed to his own insecurity about relationships and his own inability to commit to anything.  He pointed to something from my book How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong? that helped him:  “Skepticism—like relativism—tends to eliminate personal or moral responsibility since truth (which is crucial to knowledge) is systematically being ignored or evaded….We should consider the personal, motivational questions which, while not being an argument against skepticism, raise important issues that may be driving the skeptical enterprise.  Blanket skepticism is an affliction of the mind that needs curing” (pp. 28-29).  I rejoice that God has been very evidently at work in this young man’s life.

Paul Copan

____________________________

Paul has a Ph.D.from Marquette University (Philosophy), a M.Div. from Trinity International University (Divinity), a M.A. from Trinity International University (Philosophy of Religion), and a B.A. from Columbia International University (Biblical Studies).

You can find out much more about Paul by visiting his website: http://www.paulcopan.com/Similar Posts:

• Darrell Bock on Christian Doubt
• Mike Licona on Christian Doubt
• An argument against atheism?
• Hi, I am Paul Copan
• Reason, Personal Responsibility, and Naturalism’s Counterintuitive Claims: Response to Dawkins, Part IV

New Zealand theologian and philosopher of religion Matthew Flannagan is a good friend of mine.  He and his wife host an excellent blogsite—MandM.  Knowing that the kinds of comments Stark made in reply to me sounded much like what Matt had experienced, I asked Matt to comment on his previous exchanges with Thom Stark.  This is what he wrote. 

Hi Paul,

I still have not yet read Stark’s lengthy “review” of your book, but I do plan to respond. I have dipped in a bit, and it looks like more of the same stuff he wrote on his blog and in his emails to me. What you have written [in response to Stark] looks good, and it will be great read alongside Richard Hess’s response. 

Here is a brief overview of my interchange with him.

Sometime after I wrote a post on the Canaanite issue I was made aware of a post called “The Flannagan Delusion” by Thom Stark. The post not only called me “deluded,” but it contained nasty vitriol, speculated on and dissected my alleged motives, and distorted my position significantly. Stark did not respond to the line of argument I had made in the article he was responding to.  Instead he had put together a series of statements I had made in comments boxes on other issues and tied them together and presented them as my position on the Canaanite issue.

The post was part of a series with snarky titles in the same vein as “The Flannagan Delusion”; “Attack of the Clowns” was one.  In each case Stark speculated as to what other positions I held and attacked my basis for holding them even though I have never written on these issues. He continued to ignore my central argument.  He attacked my scholarly credentials; he stated I was not an Old Testament scholar and that my ideas were such that anyone in the field would recognise them as terrible.  The problem was I was not doing Old Testament Studies in the piece he was responding to; I had engaged in Old Testament Ethics—these fields overlap, but they are not the same.  I have a PhD in Theology specialising in Ethics. Stark, at the time, had a Bachelor of Divinity; so this ad hominem argument cuts both way.

Stark accused me of incompetent translations of texts. When I pointed him to museums and Egyptologists whose translations I had used, he said they were poorly translated as well. Then on another forum he would back-pedal and say the opposite.  Every time he actually responded to an argument, rather than dismissing it with ad hominems, he nearly always attacked a subtle misrepresentation of my views. This was pointed out to him numerous times and when it was, he would change what he said to a different misrepresentation and launch another ad hominem based on this new straw man.  

He also made fairly sweeping statements about the field of Philosophy of Religion, another area I specialise in alongside Ethics, that according to Stark’s CV he does not. Stark appeared to be using an historical critical method that treated the text as a collage of different human authors writing at different times. I was adopting a more Canonical approach where one treats the final form of the text as having a single divine author. These approaches have different hermeneutical implications. When I pointed out some underlying philosophical and epistemological differences behind these methods and why I adopted the ones I did, he dismissed the work of leading philosophers without argument and would, mistakenly, suggest they were fideists. When I tried to explain to him that the dialectical context required that I make certain assumptions, he simply reasserted his position and accused me of being dishonest.

He then responded to some other writings I had made on divine command meta-ethics where again he misrepresented my position and this time attributed to me a stance I was arguing against.  He made sweeping comments about the literature and simply asserted that experts agreed with him. Being thoroughly read up on the literature on this topic, and being published in it, I knew his claims were simply false. I tried discussing this with him but it was futile.  After several days of pointless and frustrating exchanges where I felt Stark was being quite rude I got a very cordial email from Stark apologising; he said he thought it had got out of hand and offered to take the blog posts and comments down; I then discovered that the blog posts had disappeared from the web and cannot be located on any wayback engines or caches; they have vanished without a trace.  

I began an offline dialogue with him which began civilly but quickly degenerated into the same pattern from Stark. Misrepresentations, sweeping assertions, and claims that people who disagreed with him were not really credible scholars while those who did were. He finally broke the conversation off claiming I was a fideist and a liar.Similar Posts:

• Is God a Moral Monster Revisited: Preliminary Replies to Thom Stark
• Richard Dawkins: A Philosophical and Theological Lightweight? Responding to Dawkins, Part II
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This is an e-mail (dated 7 May 2011) to me from Richard Hess (Denver Seminary) in response to Thom Stark’s criticisms of Hess in Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? (Baker).

The entire letter is by Richard Hess, but it is divided into Stark’s charges/arguments (which I have italicized) with Hess’s full responses (which I begin with the capitalized “HESS:”)

Dear Paul:

Thanks for sharing this with me and for inviting me to respond.  I have chosen to address here most of the places where Stark actually cites me and criticizes me, and to address the problems with his points.  Surprisingly, the total wordage came to about 4500.  It was difficult to stop!  But I hope it is of help.

Best wishes,
Rick Hess

- – - – - -

In his first criticism of me, Mr. Stark quotes my reference to herem in the Mesha stele on p. 25 of my “War in the Hebrew Bible: An Overview.” He goes on to critique me as follows:
“This is Hess’s critique of Niditch. A two-sentence dismissal of a book-length argument!”   

HESS: Mr. Stark’s claim is false.  I devote pp. 25-27 of my article to summarizing the approach of Niditch and spend most of it approving of her work. Indeed, I largely use her categories as a useful means to understand the subject of warfare.  I never dismiss them.

“The problem is, contrary to Hess’s claim here, there is ample evidence in the early texts for human sacrifice to Yahweh, and good evidence that Israelites in the pre- monarchical period believed that a human sacrifice could be offered to Yahweh in exchange for victory in battle. Niditch spends numerous pages pouring [sic] over the evidence and discussing it in detail; Hess’s response is just to deny that any such evidence exists, with no argument offered. But we’ll just cite two examples.” 

HESS: This is false.  The denial of human sacrifice as “an approved form of Yahweh worship” is my concern throughout this discussion and that phrase appears at the end of the same paragraph on the same page where Stark cites my Mesha of Moab discussion.  Stark’s decision to ignore this point distorts my statements and my understanding of the absence of human sacrifice as “approved.”

The examples Stark cites to prove that human sacrifice was given to Yahweh and approved by early Israel come from Judges 11 and Numbers 21.  Judges 11 is irrelevant because (1) there is no reference to herem anywhere in the chapter; and (2) there is no evidence that this practice of Jephthah’s was “an approved form of Yahweh worship” in the sense that the biblical text endorses it.  Numbers 21 is irrelevant because it does not deal with human sacrifice.  Line 17 of the Mesha inscription does indeed discuss the herem.  However, it simply uses the causative verbal form of this root with the Moabite god as the direction toward which the herem was made.  This follows king Mesha’s slaughter of 7,000 inhabitants of the city.  However, in the context of war it is nowhere clear that this has to do with human sacrifice. It has to do with defeat of the enemy.  We do not know what the religious beliefs of the Moabite king were in respect to the practice of the herem; only that he practiced some form of it.  Beyond that, there is insufficient evidence on the basis of this one citation.  To attempt an identity of the use of this term in the 9th century Moabite stele with that of the herem in Israel’s wars, in a different culture and at times centuries removed from the Moabite text, is incorrect method.

Again, contrary to the impression Stark leaves his readers with, I cite Niditch approvingly in the text immediately preceding Stark’s quote about the Mesha stele.  I note that she says that the “dominant voice in the Hebrew Bible treats the ban not as sacrifice in exchange for victory but as just and deserved punishment for idolaters, sinners.” I do not disagree with this.  My only disagreement would be whether that “dominant” understanding goes back in time to early Israel of the Monarchy and pre-Monarchy or whether it occurs for the first time only late in the Monarchy (or even later).  I fail to see evidence that this “religious practice” (of condemning human sacrifice) cannot have occurred early in Israel’s history. 

To repeat the point, the examples that Stark cites above and the one I cite (Genesis 22) do not demonstrate Yahweh’s approval of human sacrifice as part of the herem or in any other context.  In Numbers 21, Yahweh certainly approves of the destruction of the king of Arad and his people who first attacked Israel, in an unprovoked manner, and who took Israelites as captive slaves. It does not suggest that these people were human sacrifices, e.g.,as one might make animal sacrifices to Yahweh or any other deity.  If Stark wishes to deconstruct the biblical text and find some sort of evidence for human sacrifice behind the statements as they now stand, that is up to him. But such a procedure will always remain speculation, not proof.

On pp. 175-6 Stark refers to the issue of the translation of Deut 32:8 which he argues should be translated “the sons of the gods.”  He makes several assertions that characterize his argument:

 ”In the earliest extant version of Deut 32:8-9 (DSS 4QDeutq), Yahweh is said to be one of several of El Elyon’s sons who received an inheritance from their father.”

HESS: This is both an error of fact and a fallacious interpretation.  The error of fact is that the Dead Sea Scroll fragment that is clear on this reading is 4QDeutj, not 4QDeutq.  4QDeutq clearly has “Sons of ‘El/el’.”  Whether El is understood as the head of a pantheon and a god other than Yahweh, or as el, a title for Yahweh; the phrase cannot be translated “the sons of the gods” in 4QDeutq.  However, 4QDeutj does indeed have the reading, “bene ‘elohim.”

In 4QDeutq the text is broken after ‘el/El’ and may have read the longer ‘elohim form; however, this is not certain and cannot be cited as proof. The manuscript evidence is collected by Emanuel Tov’s Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, p. 269, where he translates the scroll fragment as, “the sons of God.”  To translate the phrase (in 4QDeutj, not 4QDeutq) as “the sons of the gods” imposes on it an interpretation that is contrary to the larger context of the chapter, the book of Deuteronomy, and certainly the Bible as a whole. 

 ”Now it won’t read that way in your NIV, because the NIV uses the Masoretic Text here, which is over a thousand years later than the Deuteronomy scroll from Qumran.”

HESS:  This is an error of fact.  The present edition of the NIV indeed translates v. 8 as “the sons of Israel,” but has a footnote that witnesses to the Dead Sea Scroll and Septuagint as rendering the text “sons of God,” exactly as Tov does above.

 “To date, Richard Hess’s attempts to argue against this reading (both in his book on Israelite religions and in his piece on Bill Craig¹s website) have only displayed that Hess is totally oblivious to the DSS reading of this text.”

HESS: This is not a statement of fact but a personal evaluation.

 ”In his book he says that scholars base this reading on the LXX, which is false, and in his piece on Craig’s website, he goes so far as to claim that ‘the Hebrew’ doesn¹t say that. Of course, what he means is that the Masoretic Text doesn’t say that, and what this shows is that (at the time he wrote that piece at least) he hasn’t been introduced to 4QDeut.”

This is an error of interpretation.  In my Israelite Religions book on p. 103 I do indeed refer to Smith and Day as using Psalm 82 and the LXX of Deut 32 to make their argument. It is true that they cite other evidence in their works, including the Dead Sea Scroll fragments.  What Stark neglects to point out is that I do not disagree with Smith and Day on this interpretation.  That is because it is part of a larger scheme in their books, comparing the Ugaritic pantheon with the putative (pre-?)Israelite pantheon, that I am rehearsing in my discussion of West Semitic religion as reflected in the Ugaritic texts.  On Bill Craig’s website I introduced my discussion of Deut 32:8-9 by reference to “the Hebrew as we have it.”  This would not suggest any Hebrew text, much less the Hebrew text of one Dead Sea Scroll fragment.  Rather, it refers to the Masoretic Text.  As I cite the works of Smith and Day scrupulously and as they forthrightly cite all the evidence, including that of the Dead Sea Scrolls, I leave it to the reader to determine whether I was somehow “totally oblivious” to this fact in the midst of all the other data I cite.  Now in textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, it is common to refer to fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls that agree with the LXX tradition as just that, agreeing with the LXX tradition.  I have yet to see it stated that the LXX agrees with the Dead Sea Scroll tradition of 4QDeutj.  Thus citing the LXX tradition in contrast to the traditional Hebrew text does not demonstrate that one is “totally oblivious” to the Dead Sea Scrolls.  And in this case, given the scholars I cite, it was impossible for me to have been oblivious.

On p. 204 we read: “Now, conservatives like Richard Hess want to argue that, though there is no evidence for an occupation of Jericho in the appropriate period, it’s possible that the lack of evidence can be explained by erosion. But this is not an acceptable argument. After all, very strong evidence of occupation from the sixteenth century remains, having survived over 200 years of erosion between the sixteenth and fourteenth centuries, as even conservative Evangelical scholar Kenneth Kitchen acknowledges.”

HESS:  This is false both factually and in terms of interpretation.  In my article, “The Jericho and
Ai of the Book of Joshua,” I do cite erosion as a possible scenario.  It is clear that pottery from the late 10th century and afterwards, attests to occupation at the site despite the absence of layers of occupation (only tombs are found).  In fact, one can walk onto Tell es-Sultan and go to the
highest points on the tell.  That layer, which is the latest layer, is 18^th century B.C. (Middle Bronze IIB), not 16th and certainly not 10th century or later.  By Mr. Stark’s criteria no one lived at Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) in the first millennium.  They just left a lot of pottery and some tombs!  What Mr. Stark ignores is my point in the paragraph that he cites that 15^th century Egyptian scribes claim that Thutmose III conquered and destroyed Megiddo, something that I am unaware of any modern Egyptologist disputing. Yet at Megiddo in Palestine we have yet to find a destruction layer from this event.  Why?  I don’t know but I am no more going to dismiss the Egyptian scribes than I will the biblical scribes.  Mr. Coogan, whom Stark quotes, is a biblical scholar and his assessment of Jericho may be correct. But Mr. A. Mazar, professor of archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jersualem, whom I quote, does not agree with him.

On p. 247 we read:  ”The word herem isn’t even used in Numbers 31! It’s never used in connection to the Midianites anywhere. Hess should know this; he reads Hebrew. Numbers 31 isn’t depicting herem warfare. Why he thinks he can cite this as an example that noncombatants weren’t killed in herem warfare is beyond me.”
HESS: This is false.  I never say that the herem is applied in Numbers 31.  In fact, my point is that the herem is not applied here.  If it were, everyone should have been killed.  I cite without criticism Niditch’s view that texts such as Numbers 31 describe a “separate type” of warfare.

On this same page we read that I have made a “ludicrous claim” by the statement, “(also see Judges 21)” set at the end of the sentence where I refer to Numbers 31.  A sizeable interpretation of my words is then foisted upon the reader.  I apparently refer to Judges 21 because it “uses the word herem” and because it “didn’t involve the killing of noncombatants.”  Anyone reading my essay should be able to discern that this paragraph is not all about herem. It is about how, as Niditch observes and I quote at the beginning of the paragraph, a group that fears loss of identity attempts to define itself by eliminating foreigners, both outside and inside the group. Herem is an important example of this, but not the only example in the Bible.  My reference to Judges 21 is not to endorse what went on there as a herem on the order of Deuteronomy 20, just because the killers use that term.  There is nothing about Judges 21 that is endorsed by divine words or by the narrator.  It is simply another example where some are allowed to live and some are exterminated.

On p. 251 we read:  “Copan and Hess are able to offer no evidentiary support for this claim that ‘men and women’ meant ‘all.’”

HESS: This is false.  In my “The Jericho and Ai of the Book of Joshua,” I note that “man and woman” in the Hebrew is literally “from man (and) unto woman,” and I survey the remaining 8 occurrences of the term in the Bible (in addition to those of Jericho and Ai).  In every case, except Saul’s extermination of the inhabitants of Nob (1 Sam 2:19), it occurs alongside the Hebrew kol “all,” and refers to all those involved. When I state that this is stereotypical, I do not mean that it cannot refer to noncombatants, as Stark claims.  I do mean that it need not refer to noncombatants.  It is merely a way of saying “everyone” without prejudicing the reader as to the nature of who is involved.  If Jericho and Ai were forts then this would involve only the occupants of the fort; i.e., soldiers. Were “women and children” “routinely killed” as Stark claims?  I make no claim that the horrible term “collateral damage” could not be applied here.  However, I do make the claim that the primary target in Jericho and Ai was military because they were military forts.

On p. 255 we read:  “But let’s examine the actual texts that Hess cites to prove that ‘men and women’ was a ‘synonym’ for ‘all, everybody.’ We’ll find that in no case does the phrase mean ‘whoever happens to be there.’ It refers to scenarios where both men and women are literally present.”  

HESS:  This is misleading.  In fact, in every case it means “whoever happens to be there.”  I would never deny that in the examples both men and women were regularly present, but why say “from man unto woman”?  Why use this expression when the common conjunctive phrase “men and women” was available and used more frequently than “from man unto woman”?  “Men and women” occurs some 13 times in the Hebrew Bible and is different from the phrase, “from man unto woman.”  For example, it first occurs in Gen 7:2 with reference to the animals going on the ark.  There it implies the necessity of both genders being present.  Again, in Exodus 35:29 and 36:6 the phrase emphasizes the importance of both genders in the fullness of their heartfelt contribution and in the prohibition of either gender bringing anything more.  In all the occurrences of “from man unto woman,” both genders may or may not be present.  That is not the emphasis. Instead, it is on everyone who happens to be there.

On p. 257 Stark argues that “Hess omits” Joshua 6:21. 

HESS: In fact, it is the first verse I mention at the bottom of p. 38 of my article. 

Then he states that “Hess’s list of seven occurrences of ‘men and women’ also leaves out another text,” i.e., 1 Samuel 27:9. 

HESS: In fact, this text does not use the “from man unto woman” phrase, but the “man and woman” phrase.  Thus he confuses these two separate phrases that actually carry different referents. Why does he throw everything together and betray no knowledge of the Hebrew text?  I don’t know and will not judge Mr. Stark.  Rather than dealing with the text, and carefully reading what the Hebrew actually says (not to mention what I actually write), he succeeds in distorting, taking out of context, presenting polemic, and regularly engaging in vitriol and all
manner of name calling.  This continues through the entire book and it remains for the reader to determine whether it adequately substitutes for evidence and reason. 

On p. 252 Mr. Stark attacks my view that the Hebrew word ‘elef, usually translated “thousand” cannot mean “squad” but only “clan” and then it is “extremely rare.” 

HESS: This is false.  In the standard Hebrew-English lexicon of Koehler and Baumgartner, 15 occurrences are listed, almost all in military contexts in Numbers, Joshua, Judges, and 1 Samuel.  Clines’ Dictionary of Classical Hebrew lists 15 as well, including two that occur in the Dead Sea Scrolls.  In both lexicons they describe some texts as equivalent to various smaller groups, including the word for “family” “mishpachah” in 1 Samuel 10:19-21 and Judges 21:14.  For the interested reader, note the important discussions by Colin Humphreys, “The Number of People in the Exodus from Egypt,” Vetus Testamentum 48 (1998): 196-213; idem, “The Numbers in the Exodus from Egypt,” Vetus Testamentum 50 (2000): 323-328.

On p. 259 there is more name calling but no substantially new evidence. 

On p. 260, we learn that Hess points out a few exceptions to the normal meaning of ‘ir’ [‘city’].” 

HESS: Exactly how many does “a few” constitute?  How many examples need to exist before they become more than “a few”? How about several hundred villages and hamlets that appear between Joshua 13 and 21? Are all these sites major population centers?  They are all designated by ‘ir’ (Joshua 13:9, 10, 16, 17, 21, 23, 25, 28, 30, 31; etc. – the NIV often renders “ir” as “villages” or “towns”).  I would be interested in any biblical scholar or archaeologist who would wish to defend Stark’s position that there are only a “few exceptions to the normal meaning of ‘ir’” where it must refer to a major urban center such as we might understand the meaning of “city” today.  Anyone reading the literature will quickly realize that Stark betrays no idea of the usage of this term.  His distortion continues on p. 261 where he accuses me of not understanding the nature of Rabbah of the Ammonites.  Perhaps he thinks that it is the entire populated center that is mentioned in 2 Samuel 12:26.  If that is the case then what is being described in verses 27-31 where the rest of the “city” is conquered?  Furthermore, Rabbah is identified as the acropolis of the modern Amman, capital of Jordan.  This is where the Iron Age fortifications have been found.  I invite Mr. Spark to visit this center of Amman and estimate how many Ammonites he would place on that acropolis.  There is not room for the entire population unless it consisted of a few hundred rather than thousands or more.

On pp. 261-262 Mr. Stark wishes to identify Zion in 2 Samuel 5:6-8 as a civilian center.

In fact, all major commentators identify this as a distinctive fort; and here I include, Gordon, McCarter, and Hertzberg, none of the “conservative Evangelicals” that are Mr. Stark’s targets.  Hertzberg in particular states, “It certainly looks as though a distinction is made between the ‘stronghold of Zion’ and the rest of the city (‘Jebus’?); this is even clearer in the account in Chronicles.”  See p. 268 of his I & II Samuel commentary (Old Testament Library; Westminster Press, 1976).  The lexicon of Koehler and Baumgartner lists this with seven other biblical references (including 2 Samuel 5:7 and 9) as a “district within a city.”  Mr. Stark’s argument is not with me but with Hebrew commentators and lexicographers, none of whom could be identified as “conservative Evangelicals.” 

This is where the gold crown of Amman was found.  There was no special royalty or military center here; just the average citizenry. 

HESS: I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions about such claims that gold crowns were deposited away from the royalty and military.  I wish Stark would pursue his argument with these other scholars as they will make a case not unlike the one I propose.  However, as with other cases (e.g., the citation of the archaeologist A. Mazar above), Mr. Stark prefers to focus his insults and derisions on me, whom he finds easier to designate as “pseudo-scholarship” (p. 262).  But the reader should be aware that in doing so he does not address the preponderance of scholarship that does exist.

So on p. 263 Mr. Stark chooses a humorous insult with his imaginative midrash on the note I make that no noncombatants are explicitly identified.

HESS: I do not mean, of course, merely that they are not named.   I mean also that there is no specific reference to any noncombatants unlike the armies that are again and again described through Joshua 6-12.  It is the armies that confront Israel in these pages of the Bible.  First, there is the southern coalition in Joshua 10 and then the northern coalition in Joshua 11.  Look for a moment at the opening verses of chapter 11. These armies gathered together for the sole purpose of genocide against Israel.  Here there is no question but that they intended to destroy every man, woman, and child of that nation.  There is no similar threat that Israel presents in Joshua to the noncombatants of the armies that gather against them.  Mr. Stark betrays his own misunderstanding of the genocide intended for Israel.

In Joshua 8:25, in the only reference made to both genders at Ai, the phrase, “from man unto woman” occurs, with the same sense as at Jericho. Why in Joshua 8:17 is Bethel referred to if Ai was an independent population center separated from Bethel?  It would seem that, as with the Iron Age forts surrounding Jerusalem (at modern French Hill and Giloh, for example) and surrounding Amman, so Bethel had its outpost at Et-Tell (Ai) overlooking the major road from the Jordan Valley to the city of Bethel.

On p. 267, Mr. Stark accuses me of “nothing but a sleight of hand trick, because Hess never established any precedent for the use of mlk as a vassal to other vassals in the hill country.” 

HESS: This is true insofar as Stark raises the burden of proof to finding evidence in the hill country of Canaan, i.e., I need to find the “king” of Jericho mentioned in the Amarna texts as a vassal to other vassals.  Of course, I do not make this claim, nor is it necessary to raise the bar to this point to establish what I want to establish.  Among my “irrelevant arguments,” he notes my point that an Amarna Canaanite gloss on a certain Piwuri is malik, identical to the Semitic precursor of the Hebrew melek, translated as “king” of Jericho.  This figure is not a leader of a city but someone responsible to the pharaoh for military leadership in Canaaan (on Piwuri see my Amarna Personal Names [Eisenbrauns, 1993], pp. 125-126 and all the references conveniently listed there).  He is a commissioner appointed by a “king” (in this case, pharaoh) over a geographical area in Canaan and responsible to that king for administration of the area.  This parallels the responsibility of the “king” of Jericho.  Mr. Stark can continue to sneer at this understanding as he does on pp. 268-269 but it does not explain why the Canaanite term malik is glossed to the Sumerogram MASHKIM in EA text 131 lines 21-24.  This logogram is rendered in Akkadian as rabitsu, not as malik.  Elsewhere, MASHKIM is always glossed (i.e., there appears side-by-side with it in the text, usually with the intention of explaining the word) with rabitsu in Akkadian.  The Akkadian dictionaries give no other example of MASHKIM glossed with malik. Malik is the Canaanite form here of the Akkadian rabitsu which is written logographically as MASHKIM.  See the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary volume 14 “R” pp. 20-23.  This is recognized by Daniel Sivan in his Grammatical Analysis and Glossary of the Northwest Semitic Vocables in Akkadian Texts of the 15th-13th C.B.C. from Canaan and Syria (Verlag Butzon & Bercker Kevelaer, 1984), p. 243.  He translates malik with the sense of king or governor at Amarna, Alalakh, and Ugarit; all West Semitic archives of the second millennium B.C.  The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is certainly correct regarding how the Akkadian equivalent of malik (or malku) should be rendered, but we are dealing here with a West Semitic gloss, not an Akkadian term (something the Chicago Akkadian Dictionary recognizes elsewhere but not here; my objection lies with its inconsistent application of comparative Semitics, not, as Mr. Stark supposes, my questioning of its basic definitions). 

The West Semitic use of malik as governor or ruler is attested in use throughout the Levant in the archives of the second millennium B.C.  In addition to the sources already cited, this is discussed at length by John Huehnergard, Ugaritic Vocabulary in Syllabic Transcription (Scholars Press, 1987), p. 147, where he uses the same example that I cite and that Mr. Stark belittles as somehow demonstrating that the word does not mean “to have authority.”  That is, Mr. Stark misconstrues his quotation of me on p. 269.  I do not contend that the text affirms that the mayor and overseer have authority in this case.  Rather, I contend that the verbal form of the root mlk (the same root for the noun malik), indicates authority and not merely advice. 

The concern of my paper was to argue that the melek of Jericho need not have been an independent sovereign but could be a local leader responsible to a greater “king.”  In the context of the paper, I was specifically examining textual evidence from Bronze Age West Semitic archives (Amarna especially but also Alalakh, Ugarit, Emar, etc.).  Within the Bible itself, however, a phrase such as “king of kings” demonstrates the same point (Ezra 7:12; Ezekiel 26:7; Daniel 2:37).  The term melek “king” was not restricted to independent sovereigns but could include governors or other leaders responsible to a greater “king.”

I could go on with this but I have neither the time nor the need.  His disagreements consistently occur as misinterpretations of what I have actually written and in many cases they are factually wrong.  It is sufficient to look at the examples here.Similar Posts:

• Is God a Moral Monster Revisited: Preliminary Replies to Thom Stark
• Matthew Flannagan’s Interactions with Thom Stark
• Top Ten Biblical Discoveries in Archaeology – #3 Jericho
• Is Obama the Antichrist?
• The Moral Indignation of Richard Dawkins

Thom Stark has offered a lengthy response to my book Is God a Moral Monster?  His online book is entitled:  Is God a Moral Compromiser? When a book is laden with sarcasm, distortions, and ad hominem attacks, genuine dialogue and cordial exchange—the stuff of genuine scholarship—become difficult, if not preempted.

My good friend Matt Flannagan, with whom I have collaborated on various projects, has extensively engaged with Stark in the past.  (Note: I have posted his response alongside my posting.)  I’ve held off on commenting on Stark for this very reason, as the experience of others shows that engaging with Stark on such topics tends to be unproductive.

Let me make some preliminary comments on Stark.  

First, Stark accuses me of ignoring the critical scholars.  Keep in mind that I am writing for a popular audience—a group that isn’t going to read at a scholarly level but who are reading the New Atheists.  Mentioning these critics is simply a springboard to launch into the topic of Old Testament ethical issues; these men are hardly legitimate sources of critique, even if they raise points discussed by critical scholars. 

Second, it’s disappointing that Stark simply writes off Old Testament scholars who have endorsed my book, calling them “Little Leaguers.”  These include Christopher Wright (Ph.D. Cambridge), Gordon Wenham (Ph.D. Cambridge), and Tremper Longman (Ph.D. Yale).  They have earned their stripes at leading academic institutions.  Stark’s demeaning talk strikes me as disrespectful and unprofessional.  One gets the impression from reading Stark that those who agree with him are the “real” scholars. 

Third , Stark assumes I have no background in biblical studies.  Not so.  I’d imagine that I’ve probably logged the same number formal academic hours (if not more) in biblical/theological studies than Stark—though Stark would no doubt dismiss such training as “Little League.”  I have a B.A. in Biblical Studies as well as an M.Div. (Having studied Greek and Hebrew)—in addition to an M.A. in philosophy and a Ph.D. in philosophy (in which I also took courses in theology).  I’m also a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, and I have presented at SBL as well as the American Academy of Religion.  Furthermore, I am a Fellow of the Institute for Biblical Research.  

Fourth, Stark mentions Baruch Halpern as one of his “Major League” scholars.  Yet Halpern has actually written an endorsement for one of Tremper Longman’s coauthored books, A Biblical History of Israel:  “The most talented trio in the last fifty years to turn their attention to recounting the history of Israel.”  William Dever, another big leaguer (of whom Stark might approve) , recommends this same book: “I cannot imagine a more honest, more comprehensive, better documented effort from a conservative perspective.”   Another evangelical archaeologist (whom I cite in connection with the Canaanite question), Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen (Liverpool), has written On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Eerdmans).  This hefty book is robustly endorsed by William Hallo (Yale) and Harry Hoffner Jr. (University of Chicago)—leading scholars in this field, whom I also cite in my book.  So I think a bit greater academic fair-mindedness is warranted rather than demeaning dismissal and condescension.

Or think of the archaeologist/Egyptologist James Hoffmeier (another evangelical), to whom I refer in my book.  Baruch Halpern endorses Hoffmeier’s Ancient Israel in Sinai (Oxford University Press):  “Hoffmeier furnishes a sophisticated fresh approach to the Biblical Exodus traditions filled with detailed Egyptological background, and utterly indispensable because of its basis in recent, and in many cases as yet unpublished, archaeological data. This is a virtual encyclopedia of the Exodus.”

Fifth, as to the charge of selectively citing scholars, I would say this:  Look no farther than my own endorsers! There are points at which I would disagree with Longman, Wright, and Wenham (and they with me), but I would hardly call this selective.  I have tried to weigh and make judgments of a number of scholars on different sides of the debate.  What’s more: have I really duped these Cambridge- and Yale-educated scholars so that they endorsed my book without reading it, or are they completely misinformed too?

Sixth, consider the question of worldview/philosophical as well as hermeneutical assumptions.  For example, one’s presuppositions will affect the degree to which one gives the benefit of the doubt to Scripture’s  authors’/editors’ trustworthiness.  One’s presuppositions will affect one’s view of the Scripture’s canonical coherence and mutual reinforcement (as Matt Flannagan notes in his post).   One’s presuppositions will also affect whether one views Yahweh as a mere tribal deity in Israel’s history (before the fifth century BC) or as the “one true God.”

Take the last set of dueling assumptions.  When we see that Yahweh is the “cloud-rider” on a chariot (2 Sam. 22:10-12; Psalm 29; 104:3; Isa. 19:1), is this syncretistic?  After  all, in Ugaritic literature, Baal is the chariot rider on the clouds.  What of the mentions of the Chaoskampf (the divine effort to subdue chaos and bring order) in the Bible?  There’s Yahweh’s battle against Leviathan the dragon (tanniyn) mentioned in Isa. 27:1; yet the Ugaritic refers to Baal’s fighting against tannin (dragon) and lotan.  Is this polytheistic syncretism?  I would argue that the biblical texts are polemical and subversive.  They appropriate literature familiar to ancient Near Easterners, and they present Baal and other deities with the one true God, Yahweh.  Yahweh literarily displaces them.  The same is true in the creation story:  the deep, the darkness, the sea, and even the heavenly bodies were gods in their own right in ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies (accounts of the world’s origin).  Yet in Genesis 1 they are domesticated and seen as the creation of God himself.  Again, we have displacement, not polytheistic syncretism.

Another presuppositional issue is that the place of archaeological discovery and what this may “prove” or “disprove” about the Bible.  For example, he claims that I offer no evidence for the exodus or the Canaanite conquest.  For one thing, this wasn’t my purpose in writing the book, even indirectly.  For another, I cite books that address these topics at length—namely, those authored by James Hoffmeier and Kenneth Kitchen.  For a brief overview, however, see “Did the Exodus Never Happen?”.  Along these lines, one could also examine Tremper Longman’s coauthored A Biblical History of Israel (Westminster John Knox Press).  No, the evidence—which is indirect—does not prove or disprove the exodus.  Rather, it presents plausible historical context for the event’s historical occurrence.   In addition, I do mention in the book the archaeological evidence surrounding the gradual transition from Canaanite domination to Israelite domination.  I follow Egyptologist Alan Millard’s work.  He argues that Israel’s settling in the land was a gradual infiltration rather than a dramatic military conquest, which is what the biblical text affirms. 

Seventh, as I’m in the midst of a number of writing and editing projects, I’m even less inclined to respond to Stark, at least with any comprehensiveness.  Even before Stark wrote a response, I had begun compiling material based on further research as well as cordial (!) interaction various friends and critics who offered helpful suggestions.  For instance, I should have elaborated more on the word(s) herem/haram (sometimes translated “utter destruction/utterly destroy”) at places like Jeremiah 25:9, where Yahweh promises to “utterly destroy” Judah by using Babylon.  Were the majority of Judahites annihilated or destroyed as a people? 

Eighth, I have approached Baker Books about a second edition in which I could incorporate this further research and also do some tweaking/clarifying on some certain points Stark raises.  Also, I am working on coediting a book on warfare in the Old Testament (IVP Academic). Matt Flannagan and I have written a lengthy chapter that responds to the sorts of challenges Stark raises on the warfare issue.  Also, I’ll be presenting at a conference in November on slavery in the Old Testament. This will be an occasion to reply to any relevant challenges that Stark raises.  So stay tuned.

Finally, Stark’s critique resorts to much bluster, condescension, and distortion; he makes abundant claims and arguments that are either false or tenuous (as Flannagan points out).  As a specific sampling, Old Testament scholar Richard Hess (whom I cite frequently in my Moral Monster book and who also endorsed it) responds to Thom Stark in a separate post at Parchment and Pen.  I’m keeping  my own piece here separate from Hess’s specific comments (as well as Flannagan’s comments) so that Stark, if he chooses, can respond directly to Hess’s (and Flannagan’s) rebuttal.Similar Posts:

• Matthew Flannagan’s Interactions with Thom Stark
• Richard Hess’s Response to Thom Stark
• Is God a Moral Monster?
• Deuteronomy 25:11-12, an Eye for an Eye, and Raymond Westbrook: A Reply to Hector Avalos
• N.T. Wright on God and Evil

We’ve been engaging the thinking of Richard Dawkins, and more recently we’ve touched on the counterintuitive nature of (Dawkins’) naturalism.  I’ll be looking at the topic of naturalism’s counterintuitive claims regarding morality, but first the historical question of naturalism’s alleged link to human rights.

Dawkins, Human Rights, and Historical Connections

When Dawkins spoke Nova Southeastern relatively recently, he talked about how Enlightenment secularism gave rise to human rights.  This is a common claim made be naturalists, but it is simply false.  As human rights scholar Max Stackhouse of Princeton writes:  “intellectual honesty demands recognition of the fact that what passes as ‘secular,’ ‘Western’ principles of basic human rights developed nowhere else than out of key strands of the biblically-rooted religion.”^[1]   These rights are rooted in the biblical language of the “image of God”—and natural law (in the Middle Ages) and natural rights (in the modern world).  The two leading documents of the eighteenth century refer to God as the basis for human rights: the Declaration of Independence (which speaks of humans being “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”) and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (affirming human rights “in the presence and under the auspices” of God, “the Supreme Being”). 

More recently, the chief movers establishing a Universal Declaration on Human Rights of 1948 (which speaks of humans being “endowed with reason and conscience”) were primarily church coalitions and individual Christian leaders who worked closely with some Jewish rabbis to create a “new world order” of human rights.^[2]

Jürgen Habermas is one of Europe’s most prominent philosophers today.  Another fact about Habermas: he’s a dyed-in-the-wool atheist.  Yet he highlights the inescapable historical fact that the biblical faith has had a profound influence in shaping civilization.  Consider carefully his assessment:

“Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than just a precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and a social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love.  This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation.  To this day, there is no alternative to it.  And in light of current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage.  Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.”^[3]

Even non-Westerners have come recognized the remarkable impact of the Christian faith in the West.  TIME magazine’s well-respected correspondent David Aikman reported the summary of one Chinese scholar’s lecture to a group of eighteen American tourists: 

“One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world,” he said.  “We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective.  At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had.  Then we thought it was because you had the best political system.  Next we focused on your economic system.  But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion:  Christianity.  That is why the West has been so powerful.  The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics.  We don’t have any doubt about this.”^[4]

This lecturer was not some ill-informed crackpot.  To the contrary, he represented one of China’s premier academic research organizations—the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

This isn’t surprising.  Intrinsic human dignity and worth make sense if we have been made in God’s image rather than being mere molecules in motion.  Biblical theism has the metaphysical capital to sustain the concept of human rights.  Our law courts and legal system assume that humans don’t simply dance to the music of their DNA.  The criminal’s excuse (“Your honor, my genes made me do it”) flies in the face of what we all know of human nature and our presumption of moral responsibility.  Human value and moral agency make better sense if we have come from a supremely valuable being beyond nature.  We certainly have no rational justification to anticipate the emergence of intrinsic human dignity and worth if we are simply the products of mindless, deterministic, valueless material forces in a purposeless cosmos.

Many Naturalists Themselves Acknowledge No Room for Objective Morality

Another point that undercuts objective morality and human dignity given naturalism is that many naturalists themselves see the logical outcome of their own metaphysic.  Naturalism, they argue, simply lacks the metaphysical equipment to account for objective moral values.  Many naturalists admit that natural material processes without God cannot bring us to moral responsibility and human dignity and worth.  These features of reality—which we routinely assume—don’t square well with naturalism.  Here’s a sampling of key naturalists on this topic:

• Friedrich Nietzsche: “Moral judgments agree with religious ones in believing in realities which are no realities….There are altogether no moral facts.”  Indeed, morality “has truth only if God is the truth—it stands or falls with faith in God.”^[5]
• Jean-Paul Sartre: “It [is] very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him.”^[6]
• Bertrand Russell believed that “the whole subject of ethics arises from the pressure of the community on the individual.”^[7]
• E. O. Wilson locates moral feeling in “the hypothalamus and the limbic system”; it is a “device of survival in social organisms.”^[8]
• Jonathan Glover considers morality a “human creation” and calls on humans to “re-create ethics.”^[9] 

We could add lots more leading naturalists—J.L. Mackie, James Rachels, Peter Singer, and the like; these acknowledge that nature can’t get us to objective moral values and human dignity. 

Science’s Inability to Move Us from “Is” to “Ought.”

Dawkins admits, “Science has no methods for deciding what is ethical.”^[10]  The study of natural processes can’t get from the way things are to the way things ought to be.  Yet why does Dawkins consider religion   “the root of all evil,” as his BBC documentary affirms?

The popular writer Michael Shermer affirms that our remote ancestors have genetically passed on to us our sense of moral obligation within, and this is reinforced by group pressure. Ultimately, to ask, “Why should we be moral?” is like asking, “Why should we be hungry or horny?”^[11]   But this doesn’t mean that I have a moral obligation to eat.  I just have this inclination, and I do it.  If I don’t eat, then I starve.

C. S. Lewis was familiar with such reasoning.  He argued that given such naturalistic conditions, moral impulses are no more true (or false) than “than a vomit or a yawn.”^[12]  Thinking “I ought” is on the same level of “I itch.” Indeed, “my impulse to serve posterity is just the same sort of thing as my fondness for cheese” or preferring mild or bitter beer.^[13]  All naturalism can do is describe human behavior.  It can’t prescribe human behavior, nor can it ground moral obligation.  How do we move from the “is” of the natural world to the “ought” of ethics?  Naturalism doesn’t inspire confidence that we really have duties and that we ought to be virtuous.

If ethical beliefs are simply hard-wired into us for our fitness and survival, we have no reason to think these beliefs are true or that we ought to act in a certain way; these beliefs simply are. If, as Francis Crick argues, human identity (“you”) is simply “the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules,”^[14] then such a perspective is only accidentally correct. After all, this belief itself is the result of “the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”! 

At his talk at Nova, Richard Dawkins said that everyone knows that rape is wrong.  How can he say this from a “scientific” point of view?  And what if rape is completely natural—that it enhances survival and reproduction?  The book A Natural History of Rape^[15] (coauthored by a biologist and an anthropologist) maintains that rape can be explained biologically: “[Rape] is a natural phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage” comparable to “the leopard’s spots and the giraffe’s elongated neck.”^[16] 

How does this work?  When a male cannot find a mate, his subconscious drive to reproduce his own species pushes him to force himself upon a female. Such acts happen in the animal kingdom (e.g., male mallards or scorpionflies). Now the authors do not advocate rape; in fact, they claim that rapists are not excused for their (mis)behavior. But we have to ask:  why oppose an act that is as “natural” as granola?  Why stop an act that may enhance survival and reproduction?  To appeal to a standard outside nature suggests that a transcendent realm exists—that nature is insufficient to account for our opposition to what is natural.

Given naturalism, it appears that humans could have evolved differently and inherited rather contrary moral beliefs (“rules”) for the “chess game” of survival. Whatever those rules, they would still direct us toward surviving and reproducing. Ruse (with E. O. Wilson) gives an example: instead of evolving from “savannah-dwelling primates,” we, like termites, could have evolved needing “to dwell in darkness, eat each other’s faeces, and cannibalise the dead.” If the latter were the case, we would “extol such acts as beautiful and moral” and “find it morally disgusting to live in the open air, dispose of body waste and bury the dead.”^[17]

According to Ruse, our awareness of morality (“a sense of right and wrong and a feeling of obligation to be thus governed”) is of “biological worth,” serves as “an aid to survival,” and “has no being beyond this.”^[18]  He has claimed, rather, than morality is a corporate illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.

The theist doesn’t have to take such a counterintuitive positions and metaphysical gymnastics.  He is properly placed to affirm intrinsic dignity and moral duty rooted in a supremely valuable, worship-worthy Creator.  Such a moral perspective flows more naturally from theism than from naturalism.

Similar Posts:

• God, Naturalism, and the Foundations of Morality
• Reason, Personal Responsibility, and Naturalism’s Counterintuitive Claims: Response to Dawkins, Part IV
• The Moral Indignation of Richard Dawkins
• Richard Dawkins: Advocate of Science or Self-Refuting Scientism? – Response to Dawkins, Part III
• The Language of God: Some Reflections on Francis Collins’s Perspectives on God and Science

• Nature is all there is.
• All reality is comprised of or rooted in matter.
• There is no supernatural—no Creator, no miracles, no souls,
  no angels, no life after death.
• Science becomes the only (or best) means of knowledge. 

Richard Dawkins is a four-point naturalist.  Such a position, however, defies our most basic intuitions and assumptions about human experience. Naturalism’s logically leads to:

• the impossibility of knowledge;
• the unreliability of reason;
• the denial of free will and personal responsibility;
• the undermining of human rights and dignity

I’ve already touched on the first two points (on the impossibility of knowledge and reliable reason) in a previous post, but let me review before addressing the matter of free will/personal responsibility.

Knowledge is warranted true belief.  It’s not enough to have true belief, since you can believe something that’s true but in a totally fluky way.  And Dawkins is right—that we just dance to the music of our DNA—then he himself is dancing to his own DNA.  Dawkins has accidental true belief, but that’s not knowledge. If our beliefs are determined and we believe that determinism is true, then this is just a lucky coincidence—again, not knowledge.  Those who reject determinism are still determined to believe what they do.  Yet Dawkins claims to know his view is true and that he is more rational than the theist.

Naturalistic evolution is interested in survival, not truth. As naturalistic philosopher of mind Patricia Churchland puts it: 

“Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principal chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive….Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”^[1]

The late atheist philosopher Richard Rorty echoed Churchland’s analysis of the implications of Darwinian theory: “The idea that one species of organism is, unlike all the others, oriented not just toward its own uncreated prosperity but toward Truth, is as un-Darwinian as the idea that every human being has a built-in moral compass—a conscience that swings free of both social history and individual luck.” ^[2]

If naturalistic evolution is interested in survival rather than truth, I may believe a lot of things that help me to survive—human dignity and worth, human rights. But these beliefs may be completely false.  On the other hand, if we are truth-seeking beings (a reflection of what the Bible calls “the image of God”), this makes a lot better sense if a rational, intelligent being created us to think or reason—to have genuine knowledge. Being made in the image of a rational God means we have good reason to trust our minds as generally reliable rather than malfunctioning or systematically misleading us.

So much for review.  Another implication of naturalism is that it must deny free will or personal responsibility.  If matter is all the reality there is, how could free will emerge?  Our beliefs are the necessary result of certain physical inputs.  It’s like a prism of colors that is inevitably formed when sunlight is refracted through mist or rain.  Certain physical inputs lead necessarily to certain outputs.

On naturalism, there is no self that makes decisions, and no “decisions” really matter.  The buck doesn’t stop with the agent since “no one” is making those decisions.  “Choices” are not up to me.  They are the product of material forces that impose themselves on each of us—forces over which we have no control.

Atheist philosopher of mind John Searle of Berkeley makes this quite clear.  “Physical events can have only physical explanations, and consciousness is not physical, so consciousness plays no explanatory role whatsoever. If, for example, you think you ate because you were consciously hungry, or got married because you were consciously in love with your prospective spouse, or withdrew your hand from the flame because you consciously felt a pain, or spoke up at a meeting because you consciously disagreed with the main speaker, you are mistaken in every case. In each case the effect was a physical event and therefore must have an entirely physical explanation.”^[3]

If you look at the website, www.naturalism.org, many noted atheists like Daniel Dennett are on its advisory board.  This site claims:  “From a naturalistic perspective . . . [h]uman beings act the way they do because of the various influences that shape them, whether these be biological or social, genetic or environmental. We do not have the capacity to act outside the causal connections that link us in every respect to the rest of the world. This means we do not have what many people think of as free will, being able to cause our behavior without our being fully caused in turn.”^[4]

Naturalist Michael Ruse tells it to us straight:  we merely think morality is objective and binding upon us—but that’s totally false.^[5] We believe the illusion of moral realism and moral obligation; without this strong impulse, Ruse declares, we would disregard or disobey morality. “If you think about it, you will see that the very essence of an ethical claim, like ‘Love little children,’ is that, whatever its truth status may be, we think it binding upon us because we think it has an objective status.”^[6] This is a corporate illusion that has been “fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.”^[7]

When we are assessing a worldview and whether we should accept it, one of the criteria we should use is whether the worldview can be lived out consistently or if we have to systematically live at odds with it.  Does our worldview disallow us to practice what we preach?

Richard Dawkins confesses: “As an academic scientist, I am a passionate Darwinian, believing that natural selection is, if not the only driving force in evolution, certainly the only known force capable of producing the illusion of purpose which so strikes all who contemplate nature. But at the same time as I support Darwinism as a scientist, I am a passionate anti-Darwinian when it comes to politics and how we should conduct our human affairs.”^[8]  Why, if Darwinism creates the illusion of purpose, has Dawkins been able to see clearly?  Why isn’t he under the illusion of purpose?

Theism doesn’t have to resort to such metaphysical hypocrisy. The theistic context—of a personal agent who freely creates—affords a setting to anticipate or expect creaturely agents who can freely make decisions.  Even if environment and genetics influence choices, they do not determine them. Unlike Dawkins and his naturalistic views, we can be passionate theists both in theory and in practice.

Similar Posts:

• Richard Dawkins: Advocate of Science or Self-Refuting Scientism? – Response to Dawkins, Part III
• Morality and Naturalism’s Counterintuitive Claims: Response to Dawkins, Part V
• Richard Dawkins: A Philosophical and Theological Lightweight? Responding to Dawkins, Part II
• My Recent Interaction with Richard Dawkins
• Expelled: Evolution vs. Intelligent Design – A Review

• Paul as a Culturally-Relevant Bridge-Builder: Paul the Philosopher (Part II)
• Paul, the New Socrates in Athens: Paul as Philosopher (Part III)
• Did Paul Make a Fundamental Mistake in Athens? – Paul the Philosopher (Part I)
• Paul Copan on Christian Doubt
• Hi, I am Paul Copan

Those making such claims are not simply studying the natural world or natural phenomena (science).^[3] Rather, they are advocating a philosophical worldview known as scientism.  Scientism comes in different hues, but Dawkins’ brand of scientism assumes that only science gives us knowledge.  Dawkins takes for granted that science is the study of all reality—not merely the study of nature, which would leave open the possibility of a non-natural realm, say, to explain the universe’s beginning.  (After all, shouldn’t science be open-minded to allowing the causes of events in the natural world to, now and then, have non-natural/supernatural causes?  To insist otherwise would betray a naturalistic commitment about material reality and a refusal to consider anything else.)  When skeptics demand of theists to “prove God/the soul/miracles/whatever scientifically,” they are taking a scientistic stance, not a scientific one.

One big problem here:  Dawkins’ belief that only science can give us knowledge turns out to be incoherent and self-contradictory:  How can we scientifically prove that all knowledge must be scientifically provable? We can’t validate science by appealing to science.  This position isn’t the result of scientific observation, but a driving philosophical assumption.

Thankfully, Richard Lewontin and Berkeley philosopher John Searle come clean on the matter.  They forthrightly acknowledge that what commonly poses as “science” is really a philosophical starting-point about the nature of reality—namely, materialism:

• Lewontin: “we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.  Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”^[4]
• Searle:  “There is a sense in which materialism is the religion of our time, at least among most of the professional experts in the fields of philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and other disciplines that study the mind. Like most traditional religions, it is accepted without question and it provides the framework within which other questions can be posed, addressed, and answered.”^[5]

Again, the belief that science alone gives us knowledge is a philosophical statement, not a scientific one.  This is no longer science, but the scientistic worldview of naturalism, which affirms that nature is all there is and that only science can give us knowledge.  As the late astronomer Carl Sagan put it:  “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”^[6] Dawkins, like Sagan, speaks more as an amateur metaphysician than as a scientist.

Furthermore, such a stance ignores the historical fact modern science was shaped by a biblical worldview.  Taken for granted were God’s existence, human rationality, the general predictability of nature, and the match-up between human minds and an understandable world. In fact.  As physicist and best-selling science writer Paul Davies observes: “Science began as an outgrowth of theology, and all scientists, whether atheists or theists…accept an essentially theological worldview.”^[7] Newton, Copernicus, (yes!) Galileo, Faraday, Boyle, and many other science greats were inspired by a biblical worldview as they studied nature. These remarkable observers of nature operated in the spirit of Psalm 111:2: “Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them “

Dawkins’ view is ultimately a metaphysical outlook masking as science. Unfortunately for him, such a worldview ends up leading to all kinds of counterintuitive positions.  We looked at Dawkins’ self-refuting determinism in Part I of this series. We’ll look at several more in future posts.

Similar Posts:

• Reason, Personal Responsibility, and Naturalism’s Counterintuitive Claims: Response to Dawkins, Part IV
• The Moral Indignation of Richard Dawkins
• My Recent Interaction with Richard Dawkins
• New Intelligent Design Movie
• Morality and Naturalism’s Counterintuitive Claims: Response to Dawkins, Part V