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| Artwork by Paul Baker |
Matt may have bitten off more than he can chew this time, though. Thom Stark has responded. Clearly I'm shamelessly biased in this rumble, but even so Stark is both the more lucid, readable and good humoured of the two. More fun is to follow as this is apparently only the opening salvo in the exchange.
Entering the fray is another blogger with a well-deserved reputation of his own. Deane Galbraith offers some extremely pertinent observations. Verily, did not the Spirit move mightily when Deane wrote:
Amen to that! Shark and tatties anyone?
Shark 'n tatties The background to Stark’s reply is a series of recent attempts by various conservative evangelical Christians to argue that the genocidal conquest of “Canaan” ordered by the Israelite god Yahweh was in some way a good thing. Some of these attempts, such as those by Matthew Flannagan and Nicholas Wolterstorff, are by people who are not even biblical scholars, and whose attempts to grapple with the texts expose their lack of expertise, sometimes to the point of being simply embarrassing to read.
Well, see...those people had to be destroyed, otherwise the Israelites might start worshiping their gods. Can't have that, so the only solution is to kill them all.
ReplyDeleteTo convert the Canaanites to Judaism would be impossible, especially for a god like Yahweh - he didn't want to mess with their "free will".
Of course, Yahweh had no problem messing with the Israelite's free will but that was because he had already made a covenant with them. Nevermind that they didn't all agree or participate in making that covenant, Moses did, and that was good enough for Yahweh.
Then, as you know, the Midianites had to die first, since Moses was married to a Midianite and it had proved to be an embarrassment to him.
But, doggone, they had these cute little virgins...a perfect gift to the brave Israelite warriors.