The Sean McDowell Show - Genocide. Slavery. Polygamy: DENNIS PRAGER on Tough OT Questions

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

How can God command genocide and slavery? Why doesn't the Bible clearly condemn polygamy? As a Christian, I get these kinds of questions regularly. In this video, I get to talk with Jewish talk show host (and Bible commentator) Dennis Prager about these questions and other tough ones from the Old Testament. Let us know what you think! JOIN Sean and Dennis on a Caribbean cruise (Nov 29-Dec 8): https://www.inspirationtravel.com/SMC READ: Genesis: The Rational Bible, by Dennis Prager (https://amzn.to/4dYLQsZ) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

How can the God of the Old Testament command slavery, genocide, and the sacrifice of animals? Is the God of the Bible ethnocentric, sexist, and anti-science? These are just a few of the issues I'm going to discuss with our guest today, Jewish talk show host and Bible commentator, Dennis Prager. Dennis, you and I have an event coming up that I want to invite people to consider joining us for that I'm super excited about. But before we talk about that in particular, as a Christian apologist, I get asked these questions all the time, and I'm just super interested as a Jew how you answer them. So probably each one of these we could spend an hour or hours on. So just kind of give us your 30,000 foot view, a little bit like you do in your Bible commentaries, which I love, by the way.

So given the nature of this conversation, you ready to go? Absolutely. So we'll take one at a time. Should we begin with slavery? Well, let me, I've got one for you first. I love that you're ready to go. I want you to frame this is you and I are going to differ over the identity of Jesus in the gospels, but we're going to both believe that the Torah is divine. Maybe explain to us why you think the

Torah, at least the five books of the old Testament are inspired by God? So everybody should understand that the Torah is the Hebrew word for the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, however one would refer to them. It's important to note, because my commentary is on the five books, the fourth is coming out this year, it's called the Rational Bible, and there are thousands of reviews and i would say mostly christians in fact who found it reinforced their faith very strongly and i want that my vehicle to god is reason so i i call i call the commentary the rational bible that i i i wrote an article for the jerusalem post i think I gave 18 reasons why I believe the Torah is divine So I would have that I would have even I would have to have that from

Arguments essentially There is no rational way to explain How utterly revolutionary the Torah was. I'll just give a couple of examples. The very first sentence of the Bible, the very first sentence of the Torah, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, changed the world. Because it said that God created nature. All the gods of the world were usually nature gods.

God of thunder, the God of rain, the God of fertility, animals that were gods. This notion God created nature and is not part of nature, it changed civilization. That God commands you to be good love your neighbor as yourself and everybody forgets uh even jews and christians they forget the end the end of the sentence love your neighbors as yourself i am god it's not hello this is from moses even god tells you to love your neighbor as yourself. The Ten Commandments were completely revolutionary. The idea that, for example, that your animal had to have a day off every week.

People forget that the animals got into the Ten Commandments. I find that extremely moving. So the banning of human sacrifice, every civilization in the ancient world of which we know anything had human sacrifice, virgin sacrifice, child sacrifice, adult sacrifice, prisoner of war sacrifice, and this was completely abolished by the Torah. The Torah made the rest of the Bible, both the Old Testament and New Testament, possible. No Torah, no Judaism, no Christianity. The Torah is the basis. So again, one could easily find my article giving 18 reasons, but I think those are sample reasons. And of course, God is invisible. I mean, the idea God is invisible. God does not eat. God does not have sex. I mean, all the ancient gods had sex. I'll give you one more example, the flood story. There were flood stories all over the world,

but only the Taurus flood story does God save someone all over the world but only the torah's flood story does god save someone and in each of the other stories god saved someone or some people god saves noah because he was a good man he was a righteous man in his generations that's that's the hebrew he actually is a just man uh to be technical. I'm translating in my mind from the biblical Hebrew. In other words, there was a moral, entirely moral component to the flood story. In the most famous tale, the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, do you know why the gods destroyed humanity?

Because they made too much noise and kept them up at night. Just to give an example, I find that so hilarious. I've committed it to memory. So everything about it. So I'll end with a very important thing for me personally. And this is what I say. I don't believe in the torah because i believe in god i believe in god because i believe in the torah the torah that's my vehicle to god that

torah and reason okay so that i hope that answered that that's a that's a great answer and we'll link to your article i was not aware of thatational Bible, you have an opening to the Genesis one. And by the way, I've got a copy of it right here, and I patterned a lot of my Old Testament class after listening to your lectures from a long time ago. So I've been benefiting from your work for a while. Now, I know skeptics right now are going to say, okay, that's all nice and good, Dennis and Sean,

but let's get to the tough issues in the Old Testament. Let's maybe start with polygamy. So Genesis 1 and 2 is pretty clear that God's design is one man and one woman in marriage. Why does God not only allow polygamy amongst figures like Jacob, Solomon, and David? Why doesn't he just clearly and unequivocally condemn it? Oh, it's condemned. First of all, you pointed out correctly that the Torah's ideal is one man, one woman. The Torah often will give an ideal and not necessarily legislate it. By the way, I think that that is a great way for us

who care about moral issues to go about most or many issues as well. I have, I'll digress, but it's completely related to it due to the point that I'm making. So I have a video at PragerU on abortion. I think it's the most widely used video by the pro-life world it's got i don't know 10 million views or something and it's five minutes like all the videos that trigger you and by the way i only give one out of ten at 90 percent excuse me are are given by others and uh i don't even deal with the legal, and I make it clear in the video, I'm not talking about legislation. This five-minute talk is about the morality of abortion.

So we don't always legislate. For example, adultery is legal in the united states and i it is no religious person i know jew or christian who thinks it should be against the law that we should imprison adulterers first of all if we did there might be more people in prison than outside of prison which would present a problem so it's very important religion Religion is not only legislation. I mean, if anybody knows this, it's Christians, where it's so much a factor of the heart more than the law itself. And there's a lot of truth and validity to that.

Religion is to give you, this is the ideal on how you should live, but not necessarily legislated. Of course, we'll legislate murder and theft and other ideas. There's even legislation for ritual, because otherwise anybody would make up his own ritual. And we'll get to the sacrifice issue, which you've raised. So God god as it were in the torah makes it clear i want monogamy but it wasn't legislated and uh what happened is it simply died of its own even before being legislated out of existence i mean mean, it was ultimately, both in Judaism and Christianity, legislated out of existence. The other way in which the Torah shows it, and indeed the rest of the Hebrew Bible, its opposition to polygamy is every single polygamous marriage is depicted

as awful. And I'll translate because it's rarely translated literally. One was loved and the other was hated. It doesn't even say not loved. The Hebrew sinua means hated. And so they're all depicted as awful. Remember, the stories of the Bible, New and Old Testament, are there to teach us morals, teach us about life. You don't only use law to teach about what is right and what is wrong. So anyway, that's the polygamy answer. That's really helpful that sometimes we want a specific statement, which is maybe a little more of a Greek way of thinking. Whereas the Hebrew way is I'm going to teach through a story and an example of the devastation and the life of Solomon, the life of David, the life of Jacob. So it's not as explicit as we may like today, but narratively it's clearly showing this is outside of god's

design and there's consequences when we go there right exactly all right so let's keep going along in genesis one of the common uh just complaints and challenges i hear which is fair to raise is whether it's the age of the earth or evolution, how do you reconcile apparent scientific tensions with Genesis? Well, I'm not a big believer, not on religious grounds, but on rational grounds in evolution. But you're really asking something beyond that.

Science tells us that evolution or no evolution the earth is billions of years old the universe is billions of years old and we have the uh creation in six days well i i studied in in orthodox jewish schools till I was 19. Half the day in Hebrew religious subjects, half the day in English secular subjects. So I have a real grounding. And I taught Judaism and Jewish history at Brooklyn College. And I've written books on Judaism and Torah commentary. And I'm only giving this background so people understand I have a very normative education in Judaism.

None of my rabbis told me I had to believe that it was six 24-hour periods. This is not a struggle that one needs to have. First of all, the Bible itself says that one day in God's eyes is a thousand years in man's eyes. Even in English, we use the word day to mean any period of time. Just if I would say, you know, in Abraham Lincoln's day, it doesn't mean one day that week. It means the whole era in which he lived. Day is a very large, encompassing word. I think it's beautiful the way it is depicted, however, because this is not something many Christians think about. many jews think about it either frankly but

a big part of the creation story is to lead up to the sabbath so if if the torah said well after 400 million years god created the next thing uh you wouldn't have a Sabbath except every 400 million years. But the Sabbath is so central. It is in the Ten Commandments. It's the only ritual in the Ten Commandments. The purpose of the Sabbath, aside to rest and to sanctify a day, is to commemorate that God created the world. That's when God gives the Ten Command ten commandments that's the reason given when moses recapitulates the ten commandments in deuteronomy he gives the reason

that they were freed from slavery and only free people can have a sabbath but god's reason is to to commemorate creation and i'm a big fan of God and and that's that's my underlying observance of the Sabbath each week it is to affirm God created the world so I I I think that Jews or Christians who are preoccupied with gee how do we reconcile six 24-hour periods with what science says are wasting their time. And by the way, some of my favorite people do believe in six days of creation. I don't belittle it. I don't mock it. I just don't think it is necessary at all to believe that the Bible is God's word or specifically the Torah.

If you are convinced, looking at the evidence, that evolution were true, assuming we don't mean a purely materialistic, naturalistic process, would that do anything to your faith or your understanding of the scriptures? If I were convinced, it would do nothing, correct? Because all I would say is that's the vehicle god used to make new species that's all i i would i because evolution i even think darwin acknowledged this evolution doesn't explain how we got life from non-life it only explains new species it doesn't explain life from non-life and it doesn't explain anything from nothing so it it's it's not a particularly effective substitute for a divine creation

you'll find me agreeing with you 100 on that one well let's keep going these are getting tougher maybe presumably as we go but one of the objections that we hear often is that the God, by the way, do you care if Christians refer to the Old Testament as the Old Testament? Does that get on your skin? I don't care at all. So let me tell you, I want to, I actually, I should just say I don't care at all, but I want to add something. I have lived a long, wonderful life, and I am regularly amazed at what bugs people. It drives me out of my mind. Why would I care if my Bible is called the Old Testament? That Christians believe that it is the original and that now we have the New Testament as well only reinforces the divinity of the Old Testament. I go further. Christians carried the Torah into the world much more than the Jews did.

So, you know, my theory is Jews and Christians deeply need each other. And the founders knew that, the founders of the United States. They were truly Judeo-Christians. But I don't have any problem with B.C. and A.D. And yet all these scholars now use C.E, common era. But hello, the common era goes back to Christ. That's just a fact. You don't have to believe in Christ to acknowledge a fact. So people, people, anyway. Okay. I have, I have passion on a lot of subjects. I love it. It comes through. That's why I'm looking forward to our conversations that are coming up. I'll tell folks about soon.

But let's focus on the question of, is the Torah or the God of the Bible sexist? And I guess it's often framed, correct me if you see it differently, that God is primarily described in male terms. And God creates man first and seemingly gives him authority okay so uh i deal with that at length in different parts of my my bible commentary my torah commentary in the very, I have a very long essay on why God is depicted in male terms, he. And among the reasons is that if you want a moral world, a less violent, decent place, it is imperative to have a male tell males how to behave. If God were a goddess and said, do not murder, do not steal, just like so many children of single mothers,

they just would have ignored her. It is so that God is a God of mercy and love, but as male, if women really care about how humans are treated, they would root for God to be depicted in male terms. I love it. I did see that essay and I think it was profound and game-changing for me. I hadn't thought of it that way, that you're not saying God is male or female. Of course not. Of course.

Exactly. Anyway, in Hebrew, you have no neuter. It's either male or female. So you have no choice. It would either – you don't have it. And even the people who object, what do they want? They really want, in the beginning, God, she created the heavens and the earth?

Really? That would be a moral advance? It's like the arguments, I am old enough to remember the arguments for ordaining female clergy, both in Christianity and in Judaism. And one of their biggest arguments was, we want female models so that girls will come to church, girls will come to synagogue. And I remember arguments, it won't happen. It simply won't happen. And it won't happen it simply won't happen and it hasn't happened the the the synagogues and the the jewish movements and the christian movements that have ordained women have lost women not gained that's a fact you draw in the genesis commentary too the high value of women that most kind of creation stories don't even mention women.

And the Genesis account climaxes with the creation of women. Yes. You know, not to mention men are made from dirt and women are made from a piece of the side, not the head or the foot of the man. I think the story itself is holding up women in high esteem in a way we often miss it. Oh, so this is classic. So the people who have problems with this quote unquote sexism of the creation story. So all God created man first and woman is an afterthought. Had woman been created first and man came last they go of course they create man is the

ultimate creation because all of creation goes up higher in in you can make a valid argument that the woman is the superior creature in the creation story because she is the final creation of god you know dennis that reminds me how we look at something, shapes, is based on our worldview. I sat next to a lady who is a feminist atheist on a plane. And I said, you think the images for men, that's a triangle and women is a circle, circle is sexist.

She said, absolutely. It goes up to a pinnacle and it climaxes at the top this is showing men are are the best and i said well in a circle technically some would say there's no or there's an infinite number of points which is the woman symbol i think it's completely favoring women and she just looked at me like she didn't know what to do with me this goes back to my thing that i said earlier what people what bugs people that she if in every instance if it were reversed they would have the same argument just as i said with creation oh well yeah men are a circle infinite and we we're narrow it's it's it's pathetic all right so i can actually work forgive me i just want to say any woman who is troubled by the triangle and the circle

i would say to uh a man looking for a spouse she may not be wife material. If she's going to be bugged by the triangle of the circle, I assure you she'll be bugged by a lot about you and life. Oh, I so want to follow up with that, but we will let that one sit and move on to your Exodus commentary in which the topic of slavery comes up and a ton could be said but maybe give us two or three ways you approach this when this objection arises right so i deal with it again i deal i try to deal with every difficult issue in the rational bible and of course i deal with slavery. So first of all, again, given that stories are there to teach as much as laws are, Judaism rests on two events. Christianity rests on two events, the crucifixion and the

resurrection. So does Judaism. Judaism rests on creation and exodus. If God didn't make the world, and if God didn't take the Jews out of Egypt, then there is no Judaism, essentially. You have ended the Jewish faith, quite literally. Those are the traditional understandings of the bases of Judaism, God the creator and God the liberator. That God's intervention in humanity after Noah is to end the slavery of a people is a pretty important story and and by the way virtually every liberation movement in the modern world used the exodus story as their paradigm go down moses right let my people go it for blacks it was the central story of liberation taken from exodus No black who used the Exodus story said, well,

you know, but there is no law banning it fully. It didn't trouble them. They knew what God wanted. God does not want slavery. And God says later in the Hebrew Bible, you know, you're not the only ones I've taken out of slavery. And so that's one. Number two, why doesn't the Torah just ban slavery? Okay, that's the usual. What the Torah did, and we should learn from this, the Torah took an evolutionary approach to ending slavery, not a revolutionary approach.

Had the Torah said no slaves, it would have been ignored. It would have made everybody feel good. Oh, look, the Bible said no slavery. What it did was it ended slavery by so controlling what would happen. You kill your slave, you get killed. How's this for the best? And people so rarely quote it. It's in Exodus. If a slave runs away, you cannot return the slave to its owner. Imagine if we had that in the United States, how much different things might have been, and the way you had to treat a slave,

and that you had to let a slave go. And by the way, they weren't even slaves. They were indentured servants. It was indentured servitude. A period of about half of the people who came to America in its early years came as indentured servants. I'm talking whites.

That's how they came. You worked for no money to pay off your debt you paid off your debt and then you were free but my favorite and I think there were 613 laws in the Torah I think my favorite is in Deuteronomy where it says if you are in a war and you are attracted to a woman of the enemy, you may not touch her. If you want her, you must bring her to your home. You must not touch her for 30 days. She must be allowed to mourn her family.

And then the only way you can touch her is to marry her. Given the spectacular amount of rape in wartime, to think that this was given in the late Bronze Age, 3,200 years ago, it's another one of the reasons I believe the Torah is divine. Men would not have made up such a law. And there was no parallel of such a law and it would there was no parallel of such a law anywhere in the human race that we know of anywhere near that time and and up until the modern time i mean look at look at how many german women were raped by

soviet soldiers for example so uh there what the torah did was it humanized a lousy institution. And by the way, do not steal the commandment. Let's see, what is it? So murder, adultery, steal. So it's the Eighth Commandment. The Eighth Commandment, do not steal, is first and foremost, you may not steal people, which would have ended slavery just on that grounds. That is why I must admit, I don't understand how there were Christians,

and I'm a big fan, as everybody knows, of America's Christians, but I don't understand how any of them could reconcile religious faith and slavery. I understand when people sin and they, you know what, I'm just not a saint. I could see somebody say, look, to be honest, I think God doesn't want slavery, but it's the only way I can make a living. My parents handed down slaves to me. Okay, I respect that. But to argue on religious grounds that you could kidnap people, the very act of the kidnapping of a black in Africa was banned by the Ten Commandments about stealing people. Okay, so that's on slavery.

It's stealing people and it's stealing the fruits of their labor and their work. So it's minimally double theft. That's correct. I think on top of that. All right, well, let's move to another tough one, even though a ton more could be said about that. This is probably one of the most common questions i get asked engaging skeptics and atheists about genocide in the old testament we see this in deuteronomy 7 deuteronomy 15 kind of wiping out of an entire people group including men women children and

infants it's obviously framed this way how How could a loving God command genocide? So I have a technical and then a general answer. And again, I deal with that at length on a number of occasions in every one of those verses. God did not command it. Moses commanded it. And if one looks at the actual text, it's always Moses. God did say to Moses, take revenge on the Midianites, but he didn't say wipe them all out. Second, and this is really, really important, the Bible itself records that the Canaanites were never wiped out.

They show up later. Nobody was wiped out. It was, in effect, hyperbole. For example, the numbers of Israelites in the desert, which if you take the number seriously, is a couple of million okay since I if something doesn't make sense that's why I call it the rational Bible I have to find an answer the Bible has to make sense to me if it doesn't

make sense then why would I believe in it just I I'm not prepared to you know the famous Tertullian quote credoo quia absurdum est, I believe because it is absurd. I understand that, and I'm not mocking it, but I have the opposite. If it's absurd, I don't believe it. I can't imagine two, three million Jews in the desert for 40 years. Okay, I know God could do any miracle. I appreciate that. but the text itself says that they were more Canaanites than there were Israelites nobody assumes there were two to

three four million Canaanites so the text itself makes it clear a scholar whom I I cite in my uh I guess it's either in numbersbers or Deuteronomy, and I came across it at the very last moment, showed that numbers in the ancient world were frequently a factor of 10, and the reason was to intimidate enemies. And I believe that. I am convinced that the numbers of Israelites are multiplied by 10. I do believe that.

And how often when you speak, when I speak, and we say in a ball game, in a sport, kill them. Man, I hope they kill them. I hope they wipe them out. How often in wartime did we say we're going to wipe them out? And of course they didn't wipe them out. How many American soldiers going on Normandy, we're going to wipe out the Germans? Did they really wipe out the Germans.

Did they really wipe out the Germans? So my understanding is it was not a literal statement. And the Bible itself says it wasn't a literal statement because all of these people show up again. So they obviously weren't wiped out. Good stuff. Now, let me just push one of those points How does it help to say that Moses commanded it not God when Moses is a prophet of God? yeah, but Moses violated God's will when when God said to get water from the rock and

And Moses people think the sin was that he hit the rock and didn't speak to it. That might have been. But the big sin was he took credit for it. He said to the Israelites, watch how Aaron and I will bring forth water. He didn't give the credit to God, and that's why he didn't get into Israel,

because it's clear he would have been worshipped. No one, at least no Jew, the most religious Jew does not think Moses is perfect. There is no such thing in Jewish thought as a perfect human. Obviously, for Christians, Jesus was perfect, but Jesus wasn't fully human. Jesus was fully human and fully divine. We don't have such a character in Judaism, so we don't have to grapple with the issue, gee, was he perfect? I mean, he got angry very easily by the end, which I don't blame him.

I get ticked off at many of my fellow Jews, too. So, I'm a Moses fan, but he's not perfect. And Moses saying, look, Moses changed what God said about the Sabbath and the Ten Commandments. I mean, you know, I deeply respect Moses' restating the reason for the Sabbath as being the exodus, and you're no longer slaves. You should take a day off a week. But when God gave it, it said to remember that I created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. So that's, Moses is not God. Now, you just said, talking about what Jesus believes, that Jesus is divine and human.

I'm going to cut that from my interview and just splice it and say, Dennis is now a Christian and this is going to go viral. Oh, that's awesome. That's how you get views. You don't even have to do do artificial intelligence is going to end up doing stuff with me exactly yes all right i'll all kidding aside we're talking about some pretty serious serious questions here now i've read your commentary in genesis read it on exodus working through deuteronomy i know uh numbers comes out in November, and you're working on Leviticus. Now, I'm really curious. I haven't heard you talk about this, but I know a passage you're

going to spend a lot of time on is Leviticus 18 and 20, the prohibition of homosexual behavior. What's your maybe quick take on that? And do you think that's still a relevant passage for today and how we should look at it morally? your maybe quick take on that and do you think that's still a relevant passage for yes today and how we should look at it morally right so it's my approach will be unique in that i have already written 20 000 words on that verse okay it's it's almost a book just on that verse because it is so significant to the time in which we live. And I want to explain it. So here is in a nutshell, and this is unknown to most people. Most people think all the Bible was doing, or in this case, all torah was doing was reinforcing what all other nations did a

bias against homosexuals or homosexuality and giving a divine imprimatur to it that's what i thought until a long time ago when i studied the issue very deeply. How's this? This will fascinate your viewers and listeners. Virtually every society on earth was okay with male homosexuality. The Torah invented the idea that God doesn't want it. Now you could say, what a lousy book. I could see a lot of people being angry at the Torah. But at least I want people to understand that this was an innovation. You can say it was a good one. You can say it was a bad one.

What I believe the Torah was doing is saying male male sexuality in fact and certainly female sexuality is all over the place men men have had sex uh with doorknobs i'm sorry you can excise this later if you want sure Men are animals, and that includes me. I don't act like an animal because I've been elevated by my religion. But the Torah basically said as follows. Men, you should confine your sexual life to your wife. That's what the verse is really about. Ancient Greece is a perfect model.

Ancient Greece, men who could afford it, because it cost money, men who could afford it had boys for sex and wives for procreation the Torah wants wives for sex and procreation so that's that's a big deal now how do we apply it today okay that's I have an answer to that. That's why I'm against the same-sex marriage, and I continue to be. At the same time, I'm not only close with gay couples, and by the way, there are Christians who will get annoyed with me for even saying gay and not homosexual.

So I'm even aware of that but it's it's nomenclature i'm prepared to accept sure and uh my wife and i are godparents to a to a gay couple's children. Now, it's a very interesting point. They know we're against same-sex marriage. And nevertheless, they are prepared to have us raise their children if they die. That's what the godparent role, I am told, is. We would be the moral educators of the children. And the reason that they do it is they know, I don't have a scintilla of hatred or anger at a homosexual human being. But I don't see, we live in an age where, or any age really has this, there was a conflict between compassion and standards.

My belief is you have to keep your standards and show compassion. And my motto is standards in the macro, compassion in the micro. So I can easily, look, there was one of these gay men, was on the, is on the board of directors of PragerU. And he gets flack in the gay community. You're on the board of directors.

I must've said something. I guess. Such carrying on has to be over a bone. No. It hurts something. Oh, they hurt something. Are those the dogs from the fireside chats? I'm sorry? Are those the dogs from the fireside chats?

Yes, exactly. Yes, that's right. One of them, yes. So he gets flack, as that's where I was, from people of the gay community, you're going to be on the board of directors of Prager. You know, Prager was one of the leaders in the country. I testified in Congress against same-sex marriage. I'm still against same-sex marriage.

I'm for giving gays the same rights for their partner. It was pretty cruel that a gay man could not visit his sick gay partner. I mean, that's cruel. We can't be cruel, but we do have to keep the standards that we believe in. The ideal, and by the way, my gay friends all acknowledge the ideal is male-female marriage.

See, vast numbers of heterosexuals will not say that's the ideal. They'll say, oh, that's homophobic. So I care, do you perpetuate standards? How you have been able or not in your life to keep them up, that is for God to judge. I can only say that I maintain the male-female bond ideal. That sentence revolutionized marriage. It revolutionized sexual behavior. And my heart goes out to those who cannot, for whatever reason, live by it. But I will not compromise on the ideal that sex is between a man and a woman, ideally, and between a married man and a woman, ideally.

Dennis, the idea of standing by biblical truth and being compassionate with people is something I believe deeply and try to model. I think that's credit to you that they would have you as godparents. I think today, sadly, it's been lost that we can't disagree with people and say, I think something is wrong, and in our case, even say sinful, without saying, but we're going to be in a relationship amidst those differences, and it just doesn't happen enough. So I'm glad to hear that's the case in your life. I look forward to the 20,000 words on Leviticus on that passage.

Oh, yeah. That'll be fascinating. Now, I've got a ton more questions for you. I definitely want to respect your time. But the event I've been kind of hinting at for folks is you and I are going to do an event called Ask a Jew, Ask a Christian. But on a cruise to the Caribbean. I can't tell you how pumped I was to get this invite

that someone who works for Inspiration Cruises called me up and basically said, you know, Dennis needs an evangelical to balance things out. I was like, awesome. I'll do it. Let's go. And as you know, I did a PragerU video about five years ago, but maybe just tell our viewers, invite them to come. Why should they consider going on a nine day cruise with you and me coming up November, December? Well, it's funny, the biggest reason I give,

and I've been cruising with listeners for 30 years, has nothing to do with me, has nothing to do with the ship, has nothing to do with the Caribbean, has nothing to do with you. It's that they'll meet one another. People need kindred spirits in their lives. The number of lifelong friendships that people who have cruised with me have made is one of the greatest sources of satisfaction in my life. So aside from everything else, that is a major, if not the major reason to go on the cruise. Then there, I'm crazy about cruising. The beauty of

cruising is if, if any of your folks listening or watching have not done it, you don't have to pack every day and yet you're going to another destination. Your hotel travels with you. I love that. And I've been to 130 countries, so I can speak about travel a great deal. So that's one reason. Another is the intellectual component, which is not the usual thing on a cruise. And I give a number of talks. We will be together, and it is a joy to be with you.

I'm so happy that they got you to come. And the topics, the topics are ultimately life-changing topics about the meaning of life. And applying it, of course, will be right after the election. So, of course, that will right after the election so of course that will come up but i'm not a political animal i'm a preoccupied with good and evil not with politics but politics obviously has a lot to do with good and evil so obviously that will be one of the things that i'll be addressing but it's, all they need to do is go to,

unless you have a different one for Randy, but pragercruise.com and get all the information you want. Pragercruise.com Pragercruise.com. I'll put a link below directly. You can find that on my website. There's a link.

We're both, I'm bringing my wife. I assume you are as well. I wouldn't go without her. Good. I didn't think so, but just didn't want to take that for granted. I don't know. It's a very fair question. Yeah.

I'm going to end by saying this to you, Dennis. I patterned my Old Testament class for years in high school after the Genesis commentary. I ordered the CDs, and I listened to them multiple times. I had parents an opportunity where if they want to buy a teacher a gift, the top of my list was the Dennis Prager commentary. Well, somebody bought me

one I already had of Genesis 1 through whatever it was. I don't remember what it was, like six DVDs that came together. And I couldn't get a hold of anybody at Prager. So I wrote a letter, sent it back. And I said, is there any chance you would send me Exodus and exchange it? I never heard back, but I just want to say you're off the hook since you invited me to go with you on a cruise we're now even

by well just for the record uh i have two uh commentaries on on the torah one is uh hundreds of hours in my teaching uh years ago and the other is my very recently written four of the five books they they are so different that uh i did not pattern the writing after the the oral so uh but both i think would touch people the fact that it touched you is is you have no idea how delighted i am and honored oh my goodness yeah there's moments there and there since i read it christologically where i would have a different take but those are small moments as a whole i i love it i'll probably get the numbers one and bring it with me maybe even read it on the cruise who knows but nonetheless i hope folks will join us on that coming up. Thanks for taking these tough questions on the Old Testament. It means a ton to do that.

It's a credit to you. I mean, you know, I'm interviewed a lot. This was great. And all of us who teach and believe in the Bible have to answer the tough questions, which is why I've written this commentary I want people to understand that you don't have to suspend morality or reason on the contrary both will lead you to God well you and I are going to talk about differences between Christianity and Judaism and commonality but that is a great moment to have an irrational faith you and I agree on and a perfect one to end on so appreciate your time can't wait to cruise

the Caribbean with you and hope people listen in will think about joining us