Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep964: Is God a Moral Monster? Dr. Paul Copan

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Paul Copan (Ph.D., Philosophy, Marquette University) is a Christian theologian, analytic philosopher, apologist, and author. He is currently a professor at the Palm Beach Atlantic University (Florida) and holds the endowed Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics. He is author or editor of over 40 books, including works such as Is God a Moral Monster? and the forthcoming Is God a Vindictive Bully?--both of which are the focus of our conversation.  In this episode, we discuss several problem passages in the Old Testament including the conquest of Canaan, the mauling of the young men who taunted Elisha (2 Kings 2), the killing of Uzzah who touched the ark (2 Sam 6), and the seemingly strange statements about women in Deuteronomy 21-22.  http://www.paulcopan.com –––––– PROMOS Save 10% on courses with Kairos Classroom using code TITR at kairosclassroom.com! –––––– Sign up with Faithful Counseling today to save 10% off of your first month at the link:  faithfulcounseling.com/titr or use code TITR at faithfulcounseling.com –––––– Save 30% at SeminaryNow.com by using code TITR –––––– Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review. www.theologyintheraw.com

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I'm so excited about this episode. I have on the show the one and only Dr. Paul Copan. Paul has a PhD in philosophy from Marquette University. He's a Christian theologian, analytic philosopher, apologist, and author of over 40 books. He is currently professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida and holds the endowed Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy philosophy and ethics. He's written a ton of great books. The two that we're going to talk about on this podcast are Is God a Moral Monster, which I read 10 years ago, and it was so good, so helpful, dealt with a lot of problem passages in the Old Testament. And he has a forthcoming book coming out in the fall called Is God a Vindictive Bully?

And so we talk about several problem passages in the Old Testament, the conquest of Canaan, the mauling of the kids with the female bears in 2 Kings 2, if you know that passage. We talk about some of the passages, statements on women in the book of Deuteronomy that are difficult and other problem passages. So yeah, I'm so excited for this episode. Paul is a wonderful Christian, a serious student of the Bible. And I just, I learned so much in this conversation. So please welcome to the show, the one and only Dr. Paul Copan. All right. Hey, friends. I'm here with Paul Copan. Paul, this is long overdue. I've been wanting to have you on for a while. I'm really excited to have this conversation. Yeah. Thanks for giving us an hour of your day. I really appreciate it. Sure.

So your book, I first came across your name 10 years ago with your... I don't know if it's your first book, at least the first one I read, Is God – I don't know if it's your first book. At least – well, the first one I read is God, a Moral Monster. Is that your – that's not your first book, is it? My first book was in 1998, True for You but Not for Me. I've done about 40 books. So that one was in the middle of things. Is God, a Moral Monster, is that the most popular book you've written that has gotten the

most press? I would say so. That's been the most... In fact, when I'm asked to speak, I'll speak on moral monster type themes about 75% of the time. That's sort of the default asking, can you speak on this topic sort of question. So yeah. Well, just for people who don't know about this book, and my audience, I think they do get it. Well, they get excited, but also frustrated, I think, because I'm always recommending books. I'm always having guests on. I don't do this for promotional purposes, but just because usually I have people on who have written a book whose book has been really helpful for me. And so we talk about it and then everybody goes out and buys the book. But yeah, I cannot more highly recommend this book.

So Is God a Moral Monster deals with a lot of the problem passages in the Bible, in the Old Testament, that seem to make God out to be a moral monster. Like, I mean, a big one is the treatment of women, which your chapter on that is incredibly helpful. You have one, two chapters on slavery. Oh, you do have a chapter on slavery in the New Testament. You've got three chapters on the killing of the Canaanites, God hardening people's hearts, the food laws. I mean, these are all like the big ones when people read the Old Testament, they're like, oh, what do we do with this? And then you have a new book coming out, Is God a Vindictive Bully?, which I obviously haven't read yet, but deals with other problem

passages. So I guess I want to start by asking, what motivated you to dive into these kind of passages? Were you in your own faith journey kind of like wrestling with these passages? Was it your students or what motivated you to dive into this? Well, I grew up in a pastor's home. And so these were passages that I read, you know, and was exposed to from childhood. And so, but there were obviously moral questions to wrestle with in, you know, especially as you get into your teenage years, you start to wrestle with these things. But, you know, I, and I have a background in biblical studies and theology, undergrad and graduate. And so this has been an area of exploration for me. But what really kind of launched this

was that I wrote an article called, Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?, as published in the journal Philosophia Christi, and it was motivated by a lot of the bad press that the Old Testament God was getting, Dr. Dawkins and Daniel Dennis and others, who in the wake of the September 11th attacks, were not only lashing out against Islam, but all religion as being poisonous and dangerous and so forth. And in particular, the treatment of the Old Testament understanding of God was definitely in their sights. And so I utilized the actual, you know, some of their assessments of the Old Testament God as my chapter headings. In fact, Is God a Moral Monster? That came from

Richard Dawkins. Is God a Vindictive Bully? That came from Richard Dawkins. So there, you know, there is something redemptive about those new atheists, at least in this regard. So anyway, but I've, you know, so I wrote that article. It was well-received, and then I developed that into the book, Is God a Moral Monster?, which then came to look at the old issue of violence or warfare in the Old Testament, and I teamed up with Matt Flanagan to write a book called Did God Really Command Genocide? So I've been doing a lot of work in these areas. I have some other book chapters coming out that deal with Old Testament warfare and some of these ethical challenges in the Old

Testament. So it's an ongoing project. So why don't we just dive into one and see where this leads? I mean, I would love to talk through all of these. I'm looking at your table of contents, and then your new book has all the passages, the mauling of Elijah, What do we do with that? With Uzzah touching the ark and he's struck down. You just hit all of them, all the ones that... And to be honest, Paul, so I've got four teenage kids and my third daughter, super smart. If anything catches her in the Bible, it's like, whoa, wait a minute. And all the ones you deal with are all the ones that we've wrestled with. And sometimes my response is convincing. Other times she's like, I don't know.

I'm not going to buy it yet. Why don't we start with the Canaanites? Because this is kind of the ugly passage in the Old Testament, or at least nothing's ugly in the Bible. But it's a passage that throws people for a loop. Did God really command wholesale slaughter of an entire people group, and what do we do with that? Right. Well, of course, there's nothing that, you know, when it comes to the people themselves, there's nothing inherently deficient, problematic,

immoral with these people in themselves. There's nothing tribal that sets them apart from other peoples. It's simply their behavior that these people who are being judged through the Israelites are engaging in acts that would be considered criminal in any modern society, bestiality, ritual prostitution, infant sacrifice, incest. These are practices that are associated with these people, and God warns the Israelites not to get caught up in those practices. And so also God gives 500 years, over 500 years of warning that he's going to wait until their sin is completed. So it would have been wrong for the Israelites to go in prematurely.

And so God waited until the time was right. And, of course, so it's not inherent to these people themselves. Also, we need to keep in mind that this is seen as an act that is justly punished. We read in Hebrews chapter 11 that Rahab from the city of Jericho was not punished with the rest of those who are disobedient. Namely, there's a culpability factor that is involved here. And in fact, as we read in the book of Joshua, there are people who are, if they're willing to, apart from fleeing, if they're willing to align themselves with God, who everyone knew. Rahab knew 40 years before there were reports coming out of Egypt that the Israelite God had defeated the Egyptian gods and had led them out after, you know, after plagues in Egypt, led them through the Red Sea and so forth, pillar of cloud by day, fire by night over the camp of the Israelites. So anyone who is mildly curious would know what's going on with the Israelites

and that their God is a powerful God who is even greater than the greatest superpower of the day, namely Egypt. So there are people, you know, Rahab signs up, the Gibeonites through trickery align themselves with the Israelites. There are people who are Canaanites in chapter 8 of the book of Joshua, these strangers who are actually listening in, in Shechem, to a covenant renewal ceremony with Joshua. And unfortunately, there's the indictment in chapter 11 that none of the Canaanite cities were willing to make peace with the Israelites, which is interesting that there seems to be an openness to that kind of an arrangement with other people as well, but no one was willing. Instead, the Israelites have to go, actually, they go into defensive warfare mode against most

of the Canaanite cities. So they're actually fighting defensively once they've made an alliance with the Gibeonites. So anyway, that's a little bit of that sort of a setting. In more general terms than that, we can talk about the fact that there is a lot of hyperbole that is used, that even when there are a lot of Israelites, a lot of hyperbole that is used, that even when there are a lot of Israelites, a lot of Canaanites that are still surviving, it says that one Joshua did all that Moses commanded. And we see a lot of survivors, but we also see alongside of that massive hyperbole, which is common in the ancient Near East. So you can have lots of Canaanite

survivors, but if there is a victory, even a less than decisive one, it would still be seen as we, quote, utterly destroyed them and so forth. Now, even the term utterly destroyed is actually been challenged by a number of commentators because that term, you know, like at the end of Leviticus in chapter 27, you have people who are, you know, haram. They're not utterly destroyed, but you have an animal or a servant that are haram, but they are not killed. Rather, they're consecrated. They're set aside from ordinary use and consecrated to God, say the priesthood or serving in the tabernacle or whatever. And so it doesn't necessarily mean slaughter or death. It just means, you know, set apart. And it has to do with identity. In fact, John and Harvey Walton talk about the Nazis, Nazi Germany as being a kind of an illustration of this, where you have

the identity removal of Nazism, tearing down the symbols, the monuments, the ideology, the bureaucracy of Nazism. But basically, once that is removed, you still have the German people intact. And so the Waltons say that this is what it means to haram, an identity, to basically remove that Nazi identity, even though you have people intact. And that's really what you see the major, you know, the major commands in, say, the book of Deuteronomy. Keep in mind, Deuteronomy is highly intensified language compared to similar language in Exodus and Numbers and so forth, where you have ramped up language that actually includes not just utterly destroy them, leave them alive, nothing to breathe, but it also will mention man, woman, young and old, the sweeping language, which is common in ancient Near Eastern warfare.

But you will have that language, even though no women and children are actually present. Let me give an example. language, even though no women and children are actually present. Let me give an example. In Numbers 21, you have a battle against the two kings, Sihon and Og, and they didn't allow the Israelites to pass through peacefully, so they take up arms against Moses and the Israelites, and so they fight them, and the language is used, we utterly destroyed them. In other words, a decisive battle was won. But in that is mentioned that the king, Og's king, his sons and his army fought against the Israelites. So that's the kind of on the ground account. You get to Deuteronomy 2 and 3, it recounts the same battle, but it says, man, woman, young, and old. There were no women even there. They're thrown in for rhetorical effect. It's what's called

merism. It's using the sweeping language, like, you know, the heavens and the earth, the totality is a merism. Or from north to south in Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, you know, the totality. And same thing, man, woman, young and old, that's Amerism for totality, even though women and the elderly and children were not present. So, and then again, you see the same sort of thing picked up on in 1 Samuel 15. The Amalekites would actually initially attack the Israelites in 1448 of 1 Samuel. And then in chapter 15, there's a warfare language that, you know, you see this warfare, and it's at a pitched battle. It's interesting,

James Hoffmeyer and others point out how in a lot of the warfare accounts in the ancient Near East, you'll have one battle that is focused on, like a localized battle, which you see in chapter 5, the city, the citadel of Amalek, the city of Amalek. And interestingly, before they fight, Saul sends word to the Kenites, who are also there at that town. He said, we don't have any issue with you. We're friends, so you can go. We're going to fight against the Amalekites. So they leave. Now, surely you're not going to have women and children in this sort of a battle scene, in this local battle. So we see that there is, first of all, this

localized battle, and Saul says, I destroyed, utterly destroyed the Amalekites. The narrator says that too. And then you have this massive terrain. This is kind of the twofold rhetorical device in warfare in the ancient Near East. You have first mention of a localized battle, and then secondly, you have universal conquest. So the language goes from Arabia to Egypt, Saul is fighting against the Amalekites. Well, that's clearly exaggeration, hyperbole. In fact, David fights a localized battle against the Amalekites at the end of the book. And then you see David fighting against the Amalekites in this universal conquest sort of picture from Arabia to Egypt, the same terrain that Saul had fought on. So the same sorts of dynamics are at work here. So it's very interesting

that you have a lot of hyperbole, a lot of exaggeration that is very much a part of the picture. And so man, woman, young and old are thrown in to the mix, even though they weren't present in that battle site. Let me say something about Deuteronomy 20. You mentioned that, and you have a distinction between the cities outside of the land of Canaan and the cities within. Well, let's focus on the cities within because it looks like, oh, total slaughter, man, woman, young and old. And keep in mind that Deuteronomy intensifies the language that earlier accounts are pretty mild on, like in Exodus and Numbers and so forth. Well, it uses this language, but interestingly, when you look at the actual conquest of Canaan, and again, it's a infiltration more than, say, some sort of blitzkrieg. It takes time for this to happen. But a lot of exaggeration of these cities that are set apart, that in other

words, these disabling raids where the Israelitesraelites drive them out and uh and they're basically now haram cities they're they're not literally destroyed only three cities are destroyed but the rest of them are left intact and so the they drive them out um kill the kings and so forth they're typically military installment installations there and and what you have going on here is a lot of survivors you read joshua and judgesges 1, they could not drive them out. They could not drive them out. You see this played out. Well, you know, if this is the case that you have for the cities in Canaan, you have a lot of exaggeration in that, you know, you don't have that kind of massive slaughter that a lot of people have in mind or conjured up by some of the texts.

If that's the case for the cities within the land, think of numbers, Deuteronomy 20, then it's all the less significant for, say, killing all the males, the male soldiers or the adult males in the cities outside the land. So there's a lot of exaggeration. adult males in the cities outside the land. So there's a lot of exaggeration. And so it applies both within the land of, you know, the cities of Canaan themselves and also the cities outside. So I think there's a lot more going on than a lot of people realize. There's exaggeration, there's warfare rhetoric that speaks to these extremes, you know, even though there are a lot of survivors. In fact, the Jewish account, the Israelite accounts include survivors, whereas in other ancient Near Eastern accounts, they don't

leave any room for surviving. You know, even though there are lots of survivors, typically, they'll say, we turned them to ash, we made them non-existent, and so forth. So that's how those ancient Near Eastern war texts typically operate. So much to process. And if anybody's listening who has read my book, Fight, because I have two or three chapters on this, if you're like, wow, sounds like Paul's getting a lot of this from Preston, let me be super clear. I got it from Paul. If you look at my footnotes or endnotes in that book, you've given a few examples. There's another one that I think is clear biblical evidence that hyperbole is being used. So the Deuteronomy 20 passage, Deuteronomy 20, 16, it's kind of like the main, or at least the one that gets the most attention kind of command where it seems like the Israelites are commanded to slaughter everybody. I mean,

it says, you know, only in the cities of these people in Canaan, the Lord your God has given you as inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. It's like, whoa, okay. So that's anything breathing, kill it. But in the book of Joshua, in Joshua 10, this is after basically the bulk of the conquest of the middle part of Canaan, southern part of Canaan. They're going to go north in chapter 11. But at the end of Joshua 10, verse 40, it says that, so Joshua struck all the land. And then it gets really specific. The hill country, the Negev, that's like the desert area, the lowland, the slopes, and their kings. And it says he left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed, that's Haram, I think, all who breathe just as the Lord God of Israel

commanded. This is a clear, what I say, intertextual allusion to the command in Deuteronomy 20, or Deuteronomy, yeah, Deuteronomy 20, 16. He's using the very same language. Now, here's the point. We know for a fact from the book of Joshua that there were survivors, lots of them. The rest of the book of Joshua talks about all the survivors that were left. So either here, and I've done this in class and I still, people like say, no, no, there must be another option. I said, either this verse is wrong, that there are survivors and Joshua 10 40 is wrong, or it's using hyperbolic language connected to the very command. So if since Joshua 1040 is hyperbolic because there

were survivors and because this verse is linguistically connected to the command, therefore, is it possible that the original command itself was hyperbolic? Do you have anything to add on that? And again, I might just be jacking this from your book. I can't remember where I got this, but this is because it's one thing to say, no, there's military language. It's excessive and all this stuff. People are like, yeah, but are you just punting to that because you're uncomfortable with the passage? But here we have clear biblical evidence that there's hyperbole being used. We'd love to hear.

Sure. Yeah, and again, I mentioned some of this in the – along with Matt Flanagan in our book, Did God, you know, Command Genocide? Did God Really Command Genocide? And also in this forthcoming book, Is God a Vindictive Bully? I have extensive charts where I compare the, I use the language of hyperbole in one sense, you know, man, woman, young and old, etc. And then it, you know, and then it talks about others, you know, talks about lots of survivors in the next column. So side by side, where there was allegedly, you know, there are allegedly no survivors left, you look, you know, maybe the next chapter, a couple of chapters later in Joshua, where you have those, you know, those cities being inhabited,

like the Jebusites, you know, in chapter one of Judges, where you even have mentioned that they could not drive out the, you know, it says they burned the city of the Jebusites, you know, with fire and so forth. And it goes on to say, it looks like he totally destroyed them, but it goes on later on to say that the Jebusites, city of Jerusalem, that they could not drive them out, and they are there to this day. So you have it right there. So I would mention not only that, but also, as I said, the language of identity removal, I think, is very critical because the focus on, say, Deuteronomy chapter 7, where it says, you know, don't leave alive anything that breathes, and so forth, it gives different commands. You know, when you have come into the land, you have driven them out, then you are to utterly destroy those who, you know, who are there, you know, and not leave alive any debris, show no mercy, etc. And then it goes on

to say, and do not intermarry with them, do not make covenants with them. Well, if you've already them out, then what are you doing making covenants with them? Why are you intermarrying with them? And then it goes on to talk about destroy their religious, you know, items, their shrines, their, you know, their ashram poles, theirherah poles, their altars and so forth. And that really is the focal point, to destroy those things that give the Canaanites their identity. So long as those things are in place, those shrines and altars and so forth, that is going to be the source of temptation. But you get rid of those things, and then having Canaanites in your midst isn't a big problem, because all of their identity markers have been removed. All of those

things that give that, in a sense, give their religion or their, you know, their peoplehood, its religious power, have been removed. It's been, the sting has been removed from that. And that really becomes the focal point in the book of Deuteronomy, that that is the major, major emphasis, that he didn't get rid of those things that made them most vulnerable, namely those religious objects, those shrines and so forth. But the Canaanites themselves, that wasn't the particular issue. In fact, they're not chided for the – as time goes along, even though there are Canaanites dwelling in the land, the problem is idolatry, not Canaanites. And that's really what the focal point becomes. So just to bring it back to Deuteronomy 20, or even just the command as a whole, are you saying, I would love your succinct maybe summary,

when God says, don't save alive anything that breathes, annihilate everybody, are you saying that that's not a command to kill every single man, woman, and child living in Canaan? And if it's not that, then what is it? Sure. Well, I mean, you've already made the point, so thank you, Preston. You've already said that if the language in Deuteronomy is being carried out by Joshua, and it says that Joshua carried out all that Moses commanded, but yet you have lots of survivors, then clearly something hyperbolic is in view here, that there's something more going on than just, you know, an annihilation, a genocide, that sort of a thing. It's something like that. Keep in mind that you can, you know, the language of having a decisive victory, you know, and that is sufficient to call something haram, utter destruction.

Okay. Even if you have a lot of survivors. And that's what a number of commentators, you know, like John Walton and others, David Firth, Lisa Rae Beale and others. So I'm not just making this stuff up. Lisa Rae Beal and others. So I'm not just making this stuff up. There are a lot of commentators who are coming to acknowledge these sorts of things, that it just simply means that there was a decisive victory. And the language that can be applied to that is haram, utter destruction, or however that's to be translated. Yeah. And I can verify, I can't repeat it off the top of my head, but when I did research on haram, man, that opened up a whole complex window.

This is a really complex word that's really hard to translate consistently in English because it just has some complex roots to it. In fact, it's applied to Israel in Jeremiah 25 where Judah is going to be, God says, I'm going to utterly destroy you and leave your cities in everlasting desolation. Well, the everlasting desolation would last 70 years. And, you know, though Judah has been incapacitated politically, militarily, you know, economically, religiously, all of these, you know, institutions and so forth have been, you know, decisively damaged. As a people, they still remain. It's kind of like that Nazi Germany example that I gave.

And so that language is applied to them. That language of haram is also applied to the Israelites in Deuteronomy, where it's simply the equivalent of going into exile. It's simply the equivalent of going into exile. And so I bring that out in the forthcoming book, God of Addictive Bully, that there are multiple ways of using the term haram. It's not a uniform language of, say, utter destruction. It has multiple, you know, it can be used in, you know, like identity removal, consecration, exile,

those sorts of things. Smashing the paganism that was all over the place in the land. So here's, I guess, a follow-up question. Where did Israel go wrong then? Because the first, well, the whole book of Judges, but especially the first two chapters seems to, and it's not, it's more kind of built into the narrative, it seems, that they didn't actually fulfill all the commands. So on one sense, it seems like they did, like they took over the land in a general way. But then Book of Judges, the whole, it's set up like, ah, they didn't actually fulfill the command completely. Or am I not understanding? That's how I've always traditionally understood

it. So yeah, where did they go? Where did Israel go wrong? Yeah. Again, the primary issue is the idolatry that, you know, in fact, the issue in Judges is that they continue to fall into idolatry. You know, in the language in Judges, you didn't drive out those Canaanites, but you are engaging in their idolatrous practices. You haven't destroyed their religious objects. These things have become a snare to you. And so you have that cycle of, you know, come a snare to you. And so you have that cycle of, you know, of the, you know, getting caught into idolatry. Then they become overrun by other people and are oppressed by them. And then they cry out to the Lord and the Lord sends up, raises up a deliverer and so forth. So that type of thing. That's helpful. I got one more question on the conquest, and then I'm going to move on to some

of these other passages while we have time. It's still like, if I am honest with my, so I always come at scripture like, hey, look, God's creator, I'm not, the problems of the Bible are really, I'm going to trust God. It's the best story told. There's still issues that are like in my own flesh. I'm like, I'm uncomfortable with that, but that's probably on me, not the Bible. And I can live with that tension. So even everything you said, if everything's true, it still could feel like the crusades. We're going to go over and, oh yeah, if they convert, we won't kill you. So Rahab, either we're going to kill you or convert or whatever. that doesn't always sit right with me. Like, even if it's not wholesale, even if we shouldn't say, you know, genocide or wholesale annihilation, it's like,

it's still like, oh yeah. So if they turn to Yahwehism, then we won't chop your head off. Like is that, what do you do with that? Or am I still not interpreting it correctly? Well, a couple of things. First of all, and I go into more detail on this in the book, Did God Really Command Genocide?, where the Crusades are largely defensive warfare. There are some abuses, but largely those in Christendom are simply trying to defend themselves against Islamic intrusion and being overrun by, you know, by Muslims. So I go into detail on that, so I won't rehearse that here. So Crusades may not be the best example to use, but when it comes to the notion of, because the Crusades weren't a matter of convert or, you know, or else. or else. But on the other hand, when it comes to this notion of God and Rahab and others who sign on and become part of Israel, keep in mind the problem is still that the Canaanites were wicked. They were not necessarily the most wicked people who lived during that time,

but still sufficiently wicked for God to bring judgment upon them through the Israelites, unless, of course, they repented, aligned themselves with Israel, or, of course, they could simply flee. In fact, we do have, you know, if you do a DNA test of those who are actually living now in Lebanon to the north of Israel. Those are the forebears of the Canaanites. So they eventually did migrate up northward toward Lebanon. But again, so that sort of a scenario is indeed possible as well. But again, there's also the reminder in Joshua chapter 11 that no people were willing to make peace with the Israelites. And so it seems like there's this statement that leaves that open to coming to terms to making peace with the Israelites, whatever the

configuration was. I mean, you can still live at peace with the Israelites, but so long as you destroy the idols in the land, then you can live at peace with us. I mean, that's really what is being called for. Okay. Okay. That's helpful. All right. This might not be the most significant one, but I feel like it has come up so much in my life in the last year or so. What's going on with Elijah and the bears? You got these kids mocking Elijah for being bald. And it seems like God, I don't have the passage in front of me, but God sends female bears to maul these teenagers. Am I retelling that story correctly? Why don't you just... Yeah, 2 Kings 2, and of course, Elijah has just departed in chapter one of 1 Kings. And of course,

this, you know, the Baldy contrast, you know, this is, it seems like an intentional contrast with Elijah, who was hairy. We're told in chapter, you know, that he is, you know, he's got the Rogaine thing going on. So he's, you know, so Elijah leaves, he goes on up, and then these youths say, go on up, probably referring to this departure of Elijah by the chariots of fire. departure of Elijah by the chariots of fire. And so what is going on here? Well, a few things to keep in mind. One is that these are not just little kids on the playground, say, calling a prophet baldy. These are young, the same term is used of David who killed a lion and a bear, term is used of David who killed a lion and a bear, who is called a mighty warrior. This is used of his brothers, you know, in Eliab, the big strong Eliab, and so forth. So these are young men, it's a term used of those who are, you know, males, it could be adult males, who don't yet

have their own household, so they're not married yet. Also, the same language is used of Rehoboam's royal, you know, his friends in the royal, you know, household who, you know, who are saying, you know, should you listen to the elders or should, you know, and Rehoboam says, listen to my peers. Well, again, the same term is used. These young men who are probably also have kind of a royal connection, and that's probably true in 2 Kings chapter 2, where these young, namely Bethel, which is a center for the northern kingdom's idolatry. go after other idols, if you violate my covenant, I will send wild beasts so that you will be bereft of your children. And sometimes that word bereft is translated rendered unfruitful. Interestingly, that same term is used in 2 Kings chapter 2, where Elisha has already gone to Jericho, and you've had the contaminated waters, and Elisha makes them pure. And it says, you know, he goes into a place that had been rendered

unfruitful or bereft, and now he makes it fruitful. And so now when this prophet comes to Bethel, here should be this, this prophet should be received, and he can bring blessing to a place like Bethel, but because of its idolatry, he is rebuffed, he is mocked. And so these bears come out, and the parents are bereft of their children, just as the covenant stipulations had promised, the curses and the blessings. So this is all predicted, it is anticipated, and that, I think, gives a little bit more context to what's going on in 2 Kings chapter 2. So these young men, not youth, not like 13, 14-year-olds, but young men, could be connected to the cult at Bethel, which was ruthlessly condemned, and you're saying that their death by the bears

is kind of an extension of the covenant promises, which includes the blessing and curses, for their connection to this really profound paganism that was going on. Oh, interesting. Okay, that's how... I've never actually looked into the passage. I just have read it and I've never caught any of that stuff. That's super helpful. Okay. How about Uzzah? This is, what is it? Is it 2 Samuel? I want to say 6? 6. 6. Carrying the Ark on a Cart. This one I have looked into a little bit, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Carrying the Ark on a Cart, which is explicitly prohibited by Leviticus. And if you touch the Ark, you die. I mean, that's already kind of in there.

So they're doing something, carrying the Ark in a cart that was held captive in the Philistine country, which even that was a whole mess. The ox stumbles. Cart is tilted. Ark of the Covenant is about to fall off. He reaches up, tries to save it. Good motivations.

This is where people get hung up. It's like, who wouldn't have done that, right? Like, here it comes. The Ark's going to fall. What are you going to do? Just get out of the Covenant is about to fall off. He reaches up, tries to save it. Good motivations. This is where people get hung up. It's like, who wouldn't have done that, right? Like, here it comes, the Ark's going to fall. What are you going to do? Just get out of the way? And he reaches up, tries to stop it, gets struck dead. How do we wrestle with this passage? Yeah. Well, you've already hit on a couple of things that are important to remember as part of the context. Like you said, the, you know, there had to be, you know, the one, the Ark had to be carried with poles through the rings in the Ark, and it had to be carried by the Kohathites, who were a subgroup of the Levites. And so it was to be done. And keep in mind, David himself had commissioned the ox cart scenario, so he should have known better. Also, you have a, the Ark had also been in the household of Uzzah was already there, who knows, maybe like familiarity, breeding contempt, uh, or at least taking something lightly that, uh, that this, uh, you know, the one who had been there had, had, had lived with the ark, uh, in his midst, uh, you know, maybe takes for granted some of the, uh, the holy stipulations that, uh, that, uh, that God had, uh, had God had commanded. And so you have, it's also interesting too that lessons should have been learned from the Philistines too, because once the Ark was in Philistine territory,

there were people who, Philistines who looked into the Ark and of course were struck down. There were of course plagues associated with the tumors that broke out in the Philistine, you know, in Philistine territory and so forth. So there's already warning. And it's very interesting that even when the Ark, you know, and again, the language is interesting. If you read in 1 Samuel chapter 4, where you have the Ark being taken into battle as kind of like a good luck charm, you know, it says, it talks about the Ark that, you know, above which, you know, where the cherubim are above which, you know, God sits. You have that same language that's used just before David has it transported. And so there's a kind of a mark of, this is very significant. This is very, you know, we're dealing with holy things here,

but yet they're being treated with such, in such a slipshod way, with such disregard for what God has actually stipulated should be done with this holy object. So, again, it's, there's, there are all sorts of rules that are being broken here. And even if the ark had fallen to the ground, it wouldn't have made the ark impure or some some dirt is just dirt. But so there's no, in a sense, contamination or impurity that comes to the ark if it falls to the ground. So anyway, those are some things that are, I think, helpful to keep in mind as we look at that kind of a context. But when Nadab and Abihu are struck dead for offering strange fire in Numbers chapter 10, the Lord says to Aaron and Moses that those who would approach me must treat me as holy. holy. So the closer you get to God, the better prepared you are to be, especially in this Old Testament setting where you had all sorts of stipulations, the closer, you know, the high priest especially goes into that, you know, the holy of holies once a year and has a rope wrapped around his waist in case the bell stops tingling, you know, at the bottom of his robe, and he's got

to be pulled out because he's been struck dead. So if you get that close to God, you better be well prepared and follow all the stipulations. I mean, do you think some of these problem passages is due to a modern underappreciation of the holiness of God? I mean, here's where maybe my conservative background is still very much alive and well. I don't know, like when I read the Bible, there is a deep, deep, fearful concern for the holiness of God. And I know through Christ, you know, the curtain's been rent and we're in a different dispensation, but that doesn't mean God's holiness has changed.

It just means our access to his holiness is profound. Like God has brought us up to him. It doesn't mean his holiness is, oh, I'm not holy anymore. I'm just your buddy. Like, I don't know that, that profoundness and, and yeah,

just the severity of God's holiness seems to be so written in scripture. And yet that is one of the most politically incorrect things you could ever say inside and outside the church. I mean, to talk about some being that's so holy that if some people

violate that, they get struck dead. Like that is, few pulpits would even preach that today. You know, like that's, do you think that's part of the issue? I mean. I think you're hitting on something very important. I mean, we operate in a world where you don't have, say, certain taboos, you don't have, like, related to, you know, blood and semen and so forth, that there are certain things that we, or even, you know, dead bodies and so forth. These are the sorts of things that we just kind of gloss over in Scripture. But you can imagine people from, you know, even if outside of israel and some of its sacred you know the sacred uh cultic practices and other religions you touched that you defiled that you

went into that place without preparing yourself i mean these are things that are seen as you know utterly you know inconceivable that that you would so treat this with such disregard. And you're right that the barriers have been torn down, but as one of the texts that I interact with quite a bit in my forthcoming book, Is God an Addictive Bully?, is Romans 11.22, still in the New Testament. is Romans 11.22, still in the New Testament. Now, behold then the kindness and severity of God. And you look at how Jesus is proclaiming judgment upon the cities where miracles are being performed. You know, if the miracles performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes. And so there is a greater penalty that those people from Sodom will stand up and condemn the cities of Jesus' day because the

responsibility is so much greater. And so you see that in the book of Hebrews, that if by the law of Moses that in the presence of two or three witnesses, someone was put to death. How much more severe will it be for those who trample underfoot the Son of God and so forth? So you see that great contrast. There's greater love manifested in the New Testament in Jesus Christ, displayed powerfully, beautifully. But there's also greater severity that goes along with that, too. That probably explains, I mean, Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. You got second coming passages like 2 Thessalonians 1. We mentioned offline, Revelation 2 and 3.

I mean, Jesus, he's got some pretty harsh words, you know. And yeah, I think that's helpful. I mean, so even if there's an uneasiness in my own heart with some of these passages that's a that's part of it's like well that's my default should be like i'm the creature he's the creator the uneasiness is really still my problem i can be honest with that i can be honest like even you know i still read the other passage i'm like i have a theological explanation they're still like oh there, this is a little uncomfortable. That's okay, but the uncomfortableness shouldn't be.

And I, you know, well, I can never love a God who would. Like just that, that phrase has never made sense to me. Like what do you mean? Like the kind of God that even undergirds the logic of that phrase shouldn't be God anyway. Like if we're the ones deciding whether we're going to love that God or not love that God, or if God does this, then he's out. You know, it's like, well, who's really God here in this language game we're playing?

But I don't know. Like I'm trying to wrestle with that tension of being honest with things that are, you know, troubling and yet have a better theological framework for how we view those troubling passages. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I'm not trying to,

and I hope I'm not giving the impression that, oh, you know, you know, just reading my books and all these problems are, are dissolved. There are still things to wrestle with things that, you know,

well, I wish it could be different or toned down or something. You know, that's just where I'm coming from in my more modern mindset. But a couple of things that are helpful. One is, of course, we're often quoting C.S. Lewis these days in the Chronicles of Narnia, you know, Aslan is portrayed, the Jesus figure is portrayed as being good, but not safe. Yeah, I love that line.

I think it's important to keep that in mind, that Jesus is, I think it's important to keep that in mind, that Jesus is—do not take Jesus lightly. I mean, his authority, you know, he can be severe. And we need to—and I use the contrast of Jesus is one who both is the person who will not break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick. But on the other hand, Revelation 12, he will rule the nations with a rod of iron. So you see both of those. There's the tenderness, the kindness, but there's also the severity and harshness if that is needed. But also another, you know, I think another reminder, you know, here, just basic God 101, but it's good to keep in the forefront that if there is something that is evil, if there is something that is intrinsically wrong, God is not going to command it. God will have a morally sufficient reason for doing it, that God will be vindicated in the end, and that all of our maybe objections, I mean, as strong as we think they may be, ultimately, you know, God is going to be,

is not going to do something that is unjust. God is going to see that things are set right, even if at this moment we can't see it. You know, like, for example, the practice of infant sacrifice. You know, Jeremiah, a couple of times it says about this practice of burning your, you know, having your children pass through the fire, and the Israelites imitated that. He said, I did not command it, nor did it even enter my mind. The picture being, you know, this is so far removed from me, this is so evil, that it's as though I hadn't even thought about this. Where did you guys come up with this? This is so far removed from my character. And so in the same way, we ought to

recognize that if we, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our Heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask? So, you know, give good gifts to our children, how much more will our Heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask? So, you know, every good and perfect gift comes from God. And so whatever is, you know, whatever negativity, whatever questions we may have about, well, that just doesn't seem to square with my understanding of God. God has shown himself to be trustworthy, reliable, faithful, and good, especially in the manifestation of Jesus Christ for our behalf, laying down his life for us, sinking to the very depths so that we might be rescued, we can entrust some of those muddles and questions to him, being confident that if God is willing to go to these lengths to rescue us, we can trust in his goodness, even if we can't

see it in this particular question or that particular question. Super helpful. Let's go to one more and then we'll probably have to close out our time. Let's talk about women in the Old Testament. Several passages that read from our modern Western context, we're like, what in the world is going on here? I feel like they're kind of clustered around Deuteronomy 21 to 24. You've got the so-called, you know, marry your rapist laws, which I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Sandy Richter's got some great thoughts on that. I think that's been mistranslated and interpreted. But you have that other prisoner of war, if you go in and conquer an enemy and you find a woman that, a dead soldier's wife that you think is good looking and you want to marry her, great.

Grab her and bring her home and just a lot of stuff that's just very foreign and should be troubling to our eyes at first glance. But I don't know if you want to take a specific passage or a framework or how should we think through how the Old Testament views women? Yeah. Well, in the Moral Monster book, you know, let's take the Mary Rapist accusation. That passage itself in both Exodus and Deuteronomy 22 is referring to a seducer, that the seducer is the one who, you know, it's sort of like what we'd call statutory rape,

is the one who, you know, it's sort of like what we'd call statutory rape, where it's not a forcible back alley kind of sexual assault, but someone who is seducing a younger woman. And so the question is, well, would you want to not marry your rapist, but marry the one who seduced you? So that's a far different picture. And of course, in that sort of a scenario, and commentators generally agree to this, that it's not something that's forced upon the young woman, but rather it's something that is decided upon between her father and her. And then if he says no, then he has to pay double the amount of what the, quote, bride price would be. In other words, the security that was given to the woman in the event of her husband's death, that was just given for her own security to make ends meet. But so that price would be doubled because if there is,

if their virginity is lost, which was highly prized. It was expected that one would be a virgin going into marriage, that if that was compromised, then this would leave someone's future prospects looking very dim. And so that was a way of creating, actually, a lot of these laws are actually for safety, protection, security, rather than, oh, that, you know, trying to treat women in an inferior way. It's actually, these are often very much protective measures. Even that woman in Deuteronomy 21 who is a prisoner of war, but there is the possibility of being married, that there's a month basically of mourning, of saying goodbye, cutting your hair, trimming your fingernails,

and shedding your clothing, and basically a picture of adopting a new place within a new culture in Israel. And up until that time, if he decides to marry her, then fine, he has to go through the proper protocol. But there's no such thing as, you know, battlefield rape or something like that. That would have been prohibited in ancient Israel. In my forthcoming book, Is God a Vindictive Bully?, I have material on that issue of war, rape, and so forth, which, again, would have been prohibited, you know, sex was to be within a marriage context. And here, this is one of them, preparing the way for that in Deuteronomy 21, context. And here, this is one of them preparing the way for that in Deuteronomy 21, waiting that month. And then if the marriage, you know, if the desire is to pursue marriage, then fine, you go through the proper protocol. And again, she is not to be humiliated. So there's a regard

or respect for her, you know, if he decides not to marry her, that she is to be treated with respect. One of the things I really appreciate about your book, especially with the women passages, is you just constantly remind us of the ancient context in which these are written. And when we do have parallels to some of these laws in Deuteronomy and other passages, which we do have, right? A decent amount of parallels of other cultures

and similar laws. If we compare them to their own culture, would you say all or at least most of the Old Testament laws, when we have a comparison, that it is a humanizing improvement upon what is going on in the culture of the day? Is that fair to say? Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. In my forthcoming book, I have two chapters that look at the worldview of Israel encapsulated in comes to helping the poor in the land, to foreigners coming in, a whole host of things that I cover in that chapter. And so you're right. And that's why Deuteronomy 6 says that when the Israelites are actually living out the law, the nations around them will notice what a wise and understanding people this is. So the law is actually intended to, even though it's not bringing utopian ideals wholesale all at once, because there are,

after all, some laws that are given, as Jesus says in Matthew 19, because the hardness of human hearts. So it assumes that people will sin. It assumes that people are not going to live up to God's standards. So it's giving to us kind of a moral floor rather than a moral ceiling here. But God is meeting the people where they are. He's giving them, he's reminding them of the biblical vision in Genesis 1 and 2, and also meeting them halfway and pointing them in a redemptive direction. So you see over and over again, various aspects of redemption here, there, in comparison to the rest of the ancient Near Eastern law collection. So it really is striking. And I highlight that all the more in this forthcoming book. And to me, one of the most helpful things in your first book is God a

moral monster. And it's something that I have since seen in lots of different Old Testament scholarship treatments is this kind of ethical trajectory. You even said it, the phrase. And I've used this phrase, again, probably got it from you, that God is meeting Israel where they're at and slowly kind of bringing them toward a more ideal place. slowly kind of bringing them toward a more ideal place where, you know, that's why we had this trajectory coming from, like, the Law of Moses leading up to, say, the Sermon on the Mount or the New Testament, a more Christian ethic, so that it isn't improving upon ancient cultures, clearly, if you look at the historical background. But even still, it's not the ultimate ideal. It's a step toward that ideal revealed in the New Testament. Well, Paul, I can't thank you enough for your time. I just want to give another shout out to your book, Is God a Moral Monster?

And your forthcoming book coming out in October, Is God a Vindictive Bully? Do you think if somebody hasn't read Moral Monster, should they read that one first? Like is your Vindictive Bully book, is that building on Is God a Moral Monster? Or could somebody just jump straight to this other book? Yeah, you could jump straight into it. But what I do in – especially toward the latter part of the book is I build on things that I said in the Moral Monster book regarding women, slaves, servitude, and also warfare. So I can't cover, I don't want to repeat myself too much. So I see them as complementary volumes without having significant overlap. So I'm trying to avoid that. So they're like companion volumes, but you can

read them independently. But I think it's helpful to read them in sequence. You know, is God a moral monster first? And then, of course, going into the warfare thing, if you want to add, you know, did God really command genocide, which adds more. And then the vindictive bully book. I do have one more quick question before I let you go. Criticism against is God a moral monster? What would be some of the top critiques? And is there anything where you're like, yeah, that's actually a good point. I might need to change my mind on that or? Right. Yeah. And this is another reason to perhaps read the moral monster book first

is because I've done some tweaking and modification. So I have several chapters on punishments in the Old Testament and in the law, which sounds severe, burning, stoning, etc. And I've come to see that rather than taking these literally, although I do note that 15 out of the 16 potential death penalty cases or scenarios can be commuted to monetary payment. So I acknowledge that. But one of the things that I do note is that people in the ancient Near East, including Israel, probably didn't see stoning, burning, and so forth as literal, but basically a way to alert people saying, this is bad, avoid it. And so I go into detail on how, for example, adultery, which is potentially punishable by death, but it's often,

you know, it's typically handled through monetary payment or families resolving it between themselves. But you don't see adultery being capitally punished within the law of Moses, nor do you see it outside the law of Moses and then what's happening outside the law of Moses to see how these commands, these potential capital punishment commands are handled. So anyway, I go into a lot more detail there. And so I see a lot of hyperbole and exaggeration in those. And so that's a little bit of a departure from what I had done earlier. Okay. That's super helpful. Well, Paul, thank you so much for your time.

Yeah. I'm really excited about this next book. I'll have to maybe reach out to you, have your publisher send me a free copy. I always like to get free books. Absolutely. All right. Well, great to be with you. And thanks so much, Preston.

Always a pleasure. My pleasure. Take care. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm