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Ray, I agree. Actually, the Laban slaying is the least offensive. It is the mass genocide and killing of innocent children that makes me want to throw up. That is what we are faced with in the OT. Not only that, but God himself (supposedly) killing all the people of the world (flood) and all the first born of the Egyptians (which would have included innocents). There are a lot of unjust things in the OT. I mean, some guy gets struck dead for touching the ark of the covenant yet Cain was spared. I can’t see a just and loving God keeping a son of perdition on the earth and killing some dude for trying to steady the ark. I think the Bible is very important and a true book. However, it has some whacked out stories in it. Many of the laws of Moses are also very cruel and unjust. I think there are some very damaging things in there. I know there is opposition in all things, including the scriptures. It’s just so frustrating. It’s hard enough for me to figure out, let alone try and teach my children.
I really like Valoel’s suggestions for discussion.
Fwiw, I don’t think any of those mass killings were God-commanded – and I don’t believe in a universal flood that covered the whole earth. I read the Jefferson bible to my kids. Maybe someone should do that with the BoM. 😈 Kids tend to be pretty inundated with violence at very young ages already through cartoons whether it’s StarWars/Clone Wars or Tom and Jerry. Not that they should be getting more of it at church, but that they’re learning to differentiate between real violence and “tv” violence. My son in first grade last year drew a picture of one of the kids who was teasing him with her head cut off by a chainsaw. And he had never heard the Laban story. I was really conflicted because he needs to understand what “threats” may be but it was so dang imaginative!
😳 JustMe I can completely agree with your concerns about the mass killings on all scales including the flood. We do have the option as Mormons of the 8th article of faith with its “translated correctly” but since as a Church we have the recent experience of Joseph Smith and his “translations” we know that the word is more correctly seen as “transmitted”. If we accept only a limited version of “translated” as in, the King James Bible was translated correctly from the existing Greek or Hebrew accepted standard text of the Old Testament then there is no wiggle room for any of the death and destruction visited upon the children of men. However if we are instead worried about “transmission” of the “Word of God” from the earliest times then we have many options. For example it is a standard academic position to understand that Moses was certainly NOT the author of the “five books of Moses” – the Pentateuch. First of all the scriptures themselves do not state that except for certain limited spots. The Documentary Hypotheses sees at least 4 main authors (or schools of authors) obviously using earlier material in either manuscript or oral form to tell the story of Israel from their own unique perspective and for their own religious purposes. Within that framework we can certainly see the “hand of God” directing the work but we have to understand that God really treasures free agency and He will allow things to get messed up.
My own hope is that with sufficient scholarship we will find that most of the conquest as a mass genocide as reported in 1st Samuel will be seen to be fairly simple propaganda written into the book centuries after the Israelites had settled in the land and intended to both engender fear in the the current “Caananites” still around and push the Isarelites towards a more pure form of their religion. We can see in First and Second Samuel and Judges that there are major contradictions in the conquest story in the Biblical text itself and that the issue of taking up “other people’s gods” was always seductive to the Israelites. So at this point I can offer little direct evidence for this interpretation but I am working at it and honestly feel that it is likely correct.
OK, this post is too long already. JustMe if you want to have a full discussion on the flood we should do that in a separate post (if you haven’t already done it on the board in earlier times), let me know.
First of all, I really like the OT. Secondly, I find its “heroes” deeply flawed and their morality repeatedly questionable, and yet those stories didn’t get white-washed in the telling. It seems to me that the application for the OT is almost entirely metaphorical for our day. I just like it – but I also like gruesome Grimms’ Fairy Tales and stuff like that. And remember, kids throughout time have not been sheltered from the gruesome like they are in our culture: they’ve witnessed massacres and beheadings firsthand; these types of things were considered entertainment. This notion that somehow the world is getting worse and worse for kids is a crock. Go back to the French revolution or the Hundred Years’ War. I was in Tunisia last year and we actually got to walk through a 2500 year old graveyard where children sacrificed to Ba’al were buried. It’s hard to imagine that this is how a significant portion of the human race lived their lives, but so it was. Eventually, they became reluctant to sacrifice children (imagine), so they sacrificed family pets instead. The gist of these times is that life was very rough – no technology, no way to deal with cataclysmic world events, no science to explain natural disasters, a flood or volcano could wipe out an entire people with no warning (because they didn’t know how to understand nature the way we do). So, they assumed that if something bad happened, they had to make a human sacrifice to the gods or the earth to stave off more disasters. And if that didn’t work, they would sacrifice more.
The Israelites only behave marginally better than the other groups that surrounded them. A lot of their behavior is motivated by simple tribalism – a desire to preserve their own in-group. They viewed all other groups as hostile threats to their survival. And, to some extent they were. If you are a Ba’al worshipper, and human sacrifice is required to appease the gods and stave off natural disasters, wouldn’t you rather sacrifice your enemies than your own people?
Greek Mythology is also full of the same types of beliefs, although they were a little more enlightened than some of these other groups. Ancient religions were essentially a substitute for science – a way to control (or think they could control through superstitions) the elements of nature that they did not understand. The Israelites were the first ones to say, no, we don’t believe in all these Gods – we only believe in ONE God, and we won’t worship a pantheon of gods or do human sacrifices. BUT, their actions are in many ways like their contemporary enemies; they said their god was a
jealousgod, and in that jealousy he starts to look a lot more like the gods of those other pantheistic cultures. And so do his worshippers. I’m coming to this topic a little late, but I must endorse Ray and Valoel’s views. I remember that quote by Dr Hayes, and I disagree with it as well. I think Fowler’s Stages of Faith are important for growing kids, and I think it is ok to give age appropriate Bible stories to teach certain concepts. As we get older, we are better prepared to deal with moral issues such as the Canaanite/Israeli wars, and whether God would command genocide. The Bible can be read on so many levels. Looking at the Old Testament from Dr Hayes perspective has been a real eye-opener for me. (And not to sidetrack the issue, but Bill, I hope you join in on the Balaam discussion on my blog.)
Like Hawkgrrrl, I really like the OT–specifically because it shows the warts and diamonds of the heroes. I think this adds a level of realism. Listening to Dr Hayes has helped me better understand and appreciate some of the paradoxes of the OT.
Thanks MH for the invite, we have been up to our necks in ranch stuff so haven’t done a lot online but will check in on Baalam. I agree with all of you as well but I like the cautionary feeling of her quote, sort of “here be dragons” on the edge of a map, take care when working with the Bible. What I love about the Yale course is that it shows so clearly how much reverence the Israelites and later Jews had for the already exisiting scriptures. They put together a library of scriptures that the people had come to view as sacred even if they contradicted each other and that makes for much more interesting reading than looking for moralizing examples.
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