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JB_Brother_4446
Guest
What we are discussing is part of salvation history!
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CeelosDeznos
Guest
Yes, and as a catechist I am offering an answer based on Catholic sources. Did you even read it?
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CeelosDeznos
Guest
Apparently my previous answer was not read or misunderstood by some.
I am both Catholic and of Jewish ancestry. The short of it is that it is not believed by scholars, Jews, historians, and even supported by Church scholarship that the events described in the Hebrew text regarding my anscestors is not literal in every detail. Just like the legends associated with George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, the midnight ride of Paul Revere, etc., the history of my people recorded in Scripture is not literal history but a religious re-interpretation of it.
There are many things which are not literal in the Scriptures about the Jews. For instance, the Bible claims that the Egyptians lost all their animals in the Fifth Plague (Ex. 9:6), but then says their now dead animals suffered boils in the Sixth Plague (Ex. 8:9), then claims that these same animals died again in the Seventh Plague by hail (Ex. 9:25), and finally says the firstborn among these beasts, still dead from the Fifth Plague, died from the Tenth Plague (Ex. 11:5; 12:29.) Is this literal? No.
The examples I gave in my answer are about what Scriptural details like this mean and how they contribute meaning to Salvation history. Remember, as a Hebrew it is first and foremost the history of my literal ancestors. I should know a little something about where my own people came from.
I was only trying to offer an honest answer. Sorry if you won’t read it.
I am both Catholic and of Jewish ancestry. The short of it is that it is not believed by scholars, Jews, historians, and even supported by Church scholarship that the events described in the Hebrew text regarding my anscestors is not literal in every detail. Just like the legends associated with George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, the midnight ride of Paul Revere, etc., the history of my people recorded in Scripture is not literal history but a religious re-interpretation of it.
There are many things which are not literal in the Scriptures about the Jews. For instance, the Bible claims that the Egyptians lost all their animals in the Fifth Plague (Ex. 9:6), but then says their now dead animals suffered boils in the Sixth Plague (Ex. 8:9), then claims that these same animals died again in the Seventh Plague by hail (Ex. 9:25), and finally says the firstborn among these beasts, still dead from the Fifth Plague, died from the Tenth Plague (Ex. 11:5; 12:29.) Is this literal? No.
The examples I gave in my answer are about what Scriptural details like this mean and how they contribute meaning to Salvation history. Remember, as a Hebrew it is first and foremost the history of my literal ancestors. I should know a little something about where my own people came from.
I was only trying to offer an honest answer. Sorry if you won’t read it.
J
JB_Brother_4446
Guest
So God showing up the gods of Egypt was not literal?
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CeelosDeznos
Guest
While the truth of God’s victory over the gods of Egypt is preserved in Scripture, it was often preserved using language that taught the religious lesson regarding what the event meant.
For instance, if the way it was written is meant to be literal, then you have to explain how Egypt’s animals died and rose and died and rose and died again from the Fifth to the Tenth Plague. If it is a literal retelling, then how does Scripture explain this?
The Exodus account is not written as literal history, but as a religious drama between YHWH and the gods of Egypt. Interestingly, Exodus is not the only preservation of this story. Jews have also preserved it in a varied form in their Tradition, in their liturgical customs associated with the Passover Seder and the Haggadah. Like Apostolic Tradition, this form of Jewish Tradition makes up a single deposit of faith in Judaism which consists of all that was handed down from Moses and the great teachers of Israel along with the written Hebrew Scriptures. In the Haggadah and the Traditions associated with the Passover Seder there are differences and additional details regarding God’s redemption of Israel not found in Exodus but accepted as being just as valid.
Why the differences? Exodus is part of Torah, the Law Code and instruction given to Israel as part of the Covenant between the Lord and the children of Abraham and Sarah. Torah is not the complete story of our salvation from Egypt. It is only complete when combined with the Litrugical actions and Tradition handed down from our fathers, similar to how Catholics view Scripture in connection with Apostolic Tradition.
So God did show up the gods of Egypt, but the genre or manner of narrative in Torah, in Exodus, employs a language that preserves and highlights the religious truths learned by the historic events over the actual details as they literally happened. If they were written down like a literal retelling of the events, it would read like a Wikipedia entry, as a news report and not as the religious instruction in Jewish law that it was meant to be. And you would have to explain the rising and dying and rising and dying and rising and dying of the animals of Egypt as recorded in the text.
The Church does not discourage a literal reading of the events, but it does caution against adopting the literalness common to Fundamentalism. The Catholic Church recognizes that the inspired text is first and foremost a religious one, and there are often levels of meaning and religious truth that cannot be properly tapped from a surface reading of the text at face value. This agrees with the way the text is handled in Judaism theology.
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CeelosDeznos
Guest
By the way, for those wondering, exactly why does Exodus read the way it does regarding the death of animals of the Egyptians? A literal reading seems impossible, and I can tell you that more than once anti-religious atheists have confronted me with this situation in an attempt to “prove” their conviction that the Bible is unreliable.
I pointed out some of the same information I mentioned above to JB Brother 4446. The narrative in Exodus is but one format in which our redemption from Egypt is described. Not only is it also preserved such as in our Oral and Liturgical Tradition, it is also described in various other types of narrative in Scripture, such as in the Psalms.
One such differing psalter account is located at Psalm 78:43-51. The manner in which the plagues are described here is not divided into the Ten Plagues we find in Exodus. By the reading of this particular psalm it seems as if one plague at times merged into another. Scholars have suggested that this might be the way it actually happened in history.
The Ten Plagues seem to suggest a domino effect: the Nile turns to blood, dead fish show up, the flogs flee the Nile to invade the homes, flies and boils scatter among the people and the animals. The hail storm and the locust invasion leads to a dense darkness, the type that comes from heavy sandstorms where few plants, crops, and trees grow. While a lot of this on the surface looks like natural disasters, they conclude with a very specific plague in the end, killing all the firstborn, as if God is signing his “signature” to the events.
From a reading of Psalm 78 it is not impossible that the livestock owned by the Egyptians were wiped out in one gradual swipe, so to speak. However their death included infection by boils, some of the stock being killed off in the hailstorm, and any remaining animals wiped out by the final plague. It may also be a hyperbole, which is very common in our languages, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino. Like in English, a hungry person might say: “I am hungry enough to eat a horse,” claiming that ALL the animals of Egypt died could be a way of describing how vast the loss of livestock was.
In Exodus it is divided into Ten Plagues to give a religious lesson common in Torah. Remember, Genesis - Deuteronomy is but one book in Judaism, Torah. Numbers play an important part as a catechesis device, such as the 7 days in the Creation story in Genesis 1, the 40 days and night of the Flood, the 12 tribes of Israel. While the numbers can be literal in some places, their significance gets repeated again and again to explain things that are not apparent from a surface reading. The number 10 in Torah refers to all things earthly, and dividing the plagues into 10 distinct acts teaches us that God’s triumph over Egypt and its mundane gods was total, complete.
But the effect of each of the plagues seem to have merged and come upon Egypt as if all at once, even if each of the ten events were originally separate challenges. Because of this, the Fifth Plague may have been pronounced upon Egypt’s animals that eventually ended up in the vast loss mentioned in the terms we read in Exodus. But it is still likely hyperbole because the Egyptians apparently still had horses enough to drive their army and chariots after the Israelites had been freed.
I pointed out some of the same information I mentioned above to JB Brother 4446. The narrative in Exodus is but one format in which our redemption from Egypt is described. Not only is it also preserved such as in our Oral and Liturgical Tradition, it is also described in various other types of narrative in Scripture, such as in the Psalms.
One such differing psalter account is located at Psalm 78:43-51. The manner in which the plagues are described here is not divided into the Ten Plagues we find in Exodus. By the reading of this particular psalm it seems as if one plague at times merged into another. Scholars have suggested that this might be the way it actually happened in history.
The Ten Plagues seem to suggest a domino effect: the Nile turns to blood, dead fish show up, the flogs flee the Nile to invade the homes, flies and boils scatter among the people and the animals. The hail storm and the locust invasion leads to a dense darkness, the type that comes from heavy sandstorms where few plants, crops, and trees grow. While a lot of this on the surface looks like natural disasters, they conclude with a very specific plague in the end, killing all the firstborn, as if God is signing his “signature” to the events.
From a reading of Psalm 78 it is not impossible that the livestock owned by the Egyptians were wiped out in one gradual swipe, so to speak. However their death included infection by boils, some of the stock being killed off in the hailstorm, and any remaining animals wiped out by the final plague. It may also be a hyperbole, which is very common in our languages, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino. Like in English, a hungry person might say: “I am hungry enough to eat a horse,” claiming that ALL the animals of Egypt died could be a way of describing how vast the loss of livestock was.
In Exodus it is divided into Ten Plagues to give a religious lesson common in Torah. Remember, Genesis - Deuteronomy is but one book in Judaism, Torah. Numbers play an important part as a catechesis device, such as the 7 days in the Creation story in Genesis 1, the 40 days and night of the Flood, the 12 tribes of Israel. While the numbers can be literal in some places, their significance gets repeated again and again to explain things that are not apparent from a surface reading. The number 10 in Torah refers to all things earthly, and dividing the plagues into 10 distinct acts teaches us that God’s triumph over Egypt and its mundane gods was total, complete.
But the effect of each of the plagues seem to have merged and come upon Egypt as if all at once, even if each of the ten events were originally separate challenges. Because of this, the Fifth Plague may have been pronounced upon Egypt’s animals that eventually ended up in the vast loss mentioned in the terms we read in Exodus. But it is still likely hyperbole because the Egyptians apparently still had horses enough to drive their army and chariots after the Israelites had been freed.
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fred_conty
Guest
Not only horses are mentioned. In the fifth plague also all animals died, cattle as well. But in the 10 plague, all the first born were killed, which states all the first born of the cattle as well.
Between each plague, it does not say how much time elapsed. And of course there is more time between the 5th and the 10th plague which might allow enough time to get more animals from neighboring tribes. Which would then account for the horses and cattle at a latter time.
“Do not hide your face from me: whenever I am troubled, turn to me and hear me.”
Psalm 101
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o_mlly
Guest
Deuteronomy 20:
13and when the LORD, your God, delivers it into your power, put every male in it to the sword; 14but the women and children and livestock and anything else in the city—all its spoil—you may take as plunder for yourselves, and you may enjoy this spoil of your enemies, which the LORD, your God, has given you.
15* That is how you shall deal with any city at a considerable distance from you, which does not belong to these nations here. 16g But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD, your God, is giving you as a heritage, you shall not leave a single soul alive.
Deuteronomy makes a distinction between treatment of nations far away and those close at hand whose abhorrent religious practices might, or did, influence Israel’s worship. This harsh policy was to make sure the nations nearby did not pass their practices on to Israel. usccb.org/bible/deuteronomy/20
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fred_conty
Guest
I would think that the order of killing all the Canaanites would be only for those in the promised land, not world over. For the promised land was where the Israelites were to settle down. So findings in other parts of the world of Canaanites wouldn’t be applicable in this particular situation.
“With all my heart I implore you to your face: take pity on me, as you have promised.” Psalm 118
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goout
Guest
This is what I hear you claiming in your interpretation of this passage:
God would not only approve, but actually command the slaying of innocents in the service of religious purity.
That would seem to contradict Christian theology.
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jcrichton
Guest
…I think that we are holding similar thoughts; perhaps I was not clear enough–for several reasons the Hebrews did not accomplish the task of exterminating all from the land they were to inherit; since you’ve offered a statement that demonstrates this, I thought it was necessary to point out that those who escaped may not have been pursued because the Hebrew people were not engaging in total annihilation of all people–those that escaped could have been thought of as drawn/forced/exiled far enough away from them so as to equal the command to destroy everyone and everything. Since the goal was to keep foreign cult/worship away from influencing them, they may have thought of those that fled (or negotiated some treatise) as weak enough to not pose a threat.
Maran atha!
Angel
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o_mlly
Guest
Friend, this interpretation is not mine; it’s the USCCB’s. Hit the link.
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LethalMouse
Guest
To be fair when evaluating the actions of an Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Almighty God…
Finite, ignorant, limited grasps on things let alone the seeming impact of things may not be what you in that capacity think
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Richca
Guest
The problem with ‘that there was more than a bit of truth to the main idea…they may have gotten a bit built up in the re-telling’ is that this amounts to a false statement, a false assertion not only by the human sacred writer but also by God who is the principle author of Holy Scripture and which is inadmissible. It is a form of lying called boasting to make a statement that goes beyond the truth. All manner of lying is opposed to truth and is a sin and all manner of lying, false statements, and sinning is incompatible with God, the principle author of Holy Scripture. The scripture itself says “Be not willing to make any manner of lie” (Sirach 7:14; Latin-Vulgate/Douay-Rheims).I was always comfortable with the idea they were based on a true story. That there was more than a bit of truth to the main idea. But they may have gotten a bit built up in the re-telling.
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joemccarron
Guest
It seems to me there have been several people saying that they believe the Church teaches some of these passages are to be taken literally or historically.
The problem is that the Church also seems to teach that there is an objective moral truth. And that God never directly or indirectly causes evil.
Now killing children would seem to be an objectively moral evil action. So would taking women and children as slaves. So if we are to interpret these passages as God really commanding or condoning these sorts of actions then the church teaching that God would never command or condone objective moral evil must be wrong.
It seems to me that interpreting these passages in a way that has God Commanding or condoning killing children or taking slaves contradicts church teaching.
The problem is that the Church also seems to teach that there is an objective moral truth. And that God never directly or indirectly causes evil.
Now killing children would seem to be an objectively moral evil action. So would taking women and children as slaves. So if we are to interpret these passages as God really commanding or condoning these sorts of actions then the church teaching that God would never command or condone objective moral evil must be wrong.
It seems to me that interpreting these passages in a way that has God Commanding or condoning killing children or taking slaves contradicts church teaching.
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hu324b
Guest
The bible clearly gives the reason why God asked this when they entered the promised land and as you read you will see that they did not do what God asked and the result of that decision. The people began praying to idols again even to the point of sacrificing their children to false idols. Could you insult God more that that? God did not want the influence of false beliefs and Idolatry in the promised land. Grave sins against God.
If you discount this story then did God really lead the people out of Egypt to the promised land - through the red sea - or did this not happen either. They go hand in hand you can’t separate these as separate incidents one leads to the other.
The Jews still to this day celebrate pass-over in remembrance of what God did so we know it happened. Jesus was celebrating pass-over at the last supper
These are not just stories and you have to see them from Gods position and why this was asked not mans.
If you discount this story then did God really lead the people out of Egypt to the promised land - through the red sea - or did this not happen either. They go hand in hand you can’t separate these as separate incidents one leads to the other.
The Jews still to this day celebrate pass-over in remembrance of what God did so we know it happened. Jesus was celebrating pass-over at the last supper
These are not just stories and you have to see them from Gods position and why this was asked not mans.
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hu324b
Guest
I also wonder what the world would look like today had the Israelite followed all of God instruction.
If we continue down this path of these are just stories pretty soon Jesus will be just a nice man with nice sayings and nothing but nice little stories that never really happened.
If we continue down this path of these are just stories pretty soon Jesus will be just a nice man with nice sayings and nothing but nice little stories that never really happened.
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LtTony
Guest
Thanks for the link. I may have to get that book. This subject has come up before in other forums. I have come here and searched the internet for answers, and the information has been a little confusing/contradictory for a piker like me.
That is one take-away I got from earlier research: the records on vague on if and when these deeds were accomplished. But then that leads me to ask, then why include it in scripture. This is a different, but related, subject, but critics of religion/Christianity point to OT law(s) that proscribe death for homosexuals.
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joemccarron
Guest
Hue324b
you are not addressing the fact that killing children is objectively morally wrong and saying god commands that would contradict Catholic teaching.
This would be true whether some canaanites and midianites made it out or not.
you are not addressing the fact that killing children is objectively morally wrong and saying god commands that would contradict Catholic teaching.
This would be true whether some canaanites and midianites made it out or not.
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