That’s why we don’t read the Bible in isolation, without the lens of the Church.How do you get that from the story? God orders that the babies are to be killed, not the killing of babies is to be avoided. They were rewarded with land not punished. How did anything bad happen from the killing of the babies?
That’s only if you read the Bible without the guidance of the Church that you would come to that conclusion that it’s God’s command to kill babies.
I am granting that the story could be metaphorical. You didn’t offer a metaphorical reading. There is no symbolism in your statement. You simply offered a moral that is contrary to the story. Not sure how you come up with that or why you think it qualifies as a metaphor.
The killing of all the infants could have been a metaphorical killing.
Did you read Peter’s defense? Even he grants that God ordered the killings.
How do you metaphorically kill a child? What bad things happened?
Again, it could be read as a metaphorical killing.
By metaphorically alienating all contact with the pagans and idol-worshippers. It was a command to totally separate from pagan culture.
Slavery and exile. Death and famine and destruction. Chaos and confusion and disease. The Roman occupation.
So if the killing means separation from pagans, you are saying separation from pagans causes Slavery and exile. Death and famine and destruction. Chaos and confusion and disease. The Roman occupation
They shouldn’t have separated from pagans?But they didn’t follow God’s commands, Roscoe.So if the killing means separation from pagans, you are saying separation from pagans causes Slavery and exile. Death and famine and destruction. Chaos and confusion and disease. The Roman occupation
To be clear, I did not argue that God actually did order the killings, I am arguing that there is nothing that logically precludes an omnibenevolent and omniscient God from having done so. Whether such a God actually did is another issue. Other explanations for the narrative could be possible, including what PR is suggesting.
You are saying that the killing wasn’t killing but rather separation from the pagans.
The problem is that you are using one of the commandments given by God to the nation of Israel. You can’t simply appropriate it and insist, “This is what it means,” without reference to its intended meaning. What God intended it to mean would be crucial, since it WAS his commandment, after all.
The style of the Book of Deuteronomy, the last book written by Moses, is largely didactic, homiletic, parenetic, midrashic. In it, it states that a tree that bears fruit should be spared in time of conquest or war. Moses emphasizes restraint during war against one’s enemies; this idea of restraint is basic to Torah. However, there are also elements of evil that do not bear fruit and must be destroyed. These elements relate to the evil of idolatry. Hence, the killing of these people is not necessarily to be taken literally, as in a historical or narrative reading of the text; but rather, as a drash (i.e. midrashic) or didactic lesson regarding the evil of idolatry which bears no fruit as opposed to the tree which bears good edible fruit that can sustain successive generations. The style and context of the book of the bible in question must be studied and understood for any interpretation of a single verse to make sense.
This is more problematic in my opinion because what you are saying is that these people were so evil that they were beyond the help of even the most powerful being. Which would seem to negate his omnipotence. He was powerless to help them.
The taboo of killing other people can be found in most cultures. I don’t see the need to defer to only one culture. I shouldn’t have appropriated the biblical language.
Yes. This is one way it may be read.
Yes.
Yes. If one is to read the command today, that is one lesson we could distill from this story.
Egg-zactly.