I’m still new here, but not to message boards, and I was surprised there are so many Christians here. I applaud their (your?) courage and dogged determination, but not your blind faith. So I thought from time to time I’d post one of the passages alluded to in the title. This first one was referred to in another thread. The following is extracted from ChristianAnswers.net:
What they leave out is that what he ended up sacrificing was his one and only child, a daughter (who isn’t even named). When I returned to this passage years after I was no longer a Christian, it hit me that it wasn’t a story about Jephthah’s dedication to God and the courage and devotion of his daughter as it had been explained to me, this was pure human sacrifice. There’s also the story we’re all familiar with where God commands Abraham to kill his son Issac. Yes, God is shown as stopping it, but Abraham was going to go through with it, meaning he didn’t question the sacrifice of his son.
Would any Christian here put away any question in his mind to sacrifice his child if “God commanded it”? I believe no Christian here would do such a Satanic thing, but your faith in the Bible as the “Word of God” has to be schizophrenic given this and many other such passages.
I couldn’t even regard that as a hypothetical. Knowing Christ made the ultimate sacrifice for me and all men would negate any such thoughts. Now, If I had lived in the time before Jesus or John the Baptist and was very devout to God’s law, then it would be very possible I would fear God enough to carry out such an act. But, not with my present knowledge of the New Testament.
There is plenty of extra-biblical historical evidence that human sacrifice was a wide spread practice throughout the ancient world. It was practiced by middle eastern cultures from which Israel emerged. These stories and others are obviously reflective of that historical background. They are cautionary tales. They illustrate a dawning consciousness that human sacrifice is wrong. Unlike many other cultures that continued to practice human sacrifice, the practice was prohibited in ancient Israel.
Jdg 11:30-31 And Jephthah vowed a vow unto Jehovah, and said, “If thou wilt indeed deliver the children of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth from the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, it shall be Jehovah’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt-offering.â€
Jdg 11:36-37
And his daughter said unto him,“Do to me as has gone out of thy mouth, since Jehovah has procured the vengeance upon thine enemies the Ammonites.â€
Jdg 11:40
And it was a custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.
I think this puts the story into perspective – although all Christian scholars have struggled with this subject. It isn’t a question of what God wants, since it is an oath that Jephthah swore and felt he had to keep, but it was his daughter who was commemorated for her selflessness.
It is hardly an example for Christianity (sacrifice to God) but I wouldn’t want it to be scored out either, since it is the repulsiveness of the sacrifice that we learn.
Oh my God. Your telling me that human sacrifice was resolved by a human sacrifice. That’s an appeal to paganism, to believe that ritual human sacrifice has any ability to achieve salvific atonement. John the Baptizer didn’t teach human sacrifice, and neither did Jesus, they taught repentance which has been available to man since the fist act that was ever motivated by vanity.
I’m sorry but this is just more tap dancing. Ritual human sacrifice from within God’s chosen people and with God’s assent is a cautionary tale against ritual sacrifice? If so, then why doesn’t it, at least at some point portray God as angry, or Him preventing it from happening or something, anything? People are stoned for gathering sticks on the sabbath, but this is accepted nonchalantly.
An oath becomes evil when the avowed act is evil and carried through. Instead of God punishing or deriding evil, we have God sacrificing Jesus so that we wouldn’t have to achieve salvation through repentance. It’s just more Paulism being demagogued to the pagans. He wrote in Romans 4:4 “being saved is a gift; if a person could earn it by being good, then it wouldn’t be free–but it is! It is given to those who do not work for it”.
What I’m seeing here is rationalization in the extreme to protect a dogmatic commitment. These glitches mean something, that we’re not dealing with God, but with fallible men. If this were the only contradiction or example of blessed evil in the Bible, I might buy it, but there are hundreds of such problems.
Edit: I retract the statement that I would buy it if it were just this one instance. Truth is a majority of One.
Before I continue any more dialogue with you, does the New Testament of the Bible (KJV) not have any relevance to you at all? If it does, you would have to accept it all. If not then we have no common ground for argument. I won’t go into, ‘you say…I say’ diatribe. It won’t serve any purpose from my point of view.
felix dakat wrote:
There is plenty of extra-biblical historical evidence that human sacrifice was a wide spread practice throughout the ancient world. It was practiced by middle eastern cultures from which Israel emerged. These stories and others are obviously reflective of that historical background. They are cautionary tales. They illustrate a dawning consciousness that human sacrifice is wrong. Unlike many other cultures that continued to practice human sacrifice, the practice was prohibited in ancient Israel.
The Bible does portray God preventing human sacrifice from happening. In the very passage to which you refer, it states that God acted to prevent human sacrifice. Genesis 22; 10-12 states : "And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him."
Concerning the story about Jephthah sacrificing his daughter. Let’s first read the book of Judges to see how the Israelites were doing back around that time. Here’s some excerpts from the book of Judges:
Okay, it sound’s like the people of Israel are not doing very good as far as following the Commandments and such. It repeatedly says they “did that which was evil in the sight of YHWH”.
Now, let’s find out who Jephthah was:
Now, I don’t want to come across like a moralist, but Jephthah doesn’t sound like a model citizen to me.
Allright, now let’s get to the part where Jephthah makes his vow:
Now, according to the law the only creatures that could be “offered up as a burnt-offering” where lambs and cattle and certain birds. Human sacrafice was a big NO-NO.
Thus, I would try to understand the story about Jephthah’s daughter (Judges 11:34-40) in the context of all the above.
It seems that it does if one actually reads the whole story and doesn’t isolate Judges 11:34-40 from the rest of the book, or from Leviticus 18:21 and 20:2 (an ordinance given to Israel prior to the time of Jephthah).
Mainly because “Outlaws were gathered to Jephthah, and they went raiding with him”. The guy sounds like Poncho Villa.
We live in moral-ethical world where people are free to make choices, be they good or bad.
Because it’s obvious to most people given the sanctions against human sacrifice cited by Tunis.
Maybe. But the Bible doesn’t say that. That isn’t a necessary conclusion. The story leaves the matter open for us to ponder. It seems that you prefer pat answers.
“Evil is evil” is a tautology. But the same act may or may not be judged evil depending on the the context. If a man violently shoves a little child in the aisle of a grocery store it might judge that evil. If a man violently shoves a little child off the railroad track in order to miss an oncoming train we might not. Context is a critical variable for judging whether an act is evil or not.
Even more reason to wonder why this transgression was ignored.
A man the Bible deems to call a man of valor nonetheless.
Looks like you’re coming around to my deistic point of view where people have free will, free to make choices while God withholds His divine influence. And in isolation, that’s what this looks like, a man committing an evil act and God neither stops Him nor gives His opinion–he leaves us with our free will to figure it out as He has with every other evil act that has ever been committed.
In Judges 11:1 the Hebrew word is “gibbor”. The KJV renders it “mighty man of valour” , wheras the ASV reads “man of valor”. The NRSV translates “gibbor” as “mighty warrior”. The same word appears in Genesis 6:4 as “mighty men” in the KJV. The Hebrew word “gibbor” appears about 150 times in the Old Testament.
In Judges 11:1 I think the NRSV rendering, “mighty warrior” is the best. Although I’m not sure how English speaking people in 1611, the time of the King James translation, would have understood the word “valour”. It seems that “gibbor” can mean something good as in “a brave hero who is honorable” or something negative as in “a ruthless warrior bent on pillage and plunder”. Thus, it’s meaning would depend on context, as many words do.
Only if you believe that every Biblical translation is divinely inspired. If I believed that, anytime I felt uninspired, I would translate the Bible as a pick-me-up, kind of like Prozac or an energy drink.
I think its probably that nobody believes that every Bible translation is divinely inspired–but they all believe that theirs is. And for those who had to decide which one to put their faith in, how did they go about it.
Why do you think there’s so many translations, in English alone.
In any case, at what point does God stop protecting “His divine word”? And did you ever think about those curses in the Bible (one in the OT and one at the end of Revelation) that damn those who would add or take away from the Word. Why is such a curse necessary if such a thing isn’t possible?
I don’t believe the Bible is divinely inspired, but if it were, that would be God’s problem.
There’s a lot of middle ground between the doctrine of inerrancy and what I understand of your position so far. I don 't see evidence for the view that the authors were taking word for word dictation from the mouth of God. The books themselves never make that claim. (Not even “All scripture is God breathed and profitable for teaching” says that.) But does divine inspiration occur? In my experience, the answer is yes. Did it occur in the writing of the Bible. In my judgment, yes. Is divine inspiration limited to the Bible? In my experience the answer is no. In fact, what is needed to appreciate inspired writing is inspired reading.
PainfulTruth, you are not going to get very far taking one verse from the Bible out of context in order to further your own arguement against. Many have tried and have fallen flat on their faces in failure. so really, you are just waisting your time. sorry
It isn’t taken out of context at all. Human sacrifice is evil even if “God” commands you. I believe that 98% of Christians, if they heard God say such a thing, would sooner believe they were insane. And even if He was able to prove to you that He was God (which He should be able to do very easily), and swore you’d go to Hell if you didn’t, they still wouldn’t. I would tell Him Heaven would be Hell if I did!
Even though this is the only the first example (note the Vol. 1), I’d still feel that it was necessary to try if there was only one. Another minor contradiction of sorts is where Jesus says not to judge lest you be judged, then turns around immediately and says not to case your pearls before swine. How do you know who the swine are unless you make judgments? I was a swine once. I know from my own personal conversion that changing from a long, deeply held belief is traumatic and takes time. The person that had the most influence on me (not on what to think but how to) never knew that he had. So I barter my pearls for mustard seeds and spread them wherever I have the opportunity.
(I know the pearls and swine thing is a complicated and perhaps unfortunate juxtaposition. I believe there is wisdom there as well.)
I will post a quote under a new topic that I believe is the most important paragraph ever written about the nature of Truth and what might be the Word of God.
