Still have an extra book by the way
Book by Stephen De Young that I got from the Christmas exchange. People expressed a lot of interest, so just going to outline a few thoughts. Still have an extra copy if anyone wants it. The book is written from an Orthodox Christian perspective, which is not surprising considering it was originally a recommendation by Zobel. You'd barely be able to tell though. It would fit on the bookshelf of any fundamentalist evangelical or Messianic Jew without any issues. The amount of times the Church Fathers were referenced or the Orthodox Church is probably less than 10.
What I liked:
The book takes a direct, unapologetic look at episodes of violence. It mostly focuses on the Old Testament, but plenty of New Testament stuff is in there for context. It doesn't try to pretend the violence never happens. It doesn't try to argue that the these orders from God were misinterpreted by violent men. It also doesn't try to say that it was a different time and that things have completely changed from the Old Testament to the New. The only thing that comes close is that idea that God has shifted from physical warfare to spiritual warfare. He otherwise puts an emphasis on the continuity of the nature of God from the Old Testament to the New, and the continuity of His relationship to his people that I really appreciated.
What I didn't:
Really just a few things. One of "justifications" for the extermination of several Canaanite tribes is that they were Giant Clans. I get the point he's making, but it sounds suspiciously like dehumanizing the other guy so you can kill all of them. That's really genocide 101.
Second, he didn't address my biggest problem with violence in the OT. I get that God is sovereign, master of life and death, and He can kill or save whomever He wants. If He wants to send a Flood, destroy a city, and send a plague then that's His prerogative. It doesn't give me warm fuzzies, but it sort of goes along with the whole thing. My question is: why does an all-powerful, perfectly just God need humans genocide other humans? If He wanted the Giant Clans dead, then He could have just killed them. Involving the Israelites can only makes things go wrong. Even if they go perfectly, you've got a bunch of Israelites with PTSD or a bunch of evil psychopaths the thrill of their lives. Not to mention people thousands of years later trying to explain this to believers and skeptics alike.
Some of the individual points in brief:
God's justice and plans for creation are perfect. The only thing that can mess that us is humans using free will to rebel against God's order. God's justice is not punitive, but God's justice merely restores things to the way they should be. At some point that involves either the willing cooperation of people or their deaths.
My favorite insight regarded the killing of children. As awful as that sounds. Imagine an good child surrounded by bad influences, who God knows will grow up to be evil. If they are killed while still good, then God has potentially saved their immortal soul. Imagine if Stalin died of a heart attack as a young man in seminary but before learning about socialism. Not only would Stalin's soul have been saved, but a huge amount of suffering could have been prevented. Obviously only God with his mercy and knowledge would be able to make that determination, and it would completely preclude any human person trying to make a similar determination.
He steers pretty hard into the whole Giant Clan aspect. This rolls back to the idea of fallen angels reproducing with humans and forming Giants. He does get away a little from the biological aspect of this and makes it more an attitude thing. The other names for Nephilim are "men of reknown", and another valid intepration of that Hebrew word is tyrant. So these could just as easily be called Tyrant Clans, full of exploitation and cruelty. So their culture was so irredeemable that it had to be wiped out. He connects this to the New Testament exorcism of demons using some Qumran texts that say the demons were the spirits of dead giants left behind.
Speaking of culture, he makes the point that eradication of a tribe doesn't just mean killing them all. For example, leaving no Ammonite man, woman or child alive can be accomplished by either killing them or converting them. If they convert or renounce being Ammonites, then they are no longer living Ammonites. It's a valid point that I had not considered.
He also makes the point about all the God of foreign nations being demons, and the wars were between Him and these rebellious spirits. I had a few issues with this. First, they all foreign gods are evil part. Can a goddess exclusively symbolizing motherly love be evil? What about a god of divine justice and mercy? After all, God has never hidden Himself from any of the nations, so why wouldn't they worship aspects of Him even incompletely? Second, not all the angels rebelled against God. What about all the remaining ones? Not that they should be worshipped, but do none of them have any purview? Or do only the fallen angels have dominion?
He also makes the point of sin being both contagious to other people and contaminating of the land itself. I think that point is a little easier to follow. We have modern examples of greed literally poisoning the land. So it's not hard for us to imagine sin polluting land in a spiritual way as well as a physical one. We've also all seen the ability of some ideas to go viral and cause immense suffering. Just look at the history of Communism in the 20th century and the untold amount of death and misery that came from that.
He spends a lot of time talking about animal sacrifice and bad examples of violence like Jepthtath and Sampson. Those didn't stand out to me as I really didn't have an issue with those things coming in.
Book by Stephen De Young that I got from the Christmas exchange. People expressed a lot of interest, so just going to outline a few thoughts. Still have an extra copy if anyone wants it. The book is written from an Orthodox Christian perspective, which is not surprising considering it was originally a recommendation by Zobel. You'd barely be able to tell though. It would fit on the bookshelf of any fundamentalist evangelical or Messianic Jew without any issues. The amount of times the Church Fathers were referenced or the Orthodox Church is probably less than 10.
What I liked:
The book takes a direct, unapologetic look at episodes of violence. It mostly focuses on the Old Testament, but plenty of New Testament stuff is in there for context. It doesn't try to pretend the violence never happens. It doesn't try to argue that the these orders from God were misinterpreted by violent men. It also doesn't try to say that it was a different time and that things have completely changed from the Old Testament to the New. The only thing that comes close is that idea that God has shifted from physical warfare to spiritual warfare. He otherwise puts an emphasis on the continuity of the nature of God from the Old Testament to the New, and the continuity of His relationship to his people that I really appreciated.
What I didn't:
Really just a few things. One of "justifications" for the extermination of several Canaanite tribes is that they were Giant Clans. I get the point he's making, but it sounds suspiciously like dehumanizing the other guy so you can kill all of them. That's really genocide 101.
Second, he didn't address my biggest problem with violence in the OT. I get that God is sovereign, master of life and death, and He can kill or save whomever He wants. If He wants to send a Flood, destroy a city, and send a plague then that's His prerogative. It doesn't give me warm fuzzies, but it sort of goes along with the whole thing. My question is: why does an all-powerful, perfectly just God need humans genocide other humans? If He wanted the Giant Clans dead, then He could have just killed them. Involving the Israelites can only makes things go wrong. Even if they go perfectly, you've got a bunch of Israelites with PTSD or a bunch of evil psychopaths the thrill of their lives. Not to mention people thousands of years later trying to explain this to believers and skeptics alike.
Some of the individual points in brief:
God's justice and plans for creation are perfect. The only thing that can mess that us is humans using free will to rebel against God's order. God's justice is not punitive, but God's justice merely restores things to the way they should be. At some point that involves either the willing cooperation of people or their deaths.
My favorite insight regarded the killing of children. As awful as that sounds. Imagine an good child surrounded by bad influences, who God knows will grow up to be evil. If they are killed while still good, then God has potentially saved their immortal soul. Imagine if Stalin died of a heart attack as a young man in seminary but before learning about socialism. Not only would Stalin's soul have been saved, but a huge amount of suffering could have been prevented. Obviously only God with his mercy and knowledge would be able to make that determination, and it would completely preclude any human person trying to make a similar determination.
He steers pretty hard into the whole Giant Clan aspect. This rolls back to the idea of fallen angels reproducing with humans and forming Giants. He does get away a little from the biological aspect of this and makes it more an attitude thing. The other names for Nephilim are "men of reknown", and another valid intepration of that Hebrew word is tyrant. So these could just as easily be called Tyrant Clans, full of exploitation and cruelty. So their culture was so irredeemable that it had to be wiped out. He connects this to the New Testament exorcism of demons using some Qumran texts that say the demons were the spirits of dead giants left behind.
Speaking of culture, he makes the point that eradication of a tribe doesn't just mean killing them all. For example, leaving no Ammonite man, woman or child alive can be accomplished by either killing them or converting them. If they convert or renounce being Ammonites, then they are no longer living Ammonites. It's a valid point that I had not considered.
He also makes the point about all the God of foreign nations being demons, and the wars were between Him and these rebellious spirits. I had a few issues with this. First, they all foreign gods are evil part. Can a goddess exclusively symbolizing motherly love be evil? What about a god of divine justice and mercy? After all, God has never hidden Himself from any of the nations, so why wouldn't they worship aspects of Him even incompletely? Second, not all the angels rebelled against God. What about all the remaining ones? Not that they should be worshipped, but do none of them have any purview? Or do only the fallen angels have dominion?
He also makes the point of sin being both contagious to other people and contaminating of the land itself. I think that point is a little easier to follow. We have modern examples of greed literally poisoning the land. So it's not hard for us to imagine sin polluting land in a spiritual way as well as a physical one. We've also all seen the ability of some ideas to go viral and cause immense suffering. Just look at the history of Communism in the 20th century and the untold amount of death and misery that came from that.
He spends a lot of time talking about animal sacrifice and bad examples of violence like Jepthtath and Sampson. Those didn't stand out to me as I really didn't have an issue with those things coming in.
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