Transcription
If you wish to see what peak intellectual dishonesty looks like, just ask a Christian apologist to explain some Old Testament verses.
I think you might have confused Christian apologists with Muslim apologists. But uh let's check these passages out.
All right, let's see it.
Like this one, which says, "If a man happens to meet a virgin who has not pledged to be married and grapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father 50 shekels of silver and then he must marry the young woman for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives." Okay, so let's get some context with Deuteronomy 22.
Are we going to get context or are we going to get some of that intellectual dishonesty?
You'll see here in verse 25 that Moses has already hit on the issue of a man forcing himself on a woman. So intellectual dishonesty it is because this content creator is entirely glossing over the actual context to provide a fake context because this content creator wants you to imagine that the verse that they're showing verse 25 is addressing the circumstance of sexual assault whereas verse 28 is addressing the circumstance of consensual intercourse. And that is inaccurate and that is intellectually dishonest because the full sense unit is here. It's verses 22-29. And this is divided up into three different sets of circumstances. And the main difference between the three sets of circumstances is the marriage status of the woman.
Because the first verse, verse 22, addresses what should happen if a man is discovered lying with the wife of another man. In that instance, they are both put to death. And it says, "So you shall purge the evil from Israel."
Now, verses 23-27, the largest of the three, uh, because it is subdivided, addresses what happens if there's a young woman who is a virgin who is already betrothed or engaged to be married. And it's divided up into two segments depending on where this thing occurs. So this is a different social status from what is addressed in the first passage.
The last section is verses 28-29. And this is what happens when a man has sexual intercourse with a virgin who is not engaged. So the marriage status of the woman results in a specific social status and the crime of sexual intercourse with that woman depending on her social status has a different punishment.
Now, here's where it gets interesting. In verse 24, we can see here that the man is put to death because he violated his neighbor's wife. Now, this requires an understanding that they're using slightly different terminology than we use today. When the woman becomes betrothed to the man, for all intents and purposes, she is married to him. They have not consummated the marriage yet, but legally she is his property because that's what a marriage was. It was a transaction where one man sold the procreative capacities and the sexual availability of a woman to another man and that transaction was the betroal and then the consumation occurred at a later date. And so the reason that the man is put to death is because he violated that set of property rights that that man had.
Now in this passage, the Hebrew word for violated there is ana, which means to do violence to, to humiliate, to oppress. He has violated another man's wife, specifically a woman who is betrothed to another man who is still a virgin.
Now, when we go down to verse 29, we get the statement that the man has to marry her and he's not allowed to divorce her as long as he lives. Why? Because he violated her. The verbal root is identical. So at least if we are just focusing on the crime that the man has committed, they are identical between verses 24 and 29. He violated someone. Anna, the verbal root is the same. The only difference between verse 29 and verse 24 is the social status of the victim. If she's already betrothed, then it is a specific set of property rights that has been violated. If she is not yet betrothed, it's a different set of property rights that has been violated. And what's going on here is that the father has lost the potential income from selling his daughter to a future husband, which is why the reparations for this particular tort are that he is paid an elevated bride price. That comes first. That's the first thing the law addresses. He must repay the father what the father has lost and an increased elevated fine. And then the other part of the punishment is that the perpetrator must marry the victim is never allowed to divorce her because he has violated her. In other words, he has rendered her unfit for proper Israelite marriage. She has now been robbed of any future where she is a good proper Israelite bride and wife. And so in order to make her whole, he must marry her and can never divorce her. So the crime committed by the man is identical between the two. The only difference is the social status based on the marriage status of the woman. If she's betrothed, death. If she is not betrothed, marriage.
And notice in the context of verse 25, only the man is at fault and only the man should be unal alive because the woman is innocent. So there's another thing to address here. Why do only verses 23-27, only the second circumstance, only the circumstance of a woman who is engaged but not yet married actually address the difference between what appears to be consensual and non-consensual sex? Why does the first verse not say anything about whether or not the woman cried out or where it happened? Why do the last two verses not say anything about whether or not the woman cried out or where it happened?
And this is where things get pretty counterintuitive for people today because they tend to think of these laws as actual law codes as actual jurist prudence that governed how judges ruled within a courtroom setting. And that's simply not true. This is actually propaganda. These laws probably never governed the operations of any courtrooms in ancient Israel. Very much the way the Ten Commandments are posted in front of some courtrooms in the United States today, but also do not govern what goes on inside those courtrooms. The courtrooms have their own set of rules and regulations and laws that govern how the judges are to rule. The ten commandments are there for propaganda. And that's what's going on with Deuteronomy because between uh Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy and a little bit of Numbers, you have multiple different law codes and they differ from each other and they directly contradict each other in a number of ways. There are a number of places where Deuteronomy is clearly amplifying or altering or even trying to supersede what's going on in Exodus. And there are places where Leviticus is doing the same regarding Exodus. And so most scholars think that these law codes were propaganda. They were scribal exercises. They were meant to structure power among elites. They probably never saw the inside of a courtroom. And we actually have a parallel to this because we have a bunch of law codes from ancient Mesopotamia that are very similar. In fact, the earliest law code in the Bible, the covenant code, is taken directly from the laws of Hammurabi. none of those other Mesopotamian law collections. And we know that in Mesopotamia, we have a bunch of courtroom proceedings, we have a bunch of lawsuits, we have a bunch of rulings. Never once does any ruling refer to any of the law codes that we have that were monumental inscriptions that were set up. And a lot of those rulings directly conflict with what is prescribed within those law codes. So, the majority of scholars think that those law codes were meant as propaganda to be set up in public as a way to put on display how just and how righteous the king was. You just looked at the laws and you saw how how very ordered they were, how logical they were, how just they were. And that gave you the impression that the king was an ordered, a logical, a just, a righteous ruler. And the same thing is almost certainly true of the law codes in the penetuk because you can't have all of these laws operating simultaneously within a courtroom. It just doesn't work. Not only are there too many gaps, but they frequently contradict each other. And so with that in mind, when we look at what's going on here in Deuteronomy 22 22-29, what we see is not actual legal juristprudence. But it's not actual governance of courtroom proceedings. What it is is an attempt to put on display how righteous and ordered and just the sovereign is. In this case, the God of Israel.
And so in verses 23-27, what we see is a single attempt to say we can even consider when a woman might not have consented. But they use the location as a proxy for that because notice it doesn't say if it happens in a city and she didn't cry out. Because notice it doesn't say if it happened in a city and she didn't cry out. It says if it happened in a city she didn't cry out. So it's trying to use the location of the event as a proxy because they don't really have a way of knowing whether or not she consented to it. And so they're just saying, well, let's just assume that if it happened in a city, she didn't cry out because if she did cry out, surely there would have been people around to hear and to have stopped it. And so the naive assumption is that, oh, if it happened in a city, then she must not have cried out. So she must not have objected to it. She let it happen. That is the logic of naive men who don't really know anything about sexual assault or sex in general. Because just a few verses earlier, we have this notion that a woman who gets married after the wedding night, if the man decides he hates her and accuses her of not being a virgin, her family has to produce evidence of her virginity. What is that? Well, most scholars have concluded that they probably had in mind bloody sheets. That would have been evidence that she was a virgin. And any women watching this video right now are going, "Ha, that's not how women's bodies work." And it's true. It's not how women's bodies work. That is the naive assumption of men who don't know how sex actually works. saying if she can't produce bloody sheets, she gets put to death because that means she did not have any evidence she was a virgin. She must not have been a virgin. So, the author of Deuteronomy 22 is a remarkably naive man who doesn't know how women's bodies work and doesn't know how sexual assault works and is trying to put on display that Adonai is so just and so righteous that in this one instance of a woman who is a virgin but who is already betrothed, we're going to show you we can consider what's going on here. Because if it happens in the open country, the text says she cried out there was no savior for her. The text presupposes she doesn't want it. The text presupposes that this was a sexual assault in the open country. So when it comes down to verses 28 and 29, we've already put on display our ability to perform this sensitivity to agency. We're done with that. So now we're just going to go back to doing what we did in verse 22 and just rule on one circumstance. And the ruling differs because of the social status based on the marriage status of the woman, not because verses 28 and 29 are about consensual sex. They're not, and we're going to get to that next.
Now to the verse in question. You'll notice in the video he specifically used the NIV translation uh to make his point here, but this is an ESV translation. And you'll see the word being used here is seizes and the context is the man seizes and lies with her. But notice something here. The condition is if they are found, that's when the marriage should happen. So we're going to look more into the context of the Hebrew word to see what's going on here in verse 28. The fact that they are found has nothing to do with the consent of the woman. The fact that they are found is a necessary element of this case being brought to the judges and the judges being able to rule on it. Because if they're not found, then all that's happened is someone has accused someone else and there's no evidence and the law codes are not addressing how judges are to magically determine what happened here because it's just one person's word against another. So the fact that they have to be found in order for the law to become involved is really the reason why you have that verbal root. and you don't have it in verses 23-27. Not because they're not found. How is the case coming before the judges if they're not found? It's that they're already using the verbal root to describe the way the man finds the woman. And so you'll see the definition means to lay hold or to wield. And you'll see that Deuteronomy 22 is the verse that this definition is applied to. So what's going on in the context is you have a man and a woman getting together in relation outside of wedlock and according to the law if they are found the man now has to marry her and can never divorce her. So that's not what's going on and this content creator didn't actually fully unwrap the point of appealing to the lexical entry for the verbal root tas. and they're only sharing a little bit of the BDB, which by the way is a significantly outdated resource. And this is coming from the Blue Letter Bible. Here's more of the entry, not the entire entry, but at least the intro and the call form. And I want to point out that this content creator seems to think that there's something about the glosses lay hold of wield that means this is not sexual assault. And this entry doesn't really support that because if you look down at the first indented paragraph number one, lay hold of sees with the hand accusative of person. Now, this entry doesn't make it clear enough. But what's going on here is that when this verbal root occurs and the object of the verbal action is a person, it is always referring to force. It is referring to violence. It is referring to taking custody of someone against their will. It is referring to seizing someone. It is directly synonymous with the verb kazak which is the verbal root that is used in verse 24 to refer to the man seizing the woman. So this very clearly is conceptually parallel to what's going on in the other case of sexual assault. This is a reference to sexual assault. Now, this content creator didn't get to it, but what most people who appeal to the Hebrew word tapas for this verse are trying to argue is that it can just mean to hold something without necessarily being violent because this verbal root is used to refer to wielding, handling instruments or weapons or things like that. And the people who appeal to the verbal root tafas and again this content creator actually didn't get to the argument they were supposed to get to. But the people who appeal to that are overlooking the fact that it only means that when the direct object of the verbal action is not a person when it is an inanimate object like an instrument or a sword. So the verbal root tapas when the object of the verbal action is a person always refers to force. So verse 28 indisputably is saying that this man is by force seizing this woman and lying with her. That is synonymous with the description of the man finding the woman in the open country and Kazak seizing her by force and lying with her. So this is very clearly referring to sexual assault. Based on the Hebrew, you cannot make a plausible case for understanding this as anything other than sexual assault. And as we've already seen, the verbal root ana is also used in both 24 and 29 to refer to what the man did to the woman. So the description of the crime and the classification of the crime are identical in verses 24 and 29. The only difference is the social status based on the marriage status of the woman. And that is the reason why the punishment in the first instance is death for the man. And in the second instance, it is that he must pay an elevated bride price. He must marry the woman. He's never allowed to divorce her because of his tort against the property rights of the father and then his violation of the woman's ability to get married in the future. And so reparations are made for both. And I go into more detail about this in the chapter on this passage in my book, The Bible Says.
So, what we get right and wrong about scriptures most controversial issues >> or the classic Samuel 15:3 where God supposedly commands a literal genocide where not even the camel or the donkey is spared. >> Yeah, if you just read the whole book of 1st Samuel, you would know that this is not a genocide. >> Well, not a successful one, at least according to the broader narrative. But what is commanded is indisputably genocide >> because we get to the end of the book and the Amalachites are still around. So what's happening here? What's going on here is you have different traditions being brought together. A tradition where there was not complete genocide and another tradition where there was. And this happens in multiple places. For instance, we can go to the book of Joshua in chapters 10 and 11. You rattle off the list of a number of citystates and people groups that were completely annihilated repeatedly saying that they killed everyone. They did not leave any survivors. They did not leave anything that breathed. And then you go look at Joshua 13 and it's like so anyway, all these people were still around and these towns had not been conquered. They're two different traditions and they're being brought together. And the presupposition of univocality compels apologists who refuse to allow these texts to contradict each other to come up with excuses for how they can both be accurate and how the text can maintain its univocality. Scholars have noted in 1st Samuel 15 that this is just ancient neareastern war rhetoric. Saul is not literally going to obliterate the Amalachites. He's simply going to defeat them in war. And when we see do not spare man or woman, child and infant and so on. This is just the use of marrorisms to communicate defeat, not a literal genocide of people. Scholars have noted absolutely no such thing. This is just something that apologists have made up. Remember, we've got contradictory accounts occurring next to each other. We're presupposing univocality, so they are not allowed to contradict. What can we concoct to make it sound like, at least to us, like everything is hunky dory? Well, let's make up the notion that the references to genocide are really just a specific type of wartime rhetoric where when it says you must not leave anything alive that draws breath, you must kill everything, man, woman, child, and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. Oh, that's just memss. Camel and donkey is not a meism. Ox and sheep is not a meism. Child and infant is not a meism. These are uh pros couplets. They are not meisms. And there is no such ancient West Asian literary convention of this kind of rhetoric. And we see other places in the Hebrew Bible that are talking about wartime in the same periods or at least set in the same periods where they don't say this. They are somehow capable of talking about victory over other cities without saying that we killed everything that breathes. We left no survivors. We did not leave any living. So the notion that scholars have uncovered this kind of hyperbolic rhetoric involving meisms, that's pure and utter nonsense. Scholars have uncovered no such thing whatsoever. Apologists have made it up to convince themselves that what's going on here is not that we have one tradition that says, "Yeah, it was a genocide. How awesome are we?" And another tradition that said, "And there were still a bunch of people around." um and they were brought together next to each other and that creates a conflict and they can't allow that to stand. And so they just made up this thing that allows it to not only resolve the conflict but also make it sound like it's not genocide. And really what it is is this concept of which is ritual slaughter which is a kind of human sacrifice. You are killing all the members of a given polity or people group as a way of purging the land of wickedness. It's a human sacrifice. And the idea is that this cleanses the land of Israel of the bad blood. And that is why the genocide is needed. And when we look in 1st Samuel 15, God commands the genocide and then Saul carries it out and says they they killed everyone completely destroyed them. And what did Saul leave alive? Some of the animals and Aog. And then after Samuel wags his finger at Saul for disobeying Adonai, Samuel is the one who slaughters Aog. So that means everybody is dead. Now yes, the Amalachites are still around after that because these are different traditions that are being brought together. The Saul tradition and the David tradition come from different sources and they don't fit together perfectly. And this is one of the ways that that happens. And we see this all over the Hebrew Bible. And we see it all over apologetics that cannot deal with contradictory traditions and must find ways to try to smooth them out. And additionally uses the opportunity of smoothing out contradictions to try to make the commands for genocide to go away. And it just doesn't work because it's not intellectually honest. These content creators don't know the scholarship. They just know the apologetics. They have heard people say, "Well, this is what scholars have concluded and it sounded good to them because it made the cognitive dissonance go away for a bit." And so they just turn around and repeat it on social media without knowing if this is actually anywhere in the scholarship. It's not. This is just poor apologetics.
or this one which says anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two since the slave is their property. So looking at this verse in an ancient neareastern uh context you'll see that the verse is actually protecting the slave ultimately God is holding the Israelites responsible for their actions in the context of how they treat their servants. So reading this in any other context would actually be dishonest to the historical setting and the context of Exodus 21. So there are two problems here. There's a problem with the attempt to try to defend this legislation as some kind of more benevolent version of enslavement. Even if you understand the New International Version to be correctly translating this passage and the fact that they are not is the next issue. But even if you understand this to be an accurate translation, it still means that a slave owner is allowed to beat an enslaved person to within an inch of their life as long as they recover in a day or two. There's no punishment whatsoever. That's immoral. That's not a more benevolent kind of enslavement. There's no such thing as a more benevolent kind of enslavement. And this brings up the second issue. That's not actually what the passage is talking about. The passage, as the majority of scholars agree, is saying if a slave owner beats an enslaved person and they survive for a day or two and then die, there's no punishment. And one of the reasons for this is the fact that it follows up because he is his kfv, which means silver, which means property. So the enslaved person is not a full, legal, and moral person. The enslaved person is property. And what is the relevance of the enslaved person being the slave owner's property? Well, it means that the slave owner has lost property. They have been punished enough. So, the logic is that if the slave owner beats the enslaved person to death with a rod, then it was done in anger. It was punishment, a beating that was done in anger with an intent to kill. But if the enslaved person survives for a day or two, then it was just discipline that accidentally got out of hand and they survived for a day or two and then passed away. So it was not done with the intent to kill. It was done with the intent to discipline and unfortunately the enslaved person passed away. And the fact that the slave owner has lost their kvf, their silver, their money, their property is considered punishment enough. That's the logic of the passage and that is similarly entirely immoral. So, uh this defense not only is inadequate even if we accept the mistransation, it has entirely glossed over the fact that there is a mistransation and the passage is actually a whole lot worse.
Ultimately, there's no reason to be dishonest about these verses. We simply just need to read them in their proper context.
So, neither of these content creators knows their proper context. What they know is the apologetic excuses that they have seen others be successful with that they are adopting themselves. They don't know the scholarship. They are not well trained enough to assess the legitimacy of these claims. They just know that they work apologetically. So they will deploy them. These are not scholars. These are not people who understand these contexts. These are people who are just regurgitating the apologetics that they have seen other people regurgitate. And because apologetics is about convincing yourself and convincing the people who already agree with you, the performance of confidence, conviction, and academic competence, whether or not that performance is convincing to adequately trained people is enough because you've achieved the goal of making people who already agree with you and just need to be made to feel validated in their dogmas. you just need to make them feel like it's good enough. And obviously, they're even less well-trained and so they are not going to be able to think critically enough or have the skills or resources to be able to see through the apologetic smoke and mirrors. So, I think it is intellectual dishonesty because it's not actually approaching these things critically. It's just taking up the apologetic argument because it works for them and then repeating it. But there's also a degree to which it may not be just because these folks don't know any better. They're not well enough educated about these contexts to actually be able to assess the quality of the apologetic arguments that they are simply regurgitating that they found elsewhere. But these are just weak apologetic arguments based on misinformation, based on intellectual dishonesty at its root. Whether or not that carries through to all of the iterations such as this video, I think it probably is to some degree intellectually dishonest, but at the same time, I think these content creators are also just being exploited by the people upstream from them. So either way, this is all pure and utter nonsense. And the fit for this video has been the old school Broncos.