Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Please Read OP)

Zombrex wrote: »

You appreciate that one of those outcomes is God condoning rape of prisoners of war, correct?

Er, that is what I quite clearly said in the quote you cited, yes. One of those optiions would, by any modern definition, be classed as rape,

And lets be honest, that is the more likely interpretation, agreed? If you looked at the text completely independently to any theological issues.

No, to be honest, it isn't.

Let's look at this from a purely historical standpoint. Throughout history it has been common for conquerors of cities to rape women. This can be seen in the Ancient Persians, in the Crusades (from both sides), and even in the last century (try reading Antony Beevor's harrowing account of the downfall of Berlin at the hands of Soviet troops in 1945).

It has also been common for women to voluntarily become wives of the soldiers that have conquered them. This was particularly so in ancient times, when victory in war was seen as a sign of divine favour, and when marriage was often viewed as a strategic alliance rather than a love affair. But this has also occurred in the last century, as when German women married American GIs.

So, the question is, does the practice in Deut. 21 sound more like a terrified fraulein being raped by the Red Army or more like a German woman marrying a GI and getting a meal ticket to the land of the free?

The stipulation that the woman must be given time to mourn her husband, extraordinary for that time in history, certainly contrasts greatly with the usual practice by which soldiers would gang rape conquered women as soon as a city fell.

Then we take into account the stories in Scripture of Rahab and Abigail - women who readily agreed to throw in their lot with those who would have previously been their enemies, and, apparently willingly, married them.

So, leaving aside any theological considerations, I would probably be inclined, on historical and textual grounds, to see the non-rape option as more likely. But I'm not ideologically wedded to that, and would be prepared to change my mind if evidence were presented to support the other view.

The other text mentioned was Deuteronomy 20:10-15

10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

I don't see any mention of rape there, or even of marriage, do you? You might as well argue that they raped the children and the livestock too.

How such commandments were carried out by Moses and by the soldiers is described in such passages such as Numbers 31. Its a long passage but basically all the men are killed and then all the women are killed except for the virgins and then the virgins are divided up long with the donkeys and other live stock and given to the soldiers.

Numbers 31 is pretty clear that thousands of virgin women were rounded up and presented as plunder to the soldiers, and again I'm pretty sure they weren't being asked was this what they wanted.

I'm sure the women weren't asked if they wanted to be taken to Israel to work as domestic servants or slaves. But, again, I don't see any mention of rape or marriage there - do you?

I do actually have a genuine question about Numbers 31:40

What does it mean that 32 virgins were "tribute" for the Lord? Now I could jump the gun and say that they were executed, but the Israelites genuinely didn't seem big on the human sacrifice thing, so that seems unlikely. The priest ends up with 32 virgins but it is not particularly clear what he is supposed to do with them? Did they end up his wives?

Any thoughts?

They were most likely given to the Levites. The tribes of Levi (from where the priests and temple workers came) had no territorial inheritance in the Promised Land, and were not landowners or soldiers. They did have small-holdings in the Levitical cities, and they ministered by rota in the Temple and received tithes as income from the other Israelites. So, most likely, the women who were 'tribute' to the Lord were to work in the homes and fields of the Levites.

Just a note about siege warfare. It was common practice, certainly up to the last few centuries, for besieged cities to be given the option of surrender. If they did so then the inhabitants would be spared, although the military men might still be enslaved, depending on how negotiations went.

However, if a city resisted until the walls were breached, then the rules of war meant that the inhabitants would all be killed. It sounds horrendous to modern ears (and certainly would have beeen horrendous if you were one of the inhabitants) but that was the equivalent of the Geneva Convention for many many centuries. The reasoning was that the death toll (more by disease than anything else) tended to be so high among besieging armies that long sieges should be discouraged.

So, in this context, what would an army do with the women and children of a conquered town? They could, of course, kill them - and that was entirely permissable under the rules of war. They could leave the women and children defenceless in a ruined city filled with men's corpses - in which case it would be a toss up whether they would starve to death, die of disease, or be picked off by bands of marauders. Or they could take them with them and absorb them into their own nation (many armies avoided this as it meant a huge burden of feeding them as they returned home).

So, to take the women and children back to Israel was hardly the worst option - and may well have been what the women themselves would have chosen as the least worse option.

To be a slave under these circumstances was certainly not comparable to the enslavement of Africans in the nineteenth century, nor even a Roman slave - we are not talking about chain gangs harvesting sugar cane. Nor would it have been a picnic either. Think more a half way house between what we commonly think of as slavery and the domestic servants of Victorian England as portrayed in 'Upstairs Downstairs'. Israel's laws were quite liberal in how they instructed the Jews to show kindness and mewrcy to the aliens who lived among them.

Over the centuries some societies deveoped creative roles for such slaves. For example, the Ottoman Empire trained captured Christian boys as soldiers. They formed the Janissaries - a fanatically committed military unit that were the equivalent of the SAS. They were technically slaves, but received salaries and pensions.

So there were many different shades of slavery. We tend to hear 'slavery' and think of industrial scale slavery as in Rome, the West Indies, or Stalin's gulags. So it is important, for the sake of balance and accuracy, to point out that slavery in Israel was probably not like that at all.

Of course in our modern western societies influenced by two thousand years of exposure to New Testament themes and Christian values, we see no form of slavery as acceptable - and that is as it should be.

For the Christian, then, slavery in the Old Testament is a historical issue that must be faced. It should not be glossed over - but neither should it be distorted by false ahistorical perceptions or lurid imaginations of mass rape.

tommy2bad wrote: »

PDN you seem to be saying that whatever was done in the context of the time was neither right or wrong just how things were but maybe a little better when done by Gods people and God therefore is the justification for this small amount of morality or am I paraphrasing you too much?

Sorry, I'm finding that sentence really hard to follow. Not trying to be funny, but it might just be the lack of punctuation. Could you restate it a biit more clearly?

The problem is that we are back where we started. God isn't necessary for the acquirement, people get good ideas as well as bad ones.

I don't see that as a problem. People get good ideas and bad ideas. I think we would all agree on that - wouldn't we?

Also no matter how you dress it up you end up an apologist for murder rape genocide and a whole load of things. Why? why not condemn thees things or is it a 'my side is right' kind of thing? I see more human behavior in the bible than God.

Tbh, I think that's a ludicrous accusation. I'm not acting as an apologist for anything. I'm not an Israelite so 'my side' doesn't come into it.

I read in the Old Testament about things that happened, and I try my best to understand them. I'm not going to pretend that some kind of mass rape occurred if the evidence suggests otherwise. I find the genocide stuff very hard to understand, but I certainly am not going to cherry pick which bits of the Bible suit me and me which don't.

Zombrex wrote: »

The passage describes the Levites share coming from the communities bounty. The Lord's tribute, given to the priest, came from the soldiers share. The Levites got 320 virgins, where as the priest got 32.

Was just wondering, I don't think they were sacrificed, there seems little evidence to suggest that the Israelites performed human sacrifice. My own take would be that they simple became slaves for the priest.

Ah, my bad. The Levites received tithes from the people, and the priests received a tithe of tithes (ie one tenth of what the Levites got). So that would explain why they got 32.

The priests, the descendants of Aaron, were not full-time at the Temple. They were divided into 24 shifts (or 'courses') and so, for most of the year, they, like the Levites, kept their own small holdings. So these women most likely worked for them as domestic servants or slaves.

tommy2bad wrote: »

OK so if they did this was it with the blessing of God, under instruction of God or under the delusion that it was what God would have wanted?
Two inferences here, 1. God is a capricious monster. 2. God dosn't give a sh1t.
Other option, God doesn't exist and people made stuff up.
.

Third option. God did stuff that we are incapable of understanding, due to our inadequate concepts of sin, and our sketchy understanding of what was at stake when the people through whom God was working out his plan were surrounded by hostile tribes determined to exterminate them.

My problem isn't whether their is or isn't a God, it's the nature of God and how people claim to know what He wants based on a bible that they interpret to suit their biases

No, I think you are the one trying to produce an interpretation of the Bible to suit your biases - by junking all the bits that don't suit you.

What I'm saying is "I don't understand why God ordered so many people to be killed, but I follow the evidence to the conclusion whether it suits my biases or not. God did order the Israelites to kill those people. And I do know that Jesus came and instituted a New Covenant under which such actions can never be repeated."

Would it be more comfortable for me to say that the killings in the OT were just bits that men added by mistake? Hell, yes, of course it would be much more comfortable - but intellectual honesty does not permit me to believe that. I would be doing so out of wishful thinking rather than basing my beliefs on the evidence available to me. And, when push comes to shove, I'm not interested in creating God in my own image.