Is your position, then, that Samual lied about God commanding the slaughter of all the Amalekites? — Bob Ross

Buber thought Samuel was confusing his human impulses with God's will. Rashi, OTOH, does take it as a literal command to slaughter all of Amalek.

You mean the group that published footage today of an emaciated hostage forced to dig his own grave? It's fine — he's a Zionist.

If we're listing heads of state whose soldiers have committed or likely committed war crimes, we could add Zelenskyy to that list.

For example, there is a constant vacillation in the Bible between the idea that everything is according to God's will (and therefore even evil things are brought about by God), and the idea that God does not do or will evil. I think that's a natural vacillation that can't be overcome easily or quickly, and the sacred texts inevitably reflect this reality. — Leontiskos

Yes. I suspect the former idea is earlier, the latter idea (seen in Chronicles) is later. Biblical authors struggle to deal with this. Each view has its strengths and weaknesses. I find the notion that God allows evil to fester and build until it's ripe for destruction to be a fascinating and non-modern one. My favorite theodicy is Job. We can engage in apologetics, but ultimately, I believe the existence of evil and suffering in this world is beyond human comprehension.

@Leontiskos @Bob Ross

On one reading it would superficially reinterpret the text. On the reading that ↪BitconnectCarlos provided it would not. The sort of question here asks whether we are permitted to interpret these sorts of post-Pentateuch texts as including the perspective of a fallible author, such as Samuel. — Leontiskos

I remember the writing in bSamuel as brilliant and capturing what can happen even when legitimate prophecy is granted to the crooked timber of humanity. I think it would be a mistake and a superficial reading to decontextualize the command to kill the Amalekites and use that as an injunction against God. The command is given by Samuel, speaking on behalf of God.

Even though Samuel is a legitimate prophet, he's far from a passive conduit of the divine will. He's constantly setting up Saul for failure. Samuel is irascible and continually seeks influence and power for himself. Presumably, if Saul fails, Saul can be dismissed and Samuel can exert authority again. Samuel is a fascinating character and quite complex. He is critical of both the kingship and the people. His speeches in Samuel remind me of a libertarian warning against the dangers of big government. It is unclear how much of this is genuine ideological commitment versus a desire to maintain influence.

Martin Buber argues that Samuel mistakes his own will for God's, which I imagine would be easy to do for a man who selects kings and possesses a special relationship with the divine. The divine voice in this book is more removed than in earlier books.

In Torah, you'll hear, e.g., "And God said to Abraham...." In the book of Samuel, this doesn't happen, and instead, it's Samuel telling Saul to put Amalek under the ban. The key here is Samuel. He could be correctly and perfectly conveying God's will, or he could be mistaken, or he could be deceiving. The clarity of Torah, where we see God's words openly dictated, is no longer present in Samuel.

Interpret the text to be talking about indirect intention, and adjust one's interpretive hermeneutic (to deviate from the literal meaning).
Hold that life and death are in God's hands, that for God to kill is not murder, and that God can temporarily delegate this power.
Hold that the Amalekites were demons and demons can be justly killed (see Hanover's post).
Hold to some form of group morality rather than a strict individual morality.
Hold to a pedagogical approach on the part of God. — Leontiskos

IIRC, if we take the Book of Samuel literally, we understand that God's words/wishes/desires are all conveyed through the prophet Samuel. Samuel serves as a mediator between the divine and the Israelites, allowing us to contextualize him with other divine mediators. Additionally, in the Book of Samuel, Samuel often plays an active role in shaping events or situations to his will. In any case, the words we have in the Book of Samuel are Samuel conveying the divine will, and that ambiguity runs through the text (i.e. whether it is God or Samuel making the commands... or both). If I had to judge, I'd say it's a mix of both. Even at this early date (c.1050 bc-1000 bc), the words of God are not as clear and direct as they were before in the Torah. The Torah is from Sinai; Samuel, while a brilliant piece of literature, isn't.

murder is the direct intentional killing of an innocent person — Bob Ross

It seems a medical professional who engages in euthanasia would fit this definition.

Agree. I see Bob's point as an ordinary and natural theological hurdle. “Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God" - Luther.

Who hasn't read the Hebrew Bible and thought, "If only I were in charge, I would have handled the situation better." However, upon deeper reflection, we find ourselves unjustified in our judgments of the divine. The Flood is the first central juncture point.

Fake news. It's actually Hamas killing their own. They want to get to the food first and kill civilians for stealing it.

Note that when I spoke about the possibility of being pushed away from the OT, I was prescinding from the question of Christianity. — Leontiskos

Could you elaborate?

Or perhaps such an argument must push us away from the Old Testament altogether. That's possible. I am not there myself, but I do know some people who take such routes. — Leontiskos

I don't see how Christianity can do this. Jesus frequently references the Old Testament, so the Christian exegetical approach to those passages would be something along the lines of "Jesus is referencing irrelevant texts" if we were to discard or "push away" the OT. Who or what would that make Jesus? Maybe a conman.

Will antifa be demonstrating for the Druze anytime soon? Confront the Islamic fascists sent to butcher them? You should push that through, be the change you want to see in the world.

So Syrian jihadists are murdering Druze and on their way to murder more as I type this. This won't get it's own thread and it will receive scant media attention. Israel has been helping the Druze, but this also won't get attention.

Funny how Israel is so racist against the Palestinians/Arabs but stands up for the Druze (who are also Arab). Wonder what it is. We shouldn't think too hard, though; Israel is racist, and even though they're saving the Druze, nothing can change that fact. :roll:

Things are not good merely because God wills them: God has to will them in a way that is good because He is goodness itself—His nature is perfectly good. — Bob Ross

God is reality. The dynamic essence of reality, according to the Hebrew conception. I believe God is good, but he is reality first. If he is good, his idea of goodness is simply beyond our common-sense understanding. This is the same God who sent snakes and plagues to the Israelites in the desert and swallowed up Korah's family whole. The same God who slew the Egyptians' firstborn from the highest to the lowest, and even included animals in that count.

In some ways, I find the NT God more terrifying. In the OT, he'll kill you, but he never threatens you with eternal damnation. If you want to define God as the Form of the Good, you can worship that, but you're better off reading Plato. I'm not even sure what the point would be of worshipping the Form of the Good; wouldn't it just be a one-way relationship?

The Talmud is considered as authoritive as the Torah, and it is interpreted by the rabbis. That is, there is an entire legal system devised around these writings, largely given meaning by the rabbis. — Hanover

Talmud helps us apply Torah, but Torah is the holier, more primary text. If you're looking for a complete code of halakha just go to Shulchan Aruch or Mishneh Torah and skip the Talmud, but the authors of those respective books would never say that their texts hold equal weight to the Torah such a claim would be horrible blasphemy. Those works are Judaism's best attempts at halakha (religious law) formulation, but a major thinker like Maimonedes would argue that understanding is to be prioritized over the simple rule following of religious law.

I'll try a different approach, as I don't intend to restate what I've already said.

Considering other common forms of death in antiquity, death by flood isn't exactly a bad way to go. Would you also think, e.g., death by tuberculosis or dysentery to be God "murdering?" Or dying at 60 of heart disease? People rarely lived past that back then. I don't get where we draw the line between God "murdering" and there being an ok death that isn't "God murdering" if we adopt this absurd view that God "murders."

Secondly, if a set of pre-existent rules binds God, then he is not God. Creation (which includes rules) proceeds from God.

Hundreds of thousands? I hear that's only kids -- so that would make millions of dead Palestinians. Now that'll stick it to the Zionists. Who cares about sources when what matters is liberation?

More seriously: You honestly believe ~25% of Gaza has been murdered by Israel? Seriously?

By your definition, a person would kills an innocent child in society that has not made killing humans, in any way or means, illegal has not committed murder and, most crucially, apparently, has done nothing wrong. — Bob Ross

The man would be guilty by divine law, which exists independently of man-made legal systems.

God is all-just (because it is in His nature to be all-just and not merely because you are defining arbitrarily God's commands as what defines justice) and murder is unjust, then God cannot commit murder — Bob Ross

:up:

God does commit murder in the OT — Bob Ross

The religious view is that God has the right to take and give life as He sees fit.

Death is an inevitability, whether it's now or in 100 years. Whether through pain or with ease.

If you think that those Jewish population changes in the Arab countries were all voluntary emigration, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Um, yeah, Jewish life has grown in Germany since the Holocaust ended.

Something to keep in mind.

Terrifying footage earlier today of Syrian troops going into Druze villages and forcibly shaving the beards off Druze men. Same thing Nazis did to Jews in the early stages. Murders are reported as well; this is fresh news.

Israel has reportedly passed a message to Al-Julani via Egypt: "Your regime will fall within hours unless you cease the massacre against the Druze and withdraw."

OMG a Jew said that! Unbelievable! Stunning and brave.

Thereby, He directly intentionally killed innocent persons and murder is the direct intentional killing of innocent persons; therefore, God committed murder. — Bob Ross

Murder is the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. Animals cannot murder, nature cannot murder, and God cannot murder.

Beyond this, God is the source of the Law; for God to be a law-breaker, there would need to be some higher law that God is subject to, which would make him not God by definition—at least not the Judeo-Christian one. Maybe Greek or Roman Gods were bound by pre-existent laws, but not the God of the Bible (who is the source of all creation).

The Noahide laws are in Genesis. See, for instance, Gen 9:4 and 9:5. The injunction against murder goes back further to at least Cain and Abel. God is first the universal God, then he is followed by Israel.

Rules that bind humanity have been present from the very beginning, in Eden.

Yes, Genesis includes the patriarchal tales, but before that are stories about God's interaction with humanity more generally. Noah is saved on account of his righteousness and given seven rules that all of humanity must follow. It is only after these universal prescriptions that we see the shift to Abraham and his tribe.

he OT God is very specifically the god of the Jewish People — EricH

Books like Genesis and Jonah present a more universalistic picture, while Exodus is more particular/nationalistic. A group (Israel) accepted him as their God, but his dominion extends far beyond that, and others are free to accept him.

In Jonah, he cares deeply about Israel's historic nemesis -- the Assyrians.

The OT gets angry and changes his mind - not the expected behavior of a perfect entity. — EricH

God can be negotiated with and questioned; otherwise, you have a God who is beyond question. Some religions do perceive God like this.

The OP doesn't treat God as a 'magical alien': it treats God as God in the classical theistic sense---the neo-platonic sense. — Bob Ross

I wouldn't necessarily equate these things. I would need to read up on Plato, though, but perhaps Plato would perceive God/the divine as unchangeable? The God of the Old Testament is so multi-faceted and presented in so many different ways that I would see some tension here. As @Count Timothy von Icarus mentioned, God can be bargained with.

If you are secular, I would drop the "Christ" and just call him Jesus. Christ is a title meaning Messiah, not a last name. He's a first-century rabbi whom you take a liking to.

There was a time, particularly in the 19th century, when the "academic" approach to Christianity was very ahistorical. During that time there was a common trend wherein it was forgotten that Jesus was himself a Jew, — Leontiskos

Reminds me of one of Hitler's early portraits. Aryan Jesus.

Genuinely, they could hardly be further apart. — Tzeentch

Kinda strange, considering Jesus prayed to the God of the Bible and seemed to hold the Law in high regard. The gospels record him attending synagogue and reading Torah to the congregation. Or was it all an elaborate ruse?

Didn't realize you were a Marcionite, but it makes sense now.

However, I don't think we need to be able to give an account of what the perfectly good way to treat things is in order to know that certain treatment cannot be the perfectly good way to treat them. — Bob Ross

We don't know the soul's journey. Perhaps death is simply a soul being called back to its source. Perhaps suffering can be purposeful. When you shift the focus to the soul, instead of the material body, God becomes more sensible.

IMO, the Flood is the first real moral juncture point in the Bible. It's the first time God truly wreaks mass destruction on humanity. The explanation is that mankind is evil, but this seems questionable. After all, as you mention, there are children and animals.

So it's easy to question God. We can even imagine ourselves as God answering, "How would I have solved world evil?" Remember, we can't infringe on free will. What should we do as God? Offer classes on moral virtue to those who are wicked? But who should teach it? Maybe the angels? But what if the evil don't want to attend? My point is that once we start trying to play God to rectify the issue, things quickly become absurd.

We must accept that God has the right to give and take life as he sees fit. To question this - to assume that we know better - is to take on the role of God ourselves. The question of ultimate justice for the individual is beyond the horizons of our cognition. The author of Ecclesiastes notes that whether one dies at 1 or 100, everything goes to the same place.

As for Samuel, it is worth noting that God in this book is entirely conveyed through the prophet Samuel. It is not God directly communicating to Saul.

Nature isn't equitable. The problem with these DEI initiatives is that they focus on limited intersectionalities in a world with countless intersectionalities. It creates resentment and prompts the excluded to ask, "Why aren't my intersectional identities being addressed?" And then there's the matter of weighing them up and comparing them - an impossible task.

Come to think of it, even if we were all the same race and all from the same class, I don't believe we'd have made any progress towards genuine equity.

The Middle East has always been "fucked up." To pin it on the Europeans might be politically correct, but it's not accurate. Those living in the area possess agency and are perfectly capable of "fucking it up" themselves.

Europeans do get into trouble when they project their notions onto the Middle East and insist that the region submit to their impositions.

Consider the phrase, "I am politically nonbinary.". Do you discern the speaker's intent differently if they are liberal or conservative? — David Hubbs

Honestly, this cracked me up. I would have to stop myself from chuckling if I were to hear this one.

If it's a conservative, I would suspect that it's a joke or sarcastic. If said by someone on the left, I probably shake my head in confusion or chuckle.

.

To continue with the rest of your so-called argument... — Benkei

My post wasn't an argument. I was setting forth a condition for discussion, namely, the understanding that the Iranian regime was wicked.

To which you finally get around to addressing:

Let’s be clear: the world is full of evil. — Benkei

I get it: We are all sinners. The world is full of sin. Whether we throw in with the 7th century savages who behead homosexuals and rape women before their executions or those fighting them is no significant matter. We're all sinners anyway. We can all agree that those fighting the 7th-century savages are no angels. And the problems of the West will, of course, be condemned to their fullest extent, while we can rationalize away the faults of the 7th-century savages if not blame them on the West itself. It's all so tiring.

I suspect it ties back to the Marxist oppressor-oppressed dynamic, where the oppressor deserves zero leniency.

But the presence of evil doesn’t mean we drop bombs until it feels better.

If their wickedness starts seeping over borders, that's when military action may be required. And military action has been the solution to many, many forms of evil throughout history. Sometimes you can't compromise with evil. Nor can you rationalize with it. History tells us that sometimes, evil must be destroyed with force.

I gotta say, you bring up interesting points that point to our differences.

Step 4: “I don’t care about facts. We need a paradigm shift.”
And there it is: the moment when the mask fully drops. You admit facts don’t matter to you. You just want to feel right. — Benkei

Please tell me more about these theory-independent prescriptive facts. We all have our lens; I acknowledge mine. You, OTOH, apparently have direct access to prescriptive objective reality independent of theory/conceptual framework.

Were the bombings of, say, Berlin or Hamburg murder or killing? What do we say about those deaths? I know civilians died, but I'd like to learn how to make sense of it, prescriptively/in the realm of judgment, without the theory. Is this just one of those cases where "the facts speak for themselves," or maybe, just maybe, we require a lens through which to process these events.

The more I read this the more I enjoy parts of it. You note real points of difference, but from the other side.

Sub 3. It reveals an inability to hold multiple truths at once.
Yes, the Iranian regime is brutal.

But your mind can’t accommodate that tension. You flatten everything into one big moral binary where once you label something “evil,” no further thinking is required. It’s cognitive offloading and it’s dumb because it rejects complexity in a domain that requires it most. — Benkei

As opposed to you, where it's all just a billion shades of grey? Trump brutal. Hitler brutal. Roosevelt brutal. Khomeini brutal. Side with whoever, because the world doesn't have absolutes; we're all just different, slightly darker or lighter shades of grey. Who cares about Khomeini torturing women and beating them to death when the US has bombed Iraq. :roll:

The lemon farming anecdote amused me, but I don't think this is historical, as the Palestinians were displaced from the West Bank, not to the West Bank, in 1967. They largely went to Jordan.