Ep 46: GENOCIDE!

00:00Matthew will tell the story so as to make it fulfill prophecy, even if it is ludicrous.

00:09And so Matthew is describing Jesus writing two animals at the same time into Jerusalem.

00:16You can find paintings of Jesus' side-saddle on a big donkey with his feet resting on a

00:23small donkey. Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan. And I'm Dan Beecher. And you are listening

00:34to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the

00:39Bible and religion and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

00:44Things are great. You know, by the time our friends hear this, this will have already happened. But I am,

00:52I'm fixing to go to a religious celebration soon. Tomorrow morning, I take off for Mardi Gras in

01:01New Orleans, which is vaguely related to Lent and Shrove Tuesday and all that stuff. I will not be

01:10celebrating any of those things, but I will be celebrating some amazing, amazing Cajun food,

01:15yeah, and some parades and such. So I'm stoked. I'm excited. Come back with no beads.

01:23You want to have given them all the way, right? That's the, that's the point. I understand.

01:27I, you know, I am bead neutral. I will say, I'm, I'm, I have no plans for beads one way or

01:37two others. Okay. New Orleans is a wonderful city. The first time I was there was way back in

01:432009 flew off to Oxford with my family. And a month later came back for a conference taking

01:48place in New Orleans. And we had just a wonderful time. In fact, I think I had, we went to find a

01:54restaurant downtown New Orleans on Thanksgiving. We found a little hole in the wall at best Mac

02:01and cheese I've ever had. Love it entire life. Yeah. Love it. Just don't go in August. It's very,

02:07it's very hot and muggy. Oh, I can imagine. Yeah. No, I'm, I don't like when the mosquitoes

02:14could carry you away. Yeah. Yeah. That's less appealing. Yeah. I, I scratched those places

02:20off my list when I went over a place to go. Speaking of less appealing. Yes. Today shows

02:28an interesting one. We're diving headfirst into one of the, one of the roughest things

02:35to, to square in the Bible. And that's, and that's saying something. We've engaged a lot

02:42of a lot of rough topics on the show so far. Yeah. But this one's real, real tricky. We're

02:49going to talk genocide. Right. And that's going to be fun. And if we have time for it

02:55at the end, we'll do a little sorbet course, a little palate cleanser, a little palate

03:00cleanser, and we'll, we'll, we'll give you Jesus's petting zoo. A fun story, a, a confusing

03:09sometimes story about Jesus writing animals. Yes, indeed. So, so stick around for that.

03:17But first let's dive in with, with, with genocide. That's always fun. How is it delight when

03:25we do that? Yeah. It comes up a lot though. Yeah. And so first, I guess we should start

03:33with just like, what are some of the really rough passages that we're talking about when

03:39it comes to this? Cause, cause there are a couple. Well, the, I think the main one we're

03:45looking at is, and we find it scattered in a, in a few different places, but we're talking

03:49about the conquest of Canaan, uh, at the hands of the Israelites following the 40 years in

03:55the desert. Moses has gone. Joshua is now leading the Israelites and they are commanded

04:01to go in and take over the land and not just drive out the, the current inhabitants, but

04:08commit genocide and, uh, kill everything that breeds man. Yeah. And we're not just talking

04:16about animals. Yeah. The animals. That was the part that was like, yeah, man, that we're

04:21getting rough. Like there's a, and there's a logic to this. First thing I want to point

04:25out is that, um, most of the, the stuff that kind of champions this genocidal, um, appropriation

04:33of this land is coming from the Deuteronomistic literature. So this is something that's being

04:37written toward the, the end of the seventh century BCE and is having layers added to it

04:44over the next couple of centuries. And they're looking back on something that, uh, ostensibly

04:50happened multiple centuries before and they're treating this as basically a human sacrifice

05:01to purge the land. And that's, that's something that that is sometimes lost in this, but the

05:05idea of killing even the animals, destroying all the goods, um, man, woman, child, everything

05:13must go is this is how you purge the wickedness of the Canaanites from the land. It's basically

05:21you must sacrifice all of the life in order to purge the land so that it is fit for you

05:27to come in and then be holy. It is a whole, it is a, it is such a large scale view of

05:35everything. Like not just, I'm not just talking about like, you have to cleanse the land,

05:40but like just the concept that there is such a thing as a wicked, entire group of people,

05:48like not a one of them is worth saving, not a one, like literally we can condemn the entire

05:54group. And this happens several times throughout the Bible, but there's this, this all or nothing

06:00thinking that pervades all of this. That is, I mean, I find it very disturbing. Yeah.

06:07These ideas. Absolutely. And, and these are pretty ancient ideas. It's, uh, there's a

06:13pretty, uh, ethnocentric perspective driving a lot of this where it's us against them.

06:19Yeah. And we're, we're out to preserve and protect our community and everything on the

06:25outside of our community is potentially and usually an enemy that we need to defeat because

06:33it's either we defeat them or they defeat us in this perspective. And, uh, so yeah, you've

06:40got this idea of, uh, cleansing the land through this human sacrifice. And as the, the

06:46Bible progresses, we'll talk about this a little later on, but that perspective is forced to

06:52change circumstances compel the biblical authors to renegotiate their understanding of the relationship

07:00of Israel to the nations around them. And I think it's a fascinating, uh, rhetorical

07:06innovation that takes place. But for the time being, yeah, this is, uh, this is pitting us

07:12against them. We're the good guys. They're the bad guys. And you even see in, in Genesis

07:1718, Abraham is negotiating with, with Adonai, they got of Israel regarding Sodom and Gomorrah.

07:25And do you recall, uh, what the negotiation is about? Oh gosh. We talked about it and

07:31I was so delighted by it. Uh, no, I don't remember. I don't remember. Okay. So, um,

07:36so Abraham's like, man, you're not going to destroy the whole city. Come on. And he's

07:39all right. So what if, what if there are 50 righteous people? That's right. And God says,

07:46I will not destroy it for 50 righteous. And then he goes down, down, down and 10 righteous

07:50people, five righteous people. And, and Abraham says I, or God says I will not destroy it for

07:56the sake of five righteous people. And then this is why the story is told the way it is

08:00in Genesis 19. Lot goes in there, uh, needs a place or, um, lot is there, the angels, excuse

08:09me, go in there, need a place to stay. Uh, lot brings them to his home. How many righteous

08:15people are in lots home? And here's where, here's where there's a distinction. Full personhood

08:21here is only attributed to men. Oh, right. The women are not attributed full. So the daughters

08:25and the wife don't count. Right. It is lot and it is two, uh, men who are betrothed to

08:33his daughters, not yet married, but betrothed, uh, which adds up to three righteous people.

08:39And so guess what? That's not five. And so the city goes down and, and that's kind of, uh,

08:47you, you mentioned that this, uh, this kind of framing this characterizing everyone as

08:53fully, entirely, unilaterally wicked is kind of on display in the destruction of Sodom and

08:59Gomorrah. Because Abraham's like, surely they're five and it turns out they're only three. And

09:04God says, get him out because everybody else is that. I mean, he'd go back to Genesis six through

09:10eight. There is a very famous, uh, story of everyone being wicked. Right. And that's everyone

09:17being wicked. That is literally everyone that isn't on that boat, which we're talking about

09:24the flood. We're talking about right. Yeah. And if you didn't know, Genesis six through eight,

09:28uh, narrates the, the flood. Yeah. And, um, it kind of highlights the rhetorical nature of these

09:35stories. These are not real world circumstances. Right. These are people telling stories. Every

09:42last one of them was wicked. It's, it's like, uh, you know, now we tend to give nuance to villains

09:50in books and movies and things. Like, you know, you've got, uh, you've got Black Panther where

09:54the bad guy, a lot of people are like, he's kind of making sense. Right. Right. Like you want you,

10:00like the villains that are closer to, um, kind of sympathy and empathy and stuff are more compelling

10:06villains. But for a long time, it was, you know, and when Superman started up, it was good guys and

10:12bad guys. Yeah. You were all good or you were all bad. It was black and white. And so, uh,

10:17that's the storytelling that we have in the ancient world. They're all wicked. And, and that kind

10:23of plays into some of the apologetics about this as well. When we talk about, oh, all the

10:28candidates, men, women, children, newborn babies, they're all going to die. And apologists will say,

10:33well, they were all wicked or if they weren't yet wicked, there was no way they were going to be

10:38anything other than wicked, which means this is, and you've got DNA level wicked. There's nothing

10:45you can do. Like that's just going to. It's baked in. Yeah. It's, uh, it's prior restraint, uh, did not

10:54play, uh, uh, uh, anciently. So, um, and so yeah, some of the apologetics kind of play into the way

11:01everything is represented in black and white terms, which very clearly shows these are not real world

11:07circumstances. This is rhetoric that is being used, but let's, let's get into some of the actual

11:12stories about this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I've got, uh, a few different examples that I looked

11:18up that I tried to sort out, you know, what they were, and I'll be honest with you. I don't know,

11:23I don't understand how the timeline works very well. I don't understand how some of these, uh,

11:28the biblical authors didn't understand either. So, and I don't understand how these, uh, stories

11:33interact with each other. I don't know if they're the same stories or if they're different stories.

11:37So you can help me out with this. The first one that I wanted that I found was, uh, Joshua six.

11:43This is, this is Joshua taking Jericho, uh, and this is where, you know, the, uh, in Joshua six,

11:51the, uh, you know, the, the, the people all march around the city of Jericho with six days in a row

11:59and they're blowing their trumpets and everything. And then they all shout. And then it's time to go in

12:05and, uh, and, and you know, the walls come down, uh, come a tumbling down. They come a tumbling

12:12day poet once said, yeah, that's right. Um, those famous fabled walls of Jericho, uh, and then

12:19literally, and then they say for the city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord

12:26for destruction. Yes, only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live

12:33because she hid the messenger. So they sent in spies. This prostitute helped the spies out. So

12:39she gets to live. Everyone else is to be killed. Right. Not just killed, devoted to destruction.

12:46Right. And that seems like just like a supporting of your thing, which is, which is that this is a

12:51ritual sacrifice. It is. And this is, uh, the word in Hebrew is harem. Excuse me, uh, harem is, uh,

12:59how you would, uh, h-e-r-e-m. And this is not unique to biblical Hebrew. Um, there's a, uh, a

13:07stele called the, the Masha inscription or the Masha stele or the Moabite stele from, uh, around

13:13840 BCE. And it's written in Moabite, a, um, a sibling language of biblical Hebrew. And the King

13:21Masha talks about devoting cities to destruction using this word, harem, um, which is, is basically

13:29saying, we're not taking the goods for us. We're destroying everything. We're just going to pile

13:35it all up and burn it. And that is to, it's kind of a, a bit of costly signaling.

13:41It's very costly. That's a lot of, that's a lot of good stuff that they're just getting rid of.

13:48And, and it's a way to say this is, um, we are just destroying this to show the deity that we're

13:55doing this because the deity said we're not doing it so that we can benefit financially from, uh,

14:02these, uh, going to war. And then you have the, there's a famous story of, uh, Khan who engages in

14:09a little five finger discounting of some of the material and hides it. And then, uh, God says,

14:16Oh, I, I told you, you guys to devote this to destruction. And one of you did not. And then

14:21Josh was like, ah, crap. Okay. We got to figure out who did this and, um, and then they, they whittle

14:27it down through this, um, this kind of ordeal, uh, thing. And God reveals that it is a Khan who

14:34was responsible for this. And so he and his whole family and all the goods that they stole basically

14:40get swallowed up by the earth, uh, because, because he was going against the devotion of all of this

14:47to destruction. Um, so this, this is a principle that is in circulation in the area around Israel,

14:54uh, when this kind of thing is going on. Uh, but yeah, it's, it's basically a ritual sacrifice of

15:00everything. Okay. There you go. Uh, let's go to, I, I'm, I guess I'm going backwards to, uh, to do

15:09Deuteronomy seven, uh, which is, which is, uh, sort of, it's got a command in it. The Lord is

15:18talking to who is the Lord talking to? I don't know who, um, maybe you know who the Lord is talking to.

15:26Well, normally, uh, God is talking to, uh, Moses and, and Deuteronomy. Okay. So we'll just say Moses

15:33for now, uh, and Deuteronomy. So I'm, I'll skip around a little bit. Um, basically, uh, he says, uh,

15:42well, in just at the very top of the, of the chapter, he says, when the Lord, your God brings

15:48you into the land that you're about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you,

15:55and he lists them off the Hittites, the Giga Shites, the Gertono Gurga Shites, the Amorites,

16:01the Giga Chads, the Giga Chads, the Canaanites is in there, the parasites, not to be confused with

16:08parasites, the Hivites and, uh, with apologies to Homer Simpson, the Giba sites, uh, praise

16:16Jesus. I don't even believe in Giba's. Um, so basically, he says, it says seven nations more,

16:24more numerous and mighty than you, uh, skipping a little bit, uh, then you must utterly destroy

16:30them, make no covenant with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them, giving your

16:36daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, blah, blah, blah. That's a whole

16:40lot of destroying that's the seven different nations. So like we hear talk about the Canaanites a lot,

16:46but, uh, nobody's mentioning the, the, the Amorites or the Giga Shites. So what's going on there?

16:53So this is actually, uh, a variance use of this term Canaanite because, uh, it becomes kind of a

17:01blanket term for everybody who occupies the land that they refer to as Canaan, which is basically

17:06all the land that they're inhabiting. But in, in some usage, it is a subgroup, uh, of, uh,

17:14the broader categories, but like the, the Gebus sites, this is the people who are occupying

17:20ostensibly the city of Jerusalem until that's taken by David, which is dead center of, uh, the

17:28whole land of Canaan. And so to distinguish the Gebus sites from the Canaanites, um, is

17:34a little, uh, misrepresentative, according to the, the broader use of the term. And so you've got

17:41the Deuteronomistic, uh, author here, um, probably just trying to come up with seven names because

17:49seven represents completion perfection. So if you can destroy the seven nation,

17:56um, I, I can't sing the song because I understand we can get a trope for singing the white stripes.

18:01Yes, the white stripes. Um, but if you destroy the seven nations as God has commanded, that is,

18:08you're perfectly fulfilling, uh, God's requirements. And then you've perfectly cleansed and purged,

18:14uh, the land. And so that's what that strikes me as. And again, this is coming

18:19from the period of Josiah or after, uh, which is looking back almost a thousand years on

18:27what they imagined to happen. And so it's kind of constructing a golden age deep in the past,

18:34where we were the champions who came in and we were going to route everybody.

18:40And that's not the way, um, anything turns out, according to, um, the rest of the text that we have.

18:50Well, why don't you look what I've got is a whole bunch of different scriptural references

18:58to the same kind of idea. So will you just tell us the story, uh, that we're referencing

19:04here and just sort of give us the broad strokes? Well, like you said, there are different stories.

19:09So when we look at, um, and we talked a little bit, we've done an episode on, on the priestly,

19:17uh, source or account or document, um, right now we're in D, we're in Deuteronomy and Deuteronomy

19:25is one of the main sources that, that came together to create the Pentateuch, but the Deuteronomistic

19:31project extends well beyond the Pentateuch. It includes Joshua, judges, Samuel, kings. And so

19:38the majority of, of all of that is being brought together by the Deuteronomists who are influencing

19:45how these stories are being told. And so when we go into Joshua and judges, we're actually going to

19:50see the Deuteronomists, um, preserving some earlier accounts while also including their own accounts.

19:56And, and this is where I think one of the most interesting things about the story of the conquest

20:03is that you have this command in, in, um, Deuteronomy seven, but if you go down to verse 22 says,

20:08the Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You will not be able

20:14to make a quick end of them. Otherwise the wild animals would become too numerous for you. And

20:22you see this in a couple of different places where it says, we can't just kill everybody because then

20:28the land is empty. You have nobody to curate it. It's going to take too long for you to, um,

20:33you know, to get your people out there. And so the land, the wild animals will just take over.

20:38So it's kind of this weird rationalization for why it's actually going to take a while for this

20:45conquest to happen. And so in those guys there and tell you build up enough people that you can

20:50actually take over the land instead of the animals coming in. Yeah. It's told in a, in a bunch of

20:54different ways, but you repeatedly get these like pathetic rationalizations for why something

21:01didn't go the way God commanded it. Um, and so a good example is, is, uh, judges one 19.

21:08Um, the Lord was with Judah. So in, in judges one, what we have is, um, okay. So everybody's going

21:16out and they're dispossessing the, the Canaanites of this land. The Lord was with Judah and he took

21:20possession of the hill country, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because

21:26they had chariots of iron. Right. And so they, they, God is, is with Judah, but it's like, God's

21:34like, ah, you know what? We're going to have to regroup because I didn't know they had chariots

21:39of iron. That's, that's not fair. This is above my pay grade. I call time out. That's not okay.

21:45And, and then you've got that other one. And it's like, look, the wild animals would take over.

21:49There's nothing we can do about that. I'm doing wild animals. They don't listen to me.

21:54And, uh, so you get stories of they killed everything that breathed. And then you get stories of,

22:00so they didn't quite kill everything that breathed. And, um, you see kind of the starkest contrast,

22:06uh, between like Joshua 10. This is where, uh, I, I think this is the most striking,

22:12uh, starting in, in verse 40. So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country. So that's

22:19the northern hill country and the Negev. So that's the, the desert in the south and the low land and

22:26the slopes. That's this fella. So that's everything running from the western hill country down to

22:32the coastal plain, uh, and all their kings. He left no one remaining, but otherly, utterly

22:38destroyed all that breathed as the Lord God of Israel had commanded. And Joshua defeated them

22:45from Kadesh Barnea to Gaza and all the country of Goshen as far as Gibeon. Joshua took all these

22:51kings and their land at one time because the Lord God of Israel fought for Israel. Then Joshua

22:58returned and all Israel with him to the camp at Gilgal. And we have something similar at the end

23:03of, uh, the very next chapter. Uh, what do we got? At the time Joshua came and wiped out the

23:08Anakin from the hill country from Hebron from Debeir from Anab and from all the hill country of Judah

23:13and from all the hill country of Israel, Joshua. So that's north and south. Joshua utterly destroyed

23:18them with their towns. None of the Anakin was left in the land of the Israelites. Some remained

23:23only in Gaza in Gath and in Ashtoed. So the Philistines are still there. So Joshua took the whole land

23:29according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses and Joshua gave it for an inheritance to

23:34Israel according to their tribal allotments and the land had rest from war. And now I'm looking at,

23:39at, at this on page 356 of my SBL study Bible and then chapter 13 begins on page on the very next

23:48page. So the facing page. Now Joshua was old and advanced in years and the Lord said to him,

23:53you are old and advanced in years and very much of the land still remains to be possessed.

23:59So all the land was previously possessed. And now suddenly there's a bunch of stuff that is not

24:06possessed. And we can go to elsewhere, Joshua 17. We have this statement, let's see, verses 12 and 13.

24:15Yet the Manasites could not take possession of those towns, but the Canaanites continued to live

24:20in that land. But when the Israelites grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did

24:25not utterly drive them out. And we have a number of references, even in Judges 1, to this idea that

24:32they didn't quite do what the text said they did. When Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites

24:39to forced labor, but did not in fact drive them out. And so I think what we have here is this rhetoric

24:48about this, this legendary idealized past where we came in and we just wiped them out.

24:57It was epic. And then you've got others who are like, dude, they're still around.

25:03Have you guys noticed something weird? Yeah, like around Canaanites. And there are apologetic

25:13attempts to say, well, no, when he said all the land, they're actually just talking about the land

25:17that goes from this side of this hill. And then it is this includes this city, but doesn't include

25:22and people try to parse it apart to try to insist that it is still perfectly accurate. And it doesn't

25:29work. It requires inventing scenarios that are not in evidence, in order to insist, well, it's not

25:37impossible that all of these agree. And so we've got a collection of conflicting texts. And I

25:45would argue that the genocidal ideal is something that is being invented in a much later time period.

25:53Is there any like archaeological evidence that something like this happened?

25:59You see, you see a lot of destruction layers, what they usually they'll call them destruction

26:05layers, conflagrations is the $2 word for this in a lot of the sites that are mentioned in these

26:11narratives. But they don't line up with the timeline. And they don't fit any broader

26:18conquest narrative. And so most likely, they're just fighting that went on in these places. And

26:24sometimes towns got destroyed. And would be a pity for something to happen to people.

26:31Hey, for something to happen. Yeah, real nice to real nice town, you amorites got here.

26:37But like Jericho, you know, depending on how you date Moses and the Exodus and everything like that,

26:44there's a window of time in which Jericho was supposed to have been destroyed. And archaeologically,

26:49it doesn't seem to have been inhabited anywhere in that window. Okay. And there were walls that

26:56were knocked down before that window begins. And then they built it up again after that window.

27:01But during that window, it was either uninhabited or if it was inhabited, it was not fortified.

27:07Well, they could easier for Joshua. If there's no one in there, you can take that city pretty easy.

27:13Yeah. And well, that's probably just him trying to make sure that his budget doesn't get decreased

27:18for the following year. It was like, look, we had it took us seven days. We had to and we, you know,

27:26the all the costs, it just, we need this much money next year as well. When in reality, they

27:32were like, Hey, man, you can have it. This is there's not even a wall. So the conquest narrative is

27:40not supported by the archaeological data. And within history of scholarship, you started off

27:46everybody kind of just presumed the historicity of these accounts. In fact, the whole field of

27:52biblical archaeology began with the saying is a spade in one hand and a Bible in the other,

27:59where they would go try to dig up these places that were mentioned in the Bible to prove the

28:04historicity of the Bible. And as it progressed and as methodologies were refined and matured,

28:10and as people figured out how to treat this more as a science than an apologetic endeavor,

28:17we developed better principles. And we got to the point where this was no longer tenable,

28:23the idea of this conquest. And so you had a bunch of theories popped up. The maturation of the

28:28science was a bad idea. Well, at least for the apologetic project, yes, it was, it was self-defeating.

28:38And so you had these other theories that popped up peaceful infiltration that the

28:44Israelites coming out of Egypt peacefully infiltrated the land. And this is how they account for,

28:50well, this is why the Canaanites were still around. It was because they came in and were like,

28:54hey, man, can we set up camp over here? Nobody's over on this part of, we're okay. And then you

29:00had this other idea of a peasant revolt. It's like, well, peaceful infiltration isn't violent enough

29:05to account for all the violence in the text. So let's have a peasant revolt where it's local

29:10people. They're not coming from outside. They're from inside, but they're just decide, you know,

29:15we're not going to take it anymore and rise up and we're going to defeat the overlords. And these

29:21days, I think most scholars, most archaeologists would say none of those really work. It's probably

29:28a bunch of small scale things kind of took place across the whole spectrum, probably some people

29:35conquered some towns. Probably there was some peaceful infiltration. But for the most part, the

29:40nation of Israel and the tribes of Israel were already living in the land. And it was just a matter

29:45of slowly kind of developing a concept of some kind of identity, shared identity that then became

29:52a nation. And later down the road, they were like, well, where did this nation come from? Well,

29:57let's say it came from conquest. So it's it's the development of a mythos, a myth, a foundation myth

30:08about where we came from and why we have a right to this land. And unfortunately, genocide was the

30:17foundation of of this myth. Well, let's talk a little bit about that. You know, we've talked

30:24about apologetics for various things. I read a bunch of apologetics about just that the genocidal

30:33nature of of this conquest. My favorite of which, or rather the one that I'm absolutely giddy about

30:44presenting to you begins with the with I'll just start reading. Okay. This is from, and I have not

30:55heard this yet. You mentioned you were going to spring something. I'm going to spring it on you.

30:58This is from table talk magazine.com. That old that old cannerd. Okay. Yeah, I don't know that one.

31:05I'll skip down to my to the one that I know you're going to respond to the best to your this one.

31:12I think you'll find this convincing. Miriam Webster defines genocide as

31:18strike one strike one the the defining of words and the use of Miriam Webster to right. Exactly.

31:28This is a sacrament talk that somebody. Yes, exactly. Yeah, please don't start any talk.

31:36Your 10 talk starts with Webster's dictionary defined. Anyway, they say that it defines genocide

31:42as the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial political or cultural group.

31:48Now I find that to be a fairly useful way of talking about this. But this this apologetic goes

31:56on to say basically they say well, genocide defined in this way is the intentional destruction of a

32:08people of a people group because of their race, politics, culture, or religion. And since you can't

32:17say that the destruction of Canaan was because of their race, the culture or religion, then it's

32:28not it's not genocide. So we win. It's literally they basically say see it wasn't because of race.

32:37So you can't call it genocide. The other thing that I wanted to do was

32:42right. Okay, so talk about that first. Okay, so race

32:48recently meant your ethnic group, which it could mean just what language you spoke. It could mean

32:54what city you lived in. It could be, you know, what society you identified with. It wasn't based

33:00on skin color. That is an invention of medieval European hubris. But it absolutely was because

33:08they're saying wipe out the Jebusites. So that's an ethnic designation. Therefore. And it's not saying

33:15the text is not saying I want to wipe them out because they're Jebusites and I just, you know,

33:22a Jebusite stole my girlfriend in high school. It's it is identifying the object of this genocide

33:31via their ethnic designation, which would still qualify even if one were so senseless as to

33:40accept a dictionary definition as as adequately delineating the concept. But it's still saying

33:49it's kind of like how apologists are going to respond about what Trump did to Miss Carroll.

33:59They'll say, Hey, hey, hey, hey, it wasn't fine. It wasn't rape according to the official state

34:06definition of rape because she didn't know if it was one thing or the or the other. Right. And

34:13and it's like, okay, he still sexually assaulted her. You haven't gotten you haven't gotten very far

34:22in in ameliorating this issue. And I think that that was my issue with this apologetic was that

34:27like, even if you can find a way to skirt around the problem of feeling icky about the word genocide

34:36being applied to something that the good guys in the Bible were supposed to have done,

34:41you still haven't addressed the problem of the good guys in the Bible doing something

34:48that is at least by most modern standards morally reprehensible.

34:55Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't. It doesn't resolve the issue. It doesn't make the deity any less

35:02genocidal. It just says, well, technically, it wouldn't be genocide. It would just be the mass

35:08murder of an ethnic group. You know, even if we accepted the argument that it wasn't based on

35:15their ethnic identity, which it explicitly was. Yeah. So, yeah, that that doesn't work at all. And

35:24one that I've heard, I don't know if you were going to get to this one, but the one that that

35:27makes my blood boil is the one that is used to respond to the idea that, you know, in numbers,

35:35we have the statement where there, I think it's the, is it the Ammonites that their numbers 31,

35:47I believe we have. Yeah. Moses became angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of

35:54thousands and the commanders of hundreds who had come from service in the war. Moses said to them,

35:57have you allowed all the women to live? These women here on Balaam's advice made the Israelites

36:02act treacherously against the Lord and the affair of Peyor so that the plague came among the congregation

36:06of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman who has known

36:11a man by sleeping with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him

36:15keep alive for yourselves. And this is basically saying we are taking captive the Virgin women as

36:22sex slaves as spoils of war. Yes. And and folks will say, well, better that than just being left alone.

36:31And, you know, the, and other art, the other argument is, well, well, they were the only ones

36:41who are not guilty of seducing all the Israelites in this affair of Peyor, which actually

36:46never says anyone ever seduced anyone. But they'll say, so it's the virgins who are not guilty of

36:54that. So they're keeping them alive because they're actually the only innocent ones, even though it

36:59also says to kill all the males old and young and they were not guilty of any such thing either.

37:05Yeah, two-year-olds are, it's hard to find a two-year-old guilty of anything really. Yeah. And so the

37:12apologetics here are despicable because they try to take something like this and use comparative

37:19measurements to try to say, well, at least they didn't just leave them to starve to death in their

37:25own land. Yeah, I mean, look, if you're engaging in an apologetic endeavor, that's fine. But what

37:34you can't do is try to mitigate the impact of how bad one thing was by saying it could have been

37:43a worse thing. Yeah. That's just, that's, that's an absurdity. Yeah. And it, it does not make the

37:51awful thing less awful. Right. It's just identifying a worse thing out there. Right. And you know,

37:56there's, there's, there's no suffering that is incomparably bad that there's, there's nothing

38:03worse than you're, you're always going to be able to point to things that could be worse. And it could

38:08be worse is not a defense of God commanding that you take girls as sex slaves or that you commit

38:18genocide against entire ethnic groups. It's just, it's wrong, period. The apologetics that I find

38:27more interesting are the ones that make an attempt to just not to excuse, you know, these actions,

38:37but rather to just sort of explain them or to come up with a reason why it might have happened

38:41or why they might have thought of it in the ancient times. Yeah. I think those are much more

38:46interesting and much more honest, at least an honest engagement of sort of the, of the text.

38:51To some degree, yeah. And, and unfortunately, usually what they end up doing is this and then

38:57come around and say, so we can still think that this is inspired and that this is of God and that

39:02God is, is holy good. And, and no, a God that commands sex slavery or that commands genocide

39:10is not good. Because, and here's where there's, there's another apologetic that we'll try to point

39:16out that these things didn't really happen, which is somewhat self-defeating because it's

39:21acknowledging that the text is, is fiction. Right. And, and good on you if you can acknowledge that,

39:28but usually an apologetic that wants to defend God for genocide is not one that's going to be

39:33open to saying that, that the text is fiction, but sometimes you, you do see that argument. And, and

39:40I think that's, that's a little more honest, but it still turns the authors into somebody who used

39:47the idea of genocide and sex slavery and things like that to kind of pump up. It's, it's a fictitious

39:56pep rally for Israel to have them thump their chest and say, you know, we were once the big baddies.

40:03Yeah. And look, look at how much destruction we can do. Yeah. If we really put our minds to it,

40:09I'm very proud of us. We can, we can do it. It does seem like this, this concept that, you know,

40:16just this, if we, even if we just look at the destruction of the Canaanites as, as described in,

40:24in these, in these books, it seems like that, that is a good enough reason for every Christian to let

40:35go of the literal reading of, you know, the, the fundamentalist idea that the Bible has to be

40:43the literal word of God, every word of it true, every word of it good. Yeah. And just see it at least

40:50these parts as interesting sort of cultural markers and, you know, and, and sort of, and

40:59they point to what an ancient group of people believed and what they wanted to have happened

41:06and, and they're, and it becomes so interesting. But if you have to hold to it as good,

41:13because it came from the Lord, and there's just no weaseling around the fact that the Lord

41:19in these, uh, in, in these verses said to do something that we can all acknowledge is, uh,

41:27is not okay. Uh, given any other circumstance, it is not okay to do this.

41:32John Barton wrote a wonderful book called A History of the Bible and part, uh, a good

41:41chunk of the discussion is about how the Bible was interpreted once it was set loose. Once we

41:49had the Bible, how did they read it? And he talks about Psalm 137 nine. Are you familiar with that

41:56passage? This is a famous, uh, imprecatory Psalm. I don't even know what imprecatory means.

42:02Okay. We'll be familiar with it. So, um, from the trustee and RSVUE, uh, happy shall they be,

42:11who take your little ones and dash them against the rock and that happy shall they be. Uh,

42:17the Hebrew is ashre, which is translated into Greek and the Septuagint as blessed.

42:23This is the word that would be translated as, uh, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the

42:32meek. So this is a beatitude. So you could say, blessed are those who will take your little ones

42:38and crush them against a rock. And this is, this is a, a very isolated little single passage. And

42:46unlike the conquest accounts, which are embedded in the, the entire concept of the historical narrative

42:55of the Bible, this is something that could just be kind of plucked out. And, and you could rationalize

43:00it away without threatening the foundation of your belief in the historicity of all this stuff.

43:05And so Barton talks about how early Christians dealt with this passage, how folks like origin

43:11talked about how, um, the little ones here is, and this is a reference to, uh, Babylonian children.

43:18So this is post exile. This is basically a fantasy about getting revenge for the exile and talks

43:24about how origin says this is a metaphor. And the little ones are your little Babylonian thoughts,

43:31your sinful thoughts. And so blessed is the one who takes our little, um, our little neophyte

43:38Babylonian thoughts and smashes them against the rock, uh, to say, blessed are those who destroy

43:45their sinful thoughts. And so this, and so you have this in, uh, in early Christian, uh, kind of

43:51renegotiation with the text, how are we going to think about this kind of stuff? And you have it in,

43:55in some of the Jewish discussion as early Judaism, rabbinical Judaism, as well as talking about,

44:02how are we going to reconcile these things with our, a very, very different ethical framework?

44:09And this is something I wanted to make sure we brought up. I mentioned at the beginning that,

44:13uh, a lot of the, these texts are coming from very ethnocentric viewpoints, a very

44:19insular isolationist, separatist, uh, kind of notion of, uh, of the different people and the

44:25different states and nations of the world. And then with the exile, you had something

44:32unfortunate happen, uh, or fortunate, depending on your, depending on your perspective.

44:36The, the main body of Judah heights is now outside the land. They had no access to their God,

44:42whose purview was limited to the land. They needed to find a way to access God outside of Israel.

44:48And so you have this universalization of Adonai that I've argued in print is affected,

44:55is accomplished rhetorically in Psalm 82, which deposes the gods of the nations and calls on Adonai

45:02to rise up and inherit all nations, basically becoming the God of all the ge, different geopolitical

45:08identities. And so now God is available in any nation and now God has direct rule over all the

45:14nations, which then raises a question. Uh oh. Now every, all, all the other nations of the earth

45:21are God's subjects. So we've got to reconfigure our relationship to all the other nations of the

45:28earth. And we have this idea that God has chosen Israel as God's, uh, the, the King James version

45:36says peculiar people. And so a lot of Mormons like to think weird people, but peculiar there is an

45:44outdated, um, usage of this word that meant unique possession. So Israel is chosen as God's unique

45:52possession, even though God has concern for and is responsible for the creation of all the other

45:57nations of the earth as well. And so now that we have universalized God, we now need to find a way

46:02to understand everybody as being God's responsibility and, uh, even offspring and things like that. So

46:10then we get, oh, all the nations of the earth will come into the, the holy temple and everybody

46:15will be converted. And, uh, and we get kind of the universalist approach of Deuterois and later

46:20texts. And so we go from mine. Um, this, uh, this isolation is us versus them to being compelled to

46:29find a way to make them fit in our identity. Um, and by the time of the New Testament,

46:36we have this idea, uh, where all the nations of the earth are, are under God and everybody can just,

46:43you just have to change your beliefs. Nothing about your ethnic identity has to change at all. You

46:47just, you don't even have to get circumcised anymore. So you just have to, uh, you know, come to Jesus.

46:53So, um, that's all it takes. And, and I think that's a trajectory from a more isolationist,

46:59ethnocentric perspective to one that is more universal and less ethnocentric. Unfortunately,

47:05circumstances later incentivize Christians to come up with the idea of skin color as, uh,

47:12as boundaries of race and, uh, had to justify all the things that they had to do. So, um,

47:17it's a vicious cycle. Fortunately, uh, like there's so much of all the things, you know, this,

47:23this idea of genocide and you know, we've talked about sort of God commanding genocide. We've talked

47:29about the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah. That's when God commits genocide himself. What it does,

47:35the bad thing about it is that it provides cover for a lot of people to do some very horrible

47:41things if you should choose to. Yeah. Uh, and so that's the big danger with, it seems to me with,

47:48with taking a literal, uh, approach to, to these passages. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's an

47:55unintended consequence of trying to defend genocide is then you rationalize genocide and then it

48:03becomes acceptable. And the notion that the Canaanites, they were, they were evil and so they're

48:07better off dead is phenomenally dangerous because then the people that we dehumanize and the people

48:13that we dismiss as holy and unilaterally evil, it becomes a lot easier to rationalize their

48:21extermination. Right. And so just like we talked previously about the chewed gum and stuff like

48:27that. And if we talk about people that way, we lead them to believe that maybe it's, I am better

48:33off dead. Maybe this was so important that my life is ruined and I am, uh, unredeemable. And so

48:40we have children taking their lives because of these things, uh, in a very similar way,

48:46this rhetoric that strikes me as just an attempt to defend the inerrancy of the Bible and the goodness

48:51of God can have this unintended consequence of, of making genocide, uh, an option and,

48:58right, or, or just the killing of evil of, of people that you deem to be evil. Yeah. Uh, suddenly

49:05that's, that's seen as a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. On the table. Exactly. Yeah. Well, uh, don't kill

49:11anybody. Uh, I don't, I think, I think we are going to make this, uh, the official position of the

49:17data over dogma podcast, which is no matter how evil you think they are, you don't get to go into

49:23a country and kill all the people of it. And yeah. And I, I would say even that, uh, although some

49:30Christian nationalists have recently been, um, really hype in the death penalty, I would go so far as

49:36to say even the death penalty, I think is inappropriate and, um, I don't know if you feel the same, but I

49:42do. I do. I'm anti. I like it. So we're, so we're going that far guys. All right. Yeah. That is the

49:47official position of the data over dogma podcast. Boom. There it is. Uh, so, uh, you'll, don't worry,

49:55we'll give our, our email address at the end when you want to write an angrily at us. Um, should we

50:01switch to a much sillier, uh, topic really quickly? Yeah. Let's do. Um, and so let's, uh, let's do a, uh,

50:09chapter in verse on, uh, so we're, we're, we're, we, this is, this is Jesus is coming to Jerusalem,

50:20the triumphal entry. We're, we're, we're going to the New Testament now. We're, uh, we're, we're in

50:26Jesus times and, uh, and our friend needs a ride. So we're in, we're in Matthew 21, Jesus is, uh,

50:36coming in an in fulfillment of this, uh, prophecy that we have, um, and let me just pull up the text.

50:43So I make sure I don't misquote anything. Uh, that would be Zachariah. Yeah. Zachariah nine,

50:49nine is, is the prophecy. And so in fulfillment of this, which reads, uh, your king is coming to

50:55you unassuming and seated on a donkey and on a cult, the full of a donkey. So Matthew is the,

51:03the gospel author who is most concerned to present Jesus as fulfilling Hebrew Bible prophecy

51:08to a fault, meaning that Matthew will tell the story, even if it's told differently in his source,

51:16and Mark was likely one of the sources that Matthew used. Matthew will tell the story so as to make

51:22it fulfill prophecy, even if it is ludicrous. And so when we look at Zachariah nine, nine,

51:30we have a bit of poetic parallelism. He seated on a donkey and on a cult, the full of a donkey.

51:36Now this is actually just opposition. This is kind of poetic opposition, uh, seated on a donkey.

51:41That is to say, right, a cult, the full of a donkey. So it's repeating and giving more information.

51:47Now, whether or not the author of Matthew was confused by the Greek translation and understood

51:54this as just a simple conjunction, um, Matthew tells the story in a peculiar way. And it's kind

52:00of hidden in some translations. Um, let me open up the King James version. Okay. So in verse seven,

52:07so, so Jesus says to them, um, hey, go, uh, go into this village. You're going to find a donkey

52:14and a cult tied up on time and bring him to me. And, uh, and you can see the, you can imagine the

52:20disciples kind of looking hesitantly at each other and Jesus saying, don't worry. If anybody says

52:26anything, just say the Lord needs them and wave your hand like that and say, um, these, you know,

52:32these are not the animals that you are in need of right now. Um, and then it says this took place

52:38to fulfill what has been spoken through the prophet and then we get Zachariah nine, nine,

52:41the disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them, they brought the donkey and the cult and put

52:48their cloaks on them. And he sat on them. Yeah. So the King James version tweaks us a little bit,

52:58says, uh, they brought the ass in the cult and put on them their clothes and they set him there on.

53:03So, uh, now, now the Greek preposition is unambiguous. It literally says on them,

53:10which means Matthew is describing Jesus writing two animals at the same time into Jerusalem.

53:18And the King James version is obscured that a little bit. Can I offer two, two ways that this

53:24comes up in my head because I love both of them. Yeah. The first way that this happens in my brain

53:30is it's like, uh, I don't know if you've ever seen in a rodeo where somebody will ride two horses

53:37at the same time, except that he's got it. He's got it. Yeah. Exactly. Except that he has to do it,

53:42like uneven bars style with one with one knee, like raised up high because he's on a, uh, a cult

53:48and a donkey. That's one fun way of looking at it. But my favorite way of looking at it is he rides

53:53side saddle on the big one. And the little one is just his donkey, Ottoman foot. He just puts his,

53:59he just puts his feet up on and then they, they march in that way. So that the latter conceptualization

54:05of this event is actually how some Christian artists depicted this because you can find paintings

54:12of Jesus sitting on side saddle on a big donkey with his feet resting on a small donkey.

54:20So the, I think the third way is, is the one I need to see in a painting though. And that is

54:26where they take the, the smaller one and put it on top of the big one. Oh, so it's like, oh,

54:33it's like, you got like a pyramid thing. Yeah. I haven't seen that depicted anywhere. That's what

54:39I just found it on Reddit. Somebody's done it on Reddit. I like it. Oh, there's another one where,

54:47where like somebody's like put a board between the two animals and he's sitting on, he's riding

54:52on the board. He's sitting on the board. Oh, and how does he not slide off? Do they make the animals

54:57the same size? Yeah, they're the same size in this. Okay. Yeah. So there, there are, there are already

55:02messing with the, uh, with the scriptures to giversating the scriptures. If you, uh, I use that word every

55:08now and then and every time at like, people are like, I did not know that word existed. Um,

55:13and the only term to giversate, and that means to, it, it means, uh, basically to intentionally

55:19misinterpret or to twist or pervert your interpretation of something. And the only reason I know about

55:24it is because I used it all the time when I was a missionary because it's a more common word in

55:30Spanish. Oh, okay. And so I, I was like, I, I come back to the States and I was like,

55:35turd, is this a word in English? And I looked it up and it is. And I was like, okay, good. I'm,

55:40I can use this word. You guys are like, you guys don't have that one? That's okay. Yeah, that's,

55:46that's too bad. So, so what did the other, we've got Matthew doing this? What are the other, uh,

55:52they just, they just mentioned a single cult. Okay. Yeah. So piece of cake. It's, uh, and because

56:01they're not either they were not worried about trying to describe this in a way that exactly

56:07matched their reading of, of Zechariah nine nine, or, uh, they were just, uh, you know, pick, uh,

56:14Mark was the first one to say, to tell it. And he just says a cult. And so Luke is probably just

56:19like, I don't know what works for me, spoken, but yeah, we're just going to go with the cult. Um,

56:25so, and, and interestingly, this is one where, um, for any Latter-day Saints in the audience,

56:30the Joseph Smith revision, uh, changes it to a cult. So, um, yeah, got, uh, got one right by

56:39harmonizing with, uh, the other two gospels. Yeah. But yeah, this is one of the examples where, uh,

56:44where Matthew, I think, twists the story a little bit to make it fit a little better

56:49with this rhetorical goal of having Jesus, uh, fulfill Old Testament prophecy. And, and you see

56:55something similar in the, in the death of Judas as well. Cause he says this was, um, to fulfill this,

57:01this prophecy, uh, where the, the story of Judas's death is very different from the story told in

57:07Acts one. And it's because Matthew wants it to fit, uh, the, uh, prophecy rather than just tell the

57:16story as it probably came down to him. Sure. Okay. Well, I mean, it's just a silly story. And that,

57:24I, what I love about this is that it's so fine. You know what I mean? If, if the, if the author of

57:31Matthew just was, yeah, like you say, got a little uptight about making sure that it matched with

57:39what he read in Zechariah and, and God made a low weird. That's okay. So long as this doesn't have

57:50to be an inerrant book. Yeah. It's, it's just the work of a guy who was trying to do a thing.

57:58Yeah. But, but it does present a real problem again. Like, like, I think that's the thing that

58:07the theme that we keep bumping up against as a, as a show is that like, if you're trying to make

58:15this a literally true, uh, inerrant book, your just all order. You're just in trouble.

58:22There's just, yeah. You're just, you're going to have to write novel length, uh, explanations

58:28of why it's okay. And also explanations that just make up data and scenarios and stuff. Like,

58:37I've, I've seen attempts to try to reconcile this. People, um, try to argue that. Oh, well,

58:43the other one was there, but the other authors, they just didn't mention the other one. Right.

58:49Right. Whatever reason. Well, Mark thought it looked dumb. So he didn't want to tie. He didn't

58:53want to embarrass Jesus or whatever. Well, and here's another way I've seen apologetics make use of

58:58the dictionary in a problematic way. They'll look up the word contradiction in the dictionary and

59:02they will assert, they will assert like the most hard line definition. And, and one of them,

59:11I don't remember what they are off the top of my head, but one that always comes up is this notion

59:14that they cannot possibly be reconciled. And so what they understand that to mean is that if there

59:21is any possible way that two different passages could be reconciled or harmonized, it's not a

59:28contradiction. And what that means is you can run wild with your imagination. Yeah. The, the only

59:35limit is physical possibility, which means you can have two things that are, that are described

59:42in just totally different ways. But as long as you can imagine and make up scenarios

59:48that could render this possible, that means it's not physically impossible. That means it's not a

59:54contradiction. That means the text is still univocal. And that is one of the most tortured

60:01attempts to try to rationalize away contradictions in the Bible that I have ever seen, leaving aside

60:09how much I just hate definitions to begin with. But, but it's so silly when, and you know, you have

60:17the deaths of different kings, whereas like one says he was shot with an arrow and died in,

60:23in Megito. And the other said he was caught hiding out in Samaria and killed on the spot. And they're

60:29like, well, he could have run off to Samaria with the arrow in him and they caught him. And then

60:35they took him back to Megito and then there he died. But then they took him back to Samaria and

60:39he buried him in Samaria. And, and like there are all kinds of tortured, tortured attempts to invent

60:46scenarios that are not in evidence, just to show that, look, there's a way it could be possible.

60:52And, and my feelings are that if your apologetics are based on, hey, it's not impossible,

60:59you're fighting a losing battle, at least to the degree that that battle is aimed beyond the

61:06people who already agree with you and are just looking for validation for agreeing with you. If

61:11your battle is extending at all beyond that, you are losing. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the point,

61:18right? Like if you've just, if you've come up with a way that makes it work in your head,

61:22and it's not hurting anybody else, yeah, I would, I would add him adding that caveat.

61:28But usually apologists, the apologists who are trying to get more out of apologetics, make a

61:33living out of it, are usually trying to perform plausibility, perform a scholarly approach. They

61:41want not only to communicate to those who already agree, hey, you are, you are validated in agreeing,

61:49but they also want to make it seem like they want to gin up the illusion of plausibility

61:55so that the people who agree can say, yeah, look, they're actually

61:59legitimate mainstream scholars. And they're saying this, which means this is a part of

62:04legitimate mainstream scholarship. And so this is legitimate scholarship. And so they have to

62:10perform valid scholarship, even if it's actually not valid scholarship.

62:15And I think that the thing that you said that I think is most salient to that idea is

62:20the presentation of facts, not in evidence. Like if you're, you can present all kinds of

62:27ways that you could maybe make it harmonize if you squint a little bit and you turn your head and

62:32whatever. But you don't get to call that evidence. You don't get to call that a reason to believe

62:40your position. Yeah, that's a reason why your position may not be impossible. But that's not a

62:47reason to believe it. You're not presenting anything that is that is useful in convincing

62:51someone else. It's not a positive argument for plausibility, probability certainty. Right.

62:57It's just defense against impossibility. Yeah. So and maybe they have defense against

63:05impossibility professors. Maybe they have those maybe they have plant roots that they use to try

63:16to gin up scenarios that aren't in evidence. But yeah, that's not that's not scholarship.

63:22Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for joining us on the data over dogma show.

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