| Old Testament Morality By Charles Rose Introduction As I noted in my essay The Darwin Fish, Spirituality, and Me, I was once a Christian. I became an atheist after reading about and carefully considering some philosophical issues related to faith in God. Later, I went back and studied the Bible. As an atheist I found that to be a truly liberating experience. I wrote this essay in part to show to Christians who wish to �save� me, as an alternative to tedious and usually pointless religious discussions. It will hopefully also be useful for other people who haven�t read much of or about the Bible but want to know more. You will need only an open, thoughtful mind and a Bible of your own to verify most of what I say, and I will only be discussing a few very basic issues that any serious student of the Bible will already be familiar with. The Bible that I will be quoting from is the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). This is one of the more accurate translations available, and it is written in modern English for ease of comprehension. Although the King James Version (KJV) is quite popular and poetic to read, it is a less accurate translation and is not as good for serious study. There are no substantive differences between the two translations with respect to the verses that I will be referring to, however, so a KJV will be good enough for verifying my interpretations. I have inserted links to the Bible Gateway online Bible to allow you to check the context of verses online. You may also want to see The Skeptic's Annotated Bible for additional commentary. God on Genocide One of the main �selling points� of the Bible is that it provides a sound guide to moral living. It is true that there is some valuable wisdom to be found there, but the Bible also has a serious dark side. I will look at a few of the more obvious negative moral messages with the Old Testament, starting with statements condoning genocide. Let us look at I Samuel 15:2-3, where Samuel relays instructions from God to King Saul (emphasis added): Thus says the Lord of hosts, "I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." The instructions are clear. The Israelites were to commit an act of genocide, and God even gave them specific instructions to kill innocent babies. Even if we assume that the grievance against the citizens of Amalek was sufficient to justify their indiscriminant slaughter, how could their children have been worthy of execution? I suppose it could be argued that the Israelites simply couldn�t care for so many orphans, and it was more humane to kill them. But is that the best that an all-powerful God could come up with? And of course the assumption that all the adults of Amalek deserved to die is hardly a reasonable one. How could every single Amalekite deserve death because of a military operation carried out in the past? After all, even the Nazi soldiers were simply doing what they were told, and we generally accept today that it would be wrong to hold common soldiers responsible for the Reich�s policies, much less the many noncombatant Germans alive at the time. And besides, it must have simply seemed prudent to the Amalekites to try to drive away an armed group of nomads wandering into their territory. Even if we assume that they posed a threat to the security of the Israelites in Saul�s day, certainly utter genocide wouldn�t have been necessary, especially with the power of God Himself behind them. Any way you look at it, it was simply senseless, barbaric slaughter. This passage is hardly an aberration. Many more such commandments to commit acts of genocide are to be found in the Old Testament. Take for example Deuteronomy 2:31-3:6: The Lord said to me, �See, I have begun to give Sihon and his land over to you. Begin now to take possession of his land.� So when Sihon came out against us, he and all his people for battle at Jahaz, the lord our God gave him over to us; and we struck him down, along with his offspring and all his people. At that time we captured all his towns, and in each town we utterly destroyed men, women, and children. We left not a single survivor. ...King Og of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, for battle at Edrei. The Lord said to me, �Do not fear him, for I have handed him over to you, along with his people and his land. Do to him as you did to King Sihon of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon.� So the Lord our God also handed over to us King Og of Bashan and all his people. ...we utterly destroyed them, as we had done to king Sihon of Heshbon, in each city utterly destroying men, women, and children. Some would point out that these people had to be exterminated to prevent them from teaching the Israelites idolatry (Deuteronomy 20:16-18, among other passages.) This is a simple evasion, however. For one thing, few people today would agree that it is acceptable to kill people simply because they have different religious views. For another, there is no particular reason why the Israelites could not have subjugated these people and taught them their own religion. They certainly could have gotten by without absolute genocide, especially with the power of the Almighty to back them up. But God apparently preferred the slaughter. For more statements commanding or approving of genocide, see (respectively) Deuteronomy 20:16-17 and Joshua 11:20: But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breaths remain alive. You shall annihilate them... just as the Lord your God has commanded... For it was the Lord�s doing to harden their hearts so that they would come against Israel in battle, in order that they might be utterly destroyed, and might receive no mercy, but be exterminated, just as the lord had commanded Moses. The latter passage is particularly interesting, since it says that God actually influenced the minds of some of the inhabitants of the promised land so that they would give the Israelites an excuse to wipe them out! Religious Tolerance On a related note, look at this Biblical advice for dealing with a friend or family member who belongs to another religion, and invites you to join (Deuteronomy 13:6-9): If anyone secretly entices you � even if it is your brother, your father�s son or your mother�s son, or your own son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your most intimate friend � saying, �Let us go worship other gods,� ...you must not yield to or heed any such persons. Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them. But you shall surely kill them; your own hand shall be first against them to execute them... God and Human Sacrifice And then there is the issue of human sacrifice. You are likely already familiar with the story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22), in which God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son but then rescinds the order when Abraham demonstrates his willingness to do so. This story is often recited by Christian preachers, with Abraham held up as a role model due to his faith. There is an obvious problem with this: Abraham was willing to kill his own child for his faith. Due to the great difficulty that even fellow Christians have in agreeing on God�s will, and the many and occasionally bizarre interpretations of the scripture promoted by different groups, such murderous fanaticism is hardly something that should be encouraged. And on the subject of human sacrifice, here is a similar story that is rarely mentioned in sermons (Judges 11:29-31,34,39). It begins as Jephthah the Judge is heading out to battle against the Ammonites: Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah... And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, �If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord�s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.� ...and the Lord gave them into his hand. Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and there was his daughter coming out to meet him... she returned to her father, who did with her according to the vow he had made. She had never slept with a man. There is no hint that God was displeased with this arrangement; He apparently considered it a fair deal. But offering sacrifices of human virgins to God in exchange for favors is not a practice that most modern Christians would approve of. When one thinks of human sacrifice, savage headhunters or comic-book Satanists usually come to mind; but the Bible says that this horrific form of worship has been practiced with the approval of God Himself. The Ten Commandments And then there is the more subtle issue of the Ten Commandments, which are renowned by many Christians. The Commandments prohibit the following: (1) worshipping other gods, (2) worshipping graven images, (3) taking the Lord�s name in vain, (4) working on the Sabbath, (5) failing to honor one�s own parents, (6) murder, (7) adultery, (8) theft, (9) bearing false witness against another person, and (10) desiring another person�s property. First off, only five of the Ten Commandments relate to moral behavior at all. The first four deal only with worship practices and piety, not morality. These commandments are irrelevant for anyone who doesn't happen to be a Jew or Christian. And the Tenth Commandment instructs people on what to feel rather than what to do. With regard to actions, it is redundant with other Commandments. And it is a rather peculiar Commandment besides, because in my experience, people have much more control over their actions than their feelings. This commandment causes needless guilt, since people often have uncontrollable feelings of envy that they would never actually act upon. And there is a major problem with the Commandments that do relate to moral behavior. They are of no help whatsoever in dealing with ambiguous situations, and can sometimes lead to needless harm. There is no hint that one commandment might be more important than another; they are all the word of God, after all. But what if theft or a lie is necessary to prevent a murder? In such a case, to obey the Commandments would result in a needless death; is that right? What if a child is being beaten and molested by a parent? To what extent should that child �honor� the parent? The Commandments suggest that the child should just accept the parent�s actions. Such simplistic rules of behavior may be useful when instructing a preschooler, who has little capacity to reason, but they are inadequate for any normal adult. Real life forces us to make judgment calls. To say that things like murder and theft are generally very bad things is certainly true, but a sound moral system must teach a person how to make sound decisions about difficult and confusing issues. Simple �commandments� cannot do that. Conclusion I could go on at much more length about what is wrong with the Old Testament as a moral guide. For instance, I could discuss misogynous messages, passages condemning homosexuality, or miscellaneous violent messages like Deuteronomy 21:18-21, the commandment that disobedient sons be stoned to death. (Rocks are cheaper than Ritalin, after all.) In the interest of brevity I have opted to look at only a few of the most obvious issues, but hopefully I have pointed out enough already to get my point across. There is certainly a lot in the Old Testament worth reading, and there are some positive moral messages there. But there are also many moral messages that should horrify any decent person. And even at its best, the level of moral instruction offered by the Old Testament is simply not high enough. For more on these and related issues, see Basic Issues Relating to Atheism on my main atheism page. Back To My Essays |