Why defend the Bible?

[unknown soldier]

Christian apologetics, understood as a defense of Christian beliefs, keeps busy defending the Bible. Why is it so important to defend the Bible?

I'm sure Christians have many reasons to defend the Bible which we can talk about, but here are four reasons we can begin to debate and discuss:

1. It is the "word of God" that communicates what he wants Christians to know.
2. It inspires and encourages them to remain steadfast in the faith.
3. It provides guidelines for living life wisely and morally.
4. It offers hope to them.

What exactly does the Bible need to be defended from? Again, we can discuss many reasons, but I'd like to start by discussing the following four reasons:

1. The Bible's pages are full of atrocities committed by God that no moral people can condone.
2. The Bible is full of internal inconsistencies that cannot be sensibly reconciled.
3. The Bible is often inconsistent with what we know from science and historical studies.
4. The Bible has failed to let Christians know what it really means, and that's why Christians have disagreed and even fought over it for centuries.

[JehovahsWitness]

Sarai took her Egyptian servant Hagar and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife.

Hagar was not a "sex slave" she was quite simply a second WIFE.

It is hard to tell the biblical difference between slaves and wives, but the presumably unintentional (and hilarious) irony is that it's not because slaves are treated so well.

I have dealt with the idea of loss of abuse if person (not the case for Hagar), being prostituted or hired for money (not them ase for Hagar), forced imprisonment (not the case for Hagar) loss of inheritance rights (not the case for Hagar).... So I have to ask you, apart from what has already been addressed, what in your opinion is the difference between a wife and a sex slave (if indeed you think there is a difference)?



JW

[unknown soldier]

It's not difficult to explain why the Bible as we know it is so confusing. It's HUGE for one thing. It was written in dead languages that as you say are difficult to translate into modern languages, and it's full of bizarre imagery that has little to do with modern cultures.

None of that counts against.

I think I made some good points as to why the Bible is confusing.

All that this telling me is that you don't want to put in the time or effort that's required.

I'm not going to put a lot of time and effort into looking for something that probably isn't in the Bible. I think I've already solved some of its biggest mysteries.

...if size is what concerns you, feel free to pick just one book. Go with Genesis. Or one of the gospels. There is enough in either of those for a lifetime of study and moral edification.

If I "go with Genesis," then I read about most of the world's people and animals being deliberately drowned. I don't call that moral edification.

It is not just deeper meanings. It is the fact that it challenges our sensibilities. It makes us uncomfortable and pushes us to confront and wrestle with hard truths.

It can make us wrestle with hard truths about ourselves if we base our morality on the Bible. What kind of people are we if we posit a being we consider perfectly good who kills enormous numbers of people and then demands that we love him in return? The God we created tells us a lot about ourselves.

It better equips us to be moral agents in the world.

It will better equip us to be moral if the Bible teaches us how not to act.

So let's call it the beauty of the literature, the treasure hidden within, and the challenge that it sets us in finding it.

It's a challenge to find treasure and beauty in the Bible all right. If you want to discover important truths by solving problems, then why not study science and math? That way you can demonstrate truths you find rather than insist you have the truth and insult anybody who disagrees with you.

[Difflugia]

I have dealt with the idea of loss of abuse if person (not the case for Hagar), being prostituted or hired for money (not them ase for Hagar), forced imprisonment (not the case for Hagar) loss of inheritance rights (not the case for Hagar)....

I'm sure you honestly intended that list to be exhaustive, but you left a few important things out. Most importantly, you missed personal autonomy and the freedom to withhold consent to sex.

So I have to ask you, apart from what has already been addressed, what in your opinion is the difference between a wife and a sex slave (if indeed you think there is a difference)?

By modern standards? Legal protection of the freedom to say "no" in any situation without fear of any form of abuse.

By Old Testament standards it's not clear. Physical abuse of a slave short of actually knocking out an eye or tooth is explicitly allowed, so if husbands weren't allowed to beat their wives, then that would be one difference. The Bible doesn't actually state such a prohibition, though, so we can't really be certain.

As a quick gauge of what you think Hagar's marital rights were in the Bible, if she had decided to end her marriage to Abram, roughly what fraction of the marital assets was she entitled to? To make it more interesting, maybe you could tell us what the Bible says and, if there's a difference, what you think.

[JehovahsWitness]

... personal autonomy and the freedom to withhold consent to sex.

Ok now speculation apart, can you actually produce anything in the text under discussion to suggest that Hagar did not have that freedom over her person. Ie that Abraham systematically raped her.



JW

To learn more please go to other posts related to...

WOMEN, SLAVERY and ...., CHILD ABUSE

[theophile]

I think I made some good points as to why the Bible is confusing.

Nothing you said counts against the points I made about the bible. You said it is old, written in a dead language, and "huge." None of that denies its artistry. Or the subtleties at play there. Or the caliber of its form and content. Or its ability to sharpen our moral senses.

I'm not going to put a lot of time and effort into looking for something that probably isn't in the Bible. I think I've already solved some of its biggest mysteries.

I'm really curious what mystery you believe you have solved...

If I "go with Genesis," then I read about most of the world's people and animals being deliberately drowned. I don't call that moral edification.

Case and point. You are completely ignoring the real question and challenge to our morality that Genesis 6 represents.

Imagine if you will, as Genesis 6 invites us to do, that the world has gone to complete and utter hell under human rule. Deep set resentments between humankind and creation have been festering for generations. "All flesh" is corrupt, as God says.

Now, imagine you have the power to do something. What do you do?

To be clear, I'm not saying that God's decision to wipe the slate clean was right or wrong. What I am saying is that these are the moral edge cases that the bible forces us to confront, and that you are completely ignoring. You can cry foul over the poor little animals all you want. Or, as I suspect, you can make ludicrous arguments like "if I was God and could do anything, I would keep the good and only wipe out the bad." But again, you're ignoring the problem.

There is nothing good left. Nothing but Noah. Even the poor little animals have been corrupted!

So, what do you do? Please share your wisdom.

[brunumb]

There is nothing good left. Nothing but Noah. Even the poor little animals have been corrupted!

Really? All the animals of the world have been corrupted, but not the two of each kind that made it to the ark. Every man, woman and child, except for eight, were so bad they had to be killed. And the omnipotent one who can do anything chose to flood the entire planet as his method of choice. I reckon if you can believe all that, you can believe anything.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to unknown soldier in post #0]

Logically, I agree that if the Bible is authored by an all-mighty God, then he could take care of his own book. However, the fact of the matter is that apologists are busy defending the Bible. Why do they defend the Bible if presumably, they don't need to defend it? That's the main issue of this thread.

As I said, the Bible has been around for over 2000 years.

During those 2000 years, many have tried to stamp out the Bible. Most recently Stalin, Lenin, Mao, North Korea, Syria, Iran, and countless other Muslim countries over the years all have failed. There were no uprisings by Christians in those countries. at least non that succeeded and yet the Bible and the gospel keep right ongoing.

Christians do "defend" Biblical doctrine just like anyone else defends what they believe. You have a position on certain issues and you defend your position on those issues. In other words, you explain why you believe what you believe. Below you explain why you believe you are a good person. Are you saying that Christians should not explain why they believe a certain way? Should they not communicate what verses they use to arrive at the conclusions they do? Should they communicate the facts in the natural world that point to a creator God?

What this thread is calling "defending" the Bible is simply doing what anyone else would do when someone disagrees with their opinion on a subject. You tell them why you believe what you believe. A person will give a defense of their beliefs.

Some people may believe that dinosaurs are millions of years old and they are free to believe that if they wish. But I can also point out that the soft tissue that is found in dinosaurs makes that position a scientific impossibility. And they would come back with some type of hogwash about how the iron in the blood forms a type of formaldehyde that can preserve these soft tissues for millions of years. Mind you this iron mixture would have preserved the soft tissue on the order of six orders of magnitude longer than formaldehyde.

Someone "defending the Bible" is simply defending what they believe in. Just like anyone else would do.

What are you calling atrocities and why?
Bible critics object to the Bible glorifying the violent and deadly acts of its God. If the Bible is such a wonderful book, then nobody would be expected to object to its contents, yet many people do object. Why do they object to its stories and injunctions seeing them as cruel and evil?

Since when is justice, cruel and evil? Are you trying to say that infanticide is ok? The nations that God wiped off the face of the Earth were sacrificing their own children. God gave these people 400 years to repent of this sin. The question could be asked. Why did God wait so long to punish these people?

...the real issue is the desire not to be held to the same standard as everyone else. This is why for men absolute power corrupts. When men feel that there is no consequence for their actions men, there is no limit to the atrocities that men will preform The 20th century should have taught us that.

Hmmm. So you think that people who criticize the Bible do so because they are bad and want to get away with their bad ways. Can you post an example of such a critic?

Everyone is bad. There is no one that is righteous no, not one. But let's take for example anyone that believes that homosexuality is not a sin or that abortion is good or at least morally ok. Many have tried to reinterpret the Bible in such a way that would make these acts, not a sin.

While you're coming up with that example, allow me to post a counter-example. I'm a Bible critic, and I live a good life. I live that good life not so much out of fear of punishment but out of a desire to live in harmony with others for the common good.

What is good? How can you even know what good in a society where moral relativism reigns supreme? Hitler thought he was doing "good" for the entire human race by creating a master race. Stalin, Lenin, and Mao all thought they were do "good" for their citizens. People in the United States right now that are looting and burning cities think they are doing "good."

So what you think is "good" does not mean that everyone thinks that it is "good." To some people what you believe is good is evil in a society that believes in moral relativism. Who decides what good is. Do we take a vote on it? They took a vote in Germany and that did not turn out so good.

Oh, and would you be evil if you thought there was no God to punish you?

Everyone is evil. All have sinned. The only difference between a Christian and a nonChristian is the belief that Jesus died on the cross for their sins.

How can men whose consciousness is tied to one instant in time ever hope to understand the "complex intellectual considerations" of a Being who consciousness transcends time and space?

I suppose we cannot comprehend that which is evidently incoherent--the idea of the Christian God. But it's not sensible, in my opinion, to posit a violent being whose death-dealing supposedly cannot be understood, and then justify those acts telling people that they are too stupid to to see why those deadly acts are justified! Although we are indeed limited in what we can understand, let's recognize those limits when we encounter them and not when some theologian tells us what they are. So as far as I'm concerned, we can indeed understand the Bible's horrors for what they are.

You are making a moral claim. What are you basing your moral claim on? You seem to be basing it on your belief system. My belief system says that God was judging sinners. My belief system says that God is love and that He is also just and He will judge sinners for their sin. Be glad that He does otherwise you might find yourself believing that it is quite moral to sacrifice children in the fire. God's love and goodness extend to those that do not even believe He exists but at the end of time all will know either the mercy of God or the justice of God.

But there are ideas in the Bible that do go beyond the ability of man to comprehend.
I say let's test people's understanding of the Bible's ideas and then base our judgment of their understanding on the outcome of that test rather than have you declare that they cannot understand the Bible's ideas. After all, you might be wrong and people do understand the Bible's ideas.

Ok, explain to me how Jesus can be 100% God and 100% man.
Explain how God can be 3 persons and one essence
Explain how a being can live and exist outside of time and space.
What is it like to be omniscient?
What is it like to omnipotent?
What is it like to be omnipresent?
Is it even possible for a man to make decisions already knowing the outcome of that decision?
It is not even possible for a man to understand God's decision-making process.

How could a man who is tied time and space and has no ability to change how time and space pulls him along ever understand a being who transcends both time and space? What form would a being who can transcend time and space have?
It's your God--you tell us. It appears that Christians have created a God concept that is nonsensical.

Simply because it is beyond the ability of man to understand it is nonsensical? What is nonsensical is the belief that the "universe came from Nothing". As if nothing can create something. Or that there is an eternal universe out there that we could never exist in and that time flows forward and backward and the only way that time flows the way it does is because of that universe, that we can never see or detect. Those are nonsensical beliefs.

Outside of a Creator God, man has no idea of how or why the universe exists.
Not really. Some scientists have come up with ideas of why the universe exists that involve no Gods. In fact, cosmology involves no Gods at all.

Which theory would you be trying to express? Lawrence Krauss's book the universe from nothing. A theory that was rejected the first time it was proposed in the '70s and then again in the '80s. The problem that this theory has always had is that there is no explanation of where space came from the quantum flux.

Or maybe Brian Greene's "Multiverse" theory or at least it was made popular by him. So somewhere out there there is a mother universe that spawns an infinite number of universes. This mother universe that we could never exist in is eternal and time can flow forward and backward. So they have taken the attributes of God and made them a universe. Kind sounds like pantheism to me. So is that what you have faith in really.

How lucky do you think we can be? According to Greene's theory, there is a 1: 1 E500 chance of the universe having the laws that it has. According to Sean Carroll, it is far more likely that we all part of a "Boseman Brain" than sitting where ever it is you think you are sitting right now. And all the other theories that are out there like the cosmic egg theory have the problem of impossibility also.

And we have not even gotten into the problems with inflation theory yet. Those are simply problems with how the universe could the universe possibly exist.

So no scientist has no idea of how the universe came into being.

Men want to indulge in one type of sin or other. Men will then create an interpretation of the Scriptures in order to fulfill those sinful desires.
Those bad men! Is it safe to assume you are not one of those men?

Not at all, I am one of those bad men. This is why it has taken men hundreds and in some cases thousands of years to clarify the doctrine of the Bible. Not because it is unclear but because men do have sin that they desire to hold onto. And when it is shown that Scripture states something different men should change their position.

There is nothing unclear in the Bible. Men simply make it unclear because of the sin in their lives.
May I test your understanding of the Bible? Since you are a sin-free interpreter of scripture, it should be clear to you what Luke 23:34 (NRSV) is telling us:
Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."
In this passage, who is "them" and how do you know?

I am not a sin-free interpreter. I rely on the two thousand years of Godly men searching the Scriptures and comparing it to their lives and seeing the sin in their lives changing their view of how passages should be interpreted.

Jesus said this when He was hanging on the cross. When interpreting Scripture context is king. So who was it that was doing something, the Roman soldiers. And it appears that God did have mercy on them because in

Matthew 27:54 it states this.
When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!"

The democracy that we see in the west (or at least what is left of it) was built on Christian principles. "All men are created equal" is a Christian principle. It comes from the belief that all men are created in the image of God. The only way that a democracy can survive according to George Washington is if men have an internal morally coming from religion.
Are you saying that people criticize the Bible because they oppose democracy?

Nope, what I am saying is the only reason that democracy came about is because of the Bible.

Hitler had a morality. He believed, he was doing the right thing by making a master race and there were many that believed that with him. Stalin had a moral code that he lived by, Lenin had a moral code that he lived by. The evidence is quite clear that subjective morality is no morality at all.
So those who object to the Bible's morality are like Hitler and Stalin. My subjective morality frees me to see the acts of Hitler and Stalin as unacceptable, so I don't seem to fit your profile of a Bible critic.

Subjective morality condemns those or their descendants to support the acts of Hitler or Stalin or worse if someone is convincing enough. Take for example abortion. Abortion was once thought to be a horror of the greatest kind and now today it is accepted as a right. Homosexuality used to be considered a sin that destroys the family unit and normal Godly sexuality. And now today it is considered perfectly acceptable. The only reason that you do accept Hitler and Stalin's acts as immoral is because of Biblical morality that still exists in this world. But the Biblical morality that exists in the world is decreasing. Abortion has killed many more than Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and Mao together have killed.

...I would say that there are many nonChristians and atheist on this site that know the Bible much better than your average churchgoer today.
That might be why they aren't Christians; they've read the Bible.

I would agree with you. They are not Christians because the Holy Spirit has not convicted them of their sin.

[Difflugia]

Ok now speculation apart, can you actually produce anything in the text under discussion to suggest that Hagar did not have that freedom over her person. Ie that Abraham systematically raped her.

Yep. In fact, I already did:

Genesis 16:1-2 reads:

Now Sarai, Abrams wife, bare him no children. She had a handmaid [, a female slave], an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. Sarai said to Abram, "Please behold that Yahweh has kept me from bearing. Please go into my handmaid. Maybe I shall obtain children by her. Abram listened to the voice of Sarai."

Sarai gave Hagar, her human property, to Abram to have sex with. That the goal was a child and presumably not sexual gratification is immaterial.

If you want to speculate, argue, or whatever that Hagar was not Sarai's property and was not given to Abram by Sarai for Abram to "go into," then you're free to make your case. Aside from unsupported assertions and denials, your only argument is the implication that I somehow haven't made the case that Genesis 16 means what it says.

Sarai is in a position that she may, according to the Bible, physically abuse Hagar for disobedience. The wording in 16:13 is also such that Sarai and Abram are the only ones in the encounter that have agency regarding Hagar's sexuality and Abram's sexual interaction with her. By any modern standard, that does much more than merely "suggest" rape. If, despite this, you wish to build an argument that Hagar still had the latitude to offer or deny consent without coercion (or redefine "rape," perhaps?), then it's up to you to actually make and support such a case.

If you wish to do so, a really good place to start is with the book I quoted earlier, Sex Rewarded, Sex Punished: A Study of the Status "Female Slave" in Early Jewish Law by Diane Kriger. I went to check how much could be read online as a Google Books preview or similar and made an exciting discovery:

An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 978-1-644-69329-2. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. Effective March 20, 2020, this book is subject to a CC-BY-NC license.

Individual chapters may be downloaded from academic publisher De Gruyter and the entire book may be read online or downloaded as a PDF from the Open Research Library. You now have no excuse for a response that is anything less than well-informed.

[JehovahsWitness]

Sarai gave Hagar, her human property, to Abram to have sex with. That the goal was a child and presumably not sexual gratification is immaterial.

If you want to speculate, argue, or whatever that Hagar was not Sarai's property and was not given to Abram by Sarai for Abram to "go into," then you're free to make your case.

Emphasis MINE

Have you finished making yours?



Are you suggesting giving someone away in marriage (we have already established from the text Hagar was give as a WIFE) equates not only to giving a licensce to physically abuse the bride but that it is understood that the bride will thereafter be kept as a "sex slave"?

WHO GIVES THIS WOMAN AWAY?



In traditional weddings, the father of the bride walks her down the aisle and hands her off to the groom. If this seems old-fashioned, that is because it is. The practice dates back to the days when women were the property of their father, and he gave her away in exchange for a dowry.

Source: brides.com

You make these assumptions of abuse based in the fact that Hagar was given (in marriage*)?


* I think even in our modern era its true to say that most men expect to have sex with their brides after they are married and most women understand this. I hazard a guess most people still marry because they want to start a family ie have children



JW





RELATED POSTS

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viewtopic.php?p=1022163#p1022163

Was the fact that Sarai gave Hagar away in marriage to Abraham evidence of abuse? [this post]
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Is it wrong for men to treat women as their "property"?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 57#p977057

Does God's mentioned in Eden of the mistreatement of women mean he approved or endorsed such treatement?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 43#p801843

To learn more please go to other posts related to...

WOMEN , SEX And... MARRIAGE

[theophile]

There is nothing good left. Nothing but Noah. Even the poor little animals have been corrupted!

Really? All the animals of the world have been corrupted, but not the two of each kind that made it to the ark. Every man, woman and child, except for eight, were so bad they had to be killed. And the omnipotent one who can do anything chose to flood the entire planet as his method of choice. I reckon if you can believe all that, you can believe anything.

That is what the story says. All flesh apart from Noah. The earth itself was corrupt. So don't soften the situation. And yes, God's response was to preserve all that was good (i.e., Noah) and then some to enable a second chance.

This is not a question of "belief," as if I believe this actually happened. This is a question of what would you do? It is a thought experiment of the moral kind.