The Y-STR and 4000 BC
Quick notes on notation: DNA sequences are often written by writing the first letter of each nucleotide. Nucleotides are like molecule legos that stack together, forming DNA. Thus, the nucleotide “lego blocks” called guanine, thymine, adenine, and cytosine are abbreviated to g, t, a, and c. A segment of DNA could be written as “gcgctttaaatg.”
The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of what I've learned about Y-STRs, and how they relate to the debate over young earth creationism.
There are large coils of DNA called chromosomes. One of the human chromosomes is called the Y chromosome, and it is only carried by males. Unlike the bulk of human DNA which results from a combination of the DNA of the mother and father, the DNA of the Y chromosome is passed directly from a man to all of his sons, usually without change. Small mutations do occur on rare occasion, and those mutations are passed down to the male offspring as well. Over time, mutations pile up, and people living in different parts of the world begin to grow different from each other. Closely related people have similar mutations in their Y chromosomes, distantly related people are more different, and extremely distantly related people are quite different.
Because people with very similar patterns are generally closely related, “genetic fingerprints” are used for paternity testing, criminal forensics, and genealogy. One of the types of patterns most often used to tell if people are related is called a short tandem repeat (STR). STRs are patterns in DNA where two or more nucleotides (molecules in DNA) are repeated adjacent to each other.
For example, if a STR contained three repeats of the pattern “gata”, it would look like this: gatagatagata. Sometimes, rather than inheriting the STR as is, an individual inherits the STR with an additional repeat. Thus, if John's DNA contained “gatagatagata” in a certain place, he might have a child (James) with “gatagatagatagata” in that place. If that occurred, James's kids would all have “gatagatagatagata” as long as there wasn't another repeat event.
However, for the sake of simplicity, we might simply abbreviate each STR to the number of repetitions, rather than listing out all those nucleotides.
When writing one's STRs, it's customary to note the location in the chromosome (e.g. DNA Y-chromosome Segment 393) and the number of repeats found there (e.g. 13). For example, some of my own STRs could be expressed like this: DYS393-13, DYS390-25, DYS19-14, and DYS391-11.
Mutations (changes in the number of repeats) in STRs occur rarely. The STR called DYS454 has an mutation rate of 0.016% . The STR called DYS576 has a rate of about 1.022%. That means that in DYS454, a son would have a 99.984% chance of having the same number of repeats as his dad. In DYS576, the son would have only a 98.978% chance of sharing the same number of repeats as his dad in that location. Thus, if a man had 100 sons, the odds are that 99 of them would have an identical number of repeats in that particular STR, and 1 of them would have one more.
For a moderate fee, anyone with Y-chromosomes (i.e. men) can have the Y-DNA STR test done, and have their STRs measured. My father's father did this, and the results were highly similar to a large number of Irish people. We now know we're descended from a 5th century Irish dude called Niall of the Nine Hostages.
Tests of this sort have been done on many thousands of people from all around the world. Because of what we know about the probability of mutation in each of these different locations in the DNA, we can estimate roughly how long ago the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of two different people lived. The full equations are a bit complex, so I won't attempt to explain them here. See this article for more info on the math used to calculate MRCAs.
The Conflict
When I was younger, I read a large amount of literature that explained how if one adds up the dates, ages, and reign lengths in the Bible, one finds that the Earth was created sometime around 4000 BC. There have been different Bible-based calculations over the years, but the majority of them put the age of the Earth between 5800 and 6200 years old. This would also mean that Adam, the man from which all other men descended, would have lived that long ago.
Assuming 4000 BC was the first year ever, and assuming that the average generation is roughly 20 years, there would have been about 300 generations since Adam, the person with the Y-chromosome from which all Y-chromosomes descended.
However, as we've measured STRs all around the world, we've discovered that there is a huge level of variety to be found – far greater than would accumulate in only 300 generations, and far, far more than one would expect if the most recent patrilineal ancestor lived within the last 6,000 years. (or the last 4500 years, going from Noah)
What does this all mean for the Bible?
There are some Christians who hold that the genealogical names and dates in the OT should not be read as complete. They support a literal Genesis, but not necessarily one set only 6,000 years in the past. Variety within the Y-chromosome does not phase this crowd. There are still more Christians who don't support a literal Genesis, and they are even less phased by the Y-STR issue.
As for the 4000 BC crowd, their view is falsified by this data.
[Edited 8-9-2010 for minor wording changes.]
The Existence of Omniscience
Youtube user antybu86 posted this novel argument for the non-existence of God a few months ago.
Truly omniscient beings will always hold the proposition “I am omniscient” as true. Non-omniscient beings can also hold the proposition “I am omniscient” as true. Because it's possible to be mistaken about being omniscient, how could God be certain of his omniscience? If he was mistaken, then he would not be aware that he is mistaken. How does God know he wasn't created by a super-god that is deceiving him?
P1. If God exists, he knows the truth-value of all propositions with certainty.
P2. To know all propositions with absolute certainty, God must know with absolute certainty that the proposition “God is not mistaken” is true.
P3. If God is mistaken, he would not know that he is mistaken.
Conclusion: God cannot know the truth-value of the proposition “God is not mistaken” with absolute certainty, and therefore God cannot know the truth-value of all propositions with absolute certainty, and therefore God doesn't exist according to the definition in P1.
- antybu86 (paraphrased - see original video)
On P1
It is more easy to conceive of an entity that has full knowledge of all things in physical reality than it is to conceive of an entity that has full knowledge of all things, including questions of solipsism like “Am I a brain in a jar, merely imagining things?” and “Maybe a super-god created me, and I'm being deceived by him.”
Premise 1 is questionable. Although some Christians are proponents of actual omniscience, the Bible verses that speak of God's knowledge mostly refer to knowledge of earthly things in the past, present, and future. The Bible does not give a definition like Premise 1, although that doesn't stop some folks from asserting it anyway. Put simply, one can believe in the God of the Bible without that him fitting the definition in Premise 1, which makes the whole argument moot for folks interpreting the Bible that way.
On P3
Utter omniscience is not possible for a human mind because of we are capable of being fooled or mistaken. Would it be possible for an unfoolable being to exist? My common sense says no, but I don't actually know. Because it has not yet been demonstrated that a divine mind necessarily has a human theory of mind and epistemology, Premise 3 is unacceptable.
My Conclusion
If Premise 3 were able to show that all possible minds are necessarily foolable, then it would follow that no possible mind can be omniscient. However, Antybu86 simply assumes that all minds are foolable. While it's a sensible leap, it hasn't been demonstrated logically. Thus, I find that his argument is incomplete and does not prove the non-existence of God.
Pascal’s Wager Doesn’t Work
Is Pascal's Wager a good argument for belief in and worship of the god of Christianity? Let's take a look at it.
What is Pascal's wager?
Blaise Pascal was a French guy from about 350 years ago, and is famous for his braininess. Besides the honors of his name as a programming language, a unit of measurement, a lunar crater, and various math terms, he has the dubious honor of being the author of the original form of the oft-quoted Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's work Pensées is noted for themes of uncertainty and skepticism, which he even applied to reason itself. He also deemed God's existence and nature to be unknowable and incomprehensible. In his words: “If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is.”
Having said this, he then went on to say that because the question of God's nature and existence cannot be settled through reason, the question of God's existence is essentially a coin toss. And since one is forced to place a wager on either heads or tails, one should calculate the risks and rewards. The core of Pascal's Wager is that if you bet on God and you turn out to be right, you win big time, and if you bet on no God, there are no benefits. What have you got to lose?
When I first heard this application of game theory/decision theory in theology, I thought it was quite nifty. But upon further reading and reflection, I've noticed some limitations. By itself, Pascal's wager is not an argument specifically for Christianity. It's an argument for how to best behave given the unknowable probability of a force that punishes or rewards you in an afterlife based upon your actions in this life. Thus, the argument can be used to support worshiping Allah just as much as Yahweh, or any number of other deities.
The Incomprehensibility Problem
Under the premises of Pascal's wager, God's values and personality are also be part of his unknowableness. If God's nature is unknowable, then the criteria for achieving infinite reward or punishment are also unknowable.
For every possible conception of God where he rewards a way of living, there's a possible conception of God where he punishes that same way of living, and there's no way to determine how to live or act or believe.
What about a god that creates but doesn't tinker afterwards? What about an evil god that delights in being dishonest and cruel? What about a god that randomly rewards some and punishes others? What if God rewards everyone except for those that follow false gods? In that last situation, one who worships no gods is in a far better position than one who worships false gods. Let's take a look at that chart of possibilities, with a few other options included.
If the question of God's nature and existence is infinitely incomprehensible as Pascal suggests, then I could support the idea of choosing a lifestyle based upon the potential infinite consequences. The problem is that if God is infinitely incomprehensible, then there's no way to know how to achieve the best consequences because there's no way to know how God is going to react to what you end up doing.
If You Lose, You Lose
When some use Pascal's Wager in argument, they imply that the net loss of living under an ultimately false religion is minimal, citing Pascal's statement, “If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.” That may be true for some individuals, but it is certainly not true that all people are aided by their experiences with religion.
Besides resource loss, detriments such as the following can and have occurred: refusing medicine for dying children while praying to a false god to heal them, psychological trouble caused by worries about supernatural concerns, reduced interest in scientific advancement due to belief that natural phenomena occur from supernatural causes, needless and irrational restrictions upon behavior, using religion as justification for abuse and bigotry, and some really wacky and dangerous behavior.
“If you lose, you lose nothing.” If you lose, then all the sacrifices of time, money, truth, and sanity were made for an afterlife that won't come, and those things could have been used for far better purposes than falsehood.
Honesty and Fire Insurance
Let's say someone didn't start with the premise that God is ultimately incomprehensible. She examines the evidence and arguments for Christianity, thinks deeply, and with complete honesty says that she doesn't think Christianity is believable. Which of these two possible statements would be better?
1. “Having thought deeply about this, I don't think I can honestly accept this particular religion's claims.”
2. “I wouldn't otherwise believe this stuff, but I'm going to worship this alleged God via this religion just to maximize the odds of my personal gain in the afterlife. I will then do my best to dull my intellect to force myself to believe.”
(“Endeavor then to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions. ...Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you - will quiet your critical intellect...” - Pascal)
Conclusion
The purpose of the wager is to determine how best to behave given an unknowable probability of a deity that can give eternal reward. If we grant Pascal's premise that God is infinitely incomprehensible and that we're unable to ascertain what he is or if he is, then there's no way of knowing how to please God, and the wager is useless.
Even if Christianity's conception of God were correct, the wager is still a mercenary bet in which one fakes being a believer in order to maximize personal gain. Because the Christian God cares about honest faith and condemns empty rituals as hypocrisy, use of the wager is futile.
Disclaimer: I have not read all of Pascal's writings. I have attempted to represent the wager faithfully, but if I have accidentally misunderstood and misrepresented some aspect of it, please let me know so that I can adjust my understanding appropriately. I have endeavored to address both the original form of the wager, and the popular simplified version of it.
Jehovah Jirah Is an Anachronism
The question: Why did Abraham name a place “Jehovah Jirah” when God said that Abraham didn't know the name Jehovah?
| Genesis 22:14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide (Jehovah Jirah). And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided." Abraham uses the name Yahweh elsewhere: Genesis 15:2, 7, 8, 16:2, 18:27-32, and more... | Exodus 6:2-3. God also said to Moses, "I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty (El Shaddai), but by my name the LORD (Jehovah) I did not make myself known to them.” |
Yahweh vs Jehovah
The name Yahweh is etymologically connected with the phrase “I am,” although scholars have not settled on a precise translation. During the Greco-Roman era, the Jews stopped saying Yahweh (יְהֹוָה) and began to more commonly use the noun Elohim (אֱלֹהִים) which was simply the word “god.” Later on, the word Jehovah was invented as an alternate way of saying Yahweh. Jehovah Jirah is simply an alternate spelling of the original Hebrew wording, Yahweh Yireh, or יְהוָה יִרְאֶה.
Explanation 1: It's possible that the line was meant as an emphatic question, not a statement, like this: “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, and was I not know to them as Yahweh?”
While theoretically possible, there are no major translations that render it that way. I'd be more open to considering this option as plausible if there were a respected body of professional translators that favored it.
Explanation 2: What about the Douay-Rheims translation? It says Adonai (lord/master), not Yahweh (I am), in Exodus 6:3.
The Douay-Rheims differs from more comprehensive translation efforts because it is based solely on the Vulgate, which was a Latin translation made in the late 300s and early 400s AD. The Masoretic Text, although produced later, is a body of work almost universally regarded as the definitive and most precise version of the Hebrew Bible, and an excellent basis for Old Testament translations. The MT says Yahweh, not Adonai, in Exodus 6:3.
Explanation 3: God meant it metaphorically, i.e. the patriarchs didn't comprehend the fullness of who he was.
It would seem reasonable to judge Exodus 6:3 by its context. The other statements that God makes in the vicinity of “they didn't know me by the name of Yahweh” are very straightforward and direct: “I established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as foreigners,” “I heard the groaning of the Israelites whom the Egyptians are enslaving,” “Because of my mighty hand, Pharaoh will let them go,” and so on. The face value of these statements seem to match the OT narrative in a very direct and straightforward way, so I am disinclined to accept the proposition that the face value of Exodus 6:3 should be tossed.
Explanation 4: The author of Genesis 22:14 paraphrased the original quotations by using the new name, Yahweh, in place of whatever name was actually used.
Given Exodus 6:3, Genesis 22:14's statement is a bit like the claim that the expression “In Soviet Russia, dinner eats you” arose because some bloke in the 1860s said that Soviet Russian dinners eat people. The claim is anachronistic because there was no place in the 1860s called Soviet Russia. Explanation #4 says that the claim's author was using modern terms to paraphrase the bloke's original statement, which was probably something like “Imperial Russian dinners eat people.”
The issue with that explanation is that it puts a flaw in the etymology. If the bloke said Imperial Russia, why do we have the expression about Soviet Russia? The answer is that some idioms do change over time to reflect cultural changes.
So, to tie this back in with the Bible, Explanation 4's union of Genesis 22:14 and Exodus 6:3 is basically saying that the following occurred: Abraham named a place something like “El Shaddai Provides.” His descendants learned the name Yahweh. The expression “on the mountain of Yahweh, it will be provided” entered the vernacular. The author of Genesis 22:14 said that Abraham named a place “Yahweh provides,” thus the expression “On the mountain of Yahweh, it will be provided.”
Explanation #4 is plausible. Unfortunately for literalist sensibilities, it includes the idea that the authors of this passage didn't use verbatim quotes, and the dialogue was paraphrased with lingo contemporary to authors that wrote far later than the events in question.
Explanation 5: This contradiction is an artifact of the synthesis of multiple sources that went into the making of the Torah, which was not written by Moses. Furthermore, Jewish monotheism developed out of Canaanite polytheism, and the various names like Yahweh and El originally referred to different deities.
The claims made in this explanation are not without support, but for now I won't delve into it. Here's a quick link to the Wikipedia article on Yahweh as an introduction to some of the theories about exactly how the Torah was put together, with the disclaimer that I don't necessarily buy everything on that particular page.
Concluding Remarks
Explanation 4 provides a plausible understanding which allows the passages to harmonize, although it does not allow one to take the details of the Abraham/Isaac story completely at face value. Thus, my finding is that Genesis 22:14 and Exodus 6:3 are contradictory if one is a strict literalist, but are not necessarily contradictory if one is not.
Abraham and Sarah: Squick?
In the official laws of ancient Israel, God cursed those that commit sibling or half-sibling incest. (Deuteronomy 27:22) Abraham said that Sarah was his half-sibling by his father. God blessed Abraham and Sarah's union and wanted them to have kids together. If God's morality is objective and unchanging, and if the laws he gave to Israel represented this unchanging morality, then his view on half-sibling incest shouldn't change from “bless a couple doing it” to “curse anyone that does it.” Why did God sanction them having kids with each other, if half-sibling sex was so wrong?
This one is rather easy to answer: the Bible itself doesn't say that Abraham and Sarah were half-siblings. Rather, the Bible says that Abraham said so, and the Bible makes no implications that Abraham was honest all of the time. In fact, elsewhere in the same chapter, Abraham prevaricates by obscuring his marriage and telling folks that they were only siblings. It's not so implausible that he was dishonest about that as well.
As a side note, apparently some extra-biblical sources say that Sarah/Sarai was actually Iscah, Abraham's niece by his brother Haran. While this sounds icky, sex with one's niece is not a violation of any of the anti-incest laws in Leviticus or Deuteronomy.
Alternate response: This story about Abraham is not literally true. It is just a story that was part of ancient Israel's oral tradition.
The Verdict: Not Guilty.
An Adam Addendum
Given that Adam and Eve were the only supernaturally created humans, it follows that their children would have reproduced with each other, thus violating the law against sibling incest.
Possible answer: The laws given to Israel regarding sexuality were not universal objective moral laws for all time, but laws specific to certain segments of time.
Possible answer: The stories about Adam and his family are metaphorical.
While we're here...
As I read the account where Abraham tells King Abimalech that Sarah was his half-sister, a few things struck me as a bit odd. Here's a quick summary of Genesis 20, although I recommend reading it yourself (Links: RSV, NIV).
While Abraham and his wife Sarah were staying in Gerar, Abraham let on that Sarah was only his sister. The local king Abimalech decided he liked Sarah (who was apparently about 89 or 90 years old by this time) and sent for her, but God came to him in a dream and told him that he knew the king meant well, but he had better not touch her, or else he and his family would be no more. We learn later in the story that around this time, God miraculously sealed up all the wombs to which Abimalech had access, including his wife's and those of his slave girls.
After waking up, Abimalech had a chat with his servants, who freaked out after hearing that God was upset. Seeking a quick resolution, Abimalech found Abraham and asked him what the deal was. Abraham said that he actually was Sarah's half-brother through his father, but he had been afraid that someone would kill him for his wife, and so he spread the story that she was his brother. To make things better, Abimalech gave Abraham some cash, cattle, and slaves, and told him he could live anywhere he liked in the land. Having received an apology in the form of wealth and land, Abraham prayed to God and God removed the sterility that he had placed upon Abimalech's household.
Here are the verses of that last section: “Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife and his slave girls so they could have children again, for the LORD had closed up every womb in Abimelech's household because of Abraham's wife Sarah.” (Gen 20:17-18 NIV)
Because of Abimalech's mistake of being attracted to a woman that he thought wasn't married, his own reproductive prospects were put at risk. What I would like to know is this: Why God would seal the wombs of Abimalech's wife and slave girls just because their master Abimalech believed Abraham's lie? If Abimalech's credulity was even worthy of punishment, wouldn't it seem more appropriate to only sterilize him?
Was God Ever Dishonest?
Some critics have pointed out specific passages, claiming that they show that God sometimes lies, promotes falsehood, or otherwise encourages wrongness. This is obviously not the image of God that most Christians have. Indeed, there are many passages stating that God cannot lie, that his promises are reliable, and that he's against lying in general. Here are a few:
1. Paul remarked in Titus that God cannot lie. “...in hope of eternal life which God, who never lies, promised ages ago...”
2. Samuel rebuked Saul in 1 Samuel 15, mentioning that God does not lie or change his mind. “And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent.”
3. The author of Hebrews 6:16-18 said that God's promises and oaths cannot possibly be false.
4. David mentioned during a prayer in 2 Samuel 7 that God's words were true. “And now, O Lord GOD, thou art God, and thy words are true, and thou hast promised this good thing to thy servant.”
5. Balaam delivered God's message to Balak in Numbers 23, saying that God doesn't lie or change his mind. His wording is similar to Samuel's, which makes me imagine that it may have been a common means of expressing the idea that what God says is to be held as reliable. “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it?”
There are numerous other areas that tell of God's affinity for honesty and truth, including these: the commandment given to the Israelites against bearing false witness, the place in Proverbs where two out of seven things that God hates are lying, the gospel of John continually associating God/Jesus with truth and the devil with lies, and the large number of other places in the Bible where liars and dishonest people are regarded as immoral.
Let's take a close look at some of these passages in which God is allegedly dishonest, and see what they say in context.
The Passages in Question
1. Micaiah. In I Kings 22, King Ahab and King Jehoshaphat are debating whether to invade another country. King Ahab consults with his four hundred prophets, who all say that he'll win. Jehoshaphat wanted a 401
To me, there appears to be three basic ways to look at that passage:
A. Micaiah was a true prophet, and was saying that God influenced certain people to be dishonest.
B. Micaiah was a true prophet, but lied about God's actions.
C. Micaiah was not a true prophet, and simply got lucky in his prediction that the attack would go poorly for Ahab.
While Micaiah was capable of lying (verse 15), the story shows that he took the plunge and decided to be completely honest even though he was surrounded by the people he was speaking against who had the power to cause him physical harm. It is evident to me (and to every exegete that I've found so far) that the story means to show that Micaiah was a true prophet of God, and spoke truthfully once he entered “prophet mode.”
Now, Option A does not imply that God himself uttered a statement that was false, but it does imply that God sent a spirit of dishonesty into the mouths of prophets. I'm not sure how that's different.
(Tangential musing: Micaiah's testimony is taken as symbolic by some readers. That is, it is not read as an actual description of anything that occurred in heaven, but simply as Micaiah's best explanation for why the other prophets were unanimously dishonesy. Perhaps Micaiah was using good politics, casting blame upon a party that was not physically present in the room. Of course, if Micaiah is supposed to be a true prophet, and if we're skeptical of how literally accurate Micaiah's prophetic description of God's actions and attitude was, then it makes one wonder how one should read the prophetic accounts from other prophets.)
2. Ezekiel 14:9. In this section of Ezekiel, Ezekiel is relaying God's message to his opposition.
In chapter 13, God says that there are many false prophets, and he opposes them. He goes on to say that he will pro-actively work against the false prophets and their work. In chapter 14, God talks through Ezekiel about how he'll deal with certain sorts of people.
First, the Israelite that has idols in his mind and talks with a prophet will be answered by God in keeping with the idolatry, to recapture the heart of the Israelite (14:4-5).
Second, if any Israelite or foreigner living locally that separates himself from God and has idols in his mind talks to a prophet, God will answer him by casting him out (14:7-8).
Third, if any prophet has been tricked into a prophecy, it was God that did the tricking, and God will destroy him. The prophet and the prophet's client will be to blame.
Here's the verse: And if the prophet be deceived and speak a word, I, the LORD, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. (RSV)
The contentious word is pathah (“deceived” in RSV), which has been translated a number of different ways in the various English versions of this passage. In other Bible contexts, pathah means: deceive, fool, persuade, allure, coerce, trick, entice, make a fool out of, silly, and flatter. A definite translation is difficult to pinpoint, but it would seem that pathah refers to guile and craftiness, not straightforward honest persuasion.
While it's hard to precisely identify the optimal translation and interpretation of the passage, it's clear that Ezekiel was saying that God can deceive.
3. II Thessalonians 2:11. In this chapter, the author (whom I shall call Paul) talks about the future coming of a Man of Lawlessness, and how Jesus will overthrow him, and how there will be sneakiness and deceptions of various sorts going on. Here are verses nine through twelve:
The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
In 9-10, it says that Satan will deceive a group of people. Those people refuse to love truth, and will perish. In this case, the people are choosing against truth and accepting Satan's deception, to their doom. In 11-12, it says that because these same people are wicked and didn't believe the truth, God will deceive them and they will be condemned.
(Tangential musing: The impression it gives is that whatever wickedness the people committed wasn't enough to secure their condemnation, so God is pushing them a little bit further over the edge into to make sure that they get condemned. Maybe that's not what it means, but it seems like that's what is going on. I'd be interested in hearing alternate interpretations that both make sense and allow the text to mean what it says.)
I checked over a dozen popular versions of the Bible that were not heavily paraphrased, and not one of them said that God was merely allowing other deceptive forces to act. Instead, they all used phrasing that had God actively deceiving people (as deluding someone into believing something false is deception). I looked at the wording of the Greek according to Strong's, and it confirmed that reading of the passage.
Responses
“God wasn't deceiving people, he was just allowing them to believe false things.”
That sounds great at first glance, but it is simply not backed up by the text. In each case, God's involvement is active, not passive.
In example #1, a prophet believed to be reliable specifically said that God commissioned dishonesty: And the LORD said to him [a spirit], 'By what means?' And he said, 'I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' And he said, 'You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go forth and do so.' (1 Kings 22:22 RSV)
In example #2, Ezekiel words it as a specific action, not a passive allowance: And if the prophet be deceived and speak a word, I, the LORD, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. (Ezekiel 14:9 RSV)
In example #3, Paul unequivocally says that God acts, not sits passively: Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 RSV)
In essence, this response is saying, “the Bible says God took an action, but I'm reading it to mean that he didn't.” There's room for non-literal interpretation of some things in the Bible, but this response really pushes it.
“In each of those situations, the people were already committed to falsehood.”
That is indeed what the Bible says. But it is irrelevant to the question of whether the Bible says God used dishonesty or not.
“We believe that God is always good, so I'm sure whatever happened in that situation, it was good and correct.”
This response answers a different question, which is whether or not God is good. It's a great question, but it's not the one that this article seeks to address. The question of this article is whether the Bible is consistent in how it portrays God's honesty.
“Micaiah is actually telling the truth to Ahab, and he rejects it!”
Yes. But that does not change the fact that Micaiah said that God commissioned dishonesty earlier on in the story.
Just for fun, I'll advance my own theory about why things are worded the way they are:
Premise 1. The authors believed that if something occurred and was not evil, then God had a hand in it.
Premise 2. The authors believed that the condemnation of wicked people was not evil.
Premise 3. The authors believed that the wicked people (Ahab, false prophets in Ezekiel, truth-haters in II Thessalonians) were condemned partly due to believing things that weren't true.
Conclusion 1. The authors believed that God had a hand in causing the wicked people to believe things that were untrue, in order to condemn them.
I acknowledge that this argument is not completely verifiable because the premises are not completely verifiable. But it does seem to me like a good theoretical explanation of why the authors would say things in the manner that they said them.
Concluding Remarks
It's clear that, for whatever reason, the Bible says that God sometimes uses delusion and deception for purposes related to condemnation. At the same time, the Bible also says that God does not and cannot lie, and strong emphasis is placed upon God and truth vs the devil and lies. It is my finding that the characterizations of God as incapable of lying and the characterizations of God in which he tries to persuade people to believe falsehood are not compatible.
Amendment: This incompatibility may only present a problem to Bible literalists. The contradiction is moot if one's understanding is that Micaiah's prophesy was not literally true, and that Paul's statements were a confusingly worded reiteration of the earlier passage. I'm not convinced that the Ezekiel passage can be conclusively translated as an example of outright deception. Updated 8:55 PM, April 14, 2010.
The Death of Judas
As part of the current six post series on hard questions, I was originally going to cover the topic of Jesus promising Judas a throne to rule over Israel.
Basically, Luke 22 includes events in this order: Satan enters Judas, who intends to betray Jesus. Jesus and his apostles go out to Passover dinner. Jesus points out that someone at the table will betray him. In response to an argument over which was the greatest disciple, he says that they'll sit on thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel. Now, some read this and think it's obvious that Jesus meant Matthias (Judas's replacement, chosen by a coin toss after Jesus left) would get Judas's throne. Others see this the throne promise as evidence of the narrative's piecemeal construction from circulating legends.
But rather than spending a long time on that, I've decided to look at the death of Judas instead.
Matthew 27:3-10 (RSV)
When Judas, his betrayer, saw that he was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, "I have sinned in betraying innocent blood." They said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself."
And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, "It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money." So they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.
Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me."
Matthew in short form:
1. Judas discarded the money in the temple.
2. Judas hanged himself.
3. The priests used the blood money to buy a burial field.
4. The field was thus later known as the Field of Blood.
Acts 1:18-19 (RSV)
Now this man [Judas] bought a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Akel'dama, that is, Field of Blood.
Acts in short form:
1. Judas bought a field.
2. Judas fell head first and spilled his entrails (accidentally or intentionally).
3. The field was thus later known as the Field of Blood.
The Three Issues
Issue 1. Judas and his silver separated because: he threw it down on the temple floor, or he purchased a field with it?
Issue 2. Judas died because: he was distraught and hanged himself, or he fell head first and his body tore apart?
Issue 3. The place was named Field of Blood because: the blood money, or Judas's blood and guts?
As a side note, the alleged quote from Jeremiah is not very similar to anything in Jeremiah, and it rather looks like a reference to a passage in Zechariah. If this seems like a poorly researched skeptical nitpick, please note that Jerome, Augustine, and Calvin all surmised that Matthew made a mistake and wrote the wrong name by accident.
Before getting into explanations, I'd like to point out that natural language is nearly immune to absolute logical contradiction because it is often ambiguous and always open to creative interpretation. Lawyer lingo is long and complicated in order to eliminate ambiguity and thwart the dishonest people that seek creative interpretations. Outside the nauseatingly verbose world of legal documents, one simply has to do one's best to make sensible assumptions about the meaning of a statement based upon what one knows of the context, the author, etc.
Explanation 1. A very simple explanation is that the authors used varying sources. There were probably various urban legends about how the Field of Blood got its name, all involving the death of Judas and the purchase of a field. The author of Acts used one, and the author of Matthew used a different one.
Commentary on Explanation 1
This theory is very simple, and accounts for all three issues. It does imply that the Bible may contain contradictory information due to the reliance upon unreliable sources.
I find it interesting that Matthew and Acts have very different characterizations of Judas. Matthew has Judas being highly distraught, confessing guilt, throwing money on the floor, and committing suicide. In Luke and Acts, we see almost no depictions of Judas's drama. Instead, we see only that a man betrayed Jesus for material gain and then died horribly (almost like some kind of karmic justice).
It would be interesting to learn more of the data collection methods used by either author. The author of Luke-Acts was a self-proclaimed careful investigator, but self-appellation scarcely qualifies as hard evidence.
Explanation 2. Another explanation for the differences is that Matthew thought that the story of Judas's death seemed directly connected to prophetic statements in the Old Testament, so he used the prophecies to extrapolate details about the actual event.
Commentary on Explanation 2
This explanation covers all three issues as well, although it's a bit more complex.
One of the details used to support Explanation 2 can be found in Matthew 26:15. The literal translations mention the priests weighing out thirty pieces of silver for Judas. This weighing out was done in Zechariah's time (see here) but was apparently no longer being done in the first century AD. Rather, the minted denarii coins were the silver currency in the Roman empire. When speaking of Judas, Matthew says “pieces of silver” (arguria, adj. silvery). When speaking elsewhere, Matthew says “coin” (nomisma, noun. coin of recognized value) and denarius.
Now, I'm not a student of Greek, but according to the concordance, “weighed out” (estēsan) is a conjugation of the Greek verb histémi which apparently can have a wide variety of translations. This is why some versions of this verse say “weighed out” and others say “counted out” “paid” “appointed to him” among other things. So unless a solid case can be made by a competent linguist that it should be translated as “weighed out,” I'm not convinced that Matthew 26:15 constitutes evidence for Explanation 2 based solely upon “pieces” and “weighed.”
However, the rest of the book of Matthew does show that he's focused on trying to link various events to prophetic references, although exactly how far he takes this into the land of exaggeration, embellishment, and extrapolation, I don't yet know. That would be a subject for me to study another time.
For now, I conclude that Explanation 2 is possible, but I have not yet researched it enough to prove or disprove it.
Update: I should not have said that Explanation 2 covers all three issues. While the idea of Matthew extrapolating from OT details does cover the issues of the fate of Judas and the fate of the money, it does not cover the issue of the etymology of the Field of Blood. (2:43 PM, March 6, 2010)
Explanation 3 One harmonist's explanation has events occurring in this order: Judas returns the silver. Judas goes to a field and hangs himself. The corpse eventually falls onto the field and breaks open. The priests use the defiled money to buy the defiled filed for the burial of strangers. They do so under Judas's name so as to avoid uncleanness, so in a sense Judas bought the field. Because of all that, the place becomes known as the “Field of Blood.” Acts leaves out details because it's only explaining the parts relevant to the etymology of “Field of Blood,” and you'll note that it doesn't explicitly state that falling was the actual cause of death.
(For simplicity, I will now note a similar hypothesis where Judas's hanging failed, so he leaped off a cliff to get the job done.)
Commentary on Explanation 3
This explanation does address all three issues, although it does not resolve any of them.
Explanation 3, Issue 1: The money. In Acts, the field is purchased and then Judas dies there. This doesn't fit Explanation 3 very well. Firstly, E3 and Matthew both have the field being purchased after Judas dies, which is the reverse of Acts. Secondly, if the priests did indeed use the money to buy a field before Judas died, why would he bother going to that field to kill himself? Thirdly, if we're going to play with the language such that “Judas bought a field with ill-gotten money” actually means “Judas threw away his money and an entirely different group of people picked it up and bought a field since they couldn't legally keep money that paid for murder” then I'm not sure there's any point in trying to have a meaningful discussion.
Explanation 3, Issue 2: The death. True enough, Acts doesn't explicitly say that falling headlong (Greek prenes, English head first) was the cause of death, and Matthew doesn't say that hanging was the cause of death either. Maybe he tried to hang himself, failed, and then somebody cut him up with a sword and tossed him over the edge of a cliff. Individually read, neither passage suggests this, of course. But then again, individually read, neither passage suggests that Judas both hanged himself himself and also fell headlong in a rather messy way.
In fairness, Acts is very brief on any details. It's conceivable that Acts, not wanting to waste space, merely included the reason why the place was called the field of blood: a very grotesque situation involving a dead body, guts, and lots of blood. However, without the motivation of Bible harmonization, there's no reason not to take the description to mean that Judas died from falling.
Explanation 3, Issue 3: The place name. It's clear that both Matthew and Acts felt it was necessarily to explain the etymology of the Field of Blood. Having this goal in mind, both authors would certainly include details immediately relevant to that etymology. To that end, Matthew states that the Field of Blood got that name due to being purchased with blood money – certainly referring to the blood of Jesus. However, Acts connects the name of the Field of Blood to the grotesque tale of Judas's body falling headlong and breaking apart – referring to the blood of Judas.
Theoretically, the same place may have acquired the same exact name for two separate reasons, although that doesn't happen very often. It seems far more likely that the place had the name, there were different stories in circulation regarding how the place got its name, each with similar themes but different details. They didn't have Snopes back then, you know.
Conclusion
While I find the harmonistic interpretation possible, it requires that I disregard the natural reading of the text in both passages, read events out of order, assume that phrases mean things different from what they say, and ignore the conflicting statements of etymology.
I find Explanation #1 to be an easily acceptable theory, with #2 as an interesting supplementary hypothesis to be more fully researched at a later time.
What does God need with 32 virgins?
Numbers 31 is often cited by critics as an example of the places where God and Israel do morally sketchy things. There's the question of the deaths of innocent boys, the wholesale slaughter of all adult members of an offending group, and the treatment of foreign women as spoils of war along with livestock and other goods. For now, I'm just going to look at a minor point about the spoils of war that struck me funny: Yahweh's cut of the loot.
The story goes like this: Yahweh told Moses to have the Isralites kill all Midianites for reasons that are addressed earlier in the book of Numbers. Moses sends in about twelve thousand men, and they succeed in killing every last man of the enemy as well as burning down the cities. They returned with loot including captive women and children. Moses ordered that every child and woman be executed except for the virgin girls. This having been done, there remained the task of dividing up the sheep, cattle, donkeys, and virgin girls plundered from the Midianites. Yahweh declared that 49.9% shall go to the men that fought, 49% shall go to the general population of Israel, 1% shall go to the Levites, and 0.1% shall go to Yahweh himself. The percent for Yahweh was dealt with by Eleazar the priest. [Full chapter here.]
There are several questions that might arise out of this story. Glenn Miller's essay answers some of them satisfactorily, although I don't have time to detail the answers that are less than satisfactory. For now, there is one question on my mind that he didn't directly answer.
What happened to the thirty-two virgins set aside for Yahweh?
It's common for apologists to say that sparing the lives of the thousands of captured virgins was an act of mercy, since all Midianites were supposed to be destroyed. Along these lines, Miller defines the phrase “for yourselves” (Numbers 31:18) by saying it wasn't about using them for sexual pleasure, but simply was the opposite condition of “deliver over to Yahweh” which meant death. He goes on to say, “The herem (or ‘ban’) specifically indicated that all enemy people or property which was ‘delivered over to YHWH’ was to be killed/destroyed.” Seeing as the thirty-two virgins were Yahweh's 0.1%, it follows from this reasoning that they'd have been killed, just like the majority of their compatriots.
One person to whom I was speaking suggested the possibility that this was an example of human sacrifice, a vestigial hint of the polytheistic paganism practiced by some Israelites until a certain point in history. But since I'm saving the topic of Israel's theism for later, I won't comment on this theory except to acknowledge that human sacrifice did occur in some times and places by Israelites who were influenced by various Canaanite religions.
The optimistic apologist might suggest that someone who had livestock or silver to spare offered the appropriate to Yahweh to cover the lives of the thirty-two virgins, and the young women were then allowed to live. The problem with this answer is that if the virgins were indeed herem, “for Yahweh”, then it was forbidden to redeem them, and they were required to be destroyed.
There's a problem with the labeling of the virgins as herem. That word doesn't appear anywhere in this passage. The case could be made that the concept of herem fits the context of the story, but because it's not specifically invoked, such an argument would be tentative. So, was the war against the Midianites one of herem or not? Either way, the 32000 virgins have already been officially spared, which means that the law of herem, if it even applied, had already been broken.
There was a law on the books (in this passage of Deuteronomy) that allowed a man to marry a woman captured in war. Even if one assumes that the other 31,964 Midianite virgins eventually married into the families to which they were distributed, it doesn't explain what Eleazar was going to do with the 32 young women that were specifically for Yahweh.
The word used in Numbers 31:29 to describe the parts given to Eleazar is terumah, which is the same basic word as terumotai. which was used back in Numbers 18. In Numbers 18, Yahweh says that the terumah offerings given to him are to be used by the priests and their families. There are rules about how these things must be done, and the text describes what to do with offerings of edibles, livestock, and new firstborns. It doesn't say a word about how to deal with dozens of virgin girls. However, given that the other human offerings were to be redeemed and not actually sacrificed, it seems reasonable that the 32 Midianite virgins would also live – so long as they were redeemed properly.
So then. What happened to the 32 virgins for Yahweh?
1. There's reason to doubt that the law of herem applied to them. (Such language was not explicitly used, and the other 31,968ish virgins were allowed to live)
2. The text explicitly says that they were part of a terumah offering to Yahweh.
3. Humans in terumah offerings are apparently redeemed, not put to death.
4. Generally, terumah offerings became the official possession of the priests.
5. While possible, we don't really see anything here that would indicate sexual abuse.
Thus, it seems reasonable to me that the thirty-two virgins were probably not killed as human sacrifice or raped, but were legally taken by Eleazar and his family, and made into servants or possibly wives.
For the record, there are numerous elements of the Midianite story that I find troubling. However, I side with the apologists at least on the question of what happened to those thirty-two virgins.
The Twelve Years of Omri
The Question: Was Omri the king of Israel for seven or twelve years?
1 Kings 16:21-24. Then the people of Israel were divided into two parts; half of the people followed Tibni the son of Ginath, to make him king, and half followed Omri. But the people who followed Omri overcame the people who followed Tibni the son of Ginath; so Tibni died, and Omri became king. In the thirty-first year of Asa king of Judah, Omri began to reign over Israel, and reigned for twelve years; six years he reigned in Tirzah. He bought the hill of Sama'ria from Shemer for two talents of silver; and he fortified the hill, and called the name of the city which he built, Sama'ria, after the name of Shemer, the owner of the hill.
1 Kings 16:28-29. And Omri slept with his fathers, and was buried in Sama'ria; and Ahab his son reigned in his stead. In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel, and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Sama'ria twenty-two years. (RSV)
Here's a handy graphic showing the problem with reading this passage as it has been written:
Explanation 1: Omri was co-king with his son.
In no place does it suggest that that was even an option. The very nature of being king over an entire region is that one is the only king. Had he shared the ruling with his son, the text would almost surely say so. Rather than saying anything of the sort, it specifically says that Ahab succeeded him. This response is a stretch.
Explanation 2: The discrepancy in reign dates can be accounted for by bad record-keeping, bad fact-checking, or bad copying over time.
This is quite plausible. If it can be reasonably shown that details in the books of Kings and Chronicles are often shaky, then this option seems very likely. If, on the other hand, the books of Kings and Chronicles can be shown to have excellent internal consistency and good correlation with external historical sources, then an error like this would be out of character.
Edwin Thiele, an archaeologist, OT professor, and biblical chronologist, wrote about Omri in his book, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. He said that “the hardest kind of problem in Old Testament chronology is the seeming disagreement between the synchronisms and the lengths of reign.” Thiele goes on to confirm that not only are the OT dates generally baffling, but they are very often at odds with the dates in the historical records of neighboring cultures. He points out that the subject has been mysterious for thousands of years, and even Jerome said that to attempt to clear up this question would not be a job for a scholar, but for a man with too much time on his hands.
Explanation 3: The twelve years stated begins at the time that Israel made him king in verse 16, and includes the period in which he was in conflict with Tibni.
The math works for this one. The beginning of the conflict between Tibni and Omri was sometime around the 27th year of Asa. The time between that date and the date that Ahab took the throne is eleven years, which fits the twelve year reign of Omri, given rounding errors.
While Omri does seem to have gained the zeal of the people for the sake of clearing the usurper Zimri off of the throne, verse 22 says that Omri was made king at the time of the death of his political opponent, Tibni. It goes on to specifically state that he only began to rule over Israel in the 31st year of Asa. It does not say that he began to rule in the 27th year of Asa, and simply had to deal with a political opponent for his first four years on the throne. While somewhat plausible, I find it unlikely that verse 23 could mean anything other than that his rule began in 31, and that he then went on to reign for 12 years. For the record, I am not a student of Hebrew, and it's possible that the plain English translation of that verse is simply misleading.
So what does an actual student of Hebrew say? Edwin Thiele is noted for attempting to harmonize the dates of the reigns of the kings in the Old Testament and not going completely insane in the process.
Thiele's Conclusion
“The regnal details of Omri are given in accord with dual-dating procedure, where in an overlapping reign, the datum for the length of reign includes both the period of overlap and that of sole reign, but the synchronism of accession denotes the end of the period of overlap and the commencement of the sole reign. Thus the length of Omri's reign includes both his overlap with Tibni and his sole reign, but his synchronism of accession marks the end of his overlap with Tibni and the commencement of his sole reign.” - Edwin Thiele
It would seem that if Thiele's analysis is correct, then there's no contradiction here, and the problem text is not a problem if you happen to be a student of the special ways in which the Hebrews recorded certain sorts of things, so that you don't need to rely on the tricky English wording.
Thiele's answer is plausible, and the answer of poor information transmission is also plausible.
Intro to Hard Questions
Ah, the Bible. Where did it come from, how reliable is it, and how should it be used? Those are questions that can't be completely answered without spending quite a bit of time on them.
He that believes that the Bible is of foundational importance to Christianity and wishes to be sure that he has consistent theology should examine his understanding of scripture to see that he has not settled on any incorrect interpretations. This process is made difficult by the places in scripture where the meaning is less than clear. There are cases where minor details seem to be contradictory, but even more difficult are the places where theological beliefs may hang in the balance.
To many, it is a fundamentally important tenet that the books in the Bible were divinely inspired and have been preserved correctly over the time since the original writing of each. If contradictions are found that are both substantial and insurmountable, they could point to a lack of divine inspiration, a lack of accurate preservation over time, or even a lack of our ability to understand. All of those possibilities would be problematic, and the question of alleged contradictions should be addressed. If not for one's own sake, then for the sake of the inquirer that asks the hard questions.
In addition to the question of contradictions, another type of hard question that comes up pertains to the person of God: How he acts, how he thinks, what he's done, and why he's done it. Obviously, one should not assume that one should be fully able to understand God. But one should try, eh?
I've been to Bible studies where we talked about ways to resolve things that were hard to understand. Those discussions were certainly very interesting, although I found it troubling that we were unable to find definitive answers to some of the questions that came up. I've seen several skeptic's websites with lists of apparent contradictions, and as one might expect, some of the items are quite silly while others are much harder to answer.
In the next several posts, we'll look at the following questions:
1. Was Omri the king of Israel for seven or twelve years? (I Kings 16:23-29)
2. What does God want with thirty-two virgins? (Numbers 31)
3. Why does Jesus promise Judas (who had the devil in him) a throne? (Luke 22) [topic changed to the death of Judas; see post for details]
4. Does God lie, either directly or by proxy? (Titus 1:2, I Sam 15:29, Hebrews 6:18 vs I Kings 22:23, II Chronicles 18:22, Ezekiel 14:9, II Thessalonians 2:11)
5. Why does God give his blessing to incest at one time (Gen 17:16 and 20:12) and call it wicked another time (Deut 27:22)?
6. Why did Abraham name the place Jehovah Jirah (Genesis 22:14) when God said that Abraham didn't know the name Jehovah (Exodus 6:3)?
Please save comments on those individual topics for the posts in which they will be covered.
Most of those future topics relate to the Old Testament. My experience has been that there are simply more difficult questions about God in the OT than in the NT. That's all there is to it. I've selected a few specific items to show different areas of potential difficulty: names, dates, morality, and what God and/or Jesus is like.
