Were the Old Testament laws the standard for all nations?  Are they for us today?  Copan walks us through how we should think through such questions and incorporates incrementalism to do so.  If we were to look at one stair step, as the antagonist do, we would draw the wrong conclusions, like they do.  

  This is a review of Is God a Moral Monster by Paul Copan with study questions added to turn them into lessons.  These lessons are part of a wider study on Sanctification by Faith which has as its goal the fulfillment of Gal 5:16

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. 

  Because sanctification depends upon faith, doubt will be seen as a hindrance.  Misunderstanding can lead to doubt as well as ignorance, deception, and experience like - it doesn't feel right.  This lesson seeks to combat ignorance, deception, and misunderstanding.  By erasing these, our faith is free to function at a higher level.  

  I’ve set all of these studies in a specific order so that anyone may easily build on the foundation of Christ with the finest materials - gold, silver, and precious stones (1 Cor 3:10-13).  God has gifted the Church with amazing evangelists, pastors, and teachers to do the mining so that we have these materials to complete the building project. (Eph 4:11-16).  I invite you to study along with me.  You can see an overview of the complete Sanctification by Faith study here.  To go to the start of the current lesson (Is God a Moral Monster) click here. 

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thess 5:23 

Part 3: Life in the Ancient Near East and in Israel

6: God’s Timeless Wisdom? Incremental Steps for Hardened Hearts

Someone posted an “Open Letter to Dr. Laura” on the internet.^[1] Dr. Laura Schlessinger, of course, is the Jewish author and (until recently) radio talk show host who offers practical advice about relationships, parenting, and ethical dilemmas based on Old Testament principles. Here’s part of that letter, which is saturated with sarcasm:

Dear Dr. Laura:  Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to follow them:

• I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
• I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
• A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?
• Leviticus 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
• Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Leviticus 19:27. How should they die?
• I know from Leviticus 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
• My uncle has a farm. He violates Leviticus 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). . . .

I know you have studied these things extensively; so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging. Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

Twelfth-century rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) counted out 613 distinct laws (365 prohibitions, 248 positive commands) in the Pentateuch. Talk about dos and don’ts! It’s no secret that Westerners find many of these commands—and the ancient Near Eastern world in general—baffling. They seem millions of miles removed from us—all the regulations about food laws and skin diseases, not to mention prohibitions against cutting the edges of one’s beard, wearing tattoos, or cooking a kid goat in its mother’s milk. Israel’s perplexing precepts, principles, and punishments seem odd, arbitrary, and severe.

When the New Atheists refer to the “ubiquitous weirdness” of the Bible, this may simply be the knee-jerk reaction of cultural snobbery or emotional dislike. It may also reflect a lack of patience to truly understand a world different from ours. C. S. Lewis warns against chronological snobbery—the “uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.”^{[2] [3]}

How would you respond to the challenges of the open letter? Our discussion in part 3 will look at laws that may strike us as random, bizarre, and harsh. While the Old Testament world is in many ways a strange world to us moderns, to be fair-minded, we should at least try to understand it better.

After some introductory thoughts to frame the discussion, we’ll look at issues related to cleanliness and the treatment of women and slaves, concluding our discussion with Israelite warfare. Hopefully, this lengthy but popular-level discussion will help put Israel’s laws and ancient Near Eastern assumptions into proper perspective.

The Law of Moses: Inferior and Provisional

On Palm Sunday in 1865, the brilliant Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered to the tenacious, gritty Northern general Ulysses S. Grant—sometimes called “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. This day at the Appomattox Court House was the decisive end to a costly war. Well over six hundred thousand men were killed in the Civil War—2 percent of the United States’ population—and three million fought in it.

Despite the North’s victory, the Emancipation Proclamation that preceded it (January 1, 1863), and the attempt at Reconstruction in the South, many whites did not change their mind-set in regard to blacks. As a nation, we’ve found that proclamations and civil rights legislations may be law, but such legalities don’t eradicate racial prejudice from human minds. A good deal of time was required to make significant headway in the pursuit of racial justice.

Let’s switch gears. Imagine a Western nation or representatives from the West who think it best to export democracy to, say, Saudi Arabia. Think of the obstacles to overcome! A radical change of mind-set would be required, and simply changing laws wouldn’t alter the thinking in Saudi Arabia. In fact, you could probably imagine large-scale cultural opposition to such changes.

When we journey back over the millennia into the ancient Near East, we enter a world that is foreign to us in many ways. Life in the ancient Near East wouldn’t just be alien to us—with all of its strange ways and assumptions. We would also see a culture whose social structures were badly damaged by the fall. Within this context, God raised up a covenant nation and gave the people laws to live by; he helped to create a culture for them. In doing so, he adapted his ideals to a people whose attitudes and actions were influenced by deeply flawed structures. As we’ll see with regard to servitude, punishments, and other structures, a range of regulations and statutes in Israel reveals a God who accommodates. Yet contrary to the common Neo-atheists’ caricatures, these laws weren’t the permanent, divine ideal for all persons everywhere. God informed his people that a new, enduring covenant would be necessary (Jer. 31; Ezek. 36). By the Old Testament’s own admission, the Mosaic law was inferior and future looking.^[4]

Does that mean that God’s ideals turn up only in the New Testament? No, the ideals are established at the very beginning (Gen. 1-2). The Old Testament makes clear that all humans are God’s image-bearers; they have dignity, worth, and moral responsibility. And God’s ideal for marriage is a one-flesh monogamous union between husband and wife. Also, certain prohibitions in the law of Moses against theft, adultery, murder, and idolatry have enduring relevance.^[5] Yet when we look at God’s dealings with fallen humans in the ancient Near East, these ideals were ignored and even deeply distorted. So God was at work in seeking to restore or move toward this ideal.

We know that many products on the market have a built-in, planned obsolescence. They’re designed for the short-term; they’re not intended to be long-lasting and permanent. The same goes for the law of Moses: it was never intended to be enduring. It looked forward to a new covenant (Jer. 31; Ezek. 36). It’s not that the Mosaic law was bad and therefore needed to be replaced. The law was good (Rom. 7:12), but it was a temporary measure that was less than ideal; it was in need of replacement and fulfillment.

Though a necessary part of God’s unfolding plan, the Sinai legislation wasn’t God’s final word. As the biblical scholar N. T. Wright affirms, “The Torah [law of Moses at Sinai] is given for a specific period of time, and is then set aside-not because it was a bad thing now happily abolished, but because it was a good thing whose purpose had now been accomplished.”^[6] This is the message of the New Testament book of Hebrews: the old Mosaic law and other Old Testament institutions and figures like Moses and Joshua were prefiguring “shadows” that would give way to “substance” and completion. Or as Paul put it in Galatians 3:24, the law was a “tutor” for Israel to prepare the way for Christ.

Incremental Steps toward the Ideal

How then did God address the patriarchal structures, primogeniture (rights of the firstborn), polygamy, warfare, servitude/slavery, and a number of other fallen social arrangements that were permitted because of the hardness of human hearts? He met Israel partway. As Jesus stated it in Matthew 19:8, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.” We could apply this passage to many problematic structures within the ancient Near Eastern context: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted servitude and patriarchy and warfare and the like, but from the beginning it has not been this way.” They were not ideal and universal.^[7]

After God invited all Israelites—male and female, young and old—to be a nation of priests to God, he gave them a simple covenant code (Exod. 20:22- 23:19). Following on the heels of this legislation, Israel rebelled against God in the golden calf incident (Exod. 32). High priests would also have their own rebellion by participating in deviant, idolatrous worship (Lev. 10). As a result of Israel’s turning from God, he gave them more stringent laws (Jer. 7; cf. Gal. 3:19). In the New Testament, Paul assumes that God had been putting up with inferior, less-than-ideal societal structures and human disobedience:

• Acts 17:30: Previously, God “overlooked the times of ignorance” and is “now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent.”
• Romans 3:25: God has now “demonstrate[d] His righteousness” in Christ, though “in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed.”

Like two sides of the same coin, we have human hard-heartedness and divine forbearance. God put up with many aspects of human fallenness and adjusted accordingly. (More on this below.)

So Christopher Hitchens’s reaction to Mosaic laws (“we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human animals”) actually points us in the right direction in two ways. First, the Mosaic law was temporary and, as a whole, isn’t universal and binding upon all humans or all cultures. Second, Mosaic times were indeed “crude” and “uncultured” in many ways. So Sinai legislation makes a number of moral improvements without completely overhauling ancient Near Eastern social structures and assumptions. God “works with” Israel as he finds her. He meets his people where they are while seeking to show them a higher ideal in the context of ancient Near Eastern life. As one writer puts it, “If human beings are to be treated as real human beings who possess the power of choice, then the ‘better way’ must come gradually. Otherwise, they will exercise their freedom of choice and turn away from what they do not understand.”^[8]

Given certain fixed assumptions in the ancient Near East, God didn’t impose legislation that Israel wasn’t ready for. He moved incrementally. As stated repeatedly in the Old Testament and reinforced in the New Testament, the law of Moses was far from ideal. Being the practical God he is, Yahweh (the Old Testament title for the covenant-making God) met his people where they were, but he didn’t want to leave them there. God didn’t banish all fallen, flawed, ingrained social structures when Israel wasn’t ready to handle the ideals. Taking into account the actual, God encoded more feasible laws, though he directed his people toward moral improvement. He condescended by giving Israel a jumping-off place, pointing them to a better path.^[9]

As we move through the Scriptures, we witness a moral advance—or, in many ways, a movement toward restoring the Genesis ideals. In fact, Israel’s laws reveal dramatic moral improvements over the practices of the other ancient Near Eastern peoples. God’s act of incrementally “humanizing” ancient Near Eastern structures for Israel meant diminished harshness and an elevated status of debt-servants, even if certain negative customs weren’t fully eliminated.^[10]

So when we read in Joshua 10:22-27 that Joshua killed five Canaanite kings and hung their corpses on trees all day, we don’t have to explain away or justify such a practice. Such actions reflect a less morally refined condition. Yet these sorts of texts remind us that, in the unfolding of his purposes, God can use heroes such as Joshua within their context and work out his redemptive purposes despite them. And, as we’ll see later on, warfare accounts in Joshua are actually quite tame in comparison to the barbarity of other ancient Near Eastern accounts.

So rather than looking at Scripture from a post-Enlightenment critique (which, as we’ll see later, is itself rooted in the Christian influence on Western culture), we can observe that Scripture itself acknowledges the inferiority of certain Old Testament standards. The Old Testament offers national Israel various resources to guide them regarding what is morally ideal. God’s legislation is given to a less morally mature culture that has imbibed the morally inferior attitudes and sinful practices of the ancient Near East.

Note too that common ancient Near Eastern worship patterns and rituals-sacrifices, priesthood, holy mountains/places, festivals, purification rites, circumcision—are found in the law of Moses. For example, we find in Hittite law a sheep being substituted for a man.^[11] In his providence, God appropriated certain symbols and rituals familiar to Israel and infused them with new meaning and significance in light of his saving, historical acts and his covenant relationship with Israel.^[12] This “redemption” of ancient rituals and patterns and their incorporation into Israel’s own story reflect common human longings to connect with “the sacred” or “the transcendent” or to find grace and forgiveness. In God’s historical redemption of Israel and later with the coming of Christ, the Lamb of God, these kinds of rituals and symbols were fulfilled in history and were put in proper perspective.

Instead of glossing over some of the inferior moral attitudes and practices we encounter in the Old Testament, we should freely acknowledge them. We can point out that they fall short of the ideals of Genesis 1-2 and affirm with our critics that we don’t have to advocate such practices for all societies. We can also show that any of the objectionable practices we find in the Old Testament have a contrary witness in the Old Testament as well.^[13]

Questions & Notes

1. One site with this letter is www.thehumorarchives.com/humor/0001065.html. ↑

2. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1956), 207. ↑

3. Discuss C. S. Lewis’s mention of “chronological snobbery.” Why is this relevant for a discussion on “strange” Old Testament passages? ↑

4. What do we mean by the law of Moses being inferior and provisional? How does this help us understand the Mosaic law’s role in our thinking today? ↑

5. What ideals does God establish in Genesis 1-2 (at creation) that serve as a reference point as we work through Old Testament ethical questions? ↑

6. N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 181. ↑

7. How does Matthew 19:8 (the law and hardened human hearts) give insight regarding the less-than-ideal legislation in the law of Moses? ↑

8. Alden Thompson, Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 33. ↑

9. Is it useful to think of Israel’s laws as realistic, “incremental” steps toward the ideal? Is this a serious problem? Why or why not? ↑

10. Ibid., 32. ↑

11. Hittite Laws §167. See Martha T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997). ↑

12. See Allen P. Ross, Holiness to the Lord (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006). ↑

13. Bruce C. Birch, Let Justice Roll Down: The Old Testament, Ethics, and Christian Life (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 43. ↑

Click on the "Is God a Moral Monster" tag below to see all the posts in this series. To go to the start of this series click here.