Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: spok@MATHOM.GANDALF.CS.CMU.EDU (John Ockerbloom) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: War in the Persian Gulf Against Iraq to Free Kuwait Message-ID: Date: 3 Feb 91 03:50:23 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Lines: 50 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Our moderator writes, regarding the slaughter of the Midianites and other peoples: >[If you assume that people at the time were not ready to hear all that God >would eventually have to say, several alternatives are possible. E.g. >God may have been concerned with keeping Israel pure from >contamination by paganism, and the people may simply have been unable >to conceive of this being implemented in any way other than killing >them all. This could imply either that they misheard what God had to >say, or that he actually gave commands that would now be considered >bloodthirsty because more subtle alternatives were not yet possible. >--clh] If it was a case of mishearing, though, one of the people who misheard was the narrator of Joshua, who states explicitly that God had commanded the slaughter of everyone in the area: "Joshua conquered the entire country; the mountain regions, the Negeb, the foothills, and the mountain slopes, with all their kings. He left no survivors, but fulfilled the doom on all who lived there, just as the Lord, the God of Israel had commanded." -- Joshua 10: 40 [NAB] "The Israelites took all the spoil and livestock of their cities as their booty; but the people they put to the sword, until they had exterminated the last of them, leaving none alive. As the Lord had commanded his servant Moses, so Moses commanded Joshua, and Joshua acted accordingly. [...] For it was the design of the Lord to encourage them to wage war against Israel, that they might be doomed to destruction and thus receive no mercy, but be exterminated, as the Lord had commanded Moses." -- Joshua 11: 14-15,20 [NAB] Since a biblical narrator is speaking directly here, denying these statements implies denying inerrancy. This presents a dilemma for many people. I'm afraid that I can't make sense of the other alternative our moderator offers, that God did issue these commands "because more subtle alternatives were not yet possible". I presume that the statement "with God, all things are possible" was just as true at that time as it was when Jesus said it, and indeed it is not too difficult to think of alternatives which would have kept Israel just as free from paganism as it was after its army reportedly killed every last inhabitant of Canaan. John Ockerbloom -- ========================================================================== ockerbloom@cs.cmu.edu ...!uunet!cs.cmu.edu!ockerbloom ocker@yalecs.bitnet (forwarded) 4209 Murray Ave., Pittsburgh PA 15217