tim@unc.UUCP (Tim Maroney) (01/11/84)
Third in a series of responses to Dave Norris' attempt to refute points I made in the essay "Even If I DID Believe ...". This time, the topic is the slaughter of the Midianites by the descendants of Israel in the book of Numbers. T You hear a lot from Christians about Yahweh's "infinite I compassion and mercy". Tell it to the Midianites. Numbers 31 is M a classic example of wholesale slaughter and rape under the . direction of Yahweh. [I then gave a lengthy extract from Num. 31 T which you can verify for yourself -- I have omitted it here for I space reasons, although Dave did not.] D Again, out of context. You have created your own reasons why God A commanded the destruction of the Midianites; chapter 25 (a few V pages back) explains that they were vile people, responsible for I the Baal-peor orgy. In 25:2 "They called the people unto the D sacrifices of their gods." The subject (they) is feminine, and . refers to the daughters of Moab, with whom the men of Israel D committed fornication (this method was used to weaken Israel by A Balak, with Balaam's advice; see Rev 2:14). The Baal cult had V festivals which dramatized the mating of Baal with the goddess of I fertility. Archeological discoveries reveal that prostitution D was practiced as part of their worship. You are correct, Dave: my quote IS out of context. Here is a representative quote from Numbers 25: "Israel settled at Shittim. The people gave themselves over to debauchery with the daughters of Moab. These invited them to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down before their gods. With Israel thus committed to the Baal of Peor, the anger of Yahweh blazed out against them. Yahweh said to Moses: 'Take all the leaders of the people. Impale them for Yahweh, here in the sun; then the burning anger of Yahweh will turn away from Israel." (Note in this last sentence that Israel is commanded to perform human sacrifice to appease their wrathful deity.) It doesn't seem to me that the offense of apostacy is deserving of the death penalty. The people freely went over to the rites of the Moabites. This is hardly a capital offense. Or do you really think that we should pass a law imposing the death penalty against those who leave their religion, or those who preach any religion other than Christianity or Judaism? Nor is fornication to be considered a crime deserving of execution. Again, would you suggest that we pass a law putting fornicators to death? It does not surprise me in the least that there was an element of sex in the worship of these people; many anthropologists and psychologists have come to the conclusion that religion originated in sexual rites, largely as a way of blessing the crops. (No doubt these researchers were in the pay of Satan, right?) Religious prostitution is not a thing which you can justly commit genocide for; it has been practiced by millions, persisting to the present. Also, it has not escaped my attention that in Gen. 38:15-19, Judah practices solicitation of a prostitute quite openly and without the slightest qualm. His later embarrassment is only over having been tricked by a whore, not in having used one. In Gen. 49:8-12, Israel himself deems Judah a praiseworthy man. Is this yet another example of moral monopoly, that is, "It's OK if we do it, but no one else can"? D This seems like a harsh judgement, but God is actually choosing A the lesser of two evils. The alternative was to allow the V Midianites to live and corrupt (and thereby destroy) Israel. And I read Jeremiah 19:5, where we discover that the Midianites D sacrificed their children to the god Baal. Is this what you are . defending? Give me Yahweh any day. The early Christians were accused of the selfsame offense by their enemies, as were the Jews in the Middle Ages and in the 1930's. Their enemies were lying. Similarly, when the enemies of the Midianites said this, they were almost certainly lying. If you are going to treat blatant propaganda as fact, we aren't going to get anywhere. However, even if these tales were true (which I do not think is the case, but which I will concede for the sake of argument), the Midianites could not have killed as many Midianite children as the armies of Israel did in Num. 31. "For the crime of killing your babies, we will kill your babies"? Absurd. You're the one defending slaughter, not me. Your reasoning about the destruction of the Midianites for the salvation of Israel is worthy of a true Stalinist or Nazi. The principle of the purge is the same in all three cases -- slay an unliked people so that a liked people can prosper. I don't buy it from them, and I'm not buying it from you. By the way, the phrase "the god Baal" is nonsensical. Baal was a generic term used to describe any god of other tribes. So what do we have by our examination of Num. 25? All we find is that the worshippers of another religion were popular, so Yahweh had them all killed. A few chapters later, with Israel firmly planted in Heshbon, many miles from Midian, and having had no further dealings with the Midianites, Yahweh decided that killing a few of them hadn't been enough, and ordered Israel to march over 100 miles south and wipe them out to the last person. Their only crime was that they worshipped a different religion; this was apparently considered enough to justify genocide. (There was also a trumped-up charge that the people of Midian were spreading disease -- see Num. 25:8-9; I say it was trumped-up because according to the book, killing one Midianite woman was enough to stop the whole plague, and we all know these days that that just isn't how contagious disease works! More propaganda, clearly.) One last point in favor of the Midianites. Moses' wife Zipporah was a Midianite, and there is no suggestion that she is "vile" by the standards of Yahweh, although the prejudices of some Israelites turn them against Moses for marrying her. Furthermore, Zipporah's father Jethro, also a Midianite, gives Moses good advice in Ex. 18:13-27, and is generally painted in a positive fashion by the book's author. Clearly the people of Midian were not beyond hope of redemption if these two individuals came from their number! By the way, I hope Jethro got out of Midian in time, since it says that all the males were put to death. All this is to some extent beside the point, which is that no possible crime justifies actions such as depicted in Num. 25 and 31. Brutal slaughter of civilians is completely unacceptable to any reasonable moral standard. Yahweh's ordering it puts him on a par with Hitler, Stalin, Manson, and Calley. This is a leader that should not be followed under any circumstances; he has proven himself unfit to hold power by his brutal abuses. Finding out how small was the "crime" of the Midianites only makes this fact all the plainer. Thank you, Dave, for forcing me to strengthen my case against the justness of the campaign against Midian. The next version of the essay will surely contain some form of the arguments I have given above. -- Tim Maroney, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill duke!unc!tim (USENET), tim.unc@csnet-relay (ARPA)