Introduction

How it came to my attention is something of a mystery (divine appointment perhaps), but I recently encountered a post over at the blog Bible and Interpretation, which is something of a hotbed for atheists and liberals to air their spleens about conservative biblical interpretation. That’s not to say that everything over there is all bad, but the title of the blog is…well…somewhat misleading.

Dr. Josh Bowen

What caught my attention is a post by Dr. Josh Bowen of Digital Hammurabi fame, wherein he’s responding to a post by Paul Copan over on the SBC North American Mission Board’s apologetics blog which is interacting with Bowen’s chapter contribution in the new book Misusing Scripture: What Are Evangelicals Doing With the Bible? (Routledge, 2023). So, it’s a response to a response.

I put my internet sleuthing and dark web trolling abilities to the test and dug up a copy of the book so I could 1) check Copan’s work for myself and 2) make sure that Bowen’s response was correct. Believe it or not, I do try to be fair.

A Starting Point

Bowen’s chapter, “‘Your Eye Shall Have No Pity’: Old Testament Violence and Modern Evangelical Morality”, in Misusing Scripture[1] reflects his clear grasp of material concepts and sources, but also that typical hostility to those who those who hold the biblical text as being not merely historical but also as being authoritative to matters of morality.

This fact is most clearly seen in the opening paragraph,

The violence that appears throughout the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (OT) has presented no small problem for those who wish to build their ethical systems upon, or derive their values from, this “sacred” text. While philosophical issues like the “problem of evil” are challenging for theism in general, their difficulties increase drastically when a specific god, Yahweh, commands actions we would consider to be immoral.[2]

See also: The Morality of Genocide: A Response to Randal Rauser

It’s strange how, at least until the 20th century—as far as I can tell—, no one really had a problem with the “commands” of God. I’m guess that this is because the 20th century introduced us to the industrialized slaughter of people groups based upon a particular ethnicity. 

Humans had regularly engaged in the wholesale slaughter of one another as distinct people groups for literally millennia, with very little cause for concern. It was just the way it was. Oh, sure, every now and then someone would pop their head up and question the whole enterprise and perhaps peace would be brought. I suppose since the behavior was mutual, more tit-for-tat, that it was given some moral leeway.

However with the 20th century, we were beholden to the spectacle of destruction befit for the modern age: factories for the destruction of humans of a particular race or creed. The behavior was then slapped with a lovely technical name that was created to describe such behavior: genocide.[3]

As a result, the term has been retroactively applied to many historical events, such as what happened to Armenians in Turkey in the decades prior to World War One as well as the response to the Heroro and Nama rebellions in German South Africa. Moreover it has, found itself applied to other, less directly homicidal actions. But it has also found itself applied to ancient actions, such as the conquering of Canaan.

As Bowen notes, such actions “we would consider immoral”.[4]

The Problem of False Equivalency

The entire issue, to me, seems to fall along certain lines where we want to treat similar actions similarly. Let me begin the analysis with this example:

Imagine that you’re driving down the street on a winter day and you see two houses across the street from one another, both with women and children outside crying and all of their worldly possessions stacked on the curb, both with burly men standing in the door. You are moved with concern and decide to pull over and investigate.

At the house on the right side of the street, you discover that the man who has put out the woman and her children is the owner of the house and the woman has been leasing the house, but never paid her rent and has wrecked the inside of the property. You cross to the left side of the street and find that the woman has been a good tenant, has paid her rent on time, has not only maintained the house but has made substantial improvements to it in the time that she’s lived there but the landlord has decided that he no longer wishes to rent out the property but to live in it himself.

Here’s the question: who is the “bad guy” in this situation?

If we’re just looking at the situation without context, then we would just assume that the men are the “bad guys” for throwing these women and children out into the cold. But when we bring context into the matter, it becomes increasingly difficult to see exactly who the “bad guy” really is. We can be critical of the timing or the methods, but context often makes the actual judgement that much more difficult, because if we say that the someone has a right to his property, then he’s justified to evict someone from his property that he doesn’t desire to be there, regardless of the reason. He’s in the right, no matter the means, methods, or timing that he employs.

The fact that both evictions share certain common features can lead one to a false equivalence, if not considered contextually. 

How does this manifest in Bowen?

We shall see in the next post.

Notes

  1. Joshua A. Bowen. “‘Your Eye Shall Have No Pity’: Old Testament Violence and Modern Evangelical Morality” p. 177-199. Misusing Scripture: What Are Evangelicals Doing With The Bible (Ed. Mark Elliot, Kenneth Atkinson, & Robert Rezetko. Rutledge. 2023
  2. Ibid, p. 177 (emphasis original)
  3. “Genocide”. United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml (Accessed February 2024)
  4. Bowen, p. 177 (emphasis added).