Saturday, August 17, 2013

Deuteronomy: Chapters 21 to 25

Last time we plowed through some of the Laws of Moses.  More of that here.


CHAPTER 21

You get a series of laws in this chapter. Most of them are things we’ve seen already, so yeah, it gets a bit old. 

A few things of note – apparently, polygamy is A-OK for the ancient Hebrew.  I knew it happened, but this Biblical verse includes laws for guys with more than one wife.  It says you give your main blessing to your first-born son, even if he wasn’t born to your favorite wife.  By those standards, the patriarchs don’t look so good, but oh well. 
           
Speaking of sons, if you have one that is a no-good malcontent, bring him to the elders so he can be stoned to death.  That’s some tough love right there.

CHAPTER 22

There is an entire section here just called “various precepts.”  It’s a grab bag of rules.  I get a kick out of that.  Let’s stop and think for a second.  Deuteronomy is essentially the last testament of Moses.  These are supposedly a series of speeches Moses himself is giving to the Israelis just before entering Canaan. 

The best modern analogy would be the farewell addresses of some of our leading presidents – Washington, Jackson, Eisenhower had among the more famous.  Those guys gave talks that found a few big points and stuck to them.  Beware the spirit of party and foreign entanglements.  Beware banks and big government.  Beware the military industrial complex.  That’s what they did.  Here?  Moses is so getting lost in the weeds with things.  (And wouldn’t you know? They were entirely statements that had resonance of some sort to the controversies of the reign of King Josiah!  It’s like it was written specifically with that time in mind!  Hence the "pious fraud" label).

Some of the laws are interesting.  Men should stick to men’s clothing and women should stick to women’s clothing.  Cross-dressing? “An abomination to the LORD, your God.” 

There’s a proto-version of homeowners insurance, or rather, responsibility.  When you build your roof, put a ledge so no one falls off.  If they do, you’re to blame.  So what happens in your house falls on your head, unless you’ve taken steps against it.

There is one part that reads like something allegorical: “If while walking along, you come across a bird’s nest with young birds or eggs in it, in any tree or on the ground, and the mother bird is sitting on them, you shall not take away the mother bird along with her brood.”  This reads like one of those lines that could become the basis for entire sections of rabbinical law – heck, maybe it is for all I know. 

Speaking of allegorical laws, shortly after that, you’re told – for the second time in the Bible – not to mix.  Don’t plant two types of seed, don’t plow with an ox and donkey together, and don’t wear clothing made of wood and linen.  I don’t quite get it, but it sounds interesting. 

Right after that, the chapter veers into marriage.  Again, I’m trying to imagine this speech actually being given and people listening.  At a certain point, they had to wonder if he was ever going to shut up.  The constant rambling couldn’t have helped.  This speech begins at the end of Chapter 4 and goes through end of Chapter 28.  It clocks in at 25 pages in my Bible.  That’s about as long as the entire reign of King David.  So imagine this as the Bible claims it – a big long speech that covers all of these topics.  Man, it wouldn’t be very effective.  There’s too much detail and too little focus. 

CHAPTER 23

More random laws.  At this point, Moses has really lost whatever thread he had going.  Early on this chapter had a nice head of steam going for it, but somewhere in the late teens, it began devolving into a “and the kitchen sink” farewell address.  Moses has gone on this far, may as well say every little dang detail. 

But some of the laws are fun.  There are certain stipulations as to who can “come into the Assembly of God.”  OK – what does that phrase mean exactly?  Does it mean just the priesthood?  I think so, but if it means anything more, it’s rather excessive.  You see, this opening section bans people from joining in the Assembly of God.  Banned?  Guys whose balls have been crushed or penis cut off.  Yeah, this Bible uses the word “penis” – Deuteronomy, Chapter 23, verse 2.  Also, no bastard children.  In fact, anyone produced from an “illicit union” may join for 10 generations.  Yeah, like bookkeeping was really good enough to pay attention to that. 

Then you get rules for the army.  In order to keep things clean with the Lord, any soldier who has a “nocturnal emission” has to sty outside the camp until the next nightfall. You must be holy to fight in this army. It actually says “nocturnal emission” so do they just mean wet dream?  That’s what the phrase typically means nowadays. 

CHAPTER 24

We go back to marriage in this chapter.  Apparently, divorce was acceptable under Hebrew law. 

Here’s an intriguing one – if you loan some money to a neighbor, you shall not enter his house to receive his pledge, but wait outside until the person comes out to you.  That’s an odd little one.  I wonder what the rationale is?  My best guess – it’s a show of respect.  Barging into someone’s house to make them give a pledge to you is too insulting, too demeaning.  A man should at least be the king of his own castle, so stay outside when this happens.  In fact, right after this little section, Moses admonishes people to not exploit the poor and needy. 

There are other likable laws in this chapter.  For example – you shouldn’t execute parents for the crimes of their children.  That sounds like a nice idea.  My hunch – this was put in here because sometimes people would do that as a form of rough street justice.  It’s just my hunch, but then again, if it wasn’t an issue, why include it in the first place?  There must’ve been some of this going on somewhere.

The chapter ends on a note of being nice to the unprotected – do that because you were slaves in Egypt and know what it’s like to be on bottom.  This concern for the poor and unprotected is a nice theme. 

Really, Chapter 24 of Deuteronomy is an easy chapter to root for.  Hurrah for Deuteronomy 24!

CHAPTER 25

This has some more interesting laws in the increasingly completely disorganized speech by Moses.  One bit apparently has served as the basis for much religious thought: “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out grain.” Far from being just about animal rights, this is taken as a sign that laborers have the right to live on the fruits of their own labor.  That’s the theory of no less an expert than St. Paul.  Hey, religion and the International Workers of the World come together in this passage!

Right after that, we come to a passage on marriage laws.  Man, if the D author is going to talk about marriage so much, could he – I dunno – maybe put them all in the same part together?  At least Leviticus was well organized.  This is at least the third time in the last 4-5 chapters marriage has come up, and it’s just spliced in randomly.  Just bizarre.

Anyhow, the marriage laws here on the face of it are just weird, but really are of note.  They not only look back to something that’s happened in the Bible, but forecast something coming up.  The rule – if a man dies and leaves a widow, it’s the responsibility of any younger brothers to marry her.  That way, you keep it in the family.  But if the younger brother refuses, then the elders shall strip him of his sandal and denounced.  And “his name shall be called in Israel `the house of the man stripped of his sandal.’”

Well, that’s an … odd one.  But here’s the thing – it relates back to the story of Judah.  Chapter 38 of Genesis is just character assassination on Judah, in which a woman marries his eldest son and dies, then she marries the second son and dies, and finally Judah doesn’t want her marrying the third son and so tells her to go home until the third son is old enough.  (Then Judah mistakes her for a prostitute, sleeps with her, and impregnates her – like I said, Judah comes off poorly there).  But there you see the notion that a younger brother should marry the widow of his late elder brother.

But more than that, this odd talk of the man stripped of his sandal comes up again.  It’s in the Book of Ruth.  So stay tuned – it’ll happen.

So why put this in Deuteronomy?  My take is simple – it was an actual social custom and the D author approved of it, so he put it in.  And there you go.  Why would he like it?  It keeps the women in the family. They’ll stick around, and preserve the racial integrity of the Hebrew people.

But I amuse myself imaging this as part of an actual, never ending, forever rambling speech by Moses.  Gee, now he’s talking about calling guys unshoed?  Will this speech ever end?  There’s some odd observational comedy if you think of this chapter from the point of view of an average Israeli bored to death by the ramblings and excessive detail of Moses giving his last speech.  People find it boring enough to read – can you image it as a long speech? 

There are a couple other rules after that and the theme is: act fairly.  We’re specifically told that if two guys are fighting, you are not to grab the other guy’s balls.  So that tactic of dirty fighting is officially an abomination.  In fact, if someone does that, his hand should be cut off.  Then we’re told you shouldn’t have two sets of weights.  So engage in fair business dealings with each other. 

A nice, if rambling, series of chapters ends on a dark note, though.  The Amalek people shall be blotting out.  They are cursed.  

EDITED to add: here is a link to the next item: Deuteronomy Chapters 26 to 30.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Deuteronomy: Chapters 16 to 20

Picking up where we left off, so far Deuteronomy has been largely recapping previous parts of the Torah, but with its own spin that tells us about the author and his agenda.  We get more of the same - but adding a wrinkle, I propose the Deuteronomy Drinking Game!


CHAPTER 16

On the face of it, this is just pure recapping – and recapping some of the more boring parts of Biblical passages gone by.  It’s just a goings-over on the religious feasts that the Hebrew are to observe – Passover, Weeks, Booths.  Yeah, we did this already in Leviticus, and it was boring then (even by Leviticus standards).

Aye, but there is a wrinkle this time around, an interesting wrinkle if you know much about modern Biblical scholarship.  Each time the D author (the author of Deuteronomy) discusses a feast, he makes sure to include that the feast should be “only at the place which the LORD, your God, will choose as the dwelling place of his name.”  We get this about Passover, that phrase is repeated with the Feats of Weeks, and again with the Feats of Booths.  Then in summing up all three feasts, the Hebrew are again told this – only celebrate at the place the Lord chooses to dwell.

Why does this matter?  Well, let’s look at this.  Where does the Lord choose to dwell?  In the Temple – specifically, in the holiest of holies inside it where the 10 commandments lay inside the ark, inside the tabernacle.  That’s where God chooses to reside.  Sure, Solomon built it, but if I recall correctly, the Lord appeared as a cloud (as he’s wont to do) to show his approval of this dwelling place for the ark.  (Prior to temple, the Lord’s ark was in Shiloh).  So all festivals are supposed to be there.

More than that, four times the D author notes that the festivals are only to be there.  He is quite clear on that point.  Why does this matter?  Simple – festivals weren’t just there.  Heck, in the divided kingdom era, the northern kingdom of Israel (with Jerusalem staying in Judea) had their own festival centers.  That was done to keep their people from having a religious allegiance/attachment outside the grasp of their ruler. 

Now, D is believed to have written this well after the divided kingdom era.  As I noted at the outset of this book, he’s believed to have written Deuteronomy during the reign of King Josiah, near the end of Judea’s independent existence.  OK, but people weren’t always practicing as they were supposed to.  There was a tug of war between the priestly class and the populace.  So the D author is trying to stamp his approach on things by putting his words in the mouth of Moses.  Earlier, Moses had noted the importance of the feasts, but its only now that they be centralized so.

CHAPTER 17

More rules and stuff.  A lot of this deals with political leadership.  They’re told to pick judges and if a case is too baffling, then you “shall go up to the place which the LORD, your God, will choose” – maybe we should start a Deuteronomy Drinking Game?  Every time the book says something about going to the place where the Lord, your God, choose – take a shot.  Following drinking game, you’d have four shots in Chapter 16 and one here.  It isn’t quite the drunkenness off the Leviticus Drinking Game, but we still have 17 more chapters left to go.

Oh, and the people are told that if they want to pick a king, that’s cool. (Yeah, makes sense Moses would think to say that, given that D author is writing this down for Moses centuries after the first king.  If Moses had really given instructions about wanting a king, than Samuel really shouldn’t have had such a shit fit when the tribes told him they wanted one).  But oh wait – Moses did tell them and then this book was “lost.”  Sure, that’s it. 

Note – when would Deuteronomy have been lost anyway?  At the time they moved the ark from Shiloh to Jerusalem?  No, that can't be.  If that were the case, it would've been known before the move, and Samuel (prophet based in Shiloh) is clearly unaware of what Moses says here about kings).  So this was a sacred book of Moses, lost way back in the days of judges in Shiloh, but despite being lost it was taken with all the other things to Jerusalem – but still lost?  No, I’m not buying it.  This book wasn't lost and then found during  the reign of King Josiah.  It was written during Josiah's time and then claimed to be a lost holy book of Moses. 

Actually, there is one other really key point about this chapter – it’s from Chapter 17 that Deuteronomy gets its name.  At the end, in verse 18, Moses says the king shall write down a copy of the law – and that duplicate is where Deuteronomy gets its name from.  St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Bible (the Bible for over 1,000 years) wrote the word in Latin as Deuteronium – literally “second law.”  That makes sense to me.  We’ve already been given a law code, and now we’re being given it again, with some tweaks. 

One final thing about this chapter – there’s a clear implied critique of Solomon in it.  A king is gold to essentially live frugally.  Not have too many horses or too many wives or too much gold and silver.  I don’t know how many horses Solomon had, but he’s legendary for his wife collection, and his reign was known for being wrapped in prosperity and gold 

CHAPTER 18

This is about priests and prophets.  Much of this, especially about priests, has been said before.  Prophets, though?  That’s new.  I don’t recall Moses talking about that at all before.  But D author lives in a time of prophets so what’s it to be addressed. (In fact, Richard Elliot Friedman makes a pretty good argument that the D author may in fact be the prophet Jeremiah – he had a similar message and lived at the right time. Added bonus, the D author, Friedman has argued, is also likely the author of the heart of the history section – Joshua, Judges, the two Samuels, and the two Kings.  We’ll talk more about that when I get there. 

Getting back on track, Moses here tells people they must listen to the prophets.  Well, how will they know how is a prophet and how isn’t?  Simple, if a prophet says something and it happens, then he’s a true prophet.  If what he says doesn’t happen, he’s not a prophet.  OK, that makes sense, but it also begs the question how can you know until it’s too late?  (Also, getting way ahead of things, wouldn’t this demote Jonah to un-prophet status?  Yeah, that’s getting ahead of things). 

CHAPTER 19

This is a pretty bland bunch of rehashings.  Now we rehash punishments.  If you kill someone accidentally, you’re punishment is internal exile.  You go to one of the cities of refuge.  But if it’s intentional, then going to a city of refuge won’t save you. 

Also, don’t bear false witness.  If you do, you’ll be done in like you intended to do to the person you spoke against.  Then the Code of Hammurabi is quoted for at least the second time in the Bible – an eye for eye, and a tooth for a tooth and all that. 

CHAPTER 20

This chapter discusses the ethics of war.  Some of it is predictable, other parts not at all.  First, we learn that a priest should sanctify the Israeli soldiers before they go out into battle.  OK, that makes sense.

Then we’re given reasons for why a soldier may be dismissed from service.  Most are sensible items that you’d expect.  If he made a house that hasn’t been dedicated, planted a vineyard that hasn’t been plucked, been betrothed but not yet married – all those guys may be excused.  There’s a clear theme here – you shouldn’t be asked to lay down your life when you’re on the cusp of a major milestone.  Added bonus – these rules really shouldn’t cost the army too many soldiers.  (Well, unless it’s on the eve of vineyard picking season).

But there is another rule, and this one is a bit more unexpected.  If someone is afraid, let them go.  Huh.  That’s it – if you don’t want to be here, go home.  That could conceivably cost them many.  What’s going on here?  My theory: peer pressure.  You don’t want to look like a wuss in front of all the other guys. The exact phrase the Bible uses is “afraid and weak hearted” and what guy wants to be considered afraid?  So you give people the option of leaving out of fear, and when they don’t, that forces them to commit that much more to the fight. 

When offering terms of peace, it depends who you’re offering peace too.  For people of the Promised Land, show no mercy.  They all die.  For others, always offer terms of peace to a city, and if they accept, just make them laborers for you.  If they say know, lay it under siege, and when you take it, kill all the men and let all the rest for plunder. 

The difference is because one is the Promised Land and the other isn’t.  On the face of it, that explains it.  Another way of looking at if from the point of view of Biblical scholarship: the conquest of the Promised Land happened centuries before Deuteronomy was written down, while the other fighting is what the nation of Judea actually does. 

Saying that all Canaanites should be killed sounds terrible to modern ears, but it has an advantage – it wipes the slate clean.  This was for us and it’s only for us.  In reality, things never work that simply. Whether you’re looking at Germanic tribes, or the Aryans in India or Turkic bands or whoever – when a group comes into a place, they never fully displace the old group.  It’s easy to say they came and therefore everyone else died or fled, but in reality you end up intermingling.  (But that doesn’t perfectly jibe with a notion of a Promised Land.  The more bloodthirsty approach actually sounds better.  Also, it allows for a clearer creation of a separate people.  We’re not a bunch of people from Egypt who intermingled with the locals, we came and took over). 

Finally, the chapter ends on an odd note.  There’s a bit of proto-environmentalism as Moses tells people not to cut down trees in cities you besiege: “Are the trees of the field human beings, that they should be included in your siege?”  Then he relents a bit, saying trees that don’t grow fruit are fine to cut down for siege works, but otherwise – don’t cut them down.  Moses phrases it like trees are more important than people.  I guess it’s better to say that trees are less to blame or less at fault than people.  I don’t know fully what to make of it, but there you go.

EDITED to add: if you want to move ahead, here's a link to Deuteronomy: Chapters 21 to 25.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Deuteronomy: Chapters 11 to 15

Last time, Moses got into his second big speech in this book.  Today, it keeps going - and it's of these seemingly more forgettable parts of the Bible that helps explain where the religion of the Hebrew came from, what it was like back in the day, and why it's survived.  That's my take anyway.


CHAPTER 11

Again, much of this speech recaps what has already happened in the Bible.  There is a reason why the back half (or really, back two-thirds) of the Torah makes people’s eyes glaze over. 

Some notes – as always, there is emphasis placed on making sure the Hebrew adhere to all of God’s laws. Clearly, this was a problem at the time.  The Israelis will be blessed for following God’s law and – foreshadowing – cursed if they don’t.  This book keeps talking of God’s “strong hand” and “outstretched arm.”  These phrases don’t appear until Deuteronomy, but are all over the place now. 

When Moses talks about the parting of the Red Sea, the footnote says that in ancient Hebrew the wording is really “sea of reeds” or “reedy sea.”  So even though we know Red Sea is a mistranslation, it’s still translated wrongly (though traditionally) with the correction in the footnote.  It’s too iconic to fix in the text itself.  It’s the Liberty Valence approach – when the myth becomes truth, print the myth. At least this Bible puts the correct translation in the footnotes.

Also, Moses again tells them that the Promised Land goes all the way to the Euphrates River.  That’s twice now Deuteronomy has said this and never before. 

CHAPTER 12

Now for a big moment in centralization of religion.  This chapter makes really clear that the Hebrew should do all of their sacrifices and services at one central temple.  No other place should be allowed.  This is a big deal for Moses.  And whatever you do, don’t go sacrificing at the altars used by the people we drove out of Canaan.  They did terrible things there, so avoid those places accursed by God. 

This rather inadvertently let’s us in on a window of religious practice by the Hebrew at the time this book was written (in the late seventh century, during the time of King Josiah – the evidence is pretty good for that).  The Hebrew were doing sacrifices at other altars.  They were flirting with other gods.  They were even sacrificing at altars to other gods.

Seems odd, doesn’t it?  Keep in mind, Jews have been much, much better about observing proper practices AFTER the Babylonian Captivity.  They stayed together as a cohesive unit despite losing their Promised Land, and becoming a scattered people.  Yet at the time when whey had their own kings on their own Promised Land, when they had prophets (post-Moses, but they still had prophets) and were much closer to the really miraculous stuff – despite all that, they weren’t very good at being observant.  What gives?

Well, this is where it helps being a non-believer.  The religion evolved and was created over time.  Sure there was likely a Moses figure and even and Abraham figure, but it wasn’t quite the story it evolved into.  For example, why are the people worshipping at the old altars?  Well, despite the bloodshed that Moses is calling for here and that Joshua will deliver in the next chapter, they really don’t commit genocide. They move in, live alongside some of the people already there, and some of them start worshipping this God Yahweh while still keeping some of their old gods. 

But the Hebrew priests will write down their version of religion.  That’ll give their version staying power while the folk religions fade.  That’s why the Hebrew will be more observant after the fact – once folk practices fade, the written practices can become folk practices and have the full run of things.

Oh, the chapter ends by noting some other people of the region practice human sacrifice – even infant sacrifice.  Yeah, God’s against that, so don’t do it.  I gotta side with God on that one.

CHAPTER 13

Speaking of how the religion evolved rather than being a result of divine creation - (see what I did there? Evolve versus creation?) – this chapter warns against using idols.  This is a background theme throughout the Old Testament. Heck, David has one in his house – and uses it to escape Saul at one point.  Again, Jews are much better at observing this stuff only after Babylonian Captivity, after God has largely moved on from their lives. 

Moses begins by saying you must do all of this, not pick and choose.  More importantly, he bewares against false prophets.  What’s a false prophet (called a “dreamer” here)?  It’s someone who will lead you to old gods of other people.  Again, the appeal of the alternate gods makes more sense if the Hebrew moved in alongside the Canaanites instead of killing them all.  (In other words, the Canaanites are Hebrew, too).

I’m reminded a little of what I know of Native American religion.  They had a belief in protector spirits, and you’d pray to a spirit to look after you.  They had special ceremonies and rituals to appeal to the spirit(s) of choose and try to gain access to the spirit’s sacred power.  If calamity befalls you, then someone has a dream of a vision for a new ceremony.  Maybe you stay with the old spirit, or maybe you move on to a new one.  There were plenty of spirits after all.  They called the spirits Manitou. 

The Christian missionaries found it easy to convert the Indians – but only on a surface level.  The missionaries would tell the Indians about Jesus Christ and his wonder and glory and the power of God and all that.  Sounds good, and they’d pray to him.  But for the Indians, Christ was just a new Manitou.  So if things went well, they’d keep praying. But when things inevitably hit a detour, time for a new ceremony and a new spirit to appeal to for sacred power. 

Anyhow, it sounds like Moses is warning against that – and he’s doing so because it’s a real problem around the time that Deuteronomy is being written. 

And it’s a real problem for the author.  He flatly calls on these false prophets to be killed – “show no pity or compassion and do not shield such a one.”  And if a city, goes under the spell of such a false prophet, “put the inhabitants of the city to the sword.”  Yeah, he’s playing for high stakes here. 

While it’s easy to be horrified by the bloodthirstiness of this chapter, here’s a question: without this, does the Hebrew religion survive?  Does monotheism make it out of this time period otherwise?  Clearly, the people of Judea (where this is being written) are going away from what the priests thing should be done.  Keep in mind, when Israel to the north ceased to exist, the Hebrew people ceased to exist.  The “lost tribes” of Israel weren’t wiped out.  They just kept drifting away from their religion, and ceased to be a people, even if the persons survived. 

Maybe Deuteronomy and the ferocity of belief expressed within it explain why there are still Hebrew/Jews when the likes of Moab and Edom are long gone.

CHAPTER 14

This is a more minor chapter. Now we’re just rehashing things from Leviticus, like mourning rites, and clean/unclean animals.  Again, I assume the desire to restate it is because people weren’t following the dang rules.  We get that “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk” line for the third time.  That’s the line that been interpreted to mean Jews shouldn’t eat cheeseburgers.

Oh, and make sure you tithe, because otherwise the Levites have nothing. 

CHAPTER 15

Now we’ll rehash the financial rules previously stated in Leviticus and elsewhere.  You get remission of debts to other Hebrew every seven years, and you’re told specifically be generous.  Don’t withhold funds for the poor just because the year of debt remission is approaching and you’re afraid of not getting your money back.  This is new.  Last time we were just told how it works, but this new detail let’s us know there was a problem with people not wanting to give debts with the remission year approaching.  Really, human nature being what it is this is not at all surprising that people would try to avoid giving out loans when they know it soon won’t be paid back – and with legal/religious sanction not to pay it back.

Rules on slaveholding and sacrificing animals are again restated.

Oh, and you get the birth of a stereotype here, too.  Moses tells the Hebrew, “Since the Lord, your God, will bless you as he promised you will lend to many nations, and borrow from none.”  Oh, here’s the Bible calling the Jews moneylenders.  Yeah, that image will be around for quite some time – though it typically isn’t meant as a positive thing as Moses intends it as.

Actually, Moses really has a very different vision before him as immediately after saying they’ll lend money he says, “you will rule over many nations, and none will rule over you.”  Yeah, this goes the other way.  They lack their own nation for a good 2,500 years and are ruled over by all. With Moses, financial and political power go hand-in-hand.  That’s his vision. 

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Deuteronomy: Chapters 6 to 10

We began this book last time, now let's plow deeper into it;


CHAPTER 6

Really, this largely reads like the preface to a bigger point coming up.  People are told to always love the Lord with all their heard and recite the commandments and tell them to your children and write them on your doorposts.  Keep the word of the Lord.  (Sounds like there are some problems with people doing this at the time D is writing, given how much he emphasizes this.

There is one intriguing portion.  Moses tells the Hebrew that they’re going to a land with cities that they didn’t build, with wells they didn’t dig, with vineyards they didn’t plant, with wealth they didn’t create.  The point is – remember to pay homage to the Lord for giving you all of this, but reading it, the Hebrew came off look a bunch of moochers.  I kept thinking of the Romney campaign’s favorite line from the 2012 campaign, “You didn’t build that.”  Well, here people are being specifically told they didn’t build that. 

CHAPTER 7

This is a nasty, violent, and ruthless chapter.  They’re going to take land from the Canaanites and Moses is very clear throughout what that means.  “Do not be gracious to them.”  “You are not to look on them with pity.”  Kill them, keep killing them, and don’t stop killing them until there is nothing left to kill.   This is a much uglier and nastier version of Moses.  This is open genocide.  I kept thinking back to reading Mein Kampf and how Hitler keeps using words like merciless and ruthlessness and positive things.  You get the same thing here – and with the same goal of genocide. 

So what justifies this ruthless genocide?

Well, it’s because “You are a people holy to the Lord, your God, the Lord your God, has chosen from all peoples on the face of the earth to be a people specially his own.”  I know the concept of being a chosen people is implied throughout much of the previous Torah, but I do believe this is the first time it’s explicitly laid out. They are right to do this because they’re God’s people.  As long as they act in the name of the Lord, they’re awesome.  This completely cuts against the point of the 10 Commandment that the D author just had Moses extol.  In the commandments, there are clear right and wrong actions.  Here?  Seemingly any action is allowable, as long as it’s the name of the Lord. 

Wait – check that.  Not all actions are allowable.  You have to follow the Lord and not say his name in vain and observe the Sabbath.  The actions that reflect on the Lord are the sacred ones.  The ones focusing on other people – like thou shalt not murder – those are the less important ones.  If you violate the Sixth Commandment in the name of the First, it’s all good, apparently. 

So why did God choose these people?  Because he made a pact with their ancestors – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  I must say, this is looking like a really bad deal for the Lord at this point.  He makes a pact with a few guys and is stuck delivering their complaining, rebellious brood the land he said he’d given them.  Lucky him.  But this is all the more reason why people should worship God and all that.

Also, there is some memorable imagery here.  I found the part about “God will send hornets among them, until those who are left and those who are hiding from you are destroyed.”   That sounds painful.  Hornet stung to death.

CHAPTER 8

Hey – there’s a famous phrase here!  “It is not by bread alone that people live.”  Huh.  It’s in reference to God giving them food in their 40 years wandering.

Moses says they’ll be given really good land – he’s really selling this point here, it’s like he’s a real estate agent for the Almighty – but then cautions them.  Look, when you get there, don’t forget the Lord.  Make sure you always pay him homage. 

And it’s things like this that make me think that this is a created religion, not a received religion.  Which is to say, I’m a non-believer, not a believer.  It just makes more sense that way.  Look, if all the preceding really happened, then why do the Hebrew struggle so much to observe the Lord properly for the next several centuries?  Seems like it should’ve made a bigger impression on them.

But – there’s another way of looking at it. Maybe it started off with a few details (like having unleavened bread and sacrificing their first born animals) and a belief in a deity that oversaw them.  Over time, as the past receded beyond memory and into mist, the stories of what had once been were amplified into something bigger – 10 plagues!  A pillar of fire!  But the people would hear the stories and maybe not be that observant, because the stories they heard cut against lived practice. I don’t mean that they didn’t believe the stories, but again, if you grow up in a culture where people occasionally peak at idols, it’s easier to do it yourself than if no one did it.

By the time of Deuteronomy being written, folk belief and priestly belief were really at loggerheads.  So the priests wrote this to bolster them.  Eventually, the priests won out, because their version was written down and as how Deuteronomy was written faded into mist, it gained an extra aura that it didn’t have when it was the “lost” book just “discovered.” 

Upshot: the Hebrew became much more observant in the centuries AFTER miracles happened.  Or supposedly happened.

At any rate, getting back to this chapter, the writer clearly has problems with the way people act and doesn’t seem to think they deserve the land, but it’s their land.  Like I said, there was a big disconnect between priestly and popular belief.  So it ends with a threat – do as your told or you’ll be destroyed by God.  That’s one of those things likely added in after the exile began.

CHAPTER 9

Now we get a big reason why God wants the Hebrew to have the Promised Land.  It’s not that they are so great.  It’s not that they are so pure and perfect.  We’ve already seen far too much evidence of that not being true.

No, they’re getting the land not because of their goodness but because of the badness of the current occupants.  It’s a negative achievement.  Man, they suck – so give it to those complainers following Moses around.

Much of the rest of the chapter is just recapping the back half of Exodus.  We get the mountain (again, called Horeb, not Sinai), the calf, the broken commandments, the new ones.  We get it all again.  We’re told Moses didn’t eat or drink his 40 days up there.  Really?  Is this new or did I miss it last time?

Also, Moses says after turning the calf to powder, it was thrown down a hill.  No – you mixed the powder with water and made people drink it.  D author isn’t fully straight on his story here. 

CHAPTER 10

More recapping. The tablets are put in the ark.  God doesn’t kill everyone because of Moses.  (Thanks, Moses!)  There is some talk about the need to circumcise your heart – follow the word of the Lord inside, not just outside.  That will come in handy for Christianity, when they decide to do away with ritual circumcision. 

Also, a few chapters after some vigorously nasty and harsh sections, you get the kindler, gentler side of God.  Moses says that everyone should take care of orphans, give justice to widows, and be kind to resident aliens.  All these points have been said before, but the last one strikes me differently in the context of Deuteronomy.  OK, so right after calling for genocide you’re calling for kindness to others? Well, there is a distinction.  Kill ‘em all to take the land, but once it’s your land, treat others well – just as you wished you’d been treated in Egypt.

EDITED to add link to the next part: Deuteronomy Chapters 11 to 15.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Deuteronomy: Chapters 1 to 5

Well, Numbers is now done - time for the last book of the Torah - Deuteronomy: 



Here it is – the pious fraud!  Yeah, I remember reading the Bible about 15 years ago and came across something very funny in the historical section. Late in the history of Judea, there was a very funny entry, about how the priests discovered a lost and previously unknown holy writings.  When I read that, my bullshit detector went off and went off hard. Really?  They just happened to find this new book of lost writings? That sounded …. Convenient. 

Well, then I read some Biblical scholarship and learned that my BS detector works pretty well.  That new “lost” holy writing is believed to be this, the Book of Deuteronomy.  Biblical scholars are fairly certain that the writer(s) of this book had nothing to do with the previous books, and vice versa.  There is different language, different style, some modified theology, and even the words used are more typical of a later era of Hebrew than the previous books (this is known by looking at all surviving Hebrew writings from ancient times; not just the Bible).  In short, whereas J, E, and P. combined to write Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, a new guy showed up to write Deuteronomy – and hence is known as the D author. 

And when I say theological differences, here’s an example.  One of the main themes of this chapter is the need for centralized religious worship.  That wasn’t a big deal until now (though it came up on occasion), but it should be big throughout this last book of the Torah.  Well, a few things about that.  First, this book was “found” at a time when the priests finally had a king – King Josiah – who supported their program.  And what was central to their program?  Centralized religious worship.  So at the exact same time they finally had the juice to do what they wanted, they “found” this “lost” book of Moses saying the exact same things they were saying, written in ways that doesn’t fully fit with previous books. 

Oh, and Richard Elliot Friedman did a nice breakdown from the other end in his book, “Who Wrote the Bible?  Friedman noted that given that the Hebrew were a nomadic group without much history and tradition of a fixed place, let alone fixed worship, this notion of centralized worship wouldn’t have made much sense to them.  This is the last thing they’d have wanted. 

All roads lead back to the same point – this is likely a book written during the reign of Josiah and passed off as something older in order to justify what the priests wanted to do.  Hence, it’s the pious fraud.

One final odd point – the entire book is written as a series of speeches by Moses on the eve of entering Canaan. That always struck me as odd and artificial – because it probably was odd and artificial. All the ground had already been covered.  Numbers ends with the Hebrew on the eve of taking the land promised to Abraham.  So you make a bunch of speeches at the last possible moment to stick in here.  So there is no actual action in this book.  It is just speeches.

CHAPTER 1

OK, enough generalities about the book – now for Deuteronomy (AKA, the Torah book whose spelling I have to look up every time I need to write it down). 

It starts off with a speech by Moses.  Get used to it people.  A few things – first, the big mountain in Sinai Peninsula is called Horeb here.  Previously it was usually Sinai.  I don’t know why it switches names, but it’s a sign there’s a different author.

Early on there’s a big surprise as the land promised to them is quite a bit bigger than it ever was before.  Previously, it was Canaan.  Now we’re told it goes “as far as the Great River, the Euphrates.”  Whoah – that’s way the hell out there, people.  But it belongs to the Israelites, because God says so.

Much of this chapter is just recapping previous action.  After all, this is a new author, and so he feels the need to recap everything from scratch.  Well, not literally everything.  There is no Genesis II and no plagues.  But it’s the story of the 40 years wandering.  So if you thought it was boring over the last two and a half chapters – lucky you, the Bible gives it to you again.  At least it’s greatly abridged this time. But you get the wandering, the complaining, the 12 scouts, and the Israelites denying that they can take the land, and the punishment of 40 years wandering until everyone dies.  Really, it’s mostly just reheating Numbers. 

Here’s a new wrinkle: Moses says he can’t go to the Promised Land because, “The LORD was angered against me also on your account, and said, You shall not enter [the Promised Land] either.”  Hey, that’s even worse than the last reason.  Numbers said Moses will be denied entry for tapping on a rock twice for water.  That was a really weak reason and two strong a punishment, but at least it was based on something Moses did.  Now?  Just guilt by association.  I guess the idea is Moses did a bad job leading the Hebrew, and you can make that argument.  Maybe a stronger leader would’ve had fewer revolts on him.  But the Bible didn’t make Moses appear weak, but the Israelites appear whiny.  (And if Moses is a bad leader, wouldn’t that reverberate back on God, the man who choose him? After all, Moses tried to talk his way out of the whole being-a-prophet thing).  Well, moving on. ..

CHAPTER 2

More recapping the journeys of the Israelites.  They went along Edom.  They went along Moab.  Yeah, we know. 

One difference in this book – there are some really long parenthetical asides here.  One lasts from verse 10 to verse 12.  Another consists of verses 20-23.  It’s just describing where the Hebrew went and who they were among.

Most is pretty dry, but then at the end of the chapter you wish it had stayed dry.  Now it gets flatly nasty.  They defeat Sihon, King of the Amorite kingdom of Heshbon.  This was discussed back in Chapter 21 of Numbers, but this account goes further.  Now we’re told all cities were captured and all cities “were put under the ban, men women, and children; we left no survivor.”  Oh, it was complete and utter genocide.  That’s lovely.

But wait – the reason this happened is because Sihon wouldn’t let them pass through.  So he’s just a jerk, right?  Well, we’re told “the LORD, your God, made him stubborn in mind and obstinate in heart.”  Oh, so God made him refuse the Hebrew entry, and because they weren’t given passage, they felt justified in committing genocide. The implications of this are horrifying. This doesn’t reflect well on God at all.  Yes, it’s similar to the 10th plague – where God also made the pharaoh’s heart hard – but at least there it wasn’t complete genocide.  “We left no survivor” this time.

Again, the good news is this book is a fraud written much after the fact, so there’s no reason to take this too seriously.  Still – it just justified genocide!

CHAPTER 3

God is really parochial.  He’s God of the universe, right?  Well he only cares about a small few people – the children of Abraham.  As I’ve noted already, you get hints of the religious milieu the ancient Hebrew religious grew out of.  Cities and peoples had their gods – a protector god that they prayed to.  It didn’t mean their god was the only god, but just their god.  That’s how God comes off here in much of the Old Testament.  He’s got his crowd and he’s going to fight for them.  But these people believe that their God is very powerful.  He later on emerges as The Only God.  But it’s not always clear that’s the case.

But since he’s such a parochial God in the early going, he’s fine with supporting the Hebrew no matter what.  It’s like supporting a college football team.  You just root for the laundry – it’s pure us vs. them, not any moral drama.  So once again, for the second straight chapter, we’re told the Hebrew committed genocide.  This time it’s beating King Og and all his people – “We defeated him so completely that we left him no survivor.”  Yes, again.  And again – we weren’t told this until Deuteronomy.  Previously, Og had been beaten, but not like this.  “As we had done to Sihon, king of Heshbon, so also here we put all the towns under the ban, men, women, and children; but all the livestock and the spoils of each city we took as plunder for ourselves.”   Oh, genocide and plunder.  Folks, it’s actually a little worse than with Sihon.  Also – there is some dark comedy here of killing all the people, but letting the cattle live. 

There is some boundary talk, and again we learn that Moses won’t be allowed to enter the Promised Land through no fault of his own. 

CHAPTER 4

Long chapter – 40 verses in all. Well, we’re past the recapping portion of the first speech and get into the laws. 

First thing, Moses makes 100% clear, that you must do everything that he says.  Every.  Little.  Thing.  Don’t abridge it, don’t minimize it, don’t half-step it.  Do it. OR ELSE!  And that OR ELSE ain’t no small thing when it comes to God.  Do it or God will destroy you, just as he destroyed Og and Sihon.  Oh, so the previous talk of genocide actually just helps set up this portion on why it’s so damn important to do what you’re told.  This makes sense in context.  First, this book is written to fake that Moses said what the priests during the time of Josiah wished he said.  Second, it slightly goes against previous Bible battle accounts, which had victory but no genocide.  They went further here to dramatize the need to listen to the priests.

Also, still giving opening remarks, Moses makes sure to tell everyone to pass on to their kids what they’ll here today.  Folks, this is the real deal, the big thing.  From a purely literary point of view, this is well done.  We’re building up to something here.

First thing – no idols!  God didn’t take form when he spoke to you, so don’t worship idols.  There is some nice mockery of others peoples who, “serve gods that are works of human hands, of wood and stone, gods which can neither see nor hear, neither eat nor smell.”  Those doofuses!

Also, this is the first time Deuteronomy refers to God speaking from a fire.  We’ve seen a little bit of that earlier, with talk of a pillar of fire, but it’s usually been a cloud or something like that.  He’s been more misty than fiery.  But in Deuteronomy, get used to fire talk people.  Plenty of that coming up. 

God is also called “a jealous God,” a phrase that harkens back to a point I made last chapter.  God came out of the polytheistic tradition and only gradually evolved into something monotheistic.  After all, if there are no other gods, what has he to be jealous of?  The notion of a jealous god implies a sense that there are other gods out there.  Again, this religion grew out of the context of the Near East.  You can expect monotheism to emerge perfectly formed all at once.

Oh, and just before the chapter ends, the first speech concludes and Moses is about to begin the second speech. Mighty odd place to do that, don’t you think?  Seems like the chapter should end with the speech, but nope.  This is part of the oddity of chapter creation in the Bible.

CHAPTER 5

We get the 10 Commandments, again.  This time we’re told it was at Mt. Horeb, not Sinai.  Yeah, I don’t get why they have two names for the same mountain, but never mind me. 

We’re told he’s a jealous God again, and will punish your children for four generations if you’re wicked, but will love for 1,000 generations those that uphold his word.  OK, so what happens if I uphold the commandments and my kid doesn’t?  Is he part of the 1,000 loved or the first punished? And then his kid?  Ah, never mind.  I think it’s mostly a rhetorical point Moses is making about God here anyway. 

At the end of the chapter, we’re told that you should follow God’s law and not move to the right or to the left, just follow along.  Hey – is that a reference to Lot’s late lamented wife?  It reads like a reference to me.  

EDITED to add link to the next part: Deuteronomy Chapters 6 to 10.

Deuteronomy Main Page

Chapters 1 to 5
Chapters 6 to 10
Chapters 11 to 15
Chapters 16 to 20
Chapters 21 to 25
Chapters 26 to 30
Chapters 31 to 34

Monday, August 12, 2013

Numbers: Chapters 32 to 36

OK, we went through some pretty memorable bits last time.  Now we finish off the fourth book of the Bible.


CHAPTER 32

This is a procedural point for the Children of Israel to deal with before moving into the Promised Land, but it’s actually fairly interesting by those standards.  The tribes of Gad and Reuben have a thought.  Look, were raise animals, and the best land to do that in is the land we’re already on.  We don’t actually need to go into the Promised Land, so how about we set up shop here?  Moses is aggressively unhappy with this and gives them a verbal smackdown. 

Chastised, the tribes make a counteroffer (or perhaps just clarify their original offer).  Look, they’ll enter the Promised Land swords unsheathed and take full part in the killing and the genocide of the Canaanites.  They’re down with that.  But when the murdering is done, how about they be allowed into their old land?  Well, that’s a horse of a different color.  And Moses says this is fine.  They can settle where they want – provided that they take part in taking the Promised Land.

Why was this included?  Well, the Israelites had a verbal tradition of Canaan being their Promised Land, and of all of them being descended from Abraham.  But they also had some tribes living outside Canaan. Well, you have to reconcile that fact that this is still Promised Land with how some tribes don’t actually live there.  And that’s what this story does.

Also, it’s apparently 40 years later now.  Moses notes how the generation led out of Egypt is all dead and if the tribes of Gad and Reuben don’t do their part, they’ll wander another 40 until all of this generation dies out, too.  Well, that would actually help make more sense of the second census in Chapter 26.  More time has elapsed than I expected.  But that still doesn’t explain the complete collapse in numbers of the tribe of Reuben.

Oh, and the tribe of Mansseh – half of it, anyway – kills a bunch of people to the north.  So that’ll be part of Israeli land, too.

CHAPTER 33

This is entirely a procedural chapter.  It describes the journey of the Israelites over their 40 years.  It’s as boring as it sounds.  Just a list of places they camped at and repetitive sounding sentences.  This Bible comes with a map, so that’s nice – I don’t feel like I’m missing anything when my eyes glaze over. 

Oh, we do learn something, though.  Aaron dies at age 123, 40 years after the Israelis departed Egypt. Well, given that the entire journey itself took 40 years, he died near the end.  Well, let’s see – he died in Chapter 20 of Numbers.  And the Israelites left Mt. Sinai in Chapter 10 at Sinai.  I believe they left Sinai about a year into the wanderings.

So the Torah tells you a lot about their first year or so, quite a bit about the last year or so, and the middle 38 years you get virtually nothing.  That period – 95% of the wanderings, rates about 10 chapters total.  Looking at the map, they did about half of their wandering in the first and last year, too.  In between, they really didn’t wander much at all, really.  They just sat around, all sitting around there like. 

After finishing all that, the chapter ends on a ghoulish note.  God tells Moses to remind the Israelites that this is their land.  They should “dispossess all the inhabitants oft e land before you, destroy all their stone figures, destroy all their molten images, and demolish all their high places.”  They are to then take the land for themselves.  God makes this very clear, and in facts threatens the Israelites if they don’t engage in a sufficient amount of ethnic cleansing.  They are told, “But if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land before you, those whom you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides and they will harass you in the land where you live, and I will treat you as I had intended to treat them.”  Yup, that’s a definite threat there at the end – drive all them out, or I’ll have all of you driven out.

Aside from discomforting some modern sensibilities, this passage has even bigger problems for the real world, as this has some definite (and nasty) implications for the Middle East. 

In present day Israel, there is an increasingly strong mixture of religious fundamentalism and Israeli nationalism.  They look to quotes like this and say, “See?  The Bible says this is OUR land, so we’re right to occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and all else!”  If a UN charter says the Palestinians have a claim to the land, who cares?  The Torah trumps it!  Things weren’t always this way.  The Zionists and the religious Jews initially were different group.  The Zionists focused on politics and creating a state, and the religious Jews focused on the next world, not this one. OK, but now there is a state, and many fundamentalists live there – so this becomes core to their belief.  Politics and religion mix, given greater certainty – and this is a main founding pillar for the settler movement.

It also explains why many Christian conservatives so strongly back Israel.  It doesn’t matter what they do – look, the Bible says its there, and what the Bible says is, must be.  So among other things, Chapter 33 of Numbers is used to deny Palestinians human rights.

CHAPTER 34

This is just procedural stuff.  You can tell they’re getting ready to enter the Promised Land because everything going on here is done with one eye at Joshua.  (I know there’s an entire book coming up until we get there, but the J, E, and P authors didn’t know that.  The D author – who wrote Deuteronomy – didn’t come along until much later, and wasn’t combined with the others until still later. 

Anyhow, each tribe picks a representative to determine where their land will be. And we’re told what the overall boundaries of the Promised Land are.

CHAPTER 35

Now we get into some details as he approach D-Day of the invasion. 

The Levites get some cities.  OK.  After all, they don’t get any land for themselves.

Also, some cities are to be places of asylum.  If you kill someone, you can flee there to avoid being murdered in retaliation – at least right away.  Go to a city of asylum, and the community will judge you.  Then you’ll be given the appropriate punishment.  Once you’re in the city, the family of the murdered victim can’t kill you in retribution.  But, if the community finds you guilty of intentional murder, then you will be killed – and it’ll be the relatives of your victim that can kill you.  Also, you can’t murder someone and then give money to get out of it.  That’s forbidding.

This is interesting because they’re trying to create a functional justice system here without having everything devolve into internal feuding.  OK, you can have vengeance on the person that murdered your brother, but you got to follow the code first. 

It’s a nice code.  It’s about having a system and procedure in place.  That way your vengeance killing won’t lead to another round of killing.  You need some law and order and you’re a people that’s not yet settled down. 

Also, if the murder is accidental (manslaughter), then the community will fix the appropriate settlement between the killer and the family of the victim.  Intent matters.  This, I should note, is different from the tradition in Chinese culture, where the deed matters more than the intent. 

CHAPTER 36

We end on a rather odd note, going over a point actually made once before: daughters and inheritance.  Now, there’s a new wrinkle on it, though.  Previously the issue of daughter’s inheritance was about the family more than anything else.  Now it’s more about the tribe.  The short version is they don’t want daughter’s inheritance and any marriages to mess up tribal lands.  So any daughter who inherits money must marry within her own tribe.  Period. 

So there’s both a tradition of personal ownership or property and also communal ownership.  The land is yours, but it must stay in the tribe you belong to.  This is a sense that certainly cuts against capitalism.

And what an odd note to end a Bible book on.  Genesis ends with the death of Joseph.  Exodus ends with the completion of the Tabernacle and God taking up his presence there.  Up ahead, Deuteronomy ends with the Moses.  Those are all big events in their own way.  But Numbers just ends with some secondary laws about land. 

OK, there is Leviticus ending with some general laws, but then again Leviticus is pretty much nothing but laws.  So it makes sense it would end like that.  Sure Numbers has laws in it too, but it also has some events. In fact, you get a definite sense of momentum toward the end of Numbers as we’re on the verge of D-Day in ancient Canaan.  Then we get some odd laws and it stops.  Huh?

My theory: originally, the chapter ended with the death of Moses.  Then, later on – about a century later – some priests of Judea wrote Deuteronomy and put Moses death at the end of that.  So they didn’t need it here any more.  So you get this awkward, and abrupt conclusion.


Concluding Thoughts

What can I say about Numbers on the whole?  Like Leviticus, it’s part of the Bible that doesn’t really stick in the imagination.  However, while Leviticus is more consistent throughout, this has some more ups and downs.  The highs are definitely more memorable and fascinating that Leviticus.  But the lows are frankly even more boring.  All that priestly talk gets old.

I’ll say this much for Numbers: at no point is it ever as boring as the building of the Tabernacle in the back half of Exodus. 

EDITED to add link to the next part: Deuteronomy: Chapters 1 to 5.