So it seems to me there is no counter example here, either God endorsed it in which case its not an atrocity or it is an atrocity and God did not endorse it. No other option is coherent.

2. Your objections to my comments on Sam 15 are unconvincing.

First, you state my position is that they were “bragging” but that’s not what I said I suggested it was hyperbole, thats not the same thing.

Second, you state “it says in black and white” that God commands genocide. But that does not show its not hyperbole, if my son messes up his room and I say “I am going to kill that kid” I have said in black and white that I will kill him. If the media say “the All blacks slaughtered the french, Dan Carter annihilated the french defenders” its stated in black and white that the all blacks kill french rugby players. yet no one would interpret these comments as not hyperbolic.

Third, you suggest that if a person grants hyperbole in one part of scripture then they will have to allow it in various others. This does not follow however, if I read the above statement about the all blacks in the Herald it does not follow that every other report I read is called into question, its common for language to seamlessly mix both literal and figurative language in the same text.

Turning to your last point you quote some of the passage and assert ” In other words, God command Saul to commit an extreme form of genocide, Saul does so but spares the king along with some prize livestock and God is upset because Saul didn’t go the whole hog ” this issue is nowhere near as clear as this.

First, when God gives the reason why he is not pleased with Saul in this passage he does not mentioned Genocide, what he says is “Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the LORD ?” the issue God states then is that Saul took plunder.

This brings me to a second issue, what God commanded is “Now go, attack the Amalekites and put under the ban everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ ” there are two instructions here, an instruction to put everything that belongs to the Amalekites under the ban, the word is Harem and it means that one renounces the item so as not to take it as plunder. The second command is the so called Genocide one.

Third, there is evidence in the text that the second command the one to “Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” is hyperbolic. For starters the OT scholar Hess has argued that the phrase “women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” is an idomatic way of saying “everyone” it does not actually imply that women and children are in the list. Its a bit like our English idiom everything including the kitchen sink, so what is said is kill everyone. Moreover, as I note in my post, phrases like this are common in Egyptian, Hittite, Assyrian accounts of battles and when its used it is hyperbolic not literal. Finally, the text makes it clear that the command was not literally carried out, while you note that the text says all the Amalekites except the king were killed ( and the king is killed latter in the same passage) a few chapters latter such a Samuel 30, the Amalekites attack a city, raid it and David has to launch a counter attack to get the captives back, which suggests that they were not exterminated and not even close if they were capable of such an attack.it tells us that the Amalekites are alive and in sufficient numbers as to raid cities and capture. This kind of thing is common in ANE histories of the period, one hears battles described rhetorically and hyperbolically in totalistic terms, all the enemy killed etc and then a latter passage which mentions survivors.

So its not clear to me that this passage says what you assert at all, of course if you take everything totally literally, ignore what happens afterwards in the narrative, ignore the conventions literature like this was written with and so on, you can get the conclusion you state, but that does not prove that the reading you give is correct.

2. I’m aware you are not convinced that my reading (where it says in black and white that God commands the genocide) is accurate. Which is why I made the point that “if the Bible contained a verse where God commanded people to ‘torture others as much as possible’ someone would find some way to justify it”.

For readers unfamiliar with the story, Saul is told by God to kill “men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys”. Matt interprets this as the kind of bragging language they used in that era. The problem is that the story goes on to say,

Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, to the east of Egypt. He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.
Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: “I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” Samuel was troubled, and he cried out to the LORD all that night.

In other words, God command Saul to commit an extreme form of genocide, Saul does so but spares the king along with some prize livestock and God is upset because Saul didn’t go the whole hog (excuse the pun).

It’s pretty black and white and if you want to reinterpret this as bragging that crept its way into your holy scriptures you are going to have to rethink a *lot* of other scriptures if you are to maintain even a modicum of balance and integrity. Like, perhaps, were the various authors bragging about Noah living to 950 or about Moses leading the people out of Egypt or Balaam’s talking donkey or the uncorroborated darkness, tearing of the curtain and wandering of the zombies or even perhaps of Jesus coming back to life? That’s quite a can of worms.

Remember, for most Christians, the contents of the Bible are unlike, say, the contents of a C S Lewis book. To them they’re different in that they are endorsed by God Himself. Why would he let something like that be included? Surely it misrepresents what he would have said by a very long shot when he is claimed to have commanded genocide? Not just genocide of men, women and children but the utterly pointless killing of animals too. Surely this would be the very definition of blasphemy if it were contrary to what God really commanded? Why would he let it slide?

Either that, or perhaps if the Bible really is endorsed by the omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent creator of the universe then perhaps it really *can* be morally right to commit genocide so long as God commands it?

But that would mean that even the action of “torturing others as much as possible” is well and truly back on the cards too if you would consider extreme genocide a ‘paradigm of conduct that no morally good person could ever entertain or endorse’.

Undermine? I think so.

Sam 15 2-3 is a counter example to position only if it is both the case that (a) an all knowing, all powerful, and is morally perfect. perfectly good person commanded this action and (b) the action is wrong. The problem is I cannot think of anyone who would accept both (a) and (b). People who deny (b) typically infer from this that either God did not command the action in question ( and challenge biblical inerrancy) or they argue God is not morally good. Moreover, people who accept (a) as you say typically deny (b) . I can’t think of any sensible case where a person maintained both that what God ( as defined above) commanded was wrong and God actually commanded it.

2. I am not convinced your reading of the passage is actually correct, I spelt out my reasons in my two posts http://www.mandm.org.nz/2010/01/sunday-study-joshua-and-the-genocide-of-the-canaanites-part-i.html and http://www.mandm.org.nz/2010/01/sunday-study-joshua-and-the-genocide-of-the-canaanites-part-ii.html. I mentioned the Amalekite case specifically in the comments. Basically the language in Sam 15:1-2 uses language which is typical of ancient near eastern hyperbole, it was common in ANE histories to describe a victory in hyperbolic terms of total anihiliation, killing everyone etc, moreover if you read on in the same chapter its evident that the Amalekites were not literally wiped out despite the fact that the command is Sam 15 is said to have been carried out. So its unclear that this text says what you contend that it does.

So, as the terms are defined, the claim that it is possible for God to command people to “torture one another as much as possible” is true only if it is possible for a morally perfect person to command such an atrocious thing. But this is unlikely. The very reason critics cite examples such as “torturing others as much as possible,” is because these actions are paradigms of conduct that no morally good person could ever entertain or endorse. The situation the critic envisages then is a situation which is impossible.

1 Samuel 15:2-3 says,

This is what the LORD Almighty says: “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

To me, the commanding of others to slaughter men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys is a ‘paradigm of conduct that no morally good person could ever entertain or endorse’.

I suspect that if the Bible contained a verse where God commanded people to ‘torture others as much as possible’ someone would find some way to justify it (as they do with the above passage).

I think that’s chiefly because Christianity continues the trajectory established in the OT to broaden the scope of those to whom one owes, and from whom one expects, the fulfillment of moral obligations.

Morality in interpersonal and relational —
1) only persons have moral obligations and expectations;
2) the moral obligations and expectations between persons follows from the relationship between them.

Biblical religion changes the calculus on point 2 by establishing that we all are equally creations of God, and so there is *always* some sort of relationship between any two human persons, because God is always involved.

On the narrow issue of God’s truthfulness … were God to lie, would not all things, including God himself, cease to be? For, as God is “the ground of all being,” as God is Being itself, does it not logically follow that if God even *could* lie, then being/existence would be self-contradictory, would cancel itself out?

I am not sure that he does “use the assumption that Christianity is mistaken”

.. he merely points out that there are issues with finding out the authentic message of Jesus, or finding authentic facts about the life of Jesus. This does not mean Christianity is mistaken.

ALSO:

He no where CONCLUDES that Christianity is mistaken either.