Search ATF's Blogs

Monday 12 March 2018

Jews, a better race than the rest of the World? | Genocide in the Bible series (Part 2)


As I will lay out below, due to skewed inputs from the media, pop culture and even selective readings/preaching by Bible readers/preachers, there is a bias that builds up against the nation of Israel with many writers even saying on record that the Old Testament was fictional writings of the Jews to show that they are a better race than the rest of the world… if you read the Old Testament, nothing further can be from the truth… to refute the “Old testament is fiction issue”, there are tons of archaeological and extra-Biblical evidence that has proven time and again the historical veracity of the Old Testament (further information on websites such as Bible History Online) or just reading thru the Bible, especially the prophetical books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Lamentations, a completely reversed picture emerges… just by the historical method of the “principle of embarrassment”, it stands without any doubt that the Lord not only blessed but also chastised and punished the people… the nation of Israel more than any other race on the face of this earth at any point of time.

Such a bias, I think appears primarily cause of what I refer to as “lazy mind or copy-paste syndrome” which you see prevalent in this culture wherein people tend to repeat gossip news, titillating news (dog bites man is not news, man bites dog is news) without doing any research or using the last vestiges of their common sense/wisdom… a lot of responsibility need to be attributed even to the church which in violation of Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30-31 and Luke 10:27 is very much guilty of not propagating or encouraging responsible exegesis… loving the Lord thy God only with their heart and soul AND NOT with their mind. To quote a well known apologist and writer, Dr. Ravi Zacharias once said, “What I believe in my heart must make sense in my mind”.

Another critical flaw that I see which is also responsible for the bias is that the Bible is treated as a religious book… if a person attempts to read the Bible without any religious or atheistic bias in mind, the picture appears is that of a book which chronicles world history and the history of the nation of Israel in particular and also documents how God intervened and guided human affair. In other words with the mostly chronological sequence of events and archaeological evidence in place, the Bible, especially the Old Testament should be put across a book on history which a reader can go through to understand parts of world history and the history of the nation of Israel in particular. What can be said is that no other nation or culture on the face of this planet has better documented record of its inception and history.

In my frequent interactions with Muslims and atheists, one of the top points that they think they can score on is when they show such verses to show that Christians are very violent OR that Jesus who is also God of the Old Testament is a violent deity… after taking a moment to stifle my laughter on their sheer ignorance and stupidity, I point out that unlike the Quran which is a mix of random verses which are eternal commands by Allah, the Holy Bible is a historical narration and what you see is a descriptive narration and not a prescriptive narration… there are commands such as the 10 commandments which are meant for all time but there are points such as ceremonial laws which were meant for a particular time and place. Lastly, if someone still insists on the current applicability of the killing of the Canaanites, then let’s refer to Joshua 1:4, this has clearly demarcated the physical boundaries of the commands… it was not universal and clearly the command was against the Canaanites in particular residing in a specific geographical area and not against all infidels globally such as in Quran 9:5 or 9:29… Canaanite tribes (especially the Hittites) greatly exceeded the boundaries that Israel was told to conquer. And since, as we will see, He punished Israel when they committed the same sins, what happened to the Canaanites was not genocide, but capital punishment.

Coming back to the original question…. Let’s break this up into smaller questions:

1. Why did the Lord pass judgments against the Canaanites?

2. Couldn’t they have repented much like the city of Nineveh at the time of Jonah?

3. What about the infants?

4. Then why the animals too? Couldn’t they have been used by the Israelites for farming, domestication, sacrifices?

5. Were the Israelites any better?

6. Is it cause God can do whatever HE wants?

7. Lastly, one of the questions which always used to haunt me is like the first three instances quoted in the beginning of this article, why didn’t God wipe out the Canaanites himself?

8. How is Christianity different from Islam?

As we look at difficult issues such as this one, we must remember that God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:9; Romans 11:33-36). We have to be willing to trust God and have faith in Him even when we do not understand His ways.


(... To Be Continued in Part 3)

No comments:

Post a Comment