In December 2010 I published a blog post called “Are There Categories of Biblical Law?” This was a chapter from my Master’s thesis on the role of Old Testament Law, and I answered the question in the affirmative: Yes, there are legitimate categories of Old Testament law. One of the ways the Old Testament law can be categorised, I attempted to show, was in terms of laws that applied only to native born Israelites on the one hand, and on the other hand laws that applied to everyone – Jew and gentile alike – living in Israel. This post is another chapter from that thesis. In this post, I look at the scope of the Old Testament law. This article uses the font Hebrew.ttf. If you don’t have it, you can get it here.

As I wrote this thesis back in 2002 and 2003, it’s entirely possible that I no longer agree with some of the things you’ll see here – but nothing springs to mind! Also bear in mind that I was encouraged at the time to write in the first person plural, referring to myself as “we.” This is a convention I prefer not to use, but I have used it here.

Were the standards of the Torah standards that Israel alone was morally required to uphold? Some say yes, such as John Sampey, who argues that “It was to Israel that the Decalogue was primarily addressed, and not to all mankind.”¹ Geisler likewise draws this conclusion because in his view, “Nowhere in the Bible are Gentiles ever condemned for not keeping the law of Moses.”² Or were the standards of Israel’s Law standards that applied to all nations everywhere, with Israel as a chosen example of how the rest should live? Also of interest is the prevalence of the Law as the ethical standard by which Israel is judged throughout the Older Testament, and the basis of Israel’s condemnation. Is it disobedience to the standards revealed in the Law, or condemnation on some other basis? We will treat this topic in three sections – what the law declares about itself, historical outworkings of the law’s authority and the law in prophetic literature.
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At his Internet Infidels website and in a number of talks including a debate with Michael Licona on the Resurrection of Jesus, Richard Carrier presents an argument for “Why I Don’t Believe the Resurrection Story.” I have decided to put together a response to the reasons that Carrier offers for not believing in the resurrection of Jesus. This will be a series of three or four blog posts, and when complete I will make it available in the article section.

At his website, his presentation is divided into five sections: Main Argument / Rubicon Analogy, General Case for Insufficiency, Probability of Survival vs Miracle, General Case for Spiritual Resurrection, and Rebutting Lesser Arguments. Actually the section that drew my interest the most was Carrier’s arguments for a “spiritual resurrection.” His position is that the earliest biblical account of the resurrection of Jesus has nothing to say about Jesus actually coming back to life in any bodily sense. Instead, says Carrier, the first disciples of Jesus had either a vision or a dream of Jesus in heaven, and came to believe that in spite of his death, Jesus had spiritually survived in an immaterial form in heaven. I’ll say more about that later.

Out of convenience, I’ll divide my coverage of the arguments into five sections as Carrier did. For what it is worth, I commend to readers the debate that Carrier had with Michael Licona (see the link provided above) for a succinct, clear verbal presentation of Carrier’s position.
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[Time for another foray into biblical studies. I thought it might be fun (???) to post some excerpts from previous work I have done at the University of Otago when completing my Master's Degree in Theology. This is the first such example, slightly adapted from my thesis on the modern role of biblical law.]

One of the issues that will affect the discussion of the continuity of the law’s authority is the question of categories of law. When theologians and biblical scholars speak of categories of law, what is usually in mind is a distinction between moral and ceremonial law. Can we legitimately speak of categories of biblical law, and if so, how do we go about recognising them?
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One issue that I’ve seen pop up in a number of different contexts recently (one prominent example is the debate between Matt Flannagan and Ray Bradley on God and morality) is the issue of whether and when to interpret biblical passages literally or metaphorically. It’s an issue that I think highlights the shortcomings of “fundamentalism” (OK, I don’t like that word but it’s convenient sometimes). Interestingly as was highlighted in that same debate, and is also painfully clear in a number of similar exchanges, is that it also highlights the shortcomings of the way in which a number of self-proclaimed sceptics and atheists interpret the Bible when trying to discredit it or Christianity. In fact I can’t see any appreciable difference between the way those two groups, in general, interpret the Bible.

Geoff recently brought the following clip to my attention (thanks Facebook!). It’s a brief but interesting discussion of the issue of interpreting the Bible “literally” from N T (aka Tom) Wright. Enjoy!

Every now and then when I’m looking at a particular passage of Scripture I’ll come across a verse, scratch my head and think, “what were they thinking”? I don’t mean the author, I mean those responsible for the translation. Now I’m not the world’s greatest Hebrew or Greek scholar by any means, so I’m not talking about translations where the actual meaning is debatable, depending on subtleties that are frankly beyond my knowledge or abilities. I’m thinking of the kinds of translational… well, blunders (or so it seems to me) that are frankly surprising. So I thought – Why not start a blog series on verses like that, and ask for input from the readers?

That’s what I decided to do, and this is the first such blog. This time I have the NIV (among others) in my sights because of the way that they translated Romans 12:1. In Greek, the verse reads:

Parakalo oun hemas, adelphoi, dia ton oiktirmon tou theou parastesai ta somata humon thusian zosan hagian euareston to theo, ten logiken latreian humon.

I’ve highlighted the part that I want to draw your attention to. The verse is rather literally translated by the King James Version as follows: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

That phrase “reasonable service” could have been translated a number of ways. It’s translated from the Greek phrase logikon latreian. The term logikos basically means logical. Not necessarily in a strict mathematical sense, mind you, but of course it includes that. It means logical, rational, or perhaps reasonable. In context it indicates that giving ourselves wholly to God as living sacrifices is the sensible, reasonable or logical thing to do (Young’s literal translation says “your intelligent service”). In verse 3 the writer gives his reason for saying this, starting his sentence off with an exaplanatory conjunction “for…” (the greek word gar): “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” Given who God is, and given that we shouldn’t think more highly of ourselves than we really are, and given God’s mercy towards us, the only sensible thing we can do in response is to give ourselves completely to God.

In the year 1900 the American Standard Version of the New Testament was published (followed by the Old Testament in 1901). This new translation contained an idiosyncrasy that I cannot find any example of in the nineteenth century or earlier. It’s an idiosyncrasy that is no longer idiosyncratic, because from initially only one version, it has spread to quite a few translations. Here’s that post-1900 innovation, represented in various translations. You can see how over the years that innovation has itself sprouted others that were based on it:

1900, American Standard Version: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.”

1958, Amplified Bible: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, {and} beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service {and} spiritual worship.”

1973, New International Version: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.”

1989, New Revised Standard Version: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

1991, New Century Version: “So brothers and sisters, since God has shown us great mercy, I beg you to offer your lives as a living sacrifice to him. Your offering must be only for God and pleasing to him, which is the spiritual way for you to worship.”

2001, English Standard Version, “?I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

How did “your reasonable service” evolve into “the spiritual way for you to worship”? Here’s my question: Why did people start, in the twentieth century, to translated logokos as “spiritual” here in Romans 12 – but for some reason, only in Romans 12?

What were they thinking when they did this? Are they all just parroting the American Standard Version? Can anyone versed in New Testament Greek offer a justification of this?

Over at the blog, “the Christ Seminar,” a common but plainly fallacious argument about the Bible and abortion has reared its head. At the time of writing this post, wordpress.com is having technical problems and I can’t post a comment in reply just now, so I’ll make the point here instead.

The claim made in the blog entry “The (lack of) biblical arguments again abortion” is, you guessed it, that the Bible says nothing that amounts to a condemnation of abortion – killing the unborn. In the post and the comments, the author makes two specific claims: 1) That the Bible does not directly mention killing the unborn and in doing so condemn the practice, and in reply to a commenter, the author adds, 2) While the Bible condemns homicide in general, it is silent on whether or not the unborn count as human beings, so we cannot say that they are included in the biblical prohibition on homicide.

To think that the biblical condemnation of homicide applies to those who are not yet born, the author says, is to drag in extra-biblical claims.

Firstly, I think the Bible actually does have something directly to say about the status of the unborn and the morality of killing them, but I’m actually going to address what is a fallacious argument from silence in the author’s blog and comments.The fallacious argument is that since the Bible does not expressly state that the unborn are included in the prohibition on homicide, we should conclude that they are not included in the biblical prohibition on homicide.

Here is the comment I was unable to post (but will try later, when it will hopefully be up and running again). It illustrates just how misguided the argument is:

Good point, Max

While we’re at it, let’s apply your reasoning to a similar situation: The killing of those between the ages of 8 years old and 8 1/2 years old.

The fact (or lack thereof ) that they are fully human is an extra-biblical fact. The Bible is silent about it. We cannot just beg the question and assume that the biblical prohibition on homicide applies to them without begging the question.

I was shocked to realise this given the dogmatic views of some people that such killing is “unbiblical” or “condemned by the Bible,” but like I you I follow an argument to its conclusion, like it or not. In spite of what child protection reactionists might think, The Bible says absolutely nothing specifically about it being wrong to kill homo sapiens between the ages of 8 and 8 1/2. Damn any extra-biblical claims to the contrary.

This may seem like an absurd way to interpret biblical texts. It is, of course. That’s because nobody should read the Bible while intentionally suppressing their own knowledge of the world. We know that nobody ceases to be human at eight years old, only to resume their humanity at eight and a half. Does the Bible need to say this?

The Bible “says nothing” about shooting people with automatic weapons. It does condemn murder, and we, like sensible people, are supposed to combine biblical instructions with our knowledge of the world, like so:

1. The Bible says we shouldn’t kill human beings (setting aside explicit biblical exceptions like executing murderers or defending oneself).
2. Our knowledge of the world includes the knowledge that if we shoot somebody with an automatic weapon, we will kill him.
3. Therefore, biblical instructions indicate that we should not shoot people with automatic weapons.

We would think a person to be just silly if he said that we were “begging the question” by just assuming that shooting people with automatic weapons is a species of what the Bible condemns.

Take another example: The Bible says in Luke 24:13 that some of Jesus’ friends, after Jesus had been crucified, were traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus. But does the text say that they were traveling toward the West? No. So should we reject the claim that “the Bible says they were traveling West”? Is it begging the question to say that they were traveling West? Clearly not. The Bible says they were traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and our knowledge of the world includes the knowledge that Emmaus is West of Jerusalem. It is quite proper, therefore, to say that the Bible indicates that these friends of Jesus were traveling toward the West.

Likewise, it is just silly to accuse people of begging the question when reasoning from the Bible when they say:

1. The Bible condemns killing human beings.
2. Our knowledge of the world includes the knowledge that unborn children, in any relevant sense, are human beings.
3. Therefore biblical instructions indicate that we should not kill unborn children.

If a person wishes to take issue with 2) and rebut it, that is fine. Go ahead and do that. This would change the conclusion about what biblical instructions do or do not require. But as it stands, the objection to the pro-life reading of the Bible is frankly ridiculous.