Pregnancy and Uncleanliness

Is this pregnancy condition against women? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In Leviticus 12, we have a rule about pregnancy. The woman who gives birth to a male will be unclean for seven days. The boy is circumcised on day eight and then the woman is unclean for thirty-three days. If she has a daughter, each of those counts is doubled.

Much like the case of cooking a goat in its mother’s milk, we don’t know the exact reason for this rule. At this point, for some reason, skeptics of Scripture like to jump up and down with glee as if having total understanding of the Bible shows it’s not divine. Why is never explained. However, just because we don’t know, it doesn’t mean that they didn’t know.

Some people might think this is sexist, but if it is, could it not be sexist against boys instead of girls? After all, girls when they are born are actually given extra time to be with the mother. Boys instead as soon as they are a month old are counted in the census. Could it be that maybe the girls are given extra time with their mothers because the mother especially needs to spend extra time with the girls because her future will be to majorly influence that girl to show her what she is to be as a woman?

Now I cannot prove this, of course, but if we are unsure as to which way to read something and one position makes the claim look sexist and the other doesn’t and there’s no overriding reason to choose one over the other, why should we choose the one that makes the Bible look sexist? If we are reading with the principle of charity in mind, shouldn’t we go with the one that doesn’t do that? Do you think I would apply the same to the Book of Mormon or to the Koran? You bet I would!

The last time I tried reading through the Book of Mormon, I would look up various items mentioned in there, like steel or scimitars and see if they were around then. If they were, then I would not make any note of this. I never finished this because it was frankly boring reading through the Book of Mormon again and other interests came on board. For the Koran, we normally point to Sura 4 to show that the Koran denies the crucifixion, but I read a Christian commentator who said early Muslims did not deny the crucifixion and this could be the text having Allah say to the Jews, “You didn’t kill Jesus. I was behind it all along.”

Now I cannot prove the reading of the Koran, but I do give it to show that I am trying to be consistent. Those who are skeptics of the Bible should try to do the same. Sadly, too many of them love to jump for the interpretation that puts Scripture in the worst light, which I find reveals very little about Scripture and reveals a lot more about them.

Don’t be like that.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Are Sex Rules Pro-Women?

Do all the stipulations in the Bible on sex benefit women? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

On yesterday’s blog, some commenters on Facebook thought that I had given the impression that in this society, women were only valued for sex. They were pretty much objects. One did rightly see I was trying to point out the sacredness of sex, but that didn’t come across that way.

So today, I want to clear things up as to why the Bible has these rules and if they are good for women or not.

Let’s start with something. I do think our society is led by men. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for women. When men are being men, they will look out for the women around them. I suspect there weren’t many feminists on the Titanic who were objecting when it was said “Women and children first!”

A man who abuses and/or uses a woman is not being a man really. He’s being less of a man. If you view yourself as a leader in society, your goal is to build up those around you and not to tear them down. Any man if he wants to can take a woman’s body. Not any man can take her heart. That requires that he be a real man and one she is willing to entrust her heart to.

So let’s look at some other realities. Are some men more tempted to just look at women as sex objects? Yes. Pornography is a great example of this. If anything has taught men to treat women as objects, it’s pornography.

In the ancient world, this would also be the natural temptation of men. After all, men by nature of the chemicals and hormones in their bodies tend to have very high sex drives. Not all do and in some marriages, the woman actually has the higher drive. We’re speaking of averages here.

A man and a woman would often get together immediately in an arranged marriage and then you could be introducing yourselves to one another and then sleeping together immediately as husband and wife. Why this way? Because sex is meant to be a bonding act. It releases scores of hormones and chemicals that bind the two people to one another.

This is one reason Christians safeguard this so much. Not because sex is anything dirty. After all, the joke is that many Christians are taught two things about sex growing up. #1. It’s dirty. #2. I should save it for someone I love.

Sex is in a sense like nuclear energy. If you use it the way it was meant to be used, wonderful things can happen. If you use it in a way it’s not meant to be used, Chernobyl can happen. Do we see this? Yes. Look at most any talk show on where they talk about who is the father of who and see it. Look at single mothers who have been kicked to the curb by a guy because he thought someone hotter came along or he didn’t want to get married. Sadly, look at our divorce culture where too many people don’t take their vows seriously and many times, one person is rejected and abandoned over it.

In sharing my own story of divorce, I have had men share stories with me that leave me thankful I didn’t go through that and I have heard stories in DivorceCare that are indeed horrendous. Even harder is the fact that so many men and women jump into relationships immediately before they are ready because of the intense loneliness. Some have said that being divorced is worse than the other person dying and I am inclined to agree. Death is normally not intentional. Divorce is.

The rules of the Old Testament also started with people where they were. Let’s face it again. Guys are very much driven by sex and our natural tendency will be the path of least resistance to get what we want. We were originally designed to use our drive for the good of the other. Now we often place the good of ourselves first and foremost. Women become just means to us. Even outside of sex, this is naturally how we tend to view other people. What can they do for me?

Women meanwhile live in a world where half of the people around them could overpower them if they wanted to for the most part. Yes. I realize that there are men who are not physically intimidating, including myself, and there are women who know how to fight well, but I am again speaking of averages. I will not claim to know what it’s like to walk as a woman in a parking lot at night, though I do walk out women who work at night where I work so they don’t have to go alone.

The Old Testament doesn’t expect perfection right away. Consider many of the rules as baby steps towards a better ideal. We have slavery at the start in the wilderness, but as time moves along and people become more and more capable economically, that starts to dissipate. Jesus Himself implies this when He says that Moses granted divorce because of hardness of heart, but this is not the way it was meant to be.

So God looks at sinful men and says that if they follow their natural instincts, they will pay a price. They will either have to be with the woman for life or at the least, pay a hefty fine. That’s to curtail the man’s strong desire. So if he wants to be with the woman then, what does he have to do? He has to work up and be a man and really impress the father enough that he says “Okay. I can trust you with her.” Many of us know that if we start acting a certain way towards someone, our feelings towards that someone can change. Lewis once said to not ask if you love your neighbor. Live like you do, and loving feelings will follow. Even if they don’t, you are still doing the right thing.

Within the past few years, I was at Celebrate Recovery and for the group sharing after, it was just me and one other man. He told me about how he doesn’t feel respected by his wife and XYZ and all this other stuff. I listened and then said, “You know, I’m hearing all of this stuff and I’m going to say something and it’s going to sound insensitive, but I think I need to say it.”

“Who cares?”

BAM! The guy said even the next week it was the slap in the face he needed.

After all, as I explained. You have a duty. You have a responsibility. You made a promise as a husband. You are to do that regardless of how you feel. Do your duty and let her work out her own issues.

The Christian call to a man is not to deny his sex drive. God made it for us and He made the woman’s body desirable to us for a reason. He built the engine. It’s instead to channel that into greater love for the woman. Saving sex for marriage is meant to say that you only get to love the woman this way after you make a lifetime commitment. There is no try before you buy.

This is also to make the woman feel safe. She can freely give herself to the man because she knows he has her best interests at heart. He has made the promise and he will keep it. Ideally, a woman will meet the needs of her husband sexually, and he will meet her needs as well, not just emotional, but every other need. Also ladies, if you have a good man, he delights in meeting your needs and wants to meet your needs.

I can safely tell you that when I was married, I loved doing things that I thought put a smile on her face. When our anniversary came, I tried to go all out every single year. I wanted to go above and beyond to please her. Some I remember well, such as taking her to the hotel we stayed in our first night for our first anniversary to recreate things. For the fifth, I took her to an Equestrian theater. For the seventh, a friend had given me $200 and told me to spend it on something fun explicitly. I spent all of it and even more on our anniversary which included eating out for every meal, getting her a PSP, and a singing telegram singing songs from our wedding and other songs.

For me, I just wanted to make her happy and have her feel loved.

Ladies. Please remember you are worth a lifetime commitment. Don’t give yourself to a man for anything less than that. Let him demonstrate his commitment by making the promise first.

God realizes our natural tendencies in Scripture and puts these stipulations in because He wants us to get the most out of what He has made. It is wrong to say God only cares about our happiness, but it is just as wrong to say our happiness matters nothing to Him. God created love and sex and marriage for us to enjoy it as well and we should. Marriage done right will have us living more holy lives and in those lives finding more joy in one another and in God.

As we go through Scripture looking at marriage and divorce, keep this in mind. We are talking about the sacred. Marriage and sex are sacred because they come from a God who is sacred and they involve two people who are meant to be sacred together and bring up holiness in the next generation.

I hope this clears up matters for readers and my apologies for any bad phrasing on my part yesterday.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Can You Try Before You Buy?

Could you take her for a test run? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We live in a world that tends to worship at the altar of sexuality. We often think we know so much in this area, when really we know so little. It’s one reason there’s so much confusion such that people are having perfectly fine body parts removed from them because they feel like they’re the opposite gender. (As if to say there’s any set way a man or a woman is meant to feel.)

Sex is certainly not sacred to most people anymore and is pretty much a recreational activity. You are attracted to someone, you date, you sleep together, you move in, you could get married. Normally, it’s the woman who wants to get married to have that security, but the man isn’t as motivated. Why would he be? He’s getting what he wants already.

In the ancient world, a woman was to be protected while she was in the house of her parents, and that included her sexuality. In this case, if a man seduces her, assuming she is not pledged to someone else, then he doesn’t get to try before he buys. He has to marry her at that point.

Suppose the father absolutely refuses? The man is still in the loser’s position. He has to pay the bride-price for her. He has damaged the family. In the world of ancient Israel, men wanted to marry women who were virgins. This woman would be less likely to marry as a result of what this man had done.

Now we can be sure if a woman seduced a man, which could happen as we saw earlier with the wife of Potiphar who attempted this, that the law would be understood to apply in an opposite sense, though a man certainly doesn’t have a bride-price. However, most of us realize it makes sense to address the man because usually, the men are the pursuers in sexual relationships.

Overall, this was to be a deterrent to the man. Do you want to sleep with this woman? Really consider how much it’s going to cost you. Can you afford a bride-price? Later on in the Torah, we will get to the case of a man who seduces a woman who is pledged to be married and the stakes are different.

This is one reason also in our society, abortion is not an ally to women, but it is much more an ally to the man. After all, most men don’t really like the thought of paying child support, but if he can get a woman pregnant and she can make the problem go away, then the man gets off free and can do what he wants at that point. Abortion has really been helping women to be used by men as long as it has been around.

Perhaps our society should also learn to not take sex so casually. Maybe we’re really missing out on the joy that we’re meant to have in this area of life. While Christians are not under the Law, we are foolish if we don’t think we can learn something from it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

What Can You Get For Your Daughter?

Why would anyone sell their daughter? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

It sounds bizarre to us really. Why on Earth would someone sell their daughter? Do they want money more than they want a daughter? That does seem to be what is going on in Exodus 21.

“If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

The problem here is too many of us are reading this from our cultural perspective. We might think of something like sex trafficking going on or people turning their children into prostitutes at their home. This sounds like a family that really doesn’t care for their daughter.

However, when we look at the ancient world, by and large, marriage was about survival and continuing in the family name. This would be more like indentured servitude. serving someone for an amount of time in order to get something out of the deal. This was done by many people at first to get to America.

Okay. So how does that tie into survival? A poor family would have to work extra hard to provide for every family member. For us, we don’t understand this in a world where if we want bread, we can just drive down to the supermarket. For them, just getting a meal was long and laborious and it took time and energy to make bread.

By selling their daughter, they were selling her into a family that could afford her and could provide for her and make a better laugh for her. She would be moved into a new family unit. This doesn’t mean the old family could no longer have any contact with her, but essentially today when a family gives their daughter to a man who wants to marry her, they do the same. When my former in-laws gave my ex-wife to me, they realized that I was going to be the new primary family unit and my parents realized she would be my new primary family unit. I was the one meant to provide for her.

And notice, the new family is meant to do that, especially the husband. He has to provide food, shelter, and yes, marital rights. The man is to consistently love his wife. A man cannot sell her because that would be breaking the covenant promise to her. If the man’s son marries her, the master must treat the new girl like a daughter. If the son marries another woman, this one is not to be deprived and if she is, she can go her own way. In other words, for a book supposedly sexist, the woman has all the freedoms here and the man has all the responsibilities.

Again, we are not really at marriage for love yet, but we will be getting to that kind of attitude. Even still, that needs some temperance as love is badly misunderstood. Keep waiting as that is a way’s away.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

The Servant’s Wife

What happens when a servant comes to a master? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, I wrote about how marriage was treated differently in the Old Testament. In this instance, we’re going to be discussing it with slavery in the Old Testament. It needs to be said that in this society, slavery was largely a willing institution where people gave of themselves to provide for them and their families. It was also not based on race.

So in Exodus 21, the question comes of a man who sells himself to his neighbor in order to provide for himself. Now if a man comes and he has a wife with him, then when his term is done with his master, then he is to go free and his wife is to come with him. However, what if he comes and he does not have a wife?

His master could provide one for him. This means that the master is giving of himself what he has and letting his servant partake of that gift. After all, a wife isn’t necessary to someone doing their job for the most part. How many of us when we go to work for an employer today discuss with the employer if they will provide a spouse for us or not?

In this scenario, when the man leaves then, his wife and children are not to go with him. The master will provide for all of them. However, there is an exemption to this. The servant can say that he loves his wife and his children and doesn’t want to lose them so he can become a servant for his master for life, which, if the wife was the master’s daughter, would essentially make him a son-in-law entirely and part of the family.

Note also that this indicates love was not really the norm in the time. Marriage was not done so much for love as it was done for survival. However, it would certainly be hoped that a marriage would make someone into a more loving person. In this case, it did.

The servant has no right to claim on his own what is his and what isn’t. He has been working for the master for years, likely had room and board provided, and the master doesn’t owe the servant anything else, including a spouse. If a master gives, that is a gift and the servant can choose how he wants to respond.

For those concerned about the idea of slavery in these passages, there are plenty of resources to go to on this one. I recommend this excellent article from the Christian-thinktank. I also recommend this video series on Scripture and Slavery. For now, I am looking at marriage and I don’t want to get diverted into a whole other series.

This time, we looked at the case of a man going into slavery. Next we’ll be looking at what happens when a man sells his daughter into slavery. That will hopefully be on Monday barring anything else that needs to be said. See you then.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Are Women Property?

Does the commandment on coveting treat women as property? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Let’s suppose there was a translation of the Bible made that took the passages that were general and yet used the male to speak to the people. Instead, this translation used she and her and spoke of a husband instead of a wife. Now let’s suppose we went to the Ten Commandments in this Bible. What would we see?

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, you shall not covet your neighbor’s husband, nor her male servant nor her female servant, nor her ox, nor her donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.

Would I read this and think that if I was married, that this would mean that I am my wife’s property. No. I would take it to mean that my wife has a husband and I am that husband and no other woman is to covet me. It’s not really offensive at all.

But so many people who come at the Bible with an axe to grind want to make everything in there offensive. Therefore, the Bible apparently lists a woman as property. After all, it mentions a man’s wife and then it mentions other things that he owns. Thus, the conclusion is that a wife is just another thing that a man owns.

Why should anyone think this? We can often go to a man and ask him about his wife or ask a woman about her husband. Would the same apply if we spoke of their kids or of their pets?

Why is this coveting condemned? Coveting is condemned because it leads to envy, and envy is a breeding ground for many other sins. I want what someone else has. Now the right response to this is to say “Therefore, I’m going to work hard and do what it takes to get what they have.” Of course, you can’t get their wife, but you can get a wife.

The rabbis did take coveting seriously. Coveting was said to be the sin that led to the fall of man. If Paul knew about this, that would explain why he spoke of not coveting in Romans 7. (Also, I don’t think Paul is giving his personal testimony. I think he’s speaking in the person of Adam.) Because Adam and Eve saw something that they wanted and wanted on their own terms, humanity fell. (Remember, advertising is the world’s oldest profession truly. See this fruit? You need it to be happy!)

So really, I don’t see anything here, but I did want to include it in the case of being thorough. Instead, internet atheists need to find something really worthwhile to deal with. Perhaps instead of critiquing the commandment so much, they could consider it seriously. They might think it’s a stretch to say that coveting leads to the fall of man, but what damage does it do to society to covet today? Wouldn’t that be a better area to focus on?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

You Shall Not Commit Adultery

What is adultery? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Centuries ago, there was a Bible published that was called the Wicked Bible. In this one, there was a misprint in the seventh commandment so it read, “You shall commit adultery.” The publishers were greatly fined for this.

We should all know adultery is wicked, but what is adultery?

Adultery is sexual behavior reserved for the covenant of marriage that is done outside of that covenant. This can be of a physical nature, sexual activity, or it can be of an emotional nature, an emotional commitment to another person where you share things with someone else that should really only be shared with your spouse. Both of these are incredibly harmful to a marriage.

Why is this so? Because marriage is a relationship built on exclusive trust. When you go outside of that, then you are violating that trust. Sexual activity is giving someone total trust with your body and it only makes sense if this takes place in the covenant of a promise that is followed through.

This is why I always tell women to not have sex with a man until he marries you. Why would I not say the same to a man? Technically, I would, but more often than not, the men are the pursuers in the market. If it wasn’t for sex, men would never marry. Men seek to be with women because we have strong drives and those drives drive us to love the woman also.

When a woman gives herself to a man without that, she is ultimately saying she will give him her very body for whatever he has done already. It’s hard to think of something greater one human can trust another with than their body. So a woman needs to decide what her body is worth. A promise to marry in engagement? Six months of dating? A month? A week? Dinner and a movie?

By the way, normally, once a man is given what he wants, odds are that he could have a good chance of plateauing at that level. Many a woman will think living together is a prelude to marriage. It isn’t. He’s got a great deal already. He gets the sex he wants, he can leave any time that he wants, and in the end, he doesn’t have to pay alimony if something happens because there was no commitment.

Now while I said it’s hard to think of something greater one human can give to another than their body, there is one thing indeed. Their heart. Emotional affairs hurt. I speak from experience. In the age of Facebook, they can much more easily happen. Most physical affairs also start off as emotional ones.

A man goes out from his office on lunch and there’s a woman that goes out at the same time. Why not just go together? We’re friends. We’re both married to other people, but why not? Then they begin talking over lunch and they enjoy each other’s company and not too much later, they’re meeting in a hotel room and having sex.

Yes. This happens.

Very few people get up one morning and say “I think I’ll have an affair to screw up my marriage.” It happens gradually. Often, the other side of the fence can look greener to which the reply is “Tend your own lawn first.” This will lead to hopping from relationship to relationship, especially when the spark dies down.

This is why vigilance is required to guard a marriage. In my own personal life, I have said when I get my own place again, I don’t want to be alone with a woman who is not family, even one I am dating. I know my temptations. I know as a man I greatly desire sex and having been there before, I don’t want to put myself in a position where it’s hard to put the brakes on.

Sex is reserved for the covenant of marriage. Taking it outside is lying with your bodies. It is a beautiful gift to be given to a man and a woman who have made a lifelong covenant with one another. Their bodies in sex show what they have done with their hearts to one another.

God stands against adultery not because He is anti-sex, but because He is pro-sex. He created everything about it after all. If we are to enjoy it to the best, then we need to follow His counsel on the matter.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Why Don’t The Ten Commandments Condemn Rape?

Why are the Ten Commandments supposedly silent on rape? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Skeptics will always be finding something to complain about with Scripture. This time it’s about the Ten Commandments. Why do they not mention rape? Isn’t that worth talking about?

For one thing, the Ten Commandments are not meant to be all-inclusive of everything. (Note that if we followed the first one perfectly, the other nine would be done naturally.) Laws in that culture were more didactic in that they were guidelines. Today, if you read a single law on a federal website, odds are it will be longer than the book of Exodus entirely itself. Every single possible exception is meant to be covered.

The ancients instead gave general principles and the role of a judge was to be wise and know how to apply the Law in every single case. Even if there was a prescribed punishment, no judge was forced to go that way. It was as said before more of a guideline.

Yet what about rape?

A simple answer is to say that rape would be understood to fall under the commandment against adultery. Adultery is any improper sexual behavior that is done outside of the marriage covenant. Rape is such a case. Of course, that can happen in marriage as well, but a wise judge would know what was going on.

Why would adultery be mentioned? Because looking at Israelite history, Israel seemed to have a much more consistent problem with adultery than they did with rape. Of all the horizontal sins that are mentioned in the Ten Commandments, the #1 sin that the Israelites were committing on that level was adultery. The idea that sex is the great god that people pursue in our culture is nothing new. It has been the same in most cultures throughout history. Honestly, I’d be surprised to find one where that wasn’t the case.

In the history of Israel, I can only think of two cases where rape takes place and both of them are condemned. The first is in the end of Judges where we have a scene much like Sodom and Gomorrah and a slave woman is raped and raped so much that she actually dies. What’s amusing is when skeptics quote this passage as a look at the depravity the Bible has and actually think it’s being endorsed, when Scripture records this to show an example of what happens when a society abandons the covenant with God. If you think it’s something horrible and disgusting, Scripture agrees.

The second is the case of Amnon and Tamar. In this, Amnon is in love with his half-sister Tamar and rapes her. After that, the text says he hated her and he hated her so much that his hatred was greater than the love that he had for her. (Which shows that it wasn’t really love.) Again, this is condemned. It’s seen as a sign of judgment on the house of David and later, Absalom will sleep with the concubines of David, though that’s not specified as rape.

Ultimately, by condemning adultery, the Ten Commandments do condemn rape. It’s my plan that next time we will look closer at adultery. It’s one of those commandments that many of us didn’t ask about as kids and I always wonder now what goes through the minds of children at church when it is mentioned. Hopefully, we can give the adults a better answer.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Responding to WaPo on Moses’s existence

Did the great leader exist? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A reader sent me this old article from the Washington Post wanting my thoughts on it. Did Moses exist? Let’s say at the outset that while I think he did, the case is definitely not as clear as it is for someone like Jesus. I can understand Moses mythicism whereas Jesus mythicism is just a crackpot theory.

The article is by someone named Ishaan Tharoor and can be found here. Something I notice right at the start is that a similar argument is used against Moses as is used against Jesus. That is the argument from silence.

The reality is the record is not completely silent. One can say he’s not mentioned outside of the Jewish Scriptures of the time, but so what? Do we automatically throw out those Scriptures because they are Scriptures? If anyone would have a reason to write about Moses, it would be the Jews, and a writing does not suddenly deserve hyper-skepticism because it is considered holy by some specific faith.

Now who else would write about Moses? The Egyptians? Doubtful. What would the record say “So these ragtag Hebrews managed to escape after their God kicked our gods to the curb and we couldn’t overtake them when our soldiers drowned in the Red Sea.” Nah. Historians of the time would write about their victories, but they would not write about their defeats.

It is true that we don’t have the exact timeline on when things took place. The most common dates I hear for the Exodus are either 1446 BC or somewhere around 1290. A lot of it depends on the reference to 480 years in the book of Kings. The Pharaoh on the throne is not named, but this is also not a surprise. Pharaoh is not the main character and is a figure portrayed in a shameful light. Another great way to do that would be to not even name him.

What about the Red Sea? Again, there are people who say that what happened was a natural occurrence really, and they could be right. It could be the winds could make the sea part at times. In this case, the miracle would be that it happened when it happened. I do not know of any accuracy of reports of Egyptians and chariots being found at the bottom of the Red Sea, but sadly, even if that was true, it should not surprise us that a sea near Egypt would have dead Egyptians in it. It would be evidence for something, but it would not necessitate it.

I have seen the comparison to Sargon. My ministry partner has an article on that one so no need to reinvent the wheel. I was really amused to find a claim that this is a copy of Krishna. This is the same kind of thing that happens with Jesus Mythicism, as if the Israelites would have known about the story of Krishna and choose to use it, even if you go with a late date such as with the Welhausen JEPD hypothesis.

The author also says that:

Some researchers believe the “Hymn to the Aten,” inscribed on the walls of the ancient city of Amarna, prefigures Psalm 104 of the Hebrew Bible. Both are paeans to the power of one god. Here’s the hymn:

The earth comes into being by your hand, as you made it. When you dawn, they live. When you set, they die. You yourself are lifetime, one lives by you.

And an excerpt of Psalm 104:

You hide your face, they are troubled,
You take away your breath, they die,
And return to dust.
You send forth your breath, they are created,
And you renew the face of the earth.

As I look at this, it is extremely flimsy. The first one is describing the movement of the sun. The Psalm is not and both of these are statements that could easily apply to a supreme being.

Noteworthy also is no interaction with anyone who believes in the historicity of the accounts. Do you see any interaction with someone like James Hoffmeier? Nope. Not a bit. Of course, he could be entirely wrong, but if you give your audience only one side of the story, what a shock that most readers walk away thinking that one side is true.

Also, for Christians, one of the main evidences is that Jesus seemed to treat Moses like a historical figure. Now it could be the incarnation does not entail Jesus as a human has perfect knowledge, but many of us who are Christians tend to take Him a bit more seriously. If you’re a skeptic of the resurrection, that won’t mean anything to you. If you believe in it, it means a lot to you. I realize my point here then won’t convince skeptics, but it should give Christians something to think about.

In the end, I don’t think the article really delivers. The evidence is one-sided and arguments from silence. It doesn’t convince me with mythicism and it doesn’t do so here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Deeper Waters Podcast 6/6/2020

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I was growing up playing games on the regular Nintendo, we were told that if your cartridges aren’t working, just blow into them. That will clear out anything and the game will work fine. Most all of us did that. The thing is, it worked. It made sense. Now years later we’re finding out that that really doesn’t work.

Also, before the days of the internet, we had numerous rumors flying around about games. I still remember trying to find the Artemis esper in Final Fantasy VI. How many Pokemon players were trying to move that one truck in an attempt to get Mew?

The age of the internet has made it easier and harder with these kinds of things. With some things that can be easily checked, it’s easy to see that some claims are just false. The claim about Mew would never get off the ground today, and this is even in an age where people can easily fake YouTube videos.

Yet some myths are harder to deal with. Many atheists think today that the idea about whether Jesus existed or not is a hot debate in New Testament scholarship. Not even among atheists is it a debate. Conspiracy theories run amok on the internet.

Even among Christians, there are urban legends. Is Jeremiah 29:11 really a great verse to use in your testimony? Does Isaiah 14 describe the fall of satan? Is Genesis 3:15 really a prophecy of the virgin birth? (Which I do affirm.)

To discuss these and other urban legends of the Old Testament. The book is itself called Urban Legends of the Old Testament. The co-author is Gary Yates and he will be my guest.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Professor of Old Testament at Liberty University School of Divinity for the past 17 years and have taught at the undergrad and grad level for 20 years. I also currently serve as the Pastor of Living Word Baptist Church in Forest, Virginia. 
I have a ThM and PhD in Old Testament from Dallas Theological Seminary and did my dissertation on the book of Jeremiah (looking at the primarily narrative portion of the book in Jeremiah 26-45). 
I have authored or co-authored Urban Legends of the Old Testament, The Message of the Twelve, 30 Days to Jeremiah/Lamentations, and the Essence of the Old Testament and have contributed to numerous other works, including the soon-to-be released, Baker Illustrated Bible Background Commentary. I have published in multiple journals and have contributed to two study Bibles. 
My wife Marilyn and I have been married for 35 years and have three adult children. 

We are nearly caught up on old podcasts. I just really have to get around to uploading them. That blame lies with me. I hope you all are looking forward to it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters