The Skeptical Review Online - Cutting Off Turkel's "Blast"

The Theology Web is a site that would-be apologist Robert Turkel frequents in order to bask in the praise of juvenilelike admirers, who seem to think that one- and two-line sarcastic barbs punctuated with emoticons are satisfactory substitutes for logical argumentation. Recently, someone called my attention to a thread on this website where Turkel had in typically sarcastic fashion mentioned my article "Ouch!" in which I had shown through satirical examination of several biblical passages that the Hebrew god Yahweh had decreed the death penalty to all Hebrew males who had not been circumcised. In posting the following reply to someone who had asked Turkel what extirpated meant as he had used it in his article linked to in the title above, he bragged that he had had a "blast" finding out that I had erred in claiming that the expression "cut off," generally used in translations of Genesis 17:14, meant to kill. In quoting Turkel's statement below, I have inserted [sic] in places that indicate that this self-appointed expert in biblical languages has difficulty writing his native English with reasonable proficiency.

I'm guessing you're askin' about "cut off" in this version.

I had a blast finding out the answer to this when I gave Farrell Till a kick in the dubery dues about it...[sic] or did you read this and is that where you got the word?

But anyway, here's [sic] the three dictionary defs:

To pull up by the roots.

To destroy totally; exterminate. See Synonyms at abolish.

To remove by surgery.

The first being what Milgrom had in mind, based on his article.

I suppose only Turkel knows what the "dubery dues" are, but whatever they might be, the kick to them that he bragged about couldn't have been very hard, because I didn't feel a thing. I was completely unaware of the article to which Turkel linked his Theology Web sycophants, but now that it has been called to my attention, I have decided to give Turkel a return kick to show his admirers that this guy's expertise is limited to pulling the wool over the eyes of those who send him their PayPal bucks so that he can sit at home and play apologetic expert on his computer. The easiest way to cut off the "blast" that he bragged about will be to reply point by point to the article that he linked his admirers to. In keeping with his usual evasive tactics, Turkel neither identified me by name nor linked his readers to my article, which gave him such a "blast" when he answered it. One would think that if he had really gotten such a "blast" from kicking me in the "dubery dues," he would have linked his readers to my article so that they could see for themselves just how ridiculous my position is on the biblical meaning of cut off.

Rather than using the headers Turkel and Till to help readers follow who has said what, I will highlight in blue print all quotations from his article.

Still looking to keep the Skeppies happy with diversions, Skeptic X has this on circumcision in the Bible, specifically Gen. 17:13-14:

He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.

Skeptic X wants to make hash of this, under the assumption that "cut off" means "kill". [sic] He says there are "numerous examples" where "cut off" and "kill" or equivalents "were used interchangeably in reference to the same offenses," and we don't doubt that some parallels exist, but one would think an expert on "homographs" and "figurative" language like Skeptic X would know better than to make such a statement with absolute certainty.

Some parallels? Turkel doesn't doubt that "some parallels" exist? If this guy doesn't know that there are numerous biblical parallels that show that the Hebrews quite often used the term cut off to mean "put to death," he needs to take down his apologetic shingle until he acquires a foundation of biblical knowledge good enough to qualify him to speak with at least a semblance of authority on rather elementary biblical matters, such as the meaning of "cut off" when it was used in situations that warned that if someone did X or did not do Y, he would be "cut off from his people." Later, I will be explicating several passages to show that to kill or put to death was the meaning of the expression when used in contexts like the one just described, but for now I will cite just one example.

Exodus 31:14 You shall keep the sabbath, because it is holy for you; everyone who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does any work on it shall be cut off from among the people.

The fact that "put to death" and "cut off" were used interchangeably in this verse should be enough to convince even someone as stubborn as Turkel that "cut off" was used to mean "put to death," but he may be like some biblicists I have locked horns with on this same issue, who quibbled that only those who profaned the sabbath were put to death and that working on it was not the same as profaning it. Before Turkel grabs this straw, as some of his like-minded cohorts have done, he should first read the very next verse, which shoots that quibble full of holes.

15 Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, holy to Yahweh; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall be put to death.

Verse 14 said that whoever does any work on the sabbath would be cut off from among the people, and verse 15 said that whoever does any work on the sabbath would be put to death. Obviously, then, verse 14 is an example of parallelism, which was commonly used in Hebrew to repeat the same idea for the sake of emphasis. The writer first said that whoever profanes the sabbath would be put to death; then he said that whoever does any work on the sabbath would be "cut off." Obviously, then, this writer meant that working on the sabbath was the same as profaning the sabbath, and cutting off was the same as putting to death. By repeating the same idea in different words, he emphasized the severity of desecrating the sabbath. As I said, parallelism for emphasis was a common literary device in Hebrew, which I don't think that Turkel will deny. Furthermore, when the law of the sabbath was repeated in Exodus 35:2, "Moses" warned "all the congregation of the children of Israel" that whoever did any work on the sabbath would be put to death. Later, in Numbers 15:32-35, the story was told of a man whom Yahweh ordered Moses to stone to death for having picked up sticks on the sabbath.

If Turkel can read passages like these and then deny that "cutting off" in the ancient Hebrew culture meant putting to death, then he needs to take a course in remedial reading.

The real scholars do not;

"Real scholars," of course, are those who agree with Turkel.

Driver's commentary, for example, argues that "cut off" is used for both a death penalty and for exclusion from the covenant people; he supposes it was an "archaic judicial formula" which originally meant a death sentence, but came to mean "a strong affirmation of divine disapproval."

Well, if it meant both, then the determination of its meaning--as is true of all homographs--must be made from the contexts in which it was used. The contexts of the passages just quoted and cited above, for example, clearly indicate that "cut off" [kârath in Hebrew] meant to kill or put to death the person who disobeyed the command to do no work on the sabbath. Furthermore, these contexts claim just as clearly that the god Yahweh spoke to Moses the command against working on the sabbath.

Exodus 31:12 Yahweh said to Moses: ¹³ You yourself are to speak to the Israelites: "You shall keep my sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, given in order that you may know that I, Yahweh, sanctify you. ¹⁴ You shall keep the sabbath, because it is holy for you; everyone who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does any work on it shall be cut off from among the people....

Exodus 35:1 Moses assembled all the congregation of the Israelites and said to them: These are the things that Yahweh has commanded you to do: ² Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy sabbath of solemn rest to Yahweh; whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. ³ You shall kindle no fire in all your dwellings on the sabbath.

The context of the last passage shows that Yahweh's command against work on the sabbath extended to tasks as insignificant as kindling a fire. Accordingly, when the man mentioned above was caught picking up sticks on the sabbath, Yahweh "spoke to Moses," as he routinely did in those days, and told him to have the congregation stone the man to death outside the camp (Num. 15:32-35). If, then, we are to believe what the Bible plainly says, this god that Turkel has the hots for ordered the killing of people who would do so little work on the sabbath as to kindle a fire and at least on one occasion ordered the execution by stoning of a man who had gathered sticks to build a fire on the sabbath.

With such incidents as this recorded in the pages of "God's inspired word," is it any wonder that in the article that gave him such a "blast," Turkel went to great lengths to make Yahweh appear less barbaric than the Old Testament clearly depicted him? As I go through yet another attempt by Turkel to make the Bible not mean what it plainly says, I will show that the contexts of passages that decreed kârath for what would in our time be considered minor or even trivial offenses clearly meant that the offenders were to be put to death. We will see that one such trivial offense was the failure to circumcise males.

But we'll look at this more closely below.

And I will be right on his tail looking at it even more closely to show that Turkel's attempts to whitewash Yahweh's command to "cut off" [kârath] uncircumcised males failed as miserably as attempts by him and his friend Glenn Miller to make Yahweh's commands to destroy totally the Canaanites and to leave none of them alive to breathe mean only that Yahweh wanted the Israelites to chase them out of the land. Given the appallingly barbaric depictions of Yahweh in the Old Testament, I don't blame them for wanting to clean up the image of this god to modern audiences, but they will never find enough whitewash to make the Bible not say what it clearly does say about this aspect of the Hebrew god Yahweh. As we go along through the "blast" that Turkel got from showing that "cut off" used in reference to uncircumcised males didn't mean to kill them but only to "exclude them from the covenant people," we will see another one of his "apologetic" efforts bite the dust.

Still, that isn't the issue at hand; what is at hand here is a complaint that -- aside from the usual griping about the Amalekites (see here, Skeptic X, you don't stand a chance --

Well, I will just let readers decide for themselves whether I "stand a chance" against Miller's attempt to defend the Israelite massacre of the Amalekites. In the seven-part series linked to above, I replied point by point to Miller's attempt to defend not just the massacre of the Amalekites, clearly ordered by the god Yahweh, but also the Yahwistic command for the Israelites to destroy totally all of the Canaanite nations and to leave none of them alive to breathe. If Turkel or Miller or both think that they can successfully refute my replies to Miller's attempts to make commands to destroy totally and to leave no one alive to breathe mean only to chase the Canaanites out of the land, I invite them to do so. If either or both of them will reply in kind to my refutation of Miller's article, I will gladly reply to their rebuttals if they will agree to post my replies on their websites and leave them there as long as these sites remain on the web. Needless to say, I will gladly post their replies on this website.

This will be the end of the Amalekite matter that Turkel referred to above, because neither he nor Miller will ever agree to post my replies to them where they can be accessed by their sychophantic readers.

[Skeptic X, you don't stand a chance --] for reader reference, note that Skeptic X refers to Miller's work as "inerrantist flapdoodle")

Dictionaries define flapdoodle as "nonsense," so I am perfectly willing to let those who read Miller's article and then my point-by-point replies to it decide for themselves if "nonsense" is an accurate description of it. What better meaning than "nonsense" could be applied to an article that actually tried to prove that the terms "utterly destroy" (Deut. 7:2) and "leave nothing alive to breathe" (Deut. 20:16; Josh. 10:40; 11:11,14) didn't really mean to kill the Canaanites but just to drive them out of the country?

-- this makes hash of Josh. 5 where the post-Exodus generation was circumcised but not punished for disobedience. I replied that they could hardly disobey if they did not receive a command to be circumcised. Skeptic X tries to wheedle around this with the Genesis command, as follows:

An eight-day-old male child would also not know about the command to be circumcised, but according to Genesis 17:14, he was nevertheless to be "cut off" from his people; that is, he was to be killed. You might say that Turkel's god Yahweh didn't consider ignorance of the law to be any excuse.

As I pointed out repeatedly in "Bobby Grabs More Straws," Turkel will frequently claim to have expertise in Hebrew nuances and idioms, but he often shows in his own writing that he knows very little about English nuances. The word wheedle, for example, means to persuade or obtain through flattery or guile, so as we work our way through this limited part of my article that Turkel quoted, readers should ask themselves where I used flattery or guile to try to convince them that "cut off" in Hebrew meant to kill. As for whether Miller's failed attempts to make Yahweh's commands to destroy totally the Canaanites and to leave none of them alive to breathe somehow made "hash" of my claim that the command to "cut off" all uncircumcised males meant that they were to be killed, I will let those who take the time to read my rebuttals of Miller's article, linked to above, decide if Miller succeeded in making any hash.

Turkel summarized below two more of the arguments that I used in my article to show that Yahweh's command to "cut off" uncircumcised males, including even infants, meant that they were to be killed.

2. Yahweh's original command was that Abraham's descendants were to be circumcised throughout their generations. Would that not have included the wilderness generation? If not, why not?

3. The Hebrews practiced circumcision during the time of their Egyptian bondage.

Skeptic X the Red Skelton wannabee asks why then Yahweh, or Caleb, Joshua and Moses, didn't go right out and kill all 600,000 or so of those uncircumcised disobeyers. Well, this one is frankly so inane that Skeptic X has just earned the right to reprise the role of Bozo the Clown up north of his home, in Chicago. Number 3 is true, but all this amounts to is that Israel was disobedient in keeping this command. We are left with the implication Skeptic X is trying to wrest from the texts, that if Gen. 17 is right, the post-Exodus generation should have gotten no breaks, since an unknowing baby didn't either.

As I have noted so often before, when Turkel can't answer an argument, all is not lost, because he can always hurl insults at his opponent. How do calling me a "Red Skelton wannabee" and saying that I have "earned the right to reprise the role of Bozo the Clown" in any way prove that the Hebraic expression "cut off" did not denote the idea of killing? It doesn't, but Turkel, unable to refute my claim, needed something to distract attention from that inability, so he played his old game of trying to camouflage his failure behind a smoke screen of sarcasm. We will see immediately below that Turkel was so desperate to discredit the claim that "cut off" to Hebrews meant to kill that he resorted to a variation of Zeno's paradox of motion, which I will explain below in replying to Turkel's fallacy.

Allowing the "kill" interpretation for the sake of argument, we could even take this to a ridiculous extreme if Skeptic X desires, and suggest that all 600,000 of those Israelites should have been cut off on the ninth day of their life [sic], not even waiting until they made it to Palestine. Or, we could plumb even greater depths of absurdity and foresee the elders of a village hovering like vultures waiting to snatch a child on Day 9, minute 1 if it wasn't circumcised.

Zeno's paradox of motion used a hypothetical race between Achilles and a tortoise to illustrate the problem, which Turkel has applied to the Yahwistic command that all males should be circumcised on the eighth day. In the paradox, if the tortoise were given a head start before Achilles began running, Achilles could never overtake the tortoise, because he would first have to cover the distance traveled by the tortoise, at which time the tortoise would have moved farther along. Achilles would then have to cover that distance, at which time the tortoise would have moved still farther away, so paradoxically Achilles would never be able to overtake the tortoise. In modern variations of the paradox, philosophers have used the example of a bullet fired at a target. The bullet would first have to travel halfway to the target, leaving half of that distance to then be traveled. After traveling half of that distance, the bullet would still have half of that distance to travel, after which it would still have half of that remaining distance to travel, so theoretically the bullet would never reach the target. In his comments above, Turkel resorted to a variation of this paradox, which has become known variously as the Sorites paradox, the fallacy of the heap, or draw-the-line fallacy, which, in brief, is an abandoment of common sense in situations involving imprecision. If some restriction, for example, does not state exact precision or draw a specific line, quibblers, resorting to this fallacy, will argue that no line can be drawn. This fallacy is explained in chapter seven of The University of Idaho's Critical Thinking Handbook.

Argument from the Heap: This fallacy is closely associated with the Sorites Paradox. This fallacious argument assumes that we know what is up with one endpoint of the sequence described above, i.e., we know that it is either a case in which the concept in question clearly applies or clearly does not; in addition, we know that if we change the case in a small way, we still have a case of the same kind as the one we started with. By examination of repeated small adjustments of this sort, we establish that we can never get to the other endpoint. If you start with a grain of sand, you don't have a heap; adding one grain of sand never takes you from a non-heap to a heap, so if you add a billion grains of sand to the first, one by one, you will still not have a heap. Hence the name.

Examples: (1) Assume Tim is hairy; taking one hair off of [sic] Tim's head will still leave him hairy; thus, by slow increments, we can establish that you could take a million hairs off of [sic] Tim's head and he'd still be hairy, so it is not possible for Tim to become bald. (2) "Life must be caused by a divine spark. Consider that if you start with an atom and you add another atom to it, it won't be alive, right? And if you keep doing this, you'll just have a bunch of atoms and no life. You can't get a living thing that way!" (3) Start with 1. Add 1 to it. You get a finite number. Add 1 again. Still finite. Keep doing this forever. Always you get a finite number. Therefore, there is no such thing as infinity.

In "Slippery Slopes Geoff Nunberg also used grains of sand to illustrate in reverse the same logical fallacy of the heap.

Or sometimes the slippery slope is invoked in the course of making an argument about the impossibility of drawing clear moral distinctions--if you can't draw the line between A and B, then how can you accept one and reject the other?³ That's an argument you always hear from abortion critics--where does a fetus end and a child begin? It's an instance of what Greek philosophers called the fallacy of the heap, or the Sorites Fallacy. If you start with a heap of sand and take one grain away, you're still left with a heap, but if you keep repeating the process you wind up saying that a single grain of sand is a heap all by itself. The mistake is in assuming that if a distinction isn't clear-cut it can't be drawn at all.⁴

By abandoning common sense, one could use the fallacy of the heap to prove that an infant would never become an adult or that day would never become night. If, for example, a baby is an infant immediately after birth, he will still be an infant one second later, still an infant a second after that, a second after that, a second after that, etc., etc., etc. When, then, could one say that the infant has become an adult? If it is daylight at 6:00 PM and still daylight a second later, still daylight a second later, still daylight a second later, etc., then will it ever become night time? Common sense tells us it will, even though identifying the exact second when night time arrives may not be possible. Hence, when one resorts as Turkel did above to a variation of the fallacy of the heap in his reference to "the elders of a village hovering like vultures waiting to snatch a[n uncircumcised] child on Day 9, minute 1," to punish him for not being circumcised, he is tacitly admitting that he has no reasonable proof that "cut off" in the command in Genesis 17:14 did not mean that uncircumcised children were to be killed. Likewise, he conveniently ignores the many biblical examples of Yahweh's complete disregard for the lives of children and babies, such as the destruction of the world by a universal flood (Gen. 7), the total destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:24-25), both of which, if actual historical events, would have undoubtedly resulted in the deaths of many children. He also ignores the many times that Yahweh allegedly gave direct genocidal orders that would have necessarily included children (Deut. 7:2; Deut. 20:16; Josh. 10:40; 11:11,14) and at times even specifically included babies and children in the command to wipe out entire populations (1 Sam. 15:1-3). Why, then, is Turkel laboring so hard to try to prove that his god Yahweh would not have commanded that uncircumcised infants be killed? A more reasonable approach to the problem would be to reject the barbaric notion that such tales as these are part of the "inspired word of God," but Turkel, of course, is unlikely to do that. There just isn't much chance that rejecting the traditional view that the Bible is the "word of God" would attract very many PayPal bucks.

We're also forced to see a scenario in which a person who doesn't want to be circumcised, but is bound and gagged and forced to get it done, is A-OK on covenant terms with Yahweh even if he hates Yahweh's guts.

Well, actually, isn't this what is done when an eight-day-old infant is circumcised? He is certainly not having it done voluntarily, so Turkel's "logic" here would credit male infants for an "obedience" that they really had nothing to do with. Turkel no doubt will say that his "scenario" was directed to adult males who "hate[d] Yahweh's guts" but were forced to submit to circumcision, but when have I ever even implied that the Old Testament law taught that a circumcised male was "A-OK" no matter how much he may have disregarded the law in other matters? I have to wonder if Turkel is ignorant of all the places where even the Old Testament taught that Yahweh required more than just an outward obedience to the law. Moses warned the Israelites that they would suffer dire consequences if they did not obey all the commandments of Yahweh (Deut. 30:2,8), and earlier he had taught them that retaining Yahweh's favor depended on their keeping all of his commandments.

Deuteronomy 6:1 Now this is the commandment--the statutes and the ordinances--that Yahweh your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, ² so that you and your children and your children's children may fear Yahweh your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long.

Later prophets even warned that Yahweh valued sincerity over strict obedience.

Hosea 6:4 What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early. ⁵ Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have killed them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. ⁶ For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

Jeremiah 7:21 Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. ²² For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. ²³ But this command I gave them, "Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you." ²⁴ Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backward rather than forward. ²⁵ From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; ²⁶ yet they did not listen to me, or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did. ²⁷ So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. ²⁸ You shall say to them: This is the nation that did not obey the voice of Yahweh their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.

That the law required obedience to all of its precepts was recognized in the New Testament.

Galatians 5:3 Once again I testify to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the entire law.
James 2:8 You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." ⁹ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. ¹⁰ For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. ¹¹ For the one who said, "You shall not commit adultery," also said, "You shall not murder." Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.

If Turkel doesn't know that the Old Testament clearly required obedience to all the Yahwistic commandments but valued inward attitudes over a strict outward observance of the law, then he has no business trying to be a biblical apologist.

That's how Skeptic X's former Church of Christ legalism sees things, but here again we will bring the point that no ancient law code was ever regarded in the way certain "fundamentalists" (of whom, Skeptic X is still one) believe.

Those who have followed Turkel's obsession with trying to discredit me know that when he has no sensible reply to my arguments, he will often turn to blaming my present positions on my former religious affiliation. To say, however, that I was once a member of the Church of Christ really says nothing at all about possible reasons why I now believe as I do, because the Church of Christ is splintered into many warring sects ranging from the very liberal to the ultraconservative. I was never affiliated with the conservative branches of this denomination, which argued endlessly over whether one or more cups should be used in observing the Lord's supper, whether the one cup should have a handle, whether the scriptures permit dividing into Bible classes when the congregation assembles, whether donations to orphan homes and Bible schools are scriptural, etc., etc., etc. Turkel's constant references to an alleged Church-of-Christ "legalism" that I once adhered to ignores the fact that I was affiliated with a more liberal branch that used multiple containers in observing the Lord's supper, supported orphan homes, Bible colleges, and other related institutions, so this branch of the sect, although certainly conservative, wasn't as Pharisaical as other branches. Turkel's references to my Church-of-Christ "legalism" also ignores the fact that I was fired from my last ministerial post for refusing to stop emphasizing in my sermons the responsibility of Christians to do good, love their neighbors, go the second mile, etc. and to concentrate on doctrinal issues, so when Turkel resorts to bringing up my Church-of-Christ background, as if that would in any way discredit whatever biblical positions I now hold, I know that he realizes that he has no logical way to answer my arguments.

When Turkel alludes to my past religious affiliation to try to paint me as a "fundamentalist," he should realize that the brush he is using is broad enough to include him in the painting, because he presently has a Baptist affiliation. This denomination, like the Church of Christ, has fractured into various splinter groups, many of which are notoriously conservative. The King James Only movement, for example, which actually teaches that the KJV was inspired of God, has its roots in the Baptist Church, and that is about as radically fundamentalist as a church can get. I really doubt that Turkel's fundamentalism runs as deeply as that of his Baptist cohorts, like Peter Ruckman in Pensacola, Florida, who believe that the KJV was divinely inspired to correct mistakes in the Greek text, but I have seen indications of a Baptist mentality in Turkel's articles, such as his indication in "The Problem of Eternal Security," that he wants to believe the doctrine variously known as the impossibility of apostasy, the perseverance of the saints, once saved always saved, etc. If I should ever try to dismiss any position that Turkel takes by saying something like, "Well, that is just what we would expect a Baptist to say," I am sure that Turkel would be quick to point out that this doesn't answer anything, yet he seems to think that references to my past membership in a denomination that I wasn't affiliated with nearly as long as I have now been "unaffiliated" with it are sufficient responses to whatever positions of mine that he disagrees with.

As I have often said in my replies to Turkel, inconsistency is about his only consistency.

We repeat a passage we have often used, and will continue to use, from Hillers' Covenant: The History of a Biblical Idea:

.. [sic] (T)here is no evidence that any collection of Near Eastern laws functioned as a written code that was applied by a strict method of exegesis to individual cases. As far as we can tell, these bodies of laws served educational purposes and gave expression to what was regarded as just in typical cases, but they left considerable latitude to local courts for determining the right in individual suits. They aided local courts without controlling them.

We repeat? I wonder who helped Turkel write his article. Oh, oh, I forgot; Turkel pretentiously refers to himself as we, doesn't he? Anyway, I couldn't agree more with what Hillers said here. Near Eastern laws, including those in the Bible, no doubt originated as beliefs and customs that later became tribal law, and the gods had nothing to do with their origins. The problem for Turkel, however, is that once those laws were written into documents whose origins were attributed to tribal gods, they became more than just customs and beliefs. They assumed the status of laws that had presumably been issued by deities. In the case of the Israelites, this deity would have been Yahweh. I would have to drag this article out forever if I tried to list even a tenth of the passages in the Old Testament, such as Deuteronomy 30:2,8,10 and Jeremiah 2:1,9,31, where biblical writers and prophets claimed that what they were speaking or writing were words that had come from their god Yahweh. Therefore, if Turkel sticks to Hillers' statement quoted above, he will necessarily surrender the right to claim that Old Testament laws were divine in their origin, and, needless to say, that will pose all kinds of problems for the inerrancy view of the Bible that Turkel tries--but fails--to defend.

"Considerable latitude" suggests that if someone was not circumcised due to parental neglect, or there was some other circumstance stopping circumcision (in the case of Josh. 5, rampant disobedience by parents), they would not just be given the axe the whole way on Day [sic] 9, second 1, no questions asked and no credit given.

I have to wonder why Turkel capitalized day but didn't capitalize second. Is this an indication that our expert in "nuances" in biblical languages--which we will see him implying below--doesn't understand the rules of punctuation in his native English? Be that as it may, Turkel has again resorted to the fallacy of the heap to try to explain away a glaring inconsistency in what the Bible teaches about circumcision. I could use his line of reasoning to show that punishing an Israelite male, whether the punishment be death or ostracism, for not being circumcised could never have been fairly adminstered. If, as Turkel envisioned above, an uncircumcised male should not have been "given the axe the whole way on Day [sic] 9, second 1," then surely he would say that on day 9, second 2, the axe should not have been given either. So what about a second after that? Then a second after that? And still a second after that?

There is no need to keep piling seconds onto the heap in Turkel's "argument," because the problem that his example poses is that one could never reach a time when the addition of a second to the male's delay in being circumcised would justify punishing him without appearing to be fanatically legalistic. If Turkel cares to dispute this, perhaps he will be willing to draw a line for us and state the exact number of seconds that would have had to pass before punishment for failure to submit to circumcision would have been fair and reasonable.

I love it when an argument backfires in the face of an inerrantist, and this backfire has left Turkel looking like a blackfaced buffoon in an old minstrel show.

We expect Till to provide his usual sort of non-reply [sic] ("no amount of flapdoodle about 'educational purposes' or 'typical cases' will change what the text says") but he certainly will provide no depth [sic] examination of ancient Near Eastern law codes and their application, from the period of Hammurabi up until the rabbinic era,

Hmmm, our linguistic expert doesn't seem to know the difference in the noun depth and its adjective deep. Anyway, we will see Turkel immediately below derogatorily referring to a "hermeneutic" that I was taught in the Church of Christ. My response to it immediately follows his statement, so here I will simply say what I repeat below: I don't use hermeneutics as such in studying the Bible. I apply to it the same widely recognized principles of interpretation that I used to teach literature in my college classes. A very basic principle of literary interpretation is that the words in a written text should be interpreted literally unless there are compelling reasons to assign figurative meaning to them, but a desire to make the text inerrant is not a compelling reason to assign figurative meaning, because that approach is based on an unverifiable claim that biblical writers were divinely inspired in what they wrote, and so they could not have made mistakes. This is the kind of reasoning that Turkel and his inerrantist cohorts apply to the Bible, but it is not the one that a person truly educated in literary interpretation would use.

As for a "depth [sic] of examination of ancient Near Eastern law codes and their application," I will give Turkel something to consider (if he is intellectually equipped to do so). The introduction to the Code of Hammurabi was very clear in attributing the establishment of the kingdom of Babylon and the reign of Hammurabi to the gods.

When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki, and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land, assigned to Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi, they called Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it, whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind.

The rest of the introduction (too long to quote here) goes on to express a clear belief that the affairs of the Babylonian kingdom were directed by the gods. Notice, for example, that the part of the introduction quoted above claimed that Marduk had founded Babylon to be "an everlasting kingdom," which is reminiscent of the Old Testament claim that the kingdom of Israel was to be a never-ending kingdom (Gen. 48:4; 2 Sam. 7:13-16; 1 Chron. 22:10), and that Marduk had called Hammurabi "to bring about a rule of righteousness in the land and to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers." That too reads like a page from the Bible, where the Israelite kings were considered the "anointed" of Yahweh. If Turkel, then, takes his own advice and applies to the Bible the obvious implications of what extrabiblical texts said about ancient Near Eastern law codes, he will have to admit that there are no good reasons to believe that the "ancient Near Eastern law codes" in the Old Testament were any more divine in their origins than the law codes of other ancient Near Eastern cultures.

As we plod through Turkel's hermeneutic comments below, then, readers should ask themselves just whose hermeneutics is flawed, mine or his?

and [Till] will certainly continue to play the role of the "fundamentalist Skeptic" who assumes that the hermeneutic he was taught as a Church of Christ minister is the only valid interpretive option and the very one that was in mind when the text was written.

Once again, Turkel shows that not knowing what he is talking about will not deter him from talking about it. The "hermeneutic" that I now apply to the Bible doesn't even remotely resemble that which I was taught at the Church-of-Christ colleges that I attended. The fact is that I don't even use hermeneutic methods as such in reading the Bible but rather widely recognized principles of literary interpretation that I used in teaching college literature. A foundation principle of hermeneutics, like the kind I was taught in Bible colleges, says that scripture should be allowed to interpret scripture. This principle is based on a literarily unsound assumption of biblical inerrancy, so, according to the let-scripture-interpret-scripture principle, if a text written by author A seems inconsistent with one written by author B, one of the two should be interpreted in a way that will remove the inconsistency. Genesis 6:1-4, for example, appears to tell a brief version of a myth about a time when angels (the sons of God) left heaven, came to earth, married human women (the daughters of men), and produced a race of giants who so corrupted the earth that Yahweh decided to destroy it with a great flood. In "If It Walks Like a Duck...." and "Sons of God: Just the Godly Lineage of Seth?" I analyzed a much longer version of the myth in 1 Enoch 6-10 to show that the brief account in Genesis was an abbreviated form of a myth about fallen angels who came to earth and married human women. Biblical inerrantists, however, could never accept this, because it would be an admission that at least part of the Bible was based on mythology. Accordingly, some have turned to the let-scripture-interpret-scripture hermeneutics to explain away the problem. They cite Matthew 22:30 where Jesus allegedly said that angels in heaven don't marry and argue from this that the sons of God in Genesis 6, who married the daughters of men, could not have been angels because the author of Matthew said that Jesus said (talk about hearsay) that angels don't marry. Their argument, of course, is based on an assumption of biblical inerrancy. If Matthew said that Jesus said that angels don't marry, then it has to be true that angels don't marry, so if angels don't marry--or so Matthew said that Jesus said that they don't--then the author of Genesis would never have said anything that contradicted that.

See how the let-scripture-interpret-scripture hermeneutics works? It is based on an unverifiable assumption that every verse in the Bible is in complete agreement with every other verse, but that is a literarily unsound way to interpret literature. If, for example, I were reading a story by Sinclair Lewis in an anthology of American literature and encountered a statement whose literal interpretation erroneously dated a historical event, I would be considered a literary idiot if I argued that Lewis could not have meant what the statement appeared to be saying, because elsewhere in the same anthology was a story by Ernest Hemingway in which he referred to the same event and correctly dated it. No literary scholars would consider this a sound way to interpret literature, because they would realize that it was possible for one writer to disagree with or be inconsistent with another. The same is true of the Bible. What the author of Matthew may have said about the sexual status of angels would in no way indicate that the author of Genesis, writing several centuries earlier, would have thought the same thing about the same subject.

The Church of Christ is also one of the main sects that still clings to a firm belief in biblical inerrancy, a belief that I renounced well over forty years ago. Turkel, however, still adheres to this belief while trying to present a more liberal approach to the issue, but no amount of liberal hermeneutics can make an absurd theology sensible, and certainly trying to associate me with a hermeneutics that I abandoned decades ago cannot satisfactorily answer any biblical positions that I now hold.

Those who read Turkel's website articles with any degree of regularity know that he has an obvious prejudice about the Church of Christ. A click of site:tektonics.org "Church of Christ" will open a list of 38 articles by Turkel in which he spoke derogatorily of the Church of Christ, often in a way that rather than answering whatever position of the Church of Christ with which he disagreed dismissed the issue as if identifying it with this denomination was sufficient to discredit it. Those who take the time to check the articles just linked to will see that several of them were directed at me, as if associating me with the Church of Christ were sufficient to reply to my arguments. We see above that Turkel continues this same approach in his replies to my article, so if anyone has a problem with faulty hermeneutics, Turkel is that one. The Church of Christ, for example, firmly believes that Jesus was born of a virgin and that he rose bodily from the dead after his crucifixion. If someone attempted to discredit these fundamental doctrines of Christianity by saying something like, "This is the kind of stuff that we would expect the Church of Christ to believe," would Turkel consider this a satisfactory refutation of those beliefs? Certainly not, so I don't need to say any more about the "hermeneutics" that Turkel often relies on in his "replies" to my articles. Any rational person can see that he is the one who often resorts to faulty hermeneutics. Furthermore, anyone who has done much reading at all at his website knows that in his "explanations" of alleged biblical discrepancies, he has a let-me-tell-you-exactly-what-biblical-writers-meant-here attitude, so it is the height of hypocrisy for him to say that I or anyone else claims to know the very "interpret[at]ive options" that biblical writers had in mind.

Doing hard research with actual answers isn't as much fun as saying the word "flapdoodle" several times and also does not get you the cheap laughs you need to impress and sway other skeptics.

Likewise, doing hard research to find actual answers to my arguments isn't as much fun as associating me with the Church of Christ and also doesn't get Turkel the cheap laughs he needs to impress and sway his sychophantic readers, who think that insults and juvenile quips can substitute for logical argumentation. If Turkel is so good at doing "hard research" why doesn't he demonstrate that he is instead of relying on his Church-of-Christ comments, as if they are sufficient to answer arguments?

And now to "cut off" at the pass. The word for "cut off" in Gen. 17:14 is (WARNING: Though I use Strong's as a source, this means I know Hebrew better than 10,000 Hebrew scholars)

This is a typically ambiguous Turkelism. I suspect that he meant to say that even though he uses Strong's as a source, this doesn't mean that he knows Hebrew better than 10,000 Hebrew scholars. If he didn't mean that, I don't know what he meant, except that as the statement reads, it doesn't make sense or else indicates that he is even more arrogant about his skills in biblical languages than I had previously thought.

[The word for "cut off" in Gen. 17:14 is...] karath. Let's see what this is about, using instances of the word from Genesis to the Samuels:

772. karath, kaw-rath'; a prim. root; to cut (off, down or asunder); by impl. to destroy or consume; spec. to covenant (i.e. make an alliance or bargain, orig. by cutting flesh and passing between the pieces):--be chewed, be con- [feder-] ate, covenant, cut (down, off), destroy, fail, feller, be freed, hew (down), make a league ([covenant]), X lose, perish, X utterly, X want.

It is clear just from this that "cut off" would be able to carry a figurative meaning of "kill". [sic]

If one checked Strong's number 772, he would not find kârath but rather ‘ara’, an Aramaic word that meant "earth, world," or "ground." The correct Strong's number for kârath is 3772. That mistake aside, I fail to see Turkel's rationale for saying that Strong's definition would allow kârath to carry a "figurative" meaning of to kill. This meaning would have been no more figurative than its meaning of to make a covenant with would be figurative. In view of what "cutting" denotes, one would be more exact if he said that kârath could convey the figurative meaning of to make a covenant with. The lexicon by Brown, Driver, and Briggs, which is generally considered more scholarly than Strong's, gives the following break down of the 288 KJV translations of kârath to illustrate its primary meanings of "to cut, cut off, cut down, cut off a body part, cut out, eliminate, kill, [or] cut a covenant."

KJV (288) - covenanted, 2; cut, 9; cut down, 23; cut off, 145; destroy, 4; fail, 6; hew, 2; make, 85; misc, 9; want, 3

When one considers the images conveyed by expressions like "cut down," "cut off," "eliminate," "destroy," etc., he should have no difficulty understanding that kârath conveyed far more often the idea of destroying or eliminating or killing than it did the secondary spin that Turkel tries (below) to put onto the word for no other reason except to try to rationalize away the fact that his god Yahweh sometimes ordered the killing of people for rather trivial reasons. At any rate, Turkel has admitted above that kârath did sometimes convey the sense of killing, so readers should keep that in mind as we wade through the strained "hermeneutics" that he resorts to in order to whitewash his barbaric tribal deity.

But is [sic] also is obviously not the exclusive meaning:

No, it isn't, but this means nothing more than that kârath was just a typical word in that almost all words will have more than one meaning. Context determines the meanings of words with multiple definitions, and we will see below that this is a linguistic fact that Turkel conveniently ignores.

In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates...

Turkel didn't identify the text he was quoting here, but it is found in Genesis 15:18.

The meaning here, if we may be anachronistic, is along the lines of "cut a deal" -- and alludes to the "cut" animals in the prior verses that signified working out of the covenant.

Yes, and it is the context that enables readers to understand that the word here meant "to covenate" rather than to cut off in the sense of destroying or killing. We have only to juxtapose this passage with Genesis 17:14 to see the obvious contextual differences.

15:18 In the same day the LORD made [kârath] a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates...

17:14 And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off [kârath] from his people; he hath broken my covenant.

There is nothing at all in the context of the first verse that even remotely suggests a threat of punishment, but in the second verse the idea of punishment for failure to conform to a covenant provision is quite obvious. Hence, anyone with reasonable intelligence would be able to determine from the context that the idea of a reward was present in the first statement, whereas punishment was conveyed in the second.

We can use the English verb "to kill" as an example of how contexts will give the same word different meanings. It can mean to put to death, as in, "Joe Smith was tried for killing John Doe." No English speaker would have difficulty understanding that killing was used here in its primary sense of to put to death, but in other contexts, the word will not convey that sense, as in, "The Senate committee killed the bill proposed by the house." No English speaker seeing this sentence would think that the writer meant that the members of the committee had pulled out their guns and shot the bill to death; they would understand that the word was being used to mean to prevent approval or passage. I could continue with more examples of how kill can mean to turn off or cause to stop, as in, "He killed the engine," or to consume quickly, as in, "He killed the whole bottle of beer," etc., etc., etc., but these examples are sufficient to show (1) how contexts will determine the meanings of words with multiple definitions and (2) how native speakers have no problems recognizing the contextual meanings of such words. We have seen in the past how Turkel will try to suggest that Hebrew was such an ambiguous language that the meanings of words with multiple definitions were practically impossible to determine, but any linguistically informed person will know that this isn't so.

As we go through Turkel's examples below, we will see that he really doesn't have a point, because context always made the meaning of kârath clear. To show this, I will juxtapose each of his examples with another one where this word was obviously being used in the sense of to kill or destroy.

(See also Gen. 21;[sic] 27, 32;

Genesis 21:27 And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech; and both of them made [kârath] a covenant.... ³² Thus they made [kârath] a covenant at Beersheba: then Abimelech rose up, and Phichol the chief captain of his host, and they returned into the land of the Philistines.

Genesis 41:36 And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish [kârath] not through the famine.

Does anyone have any difficulty seeing here that the first text obviously refers to an agreement that was reached between two parties, whereas the second one just as obviously refers to dying from lack of food during a famine? Notice that kârath in the sense of banishment or social ostracism, which is the spin that Turkel is trying to put onto this word, just doesn't fit the context of the second example.

Context, context, context will always determine the senses of words with multiple meanings. If Turkel ever comes to recognize this, he will look less foolish than he does when he presumes to lecture us on Hebraic "nuances" when he obviously has no credentials in this field but does have seriously flawed skills in using his native English.

[Genesis] 26:28;

Genesis 26:28 And they said, We saw certainly that the LORD was with thee: and we said, Let there be now an oath betwixt us, even betwixt us and thee, and let us make [kârath] a covenant with thee....

Genesis 9:11 And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off [kârath] any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy [kârath] the earth.

Again the context of the first text obviously shows that kârath was used to convey the idea of two parties reaching an agreement, whereas the context of the second shows just as obviously that both examples of kârath convey the idea of destroying or killing life on earth. Notice again that the idea of banishment or social ostracism doesn't fit the second text.

[Genesis] 31:44;

Genesis 31:44 Now therefore come thou, let us make [kârath]a covenant, I and thou; and let it be for a witness between me and thee.

Exodus 8:9 And Moses said unto Pharaoh, Glory over me: when shall I intreat for thee, and for thy servants, and for thy people, to destroy [kârath] the frogs from thee and thy houses, that they may remain in the river only?

The context of the second example certainly doesn't suggest that Moses was going to entreat Yahweh just to banish or ostracize the frogs that had made their way onto land and into the houses of the people. The word here obviously meant to destroy.

Ex. 23:32,

Exodus 23:32 Thou shalt make [kârath] no covenant with them, nor with their gods.

Deuteronomy 7:2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy [kârath] them; thou shalt make [kârath] no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.

The second example here shows that even when the word kârath is used twice within the same context, one can easily see that the first example obviously meant to destroy or kill, whereas the second example meant to enter into a covenant or agreement. Notice again that the sense of banishment or social ostracism just doesn't fit into the context of the first usage of kârath in this verse.

[Exodus] 24:8,

Exodus 24:8 And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made [kârath] with you concerning all these words.

Judges 4:24 And the hand of the children of Israel prospered, and prevailed against Jabin the king of Canaan, until they had destroyed [kârath] Jabin king of Canaan.

This juxtaposition shows that even though kârath in the first example, as in all of the others that Turkel has cited in this section of his article, conveyed the idiomatic sense of parties entering into agreement or covenant relationship, that meaning just won't fit the second example. That destroyed here meant killed is obvious from the broader context of this verse, which shows that Jabin's army was completely destroyed in a fierce battle with the Israelites under the leadership of Barak and the prophetess Deborah. The point, of course, is that contexts enable one to determine the ways that words with multiple meanings are used. Hence, Turkel accomplished nothing when he purposefully picked out examples of where kârath was used in the sense of making a covenant or "cutting a deal." There is no need, then, to quote Turkel's other examples, because my juxtapositions above show that contexts will always determine meanings, so picking a long list of examples where kârath obviously meant to make a covenant with in no way proves that kârath did not mean kill in Genesis 17:14 where Yahweh said [snicker, snicker] that the uncircumcised male should be "cut off from his people." I will show by contextual analyses that when the Bible said that whoever did X or did not do Y should be "cut off from his people," kârath in those contexts was intended to convey the sense of to kill.

[Exodus] 34:10-27; Deut. 5:2-3, 7:2, 9:9, 29:12-25, 31:16; Josh. 9:6-23, 24:25; Judg. 2:2; 1 Sam. 11:1-2, 18:3, 20:16, 22:8, 23:18)

The rest of these examples, as I just noted above, do indeed show that kârath was used in the sense of making a covenant or reaching an agreement, but for every example that Turkel can cite of this usage, I can quote one--and even more--where it was obviously used in the sense of destroying or killing. As I said above and will show again later, biblical contexts clearly determine what words mean, so by showing us that kârath sometimes meant to covenate, Turkel has done nothing more than show that Hebrew was like other languages in that its words often had multiple meanings. As I continue, however, I will show that whenever kârath was used in sentences that said whoever does X or does not do Y will be "cut off" [kârath] from his people, the word meant cut off in the sense of killing or destroying.

And can it indicate death or non-existence [sic]? It can indeed, quite clearly:

Poor Turkel just seems unable to understand that non- is a prefix, like dis-, mis-, un-, etc., and as such, it should be added to root words without a hyphen. One would think that someone as skilled as Turkel thinks he is in biblical languages would know something this simple about his native English.

Gen. 41:36 And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish not through the famine.

(See also Ex. 8:9, where the frogs are "destroyed"; Lev. 26:22, where it is cattle; Deut. 12:29 and 19:1, and Josh 23:4, the nations; Josh. 7:9, the name of Israel; Judg. 4:24, a king; Ruth 4:10, the name of a family; 1 Sam 20:15, enemies; 1 Sam. 24:21, descendants; 1 Sam. 28:9; [sic]

No comment from me is necessary here, because Turkel has done my work for me by citing examples of where kârath obviously meant to destroy or kill or bring to an end. In his list of examples, however, he conveniently avoided citing examples that were parallel to Genesis 17:14, which said that the male who was not circumcised should be "cut off [kârath] from his people." In other words, he avoided parallel examples that said whoever did X or did not do Y should be cut off [kârath] from his people. We will soon see that he did list several examples of persons who were to be "cut off," but all he did was list them. He didn't even try to analyze them to show that cut off [kârath] in these contexts meant only to banish or socially ostracize, which seems to be the meaning he was trying to peddle to his readers.

We will see why he didn't try to analyze the contexts of these examples. Doing so would have shown his readers that [kârath] did mean to put to death in contexts that said whoever does X or does not do Y will be cut off.

It also means your normal slice and dice job:

Ex. 4:25 Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.

I was taken aback when I saw that Turkel was actually dumb enough to cite this example, because its full context is devastating to his attempt to prove that Yahweh would not have commanded males to be killed just for not having been circumcised. Notice the part of the context that I have emphasized in bold print.

Exodus 4:20 So Moses took his wife and his sons, put them on a donkey and went back to the land of Egypt; and Moses carried the staff of God in his hand. ²¹ And Yahweh said to Moses, "When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. ²² Then you shall say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says Yahweh: Israel is my firstborn son. ²³ I said to you, "Let my son go that he may worship me." But you refused to let him go; now I will kill your firstborn son.'" ²⁴ On the way, at a place where they [Moses and family] spent the night, Yahweh met him and tried to kill him. ²⁵ But Zipporah [Moses' wife] took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin, and touched Moses' feet with it, and said, "Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!" ²⁶ So he let him alone. It was then she said, "A bridegroom of blood by circumcision."

This passage has been the subject of considerable controversy and conjecture caused by typically ambiguous biblical pronoun-antecedent references. Whom was Yahweh going to kill, Moses or his son? Moses seems to be the antecedent of him in verse 24, which says that Yahweh met him and tried to kill him, but Moses, being the son of Israelites who hid him for three months (Ex. 2:2) before he was set adrift in an ark of bulrushes and later found by pharaoh's daughter, he would surely have been circumcised. The fact that Yahweh's anger was abated after Zipporah had taken a flint and circumcised [ouch!] her son, indicates that Yahweh was ticked off because Moses had not circumcised one of his sons. Whomever Yahweh may have been angry at, the text is rather clear in showing that his anger was appeased by Zipporah's circumcision of her son, so this text isn't at all friendly to Turkel's claim that in Genesis 17:14 Yahweh meant only that an uncircumcised male should be banished or socially ostracized. Turkel's own text is clear in communicating that Yahweh didn't intend just to banish or ostracize Moses or his son. He intended to kill someone because of failure to observe the rite of circumcision.

I thank Turkel for introducing this text, but if he hadn't quoted it, I would have. It was the first text that came to mind when I started reading about the "blast" that Turkel had had in proving that I was wrong in saying that "cut off" used in reference to uncircumcised males meant to kill.

(Also Lev. 22:24; Lev. 26:30, where images are cut down; Num. 11;[sic]33, where quail is "chewed"; Num. 13:23-4, where grapes are cut from a vine; Deut. 19:5 and 20:19-20, chopping down a tree; Deut. 23:1, one's "privy member"; Josh. 3:13-16, 4:7, water; Josh. 11:21, cutting off a path; Judg. 6:25-30, 9:48-9; 1 Sam. 2:33, cutting off access to the altar; 1 Sam. 5:44, Dagon's hands; 1 Sam. 17:51, Goliath's head; 1 Sam. 20:15, kindness; 1 Sam. 24:4-11, Saul's robe; 1 Sam. 31:9; [sic]

Again, there is no need for me to comment on any of these examples, because their contexts show that kârath was indeed used in various ways, just as we will use the English word cut in the sense of cutting down trees, cutting fruit off trees, cutting off a conversation, cutting off at the pass (as I am now doing to Turkel's attempt to make kârath as used in reference to uncircumcised males not mean to kill), etc. The real fun will begin below when I analyze Turkel's examples of "cutting off" people from Israel.

But then there are the class of cites [sic] like Gen. 17:14 which speak of a person being "cut off" from Israel:

I keep hoping that someday Turkel will learn that cite is a verb and that citation is its noun, but I guess I am asking too much to expect an expert in ancient Near Eastern languages, idioms, and nuances to understand simple matters like this about his native language.

Before I look at his examples of persons who were to be "cut off" [kârath] from their people, I will first show how the expressions "whoever does X or does not do Y shall be cut off from his people" clearly indicated that these people were to be punished by death. I have already noted the way that "cut off" and "put to death" were used interchangeably in reference to the person who would profane the sabbath, but I will restate it here to have the format before us as I begin my replies to Turkel's "cites" [sic] below.

Exodus 31:14 You shall keep the sabbath, because it is holy for you; everyone who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does any work on it shall be cut off [kârath] from among the people. ¹⁵ Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, holy to Yahweh; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall be put to death.

As I showed before, the interchangeable use of "put to death" and "cut off" as punishment to be imposed on those who profaned the sabbath is clear evidence that the idiom "whoever does X or does not do Y shall be cut off from his people" meant that the violator was to be punished by death. Now let's look at some parallel examples in which cut off and put to death were used interchangeably in reference to the same offense.

Leviticus 20:1 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying: ² Say further to the people of Israel: Any of the people of Israel, or of the aliens who reside in Israel, who give any of their offspring to Molech shall be put to death; the people of the land shall stone them to death. ³ I myself will set my face against them, and will cut [kârath] them off from the people, because they have given of their offspring to Molech, defiling my sanctuary and profaning my holy name. ⁴ And if the people of the land should ever close their eyes to them, when they give of their offspring to Molech, and do not put them to death, ⁵ I myself will set my face against them and against their family, and will cut [kârath] them off from among their people, them and all who follow them in prostituting themselves to Molech.

This is clear enough that even Turkel should be able to understand it. When the Bible said that whoever does X (in this case offer their offspring to Molech) shall be cut off from his people, this meant that the offenders were to be punished with death. As Jimmy Durante used to say, "I gotta million of them," so let's look at some more parallels. One of them is the very next verse in the passage quoted immediately above.

Leviticus 20:6 If any turn to mediums and wizards, prostituting themselves to them, I will set my face against them, and will cut [kârath] them off from the people.

This verse doesn't use put to death and cut off interchangeably, but the fact that the preceding verses clearly indicated that Yahweh's setting his face against those who offered their offspring to Molech and cutting them off meant that they were to be put to death is a good indication that the same expressions in the very next verse in reference to those who practiced witchcraft would also mean that these people were to be punished with death. If, however, that isn't enough to convince Turkel, he can take a look at verse 27 in this same chapter, which says that "(a) man or a woman who is a medium or a wizard shall be put to death; they shall be stoned to death...." That should be clear enough for even Turkel to understand. One verse said that mediums and wizards were to be "cut off" [kârath]; a verse later in the same chapter said that mediums and wizards should be put to death.

Overkill is always necessary in trying to deal with Turkel, so let's look at some more examples of whoever does X shall be "cut off" from his people.

Leviticus 18:29 For whoever commits any of these abominations shall be cut off [kârath] from their people.

Among the abominations identified in this chapter were incestual relations with one's mother, sister, granddaughter, stepsister, aunt, and various other familial relationships (vs:6-18), sacrificing offspring to Molech (v:21), homosexuality (v:22), bestiality (v:23), and so on. These were all abominations for which offenders were to be "cut off [kârath] from their people." In its biblically repetitive way, the writer listed most of these same offenses two chapters later but was much more specific in stating the punishment. Rather than listing all the offenses and then stating a punishment for them at the end of the chapter, the writer stated the offense and immediately followed it with the punishment. Accordingly, those who engaged in incestuous relationships were to be "put to death" (Lev. 20:11,12,13,14), those guilty of bestiality were to be "put to death" (vs:15-16), and so on. In one chapter, the offenses were listed, and then at the end of the list the punishment of being "cut off from the people" was decreed to cover all of the "abominations" listed; in the other chapter, the same offenses were listed and then death decreed after each abomination for those who committed them. How can Turkel read these passages and then deny with a straight face that the idiom "whoever does X shall be cut off from his people" meant that the offender was to be punished with death?

Well, the answer to that question is simple: when one is enslaved to an idiotic belief that documents written in prescientific, superstitious times are inerrant, he will deny anything that disputes that belief no matter how crystal clear it may be.

In several of the examples that Turkel himself cited below, their contexts when juxtaposed with parallel texts show that cut off [kârath] was being used to mean a penalty of death to the person who committed the forbidden offenses.

Ex. 12:15 Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel. (See also Ex. 12:19, 30:33, 38; 31:14; Lev. 7:20-7, 17:4-14, 18:29, 19:8, 20:3-18; 22:3 [from the Lord's "presence"]; 23:29; Num. 4:18, 9:13, 15:30-1; 19:13, 20)

Turkel, of course, didn't explicate the contexts of these examples or for that matter even quote them, except for the first one, for to do so would have been self-defeating. Some of the texts that he cited from Leviticus used cut off [kârath] in an obvious sense of putting to death.

Leviticus 17:10 If anyone of the house of Israel or of the aliens who reside among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood, and will cut that person off from the people.

The statement emphasized above sounds familiar, doesn't it? It, should, because we saw it previously in the Levitical passage that decreed death to those who sacrificed their children to the god Molech.

Leviticus 20:1 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying: ² Say further to the people of Israel: Any of the people of Israel, or of the aliens who reside in Israel, who give any of their offspring to Molech shall be put to death; the people of the land shall stone them to death. ³ I myself will set my face against them, and will cut [kârath] them off from the people, because they have given of their offspring to Molech, defiling my sanctuary and profaning my holy name. ⁴ And if the people of the land should ever close their eyes to them, when they give of their offspring to Molech, and do not put them to death, ⁵ I myself will set my face against them and against their family, and will cut [kârath] them off from among their people, them and all who follow them in prostituting themselves to Molech.

So twice in this text, Yahweh said [snicker, snicker] that he would "set his face against" those who sacrificed their children to Molech in contexts where this expression was being used to decree death for this offense. If Yahweh's setting his face against and cutting off those who sacrificed their children to Molech were expressions associated with decreeing the death penalty, then why should we not think that when Yahweh said in Leviticus 17:10 that he would set his face against and "cut off" those who eat blood, he meant that death would be the penalty for eating blood? The rest of the blood-eating context clearly shows that it was considered a serious offense.

Leviticus 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement. ¹² Therefore I have said to the people of Israel: No person among you shall eat blood, nor shall any alien who resides among you eat blood. ¹³ And anyone of the people of Israel, or of the aliens who reside among them, who hunts down an animal or bird that may be eaten shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth. ¹⁴ For the life of every creature--its blood is its life; therefore I have said to the people of Israel: You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood; whoever eats it shall be cut off.

Turkel also cited Leviticus 18:29 and 20:3-18, but I have already explicated these texts above to show that chapter 18 listed several "abominations" and decreed that those who committed them should be "cut off [kârath] from their people," whereas chapter 20 listed several of the same offenses and ordered death for those who committed them. A juxtaposition of the two chapters clearly shows that "cut off" was used to mean the death penalty. Turkel, of course, failed to point this out in his article.

Turkel also cited Leviticus 22:3, but before I explicate it, let's look first at Numbers 4:18, which he also cited.

Numbers 4:17 Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, ¹⁸ "See that the Kohathite tribal clans are not cut off [kârath] from the Levites. ¹⁹ So that they may live and not die when they come near the most holy things, do this for them: Aaron and his sons are to go into the sanctuary and assign to each man his work and what he is to carry. ²⁰ But the Kohathites must not go in to look at the holy things, even for a moment, or they will die."

This chapter gives an account of how the Kohathite clan of the tribe of Levi was consecrated to tend to the sacred furnishings in the tabernacle. The passage just quoted states that the consecration was necessary so that the Kohathites would not be "cut off" [kârath]. It was later said that the consecration was necessary "so that they may live and not die" and that even by being consecrated to work with the holy articles, which work seemed to consist of preparing the items for transportation when camp was broken, the Kohathites were not to "look at the holy things" within the sanctuary, or "they [would] die." This text then is rather clear in saying that unauthorized persons who approached the "holy things" in the sanctuary would be "cut off" or put to death.

In "Lest They Die," an article published in the September/October 1999 issue of The Skeptical Review, I showed that Yahweh had issued dire warnings to unauthorized persons that they would be put to death if they came close to or touched the tabernacle or any of the holy objects in it. Obviously, then, the death penalty was exacted of those who desecrated items that the Hebrews superstitiously considered sacred.

With this in mind, another passage that Turkel cited in Leviticus can easily be seen as a warning that unclean persons approaching "holy things" would be "cut off" in the sense of being put to death. Yahweh is speaking [snicker, snicker] in this passage.

Leviticus 22:2 Direct Aaron and his sons to deal carefully with the sacred donations of the people of Israel, which they dedicate to me, so that they may not profane my holy name; I am Yahweh. ³ Say to them: If anyone among all your offspring throughout your generations comes near the sacred donations, which the people of Israel dedicate to Yahweh, while he is in a state of uncleanness, that person shall be cut off [kârath] from my presence: I am Yahweh.

Cut off was not used interchangeably with die in this specific passage, but it was in the broader context. After discussing various other restrictions concerning uncleanness that the Aaronic priests were required to observe, the writer then warned that death would be the penalty for any violations.

Leviticus 22:9 They [Aaron and sons] shall keep my charge, so that they may not incur guilt and die in the sanctuary for having profaned it: I am Yahweh; I sanctify them.

Several other places in Leviticus warned of death to the Aaronic priests who would violate restrictions required of them during the performance of their duties.

Leviticus 8:33 You [the Aaronic priests] shall not go outside the entrance of the tent of meeting for seven days, until the day when your period of ordination is completed. For it will take seven days to ordain you; ³⁴ as has been done today, Yahweh has commanded to be done to make atonement for you. ³⁵ You shall remain at the entrance of the tent of meeting day and night for seven days, keeping the Lord's charge so that you do not die; for so I am commanded."

Leviticus 15:25 If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness; as in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. ²⁶ Every bed on which she lies during all the days of her discharge shall be treated as the bed of her impurity; and everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her impurity. ²⁷ Whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. ²⁸ If she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count seven days, and after that she shall be clean. ²⁹ On the eighth day she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons and bring them to the priest to the entrance of the tent of meeting. ³⁰ The priest shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make atonement on her behalf before Yahweh for her unclean discharge. ³¹ Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, so that they do not die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst.

That the god Yahweh demanded strict adherence to every minute detail of sacrificial and ceremonial laws under penalty of death even for trivial violations was clearly defined in the Old Testament laws.

Leviticus 10:1 Now Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, each took his censer, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered unholy fire before Yahweh, such as he had not commanded them. ² And fire came out from the presence of Yahweh and consumed them, and they died before Yahweh.

The Levitical priests were required to light their censors with coals from the altar at the entry of the tabernacle (Lev. 16:2), but Nadab and Abihu had apparently used another source of fire on this occasion, so Yahweh punished them with death by sending out fire from his presence [snicker, snicker] to consume them. Even though Aaron had lost two sons in this incident and his other two sons had lost brothers, they were warned under penalty of death not to mourn for them.

Leviticus 10:6 And Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, "Do not dishevel your hair, and do not tear your vestments, or you will die and wrath will strike all the congregation; but your kindred, the whole house of Israel, may mourn the burning that Yahweh has sent. ⁷ You shall not go outside the entrance of the tent of meeting, or you will die; for the anointing oil of Yahweh is on you." And they did as Moses had ordered.

With examples like these of death being required for rather petty offenses under the Levitical law, I find it rather odd that Turkel would think that his god Yahweh would not have decreed death to uncircumcised males. Turkel often talks about the need to interpret the Bible in accordance with the customs and traditions of the time, but he inconsistently ignores his own advice in his interpretation of the penalty that Genesis 17:14 said would be required of uncircumcised males. Why does Turkel think that a god who would instantly incinerate priests for lighting their censers with fire other than that which burned on the tabernacle altar, or would kill them for mourning the deaths of sons and brothers who had been so killed, and would punish with death those who came too close to the tabernacle, and would also kill Kohathites who dared to look upon the sacred objects entrusted to their care would not also extract death of males who were not circumcised?

Without bothering to quote them and certainly not to explicate them, Turkel cited some passages in Numbers that referred to persons being "cut off" [kârath] for offenses that were just as trivial as the one for which Nadab and Abihu were instantly incinerated. A contextual analysis of each of these examples will show that cut off was used to mean a penalty of death.

Numbers 15:30 But whoever acts high-handedly, whether a native or an alien, affronts Yahweh, and shall be cut off from among the people. ³¹ Because of having despised the word of Yahweh and broken his commandment, such a person shall be utterly cut off and bear the guilt.

In several of the examples explicated above, we saw that the expression "cut off from the people" meant being punished with death, so what possible reason could anyone have for thinking that verse 31 above, which referred to a person's being utterly cut off, did not mean that the person should be put to death? Furthermore, the same verse spoke of this person's having to "bear [his] guilt," another expression that was widely used to mean that one being punished by death was personally responsible for receiving this penalty. The person, for example, who committed incest with his sister would "bear his iniquity" (Lev. 20:17) for the penalty of being cut off, i. e., put to death, and so would the person who committed incest with his aunt (Lev. 20:19). Other examples of references to "bearing one's guilt or iniquity" in obvious death penalty cases can be found in Numbers 14:34-35, 18:22, and Ex. 28:43. If Turkel would just follow his own advice and interpret Genesis 17:14 in accordance with the religious customs and traditions of the time, he wouldn't find it at all strange that the ancient Hebrew society would have thought that their god wanted uncircumcised males to be put to death. That the Hebrews thought that their god Yahweh was exacting enough to require the death penalty for rather trivial offenses is evident in an example already referred to, i. e., the man who was stoned to death for picking up sticks on the sabbath.

Numbers 15:32 When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the sabbath day. ³³ Those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses, Aaron, and to the whole congregation. ³⁴ They put him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. ³⁵ Then Yahweh said to Moses, "The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him outside the camp." ³⁶ The whole congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as Yahweh had commanded Moses.

Why does Turkel think that a god who would be this petty would not also be petty enough to require death of males who had not been circumcised? His problem, of course, is that he does not apply to this law his own hermeneutic principle that demands interpretation of the Bible in accordance with the traditions and customs of the time in which it was written. That reluctance is, of course, understandable, because Turkel lives in a more civilized time when such barbarity would be considered appalling; hence, he is unable to imagine that a god he believes in could have been so brutally uncivilized, so he has tried to rationalize away the rather obvious meaning of cut off in Genesis 17:14. He probably has a profound need to believe in a god whose moral temperament is more consistent with the morality of our time.

Karath is a word of some obvious complexity (with reference especially to non-scholars [sic] like Skeptic X who would lay up some simplistic grappo [sic] about "homographs" as an answer)

Kârath was no more complex than various other Hebrew words that had multiple meanings, and in my reply to his citations (without quotations) I didn't just lay up some "simplistic grappo [whatever that is] about homographs" but took the time to quote Turkel's examples and then explicate them in context to show that the expression cut off [kârath], when used in reference to people who were "cut off" for doing X or not doing Y, carried the obvious sense of "put to death." If Turkel thinks otherwise, let him counter my rebuttals with his own explications that show that I erred in my literary analyses of his examples. If Turkel ever learns that contexts determine the meanings of homographs, he probably won't put his foot into his mouth as often as he has done in the past when he tried to show that Hebrew words--which he himself knows practically nothing about--were mistranslated.

so we feel to [sic] sufficient to tie off the matter with the comments of a real scholar, and one at that who has no bones to grind for inerrancy. Jacob Milgrom in his JPS commentary for Numbers synthesizes and examine [sic] the uses of karath and comes to the conclusion that its primary defining point is that it is a punishment "executed solely by deity". [sic]

Well, in principle, I certainly don't disagree with Milgrom, but as I showed above, the ancient Hebrews thought that their god Yahweh was involved in practically every trivial event, so when Nadab and Abihu were incinerated for their terrible sin of firing their censers with coals from some source besides the tabernacle altar, they saw this as a punishment that had been administered by their god Yahweh, just as they thought that putting a person to death for picking up sticks or eating blood or looking on or touching sacred objects was the administration of divine punishment, even though the people themselves may have been throwing the stones at the condemned.

Turkel wasn't too clear in his reference to Milgrom's examination of kârath in his commentary on the book of Numbers. Did Turkel mean that Milgrom concluded that the usages of the word in the book of Numbers were restricted to punishment executed solely by deity? If so, that wasn't saying very much, because this word appeared only nine times in Numbers, and three of those referred to cutting grapes off a vine (13:23-24) and the chewing of quail meat (11:33). Six usages in an entire book would not give a large enough sample to reach any reliable decision about how the word was used. If Turkel meant that Milgrom examined usage of the word not just in Numbers but in other books as well, then primary would be the key word in the statement that Turkel quoted from Milgrom, because there were times when [kârath] was used in the Bible in reference to killing and destruction that were done by mere men. Ezekiel 17:17, for example, referred to mounds and forts that the Egyptian army built to "cut off" [kârath] "many persons." This word was also used in Joshua 11:21 in reference to the Anakim that Joshua cut off in the hill country by Hebron, Debir, and Anab. In Psalm 101:8, the writer, traditionally thought to be David, said that morning by morning he would destroy the wicked in the land and cut off [kârath] all workers of iniquity in the city of Jerusalem. These were not cases where the "cutting off" was done by deities.

By Milgrom's reckoning karath means either extirpation or death - one may be "cut off" by either means,

By either means? Extirpation and death are synonyms, because extirpation means "pulling up by the roots, destruction," or "extermination," so maybe Turkel, expert in linguistics though he may be, didn't understand what Milgrom was saying. I have shown above that in contexts where [kârath] was used to say that whoever did X or did not do Y would be "cut off" from his people, this word conveyed a penalty of death, i. e., destruction or extirpation, so what point did Turkel think he was making here? Milgrom and I are in agreement on the meaning of the word.

but God is the one who exacts the punishment of karath, and decides when to do it, and how.

Well, wasn't Yahweh the one who presumably said in Genesis 17:14 that "the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised... shall be cut off [kârath] from his people"? If Turkel will check, I believe he will find that this statement was indeed attributed to Yahweh, so why wouldn't the killing of an uncircumcised Hebrew child have been as much a case of "God's" exacting punishment as in the other cases cited above where people were "cut off" by direct orders from Yahweh?

And why did Yahweh "decide" to put to death the uncircumcised man child? Well, the verse goes on to say, "He hath broken my covenant." Trivial, yes, but entirely consistent with the character of the god Yahweh as he was depicted in the Old Testament.

God punishes the soul with karath even as men punish the body by their own means.

No amount of quibbling will remove the fact that the Bible claims that Yahweh ordered the man who was caught picking up sticks on the sabbath to be stoned to death. Notice the bold print in the quotation below.

Numbers 15:32 When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the sabbath day. ³³ Those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses, Aaron, and to the whole congregation. ³⁴ They put him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. ³⁵ Then Yahweh said to Moses, "The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him outside the camp." ³⁶ The whole congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as Yahweh had commanded Moses.

The situation here is clear enough that even Turkel should understand it. As previously noted, Yahweh decreed that the person who profaned the sabbath by "working" on it should be "cut off" (put to death). The man caught picking up sticks was stoned to death in accordance with a judgment that Yahweh himself presumably made in the matter. As the stones pelted this man's body, I seriously doubt that he took any comfort from knowing that Yahweh was the one who was "exact[ing]" the punishment of his "soul" and that it was only the people "punish[ing] his body." If Turkel would spend even half as much time critically examining ridiculous claims like this one rather than looking around for some "scholar" who wrote a book or article that agrees with Turkel's idiotic superstitious beliefs, he probably wouldn't look as silly as he obviously has been in trying to make the Bible not mean what it clearly said about "cutting off" or killing people for such trivial events as picking up sticks and not observing the rite of circumcision. Despite how often I have pointed it out to him, Turkel has yet to realize that there is no religious belief that one cannot find "scholarly" support for in books and articles.

It is therefore clear that Skeptic X cannot simply and arbitrarily claim that the persons referenced in Gen. 17:14 are to be executed.

I didn't just arbitrarily claim this. I explicated this text and others to show that in Hebrew society, "cutting off" the person who did X or did not do Y meant putting the person to death. Even Turkel's own "scholar" quoted above agreed that "cut off" [kârath] meant extirpation, and the definition of this word is "to destroy" or "exterminate." If kârath meant to destroy or exterminate, as Turkel's own scholarly source agrees that it did, then why can't I claim that "the persons referenced in Genesis 17:14," who were uncircumcised males, including even uncircumcised male children, were to be executed?

And if he wishes to take the bait on this,

Take what bait? Milgrom's "bait"? Is Turkel so ignorant that he just can't see that Milgrom agrees with me on the meaning of kârath?

he is advised that we will return any reply with the full analysis offered by Milgrom.

Well, I appreciate the warning, but I predict that Turkel will not "return" in this matter, but if he does, all we will see of him will be a "reply" that selectively quotes this article without making any serious attempt to rebut my arguments detailed above, which clearly show that Genesis 17:14 clearly meant that uncircumcised males, even uncircumcised male children, were to be put to death.

We'll see how Skeptic X fares against a scholar of such caliber. Based on the past record, he's not doing well when it comes to such confrontations.

I have no idea what "past record" Turkel was referring to here, because my past records in replying to Turkel's simplistic articles clearly show that he has repeatedly had his head handed to him on a platter. This result didn't come from any special abilities of mine but from the fact that he has tried to defend the absurd premise that the Bible is inerrant. He would never admit this, of course, but I suspect that his constant embarrassment at being unable to defend his position against informed opposition is why he said on the TheologyWeb that he would not reply again to anything I write.

I will never be responding to Till again until after he kicks the bucket (post #5).

Waiting till after I have "kick[ed] the bucket" to reply to me would be a smart tactic on Turkel's part, because when I am dead, I won't be able to humiliate him any further.

I didn't even begin to exhaust the biblical examples of where "cut off" kârath was used in an obvious sense of putting to death, so I dare Turkel to come out of retirement on this issue. If he will do so, I will gladly reply point by point to whatever rebuttal he may write if he will agree to post on his website this article, his reply to it, and my reply to his reply. Needless to say, I will gladly post everything on this site.

He is never going to agree to these conditions, of course, and so this will end the matter. It appears then that the "blast" that Turkel got from kicking me in the "dubery dues" in the matter of what "cut off" meant in Genesis 17:14, has resulted in his finding himself... well, cut off at the pass. I got no particular pleasure in doing this, because showing again that he has taken an indefensible position was as easy as the situation in the TV commercial where the guy walking through a supermarket talking on a cell phone, stops at a cart that has in it a baby holding a stick of candy, takes the candy from the baby, and then walks on.

Skeptic X on Circumcision Requirements