Turkel(1):
To our opponent we now address these questions:

1.Do you wish to deny that when Yahweh said he would give Abraham and his descendants the land in Gen. 12:7, 13:15, etc. it was meant in an entirely different way than it would have been understood by other persons living in the Ancient Near East?

Till(1):
I deny that Turkel has a proper grasp of the ancient concept of land ownership.

Turkel(2):
Our opponent has failed, with his non-relevant [sic] arguments referncing [sic] mind-reading and concepts of personal property not at all incompatible with Yahweh's ultimate ownership of the land, to show that we do not have a proper grasp of the ancient concept of land ownership.

Till(2):
This entire debate is a testimony to Turkel's failure to make cogent arguments, defend them, and then rebut my counterarguments.  I have reached the final one third of Turkel's second-round "reply," and I still find him dismissing major arguments and rebuttals with cut-and-pasted evasive remarks about "fluff," "irrelevance," "superfluous commentary," and claims of having "already" answered this or assurances that he does answer it "later" or "below."  The first 15 parts of my second-round replies to Turkel's second round have already passed 170,000 words.  With at least five more parts necessary to finish answering the rest of Turkel's second round "reply," I will likely reach 250,000 words.  Probably 50% of these words were wasted on the evasive comments that Turkel cut and pasted in his so-called replies.  Had I not begun truncating those cut-and-pasted evasions after I had responded to each of them, readers would have been subjected to several thousand more words that did nothing but repeat the same old evasions that Turkel resorted to as rationalizations for not replying to my arguments.

At any rate, it should be obvious to all readers with any sense at all of what constitutes formal debating that Turkel has spent most of his time ducking and dodging arguments that are clearly relevant to this debate.  As Part Sixteen of my replies continues, we will see more of the same old evasions.  As before, if they are just the cutting and pasting of previous evasions, I will truncate them to spare readers the time of wading through what they have already seen.

Till(1):
He has taken it [the "Ancient Near Eastern context" of land, people, and their deity] to an extreme not justified by the ancient concept that gods had territorial domains. Belief in Bacchus, for example, did not preclude the recognition that vineyards could be privately owned.

Turkel(2):
We have never argued that Yahweh's (or Bacchus', or whomever's [sic]) ultimate ownership precluded the ability of humans to transact business with the land; we have rather argued that Yahweh holds ultimate jurisdiction with respect to Israelite occupation and use of the land, including the ability to transact business associated with the land. This point our opponent has not in any sense refuted.

Till(2):
As long as Turkel keeps denying this, I will continue to quote where he said that Yahweh's "giving" of the land did not "connote any modern sense of personal property."  These are his very words quoted directly from his first-round reply when he undertook to explain what Genesis 12:7 and 13:15 meant in saying that Yahweh would "give" the land to Abraham's descendants for an everlasting possession. I will emphasize the sentence where Turkel said what he is now denying he said.

Abraham and his descendants are "given" the land, but what does that mean? It does not connote any modern sense of property ownership. What it does mean for Abraham to have been "given" the land is made most clear within the Ancient Near Eastern context of the relationship between a land, its people, and their deity.

Turkel said this in his first-round reply to my original article.  Readers can scour this article till doomsday, but they will find nothing that he said about Yahweh's "ultimate ownership" or "ultimate jurisdiction" of the land and nothing said about individual rights to "transact business associated with the land."  His original position was as quoted above, i. e., Yahweh's "giving" of the land did not connote any modern sense of property ownership, but when my reply to his first round showed that the ancient Hebrews clearly did have concepts of property ownership much like the "modern sense of property ownership," Turkel did what he invariably does when an assertion of his is shown to be wrong: he backpedaled and began parroting the denial that we have now seen him cut and paste at least a dozen times.

As for his claim that I have "not in any sense refuted" his claim that Yahweh "held ultimate jurisdiction with respect to Israelite occupation and use of the land" but that the Israelites could still "transact business associated with the land," I have shown that this is a second-round position that he took after seeing my first-round rebuttal of his feudal-landlord concept, so at the time that Turkel made the assertion above, certainly I hadn't "refuted" it, because I didn't see it until he wagged it into his second-round reply, which I am now answering.  I had, however, soundly refuted his first-round position, at which time he was saying that Yahweh was like a feudal landlord and the Israelites were like the vassals whom the feudal landlord permitted to live on his land.  That original position is inconsistent with what he is now saying (to try to squeeze out of the corner he found himself backed into), because the vassals of a feudal landlord could not "transact business associated with the land," because they had no right to sell it, barter it, or in any way transfer its ownership to a third party.  Since the Israelites obviously did exercise such rights, Turkel's feudal-landlord argument is conspicuously unparallel to the Israelite relationship to their land, which they could sell or barter.

Turkel has claimed that the Israelites were just tenants or "rentors" [sic] of the land, but he has evaded my requests that he explain how they could have sold or bartered the land they lived on if they were just "tenants" or "rentors."  What tenants or renters have the right to sell the land they are renting?

If Turkel is going to cling to his feudal-landlord analogy, he must explain these problems in his theory.  

Till(1):
I showed that Turkel's feudal-landlord concept is contrary to some rather clear biblical references to buying and selling land.

Turkel(2):
We have never argued that Yahweh's ultimate ownership precluded the ability of humans to transact business, such as buying and selling the right to land among humans, with the land; we have rather argued that Yahweh holds ultimate jurisdiction with respect to Israelite occupation and use of the land, including the ability to transact business associated with the land.

Till(2):
Having just replied to this denial, I see no need to respond to it again.  As Turkel keeps repeating it in hope of hiding his inability to rebut my argument, I will quote the rebuttal again.

Turkel(2):
This point our opponent has not in any sense shown to be contrary to the Ancient Near Eastern context of the relationship between a land, its people, and their deity.

Till(2):
The major problem with this "Ancient Near Eastern context of the relationship between a land, its people, and their deity" is that it does not explain away the inconsistencies that I have identified in the land-promise texts.  Furthermore, as I have repeatedly pointed out, Turkel has only asserted that an "Ancient Near Eastern" concept would have made the land promise conditional, but he has not presented any evidence to support it.  As a matter of fact, Turkel has switched horses in midstream and now, after having originally asserted that Yahweh's promise to Abraham was conditional to the behavior of Abraham's descendants, is trying to tap dance his way around Deuteronomy 9:3ff by asserting that the promise was partly unconditional and partly conditional.  This modification in his position came after I had pointed out that Deuteronomy 9:3ff clearly said that Yahweh was giving the land to the Israelites of that time even though they had been unrighteous and rebellious from the day they had come out of Egypt.  If Yahweh was going to give the land to a group (descended from Abraham) as unrighteous as those described in this text, then the land promise couldn't have been dependent on the behavior of Abraham's descendants.  Recognizing the problem that he confronted in this text, Turkel pulled a switch and said, in effect, "Well, yes, the giving of the land was unconditional, but the keeping of the land was conditional to the behavior of the Israelites."

Turkel, of course, gave no supporting evidence for this modification of his position.  He just stated it and expected everyone to buy it.  On the other hand, I nipped this change of position in the bud with the following rebuttal argument, which I will requote here to keep everyone reminded of just how far Turkel is from sustaining his position.

Part Eight ended with Turkel's assertion that "the behavior [of the Israelites] is stressed [in Deuteronomy 9] precisely in order to make it clear that entry into the land at all is an act of unmerited grace."  He then said that he would not comment any further on the verses that I had quoted below to show the catalog of sins that Moses alleged the Israelites had been guilty of from the day they came out of Egypt.  The purpose of my explication of this chapter was to show that if the behavior of the Israelites had been a condition for Yahweh's fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, then these Israelites would never have been given the land because, according to Moses, they had been guilty of just about every sin imaginable.

Recognizing the problem that this passage posed to his position that the land promise was conditional, Turkel began to take a new track.  He modified his position to make the giving of the land unconditional but the retention of the land conditional.  In other words, he began to argue that the giving of the land to the Israelites was an unconditional act of "unmerited grace" (an anachronistic application of a New Testament principle), which enabled the Israelites to ride into the land of Canaan on "Abraham's coattails," but, so Turkel suddenly began to claim, retaining the land would be conditional to their obedience to the commandments of Yahweh.

You can always expect a biblical inerrantist to keep modifying his position as he encounters rebuttal arguments that expose problems in it, and that is what has happened here.  This debate began with Turkel originally arguing that the land promise was conditional from the start, because it was just an "Ancient Near Eastern concept" of the relationship between land, people, and their deity that land given by deities was always conditional, but confronted with the problem presented by Deuteronomy 9, Turkel has revised his position to make entry into the land unconditional but retention of the land conditional.  In typical inerrantist fashion, however, Turkel has modified his position without giving adequate consideration to a fact that I have repeatedly called to his attention: the original land promise consisted of two parts.  The first part was an unconditional promise that the land would be given to Abraham's descendants because of Abraham's fidelity.  The second part was that it would be given to them as an everlasting possession.

Genesis 17:8 And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. ⁸Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God."

Genesis 22:15 Then the Angel of Yahweh called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, ¹⁶and said: "By Myself I have sworn, says Yahweh, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son—¹⁷blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. ¹⁸In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice."

Genesis 26:3  Dwell in this land, and I will be with you [Isaac] and bless you; for to you and your descendants I give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father. ⁴And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; ⁵because Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws."

I'm certainly glad that Turkel finally realized that if Yahweh had sworn to give the land to Abraham's descendants because of Abraham's fidelity, he could not have kept the land from the Israelites without breaking his promise.  However, in recognizing that the promise to give the land to Abraham's descendants was necessarily unconditional, Turkel did not go quite far enough, because there was a second part to Yahweh's unconditional promise: Yahweh would not only give the land to Abraham's descendants because of Abraham's fidelity, but he would give the land to them as an everlasting possession.  Turkel therefore cannot argue that the Israelites rode into the promised land on Abraham's coattails as an "act of unmerited grace" but that keeping the land after this was conditional to their behavior, because just as the promise to give Abraham's descendants the land was unconditional so was the promise to give the land to them as an everlasting promise. 

If not, why not?

Furthermore, if, as Turkel now seems to realize, the promise to give the land to Abraham's descendants was an unconditional promise by which the Israelites rode into Canaan on the coattails of Abraham, the extent of the land promise would also have been necessarily unconditional.

Genesis 15:18 On the same day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates...."

Exodus 23:31 And I will set your bounds from the Red Sea to the sea, Philistia, and from the desert to the River. For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.

Joshua 1:1 After the death of Moses the servant of Yahweh, it came to pass that Yahweh spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, saying: ²"Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them—the children of Israel. ³Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses. ⁴From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory.

The sum of all this is that Yahweh's land promise was threefold: (1) Land would be given to Abraham's descendants because of Abraham's fidelity.  (2) This land would be an everlasting possession for Abraham's descendants.  (3) This land would be contained within defined borders from the River of Egypt to Lebanon and from the River Euphrates to the Great Sea [Mediterranean].  So Turkel needs to explain why number 1 was unconditional so that the Israelites could ride into Canaan on Abraham's coattails, but numbers 2 and 3 were conditional to the behavior of the Israelites after they had gotten their free ride into Canaan.

This rebuttal, of course, came earlier in my second-round replies, because Turkel's position that it refuted wasn't even stated in his first round.  We will see if he replies to this or dismisses it with some of his usual cut-and-pasted evasions.

Till(1):
This feudal-landlord concept would have made the Israelites serfs, who simply tended the land, but serfs could not buy and sell land, whereas the Israelites could and did buy and sell land.

Turkel(2):
Our opponent has here, without any justification at all, imposed a concept (serfdom) and one of its attendant features (inability to buy and sell land) upon the text.

Till(2):
I've learned not to be surprised by anything that Turkel might say to try to dance his way around problems that I point out in his assertions, but I must say that the audacity of his statement above surprises even me.  As the following quotation from his first-round reply to my original article will show, He was the one who imposed the concept of a feudal-landlord relationship into this debate in a comment he made about Judges 18:9.

Judges 18:9 And they said, Arise, that we may go up against them: for we have seen the land, and, behold, it is very good: and are ye still? be not slothful to go, and to enter to possess the land.

The last cite is most relevant. Yarash represents the human activity of transfer of property or territory, including in war. But it is quite clear that this transfer did not involve legal ownership as we understand it, but possession. Evidence from ANE documents and the OT further clarify the nature of the relationship between a deity and its people as that of a feudal landlord and his tenants.

Notice also that Turkel said immediately above that Yahweh's transfer of the land "did not involve legal ownership as we understand it."  This statement simply underscores the obvious fact that Turkel's position in his first-round reply to my article was that "giving" the land did not "connote any modern sense of property ownership," but after I bombarded him with examples that showed this position was incorrect, he backpedaled quickly and began saying, "I have never argued that Yahweh's ultimate ownership of the land precluded, etc., etc., etc."  At any rate, the quotation above from his first-round reply shows that he was the one who introduced the "feudal" concept, which inherently included land tenants known as serfs, so he cannot accuse me of trying to "impose" serfdom "and its attendant features" into the debate.

If, therefore, Turkel was going to argue his case by appealing to this analogy, I was entitled to point out the problems in it.  Webster's New World College Dictionary defines feudalism as an "economic, political, and social system in which land, worked by serfs who were bound to it, was held by vassals in exchange of military and other services given to landlords," so feudalism, an analogous concept that Turkel himself introduced, was inextricably associated with serfdom.  The Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopedia described feudalism as a "local, agricultural, political economy," which consisted of a manorial system of lord, peasant, villein and serf" (1960, vol. 1, p. 447, emphasis added).  The explanation of the system went on to say that "ownership of the land was vested in [a] king" and under him was a hierarchy of nobles, the highest of whom held land granted by the king, and under this noble were those who held land granted by the highest nobles. The lowest in the order was a "seigneur" [lord], who held just one manor.  The seigneur or lord of the manor gave "protection and personal use of land in return for personal services and dues." 

This system sounds very much like what Turkel was asserting, so since he himself introduced the feudal-landlord concept into the debate, I was certainly within my rights to point out the consequences of his analogy.  If Yahweh was analogous to the manor lords, then the Israelites would have been analogous to the villeins [village dwellers within a manor] and the serfs, and this is where Turkel's analogy breaks down.  Villeins and serfs didn't own the land they used, so they couldn't sell it or barter it.  As I have shown, Israelites were entitled to sell or barter their land "inheritance," so Turkel's feudal-landlord analogy must be abandoned.  Likewise, "rentors" [sic] cannot sell the property they rent, so this leaves Turkel's feudal landlord/tenant/"rentor" [sic] analogy up that famous creek without a paddle.

This is the kind of predicament that one gets himself into when he embarks on a mission to defend the inerrancy of ancient documents that have undergone no telling how many editings and revisions since first having been written by superstitious people who believed in gods who chatted with patriarchs in the distant past and selected them from all others on earth to be his "chosen people."  At any rate, Turkel cannot accuse me of "impos[ing] a concept" of serfdom into the debate, because he was the one who argued that the Israelites were given their land only in a feudal-landlord sense.

Turkel(2):
However, he is nevertheless shooting himself in the foot, since indeed the Israelites were forbidden to sell the land permanently, as a cite our opponent used above showed, and as he admitted it showed.

Till(2):
My foot is doing quite well.  The touch of gout in it has even cleared up since Turkel previously thought that I had shot myself in the foot.  Since I have never argued that the Israelites had an absolute, completely unrestricted right to sell their land or that buyers had an absolute, completely unrestricted right to the land they bought, I can't see where I have shot myself in the foot.  The restrictions were intended, among other things, to keep the land within the tribe to whom the original inheritor had belonged, and this has been shown by my references to Zelophehad's daughters and Boaz's purchase of land that Naomi had inherited when her husband died. 

Is Turkel completely unaware that legal restrictions can be put on land that one gains through inheritance?  I own land, which will pass to my heirs when I die.  As my will is now written, there are no restrictions on my heirs concerning the land they will inherit, so if they want to sell it immediately after probation, they will be free to do so.  However, if I so desired, I could stipulate that my heirs could sell the land only to someone who is related to me.  Such a restriction, however, would not alter the fact that following probation, the land would belong to them. In addition to such restrictions as this that can be imposed on heirs even in our time, some modern countries have different kinds of restrictions on property ownership.  Some countries don't permit owners to sell their land to foreigners, but these countries still have a "modern sense of property ownership."  In some countries, a person may own land without owning the water or minerals on the land, which belong to the government.  In some countries, a person who owns land may not own any archaeological relics that may be discovered on it, yet it would be absurd to claim that such restrictions as these negate concepts of personal ownership of property.

Turkel(2):
 He is also, nevertheless, assuming that Yahweh's feudal landlord-tenant relationship included every single aspect of what he has perceived to be essential elements of a human feudal landlord-tenant relationship, which may or may not even apply in the Ancient Near East.

Till(2):
I haven't perceived anything about a feudal landlord-tenant relationship, because I wasn't the one who introduced the concept into this debate.  Turkel did that.  I am just pointing out flaws in an analogy that was his own perception.  No analogy will ever be perfectly parallel, but an argument by analogy to be effective must be parallel in all aspects essential to the argument.  I have shown that Turkel's feudal landlord-tenant argument fails, because it lacks a very important parallel.  Serfs could not sell or barter to anyone the land they rented.  The Israelites could.  Hence, Turkel's analogy fails, for if anyone can sell or barter something he has been "given," he has an ownership of that property, which just wasn't present in the feudal system that Turkel has appealed to in trying to find some way to explain the inconsistencies in the land-promise texts.

Till(1): 
As in the case of Naboth, private ownership of land entitled him to refuse to sell it even to a king.

Turkel(2):
This is a non-relevant [sic] example,

Till(2):
Then that would mean that it is an irrelevant example, wouldn't it?

Turkel(2):
since Ahab was not a deity and Naboth was not his subject as a deity.

Till(2):
That is beside the point, because Turkel has claimed (in the statement quoted above) that Yahweh's giving of the land to Abraham's descendants did not "connote any modern sense of ownership" and that Yahweh's transfer of the land "did not involve legal ownership as we understand it," but the story of Naboth and Ahab shows otherwise.

1 Kings 21:1 And it came to pass after these things that Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard which was in Jezreel, next to the palace of Ahab king of Samaria. ²So Ahab spoke to Naboth, saying, "Give me your vineyard, that I may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near, next to my house; and for it I will give you a vineyard better than it. Or, if it seems good to you, I will give you its worth in money." ³But Naboth said to Ahab, "Yahweh forbid that I should give the inheritance of my fathers to you!"

Naboth owned the land that he had received through an ancestral inheritance, which no doubt was a reference to property ownership that had been in his family since the land allocations claimed in the book of Joshua.  The land had belonged to his ancestors and had been passed down from generation to generation until Naboth became the owner in the time of Ahab.  Turkel claimed (in the quotation above) that Yahweh's giving of land did not "connote any modern sense of property ownership" and "did not involve legal ownership as we understand it," but the tale of Naboth and Ahab--and others I could cite--clearly shows otherwise.

Turkel(2):
Moreover, we have never argued that Yahweh's ultimate ownership precluded the ability of humans to transact business, such as buying and selling the right to land among humans****

Till(2):
Turkel is back to "answering" my arguments by just cutting and pasting the same evasive comment over and over.  I answered this same evasion above, so I won't quote it here, but as Turkel keeps repeating it, I will periodically quote it to keep readers reminded that I have rebutted it.

Till(1):
I certainly don't deny that an ancient text that referred to a god "giving" land to an individual and his descendants would have meant what people living in that time understood the "giving" and receiving of land meant, but I just don't think that Turkel has it quite right.

Turkel(2):
This is a fudge by our opponent, who admits that the texts do speak of a god "giving" land to persons, but merely denies our argument without presenting any alternative as to what the texts do mean when they speak of a god "giving" the land to persons.

Till(2):
The one fudging is obviously Turkel, who has yet to give a cogent explanation of what he meant by this "Ancient Near Eastern" concept of land ownership that he has repeated like a mantra since the beginning of this debate.  He will say one thing but then say another when his first claim has been shown to be incorrect.  For example, he said that Yahweh's giving of the land did not "connote any modern sense of property ownership," but after I had shown several cases of very modernlike concepts of personal property ownership, as in the cases of Abraham's purchase of the cave of Machphela, Boaz's purchase of Elimelech's ancestral property, and Naboth's refusal to sell his vineyard to Ahab, Turkel started fudging: "We have never argued that any deity's ultimate ownership precluded the ability of humans to transact business in terms of personal property;."  He originally said that Yahweh's land promise was conditional to the behavior of Abraham's descendants, but after confronting Deuteronomy 9:3ff, which clearly allocated the land of Canaan to Abraham's descendants, who were not keeping Yahweh's commandments at the time and hadn't been for 40 years, Turkel fudged again and said, "Well, the giving of the land was unconditional, but the keeping of the land was conditional."  That, however, was not what he originally said.  It is obvious, then, that when Turkel sees evidence that can't be squared with an original position, he will modify his position. 

And he has the audacity to accuse me of fudging?

Alternatives?  Turkel wants alternatives?  How about this alternative?  Ancient references to gods "giving" land were nothing more than a superstitious belief of the time, because there were no gods to "give" land.  With the one exception of the Hebrew god Yahweh, Turkel would agree with me, although earlier he had to pretend that he was "agnostic" about the existence of gods like Chemosh, Dagon, and Baal.  Jephthah, for example, spoke to the king of the Amorites about land that the god Chemosh had "given" to the Amorites and land that Yahweh had "given" to the Hebrews (Judges 11:24), but for all of his talk about agnosticism pertaining to gods like Chemosh, Turkel no more believes that they were real than he believes that the Tooth Fairy is real.  Because of the silliness of his belief that Yahweh, of all the tribal gods of that time, was a real deity, he has to pretend that he is undecided on the existence of gods like Chemosh.

The alternative to Turkel's "Ancient Near Eastern concept" of land, people, and their deity is simple: there were no deities to "give" land.  People simply believed that there were deities who "gave" land just as they believed there were deities who enjoyed the "sweet savor" of the animals that they incinerated in homage to them and just as they believed that deities blessed them with prosperity and victories in battles when they pleased their deities but punished them with drought, famine, pestilence, etc. and defeat in battles when they displeased their deities.  In a word, Turkel is trying to explain away obvious inconsistencies in the biblical text by appealing to ancient superstitions that he himself doesn't even believe in except, of course, when they pertained to his god Yahweh.

Turkel is doing everything he can to tap dance around the textual problems: (1) Yahweh presumably told Abraham that he would give all the land of Canaan to Abraham's descendants.  (2) Yahweh said that he would give this land to Abraham's descendants as an everlasting possession.  (3) Yahweh said that he would give this land to Abraham's descendants because of Abraham's faithfulness in keeping Yahweh's commandments, laws, and statutes.

If Yahweh promised the land as an everlasting possession because of Abraham's fidelity, then the fidelity of Abraham's descendants could not have been a condition of fulfillment.  To later make the behavior of Abraham's descendants a condition of keeping the promise would have made Yahweh unfaithful to his word, and this is exactly what "Moses" noted in Deuteronomy 9:5.

It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh your God drives them out from before you, and that He may fulfill the word which Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

This passage has given Turkel fits ever since I quoted it in my first-round reply to him, because it clearly shows that Yahweh understood that he had to give the land to the Israelites of that time, no matter how unrighteous and rebellious they were, because he had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that he would give the land to their descendants because of Abraham's fidelity. As I have repeatedly pointed out, once that Yahweh had said that Abraham's faithfulness was the reason why the land would be given to Abraham's descendants, there was no way that the behavior of Abraham's descendants could become a condition for receiving the land, and Deuteronomy 9:5 makes that very clear.

It is so clear that upon seeing it, Turkel was forced to backpedal (fudge?) and modify his original position, so suddenly we found Turkel no longer saying that the entire promise was conditional and would have been so understood in the "Ancient Near Eastern context" in which the promise had been made but that the "giving" of the land was unconditional, and the "keeping" of the land was conditional.

I have shot that modification of Turkel's position full of holes by simply pointing out that the promise that Yahweh made because of Abraham's fidelity consisted of two parts: (1) Yahweh would give all the land to Abraham's descendants.  (2) He would give the land as an everlasting possession.  Since the promise consisted of these two parts, Turkel cannot just arbitrarily declare that part one was unconditional but part two was conditional.  Abraham's fidelity was the condition on which the promise was made, so this condition cannot be applied to just the first part; it must be applied to both parts.

If not, why not?

This is a question that Turkel doesn't want to answer. He has the audacity to accuse me of fudging, but he has put enough fudge into this debate to open a candy factory.

Till(1):
This [the ancient concept of gods, land, and people], however, is really beside the point.

Turkel(2):
Our opponent merely throws a smokescreen and evades presenting any alternative as to what the texts do mean when they speak of a god "giving" the land to persons, which he needs to do in order to give his own explanations credence and consistency.

Till(2):
No denser smoke screen has been laid down in this debate than Turkel's unexplicated and unsupported claim of an "Ancient Near Eastern concept" of land, people, and deities that somehow made Yahweh's land promise, given because of Abraham's fidelity, conditional to the behavior of Abraham's descendants, but I have explained probably fifty times by now that the promise itself stated the reason why Yahweh was making the promise.  That reason was Abraham's fidelity, so the fidelity of Abraham was the "condition" on which the promise was made.  Turkel should be able to understand that, as this tale was told, if Abraham had not been faithful in keeping Yahweh's commandments, laws, and statutes, then Yahweh would not have made this promise, but once that the promise had been made and Abraham was dead, the "conditions" were forever sealed.  Yahweh had to give the land to Abraham's descendants or else break his promise to Abraham, And Deuteronomy 9:5 makes this point very clear.  Turkel cannot alter the "condition" of the promise by asserting--without any kind of evidential support--that the "giving" of the land was unconditional but the "keeping" of the land was conditional, because--and try to read this very carefully, Turkel--the promised contained two parts, i.e., the giving and the keeping [as an everlasting possession], both of which were based on Abraham's fidelity, so if the first part was unconditional [because of Abraham's fidelity], then the second part was also unconditional [because of Abraham's fidelity].

If not, why not?

This is a question that Turkel keeps evading, yet he accuses me of "fudging."

Till(1):
If Turkel has paid attention to my replies, he should have noticed by now that I have acknowledged that ancient people superstitiously believed that gods ruled over different territories and domains, but this concept obviously didn't preclude the notion of personal property.

Turkel(2):
We have never argued that any deity's ultimate ownership precluded the ability of humans to transact business in terms of personal property; we have rather argued that the deity holds ultimate jurisdiction with respect to occupation and use of the land**** 

Till(2):
Here is the same old same old again.  I have shown that Turkel did indeed say in his first-round reply to my original article that Yahweh's giving of the land did not "connote any modern sense of property ownership," but, as I have documented with biblical examples, concepts of personal property are recurrent in the Bible.  This point has become like Turkel's backpedaling on his original position that Yahweh's land promise was completely conditional in keeping with his so-called "Ancient Near Eastern concept."  When he saw evidence like Deuteronomy 9:3ff, which was irreconcilable with this position, he backpedaled and said, "Well, the giving of the land was unconditional, but the keeping was conditional."  He is doing the same thing with his original claim that a deity's giving of land did not "connote any modern sense of property ownership."  Having since seen clear evidence to the contrary, he is now saying, "Well, we have never argued that Yahweh's ultimate ownership precluded the ability of humans to transact business, such as buying and selling the right to land among humans."  What position Turkel will take at any given moment will depend on which direction the forensic wind is blowing.  If he confronts evidence that disputes an earlier position he took, he will scream, "I never meant that!"

Till(1):
I have shown in my replies that Yahweh told Abraham that he would "give" all the land he could see from north to south, from east to west, to him and his seed forever (Gen. 15:14-17). This is just one of many biblical passages where the promise was made without conditions attached.

Turkel(2):
We have shown, contrary to our opponent, that the Ancient Near Eastern context of the relationship between a land, its people, and their deity means that conditions were attached,

Till(2):
Where exactly has Turkel "shown" this? I don't deny that he has asserted it--repeatedly--but he certainly hasn't shown it. 

Here is Turkel's idea of "showing" that this so-called "Ancient Near Eastern context... means that conditions were attached."  He cited a passage where Ruth declared to her mother-in-law that she would go to the land of Israel and that Naomi's people would be her people and Naomi's god would be her god.  From this, Turkel "reasoned" that Ruth understood that if she was moving from one land to another, she would have to change her allegiance to the deity who ruled over Israel.  The following modus ponens syllogism seems to state Turkel's argument.

1.  If Ruth changed her allegiance to Yahweh upon going into the land of Israel, then there existed at this time an "Ancient Near Eastern" belief that keeping the use of land was conditional to one's obedience to the god who owned the land.

2.  Ruth changed her allegiance to Yahweh upon going into the land of Israel.

3.  Therefore, there existed at this time an "Ancient Near Eastern" belief that keeping the use of land was conditional to one's obedience to the god who owned the land.

Anyone who knows the meaning of non sequitur can see through this line of reasoning.  In the first place, there could have been many reasons why Ruth would have changed her theistic allegiance, and there is no textual evidence that Ruth changed her allegiance to Yahweh only after she had moved to the land of Israel.  As I showed when Turkel introduced this so-called argument, the biblical text indicates that Ruth had already accepted Yahweh as her God while she was still in Moab.

Ruth 1:6 Then she [Naomi] arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that Yahweh had visited His people by giving them bread. ⁷Therefore she went out from the place where she was, and her two daughters-in-law with her; and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. ⁸And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go, return each to her mother's house. Yahweh deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. ⁹Yahweh grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband."

So she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. ¹⁰And they said to her, "Surely we will return with you to your people." ¹¹But Naomi said, "Turn back, my daughters; why will you go with me? Are there still sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands? ¹²Turn back, my daughters, go—for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, if I should have a husband tonight and should also bear sons, ¹³would you wait for them till they were grown? Would you restrain yourselves from having husbands? No, my daughters; for it grieves me very much for your sakes that the hand of Yahweh has gone out against me!"

¹⁴Then they lifted up their voices and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. ¹⁵And she said, "Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law." ¹⁶But Ruth said: "Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. ¹⁷ here you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. Yahweh do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me."

As I pointed out in my previous reply to this "argument" (which I won't quote here), Ruth's appeal to Yahweh in the last verse quoted above was made while she and Naomi were still in Moab, where, according to Turkel's theory, Chemosh was the god to whom she would have owed allegiance.  Furthermore, I pointed out in my first reply to this that Ruth had been married to Naomi's son for 10 years (v:4), so there is plausible reason to believe that Ruth had converted to her husband's religion before his death just as people today will convert to their spouses' religions.  Indeed, the Old Testament is full of prohibitions against Israelite marriage to people from other tribes and nations, and the reasons given were that such marriages could turn people to the worshiping of other gods besides Yahweh (Deut. 7:3-4).

³Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. ⁴For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods....

Ruth had apparently done what many people even today do and had accepted her spouse's religion, so there is no real evidence to support Turkel's claim that Ruth was accepting Yahweh as her god because she believed that moving to a land "owned" by Yahweh required her to do this.

Another biblical example of spousal influence in one's religious choices is seen in Solomon's marriages to foreign women, who influenced him to worship their gods.

1 Kings 11:4 For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David. ⁵For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. ⁶Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not fully follow the LORD, as did his father David. ⁷Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, on the hill that is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the abomination of the people of Ammon. ⁸And he did likewise for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.

The text in Ruth 1 says nothing at all about why Ruth chose Yahweh to be her god, so to assert, as Turkel did, that she chose Yahweh because she was leaving a land "owned" by another god (presumably Chemosh) and was going into Yahweh's land and realized that a change of land necessitated a change of deities is pure speculation on Turkel's part. It is entirely likely that Ruth adopted Yahweh as her god from having been married for 10 years into a family that worshiped Yahweh.  After all if the wisest person who ever lived (1 Kings 3:12) could have changed theistic allegiance through spousal influence, there is certainly no reason to think that Ruth's decision did not result from her marriage to a worshiper of Yahweh.

Turkel(2):
and he has offered no response other than a snide comment about "mind reading" and an irrelevant diversion into conceptions of personal property among human tenants that does not preclude or negate ultimate ownership and right of discretion of use and occupation by the deity.

Till(2):
To speak of "conceptions of personal property among human tenants" is a contradiction of terms when the personal property referred to is the land where the "tenants" reside, because tenants have no personal property rights with reference to the land they "rent."  Since the ancient Hebrews did exercise rights of property ownership, they could not have been considered just "tenants."  They were owners of the land. To say that I have offered "no response" to his "Ancient Near Eastern" rantings is another example of Turkel's flagrant misrepresentation.  What I just said immediately above was a restatement of my previous rebuttal of his assertion that Ruth's acceptance of Yahweh as her god is proof that an "Ancient Near Eastern concept" regarding deities and land would have necessarily made Yahweh's land promise conditional.  I will repeat another rebuttal of this assertion shortly, but first I want to note that Turkel keeps repeating this "Ancient Near Eastern" assertion like a parrot with only a limited repertoire of expressions.  It is way past time for him to cite some substantial biblical or extrabiblical evidence to support his mantra.  An assertion doesn't become a fact simply because it is repeated a hundred times.

Another of Turkel's "proof texts" on this point was the case of Naaman the leper, who took two mule-loads of dirt back to Syria with him (2 Kings 5:17). Turkel--correctly, I believe--said that Naaman took the dirt back with him because of this ancient belief that land was owned by gods, and so Naaman took back to Syria with him dirt from the land that he thought Yahweh owned.  Naaman's action, however, would prove only that he believed that Yahweh "owned" the land of Israel.  It would not prove that Yahweh's land promise to Abraham's descendants was dependent on their behavior.  That can be seen by just putting Turkel's argument into syllogistic form.

1.  If Naaman thought that Yahweh owned the land of Israel, then Yahweh's land promise to Abraham's descendants was dependent on their good behavior.

2.  Naaman thought that Yahweh owned the land of Israel.

3.  Therefore, Yahweh's land promise to Abraham's descendants was dependent on their good behavior.

The first premise is in the form of a conditional sentence, and in logic a conditional sentence consists of two parts: (1) The antecedent, which is the "if" statement.  (2)  The consequent, which is the conclusion that follows the antecedent.  Conditional sentences, however, are sound only if the antecedent necessitates the consequent, and there is no reason at all to think that the antecedent in the above argument requires the consequent.  If a conditional sentence read, "If it is Tuesday in New York City, then tomorrow in New York City will be Wednesday," we would have a clear example of a conditional sentence in which the consequent was necessitated by the antecedent. The consequent in the conditional sentence pertaining to Naaman, however, is not at all necessitated by the antecedent.  Turkel's line of reasoning in the Naaman matter is therefore unsound, because it is based on a non sequitur.  The fact that Naaman may have thought that Yahweh owned the land of Israel would in no way require the conclusion that Yahweh's land promise to Abraham was dependent on the good behavior of Abraham's descendants, because, if we assume the absurdity of gods, it would have been entirely possible that a god could have made an unconditional promise of land that he owned.

If not, why not?

It is time for Turkel to present more than his mere assertion and distorted biblical references to support his claim that an "Ancient Near Eastern context of land, people, and their deity" necessarily made Yahweh's land promise to Abraham conditional.

Turkel(2):
When the Israelites were exiled, does our opponent think Yahweh could not kick out anyone who privately owned property, on that basis?

Till(2):
Since "our opponent" does not believe that Yahweh exists any more than "our opponent" believes that Baal, Chemosh, and Dagon exists, then obviously "our opponent" does not think that Yahweh ever did or could "kick out" anyone from anywhere.  Heck, "our opponent" doesn't even think that the Tooth Fairy has ever left a dollar under any kid's pillow.  Since Turkel is the one who believes in entities that are probably mythological, he must prove the existence of his god Yahweh before he can expect to prove that Yahweh ever "gave" or withheld land.  After he has done that, we can then speculate about whether Yahweh could or could not kick out anyone from privately owned property.

Till(1):
Obviously, whoever wrote this yarn thought that "give" meant something, and many of the other land-promise texts said that the land would be given to Abraham and his seed "to possess," so "giving" someone land "to possess" had intended meaning.

Turkel(2):
The "yarn" comment is nothing but a snide remark.

Till(2):
The mere fact that a statement is "snide" does not make it a false statement, or does Turkel not know that the truth or falsity of a proposition is independent of its source?  I made a statement that demands a reply from Turkel.  Whoever wrote the land-promise texts in Genesis intended "give" [nathan] and "possess" [yarash] to have meaning, so if Turkel doesn't believe that the writer meant for "give" and "possess" to convey the meanings normally associated with these terms, then he should explain to us what they did mean.  When Yahweh said that he would "give" all the land of Canaan to Abraham's descendants to "possess," what did he mean if he didn't mean what these words generally denote?

Turkel(2):
It is not necessary to quote this in a reply, and our opponent cannot****

Till(1):
So Turkel evades another argument that he can't answer.

Turkel(2):
our opponent would spend his time better actually explain[sic] what exactly the texts did mean, in concept, when they spoke of a "giving" and "possessing".

Till(2):
No, Turkel has it backwards.  He is the one who needs to explain exactly what the texts meant `when they spoke of "giving" and "possessing" land, because my position is that these words were used in their primary senses.  If I were a wealthy land owner who said to Turkel, "I am going to give you all the land I own in Podunk County to possess," I don't think Turkel would have any trouble understanding what I meant.  Likewise, I am sure that after I had given him this land, he would understand that he owned it.

Till(1):
I think that Turkel's deity-land-possession is close to being correct, but I doubt that even "ancient people" were as extremist in their "concept" as Turkel has argued, because various texts that I explicated earlier showed that the ancient Hebrews had concepts of private property that could be sold or bartered whereas Turkel's extremist view would exclude the idea of land being privately owned by individuals.

Turkel(2):
We have never argued for, and our opponent cannot show that we have ever argued for, any "extremist view" that any deity's ultimate ownership precluded the ability of humans to transact business in terms of personal property; we have rather argued that the deity holds ultimate jurisdiction with respect to occupation and use of the land, including the ability to transact business associated with the land. This point our opponent has not in any sense shown to be contrary to the Ancient Near Eastern context of the relationship between a land, its people, and their deity.

Till(2):
Well, "our opponent" not only can show but has shown that Turkel's original position was that Yahweh's "giving" of the land did not "connote any modern sense of  property ownership."  He chanted over and over like a parrot that Yahweh owned the land and the Israelites were just "tenants" and "rentors" [sic] in a feudallike relationship with Yahweh.  These were not my words but Turkel's, so if he would just bother to look up tenant and renter [the correct spelling], he will find that tenants and renters are not owners of the property that they occupy.  Of course, when I showed conclusive proof that personal ownership of property was clearly recognized in the Bible, Turkel began claiming that he had never argued that personal ownership of property didn't exist then.

As for the "Ancient Near Eastern context of the relationship between a land, its people, and their deity" that Turkel keeps parroting, he has yet to show that there was any such concept that would have made Yahweh's land promise conditional.  He has simply asserted that this so-called "context" would have made Abraham understand that the promise was conditional.  I'll say more about this immediately below in replying to the rest of Turkel's evasive comment.

Turkel(2):
Moroever [sic], even granting (as we do) such conceptions of personal property, how does this disprove or detract from that Yahweh set conditions upon continuing to live in the land?

Till(2):
Where are any such conditions stated that were not obvious after-the-fact statements edited into the text to give an explanation for why Yahweh didn't keep his promise?

I guess it is time to remind readers again of my rebuttal argument that Turkel has evaded more times than I could estimate without wasting time to count the evasions.  Counting isn't necessary, because attentive readers will recognize the argument and know that Turkel has yet to answer it.

Turkel's original position was that the land promise was conditional, but Deuteronomy 9:3ff, which said that Yahweh was giving the land to a generation of rebellious and unrighteous Israelites in order to fulfill a promise he had made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, caused Turkel to modify his original position and take a different track.  His modified position was that the promise was partly unconditional and partly conditional.  The "giving" of the land was unconditional but the "keeping" of the land was conditional.

Now here is why Turkel's modified position won't fly.  Yahweh's promise, which was based on Abraham's fidelity, had two parts to it: (1) Yahweh would give all the land of Canaan to Abraham's descendants.  (2) He would give this land to them as an everlasting possession. If the first part of the promise was unconditional, then the second part was also unconditional, because both parts were made because of Abraham's fidelity.

If not, why not?

Till(1):
I think the ancient view of land ownership would be somewhat like referring to United States territory. The territory referred to "belongs" to the United States, but within that territory are parcels owned by Jones, Brown, Williams, Smith, etc., etc., etc.

Turkel(2):
The analogy, adjusted for our status as a republic, is in one sense not far off, and in fact to that extent only supports what we have been saying all along. The United States has laws that we must follow to keep our freedoms. If we break the laws, there are penalties, though expulsion from land is seldom used as such a penalty, if at all.

Till(2):
I'm glad that Turkel recognized that the breaking of U. S. laws does not result in expulsions from land owned by the lawbreaker, but I wonder if in his crusade to sell his "Ancient Near Eastern context of land, people, and their deity," he has ever stopped to consider that the breaking of "Yahweh's laws" didn't seem to bring about expulsion from the land either.  When David, for example, committed adultery with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 12:13-18), Yahweh didn't expel David from the land.  He just killed the child that was born of the adulterous relationship [Yahweh's ways are higher than our ways], but David remained in the land and continued to serve as king. When Saul disobeyed Yahweh's command to massacre the Amalekites, including children and babies, by keeping king Agag alive (1 Sam. 15:1-25), Yahweh didn't expel him from the land; he just removed him from the throne (and took his good sweet time doing it).  Ahab wasn't expelled from the land for all of his violations of Yahweh's laws.  Yahweh, in his inscrutable way, pronounced a curse on the house of Ahab (1 Kings 21:20-24) and commissioned Jehu, after Ahab was dead, to massacre all of Ahab's descendants (2 Kings 9:6ff).  There are numerous examples of where the omnibenevolent Yahweh punished individuals for their "sins," even trivial ones, but I can't think of a single biblical story in which an individual's personal sin caused Yahweh to expel him from the land.

Turkel(2):
The parallel breaks down ultimately because the US does not own the land, and our opponent cannot show any example (other than parklands) where it is said that the land is the USA's land in any possessive sense, or in the same sense, that Yahweh declares that the entire land "is mine" in Leviticus (and in spite of permission thereafter to conduct land transactions of the "personal property" sort),

Till(2):
No analogy will ever be completely parallel, because situations and events will always be different in some respects.  However, my analogy is far more parallel than Turkel's feudal landlord/tenants-"rentors" [sic] analogy, because tenants or renters cannot sell the property that they are occupying.  This is such a glaring flaw in Turkel's major analogy, which he keeps parroting over and over, that he has no room to talk about the breaking down of my analogy.

The World Trade Center was not owned by the United States proper, but look at how the government of the United States reacted to the attack on this personal property.  If a foreign army invaded the United States by landing troops on properties that were privately owned by Brown, Smith, and Jones, the government would most certainly react.  How many times have U. S. officials referred to the destruction of the WTC as an attack on U. S. "territory"?  The United States doesn't own the air over our country or the waters in the oceans bordering it, but penetrations into this air or water by potentially hostile planes or ships will be viewed as unauthorized intrusions into United States air space and waters.

Turkel(2):
nor can he find a place where it is said that the USA is the Creator of the land of the United States (cf. Gen. 14:19),

Till(2):
And Turkel cannot prove that the references to Yahweh as the "creator" are true statements.  Hence, Turkel is resorting to the logical fallacy known as begging the question.  If he would like to affirm in formal debate that Yahweh the god of the ancient Hebrews created the universe, he will find me very receptive to the idea.

What about it, Turk?  Does the idea appeal to you?

I didn't think it would.

Turkel(2):
or of US citizens thinking they need to take dirt from the USA with them to be patriotic in a foreign country and loyal to the US government, or any example of anyone thinking that US troops become powerless when they step on foreign soil.

Till(2):
Has Turkel never seen news coverage of POWs or troops who have been abroad in war time stooping to kiss the ground when they stepped off the planes or ships that returned them home? People today have some of the same superstitions as those of biblical times.  The "one nation under God" issue, the popularity of songs like "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America," and, of course, the obligatory ending of political speeches with, "God bless America" all show that most Americans have the same chosen-people-of-God belief as the ancient Hebrews. 

The popularity of a belief, however, does not make that belief true, so no matter how much people believed in ancient times that gods had territorial domains over which they ruled, the popularity of this belief didn't make it so for the obvious reason that gods who do not exist cannot rule over anything.  The belief, of course, would have affected the way that documents of the time were written, so if Turkel can just present documentary evidence that this "Ancient Near Eastern concept" was so deeply ingrained that the biblical writer(s) in recording the Yahwistic land promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob didn't even bother to mention that the promise was conditional, because he knew that readers of the document would just automatically understand that a condition of obedience to Yahweh's laws was implied in the promise.  If Turkel has presented any such documentary evidence as this, I have lost it in his maze of cut-and-pasted evasions about "fluff," "irrelevant distractions," "superfluous commentary," and promises to answer this or that "later" or "below," so if he has presented documentary support of his claim that conditions of obedience would have been just automatically understood by the people of that time, I would like for him to post it again.

Turkel(2):
The USA is a nation, with a long history of individualism and Western property rights and a view of God as more remote;

Till(2):
As I showed above, there is--and has been--a prevailing view in the United States that "God" is on our side and that he "blesses" us and sees us as a special people.  It is a view that is as idiotic as its predecessor view that "God" had chosen the Hebrews of all the people on the face of the earth to be his chosen people (Deut. 7:6); nevertheless, it is a view obviously held by many people today.  Unfortunately, one of them gained the office of president through some very suspicious political maneuvering down where Turkel lives.

Turkel(2):
it [the United States] is not a Deity like Yahweh, Chemosh, or the gods of Babylon and Assyria,

Till(2):
The United States is, however, an entity.  The only difference is that it is a verifiably real entity and not a probable imaginary one like Yahweh, Chemosh, and the gods of Babylon and Assyria.  My task was to present an analogy that would be as parallel as possible to Turkel's claim of land ownership by imaginary entities that ancient, superstitious people believed in, so it was necessary for me to analogize a real entity [the United States] with Turkel's imaginary entities [ancient gods], and as I showed above, my analogy is far more parallel than Turkel's feudal landlord/tenants-"rentors" [sic] analogy that he keeps parroting but doesn't bother to document.

Turkel(2):
and the history is one of Eastern collectivism and a view of gods as deeply involved in judgment and the ownership of the land and its occupants.

Till(2):
Actually, the prevailing view of that time was much broader than just the aspect of land.  The people of that time believed that their gods were directly involved in everything--warfare, weather, famine, pestilence, fertility, and you name it--so I don't deny Turkel's claim that people in superstitious times believed that gods reigned over territorial domains.  That much we agree on.  What Turkel must prove--and hasn't done yet--is that this belief made it unnecessary for the writer(s) to mention conditions in the land promise passages in Genesis because the people of that time would have understood that a condition of obedience was inherent in the promise even if it wasn't specifically mentioned.

This is a premise that he must prove.  He can't just assert it and expect rational people to accept it just on his mere word.  He must establish that no writer of this era would have thought that a god would have made an unconditional promise pertaining to the giving of land, and he has not done that yet.

My position, of course, is that the original land promise did state a condition on which the land was being given to Abraham's descendants, and that condition was Abraham's fidelity.

Genesis 26:4 And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; ⁵because Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws."

So there is the condition.  The land would be given to Isaac's [Abraham's] descendants because of Abraham's obedience to the voice, charges, commandments, statutes, and laws of Yahweh.  Once Abraham's fidelity had been established and sealed by his death in a state in which he had observed the laws and statutes of Yahweh, the condition for receiving the land had been forever sealed.  Yahweh then had to give the land to Abraham's descendants or else break his promise to Abraham and Isaac, and that is exactly what "Moses" said in Deuteronomy 9:5.

It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to occupy their land; but because of the wickedness of these nations Yahweh your God is dispossessing them before you, in order to fulfill the promise that Yahweh made on oath to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

If, as Turkel claimed, a condition of obedience to Yahweh's laws had been inherent in the promise Yahweh made to Abraham and Isaac, then the Israelites being addressed in Deuteronomy 9 could not have qualified to receive the land, but that such a condition had not been inherent in the promise was evident from "Moses" specific statement that the land was not being given to them because of their righteous but in order to fulfill the promise that Yahweh made on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The promise was that because of Abraham's fidelity, Yahweh would give to Abraham's descendants all the land of Canaan and that he would give them this land for an everlasting possession.

Turkel cannot now backpedal, as he attempted to do after being confronted with Deuteronomy 9:3ff and say, "Well, the giving of the land was unconditional, but the keeping of the land was conditional."  Both parts of the promise had been predicated on Abraham's fidelity, so if the giving of the land was unconditional--and Turkel now admits that it was--then the keeping of the land as an "everlasting possession" also had to be unconditional.

If not, why not?

This is the predicament that Turkel is now in.  He doesn't like for me to repeat arguments, but I repeat them because he won't answer them.  If he evades this argument again, I will keep repeating it.  Eventually, even his own admirers won't be able to deny his evasion.

Turkel(2):
The parklands themselves provide a slightly closer analogy that only proves our point. The parklands have rules that occupants must follow, or they will be expelled from the parklands; though the analogy breaks down because no one in parklands occupies the land: they do sometimes temporarily occupy it (campgrounds) but cannot sell it amongst themselves (though they could conceivably barter "off the record" for the rights to certain plots).

Till(2):
Even Turkel could see the flaw in his parkland analogy, because people who use parkland cannot sell or barter it, just as "tenants" and "rentors" [sic] in a feudal system could not sell or barter the land they occupied.  The Israelites, however, could sell or barter their land, so Turkel's feudal-landlord analogy breaks down at a crucial point.  To show just how much closer my United States/land analogy is, let's suppose that the United States should parcel Yellowstone National Park and then give the parcels to private individuals named Smith, Brown, Jones, and Doe.  After the parcels had been given to Smith, Brown, Jones, and Doe, they could sell their land. 

Now analogize this with the land of Canaan, which Yahweh gave <snicker, snicker> to the Israelites, who then divided it into tribal territories, which were in turned parceled out to individual tribal members.  At this point, the individuals owned the land and were entitled to sell or barter it.  Villeins and serfs in a feudal system, however, could not sell or barter the land they used, so if Turkel wants to talk about analogies that "break down," he should take a good long look at his feudal landlord/tenants-"rentors" [sic] analogy.  It fails in the most crucial aspect of the analogy, i.e., the question of who actually owned the land.

Turkel(2):
Our opponent has only furthered our own case with his analogy; but as a whole, his analogy is contrary to the data of the Ancient Near Eastern context of the relationship between a land,

Till(2):
As I just showed, my analogy was much more parallel to the land promise issues than
Turkel's feudal landlord/tenants-"rentors" [sic] analogy.

Turkel(2):
[his analogy is contrary to the data of the Ancient Near Eastern context of the relationship between a land,]  its people, and their deity, does not rest on any positive evidence from Ancient Near Eastern contracts, documents, or inscriptions,

Till(2):
Speaking of "Ancient Near Eastern contracts, documents, or inscriptions," I wonder when Turkel is going to document the accuracy of his position by quoting ancient contracts, documents, and inscriptions that would show he is right in arguing that a deity's land grant was always understood to be conditional to obedience of the people receiving the grant even though the grant itself did not expressly mention any conditions.  Needless to say, he has yet to produce any such documentation.  So it is question time again.

Did the ancient belief that deities reigned over territorial domains unequivocally mean that an ancient writer could not have perceived of a deity's granting of land without any conditions attached?

If so, what is your documentary evidence to support this position?

Turkel(2):
and is little more than the fantastic product of a non-specialist [sic]desperately trying to maintain an argument.

Till(2):
Pardon me for laughing at the pot for calling the kettle black.  If there was ever a nonspecialist who desperately tried to maintain arguments, that would be Turkel.  His writings are filled with attempts to pass himself off as an expert in biblical languages, ancient Near Eastern cultures and philosophy, and Hebrew "thought."  At 34, he just isn't old enough to have acquired the knowledge to qualify for expertise in these areas.

He is, however, a good con artist, who seems to be well on his way to duping gullible people into sending their money so that he can become a full-time "apologist."  Except for the fact that the last thing the world needs is another religious charlatan, I hope that he makes it, because I still firmly believe that biblical inerrantists are their own worst enemies.  There is nothing like letting people see for themselves the silliness that would-be apologists continually resort to in order to defend biblical inerrancy, and Turkel ranks at the top in this area. 

Till(1):
So all the land in the world belonged to Yahweh, but there were parcels of this land owned by Naboth, Naomi, Joshua, Zelophehad's daughters, etc., and these people could sell or barter their individual parcels.

Turkel(2):
We agree, for have never [sic] argued for, and our opponent cannot show that we have ever argued for, any "extremist view" that any deity's ultimate ownership precluded the ability of humans to transact business in terms of personal property....  Moroever****

Till(2):
This was the same old same old, cut and pasted, and recycled again, right down to the typographical error where he spelled moreover as "moroever."  He cuts and pastes the same old evasion without bothering to look at what he is copying.   Since I replied to it above, there is no need to quote that reply here.  I will, however, quote it periodically as Turkel keeps cutting and pasting the same old same old.

Till(1):
For the sake of argument, I earlier took Turkel's "feudal landlord" concept and showed that even if we accept this as what the land promise meant, it will not explain away the inconsistency.

Turkel(2):
We showed that no such inconsistenices [sic] existed, for the texts show thay [sic] Yahweh maintained ultimate ownership of and discretion over the land, to the point of setting rules concerning personal transactions with the land.

Till(2):
"We" showed this?  Exactly when did "we" show this?  Turkel seems to think that he can squeeze himself out of a corner he has been backed into by saying, "We answered this," or, "We showed this or that."  I'm sure readers know by now that as adept as Turkel is at cutting and pasting, if he had really shown that no inconsistencies existed, he would simply have quoted where he showed this.  He never seems to have any trouble cutting and pasting an evasive comment, but he never bothers to cut and paste all of the rebuttals or answers to arguments that he claims he has made.

Till(1):
To illustrate the problem, let's substitute terms that denote Turkel's "feudal landlord" concept for key words in the land-promise texts. Here first is Genesis 15:18 rewritten to reflect Turkel's feudal-landlord concept.

Turkel(2):
We enter this section with the proviso that our opponent has previously assumed that Yahweh's feudal landlord-tenant relationship included every single aspect of what he has perceived to be essential elements of a human feudal landlord-tenant relationship,

Till(2):
What "our opponent" has perceived to be essential elements of a human feudal landlord-tenant relationship?  As I have pointed out, Turkel was the one who introduced the feudal landlord/tenants-"rentors" [sic] analogy.  He was content with it until I pointed out a major flaw in it, i.e., tenants in a feudal system could not buy or sell the land they lived on.  Ever since he had this pointed out to him, he has tried to lay on me the blame for the flaws in his analogy.

Turkel(2):
and that we have never argued for, and our opponent cannot show that we have ever argued for, any "extremist view" that any deity's ultimate ownership precluded the ability of humans to transact business in terms of personal property; we have rather argued that the deity holds ultimate jurisdiction with respect to occupation and use of the land, including the ability to transact business associated with the land.

Till(2):
I have replied to this denial umpteen times by now to show that in his first-round reply to my article, Turkel said that Yahweh's promise to "give" the land to Abraham's descendants did not "connote any modern sense of property ownership," but probably the most distinctive feature of modern concepts of property ownership is that the party who owns the property can sell it at his discretion. 

It is way past time for Turkel to explain himself.  If indeed he has never argued, as he is now claiming and claiming and claiming and claiming, that Yahweh's "ultimate ownership" of land did not "preclude the ability of humans to transact business in terms of personal property," then just what did he mean when he said that "giving the land did not connote any modern sense of property ownership"? And what did he mean when he later said, "But it is quite clear that this transfer [Yahweh's transfer of land] did not involve legal ownership as we understand it"?  His mere use of the term "personal property" (immediately above) is inconsistent with his original claim that no "modern sense of property ownership" was connoted in Yahweh's promise to "give" the land, because "personal property" is the backbone of modern concepts of property ownership. 

It's fun watching inerrantists trying to wiggle out of corners they back themselves into.

Till(1):
[To illustrate the problem, let's substitute terms that denote Turkel's "feudal landlord" concept for key words in the land-promise texts. Here first is Genesis 15:18 rewritten to reflect Turkel's feudal-landlord concept.]

On that day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give tenancy to this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates--the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites."

Now when exactly did the Israelites ever exercise even a feudallike tenancy over all of the land within the boundaries named here? Unless they occupied the land and tended it as farmers or shepherds, then the land was never "given" to them to have "tenancy" over.

Turkel(2):
The descendants of Abraham did indeed exercise tenancy over the land as described;

Till(2):
They did?  When exactly did they do that?  I assume that everyone noticed that Turkel made no attempt at all to prove his statement above.  He simply asserted it.  I'm sure that readers know that if Turkel could have cited any evidence to support this assertion, he would have done so.

Occupation and use of all the land from the Euphrates River to the river of Egypt would have entailed occupation/use of all the land between these two rivers up to the Mediterranean Sea on the west, and some versions of the promise even specified the Great (Mediterranean) Sea as the western boundary of the land that Yahweh would give the Israelites.

Exodus 23:31 I [Yahweh] will set your borders from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates; for I will hand over to you the inhabitants of the land, and you shall drive them out before you.

Joshua 1:3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses. ⁴From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory. ⁵No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you.

So when exactly did the Israelites ever possess the Mediterranean coastal areas?  This was land that was occupied by Philistines and Phoenicians, and the Israelites were never able to drive them from the land.  Perhaps Turkel will tell us when the Israelites occupied this land.

Even if he could cite an example of when the Israelites were on this land just temporarily, that would not help his case, because, as I have repeatedly pointed out, Yahweh's land promise contained two parts:  (1) Yahweh would give all the land of Canaan to Abraham's descendants.  (2) He would give Abraham's descendants this land as an everlasting possession.  Since both parts of this promise were predicated on Abraham's faithfulness in keeping Yahweh's commandments, statutes, and laws and since this predication of the promise was stated to Isaac after Abraham's death (Gen. 26:5), all conditions to fulfillment of the promise had already been sealed.  After having made a promise like this, Yahweh could not make the good behavior of Abraham's descendants a condition of fulfillment without proving himself to be unfaithful in his word. 

When, then, did the Israelites occupy all of the land of Canaan from the Euphrates River to the river of Egypt up to the Mediterranean Sea?  If Turkel had any evidence that the Israelites had occupied this land, he would have cited it.  Without the evidence, all he could do was assert that "(t)he  descendants of Abraham did indeed exercise tenancy over the land as described" and hope that those who know no better would buy it. 

However, I do know better, so I call upon Turkel to produce his evidence that "(t)he descendants of Abraham did indeed exercise tenancy over the land as described."  We will look forward to seeing him do that.

Turkel(2):
our opponent perhaps wishes to imply a problem in that the Israelites never got to do this with every square inch of the land indicated.

Till(2):
Well, the Mediterranean coastal area was far more than just a few square inches, so the failure of the Israelites to occupy and use this land is certainly a problem for Turkel, because Yahweh's promise was that he would give to Abraham's descendants all the land of Canaan, from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates River up to the Great Sea in the west, and another part of the promise was that Yahweh would give Abraham's descendants this land as an everlasting possession.

But this never happened.  If Turkel can prove me wrong, let him do it.

Turkel(2):
This is absurd, as we explained earlier.

Till(2):
Oh, "we" explained this earlier?  Just when did "we" explain this earlier?  Robert "Cut-and-Paste" Turkel  seems able with great facility to cut and paste evasive comments over and over, but when he is called upon to answer a rebuttal argument, his stock in trade is to say that he has already answered this or that he will answer it "later" or "below," but he never seems able to cut and paste any of those many answers that he has made "already" or will make "below" or "later" so that they will be on record in the very places where the issues came up.

Turkel is one of the biggest apologetic jokes I have had any experience with.

Turkel(2):
The Israelites violated these obligations even before they could physically move into the entirety of the land grant.

Till(2):
Here we go again!  The behavior of the Israelites was not a condition for receiving and keeping the land.  The text in Deuteronomy 9:3ff certainly established that the behavior of the Israelites could not have been a condition to their receiving of the land, because this text clearly says that Yahweh was giving the land to them despite their unrighteousness and rebellion against Yahweh from the day they had come out of Egypt.  Verse 5 stated the reason why Yahweh was going to give the land to this unrighteous bunch of "stiff-necks":  He had to do it in order to keep a promise he had made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  This text is so clear in eliminating the good behavior of the Israelites as a condition to receiving the land that even Turkel backpedaled and modified his position, so that he has been saying that the "giving" of the land was unconditional but the "keeping" of the land was conditional.

My analyses of the land promises as allegedly spoken by Yahweh in the book of Genesis, however, show that the keeping of the land was also unconditional, because (1) the promise consisted of two parts (a) giving all the land of Canaan and (b) giving all the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession, and (2) this promise was predicated on the fidelity of Abraham and then repeated to Isaac after Abraham's death.  At that moment, Yahweh was forever obligated to keep the promise, because Abraham's fidelity at that time was a "done deal."

This is what has Turkel stymied, so all he can do now is evade this rebuttal argument and hope that gullible readers will still buy his claim that the Israelites didn't receive all of the land of Canaan because of their disobedience "before they could physically move into the entirety of the land grant."  For the sake of argument, let's just momentarily accept Turkel's modified position.  The giving of the land was unconditional, but the keeping of the land was conditional.  Even with that concession, he still has a huge problem, because if the giving of the land was unconditional, Yahweh would have been obligated to give at least for a time all of the land of Canaan from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates River up to the Mediterranean Sea, because those were the borders of the land that Yahweh said that he would give to Abraham's descendants. In other words, the Israelites would have had to "move physically into the entirety of the land grant" before Yahweh's unconditional promise to "give" the land to Abraham's descendants would have been fulfilled.

So just when did the Israelites "move physically into the entirety of the land grant"?

Now let's wait for Turkel to show us evidence that the Israelites had occupied all of the land within these borders for even a brief period of time.  If Turkel can't show this, then he has failed to prove even his modified position.

Turkel(2):
By analogy, a rentor [sic] who steps into his apartment and immediately, at the front door, rips wallpaper off the wall and starts a fire, has already technically violated his lease (if it prohibits such acts, which may not be prohibited in certain collegiate rentals) and could readily be evicted by the landlord. it does not matter that he never got to the bedroom, or the bathroom, which the lease gave him implicit leave to occupy. Once the contract is violated, the "jig is up" and he is eligible for expulsion.

Till(2):
This is a cutting and pasting of an analogy that I have already shown to be false, so all I have to do is cut and paste my previous reply to it.  I, in fact, replied to it twice, so here is my last reply to it.

I'm sure attentive readers will remember where I replied to this hypothetical example, but for the benefit of those who may not remember it, I am quoting it below from Part Seven.

First, here is Turkel's presentation of the hypothetical example.

By analogy, a rentor [sic] who steps into his apartment and immediately, at the front door, rips wallpaper off the wall and starts a fire, has already technically violated his lease (if it prohibits such acts, which may not be prohibited in certain collegiate rentals) and could readily be evicted by the landlord.

Now here is my reply to it.

Notice the "if" in Turkel's analogy.  What if the landlord had signed an agreement with the "rentor" [sic] that simply said, "I give John Doe and his descendants after him permanent tenancy forever to Apartment 102 at 430 East Elm Street, Canton, IL"?  The owner of the apartment would be in a spot to remove him later, wouldn't he?

So the problem for Turkel is that his analogy is false.  Yahweh's land promise stated that he was giving the land within defined borders to the descendants of Abraham  for an everlasting possession.  He stated no conditions, just as the hypothetical rental contract above granted permanent tenancy forever with no conditions.  The passage in Deuteronomy 9, which has given Turkel such fits that he was forced to modify his position, clearly stated that Yahweh had to give the land to a bunch of stiff-necked, unrighteous, disobedient ingrates in order to "fulfill the word which Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (v:5).  This shows that the "giving" part of the promise was unconditional, but if the "giving" part was unconditional, the "keeping" part also had to be conditional, because the same texts that say that Yahweh would give the land to Abraham's descendants said that it would be given as an everlasting possession.

Turkel's analogy is false, because it based retention of the apartment on the conduct of the tenant, but as I have shown, Yahweh's land promise was made to Abraham and was based on his conduct and not on the conduct of Abraham's descendants.  As the tale was told in Genesis, Abraham died, having been faithful to Yahweh's commandments and statutes, so once Yahweh had predicated the promise on Abraham's faithfulness, the behavior of Abraham's descendants could not be a condition.  To have an acceptable analogy, Turkel would have to hypothesize a landlord who issued a contract granting permanent possession of an apartment to the descendants of a specific person in which the contract stipulated that the permanent use of the apartment was being granted because of their ancestor's faithful service.  That would be a parallel analogy, but his analogy above is obviously false.

Turkel(2):
Moreover, would our opponent suggest that Yahweh or any landlord would allow a loophole in which the Israelites could leave even one square inch of land "unpossessed" and do as they please, violating laws willy-nilly, having orgies, food fests, and idolatry as they pleased, always leaving that one square inch or yard or mile of land untouched and technicially [sic] unconqured [sic], and Yahweh (or any landlord) would just say, "No problem, they still have that bitty parcel left; I can't touch 'em until then."  Is there any such agreement in real life?

Till(2):
Well, in the first place, we aren't talking about "real life"; we are talking about ancient fantasies about imaginary gods created in the image of the superstitious people who believed in them.  In real life, gods don't drop in to chat with patriarchs, select specially chosen people, and promise to give them land as "everlasting possessions."  A "god" wouldn't have to be anywhere close to omniscient to know that nations rise and fall and none of them are permanent.  The great empires of the world come and go, just as Israel came and went.  It is back as a nation now but is nothing like the "everlasting" Davidic kingdom that was predicted in the Old Testament.  With time, the present nation of Israel will pass away too, just as the time will come when the United States will no longer exist.  Only someone with a provincial view of the world would have predicted the permanent giving of land to a people.

Second, Turkel begs the question of the existence of his god Yahweh.  When he asks if I would suggest that Yahweh would allow a "loophole" in his land agreement with the Israelites, he may as well have asked if I think the Tooth Fairy would feel obligated to give a dollar to every kid who lost a tooth.  In other words, I'm not interested in discussing what his imaginary deity would or would not have done.  I'm here to discuss the internal consistency of the biblical texts in the tales that someone wrote about the god Yahweh's promise to give land to Abraham's descendants.

Third, we aren't talking about a "square inch" or a "bitty parcel" of land.  We are talking about the entire coastal region of the land of Canaan, which Yahweh had promised to Abraham's descendants.  Turkel seems to be having trouble understanding that Yahweh's promise was that (1) he would give all the land of Canaan from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates River up to the Mediterranean Sea to Abraham's seed and (2) he would give this land to them as an everlasting possession.  The reason for this promise was that Abraham had been faithful in keeping Yahweh's statutes and laws.  Why, then, didn't Yahweh give all of this land to the Israelites?  The promise had two parts: (1) Yahweh would give all the land to the Israelites.  (2) Yahweh would give the land to them as an everlasting possession.  Turkel has modified his position to say that, yes, the "giving" part of the promise was unconditional, but the point I am making here is that the "giving" part was never fulfilled, because all the land wasn't given to the Israelites.  If Turkel says that the giving part was unconditional, he cannot claim that the Israelites didn't receive all of the land because they did the equivalent of ripping off wallpaper, because that would put conditions on the giving part, but Turkel's position now is that the giving part was unconditional.

So why didn't Yahweh fulfill the unconditional giving part and give all the land of Canaan to the Israelites?  When Turkel explains this problem, we can then talk about the "keeping" part, which Turkel claims was conditional but which I have shown had to be just as unconditional as the giving part.

Till(1):
This feudal-landlord concept would have made the Israelites serfs, who simply tended the land, but serfs could not buy and sell land, whereas the Israelites could, and unless the serfs lived on land and tended it, they didn't have tenancy over it.

Turkel(2):
Again, we have never argued for, and our opponent cannot show that we have ever argued for, any "extremist view" that any deity's ultimate ownership precluded the ability of humans to transact business in terms of personal property....  Moroever****

Till(2):
This evasion was cut and pasted verbatim from above, even down to the typographical misspelling of moreover.  Since I have already replied to it, I won't copy that reply here, but I will periodically repeat the reply as Turkel continues to cut and paste his evasion.

Till(1):
At any rate, for the sake of argument, I'll continue to apply this feudal-landlord concept to the rewriting of some other texts that stated the land promise. Here is Genesis 17:8 so rewritten.

Over the whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give a perpetual tenancy to you and your descendants after you.

Even if this is what the writer--I won't say Yahweh--meant, when did it happen?

Turkel(2):
This is merely repetition of the same argument, using a different passage, made for no other purpose than to render the reader senseless and nodding with the droning. We have answered this in full above.

Till(2):
I trust that everyone noticed that Turkel evaded the argument again.  He has given his definitions of what "giving" and "possessing" meant in the land promises, so I was within my right to substitute his definitions of these key words in the passages in question and ask him to show us when the Israelites ever received "tenancy" [his definition] over all the land within the borders defined in the land promise.  Turkel evaded this, because he cannot answer it.  He knows that there was no time when the Israelites possessed all of this land even in a "tenancy" sense, so he had to evade it again.

Folks--those of you who used to write and ask me why I didn't answer Turkel's articles about me on his website--is this your hero?

Till(1):
Why was the book of Joshua on-again, off-again about this? Unless Turkel can show that Yahweh gave a "perpetual tenancy" to all the land of Canaan, from the river of Egypt to Lebanon and from the great river [the Euphrates] to the Great [Mediterranean] Sea, he has not resolved the inconsistency in the biblical texts.

Turkel(2):
Again our opponent implies a problem in that the Israelites never got to do this with every square inch of the land indicated.

Till(2):
No, I'm not implying anything.  I am flat-out saying that there is a real problem in the failure of the Israelites to receive a "perpetual tenancy" over all the land of Canaan, because Yahweh said that he would give Abraham's descendants all of this land because of Abraham's fidelity.  Turkel was forced to admit that at least the "giving" part was unconditional, and he has argued that "giving" meant "tenancy" not ownership, so I'm taking his own definitions and asking him to show us when the Israelites ever received "tenancy" over all the land that Yahweh promised unconditionally to give them.

Turkel won't answer this question, because he can't answer it.

Turkel(2):
This is absurd, as we explained earlier.

Till(2):
"We" explained this earlier?  When did "we" explain it?  Why didn't Turkel just cut and paste that explanation here, where it would be a matter of record where the issue arose?  Instead of doing that, he cut and pasted the evasion that comes immediately below.

Turkel(2):
The Israelites violated these obligations even before they could physically move into the entirety of the land grant.

Till(2):
That can't matter, because Turkel has said that the "giving" of the land was unconditional, so if the giving of the land, which according to Turkel meant "tenancy," was unconditional, then there had to have been a time when the Israelites had "tenancy" over all the land of Canaan from the Euphrates River to the river of Egypt over to the Great [Mediterranean] Sea. 

So just when did they have tenancy over this land?

I'll alert readers to expect Turkel to hop, skip, and jump over this if he even dares to touch it, but he is caught on the horns of a dilemma.  If he is going to say that the "giving" [of "tenancy"] to Abraham's descendants was unconditional--and he has said that--and if the land that Yahweh said he would give "tenancy" to was within the borders specified above, then there had to have been a time when the Israelites had "tenancy" over all of this land, or else Yahweh's promise failed.  Since Turkel has admitted that the "giving" [of "tenancy"] was unconditional, he cannot make the behavior of Abraham's descendants an excuse for their not having received "tenancy" [at least for a time] over all the land within the above borders.

So when did the Israelites have "tenancy" over the coastal areas of the land of Canaan, Turkel?

Turkel(2):
By analogy, a rentor [sic] who steps into his apartment and immediately, at the front door, rips wallpaper off the wall and starts a fire.... and technicially [sic] unconqured [sic]****

Till(2):
I have already replied to this false analogy three times.  Since I quoted it above, there is no need to repeat it here, but as Turkel keeps cutting and pasting this evasion, I will periodically copy my reply to it.  I truncated his long, rambling, repetitious evasion to show that it was cut and pasted down to his misspellings of technically and unconquered.  He pays no attention to what he is cutting and pasting, because his only interest is cranking out hackwork so that he can brag about the quantity of work he posts. His tactic is an insult to the intelligence of his readers, because he is in effect saying that he doesn't think that those who admire him will even notice his mistakes.

I'll continue my reply in Part Seventeen.  We aren't there yet, but we are closing in on the end of Turkel's second-round response, so maybe "below" or "later" will pop up soon.  We have been looking for it through the last 185,000 words.

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