Apologetics is the defense of a belief, especially a religious belief, through a process of argumentation. In this sense, very little apologetics will be found on the website of Robert "No Links" Turkel, whose so-called apologetic methods depend mainly on citing books, articles, or commentaries that agree with whatever doctrine du jour he is trying to peddle, as if the opinion of the author(s) cited definitively settles whatever is in dispute. The flaw in this method is the obvious fact that differences of opinion can be found in any field of "expertise," whether it be sociology, psychology, history, law, medicine, or whatever, and this is especially true of religion. I have pointed out numerous times in debating so-called apologists like Turkel, Everette Hatcher, David Conklin, et al, who use this I-have-cited-an-author-who-agrees-with-me-so-I-must-be-right method that there is no such thing as a religious belief in modern society that hasn't been defended in books and articles. There is certainly nothing wrong with citing "authorities" in order to let readers know the opinions of others, but anyone with even a speck of debating know-how in his brain will realize that the opinions of authorities should be supported with logical argumentation. If that element is missing in an article, it isn't an apologetic article but merely a collection of citations or quotations that prove nothing more than that there are some who agree with the author's opinion.
In stringing together their citations/quotations, these would-be apologists will very rarely cite authors who disagree with their "sources." To do so, would defeat their methods by pointing out that the views of their "sources" are not universal but are contrary to the opinions of others with scholarly credentials. When he is "replying" to someone who dared to question his opinion, Robert Turkel will try to hide the weakness of his one-sided citations by hurling insults at those who dare to disagree with the "experts" he cited. He was at his best--and also his silliest--when he declared that feelings of guilt did not exist in biblical times and cited Bruce Malina's and Robert Rohrbaugh's Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels as proof.
Turkel made this silly assertion in "response" to my rebuttal of his "Dear Abiathar" article in which he, true to form, cited the opinion of Maurice Casey, stated in Aramaic Sources of the Gospel of Mark, that Jesus said in Mark 2:26 that Abiathar, rather than his father Ahimelech, was high priest when David had gone into the house of God and eaten the showbread, because Abiathar was a "renown priest" and a "stickler for the law," and so his name would have invoked "honoring the law" more so than his father's name would have if Jesus had correctly said that Ahimelech was the priest whom David had contacted at that time. As best as I could understand, Turkel was arguing that it wasn't an error if Jesus gave an incorrect name here for a good reason. This sounds very much like arguing that the end justifies the means. At any rate, Turkel's appeal to Casey's "solution" touched off a long discussion that sent Turkel twisting himself into all sorts of verbal gymnastics to try to defend the discrepancy in Mark 2:26, which eventually led him to set up the no-feelings-of-guilt-in-biblical-times straw man that he beat around on to distract attention from his inability to show that Abiathar was presented in the Old Testament as a "stickler for the law."
In Part 1 of "Give Us This Day Our Daily Dodge," I said that David had felt responsible for Saul's massacre of the priests at Nob, from which Abiathar had managed to escape, and later in Part 2 of "Turkel Takes the Bait," I referred back to this statement but used the word guilty instead of responsible. This prompted Turkel to react with a cut-and-pasted straw man taken from Malina's and Rohrbaugh's book cited above in which they took the position that the human emotion of "guilt" didn't exist in biblical times.
Wha ha! Let's reply with the same mantra Skeptic X uses: "What? He can read David's mind?" "It doesn't say in the text that David felt guilty!" Now I'm sure Skeptic X will want to turn the table here and say, "Yeah, well, it's a reasonable supposition, isn't it?" Nope! It isn't. This is where Skeptic X makes his humungous sociological blunder. Skeptic X fans are advised that what follows is the sort of thing that would go in your "baffling with BS file" as something you have no answer for, can't understand, and think I am making up. Ready?
News flash: There is no way David took on Abby out of guilt, because guilt is a modern invention. Now while you skeptics out there are trying to wipe the baccy off your juice harp, here's a little blurb from Malina and Rohrbaugh's Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. Speaking on forgiveness in the NT, they say: "Since the introspective, guilt-oriented outlook of industrialized societies did not exist [in NT times], it is unlikely that forgiveness meant psychological healing. Instead, forgiveness by God meant being divinely restored to one's position and therefore freed from fear of loss at the hands of God." Of course we don't think it was any different in OT times, either, and you can try to say that it is, but we say it wasn't. Dave didn't ask Abby along out of guilt; he asked him along because it was the right thing to do, and the right thing to restore to him a position of the sort held by his father, and give him the safety his father had not had. Guilt? Pah humbug. That's Skeptic X anachronizing again. And that he does so tells us how much any of his other "hichb" scenarios might be worth.
Poor Turkel seems unable to hear any better than he can read. He has mistaken Jew's harp for juice harp, so his attempt at sarcastic humor here fell flatter than most of his efforts to find harmony in the Bible where none exists, but this was just a minor goof compared to his emphatic assertion that "feelings of guilt" didn't exist in biblical times. That he would be ignorant enough to state this categorically surprised even me, and I have seen him take some extremely ignorant positions. He is declaring that the human emotion of guilt did not exist in biblical times, so he is actually asserting a universal negative. If he would take a course in elementary logic, he might learn that universal negatives cannot be proven, so even if he is right--and he isn't--there is no way that he could prove he is right. It is, however, possible to prove that he is wrong, and I intend to do just that. As we will see, if the Bible is inerrant--as Turkel claims--then feelings of guilt did indeed exist in biblical times, but even if there were no biblical references to guilt feelings, human nature being human nature would tell us that such emotions did exist in biblical times.
The human mind, or psyche if you prefer, experiences a wide range of emotions: anger, envy, sadness, happiness, jealousy, pride, empathy, and so on. Guilt is one of those emotions, so if guilt is experienced by humans in our time, how could Malina and Rohrbaugh possibly know that this emotion wasn't experienced in biblical times? To make such a determination as this, they would have to have access to a time machine that could take them back to biblical times where they could make a wide enough range of clinical observations of the people living then to conclude from the data collected that the people then, unlike their modern counterparts, just didn't experience feelings of guilt. Such a study is obviously not possible for them, so to declare dogmatically that "feelings of guilt" were unknown in biblical times would be as idiotic as if someone would claim that the ancient Huns didn't experience "feelings of love." Although the Huns were notoriously barbaric, to conclude from this that none of them experienced feelings of love would be downright ignorant. To reach such a conclusion would require clinical observations of a range of Huns broad enough to acquire data to support a claim that feelings of love didn't exist in their societies. In fact, we could even turn the tables on Turkel and dump into his lap an "argument" often used by theists who tell atheists that before they could know that there is no God, they would have to be an omnipresent deity, because if they went to every place in the universe except one, that one place that they didn't go to could be where God is. In the same way, before Malina and Rohrbaugh--or their lackey Robert Turkel--could know that feelings of guilt didn't exist in biblical times, they would have to have studied personally every person who lived in biblical times, because if they missed just one person in their study, that could have been the one person who did have guilt feelings.
I realize that such a study is not at all possible, but that is exactly my point. Malina and Rohrbaugh--and their lackey Turkel--are asserting a universal negative that is impossible to know. Just where is the data that would confirm their claim that "feelings of guilt" didn't exist in biblical times? Turkel didn't bother to cite any or to explain how this determination was made. He simply asserted it and then went on his merry way. In other words, Turkel was just being Turkel again.
Before I show from the biblical text various examples of an emotion that could only be described as "feelings of guilt," I first want to focus on Turkel's temper tantrum above, where he stamped his feet and said, "It doesn't say in the text that David felt guilty!" No, it doesn't, and it doesn't say in 2 Samuel 12:16-23 that David experienced a feeling of sorrow when the child born to Bathsheba and him died, but from what the text did say, any reasonably intelligent reader can determine that David did feel sorrow on this occasion. In the same way, we can determine from many biblical texts that personal feelings of guilt were experienced in biblical times. That Turkel would argue that because the text doesn't specifically say that David felt guilt over the massacre of the priests at Nob, he therefore did not experience this feeling is just one more example of how whatever position he takes depends on which direction the winds of controversy are blowing.
We can see Turkel's inconsistency in this matter exemplified in his snafu that I pointed out in "Turkel Rides--Er--Stumbles Again (Part Two)."
X next fumes that he can find no place where Luke says anything about the abomination. Apparently that Luke's passage is parallel to those in Matthew and Mark is not enough; no, if X doesn't see the word "ABOMINATION" in blinking red neon, Luke can't possibly be talking about it.
Those who want to see how Turkel's hide was nailed to the wall on this matter should click the link above and read the entire section. I have referred to it here only to point out that Turkel is on record saying that a word does not have to be specifically used in a text in order for its meaning to be implied therein. I am perfectly willing to concede that David may not have felt any guilt over his actions that had resulted in the massacre of 85 priests at Nob. After all, a man who would massacre entire civilian populations to keep word of his maurading from getting back to the king who had given him refuge from Saul (1 Sam. 27:8-9) could have been someone--like the amoral ones in New Testament times whom I will refer to later--who was immune to guilt feelings, but David's failure to feel personal guilt or responsibility would certainly not prove that people in biblical times didn't experience feelings of guilt. At any rate, we have it from no better authority than Turkel himself that a word does not have to be specifically stated in a biblical text in order for its meaning to be there. With this in mind, I will now proceed to show examples where biblical characters obviously experienced feelings of guilt. Since an article about David precipated Turkel's bizarre position, I will begin with him to show that, despite his moments of barbarity referred to above, he did at times demonstrate that he had a conscience.
When king Saul was pursuing David, he stopped and went into a cave to "cover his feet," which was an idiomatic way of saying that he went into the cave to, er, defecate, even though Turkel once claimed that there is no record of anyone in biblical times actually using a restroom. It so happened that he entered a cave where David and his men were hiding, so while Saul was squatting to do his business, David sneaked up behind him and stealthily cut off the hem of Saul's robe. Afterwards, David experienced remorse as described in the quotation below from Turkel's beloved KJV, with Yahweh substituted for the LORD.
1 Samuel 24:5 And it came to pass afterward, that David's heart smote him, because he had cut off Saul's skirt. 6 And he said unto his men, Yahweh forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, Yahweh's anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of Yahweh. 7 So David stayed his servants with these words, and suffered them not to rise against Saul. But Saul rose up out of the cave, and went on his way.
Turkel often makes a big deal over Hebrew idioms and nuances, so perhaps he will take note here that "David's heart smote him" was an idiomatic way of saying that his conscience bothered him. He may quibble that no one's conscience would bother him over having snipped off a piece of a garment, but the context shows that David believed that what he had done had somehow been an affront to "Yahweh's anointed," so there is ample contextual evidence here that David was "conscience-stricken" over what he had done in that he felt that he had insulted the one whom Yahweh had chosen to be king.
I will say more about this smiting-the-heart idiom later, but I can't leave Saul squatting in the cave without pointing out an absurdity in this little yarn. Saul went into a cave, which just happened to be the cave where David and his men were hiding, and while Saul was squatting, David's men, in effect, told him that this was his chance to do Saul in, and, as they were apparently urging him to take care of Saul, David sneaked up behind Saul and cut off the hem of his robe. Okay, I guess we can imagine that Saul would have been so inattentive that he wouldn't have noticed someone snipping on the back of his robe while he was pensively engaged in the call of nature, but the long spiel between David and his men? Was Saul also as hard of hearing as he was inattentive? Did he need a Beltone? How was David able to vocalize his remorse at such length and restrain his men so quietly that Saul didn't notice it? Maybe David was an accomplished mime. At any rate, Saul just got up and left the cave without noticing any of the commotion behind him. Believable? Hardly. This little yarn would make a good addition to the "Twilight-Zone" section of the index page on this website, but it certainly isn't believable.
On another occasion, David's heart smote him again. After he had taken a census of the Israelites, he experienced a feeling that could obviously be described only as a feeling of guilt.
2 Samuel 24:10 And David's heart smote him after that he had numbered the people. And David said unto Yahweh, I have sinned greatly in that I have done: and now, I beseech thee, O Yahweh, take away the iniquity of thy servant; for I have done very foolishly.
I said above that the smiting of the heart was a Hebrew idiom that meant "conscience-stricken," and some English versions have so translated it or else used an equivalent expression. Some have even used the word guilt to translate what David felt on this occasion. In quoting these versions, I will substitute Yahweh for the LORD in order to represent more accurately the Hebrew text. In my opinion, this correction of a mistranslation will correctly convey to readers that the Israelites were just another supertitious ancient nation with a tribal god like Dagon, Bel, Chemosh, or Booga-Booga Bonga, some Southseas volcano god, whom the natives thought could be appeased only through the sacrifice of virgins.
1 Samuel 24:5
NIV: 5 Afterward, David was conscience-stricken for having cut off a corner of his robe. 6 He said to his men, "Yahweh forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the Lord's anointed, or lift my hand against him; for he is the anointed of Yahweh."NASV: 5 And it came about afterward that David's conscience bothered him because he had cut off the edge of Saul's robe. 6 So he said to his men, "Far be it from me because of Yahweh that I should do this thing to my Lord, Yahweh's anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, since he is Yahweh's anointed."
GNB: 5 But then David's conscience began to hurt, 6 and he said to his men, "May Yahweh keep me from doing any harm to my master, whom Yahweh has chosen as king! I must do no harm to him in the least, because he is the king chosen by Yahweh."
NCV: 5 Later David felt guilty because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe. He said to his men, "May Yahweh keep me from doing such a thing to my master! Saul is Yahweh's appointed king. I should not do anything against him, because he is Yahweh's appointed king."
The Message: 5 Immediately, he felt guilty. 6 He said to his men, "GOD forbid that I should have done this to my master, GOD's anointed, that I should so much as raise a finger against him. He's GOD's anointed!"
HCSB: Afterwards, David's conscience bothered him because he had cut off the corner of Saul's robe. 6 He said to his men, "I swear before Yahweh: I would never do such a thing to my lord, Yahweh's anointed. [I will never] lift my hand against him, since he is Yahweh's anointed."
I should be able to say that these translations also used conscience-stricken or its equivalents in 2 Samuel 24:10 and let it go with that, but keep in mind that when dealing with Bobby Turkel, I have to swat a mosquito with a sledgehammer, so here are those translations of that verse.
2 Samuel 24:10
NIV: David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to Yahweh, "I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, O Yahweh, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing."NASV: Now David's heart troubled him after he had numbered the people. So David said to Yahweh, "I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O Yahweh, please take away the iniquity of Thy servant, for I have acted very foolishly."
GNB: But after David had taken the census, his conscience began to hurt, and he said to Yahweh, "I have committed a terrible sin in doing this. Please forgive me. I have acted foolishly.
The Message: But when it was all done, David was overwhelmed with guilt because he had counted the people, replacing trust with statistics. And David prayed to GOD, "I have sinned badly in what I have just done. But now GOD forgive my guilt--I've been really stupid."
HCSB: David's conscience troubled him after he had taken a census of the troops. He said to Yahweh, "I have sinned greatly in what I've done. Now, Yahweh, because I've been very foolish, please take away your servant's guilt."
This list of translations is by no means exhaustive. I have quoted only those that used guilt or conscience-stricken or its equivalent, but there are many others who used "full of remorse" or similar expressions to describe the inner feelings that David experienced on these occasions. I could just stop here, borrow a phrase from Turkel, and say, "Case closed!" With the Turkey, however, obvious evidence makes no impression, so it is necessary, as I noted above, to swat a mosquito with a sledgehammer. I can just see him saying, "Wha, ha, the text still doesn't say that David felt guilt," so I suppose that unless a text can be found that says GUILT in Turkel will go to his grave screaming, "Guilt didn't exist in biblical times!" He has found a "source" that made this claim, so, by golly, he is going to stick to what they said no matter how much evidence to the contrary may be found in the Bible. He reminds me of the kind of person we have all encountered at one time or the other. This is the person who will, during the discussion of a difference of opinion, will say something like, "No, it isn't that way at all; I read an article..." as if his reference to an article he had read is enough to settle the issue.
I guess, then, that I will just have to keep piling on the evidence to the contrary. That David would have cried to his god to confess that he had "sinned greatly" would be sufficient for any reasonable person to understand that he was saying this because of an inner emotion he felt that could be best described as guilt. I cited above the example of David's reaction to his son's illiness, which Yahweh had benevolently afflicted upon the child, after the prophet Nathan had reproved him with the story of the poor man's little ewe lamb. Upon hearing Natan's reproof, David said... well, why don't we look at how the Jewish Publication Society translated what David said to Nathan?
2 Samuel 12:13 And David said to Nathan, "I stand guilty before the LORD!"
What's that? David said that he stood guilty before Yahweh. I suppose the Turkey will quibble that David was only admitting to guilt in a legal sense here and was not saying that he "felt" guilty. To say that David admitted to guilt in a legal sense but felt no inner sense of guilt that nagged his conscience would be to argue that David admitted his guilt without feeling any remorse or sorrow or mental anguish. If Turkel should so quibble, he will be in the absurd position of saying that David recognized his guilt without having any feeling of guilt. Will someone hold up a sign for Turkel to see?
Many believe that David wrote about his sin with Bathsheba in some of the psalms, such as the one quoted below from the JPS. I will quote only the parts that indicate feelings of deep remorse.
Psalm 51:-14 Have mercy upon me, O God... blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly of my iniquity, and purify me of my sin; for I recognize my transgressions, and am conscious of my sin. Against you alone have I sinned, and done what is evil in Your sight; so you are just in Your sentence, and right in your judgment.... Hide your face from my sins; blot out all of my iniquities.... Save me from bloodguilt....
Save me from bloodguilt? This is from a psalm supposedly composed by David after he had been reproved by the prophet Nathan. In his appearance before David, Nathan had flatly accused him of murder: "You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword" (2 Sam. 12:9). As noted above, David said to Nathan that he stood "guilty" before Yahweh, but in spite of all this, Turkel will no doubt expect us to believe that the intense inner feelings of remorse expressed here and in Psalm 51 came from someone who just recognized that he was guilty in a legal sense but had no inner feelings of guilt.
Will someone please wave that sign where Turkel can see it?
In another psalm of remorse, David said, "For my iniquities have gone over my head; they weigh like a burden too heavy for me" (Ps. 38:4), but, of course, under the burden of those iniquities, David had no feelings of guilt. Yes, will someone please raise that sign high enough for Turkel to see it? If you succeed in getting his attention, point out to him that if he wants to see the word guilt, he can read Psalms 38:4 in the Jerusalem Bible, which says, "My guilt is overwhelming me, it is too heavy a burden," or the NIV, which says, "My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear."
David is such a good example of how wrong Malina, Rohrbaugh, and their lackey in Ocoee, Florida, are that I think I will just cite another example. While he was living as a marauder during the time that he was fleeing from Saul, David sent messengers to Nabal, a rich man in the area, and asked him to give them provisions. Nabal refused, and when his wife Abigail, described as a beautiful woman, heard of his refusal, she loaded donkeys with provisions and took them to David, who just as she arrived was swearing to his men that he was going to go kill Nabal and every male child in his house. She apologized for her husband's behavior, and in a long speech that amounted to what Turkel would call "kissing David's patoot," she said that David's restraint in sparing her husband would later spare him an "offense of heart." There is that idiomatic reference to pain in the heart again. The NRSV translated it "pangs of conscience," so I will quote the broader context from this version.
1 Samuel 25:29 "If anyone should rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living under the care of Yahweh your God; but the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling. 30 When Yahweh has done to my lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you, and has appointed you prince over Israel, 31 my lord shall have no cause of grief, or pangs of conscience, for having shed blood without cause or for having saved himself. And when Yahweh has dealt well with my lord, then remember your servant."
The next day, Yahweh, being Yahweh, struck Nabal dead, and David added his beautiful widow to his harem, but the important thing in this tale is Abigaial's reference to "pangs of conscience" that David would spare himself if he didn't kill her husband. Now I would think that even Malina, Rohrbaugh, and their lackey would realize that a person in biblical times could not have spoken of pangs of conscience unless pangs of conscience were known to exist. How could pangs of conscience have existed unless people at that time did experience feelings of guilt?
Yes, will someone please wave that sign high enough for Turkel to see it?
Knowing Turkel, I suspect that he will want to hurl sarcasms and insults at me about quoting these translations only because they agree with me, but if he is thinking about doing this, he may want to check his hypocrisy at the door before he walks into that room. He likes to ridicule those who quote English translations (as if he is linguistically knowledgeable enough to read the Bible in its original languages), but he won't hesitate to quote versions other than his beloved KJV if they will support his position. In "The Modern Arians," Turkel criticized at length a Jehovah's Witness named Heinz for citing translations that agreed with his position.
In early editions of this essay we offered an extensive analysis of qanah showing that the translation "created" is unlikely -- so much so that Vawter declared that Wisdom was a separate being that God "acquired"! "Heinz" often takes the tack of "quote the versions to prove your point" and compiles around 30 translation cites [sic] that render qanah as "created" in Prov. 8:22. None of this is of any effect, for a "created" interpretation of qanah is based on false suppositions
For an example of Turkel's hypocritical way of doing what he faulted in "Heinz" and has often faulted in others, i. e., citing translations that agree with him, go to this section of "The Jehu Debate - Part One" to where Turkel referred to the NIV translation of Genesis 10:5 to "explain" the inconsistency of the biblical claim in this chapter that nations and tribes of the earth spoke different languages, whereas the next chapter tells the Tower of Babel myth in which it was claimed that the whole earth spoke the same language until Yahweh "confounded" their language. I have often said that Turkel's only consistency is his inconsistency, but those who want to see his hide nailed to the wall should click the link above and read that section.
We have seen enough to convince any reasonable person that David, as these tales about him were written, experienced deep remorse or guilt. After all, remorse is a painful awareness of something that one did or said that he wishes had not happened, and such an awareness would certainly be a "feeling of guilt." Enough has been said already, but readers must keep in mind that I have to wield a sledgehammer to swat the mosquito buzzing around in Florida, so I will just keep piling evidence onto evidence that human nature in biblical times was pretty much the same as it is now as far as emotional feelings were concerned.
Turkel could probably read the tale of Jonah's flight from "the presence [service] of Yahweh" (1:3) and not recognize the remorse and guilt that Jonah felt (as this tale was spun), but those with no doctrinal axes to grind will have no problem seeing it. Yahweh had told Jonah to go warn Nineveh of its impending destruction, but instead of obeying, Jonah "fled from the presence of Yahweh" (1:1-3) on a ship bound for Tarshish. According to the tale, Yahweh sent a storm that threatened to sink the ship. In those superstitious times, people believed that calamities were sent by angry gods, so when the sailors aboard the ship cast lots to see who was responsible for causing the storm to come upon them, the lot fell upon Jonah (1:7). When they confronted Jonah, he agreed that he was to blame for the storm.
Jonah 1:8 Then they said to him, "Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?" 9 "I am a Hebrew," he replied. "I worship Yahweh, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." 10 Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, "What is this that you have done!" For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Yahweh, because he had told them so. 11 Then they said to him, "What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?" For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. 12 He said to them, "Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you."
This yarn has all the charm of a throw-the-virgin-into-the-volcano tale, and Jonah was, in fact, thrown into the sea, which then "ceased from its raging" (v:15).......................... .............. Oh, excuse me, I had to get control of my laughter before going on [wiping my eyes]. Now where is the word guilt in this fanciful little yarn? Well, it isn't there, but who could suppose that a person would ask for death to punish his guilt (in a legal sense) unless he was experiencing some internal emotional anguish over that guilt? The story of Judas is another tale of a person who didn't just ask for death but took his own life because of something he had done that had caused him to experience internal emotional grief.
Matthew 27:3 When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. 4 He said, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." But they said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself." 5 Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself.
Who can believe that Judas killed himself without first feeling an internal emotional anguish over his act of having betrayed Jesus? This text says that he "repented," but would a person repent of a deed committed without first experiencing a feeling of guilt for that deed? The remorse of Judas brings to mind the crowd present on the day of Pentecost when Peter preached that they had crucified and killed a man whom God had made both Lord and Christ. Upon hearing this, they were "cut to the heart" (Acts 2:37) cried out to Peter and the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" Cut to the heart--that doesn't convey a sense of personal remorse like that felt by David in the examples cited above? Then what does it mean? Turkel will probably scream, "It doesn't say that they felt guilty; it just says that they were cut to the heart," so will someone wave that sign high enough that even he can see it?
Peter's remorse for having denied Jesus must be considered by anyone without a doctrinal axe to grind another example of a person in biblical times who was overwhelmed with a feeling of guilt. Jesus had told his disciples that they would all abandon him that night, but Peter assured Jesus that he was ready go to both prison and death for him (Luke 22:33-34), to which Jesus said that Peter would deny him three times before the cock would crow on that day. The tale of Peter's denial later that day is one of deep remorse when Peter realized what he had done.
Luke 22:54 Then they seized him [Jesus] and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house. But Peter was following at a distance. 55 When they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them. 56 Then a servant-girl, seeing him in the firelight, stared at him and said, "This man also was with him." 57 But he denied it, saying, "Woman, I do not know him." 58 A little later someone else, on seeing him, said, "You also are one of them." But Peter said, "Man, I am not!" 59 Then about an hour later still another kept insisting, "Surely this man also was with him; for he is a Galilean." 60 But Peter said, "Man, I do not know what you are talking about!" At that moment, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed. 61 The Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, "Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times." 62 And he went out and wept bitterly.
Why did Peter weep bitterly if he had felt no guilt for denying Jesus? Well, Turkel, no doubt, will echo Malina's and Rohrbaugh's quibble here and say that Peter and Judas, as well as David, felt shame and not guilt, but such a quibble would be hairsplitting gone to seed. Shame is an emotion resulting from the recognition that one has failed to act, behave, or think in accordance with recognized standards of that which is good or socially acceptable, and this emotion will usually be accompanied by a sense of embarrassment or humiliation. Guilt is a consciousness or recognition of having done that which is thought to be morally wrong. There seems to be an overlapping of these emotions, which makes it difficult to imagine someone's experiencing the one without experiencing at least some of the other. I suppose that a person could feel guilt without necessarily feeling shame if his guilt was due to something he had done in private that was known to no one else, but I find it hard to imagine that someone could feel shame without also feeling guilt. Both emotions come from a sense or recognition of having done something contrary to one's moral or social standards. In its frequent references to matters of conscience, the New Testament, despite what Malina, Rohrbaugh, and their trained parrot may think, indicates rather clearly that people in biblical times did experience feelings of guilt, which would have merely been an emotional recognition that they had violated their standards of morality.
Romans 2:14 When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. 15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them.
Now how can anyone read this and with a straight face say that feelings of guilt did not exist in biblical times, because if one's own conscience bore witness to accuse him, he would experience a recognition of having done that which was contrary to his moral standard. I suppose Turkel thinks that this meant that when one's conscience in biblical times accused him, he simply said to himself, "Well, gee, whiz, I recognize that I did something wrong, but I don't feel guilty about it."
The entire eighth chapter of 1 Corinthians was very clear in showing that an individual's conscience can condemn him even when he does something that is not really morally wrong.
1 Corinthians 8:1 Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that "all of us possess knowledge." Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; 3 but anyone who loves God is known by him. 4 Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that "no idol in the world really exists," and that "there is no God but one." 5 Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth--as in fact there are many gods and many lords--6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. 7 It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. 8 "Food will not bring us close to God." We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. 9 But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? 11 So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. 12 But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.
This text is merely saying that someone has committed a "sin" if he does something that isn't within itself immoral but does it thinking that it is immoral. The reason why it is a "sin" is because he defiles or wounds his conscience. I can't imagine how someone's conscience could be "wounded" without that person's experiencing a feeling that he has done something wrong. Why wouldn't that feeling be a feeling of guilt? I can imagine even less how even Turkel could argue that the text just quoted is not saying that the feelings in one's conscience that he had done wrong in eating meat sacrificed to idols was what made the act wrong. What would have been the source of the person's guilt--and I am using guilt in a theologically legal sense--except that the thoughts of his conscience had made him experience feelings of guilt? Hence, the guilty feeling made him guilty in a legal sense of something that within itself would not cause legal guilt.
The apostle Paul often spoke about the individual's conscience. He advised Timothy to "hold faith and a good conscience, which some having thrust from them made shipwreck concerning the faith" (1 Tim. 1:19). If one had thrust his conscience from him, he would have adopted an amoral attitude that would have considered nothing wrong. Later on in this epistle, "Paul" spoke more directly of those who in later times would abandon their consciences to live in an amoral state. He said of them that they would "fall away from their faith" and be seduced to believe "doctrines of demons" by the hypocrisy of men speaking lies, who had been "branded in their own consciences as with a hot iron" (1 Tim. 4:1-2). The imagery here is unmistakable. One's conscience is his moral guide, which pricks him with feelings of guilt when he does that which is wrong, but if his conscience has been seared with a hot iron, he has become immune to feelings of guilt. The fact that "Paul" used the imagery shows that he had an awareness of the place of one's conscience in guiding his moral conduct and that he knew that in some cases people could become so morally insensitive that they would actually lose all feelings of moral guilt. He described that condition as having the conscience seared with a hot iron.
The New Testament spoke of the conscience in several other places, but these examples are sufficient to show that biblical writers recognized the existence of guilt feelings in their time. In a speech attributed to the apostle Paul, he said that he had "lived before God in all good conscience until this day" (Acts 23:1). This is no doubt an exaggeration, but if it were true, Paul would have experienced no feelings of guilt, but does Turkel think that Paul would not have had any pangs of conscience, or feelings of guilt, if he had not lived before God in all good conscience? I have a simple question for Malina, Rohrbaugh, and their lackey in Ocoee, Florida: since conscience is the word we use to denote an inner awareness of right and wrong, why did New Testament writers refer to it so often if people of that time didn't experience feelings of guilt for having done that which is wrong?
Well, what do we really have here? This all began when Turkel was getting his head handed to him on a platter in the Abiathar exchanges, which began with his attempt to prove that my article "What Men with David?" was incorrect in saying that the story that Jesus alluded to in Mark 2:23-27 shows that David was alone at the time and was lying to Ahimelech when he said that men were with him. All of these exchanges are listed on the index page of this website, and those who read them will see that Turkel made the mistake of uncritically accepting Maurice Casey's speculative theory that Jesus, instead of correctly identifying Ahimelech as the priest from whom David had obtained showbread, named his son Abiathar as the priest whom David had encountered at Nob, because Abiathar was a contemporary of Ahimelech who was renown for his strict adherence to the law. Turkel could find no textual support in the story of David's encounter with Ahimelech (1 Sam. 21) to support Casey's claim, and so he set up this feeling-of-guilt straw man to distract attention from his obvious inability to make his case that Jesus purposefully substituted Abiathar for Ahimelech in order to defend his disciples by appealing to a priest who had been known to be a "stickler" for the law. The only problem was that Turkel could find no textual evidence that indicated that Abiathar was more of a stickler for the law than his father Ahimelech had been, and so Turkel did the only thing he could and set up a straw man about guilty feelings in biblical times so that he could beat around on it and make his admiring sycophants think that he was kicking butt. The only problem was that whether David felt guilt over the massacre of the priests at Nob was not the issue. The real issue is whether Jesus, or Mark, erred in saying that David had men with him at the time and in saying that David had gone into Abiathar in the "house of God" rather than into Ahimelech. I have shown very clearly in my replies to Turkel's defense of Casey's position that these errors were obviously made in Mark's account (2:23-28) of Jesus's defense of his disciples against charges that they had violated the Sabbath.
Turkel's attempt to prove that Abiathar was a priest who had been a stickler for the law of Moses fizzled and left him with no recourse except to quibble and violate his own theme song against "decontextualized" quoting of biblical passages, which he has chimed over and over again in articles like "The Intelligence Shortage," "Waking Up from the Great Dream," "Marshall Gauvin an Anachronistic Moral Judge," "One Hundred Contradictions in the Bible," "Decontextualized Quotes," and several others I could link to. Screaming, "Decontextualized!" has become one of Turkel's primary ways of "explaining" biblical discrepancies. In "One Hundred Contradictions in the Bible," linked to above, he started his theme song right in the first sentence of the article.
Yep. You knew it. No freethinker is complete without his favorite list of decontextualized Bible "contradictions."
In Turkel's defense, I am going to agree that there is entirely too much, on both sides, of what he calls "decontextualized exegesis." I deplore probably more than he does the way that some skeptics desperately looking for biblical discrepancies will lift statements out of context, but if Turkel is going to crusade against "decontextualized exegesis," he should not do it himself. I'll give just one example of his flagrant "decontextualized exegesis" and then get back to the irrelevant issue of whether people in biblical times experienced guilt.
In our exchanges on the Abiathar issue, Turkel couldn't find a single passage that said or implied that Abiathar was a "stickler for the law," as Turkel's source (Casey) had claimed, so he tried to read into passages implications that were not there. He argued that Abiathar had been entrusted to carry the ark of the covenant, and so this somehow implied that he was a stickler for the law. In reply to this, I pointed out, as those who click the link will see, that the broader context of the decontectualized verse that Turkel had quoted was rather clear in showing that Levites who were with Abiathar did the actual carrying.
2 Samuel 15:24 Zadok was there, too, and all the Levites who were with him were carrying the ark of the covenant of God. They set down the ark of God, and Abiathar offered sacrifices until all the people had finished leaving the city.
In the second link above (Levites), I acknowledged that further along in the context of the verse just quoted, the writer of 2 Samuel said in verse 29 that Zadok and Abiathar "carried the ark of God back to Jerusalem" but that this would no more mean that they did the actual carrying than 1 Kings 6:2, which says that King Solomon built a temple for Yahweh, would mean that Solomon had personally laid all of the bricks. I went on to cite an example where the Bible says that Moses had set up the tabernacle.
Exodus 40:18 When Moses set up the tabernacle, he put the bases in place, erected the frames, inserted the crossbars and set up the posts. 19 Then he spread the tent over the tabernacle and put the covering over the tent, as Yahweh commanded him. 20 He took the Testimony and placed it in the ark, attached the poles to the ark and put the atonement cover over it. 21 Then he brought the ark into the tabernacle and hung the shielding curtain and shielded the ark of the Testimony, as Yahweh commanded him.
The text went on, saying that he [Moses] did this and that, but common sense would tell us that Moses did not personally do all of these things. Can anyone visualize Moses, all by himself, setting up the tabernacle? Certainly not, and no sensible person would think that Zadok and Abiathar had personally carried the ark back to Jerusalem on this occasion. If they did, then they violated clear instructions concerning whom Yahweh had commanded to carry the ark, because Yahweh had set aside the tribe of Levi (Deut. 10:8) to carry the ark, and those entrusted with that duty were Uzzielites, descendants of Kohath's son Uzziel (Num. 3:31). The Aaronic priests, who were descendants of Amram, Aaron's father and Uzziel's brother, were to have the oversight of those who had been charged with carrying the ark and other vessels in the tabernacle (v:32). Uzzelite Levites were with Abiathar and Zadok in 2 Samuel 15, or else Zadok and Abiathar disregarded Yahweh's command about who was to carry the ark. If Turkel is going to argue that verse 29 of the passage in question meant that the Aaronites Abiathar and Zadok had personally carried the ark, then he must explain why such a "stickler for the law" would have disregarded Yahweh's instructions on how the ark was to be transported by Levites who were descendants of Uzziel.
Did this end the matter? Did Turkel say, "You're right; the full context of 2 Samuel 15:29 shows rather clearly that Abiathar and Zadok carried the ark only in the sense that they supervised the Levites with them who did the actual carrying?" Dream on! Turkel isn't about to admit that he made a mistake. He came back with a volley of insults and abstractions that danced around the issue and completely evaded his violation of his own principle that he calls "decontextualized exegesis."
My evidence for Abby as a renowned priest who honored the law is summed up as follows: "Abiathar served David for the entirety of his reign of 40 years and had the privilege, along with Zadok, of carrying the Ark of the Covenant, the most sacred Jewish religious object." Skeptic X barbles back at this point, "I shot this 'carrying the ark' as a sign of renown full of holes, as I will be showing again later on." He shot, but he had the rifle pointing the wrong way when he pulled the trigger. It's that old game again, folks:
Here he said absolutely nothing that in any way discredited my rebuttle of his claim that Abiathar was a renown priest because he "carried the ark," which Abiathar in fact did not do. At this point the abstractions set in that told Turkel's readers absolutely nothing specific or concrete in rebuttal of my counterargument.
- Opponent argues step A in his argument.
- Interrupt, as often as possible, to point out that this does not answer for problems posed to some or all of steps B, C, D, E, and F, and strongly emphasize that these problems haven't been solved yet. Also throw in any side comments you can on different topics.
- Throw up brief answer to what opponent says on step A.
- Opponent argues step B in his argument.
- Interrupt, as often as possible, to point out that this does not answer for problems posed to some or all of steps A, C, D, E, and F, and strongly emphasize that these problems haven't been solved yet. Also throw in any side comments you can on different topics.
- Throw up brief answer for what opponent says on step B.
- Repeat for steps C through F.
Exactly what did this answer prove? Absolutely nothing. In fact, I should ask what it even said, because it was abstractly incomprehensible. Instead of taking us through the alphabet, Turkel would have accomplished much more if he had actually taken one of my rebuttal arguments and analyzed it to show his readers that I had indeed done exactly what he was abstractly claiming in his excursion through the alphabet, but that just isn't Turkel's style. When he is taking a pounding, he doesn't answer the pounding argument. He ignores it and tries to conceal his evasion beneath such drivel as what I quoted above.
Fair enough. We shot Skeptic X's "carrying the ark" response full of enough holes to use as a Swiss cheese template. See how easy it is to play this game Skeptic X plays?
And just where did Turkel shoot my carrying-the-ark response full of holes? I missed it, but his sychopants will read such nonsense as what I quoted above and revel, "Wow, Holding is really kicking Till's butt, isn't he?" Regardless of what they may think, however, Turkel clearly resorted to "decontextualized exegesis" to try to prove that Abiathar had personally carried the ark, an act that the Turkey claims somehow made him a "renown priest," who was a "stickler for the law."
Here are some direct questions for Turkel, which he will not answer:
What Malina and Rohrbaugh have apparently done in their Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels is conclude way too much from the fact that the Bible does obviously teach that a culture of collective guilt existed in biblical times. In this culture, people superstitiously believed that an offense of a small group or even one person within a tribe or a nation would impute guilt--legal guilt--upon the entire tribe or nation. The story of Achan is an example of this. According to Joshua 7, the Israelites suffered a humilating defeat at Ai after they had scored an impressive victory at Jericho. In the first attack on Ai, Joshua sent only three thousand men into battle, because, compared to Jericho, Ai was a puny town, but the three thousand were repelled with a loss of 36 men. According to the tale, Joshua went through the routine of rending his clothes and throwing dust on his head as he cried out to Yahweh to reveal the reason for the defeat. As it turned out, the defeat at Ai had happened because one man--just one--had kept for himself some of the booty taken at Jericho, and because of the offense of this one man, Yahweh had held the entire nation responsible. In fact, this little yarn was introduced by saying that "the children of Israel (which would have been the entire nation) committed a trespass in the devoted thing" and went on to say that "Achan, the son of Carmi, of the tribe of Judah had taken of the devoted thing," i. e., spoils from the battle of Jericho, and so "the anger of Yahweh was kindled against the children of Israel" (Josh. 7:1). Notice how the entire nation was deemed guilty by this primitive wargod for something that just one man had done. Yahweh had presumably let thirty-six men be killed in battle because this one man Achan had kept some of the spoils of war for himself. This sounds strange to our sense of justice, but that was the way people thought in those days.
This story plods on through the entire chapter, which ends with Achan, his sons and daughters, his livestock, his tent, and "all that he had" being burned and stoned (vs:24-26). An entire family and all of its livestock were killed for what just one family member had done. Ah, don't you long for the time when the Christian Reconstructionists, like Turkel's hero Gary DeMar, take control of our country and save it from moral degeneration by ruling it in accordance with "biblical principles"? Life will be so much better then.
I could cite other examples of "collective guilt" in the Old Testament, which show that Yahweh held entire families or tribes or nations guilty for the offenses of a few or even just one, but this is sufficient to make the point. As strange as it was, the idea of collective guilt was believed by people in biblical times. What Molina, Rohrbaugh, and their parrot in Ocoee, Florida, seemed not to recognize, however, is that even though a culture of collective guilt was believed and practiced in those times, individual feelings of remorse or guilt were obviously experienced by those living within those societies. I cited above the example of David, whose heart smote him after he had snipped away the hem of Saul's robe and had numbered the men of military age in Israel. This last example should be sufficient to convince any reasonable person--which will, of course, exclude Turkel--that David individually, and personally felt guilt over what he had done. In that society of collective guilt, Yahweh, as this tale was spun, began immediately to kill by the thousands those who had not at all been personally guilty of what David had done.
2 Samuel 24:15 So Yahweh sent a pestilence on Israel from that morning until the appointed time; and seventy thousand of the people died, from Dan to Beer-sheba. 16 But when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, Yahweh relented concerning the evil, and said to the angel who was bringing destruction among the people, "It is enough; now stay your hand." The angel of Yahweh was then by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
The killing of seventy thousand people for something that he had personally done was enough that even David could see the injustice of it.
2 Samuel 24:17 When David saw the angel who was destroying the people, he said to Yahweh, "I alone have sinned, and I alone have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let your hand, I pray, be against me and against my father's house."
Turkel will likely scream, "Till's problem is that God didn't kiss his patoot," but that is not an explanation of anything. In the first place, it begs the question of whether "God" had anything to do with this tale. It is far more reasonable to assume that he didn't and that the tale merely reflects an ancient, superstitious belief in collective guilt. At any rate, I find it hard to believe that Molina and Rohrbaugh could be aware of this story about David and still believe that feelings of personal guilt didn't exist in biblical times. It, along with the story of his encounter with Saul in the cave, clearly shows that David had experienced personal feelings of guilt. Despite all the biblical passages that I have quoted and explicated above, howevever, I am sure that Turkel will still cling to his claim that feelings of guilt were unknown in biblical times. Would someone please wave that sign in front of him?
There is an irony in Turkel's blind acceptance of Molina's and Rohrbaugh's bizarre claim that they somehow determined without being able to conduct clinical observations that feelings of guilt didn't exist in biblical times. Turkel was apparently so taken with M & R that they, as we will see, became one of his favorite "sources" to cite. In "Wearing a Funny Skeptic Mask," he quoted M & R in a failed attempt to prove that even though the Bible didn't directly say that Abiathar was a priest renowned for being a "stickler for the law," it implied that he was. In support of his claim, he reached into Molina and Rohrbaugh's Social Science Commentary and pulled out their claim that in putting the time of Jesus's encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well at "the sixth hour" (John 4:6), John implied necessarily that the woman was a social outcast.
The charge of "how it could have beening" (which we will hereafter call "hichbing" for brevity) assumes a certain judgment upon a text like the Bible. The Bible was written in what anthropologists call a "high-context" society, in which people assumed a broadly shared, "high" knowledge of the context of anything referred to in speech or writing. Readers were required and expected to "fill in the gap" because their background knowledge was a given. Extended explanations were unnecessary. As an example, note the story of the woman at the well in John 4. This story is full of background templates that John does not explain, but that make the story meaningful: For example, the time of the meeting (noon) shows that the woman is an outcast, for it is not the time when water is normally gathered and when socialization occurs among the village women, but John sees no need to explain why the time is unusual for he assumes his readers will know that it is just by that he says it is noon.
The original date of this post was July 13, 2002, but Turkel has since revised it to make less obvious its inconsistency with a later position he took, so the article now shows February 20, 2005, as the date that it was posted. We will see that Turkel, who, as I have noted in several articles, has difficulty remembering from one article to the next what he has previously said, posted on the same date revisions of "On Divorce and Adultery in the NT," "The Twenty-Pound Gorilla," and "Wearing a Funny Skeptic Mask," linked to above, in which he had said as long as three years earlier that Jesus's encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well had occurred at "noon" and that the time given here was sufficient for people living in the "high-context" society of that era to know, without being directly told, that the Samaritan woman was a social outcast. His position back in 2002, then, was obviously that the sixth hour in John's gospel was noon, but we will see that he later backpedaled and changed the dogmatism in his assertion quoted above.
Although he did not specifically mention Molina and Rohrbaugh in the quotation above as the source of his position that the encounter with the woman at the well had taken place at noon, he repeated the claim in other articles in which he did identify them as his source of this interpretation. This was made clear in a debate on divorce, which he had with Doug Krueger, linked to above.
What he [Krueger] cannot work past -- and can never work past -- is his fixation upon reading a "high-context" text as a "low-context" reader. Here we bring in, more or less verbatim, a note we have now used several times. Malina and Rohrbaugh note in their Social-Science Commentary on John [16ff] that the NT was written in what anthropologists call a "high-context" society. In such societies people "presume a broadly shared, well-understood, or 'high' knowledge of the context of anything referred to in conversation or in writing." Readers were required and expected to "fill in the gap" because their background knowledge was a given. Extended explanations were unnecessary. As an example, they note the story of the woman at the well in John 4. This story is full of background templates that John does not explain, but that make the story meaningful: For example, the time of the meeting (noon, as they read it) shows that the woman is an outcast, for it is not the time when water is normally gathered and when socialization occurs among the village women, but John sees no need to explain that the time is unusual for he assumes his readers will know that it is.
To respond to Turkel's high-context/low-context drivel--which has become a hobby horse that he rides with regularity to justify reading into given bibiblical texts what he wants them to say--would take too much time, so readers who would like to see this interpretation theory shot full of more holes than are in a sieve can go to this section of the third part of "Turkel Takes the Bait" to see a thorough refutation of his application of the high-context/low-context theory. For now, I want to concentrate on showing how Turkel will say something one week and then flatly contradict it the next. The quotations above show that Turkel thought that Jesus's encounter with the woman at the well happened at noon and that he cited the Social-Science Commentary of Malina and Rohrbaugh to support his position. Originally, he simply asserted that the meeting happened at noon, but when he was caught contradicting this in another debate, which I will get to later, he returned to his original articles, as he will often do, and tried to doctor them to downplay his earlier position. Close to the end of the quotation above, for example, he said that the time of the meeting was (noon, as they [Malina and Rohrbaugh] read it), but originally he had said that the time was noon, without the attribution to M & R, as noted in the quotation from "Wearing a Funny Skeptic Mask," which he probably realized that he had to leave unaltered, since it was imbedded in my replies to him. (We have a couple of members who keep tabs on Bobby on the Errancy list, and their records show that he inserted the parentheticl expression "as they read it" on October 19, 2002, after he had been caught in the contradiction identified below.) In addition to the original statement, he emphatically said in another exchange in the Abiathar debate that the woman was at the well at noon.
Obviously some "hichbes" [how-it-could-have-beens] are not as valid as others. As we suggested, we can posit many reasons why the woman at the well in John 4 was there at noon (emphasis added).
In typical sarcastic fashion, he continued, as anyone who checks the link will see, to defend his claim of contextual implications that put the time of the meeting at noon. As noted above, this was an idea that he appropriated from Malina and Rohrbaugh.
Until Turkel opened his mouth on another issue, the only thing he was guilty of was the flagrant fallacy of appealing to authority, but in another article "Do the Synoptics contradict John about the day of the Last Supper?" he switched horses and began arguing that the 6th hour in John's gospel meant 6:00 in the morning.
Contradiction is sometimes alleged in that Mark reports the crucifixion at the third hour (Mark 15:25) while John says the sixth. The basic reply is that Mark and the other synoptics are using Jewish time (sunset to sunset; third hour = 9 AM); John is using Roman time, which is like ours (sixth hour = 6 AM - note that John says about the sixth hour; he's estimating). (The former method is still used in the Middle East, and we and other Western nations use the latter.) We know from the Synoptics that the crucifixion took over 6 hours. If John's sixth hour is really the Jewish sixth hour - noon, as unfortunately, even the Living Bible says - then the crucifixion lasted past the time when the Sabbath started. John 19:31 says that the Jews didn't want the bodies left up over the Sabbath, which obviously means that the Sabbath hadn't started yet. So either John is giving us an extraordinarily short crucifixion, or he is giving us the time in Roman. Since crucifixions were usually extended affairs, the latter assumption is more valid.
I could easily show that Turkel's "extraordinarly short crucifixion" quibble is seriously flawed, but my purpose here is not to correct him about this but to show that he originally took the position that the sixth hour in John's gospel meant noon but later switched and argued that it meant 6:00 in the morning. As I have noted many times, whatever position Turkel may have today won't necessarily be the one he will have tomorrow or next week or next month. He switches positions almost as often as the wind changes directions. In "The Twenty-Pound Gorilla," for example, Turkel had come full course to deny that he agreed with Malina's and Rohrbaugh's claim that the 6th hour in John 4:6 meant noon.
But we may also now deliver a coup de grace based on a major difference between our world and the ancient world. Malina and Rohrbaugh note in their Social-Science Commentary on John [16ff] that the NT was written in what anthropologists call a "high-context" society. In such societies people "presume a broadly shared, well-understood, or 'high' knowledge of the context of anything referred to in conversation or in writing." Readers were required and expected to "fill in the gap" because their background knowledge was a given. Extended explanations were unnecessary. As an example (one I happen to disagree with, but it makes no difference here), they note the story of the woman at the well in John 4. This story is full of background templates that John does not explain, but that make the story meaningful: For example, the time of the meeting (noon, by their view) shows that the woman is an outcast, for it is not the time when water is normally gathered and when socialization occurs among the village women, but John sees no need to explain that the time is unusual for he assumes his readers will know that it is.
So we see that Bobby by this time had come full circle to cover his butt. He started with the position that one could determine from implications that would be clear to those who lived in a "high-context society" that the woman whom Jesus encountered at the well was a social outcast, because she had come to the well at noon, which was not the regular time when women went there to fetch water. After switching positions on the 6th hour in order to have an explanation of the discrepancy in Mark's and John's time of the crucifixion, however, he began to alter his prior references to this example to make it appear that he had said only that this was something that Malina and Rohrbaugh thought. Then from there, he went on to use the very same example of the woman at the well to talk about "background templates that John does not explain" but in so doing said the position of M & R on this was "one I happen to disagree with."
Well, I have to wonder why Bobby "Backpedal" Turkel continued to use this example if he disagreed with the Malina's and Rorhbaugh's position about the sixth hour. The whole purpose of the example was to argue that people living in a "high-context society" of that time would have known by implication about the woman's social standing from the time that she was at the well, but if Bobby disagreed that she was at the well at noon, because the sixth hour was really 6:00 in the morning instead of noon, then the woman was at the well at the very time when Bobby had originally argued that all the other women would have come for water. Abandoning his acceptance of Malina's and Rorhbaught's position that the sixth hour was noon completely destroyed Bobby's purpose in referring to this example in the first place, but he is apparently too dense to realize it, so he kept using it anyway to prove what? That people in that "high-context society" would have understood that the Samaritan woman was a social outcast because she had come to the well at the very time that women usually went there? This is the kind of nonsense that permeates Booby's, er, Bobby's website.
There is a double irony in Bobby's "high-context" nonsense. He doesn't really believe that the sixth hour--the time when the Samaritan woman went to the well--was noon, yet he can see a "social template" that tells him she was a social outcast in that she went to the well at 6:00 AM, the time when the other women usually went to the well, but he can't see feelings of guilt in the many references to "pangs of conscience" and "conscience-stricken" emotions in the various scriptures quoted above. In other words, Bobby can see what he wants to see in biblical texts. If he wants to see social ostracism in a text, he sees social ostracism, and if he doesn't want to see feelings of guilt in a text, he doesn't see feelings of guilt in it. See how it works?
Just for the sheer pleasure of exposing Turkel's ignorance in the matter of "Roman time," I will close by pointing out that he is dead wrong in saying that Romans calculated the hours in the same way that we do by beginning the first hour at midnight. That is patently not so but is simply something that he read in "apologetic" attempts to explain the inconsistency in John 19:14, which says that Pilate released Jesus to be crucified at the sixth hour, and Mark 15:25, which says that Jesus was crucified at the third hour. Turkel read where some apologist said, "Oh, Mark and the other synoptic writers used Jewish time, but John used Roman time," and he uncritically swallowed it hook line and sinker. That the Romans counted their daytime hours from sunrise to sunset and their night hours from sunset to sunrise can easily be verified by anyone who can go to Google and type "Roman hours" into the search window.
A discussion of Roman time, for example, reports the fact commonly known to everyone but biblical inerrantists that the Roman calculation of hours was somewhat similar to the Jewish way.
The Romans divided up the day in a way that seems familiar to us. Their day was divided into 12 hours from dawn to sunset and 12 hours from sunset to dawn.
A more detailed discussion of the Roman calendar contained the following paragraph (with emphasis added).
Divisions of the Day and Night. For the Romans, the daylight hours were divided into twelve hours (hora, -ae), beginning at sunrise around 6 a. m. (=ante meridiem, "before noon") until 6 p. m. (=post meridiem, "after noon"). Thus, the "third hour of the day" (tertia hora diei) is equivalent to our 9 o'clock in the morning, while the "tenth hour" is our 4 o'clock in the afternoon. As midday lunch followed by a nap (meridiatio) was at the sixth hour (sexta hora), you can see how the idea of a siesta was (and still is!) a Roman custom.
Turkel claims that he has a large following of
readers. If he does, they should take
anything that he says with a huge grain of salt, especially if he cites
a writer to support
him, because he has a habit of uncritically accepting far too much that
he reads in books.
