Turkel:
Now we get to the part where McTill gets to wave around his crass hyperliteralism, which is the part I was especially looking forward to. My notations that neither Isaiah nor any other OT prophet thought literal stars were going to fall, but were using apocalyptic imagery to relate socio-political events, is blattered off as a case of "trying to prove biblical inerrancy by assuming biblical inerrancy."

Till:
Is everyone finally seeing how Turkel works?  He thinks that if he calls me "McTill" and refers to my rebuttals as something that I "blattered off" or "barked" or "burped" or some such, that will somehow disprove whatever my rebuttal argument was.  I'm glad that we have finally reached the part that Turkel was "especially looking forward to."  Maybe he will actually try to answer an argument.

Turkel:
 If that's the case then one wonders about "non-inerrantist" liberal-moderate scholars like G. B. Caird who thought the same, describing such passages as "prophetic hyperbole" which used terms of cosmic collapse to describe God's judgment on nations.

Till:
Oh, well, if G. B. Caird agreed with Turkel, then I must be wrong.  Whey didn't Turkel let us know long ago what Caird thought about this?

Did anyone notice anything that Turkel quoted from Caird by way of arguments that would support the claim that when prophets predicted that the destruction of the enemies of Israel would be accompanied by heavenly signs of falling stars and the darkening of the sun and moon, this was just "apocalyptic" language that should not be interpreted literally?  No, he made no attempt to support Caird's claim.  He didn't even quote Caird, so we don't even know if Caird himself even attempted to support this claim.  I have found that many times references like these, if checked out, will turn out to be just assertions that the "scholars" themselves made without bothering to try to prove them. 

Earlier, I said that I would quote Turkel to show that he himself will not accept scholarly opinion when it doesn't agree with him.  To do that, I'm going to quote part of an exchange between Turkel and me that took place when we were both members of an internet list for a brief time.  I say "brief time," because as soon as Turkel learned that I was on the list, he left it.  What I am quoting can be found in full context here.  The issue in the quotation concerned Turkel's attempt to show that there was no biblical inconsistency between the praise that Jehu received in 2 Kings 10:30 for massacring the royal family of Israel and the prophet Hosea's apparent denunciation of the massacre.  Notice the quotation from Turkel's e-mail posting, which I have emphasized in bold print.

His [Turkel's]approach also relied on frequent references to what Jones, McComiskey, Hobbs, Provan, and an array of other "scholars" think about this problem, as if their opinions are authoritative enough to settle anything. As I have pointed out repeatedly in my series of responses, finding books and articles that agree with one's religious position is simple to do, so in this respect Turkel has done nothing that a Mormon couldn't do in defense of the Book of Mormon or that a Catholic couldn't do in defense of papal infallibility or that a Seventh-Day Adventist couldn't do in defense of his position on observance of the sabbath, etc., etc., etc. Turkel may think that this is "scholarship," but an examination of his article will show that he rarely used logical argumentation to support the claims made by his sources. He simply cited them, frequently in very fragmented quotations, and went on to something else, as if the mere citation of the reference was sufficient to make his case.

By coincidence, something happened recently to show Turkel's colossal hypocrisy in this matter. On the errancy list, a subscriber from England had run into repeated difficulties in his efforts to defend biblical inerrancy, and so he formed a special list called CCBE (I have forgotten the meaning of the letters), limited it to Christians only, and undertook to put their collective heads together to formulate responses to postings that were appearing on the errancy list.

I have since taken the time to research the name CCBE to refresh my memory.  The letters stood for "Christians Combating Biblical Errancy.  The quotation now resumes.

I found out that none other than Robert Turkel became one of the subscribers to this list. When the group was discussing a problem that I posted to the list, i.e., how the magicians of Egypt could have done "in like manner with their enchantments" after that Moses and Aaron had changed ALL of the water throughout ALL the land of Egypt into blood. Their answer was that the magicians went to the river, dug along the bank, found ground water, filled some pots, and changed that into blood. In reply to this, I pointed out that they are reading into the text something that is not stated, and then I quoted the 1st century Jewish writer Philo Judaeus, who stated the following about the plague of blood:

"The brother of Moses, by the divine command, smote with his rod upon the river, and immediately, throughout its whole course, from Ethiopia down to the sea, it is changed into blood and simultaneously with its change, ALL the lakes, and ditches, and fountains, and wells, and springs, AND EVERY PARTICLE OF WATER IN ALL EGYPT, was changed into blood, so that, for want of drink, they digged round about the banks of the river, but the streams that came up were like veins of the body in a hemorrhage, and spurted up channels of blood like springs, no transparent water being seen ANYWHERE" (*The Complete Works of Philo,* Hendrickson: Peabody, MA, 1993, p. 468, emphasis added).

It turned out that Turkel sent the CCBE list a response to this in which he said the following:

That's nice, but Philo is simply reading into the text what is not there. So if I find a Jewish commentator of equal worth that says the opposite, is it a draw? If I find two, do I win? Remember that Philo is trying to promote Moses and Aaron here and would maximize their feat to the greatest extent possible.

First, it's rather ironic that Turkel would accuse Philo of reading into the text what is not there, when Turkel is reading into the text that the magicians dug for water along the banks of the river, when clearly there is nothing in the text that even implies that this happened. I suppose that in Turkel's opinion the validity of what one reads into a text depends upon whether the person agrees with biblical inerrancy. At any rate, the latter part of his statement is what I wanted to focus on. Turkel wondered if he could tie or win by finding one or two Jewish commentators of "equal worth" who took the opposite opinion of Philo's. Well, first of all, let him find other Jewish commentators of equal worth to Philo who expressed an opposite view, and then we can talk about it. The primary thing in this statement, however, is Turkel's own recognition that what writers think doesn't settle anything. If this is true of Philo, then why wouldn't it be true of Provan, McComiskey, Jones, et al whom Turkel has quoted throughout his article? If I can find an equal number of writers who disagree with their position, does the discussion about the blood of Jezreel turn into a draw? If I can find more writers who disagree with Turkel's sources, do I win? I predict that Turkel will regret the day that he ever made this statement, because he has chopped off at the knees one of his primary methods of "argumentation," i.e., the citation of writers who agree with him. It is a very amateurish method of argumentation, but now Turkel doesn't even have that.

Well, I was clearly wrong about one thing.  Pointing out Turkel's inconsistency has never deterred him from citing "scholars" as definitive proof of whatever his position of the day may be.  He still does it, but as I go through his references to what Caird or Whitney or Feinberg or whoever said, please keep in mind what he said above.  By his own logic, all I will need to do to tie him is to match him "scholar" for "scholar," and I can "win" by citing more scholars than he does.  That, however, is not the game I play, because anyone can find writers who agree with whatever religious position he may be debating.

Another principle that Turkel stated above, which will come back to haunt him, is that if a writer (like Philo) was inclined to "promote" something (as Philo was allegedly trying to "promote" Aaron and Moses), his opinion isn't reliable.  Now I wonder if Turkel thinks that G. B. Caird, even though he was a moderate errantist, did not try to promote the word-of-God view of the Bible.  Those who think that Caird was just a stone-cold, objective biblical commentator should take the time to read some of his works.  They will find otherwise.  Hence, by Turkel's own standard Caird's opinion doesn't prove anything because he had an agenda to promote.

Turkel:
No doubt rather than actually rebutting them of socio-anthropological and linguistic grounds, McTill would humph back that such scholars were "thinking like inerrantists."

Till:
Well, Turkel is pretty close here.  It isn't so much that "such scholars" think like inerrantists as it is that they are themselves Bible believers, even though their wool may not be dyed as deeply as that of fundamentalist believers. In other words, like Philo Judaeus, they have a position to promote.  They have a desire for the Bible to be right, so whenever they can find what they consider plausible explanations for Bible discrepancies, they will often times try to defend the Bible against charges of errancy.  As objective as Samuel Driver was about letting the evidence speak for itself, he would sometimes do this.  I think of Driver's attempt to explain that there may not have been a chronological discrepancy between Daniel 1, where the writer said that Nebuchadnezzar put Daniel and his friends into a three-year period of training after which they were presented to the king, who determined them to be wise above all the wise men in his kingdom (Dan. 1:3-20), and Daniel 2:1ff, where Daniel and his friends were presented as men whose wisdom was discovered by Nebuchadnezzar during the second year of his reign.  Furthermore, those who write Bible commentaries have a commercial audience to keep in mind.  If they are too thorough in recognizing discrepancies in the Bible, that will surely have an undesirable effect on the marketing of their books.

Turkel:
No, McTill, we don't need a stance of inerrancy to win or interpret this one. All that's needed is the non-provincialist attitude you lack as a crass hyperliteralist with a CoC backbone.

Till:
See how Turkel works, folks?  If he derogatorily calls me "McTill" and paints me as a "provincialist" and "hyperliteralist," he apparently hopes that his readers will reject what I have to say without even reading it.

By the way, I think I will coin a new word.  What about "hyperfigurativist"?  That would be an appropriate term for someone who tries to resolve Bible discrepancies by screaming, "Well, the language in that text is figurative!"

Turkel:
We've gigged McTill for this sort of temporal and cultural bigotry; so that he's forced to say something on a subject he avoided years ago,

Till:
I've never avoided this subject.  I just saw no need to reply to something that Turkel was never going to let his readers see.  Keep in mind that until just recently, Turkel would not link his readers to my articles.  He would simply quote them selectively and call that a "reply."  Now that he has made the mistake of giving his readers the opportunity to see what I write in reply to him, I welcome the opportunity to reply to as much of his nonsense as health restraints on my time will allow.

By the way, wagging Jeremiah 7:22 into this debate is another example of Turkel's way of setting up straw men to beat on when he is unable to answer his opponent's rebuttals.  What Jeremiah said about sacrifices when the Israelites came out of Egypt has nothing to do with preterism, but when Turkel can't answer an argument, he will try to divert the subject to something else.

Turkel:
let's bring it all back in, with some editing and with some extra comments in brackets:

For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices...[Jer. 7:22]

Till:
Gee, I like for readers to see exactly what I said rather than Turkel's "editing" of it. He has lifted a statement from my article "The Uniqueness of the Bible."  I wrote this several years ago, and Turkel posted a "reply" to it on his website, which contained no link to my article.  Those who check my article at the site indicated above will see that www.infidels.org has put links to Turkel's references to it, but Turkel, in typical fashion, gave his readers no link to make my article easily accessible to them.  Through selective quoting to his choir, he wants to leave the impression that he is ripping his opposition apart, so he tries to keep from the choir access to whatever he is replying to.  As I explained above, I didn't bother to reply to Turkel's response to this article, because I knew he would never link his readers to it.  Now that he is linking, his readers are going to see just how inadequate his "replies" are. 

Wagging into this debate the Jeremiah problem explicated in "The Uniqueness of the Bible"  is another one of Turkel's straw men, because the issue discussed in that article has nothing to do with preterism, but what the heck?  Replying to Turkel's attempt to resolve this problem will give me another opportunity to expose his hyperfigurativist approach to solving biblical discrepancies.  If the face-value meaning of a text results in discrepancy, he simply declares it figurative or symbolic or hyperbolic.  Here is the entire context of the fragmented quotation that he took from my article.

All through the Old Testament, there are stories of animal sacrifices that were both commanded and savored by Yahweh. The book of Leviticus, in fact, is for the most part a catalog of the various sacrifices that Yahweh required of his "chosen people." Here and there, however, we see indications that some biblical writers were in disagreement with this practice. The prophet Jeremiah even claimed that Yahweh said, "For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices" (Jer. 7:22). This statement stands in flagrant contradiction of what the last four books of the Pentateuch say in too many places even to list a fraction of them. Biblical inerrantists have leaned over backwards to try to explain this discrepancy by claiming that what Jeremiah really meant was that Yahweh wanted sincerity, honesty, and mercy to accompany the outward compliance to his commands concerning burnt offerings, but this is not what the text says. It plainly states that Yahweh did not speak to the Israelites or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. If Jeremiah had meant only that Yahweh wanted certain inward attitudes to accompany the offering of sacrifices, he could have said so. But he didn't.

Now let's look at Turkel's "explanation" of this problem.

Turkel:
By Till's line of thinking, Jeremiah 7:22 "stands in flagrant contradiction of what the last four books of the Pentateuch say" with their many commands of offerings and sacrifices. Presumably we are to think that Jeremiah represents some "anti-cultus" faction that denies the Mosaic heritage -- some would say, that he is speaking against a recent forgery of Deuteronomy "discovered" in the Temple.

Till:
Yes, some have said that, but whatever the reason may have been for Jeremiah's statement above, it poses a serious problem for inerrantists that cannot be solved quite as easily as Turkel would have us believe by declaring that it was just "hyperbole."

Turkel:
The simple answer to this notes that this is rather the use of hyperbole to effect a point. The purpose of this phrase is to show the relative importance of sacrifices, etc. in terms of inward attitudes.

Till:
Well, let's just look at Jeremiah's statement within its context.  I'll take it a piece at a time.

Jeremiah 7:8 "Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit. ⁹Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom you do not know, ¹⁰and then come and stand before Me in this house which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are delivered to do all these abominations'? ¹¹Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of thieves in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it," says Yahweh.

Attitude was certainly under consideration, so on this much Turkel and I agree.  Jeremiah seemed to be condemning an attitude that is regrettably too commonplace in our own society.  A person professing to be a Christian will lie, commit adultery, steal, and such like, and then go confess to a priest or privately pray for forgiveness and then walk away thinking that everything is all right, or to bring it closer to home, a man will write articles in which he hurls insults, lies, and distortions, and in general conducts himself completely contrary to the "spirit of Christ" that is supposed to be in him, and then go to church on Sunday and feel that everything is all right with his "soul" because he is going through the outward motions of being a "Christian."

Jeremiah 7:12 "But go now to My place which was in Shiloh, where I set My name at the first, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel. ¹³And now, because you have done all these works," says Yahweh, "and I spoke to you, rising up early and speaking, but you did not hear, and I called you, but you did not answer, ¹⁴therefore I will do to the house which is called by My name, in which you trust, and to this place which I gave to you and your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh. ¹⁵And I will cast you out of My sight, as I have cast out all your brethren—the whole posterity of Ephraim.

According to biblical records, the tabernacle was first erected at Shiloh after the Israelites had established themselves in Canaan (Josh. 18:1ff), so this would have been the place where Yahweh first "set his name."  The early chapters of 1 Samuel tell of Eli's service as a priest at Shiloh, and it was at this time that the ark of the covenant was captured by the Philistines (1 Sam. 4).  A "feast of Yahweh" was held at Shiloh annually (Judges 21:19; 1 Sam. 1:3), but something happened that caused the tabernacle to be removed from Shiloh to Nob (1 Sam. 21:1ff).  There is no direct biblical record of what happened, but Jeremiah's statement above shows that he understood that some kind of catastrophe had happened that brought an end to Shiloh as a religious center.  Jeremiah was warning that the preoccupation with sacrifices was no guarantee that Jerusalem would remain the religious center of Judaism.

Jeremiah 7:16 ¹⁶"Therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry or prayer for them, nor make intercession to Me; for I will not hear you. ¹⁷Do you not see what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁸The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger. ¹⁹Do they provoke Me to anger?" says Yahweh. "Do they not provoke themselves, to the shame of their own faces?" ²⁰Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: "Behold, My anger and My fury will be poured out on this place—on man and on beast, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground. And it will burn and not be quenched."

So the people's preoccupation with sacrifices extended to the offering of sacrifices to other gods, so Yahweh <snicker, snicker> told Jeremiah not even to bother making intercessions for them, because Yahweh would not hear him. 

Jeremiah 7:21 Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: "Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat meat. ²²For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. ²³But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.' ²⁴Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and the dictates of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. ²⁵Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have even sent to you all My servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them. ²⁶Yet they did not obey Me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.

So the people were preoccupied with their burnt offerings and sacrifices, even to the point of offering them to other gods, but Jeremiah told them that they were putting undue emphasis on an outward religious practice that Yahweh didn't even command their ancestors to do when they came out of the land of Egypt.  In my article, which Turkel has diverted attention to in order to evade the problems in preterism, I made the following comments about Jeremiah's claim that Yahweh did not speak to or command the Israelites concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices when he brought them out of Egypt.

This statement stands in flagrant contradiction of what the last four books of the Pentateuch say in too many places even to list a fraction of them. Biblical inerrantists have leaned over backwards to try to explain this discrepancy by claiming that what Jeremiah really meant was that Yahweh wanted sincerity, honesty, and mercy to accompany the outward compliance to his commands concerning burnt offerings, but this is not what the text says. It plainly states that Yahweh did not speak to the Israelites or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. If Jeremiah had meant only that Yahweh wanted certain inward attitudes to accompany the offering of sacrifices, he could have said so. But he didn't.

If Jeremiah were the only biblical writer to express this opinion, we could perhaps be convinced that we have misunderstood this particular passage, but the same view was stated elsewhere. In Psalm 40:6, the writer speaking to Yahweh said, "Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required." Isaiah 1:11-14; Psalm 51:16; Jeremiah 6:20; and Amos 5:22 are other passages that show that some writers did not attach to sacrifices and offerings the supreme importance that was expressed in the book of Leviticus, which was undoubtedly written by an Aaronic priest intent on securing his livelihood, which would have been dependent on a continual parade of animals to be sacrificed at the temple altar.

In my original article, I simply cited several passages that deemphasized temple sacrifices, but since some people have to be hit over the head before they can see the light, I am going to quote those now in their entireties.

Isaiah 1:11-14 "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?" Says Yahweh.  "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, Or of lambs or goats. ¹²  "When you come to appear before Me, who has required this from your hand, to trample My courts? ¹³Bring no more futile sacrifices; Incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies—I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting.¹⁴Your New Moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; They are a trouble to Me, I am weary of bearing them.

Psalm 51:15  O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. ¹⁶For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. ¹⁷The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart—These, O God, You will not despise.

Jeremiah 6:20  For what purpose to Me comes frankincense from Sheba, and sweet cane from a far country? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet to Me."

Amos 5:21 "I hate, I despise your feast days, and I do not savor your sacred assemblies. ²²Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings.

In some of these texts, attitude was clearly the reason why sacrifices were pronounced unacceptable, but they nevertheless show an entirely different picture of the importance of sacrifices from what was said in the book of Leviticus.  The most plausible explanation for the difference is that biblical writers simply disagreed on some matters.  Turkel, of course, will never accept this, so I will reply to his quibbles as he presents them below.

As I begin replying to his quibbles on this point, I will remind readers that it has nothing to do with preterism, which is the subject we are supposed to be debating, but when Turkel finds himself in a bind, he turns to setting up straw men to kick around.

Turkel:
[The purpose of this phrase (Jer. 7:22) is to show the relative importance of sacrifices, etc. in terms of inward attitudes.] Indeed, were this not so, we would be constrained to ask how such an obvious "condemnation" of the sacrifices survived the so-called "cutting," since the very priests that Till accuses of creating the sacrificial law for their own benefit were the ones who made the "cuttings" in the first place!

Till:
Turkel may as well ask how so many other biblical inconsistencies survived the "cutting." The fact that an inconsistency survived the "cutting" is hardly an explanation for it. He is resorting to a familiar inerrantist argument.  If such and such were really a discrepancy, inerrantists will ask, then why wasn't it noticed back then?  There are two problems with this argument: (1) Past failures to notice a discrepancy does not mean that no discrepancy exists, for Bible believers today will read right over flagrant discrepancies and not notice them.  (2) There is no way to know whether the discrepancy was noticed. The scarcity of records left in biblical times would hardly give us a clear picture of what may or may not have been points of religious controversy back then.  The winners in the religious controversies in ancient Israel wrote the "histories" of those times, so they would have written from their perspectives.

Turkel:
But history knows of no such opposition to the sacrificial system in Israel; while the temple machinery was often corrupt (as in the time of Annas), there is no indication at all that the actual sacrificial practice was disdained.

Till:
There isn't?  What about Jeremiah 7:22 and the other passages that I quoted above?  They hardly indicate that there was no disdain for "sacrificial practice."  When a biblical writer said that Yahweh did not speak to or command the Israelites concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices when he brought them out of Egypt, that didn't show a disdain for "sacrificial practice"?  When a biblical writer said that Yahweh had had enough of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of cattle, that didn't show a disdain for "sacrificial practice"?

Turkel:
Skeptics like Till, however, will have none of this.

Till:
Inerrantists like Turkel, however, will have none of this claim that such texts as those quoted above showed a disdain for "sacrificial practice."  After all, he is a believer in the absurd.  He believes that stories about talking animals really happened.  He believes that stories about a god named Yahweh routinely dropping in to chat with patriarchs actually happened.  He believes that tales about parting a path in the sea or walking unharmed through a fiery furnace actually happened.  He believes that stories about people who were taken directly into heaven without dying actually happened.  He believes that stories about people who were resurrected from the dead actually happened.  In  a word, Turkel is a gullible mythicist, and he will spare no extreme to defend such fanciful yarns.  Like Philo Judaeus, Turkel has an opinion to promote, so we would expect him to take whatever position is necessary to promote it.

And he has the gall to refer to me disdainfully with the word "skeptic," as if there is some disgrace involved in not believing the ridiculous.

Turkel:
For the, [sic]  the text must be read "plainly" and to them, "plainly" this means Jeremiah was indisposed to the Pentateuch.

Till:
No, a text should be read "plainly" unless there are compelling reasons to apply figurative or secondary meanings to the language of a text.  To Turkel, if the plain reading of a text results in a discrepancy in the text, then that becomes a compelling reason to call the language of the text figurative or symbolic or apocalyptic or hyperbolic, but that is not a sound principle of literary interpretation except to those who have emotionally important beliefs to defend.  A Mormon could use the same technique and prove that the Book of Mormon is inerrant.  A Muslim could use the same technique and prove that the Qur'an is inerrant.  A Zoroastrian could use the same technique and prove that the Avesta is inerrant.  A Hindu could use the same technique and prove that the Bhagavad-gita is inerrant.  Turkel can choose any book he wishes, identify what he considers to be errors in it, and I can use his methods of defending the Bible and prove that what he thinks are errors in the book are not really errors.

In other words, the methods that Turkel uses in his defense of the Bible, if applied universally to all books, would prove all books to be inerrant.  His methods would eliminate all possibility of errors in written documents.  That is how ridiculous his "apologetic" methods are.

Turkel:
But as usual, Till and his ilk are thinking out of their time.

Till:
Here we go again.  Turkel is going to give us the benefit of his expertise on ancient Near Eastern culture and Hebraic "nuances."

Turkel:
Let's offer some background.  ANE culture, including that of the Semites, was generally pre-literate and grounded in oral transmission.

Till:
There's no need to reinvent the wheel, so I will just quote what I said in the land-promise debate when Turkel took this track to try to prove that the Bible didn't mean what it said in Joshua 21:43-45, where the writer clearly said that Yahweh had given to Israel all the land he had promised them, that not a man of all their enemies had been able to stand before them, and that not a word had failed of all the good things that Yahweh had promised Israel.  Since this statement clearly contradicted other biblical passages, Turkel took the ANE route and said, "Well, if Till just understood that ancient Near Eastern culture was primarily an oral society, he would know that there isn't any problem here."

Turkel:
Others recognize that certain blocks of the text had their origins as oral units of tradition, formulated and designed for a specific purpose. Josh. 21:43-45 comes at the end of an extended accounting of the assigning of territories to the Israelite tribes, and before several other independent units. 21:43-45 sits by itself, and for a specific purpose. It is a formulaic summary of previous events, with the emphasis on God's faithfulness to His promises.

As a formulaic composition, 21:43-45 contains several elements designed for easy oral memory: the repetitive "and" which is typical of Semitic literature; the forceful central chiasm using the phrase "all their enemies" as a core (not apparent in the English translation: the Hebrew order is, "And not stood [‘amad] a man before them all of their enemies; all their enemies gave Yahweh into their hand [yad]");  the reuse of the phrase "sware to their fathers"; the use of exclusive language (all, any, not -- notably, not applied to the word possessed). In short, it is designed to be memorized and repeated, and as such is not concerned with reporting the niggling "exception" details about which critics complain. These details are assumed to be known by the hearers, who are to use this summary formula to encourage themselves to continue on the same path, as Yahweh has proven to be faithful in all of his promises up to the time that this formula is inserted in the text.

So Turkel's argument was that Joshua 21:43-45 had been formulated to be memorized and repeated, and so that somehow made the flagrantly incorrect claims about the extent of Israelite conquests correct.  Here is part of what I said in reply to this.

Till:
Whoa!  Isn't everybody impressed with the way Turkel slings references to Hebrew words as if he knows the language like the back of his hand?  He knows no more about Hebrew than I do, and he wouldn't recognize a "forceful central chiasm" if it slapped him in the face.  In fact, I suspect that he meant "chiasmus" but  wasn't paying careful attention to what he was copying from some source to leave the impression with gullible readers that he is able to see insightful nuances in the biblical text that escape the notice of others.

This all sounds like excuse-making for what Turkel realizes are obvious inconsistencies in the biblical record.  What is he trying to say?  Is he arguing that the omni-one, when "inspiring" whoever wrote this text, allowed him to inject error into his historical report because it would be easier to repeat from memory?  If so, is he arguing that "inspiration" by an omni-everything deity couldn't direct the writer to give an accurate account of what had happened up to this point in Israelite history?  Is he saying that an omni-max deity sacrificed historical accuracy in order to make a text easier to memorize?

Turkel was the one who said in the first paragraph of his "reply" that the issue in this debate would be "the consistency of the biblical text," so is he now backpedaling too?  Does he think that the biblical text on this issue was inconsistent so that a passage like this could be memorized more easily by those who wanted to pass it along orally?  Does inconsistency in a biblical text magically go away because the intention of the writer was to word the statement so that it would be easier to memorize?

Very soon now, we will see him arguing the same thing about the Jeremiah 7:22 straw man, which I will note again has nothing to do with the issue of preterism.  I could take a cue from Turkel's performance in the land promise debate and say...

This is merely a distraction still, a diversion from the subject of [preterism] and our opponent still cannot, and never will be able to, explain why such superfluous commentary requires quotation and/or reference from a respondent, other than to score debate points with a [Bible-believing] readership.

That, however, is not my style, so when he evades an argument by claiming that the biblical text was using "apocalyptic" or "hyperbolic" or "idiomatic" language, I won't bob and weave and duck and dodge.  I will address his quibble directly.

Turkel:
Correspondingly, the use of idiom and strong, colorful expression was much more common than it is in our own modern society,

Till:
I'm competent only in English and French, but I doubt that very many more languages could rely more on idiomatic expressions than English.

Turkel:
especially within the context of teaching or the transmission of important messages.

Till:
So after having argued in the land-promise debate that reliance on oral transmission in ancient Hebrew somehow changed a flagrantly erroneous statement into a correct statement, it now appears that Turkel will be arguing that idiomatic intentions could make X and not X (P and ~P) be consistent statements.  The book of Leviticus is filled with Yahwistic commands for the Israelites, who had just come out of Egypt, to offer various sacrifices to him.  Hence, it would be appropriate to say that the theme of the book of Leviticus was "Yahweh commanded the Israelites, who had just come out of Egypt, to offer burnt offerings and sacrifices to him."  Now let's put the X and not X (P and ~P) problem into perspective.

1.  Yahweh commanded the Israelites, who had just come out of Egypt, to offer burnt offerings and sacrifices to him.

2.  Jeremiah said in 7:22 that Yahweh did not speak to or command the Israelites concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices when they came out of Egypt.

Hence, we have an X and not X (P and ~P) situation, so we'll look forward to seeing Turkel prove that Hebrew idiom could make number 2 mean that Yahweh DID speak to and command the Israelites concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices when they came out of Egypt.  This he must do or else the contradiction between Leviticus and Jeremiah 7:22 still stands.

Turkel:
When Zedekiah the son of Chenannah [sic], the false prophet, presented to Ahab two horns of iron he had made, and said that with these Ahab would gore the Syrians (1 Kings 22:11), this was more than just a comedic, Gallagher-type prop being used, or some primitive type of show and tell; it was a recognized means of communication. [Presumably McTill would tell us that that Zedekiah actually envisioned Ahab going out and goring Syrians with these horns.

Till:
Turkel forgets a primary rule of literary interpretation: the language of a written text is to be interpreted literally unless there are compelling reasons to assign figurative meaning.  To think that Ahab could have routed the Syrians with the horns that Zedekiah was using to dramatize his prophecy of victory is too absurd to believe that this was what he meant, and so that becomes a compelling reason to assign figurative meaning to the statement.  I do wish I had had Turkel in one of my literature classes.  Maybe he wouldn't be so literarily ignorant today.

Turkel's task now is to show us a compelling reason why we should not think that Jeremiah meant exactly what he said when he said that Yahweh had not spoken to or commanded the Israelites concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices when they came out of Egypt.  What is that compelling reason?

We will soon see Turkel arguing, "Well, it was all just idiomatic." 

I take that back.  We will soon see him asserting that it was all idiomatic.  You see, that is how biblicists work.  When the heavenly signs in Matthew 24:29ff became a problem to Turkel's preterist belief, he just declared this "apocalytpic" language.  He declared it; he did not prove it.  When the description of the end of all things in 2 Peter 3:10ff, which described the dissolving of the elements with fervent heat and burning of the earth and all the works in it became a problem to Turkel's preterist belief, he just declared it "apocalyptic" language.  He declared it; he did not prove it.

No biblical doctrine can be too absurd that someone who believes in it cannot use this same technique to prove that the Bible taught that doctrine.  Those who admire Turkel so much should be aware that he is doing nothing that anyone else with a cherished belief could not do to prove that the Bible is on his side.

Turkel:
We anticipate his response, and Hyper the Literalist will be ready with comments.]

Till:
Whenever Turkel cannot answer an argument or defend his position, he will almost always resort to silly scenarios involving "Hyper the Literalist."  Maybe I should write some scenarios in which I use "Hyper the Figurativist."

Turkel:
Likewise, Ezekiel lying on his side to symbolize Jewish punishment, and Jesus' "cleansing" of the temple.

Till:
If Turkel has any compelling reasons why we should not understand that Ezekiel lay on his side in Ezekiel 4:1ff or that Jesus did not "cleanse" the temple as described in the New Testament, he should state those compelling reasons.  Otherwise, there is no reason not to believe that the writers didn't mean what they said.

Turkel:
Actions and verbiage that we would consider excessive, overly demonstrative, and unnecessary for transmitting a message were essential and/or expected for ANE communication processes.

Till:
No more essential than in our own culture.  A mother wishing to emphasize her point to an unruly child might say, "I have told you a million times not to do that."  An angry person might say, "I'll beat you within an inch of your life."  In debates, the participants speak about "mountains" or "tons" of information. These are all hyperbolic expressions that are easily recognized.  Now what Turkel must do is show us--not just assert to us but show us--that Jeremiah 7:22 was similarly hyperbolic.  Then after establishing that it is hyperbolic, he must show us why it would not be a hyperbolic statement that expressed disapproval of the Levitical sacrificial system.  Because the mother in the example above used hyperbole to tell her unruly child that she had told him "a million times not to do that," the obvious hyperbolic language would not mean that she didn't disapprove of what he was doing.

Turkel:
Today this is preserved in the extensive use of gesticulations in some Eastern cultures, and even a few Western ones (the Italian culture for example).

Till:
So if an Italian used extensive gesticulations to say, "God did not speak to or command the Israelites concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices when they left Egypt," would the extensive "gesticulations" make his statement mean that God DID speak to the Israelites concerning burnt offerings when they left Egypt?

Turkel:
(This was for several reasons - among them that these tactics encouraged memorization of the message in a social situation where few had the resources or the knowledge to just pull out a scroll and read the material again, and where there were no video cameras to record something that might need to be preserved for later.)

Till:
Well, the scroll would preserve the message for later reference. In my quotation above from the land-promise debate, I addressed this same quibble, so I will ask Turkel to explain to us how "tactics [that] encouraged memorization" could make an X (P) statement not contradict a not X (~P) statement.  In that case, one text said X (P) [Yahweh had given to the Israelites all the land he had promised them], whereas another text said not X (~P) [Yahweh had not given to the Israelites all the land he had promised them].  How exactly would "tactics [that] encouraged memorization] make both statements true?

Now Turkel can apply the same problem to Jeremiah 7:22.  One text said X (P) [Yahweh commanded the Israelites to offer burnt offerings and sacrifices when they came out of Egypt], whereas another text said not X (~P) [Yahweh did not command the Israelites to offer burnt offerings and sacrifices when they came out of Egypt].  Exactly how would "tactics [that] encouraged memorization" make both of these statements true?  Exactly how would "hyperbolic" language make both of these statements true?

Turkel:
Relevant to our topic at hand, our point is that Jeremiah (as well as other Biblical writers - cf. Amos 5:21-5, Micah 6:1-8, Is. 1:10-17) here employs a type of idiom designed to grab the attention of his hearers and cause his message to be noticed and remembered.

Till:
I have quoted above all of the passages that Turkel cited but didn't quote, so readers can scroll up to read them.  Let's look now at Turkel's "type-of-idiom" argument.  Well, let me correct that.  Let's look at the "type-of-idiom" argument that Turkel appropriated below from the books of writers who wanted to promote the Bible, and as we go through them, keep in mind that Turkel himself set a standard above by which we should evaluate the opinions of the scholars he quotes: if a writer has a belief to promote, his opinion is not reliable.

Turkel:
Within context, Jeremiah, standing upon the steps of the Temple (7:1-2a), announces the need for reform of behavior (3) and advises against seeking refuge in the mere presence of the Temple (cf. the triple cry, 7:4 -another example of a memory-enhancing and attention-getting technique).

Till:
I always like to put before readers the texts that my opponents allude to so that they can see exactly what the bases of their quibbles are.

Jeremiah 7:4 Do not trust in these lying words, saying, ‘The temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh are these.'

Does Turkel seriously believe that Jeremiah used this "triple cry" as a "memory-enhancing" technique, as if it would be so hard for people to remember two words [in Hebrew] "the temple of Yahweh"?  That is going a long way to find a quibble.

I do agree, however, that Jeremiah's intent in this passage was to tell the people not to be too smugly confident over the mere presence of the temple.  I discussed that above in analyzing Jeremiah's reference to Shiloh.

At any rate, Turkel has to show us that whether Jeremiah was using "memory-enhancement techniques" or not, he said that Yahweh had not spoken to the Israelites concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices when they came out of Egypt in order to communicate that Yahweh DID speak to the Israelites about burnt offerings at that time.

Turkel:
The people assumed that simply having the Temple around protected them

Till:
Yes, he reminded them of what had happened at Shiloh in order to tell them that this was a false sense of security.

Turkel:
- as though a modern person assumed that nothing bad could happen to them inside a church!

Till:
Or as some people think that they can violate the "spirit of Christ" throughout the week and then go to church on Sunday and make everything all right.

Turkel:
In a sense the people attributed to the Temple and the sacrifices a sort of magical power to keep enemies at bay. Jeremiah's message negates this idea: How can the people sin and think that they will still be protected (9-11) the example of Israel, which thought it had similar protection, is called upon. (12-15)

Till:
Yes, and the fate of Shiloh was invoked too.  Turkel is wasting all of this time to say that attitude was a primary concern of Jeremiah in this passage, but that is not a point of dispute. 

Turkel:
Jeremiah cites the continuing sin of the people (16-20), and then sarcastically tells the people to continue violating prescribed sacrificial ritual. (21) Finally, in our verse (22), a rhetorical negation is used to bring attention to the fact that internal posture is more important than external ritual. By expressing the matter in terms of a negation, the hearer/reader is first shocked, then realizes from the admonitions following what the actual point is: As it is expressed in 1 Samuel 15:22 --

Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

Till:
Obviously, Turkel cannot see that this passage isn't at all parallel to Jeremiah 7:22.  In the text that Turkel quoted, Samuel was saying that Yahweh didn't take as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as he did in obedience.  He did not say that Yahweh does not take any delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, but Jeremiah's statement flatly said that Yahweh did not speak to or command the Israelites in burnt offerings and sacrifices when they came out of Egypt but that he had commanded them to "obey [his] voice" (v:23).  If Turkel can't see the difference he has a bigger problem than I thought.

Turkel:
This sort of outrageous, rhetorical teaching technique was quite common to Semitic and ANE culture. Hence, we have Jesus' parables, with outrageous images of a beam in the eye and a Pharisee swallowing a camel;

Till:
Turkel's problem is still his inability to understand a primary rule of literary interpretation: the language of a written text should be interpreted in its literal sense unless there are compelling reasons to assign figurative meaning.  Since any moron would know that a person could not have a "beam" in his eye and could not swallow a camel, the reader has compelling reasons to assign figurative meaning to the texts.  Hence, the reader will understand that Jesus was saying that people who have major flaws in their lives are being hypocritical when they criticize those who have minor flaws in theirs. 

By the way, Turkel should give some serious consideration to his own reference.  He presumes to fault skeptics, who have honest doubts about the divine origin of the Bible, while he shows in his daily life that he does not practice the requirements imposed on him by this book, which he believes to be the "inspired word of God."

Turkel:
hence, similar language in Rabbinic works of the period; hence, the Exclusive and Hyperbolic Language in the Bible and so on, throughout the literature of the ANE. These were powerful tools of communication for the Semites - and no less so for their neighbors, their contemporaries, and for other pre-literate societies from the Hutu in Africa to the Maori of New Zealand.

Till:
I checked this site and found only Turkel trying to present himself as an expert on ANE literature, but I saw no serious efforts to defend his various assertions.  I wonder what source Turkel used to plagiarize his comment about "pre-literate [sic] societies from the Hutu in Africa to Maori of New Zealand."  Sounds impressive, doesn't it?  But does he seriously expect anyone with a lick of common sense to think that someone who has difficulties with his own native language knows anything about Hutu and Maori languages?  More than that, I wonder how idioms in Hutu and Maori societies, far removed from ancient Israel, in any way prove that Jeremiah--when he said that Yahweh had not spoken to the Israelites about burnt offerings and sacrifices when the brought them out of Egypt--did not mean that Yahweh had not spoken to the Israelites about burnt offerings and sacrifices when he brought them out of Egypt. In other words, is it at all possible that Jeremiah may have meant exactly what he said?  At any rate, what Turkel may have said in one of his own website articles about ANE idioms would hardly constitute any kind of convincing evidence.  After all, Turkel has a position he is trying to "promote," and according to his own standard, quoted above, that renders his opinions suspect.

I wonder what this tangent has to do with preterism.  However, I do know why Turkel has led us into this tangent.  When he can't answer an opponent's rebuttal arguments, he spends his time fighting straw men in order to divert attention from his failure to answer the arguments.

Turkel:
This understood, Till's many remarks on Semitic context (it "amounts to nothing more than another biblicist trying to tell us that the Bible doesn't really mean what it plainly says") are nothing again but chauvinistic nonsense.

Till;
Well, since Turkel said this, it must be so.  After all, he is the expert on ancient Near Eastern languages and cultures.  He is only 34 years old, and until last year worked as a prison librarian, but we are supposed to believe that he has somehow found the time to do research and studies that make him expert on ANE idioms and customs.

Turkel:
Of course it "does not mean" what it "says"-- any more than saying "I have ants in my pants" means that our dungarees are infested with Formicida. We use the idiom stated in order to more colorfully express a concept: In this case, "I am nervous/unsettled."

Till:
If one said, "I do not have ants in my pants," would this idiomatically mean that he is "nervous/unsettled"?

We will see below that Turkel must prove that Jeremiah's statement in 7:22 was an idiom that meant what Turkel is claiming that it meant.  When a person speaks ironically [sarcastically] he can mean the opposite of what he literally said.  Is this what Jeremiah was doing?  If so, Turkel must show from an analysis of the text that this was his intention.  He can't just assert that Jeremiah meant the opposite of what he said and expect us to believe it on his mere word.  Besides, the fact that Turkel has a belief that he is trying to "promote" makes his opinion suspect.  That's a standard that he himself set.

Turkel:
(Of course, following Till's logic, one cannot blame a person who, hearing the idiom in question, tackles the speaker and sprays Raid down their trousers - after all, they "plainly said" that they had ants in their pants!)

Till:
I trust that as this tangent goes on and on and on and on and on, readers will notice that it has nothing to do with Turkel's preterist position that he is supposed to be defending.

His comment above is a glaring false analogy.  Having lived in an English-speaking country for 65 of my almost 70 years and having taught college English for 30 years, I am familiar with English idioms.  I therefore know what is meant by, "He has ants in his pants."  Most of those who read this will know the same.  However, Turkel, despite all of his talk about ancient Near Eastern culture, really knows nothing about the subject beyond what he cuts and pastes from books that agree with his point of view.  He therefore does not know that Jeremiah was speaking idiomatically in 7:22 when he said that Yahweh did not speak to or command the Israelites concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices when they came out of Egypt.  In order to know that this was an idiom, he would have to find the same statement used over and over in contexts that clearly indicate that this was an idiom that meant the opposite of what it actually said.

Turkel:
Our own idioms are relatively colorless and trite in comparison to those used in ANE and other oral cultures,

Till:
Of course, we are supposed to believe that Turkel is expert enough in ancient Near Eastern culture to know that this is a fact. He saw some "scholar" make this statement in a book in which the author probably had an inspired-word-of-God view to promote, and so he tried to show that some biblical statement didn't really mean what it said. Now Turkel is parroting it as if he has the competence in ancient Near Eastern languages to speak with authority on this subject.  Did the source from which he plagiarized this claim give any examples of "colorful" ANE idioms?  Probably not, but if it did, the least Turkel could have done was give us a few examples so that we would have a basis for evaluating the claim.

Maybe in the next round of his replies, Turkel will list for us his credentials in ancient Near Eastern cultures and languages so that we can know he is qualified to speak with authority on this subject.  He cannot expect us to believe that English idioms are "colorless" compared to those in ANE cultures unless he gives us some examples to use for comparison.

English idioms are "colorless"?  What is colorless about the idioms below, which I typed "off the top of my head"?  Turkel probably won't know what some of them mean because they were in vogue long before he was even born, but I certainly wouldn't call them colorless.

1.  You hit the nail on the head.
2.  The driver grabbed a handful of air.
3.  She got her ashes hauled.
4.  He's an apple-polisher.
5.  He got it in the neck.
6.  I never thought I would see him in the barrel.
7.  Two of them bit the dust.
8.  She's a blizzard head.
9.  The boss blew a gasket when I told him I was quitting.
10.  He keeps hitting on me.
11.  We shot the breeze all night.
12.  He doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell.
13.  I had heard enough, so I jumped in and turned off his water.
14.  She got knocked up.
15.  In those days,  I was shitting in high cotton.
16.  I got screwed.
17.  He has a burr up his ass about something.
18.  She could put lead in anyone's pencil.
19.  I got it straight from the horse's mouth.
20.  She has a sugar daddy.

Now I could have gotten far more "colorful" than this if I had chosen to use some idioms that involve certain four-letter words that might offend some readers more than the ones I used.  I would now like for Turkel to list some examples of colorful ANE idioms so that we can make a comparison.  Did Turkel have in mind the Hebrew idiom "to cover one's feet," which was used to mean "defecate"?  Did he have in mind "bone and flesh" to mean "descendant"?  Exactly what did he mean?  We don't know, because in typical fashion Turkel didn't bother to explain.  We're supposed to take his word for everything he asserts.

Turkel:
but we still use them for basically the same reason, and there is no reason why we should not take their usage in the Bible under consideration.

Till:
I won't disagree with that.  If someone was translating an English document into French, he should not literally translate expressions like "kick the bucket," "beat around the bush," "one-armed bandit," etc., because they wouldn't make sense.  Compare the translations below of 1 Samuel 24:3.

KJV And he [Saul] came to the sheepcotes by the way, where was a cave; and Saul went in to cover his feet: and David and his men remained in the sides of the cave.

NIV He [Saul] came to the sheep pens along the way; a cave was there, and Saul went in to relieve himself. David and his men were far back in the cave.

The first one translated the idiom "to cover one's feet" literally, and so it makes no sense to English speaking people unaccustomed to the wearing of garments whose hems would cover the feet when those wearing them would squat to defecate.  The NIV communicates the idea more exactly but still too euphemistically to convey the exact idea.  Did Saul go into the cave to urinate or to defecate?  One wouldn't know from the euphemistic rendering of the NIV.  Translators evidently couldn't bring themselves to state the exact idea of the idiom in a book that is supposed to be "God's word."

Now what Turkel needs to do is give us conclusive proof that saying "spoke not" in Hebrew was an idiom that meant "did speak."  If he can do that, then we would like for him to answer a logical question.  If Jeremiah meant that Yahweh did speak to the Israelites about burnt offerings and sacrifices when he said that Yahweh did not speak to them about burnt offerings and sacrifices, did he mean (in the next verse) that Yahweh did not command the Israelites to hearken to his voice when he said that Yahweh did command the Israelites to hearken to his voice?  In other words, if verse 22 meant the opposite of what Jeremiah literally said, then why would verse 23 not have meant the opposite of what he literally said?

Turkel:
Now to the hard data concerning this verse. Bright [Brig. Jer, 57] speaks for the overwhelming majority of commentators (conservatives, moderates, and liberals alike) when he writes of Jer. 7:22--

Till:
Who is Bright?  Turkel didn't say, so how do we know what his credentials are to speak with authority on this subject?  What does [Brig. Jer, 57] mean?  Turkel didn't say, but those who have had experience in biblical research know that this is the kind of bracketed abbreviations that are commonplace in commentaries and other biblical reference works.  With the book in hand, one can refer to the abbreviation guide and determine what it means, but without it, the information is useless.  Turkel has obviously cut and pasted this from some source probably without even knowing himself what the bracketed information meant or even who "Bright" was.  It may look impressive to Turkel's gullible admirers, who gasp in amazement that he is quoting "Bright," but to those knowledgeable in biblical research, it signals nothing except that Turkel can cut and paste quotations from biblical reference works.

Turkel [quoting "Bright"]:

It is unlikely, however, that it is to be taken either as a categorical rejection of the sacrificial system as such, or as a statement that there was no sacrifice in the wilderness.

Till:
I assume everyone noticed that Turkel quoted no supporting arguments that "Bright" used to defend his claim that Jeremiah 7:22 was not a "categorical rejection of the sacrificial system."  No, Turkel rarely bothers with details like that.  He simply asserts and goes on or quotes an author who asserts without giving supporting details.

I call attention again to what I quoted earlier from one of Turkel's postings on the old CCBE internet list, when he was replying to my quotation from the works of Philo Judaeus regarding the blood that spurted from the ground when Egyptians tried to dig for water after Moses and Aaron had changed all the water in Egypt into blood.

That's nice, but Philo is simply reading into the text what is not there. So if I find a Jewish commentator of equal worth that says the opposite, is it a draw? If I find two, do I win? Remember that Philo is trying to promote Moses and Aaron here and would maximize their feat to the greatest extent possible.

So now if I can quote authors of biblical commentators who disagreed with "Bright" and said that Jeremiah 7:22 was a rejection of the sacrificial system, will we have a draw?  Or if I quote two who disagreed with "Bright," do I win?  Let's see what Turkel's position on this will be, because I am now going to counter his "scholar" with my "scholars."

James Phillip Hyatt was a professor at the School of Religion at Vanderbilt University when he wrote the introduction and exegesis of the book of Jeremiah for The Interpreter's Bible.  In his introduction to Jeremiah, he said this regarding Jeremiah's theological beliefs.

Jeremiah believed that Yahweh required of men not sacrifice and ritual (6:20; 7:22-23; 11:15), as the priests and temple prophets taught, but rather repentance and obedience to his moral laws, which would issue in righteous living.  His conception of Yahweh's nature and requirement is neatly summarized in 9:24: "Let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practice kindness [hésedh]. justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, says the LORD" (Vol. 5, p. 784).

In his exposition of Jeremiah 7:22, Hyatt said that Jeremiah was plainly saying that God did not command sacrificial requirements at the time of Moses.

Jeremiah plainly says that in the time of Moses God did not lay down any requirements of sacrifice but only of moral obedience; he perhaps had in mind specifically the ethical decalogue.  This verse should not be used (as by Gaf, et al.) to prove that the priestly code was not in existence in Jeremiah's time.  Certainly many sacrifices were offered in his day, and Jeremiah may well have known the original Deuteronomy and historical narratives (J, E) which told of sacrifices being offered in the Mosaic period (e. g.,  Exodus 24:1-8).  He deliberately sets himself against the prevalent view that Moses commanded sacrifice (cf. Amos 5:25).  Modern research has shown that much of the sacrificial system was of Canaanite origin, but a few sacrifices may have been offered in time (Ibid., pp. 875-876, emphasis added).

So by Turkel's own standards, we now have a tie, because he quoted "Bright," and I quoted Hyatt.  Now I'll go for the tie-breaker.  Stanley Romaine Hopper was a professor at Drew Theological Seminary when he wrote the exposition section of Jeremiah for The Interpreter's Bible, so I suspect that Hopper was far more knowledgeable in Hebrew than Robert "Cut-and-Paste" Turkel is, and I'm sure he, being a professor at a seminary, was not trying to "promote" the idea that the Bible is filled with errors.  In Hopper's exposition of Jeremiah 7:22, he agreed with Hyatt's view.

Certain it is that Jeremiah sets the unmediated voice of God, together with the practice of justice, righteousness, and mercy, over against the systems of sacrifice and the semi-magical contrivances of the priesthood.  One must say quite simply, with Nathaniel Micklem, that "there is no escape from Jeremiah vi.20, vii.22.  It is here emphatically and explicitly stated that ceremony and sacrifice have nothing to do with the religion of Moses and the true worship of Israel."⁸  Heap up your burnt offerings as high as you like, says Jeremiah, both those that are meant to be eaten and those that are not, and eat them all.  It is a matter of indifference to Yahweh.  This was not a part of Yahweh's covenant with Israel when he brought them out of the land of Egypt (Ibid,  p. 875, emphasis added).

There was a footnote number after Hopper's quotation from Nathaniel Micklem.  The footnote identified the source of the quotation from Micklem: Prophecy and Eschatology, p. 200.  So I haven't just broken the tie, I have taken a lead by quoting not two but three scholars who clearly said that Jeremiah 7:22 meant exactly what it says: Yahweh did not speak to or command the Israelites concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices when they came out of Egypt.

Hopper's exposition of Jeremiah 7:22 continued after the paragraph quoted above.  This section is particularly important because it anticipates Turkel's "idiomatic" quibble below and shows that it is without foundation.

Two things are to be noted here: the uncompromising character of Jeremiah's rejection of the sacrificial system; and the clear-cut primacy given to the voice of Yahweh over all authoritative claims. 

With regard to the first it is often claimed that Jeremiah did not intend that his words should be interpreted in any such thorough-going manner: that his declaration was either heightened by the polemical stress of the occasion (Welch), or that the structure of Jeremiah's statement is based upon a familiar idiom in which the first portion of the sentence containing the denial is not intended as a negation, but is supposed to be subsumed within the affirmation in the second clause, as when Hoses says

I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings (6:6)

Here it is held that Hosea does not say that sacrifice is in itself undesirable, but rather that mercy and knowledge are fundamental and that sacrifice is not to be substituted for them (Guillaume).  The passage in I Samuel 15:22 would be similar:

To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

To collate the several passages which bear upon this problem, however, merely serves to strengthen the impression that the prophetic protest against the priestly compromise is growing steadily, and that, in Jeremiah, in a time (i. e., a kairos) when every claim is being pushed upon the absolute conditions, this rising consciousness bursts through with the unmistakable clarity that breaks the bonds of compromise.  Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, and certain of the Psalms (notably 50:13-14; 51:16-17) all witness to the clarity of the prophetic insight.  Nothing could be stronger, for example, than Amos' statement in 5:21-24.  Hosea's emphasis upon "steadfast love and not sacrifice," upon "knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings" (Hos. 6:16), may be less severe and possibly less absolute, but its intentional juxtaposition of what it approves as over against the people's practice is sufficient to subordinate the latter to the level of the disapproved.  (Compare carefully the following passages: Mic. 6:6-8; Isa. 1:11-17; Pss. 40:6,8; 50:10-14; 51:16-17).

In Jeremiah's view, when the right spirit comes, the sacrificial system is irrelevant, if not idolatrous.  Nor is it merely that there is an ineradicable ambiguity in sacrifices and symbols as such.  It is not merely that the symbol or the sacrifice might be, for one person, "an aid to worship," whereas for another person it would be a barrier if not an image substituted for the genuine encounter with God.  It is rather that the ambiguity is in the worshiper; that this ambiguity is itself a result of an antecedent rejection of the God-man relationship, and that whatever is done outside this relationship, or whatever substitutes itself for the relationship, is necessarily polemically and dialectically in retreat from the relationship.  The only right way is the way which is necessarily tied in with the primacy of the voice.  Vss. 24-26 are therefore a genuine continuation of the prophet's argument.  When the people refused to listen to the voice in the wilderness and consequently walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, they went backward and not forward, spiritually speaking.  They could not advance in the knowledge of the love of God, but steadily slipped backward, becoming increasingly corrupt until in Jeremiah's time they appear to be beyond correction.

Welch's contention that these verses cannot be ascribed to the prophet because they contradict directly the idea of the innocence of the wilderness period is based, therefore, upon a misunderstanding of Jeremiah's total viewpoint.  It is precisely Jeremiah's initial viewpoint (2:2) that is made explicit here.  It is the dialectical aspect of departure from the primary relationship with God that Jeremiah dramatizes.  This is made even more plain when he points out that I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day.  The true mediators between God and his people have been not the priests but the prophets.  It is the prophets who have attempted to recall the people to the purity of their original faithful relationship with God.  It is the priests, on the other hand, who, instead of going to the root of the relationship, have tried to secure the people by offering them "religion" as a substitute (Ibid., pp. 875-876, original emphasis). 

This amounts to five scholars (Hyatt, Hopper, Micklem, Graf, and Welch) who think that Jeremiah 7:22 either contradicts passages in the Pentateuch that commanded burnt offerings and sacrifices or that the verse is spurious.  By Turkel's own standard, then, I have prevailed in this matter by citing more scholars than he did.  I'm being facetious, of course, but with serious intent.  I have repeatedly told Turkel that citing a scholar as proof of one's point does not constitute proof, especially when the scholar cited simply makes an assertion and provides no evidence to support it.  At least in quoting Hyatt and Hopper above, I included in the quoted material the arguments they gave in support of their position.  Turkel almost always just cites unsupported assertions made by writers who agree with him.

Turkel:
The point, he continues, is rather that "God's essential demands did not concern ritual matters, but the keeping of the Covenant stipulations."

Till:
But as "he" continued, "Bright" simply made an assertion.  What evidence did he present to support the assertion?  Exactly none, or at least Turkel quoted no supporting evidence.

Turkel:
For this view, see also Alle.Jer, 64-5; Clem.Jer, 46-7; Huey.JerLam, 109; Thomp.Jer, 287-8.

Till:
Where can we look to "see" these sources?  Again, it is obvious that Turkel is simply cutting and pasting abbreviated references from a volume.  The entire volume would no doubt have an abbreviation guide that would identify these sources, but without that guide Turkel's references are as meaningless as if I had put "see Hy.Jer. 875-76; Wel. Jer, 142-43; Mick.Prof.Esch, 200."

How convincing would a citation like that be?  About as convincing as Turkel's "see also...."

Turkel:
The negation idiom emerges from the Hebrew word lo, which transliterates as "not." On this matter, the principal study has been done by Whitney [Whit.Jer 7:22, 152],

Till:
Oh, did Whitney say this?  Where did Whitney say this?  Well, it really doesn't matter, because Hyatt, Hopper, Graf, Micklem, and Welch disagree with him.

Turkel:
who describes the usage of lo in Jer. 7:22 as "a form hyperbolic verbal irony intended to intensify the contrast between what is present in the mind of the audience and what ought to be present."

Till:
Yes, I have heard this quibble before.  Stanley Brice Frost presented the same "explanation" in his commentary on Jeremiah, which is included in The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, but like "Whitney," he just presented it as an assertion. He gave no support for it. Hyatt and Hopper (above) didn't just assert their view of the verse; they presented explications to support them.

Turkel:
Whitney shows this idiomatic usage of lo elsewhere in the OT: Gen. 45:7-8,

Till:
Well, you know me; I like to look at the "proof texts" that inerrantists cite without quoting and explicating them.

Genesis 45:3-8  Then Joseph said to his brothers, "I am Joseph; does my father still live?" But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed in his presence. ⁴And Joseph said to his brothers, "Please come near to me." So they came near. Then he said: "I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. ⁵But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. ⁶For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. ⁸So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.

I think that readers will immediately understand why Turkel cites without quoting, because even a moron can see that this text is not at all parallel to Jeremiah 7:22.  Joseph was obviously saying that his brother's conspiracy to sell him into Egypt was providentially guided so that he would be put into a position where he would be able to help his family in a time of dire need.  To keep everyone reminded of what "Whitney" was trying to equate with Jeremiah 7:22, I'll just quote that verse again and let readers decide if it is parallel to the one above.

Jeremiah 7:22 For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. 

Turkel [citing another of Whitney's examples]
Ex. 16:8,

Till:
And here is Exodus 16:8.

Also Moses said, "This shall be seen when Yahweh gives you meat to eat in the evening, and in the morning bread to the full; for Yahweh hears your complaints which you make against Him. And what are we? Your complaints are not against us but against Yahweh."

Moses was presumably Yahweh's chosen leader, so when the people complained against him, they were complaining against Yahweh, because <snicker, snicker> Yahweh was guiding Moses in everything he did.

Maybe Turkel would like to explain to us how this is parallel to Jeremiah 7:22.

Turkel [citing another of Whitney's examples]:
1 Sam. 8:7,

Till:
And here is 1 Samuel 8:7.  (Why do I have to do Turkel's work for him?  Oh, I know, I know!  It takes time to quote examples, and if Turkel took the time to do that, it would cut down on the amount of hackwork he can crank out.  Also, if he quoted his "proof texts," even his readers might be able to see that they aren't parallel.)

But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to judge us." So Samuel prayed to Yahweh. ⁷And Yahweh said to Samuel, "Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them."

The situation was the same.  Samuel was presumably a prophet whom Yahweh had chosen to judge Israel.  Yahweh did not want the people to have a king, and this message from Yahweh was communicated by Samuel.  In rejecting the message, the people did not reject Samuel but Yahweh.

Maybe Turkel can explain to us how this is parallel to Jeremiah 7:22.

Turkel [citing another of Whitney's examples]:
1 Sam. 20:14-15,

Till:
And here is 1 Samuel 20:14-15, which Turkel apparently didn't want his readers to see or else he would have quoted it.  In this text, Jonathan [Saul's son] was speaking to David prior to David's flight from Saul.

¹⁴And you shall not only show me the kindness of Yahweh while I still live, that I may not die; ¹⁵but you shall not cut off your kindness from my house forever, no, not when Yahweh has cut off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth."

Sorry, but I see nothing here even remotely parallel to Jeremiah 7:22.  Perhaps Turkel will take the time to explicate the text and establish the parallel.  Meanwhile, I'm sure readers will be aware of the reasons why Turkel likes to cite long lists of scriptures as he has done here (without quoting them).  A list like this looks impressive to the average reader, who won't take the time to read them, so he goes away from this paragraph thinking, "Wow, look at all the scriptures Turkel cited.  He is really kicking ass."  When the scriptures are examined in context, however, it is easy to see that they don't support what he is claiming.

Turkel [citing another of Whitney's examples]:
Job 2:10,

Till:
And here is Job 2:10, which Turkel also didn't want readers to see.

But he [Job] said to her [Job's wife], "You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

This is Whitney's idea of a text that supports the spin he tried to put on Jeremiah 7:22?  Here Job was saying nothing more than if a person today would say, "We shouldn't expect just the good things in life; we should expect the bad too."  To have a parallel, Job 2:10 would have to say, "God does not give us good things, but he does give us adversity."  If the text said that, I suppose Turkel would argue that Job didn't mean that God does not give us good things but was idiomatically "denying" the first in order to emphasize the second, and so he was saying that God DOES give us good things.

Turkel [citing another of Whitney's examples]:
Jer. 16:14-15,

Till:
And here is Jeremiah 16:14-15, which Turkel apparently didn't want readers to see.

¹⁴"Therefore behold, the days are coming," says Yahweh, "that it shall no more be said, ‘Yahweh lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,' ¹⁵but, ‘Yahweh lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He had driven them.' For I will bring them back into their land which I gave to their fathers."

This is a parallel?  At that time, according to the myth of the exodus, the people of Israel had been in bondage to Egypt, so it was their custom to say that Yahweh had brought them up from the land of Egypt, but after they had gone into captivity and had returned--as Jeremiah was predicting they would--they would celebrate their deliverance by saying that Yahweh had brought them back from the lands of their captivity.  The more recent deliverance would assume more importance in their memory than the earlier one.  To have a parallel here, the passage would have to say something like, "Yahweh did not bring the children of Israel up from the land of Egypt, but he did bring them back from captivity in the north."  The text, however, does not say this, so Turkel's--er, Whitney's--parallel just went down the drain.

Turkel [citing another of Whitney's examples]:
Ezek. 16:47

Till:
And here is Ezekiel 16:47, which Turkel apparently didn't want readers to see.

Because you did not remember the days of your youth, but agitated Me with all these things, surely I will also recompense your deeds on your own head," says the Lord GOD. "And you shall not commit lewdness in addition to all your abominations."

This is a parallel?  If one reads the full context of this statement, he will see that Ezekiel catalogued a long list of offenses, referred to as abominations, which the people had committed in the past.  They should have learned from those offenses, but they didn't.  Ezekiel said that because they did not "remember" those past offenses, Yahweh would bring a recompense upon their heads.

How exactly is this parallel to Jeremiah 7:22?

Turkel [quoting Whitney's final example]:
and Hos. 6:6.

Till:
And here is Hosea 6:6.

For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

Turkel has been talking about Hebrew idioms, so I wonder if he even noticed the parallel structure of this verse.  Parallelism, i. e., repetition of the same idea, was used in Hebrew to emphasize.  An example that Turkel doesn't like is Psalm 19:1-4, which I explicated in an earlier section of my reply.

¹The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. ²Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge.³There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. ⁴Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

This quotation ends with a redundancy intended to emphasize the extent to which the heavens had declared the glory of God.  That extent was "through all the earth" and "to the end of the world."  The two expressions meant the same thing, and parallelism was used to emphasize how thoroughly the heavens had declared the glory of God.  The idea would have been communicated clearly if the psalmist had simply said that their line has gone out through all the earth, but by repeating the idea with "and their words to the end of the world," he made his idea more emphatic.

Hosea 6:6 has Yahweh saying, "I desire... the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings."  The parallel structure let's us know then that the first clause was saying, "I desire mercy more than sacrifice."  The idea of the entire verse could have been communicated by saying, "I desire mercy more than sacrifice, and I desire the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings."  To be parallel to Hosea 6:6, Jeremiah 7:22 would have to say, "For in the day that your fathers came out of Egypt, I spoke to them saying that I desired that they hearken to my voice more than I desired their sacrifices."   

Turkel:
His conclusion agrees with that of Feinberg [Fein. CommJer, 75]:

...The negative in Hebrew often supplies the lack of the comparative - i.e., without excluding the thing denied, the statement implies only the prior importance of the things set in contrast to it.

Till:
If it "often" implied this, then "Feinberg," whoever he was, should have been able to give some examples where this structure was clearly used.  "Whitney's" examples all backfired on him, so maybe that is why "Feinberg" gave none.

Turkel:
Likewise, Laymon [Laym. IntB, 380]:

Hebrew idiom allows the denial of one thing in order to assert another, and the intention here is not wholly to deny but only to relegate to second place.

Till:
Examples?  If "Laymon," whoever he was, gave any, Turkel left them out.  Hence, his statement, if referring to Jeremiah 7:22, amounts to an unsupported assertion.  So what else is new in Turkel's debating style?

At any rate, Hyatt, Hopper, Graf, Micklem, and Welch (quoted or referred to above in my rebuttal of "Bright") all disagreed with Turkel's four scholars, so since I cited five to his four, I guess I win.  After all, he was the one who set this standard in his quotation above.

Turkel:
We therefore conclude with these scholars that Jer. 7:22 is in no way at odds with the Pentateuch.

Till:
And I therefore conclude with my scholars that Jeremiah 7:22 is obviously at odds with the many passages in the Pentateuch that commanded burnt offerings and sacrifices of the Israelites when they left Egypt.

At this point, I will drop a reminder to readers in case they have forgotten.  This tangent that Turkel has led us into has nothing to do with preterism, which he is supposed to be defending.  However, when Turkel can't answer arguments he invariably resorts to fighting straw men.

Turkel:
Till's case for disharmony is based upon his inability and/or refusal to grasp the passage in its socio-linguistic context, and it therefore fails to hold up under scrutiny.

Till:
Socio-linguistic--did everyone catch that?  It sounds really impressive, doesn't it?  We're supposed to believe that Turkel is expert enough in ancient Near Eastern languages to know diddly squat about the social customs and linguistic idioms of the time?  I'll bet some of his admirers read this and said, "Whoa, Turkel is talking about socio-linguistics, so he must be really whipping ass."  Turkel has all kinds of problems with the English language--and especially the punctuation system used in America--but we are supposed to believe that he knows all about socio-linguistic matters in ancient Near Eastern cultures?

If Turkel wants to talk about failure to hold up under scrutiny, he should consider the failure of his Bright-Whitney-Feinberg-Laymon "idiomatic" explanation to hold up under scrutiny.  As we saw above, it fell flat on its face.

Turkel:
A few points in closing.

Till:
A few points in closing?  There are still over 5,000 words left in Turkel's "reply" to my rebuttal of his--er, DeMar's--"Olivet Discourse," so how could this be a "closing"?  Oh, I get it, I get it.  This was what Turkel said years ago in "closing" his reply to the Jeremiah part of my article "The Uniqueness of the Bible," so he just cut and pasted that whole article without taking the time to go through it and adapt it to the tangent that he has injected into the preterism debate.

Turkel:
There is another incongruity if we take Till's side: In synagogue services, Jeremiah 7:22 was read at the conclusion of the reading of Lev. 6-8. [Fein.CommJer, 75]

Till:
Is "Fein" Feinberg?  If so, what proof did he offer for what he said here?  What we have is another one of Turkel's unsupported assertions, which he thinks readers will buy if he puts a bracketed reference after it.  "Whoa, Fein[berg] said this," Turkel admirers (who wouldn't know Fein[berg] from the guy who lives down the street) will probably say, "so it must be true."  It never occurs to them that "Feinberg" merely said this but didn't support it.

Turkel:
If Jeremiah 7:22 were indeed a flat condemnation of sacrifices, then how is it possible that it was attached to the end of a Jewish liturgy that gave instructions for such sacrifices? The only good answer is that it was interpreted idiomatically,

Till:
The "only" good answer?  Let's assume that Fein[berg's] assertion is true.  If so, we would immediately wonder when this custom was practiced.  Was it practiced in synagogues in 100 BC?  Or maybe AD 100?  Or maybe well after that?  If so, then I can think of a darned good reason why Jeremiah 7:22 would have been read after the Leviticus text.  As Hyatt and Hopper noticed in their detailed expositions of Jeremiah 7:22 (above), a "prophetic protest" against the priestly system was emerging as early as the time of Jeremiah.  Eventually, the Levitical sacrifices were dispensed with altogether, and they have not been practiced for centuries.  In such a milieu, I could certainly see why Jeremiah 7:22 would be read in synagogues.  It offered a "scriptural" reason for the failure to include sacrifices in the services.  I just completed a debate on Errancy-II with an orthodox Jew who is studying to become a rabbi.  He offered all kinds of rationalizations for why Jews today disregard completely the sacrificial ceremonies of the Levitical law.  I never asked him, but I suspect that Jeremiah 7:22 would be a passage that appeals to him.

Turkel:
and if this is how the Jews interpreted it, we should either defer to them - or else provide much, much better arguments as a counter!

Till:
If we defer to the way that Jews interpret the law, then we would have to say that they are right in rejecting the sacrificial system, because they no longer offer sacrifices.  Furthermore, if Turkel would do a bit of research, he would find that not all Jewish commentators accept his--er, Brights's--idiomatic quibble.  At the Jewish Vegetarian website, the 12th-century AD Jewish commentator Maimonides was quoted to justify the discontinuance of sacrifices in Jewish religious rituals.

During the time of Moses, it was the general practice among all nations to worship by means of sacrifice. There were many associated idolatrous practices. The great Jewish philosopher Maimonides wrote that God did not command the Israelites to give up and discontinue all these manners of service because "to obey such a commandment would have been contrary to the nature of man, who generally cleaves to that to which he is used." For this reason, God allowed Jews to make sacrifices, but "He transferred to His service that which had served as a worship of created beings and of things imaginary and unreal." The elements of idolatry were removed.  Maimonides concluded:

"By this divine plan it was effected that the traces of idolatry were blotted out, and the truly great principle of our Faith, the Existence and Unity of God, was established. This result was thus obtained without confusing the minds of the people by the abolition of a service they were accustomed to and which was familiar to them."

The article cited the Jewish philosopher Abarbanel in support of Maimonides' belief that God didn't command sacrifices but merely tolerated them.  The article also quoted Rabbi J. H. Hertz, former chief rabbi of England, in support of Abarbanel's view.  Then the biblical commentator Kimchi was appealed to.

Biblical commentator David Kimchi (1160-1235) also believed that the sacrifices were voluntary. He ascertained this from the words of Jeremiah:

For I spoke not unto your fathers, nor commanded them the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices; but this thing I commanded them, saying, "Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people; and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you" (Jeremiah 7:22-23).

Kimchi noted that nowhere in the Ten Commandments is there any reference to sacrifice, and even when sacrifices are first mentioned (Lev. 1:2) the expression used is "when any man of you bringeth an offering," the first Hebrew word ki being  literally "if", implies that it was a voluntary act.

I have taken the time to quote these Jewish commentators not because I think their opinions settled anything but to make a point that Turkel can't seem to see: quoting biblical commentaries and other reference works in support of one's belief doesn't prove anything, because one can always find reference sources that agree with his view.  The quotations above also show that Turkel was wrong when he implied that Jews are in agreement in their interpretation of Jeremiah 7:22.

As for the "better arguments as a counter," Turkel got them above.  Now we can sit back and watch him hop, skip, and jump over them.

Turkel:
Second, and along the same lines, I pointed out that history knows of no outright rejection of the sacrificial system.

Till:
It doesn't?  As I just noticed above, Jews for centuries and centuries have rejected the sacrificial system, or does Turkel think that Jews have been incinerating animals down through the centuries and still do?  Also, as Hyatt and Hopper noticed above, prophets like Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah represented "prophetic insights" into a system that needed reforming, and Hopper spoke of "Jeremiah's uncompromising rejection of the sacrificial system."  But, of course, Turkel knows better than the professors of prestigious seminaries.  After all, he has a Master's Degree in library science.

Turkel:
Till responds by asserting our passage and similar ones as proof (which we have seen, they are not), and then remarks, "I think that this is called the argument from silence."

Till:
It would be nice if Turkel could write a coherent sentence.  What is he even referring to here?  Is he saying that in the Jeremiah part of my rebuttal of Josh McDowell's claim that the Bible is unique, I said that I think that this [what?] is called the argument from silence?  I've checked the article, which I wrote several years ago, and I cannot find any place in the article where I made this statement.  Is Turkel saying that I said this in my rebuttal to his--er, DeMar's--"Olivet Discourse"?  I have read through that article too and could not find where I said this.  What exactly then is Turkel referring to?  How can I answer something that is incomprehensible?  Turkel writes like a college freshman--and I had experiences with thousands of them--who are more interested in getting an article or essay finished than in making it a quality work.

Turkel:
However, a silence this significant is no fallacy to argue about at all.

Till:
Although I have no idea what Turkel is referring to, I agree with an apparent principle that he has stated here.  Silence in the documents and records of a time in which the Bible alleges that certain extraordinary events occurred, is a silence so significant that it often casts serious doubts on what the Bible claims. The gospel of John is a good example.  According to the synoptic gospels, darkness fell over "all the land [ge]" for a period of three hours when Jesus was on the cross, yet the writer of John, who was allegedly an eyewitness to the crucifixion, made no reference at all to this phenomenal event, and neither did contemporary secular documents.  A silence that significant leaves substantial doubt about the synoptic claim, especially since the synoptics are filled with other claims of phenomenal events.

Turkel:
Till's interpretation would require something tantamount to a Congressman standing on the steps of the Capitol, in full hearing of his peers, saying that the Founders did not write the Constitution; and then, his words being incorporated into the Federalist Papers as authoritative!  

Till:
Till's interpretation of what?  Since Turkel's sloppy writing gives no indication of when I said, "I think that this is called the argument from silence," he gives me nothing to compare his analogy to.  Hence, there is nothing here for me to reply to.

Turkel:
The sort of rejection Till suggests would have resulted in an enormous split in Judaism that would have left reverberations even unto this day,

Till:
Is Turkel still talking about Jeremiah 7:22?  Who knows?  His writing at this point has become about as clear as mud.  If he should still be talking about Jeremiah 7:22, then my reply would be that, as Hyatt, Hopper, et al indicated in the quotations above, there was an enormous split in Judaism over the issue of sacrifices.  The quotations from Maimonides and Kimchi show that this split continued for centuries thereafter.

Turkel:
or at the very least would have left significant textual-polemical or archaeological evidence.

Till:
As just noted, the "significant textual-polemical... evidence" was left in the writings of prophets like Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, and Micah and in the writings of Jewish commentators who used Jeremiah 7:22 as an explanation for why sacrifices were not being offered in their time.

I'm so happy that Turkel included archaeological evidence in his statement, because he has stated a principle here that will come back to haunt him if he should ever undertake to defend the historical accuracy of the exodus, wilderness wanderings, splendor and grandeur of a united kingdom during the reigns of David and Solomon, etc., because archaeological evidence--including the lack of such evidence--shows that these are all fictionalized "history."  If Turkel should care to defend the historicity of these parts of the Bible, I will gladly oppose him.

Now see Bobby duck.  See Bobby dodge.  See Bobby run.  See Bobby duck, dodge, and run.

Turkel:
Unless Till can provide an argument better informed by socio-religious data, he cannot be given any credence here for doing more than spouting off an uninformed, "hot off the grill" opinion of his own design.

Till:
The arguments in support of my position are now a matter of record above.  Readers may now sit back and watch Turkel hop, skip, and jump over them.  He has taken us into a long tangent about an issue that had nothing to do with preterism, and it has backfired in his face.  Those who may be hoping that as I go into Part Five Turkel's performance will improve are in for a disappointment.  He did make a half-assed attempt to get back to the issues, but most of the rest of his "rebuttal" consists of "Hyper the Literalist" scenarios and reliance on unsupported citations from Caird and others who agree with his position.