Till:
In this fourth part, Mr. Miller presented the "other data" that he
referred to at the end of
Part Three, so we
will now see how he desperately scrapes the bottom of the barrel to
find "data" to support
his claim that the Canaanites were so morally depraved that Yahweh had
no choice but to order
their extermination.
Miller: We have a few more pieces of data--most of it bad--about these city-nations.
In surveying the historical mentions for the name "Canaan", Schoville points out that the 2nd mention of the name occurs in a derogatory context. (POTW:158):
"An eighteenth-century letter from Mari provides the next evidence for the name in a phrase that connects 'thieves and Canaanites'"
Till:
At the beginning of
Part One, I
complimented Mr. Miller for the higher level of apologetics found in
his articles as compared
to those of Robert Turkel, but at the time, I mentioned that Mr. Miller
sometimes strains to
find quotations that will support his position and truncates them so
consummately that readers
can't evaluate the merit of the sources' positions, and what we see
above is an example of
both. Schoville's quotation has been so truncated that we can't
evaluate the merit of what he
said. Why didn't Mr. Miller give us the larger context of what
Schoville said? Are we simply
expected to take Miller's word that Schoville gave sufficient
information in the broader
context of the statement above to show that the word Canaan had
a derogatory meaning?
Even if Schoville knows of a letter from Mari that derogatorily connected "thieves and Canaanites," so what? One letter found in Mari that made disparaging remarks about Canaanites would in no way prove that the remarks were either typical or accurate. Since when do ethnic slurs and insults prove anything about the character of people within those ethnic groups? The author of Titus, who very likely was not the apostle Paul, quoted the Cretan poet Epimenides, who had said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and gluttons" (Titus 1:12), so does this statement prove that Cretans were always liars, evil beasts, and gluttons, or does it prove no more than that one person held his countrymen in low esteem? If, for example, Mr. Miller should find books or articles or letters in our society that spoke disparagingly of Jews or blacks or hispanics, would he see these as accurate characterizations of entire ethnic groups, or would he see them for just stereotypical remarks that have been so unfortunately common in human societies? That Mr. Miller would attempt to gauge the moral character of an entire national group on the basis of a single 18th-century BC letter quite honestly surprises me, so I will consider it a lapse in judgment caused by his eagerness to find some way to justify the Yahwistic atrocities in the old Testament.
Miller:
Although some understand this pejorative reference being to 'rebellious
soldiers'
(HAP:58),
others note that
"commonly in Hebrew the root means 'to be abased, put down, subdued,'
etc."
(ECIAT:168n192).
Till:
And some note that the origin and meaning of the name Canaan
cannot be determined.
Attempts to explain the etymology of the name Canaanites and its geographical referent, Canaan, remain inconclusive. On the basis of a reference to ma-at ki-in-a-min ("land of Canaan") in a fifth-century BC inscription of King Idrimi of Alalakh, scholars have identified in the common Akkadian forms kinahni and kinahhu a root *kina meaning "reed (papyrus)" or "red-purple." Indeed, in the fifteenth-century Nuzi texts the adjective kinahhu "Canaanite" occurs in a context which points to the purple dye originally produced in the region. Thus, Canaan and the Caananites would be related etymologically to red-purple commodities much as Pergamum is identified with parchment and Damascus with damask. Unfortunately, however, linguistic complexities make such a derivation difficult (Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, 1987, p. 186).
The article continued with a discussion of attempts to associate the word with the concept of merchandising, which Mr. Miller comments on below, but even the source that he quoted above indicates that the etymology of the word Canaan is very much in doubt, so attempts to characterize the Canaanites as moral reprobates on the basis of debatable derivations of the word shows just how desperate Mr. Miller is to find support for his belief that the Canaanites deserved to be exterminated.
Miller:
Latter meanings of the root and close-derivatives center around
"merchant" (e.g. Job 41.6;
Prov 31.24; Is 23.8) [ISBE:
s.v. "Canaan", p.585].
Till:
The word for merchant in
Job 41:6
was
ken‘anîy, which was either the same word or
a homograph of the word
that meant Canaanite, but the word used in
Proverbs
31:24 and
Isaiah
23:8 was
cachar, an entirely different word, so whatever point Mr. Miller
was trying to make
in citing these last two passages eludes me. If, however, the same
homograph
ken‘anîy was used to designate both
merchants and Canaanites, what
would that prove except that maybe the usage of the word in reference
to merchants had had
its origins in the same kind of ethnic stereotyping that has caused the
word jew in
English to be used in the sense of shrewdly bargaining or haggling as
in, "He jewed me down
on the price." Another example of this kind of ethnic stereotyping can
be seen in a meaning
that has been acquired by the word Welsh, which is sometimes
used to indicate a belief that people from Wales are cheaters or
evaders of responsibility, as in, "He welshed on the agreement." I
suppose Mr. Miller thinks that his etymological claims here are helping
him prove that the Canaanites were morally depraved, but if there is
any basis in fact to what he has said above, he has actually
established that the Hebrews were guilty of the same kind of ethnic
stereotyping that still prevails in modern times.
Miller:
In collocation with 'thieves', it might connote "cheat"--a
meaning that would fit well
with their deceptive practices in Joshua 9!
Till:
Joshua 9
relates the story
of the inhabitants of Gibeon and other nearby towns who, upon hearing
of the military
conquests of the Israelites, went to the Israelite encampment dressed
in old clothes and
worn-out shoes to give the appearance of having traveled on a long
journey. They pretended to
be people from a "far country," who wanted to make a treaty or covenant
with the Israelites.
The ruse worked, and the covenant was agreed upon before the Israelites
realized that they
had been taken. Customs of the time then required the Israelites to
honor the covenant and
spare the Gibeonites from the massacres that they were perpetrating on
all of the towns and
cities in the area.
Mr. Miller sees this as "cheating," but someone who isn't looking in desperation for some way to justify Yahwistic atrocities should see it as a matter of self-defense. As this tale was spun, the Gibeonites had heard about what had been done to Jericho and Ai, so they had simply devised a way to save themselves from the same fate. I suppose if Mr. Miller had been in that group of Gibeonites, he would have spoken up and said, "I cannot tell a lie; we aren't from a far country but live in a town directly in your invasion path."
By the way, these Gibeonites were not Canaanites; they were Hivites (Josh. 9:7).
Miller:
A textual piece of data to support this "cheat" understanding, might be
the actions of the
Hittite group in Genesis 23. (Remember, the scattered Hittite groups in
Palestine at this
time were subsumed under the term 'Canaanite' as is evident from
comparing Gen 27.46
with
28.1.)
In Gen 23, Abraham's wife Sarah has died, and he needs to buy a burial
field. Ephron the Hittite takes advantage of Abraham's grief and need
to secure burial property quickly, and charges him an incredibly
exorbitant 400 shekels of silver for a field (cf. Jer 32.9),
and saddles him with the 'property taxes and dues' that went
with "whole-lot" land
ownership. (Abraham had only wanted to buy a 'cave'--not the whole
field.) If this was the typical 'merchant ethic' of the Canaanites,
then no wonder they were grouped in with 'theives' [sic]!
Till:
When I read this, I couldn't believe my eyes, because it so obviously
distorted the
transaction between Ephron and Abraham that I have to believe that Mr.
Miller had either never
read the story or else was intentionally distorting it to try to force
it into a mold that
would support his opinion of the Canaanites. I am going to quote the
entire chapter below,
so I want readers to take special notice of the parts that I emphasize
in bold print, which
clearly show that Ephron tried to give the cave and land to Abraham,
who refused the offer
and insisted on paying the going prince for the land, but first I want
to take care of Mr.
Miller's illogical appeal to
Jeremiah
32:9.
Jeremiah 32:6 Jeremiah said, "The word of Yahweh came to me: 7 Hanamel son of Shallum your uncle is going to come to you and say, 'Buy my field at Anathoth, because as nearest relative it is your right and duty to buy it.' 8 "Then, just as Yahweh had said, my cousin Hanamel came to me in the courtyard of the guard and said, 'Buy my field at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. Since it is your right to redeem it and possess it, buy it for yourself.' "I knew that this was the word of Yahweh; 9 so I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel and weighed out for him seventeen shekels of silver. 10 I signed and sealed the deed, had it witnessed, and weighed out the silver on the scales."
So Mr. Miller is arguing that Ephron the Hittite, who tried to give him the land he wanted, cheated Abraham by assessing its value at 400 shekels of silver, because Jeremiah, several centuries later, bought a field for just 17 shekels of silver. In the first place, neither the text in Jeremiah 32 nor the one in Genesis 23 gave the sizes of the two fields, but as we will see after I have quoted the entire context of Abraham's transaction, the passage indicates that Abraham bought a sizable piece of property, whereas the property that Jeremiah bought was just referred to as a field. Now let's suppose that I bought a piece of beachfront property at, say, Malibu and paid $2 million for it. If Mr. Miller then said to me, "Boy, you sure got taken, because I just bought a piece of property in Meridian, Mississippi, for only five thousand dollars," would anyone have any difficulty seeing the flaw in his thinking? What Mr. Miller is actually arguing is that Ephron cheated Abraham by selling him land of unknown size for 400 shekels of silver, because Jeremiah later bought a field of unknown size for only 17 shekels of silver.
Let's look now at the full context of Abraham's transaction to see that (1) Ephron the Hittite tried to give the land to Abraham, that (2) Abraham wanted to buy both the cave and the field, that (3) Abraham insisted on paying the "full price" for the property, that (4) a sizable piece of property was implied in the text, and that (5) this field had special features that gave it added value.
Genesis 23:1 Sarah lived to be a hundred and twenty-seven years old. 2 She died at Kiriath Arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her. Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, 4 "I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead." 5 The Hittites replied to Abraham, 6 "Sir, listen to us. You are a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will refuse you his tomb for burying your dead." 7 Then Abraham rose and bowed down before the people of the land, the Hittites. 8 He said to them, "If you are willing to let me bury my dead, then listen to me and intercede with Ephron son of Zohar on my behalf 9 so he will sell me the cave of Machpelah, which belongs to him and is at the end of his field. Ask him to sell it to me for the full price as a burial site among you." 10 Ephron the Hittite was sitting among his people and he replied to Abraham in the hearing of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of his city. 11 "No, my lord," he said. "Listen to me; I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it. I give it to you in the presence of my people. Bury your dead." 12 Again Abraham bowed down before the people of the land 13 and he said to Ephron in their hearing, "Listen to me, if you will. I will pay the price of the field. Accept it from me so I can bury my dead there." 14 Ephron answered Abraham, 15 "Listen to me, my lord; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver, but what is that between me and you? Bury your dead." 16 Abraham agreed to Ephron's terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weight current among the merchants. 17 So Ephron's field in Machpelah near Mamre--both the field and the cave in it, and all the trees within the borders of the field--was deeded 18 to Abraham as his property in the presence of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of the city. 19 Afterward Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave in the field of Machpelah near Mamre (which is at Hebron) in the land of Canaan. 20 So the field and the cave in it were deeded to Abraham by the Hittites as a burial site.
This passage clearly states everything that I outlined above. Ephron offered to give the cave and the field to Abraham, but Abraham insisted on paying for it. As I noted above, this transaction cannot be contrasted with Jeremiah's, because (1) the sizes of the two properties were not stated, (2) the properties were located in different areas, and (3) the transactions took place centuries apart. Although the sizes of the properties were not stated, the text implies that Abraham bought a sizable piece of land. Machpelah meant "double," so there may have actually been two caves or at least a cave of double size on Ephron's property, and Machpelah was located "at the end of [Ephron's] field" (v:9), an expression that suggests that the property had at least a bit of length to it. The field also had trees in it and was located near Mamre, where there were "great trees" (Gen. 13:18). The presence of trees in that region, near Hebron, probably accounted for why the Canaanites had chosen Hebron to be its royal city (Josh. 12:10), why Abraham had moved his tent to the oaks of Mamre, which were near Hebron (Gen. 13:18), and apparently made it his permanent residence (Gen. 14:13; Gen. 18:1), and why David made it his capital (2 Sam. 2:4,11) until Jerusalem was captured from the Jebusites. The biblical account, then, indicates that Abraham bought a field and cave in a choice location. That he bought both the field and the cave was corroborated by Genesis 25:9-10; Genesis 49:29-30; and Genesis 5:13. Mr. Miller's claim that Ephron charged Abraham an exorbitant price for property of unknown size is about as absurd as Robert Turkel's claim that the writer of "John" didn't mention the miraculous events on crucifixion day that "Matthew" recorded because he didn't have enough space on his scroll of unknown length.
As I have been doing, however, let's just assume that Ephron pulled a slick one on Abraham. Why would that mean that Canaanites in general were "cheaters"? Is Mr. Miller going to claim that because one Canaanite was dishonest, the nation as a whole was dishonest? That is how ethnic prejudices mentioned above develop. By the same logic, one could prove that blacks are lazy, Jews chislers, and Hispanics ruthless. Let's go even further and assume that the Canaanites in Abraham's time were in general dishonest wheeler-dealers? Would that justify exterminating the entire nation some five or six centuries later? Perhaps Mr. Miller will think it would. After all, he apparently thinks that it was morally right to massacre the Amalekites of Saul's time because of something that their ancestors had done 400+ years earlier. Then, finally, what about the children? I am not going to let Mr. Miller forget about the children. Whatever dishonest habits the Canaanites may have had--if we assume that they were dishonest--that would not have made the children guilty of anything, so where would the justice have been in killing thousands or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of children for what the adults had done?
As for the "property taxes and dues" with which Mr. Miller says that Ephron "saddled" Abraham, the passage that told of this transaction said nothing about "property taxes and dues," but if such taxes and dues had to be paid on the land, I am sure that Abraham, having lived in nearby Hebron for 37 years, would have known about taxes and dues. The time of Abraham's residency at Hebron is easy to determine: (1) Abraham moved his tent to the oaks of Mamre [Gen. 13:18]. (2) When Sarah was 90 and Abraham 100, Yahweh appeared to Abraham--as he routinely did--and announced that she would bear a son [Gen. 17:1. 15-17]. (3) Isaac was born when Abraham was 100, so Sarah would have been 90 [Gen. 21:5]. (4) Sarah died in Hebron when she was 127 [Gen. 23:1-2]. Since 127-90=37, we can conclude that Abraham had lived in the region of Hebron for 37 years, plenty long enough for him to become familiar with laws about "taxes and dues." Mr. Miller was obviously straining again to find some way to accuse the Canaanites of being morally despicable.
Before I leave this point, I have to say that I can't help wondering who paid those taxes and dues on the property where the cave of Machpelah was located during the 17 years that Jacob and his family members were in Egypt (Gen. 47:28) before Jacob's body was taken from Egypt and buried there (Gen. 50:12-13).
Till:
Once again, I have to express my surprise at Mr. Miller's sudden turn
toward duplicitous
distortion in order to try to support his position about the
Canaanites. In the first place,
if Dinah was indeed raped--the text says only that Shechem took her,
lay with her, and
humbled her, so there is a question of mutual consent
(Gen.
34:2)--she was raped
by a Hivite as the text just cited shows. His intentions toward her
appeared too honest to describe him as a rapist, because he asked his
father Hamor to secure permission to marry her. Hamor went to Dinah's
father Jacob and
presented a marriage proposal that included an offer of whatever dowry
might be demanded.
Dinah's brothers were upset over what Shechem had done but agreed to
the marriage on the
condition that all of the male Hivites would submit to
circumcision. This condition
was accepted, and after all the male Hivites were circumcised,
Dinah's brothers
Simeon and Levi took advantage of their incapacitation to massacre
them, and then Dinah's
other brothers sacked their city and took the women and children as
captives.
Genesis 34:24 All the men who went out of the city gate agreed with Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male in the city was circumcised. 25 Three days later, while all of them were still in pain, two of Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and attacked the unsuspecting city, killing every male. 26 They put Hamor and his son Shechem to the sword and took Dinah from Shechem's house and left. 27 The sons of Jacob came upon the dead bodies and looted the city where their sister had been defiled. 28 They seized their flocks and herds and donkeys and everything else of theirs in the city and out in the fields. 29 They carried off all their wealth and all their women and children, taking as plunder everything in the houses.
When Jacob reprimanded his sons for having put his extended family in jeopardy of retaliation from the Canaanites and Perizzites (Gen. 34:30-31), they shrugged it off with an indifferent comment: "Should our sister be treated like a whore?" The spin that Mr. Miller has tried to put onto this tale flagrantly distorted the biblical account of what had happened. I wonder if he would think that the Hivites of Joshua's time would have been morally justified to massacre the Israelites because of what Jacob's sons had done to their ancestors in this story that Mr. Miller has appealed to in a strained effort to justify Yahweh's command to destroy the nations in Canaan.
As I always do in winding up my replies to Mr. Miller's dubious points, I will raise once again the issue of the children. Even if we assume that Shechem's possible rape of Dinah had set a precedent that eventually resulted in the male Canaanites/Hivites in Joshua's time engaging in widespread rape, would that morally justify killing all of the Canaanite/Hivite children of that time?
Israel sent messengers to say to Sihon king of the Amorites: 22 "Let us pass through your country. We will not turn aside into any field or vineyard, or drink water from any well. We will travel along the king's highway until we have passed through your territory." 23 But Sihon would not let Israel pass through his territory. He mustered his entire army and marched out into the desert against Israel. When he reached Jahaz, he fought with Israel. 24 Israel, however, put him to the sword and took over his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, but only as far as the Ammonites, because their border was fortified. 25 Israel captured all the cities of the Amorites and occupied them, including Heshbon and all its surrounding settlements.
This was simply an unprovoked attack (with his entire army?!) on Israel. Notice also that Sihon the Amorite had taken this territory from Moab by force already (Num 21.26)!
Till:
The same point that I made about the
Amalekite attack
on Israel would apply here too. As the Amalekites had done, why
wouldn't Sihon have brought
out his entire army to meet the Israelites, who, according to Mr.
Miller's inerrant Bible,
had an army of over 600 thousand soldiers
(Ex.
12:37;
Num.
26:51)? Is Mr.
Miller so naive that he thinks that a nation should allow unopposed
entry into its territory
to a horde of
2.5 to 3 million,
with an army of 600,000, on their mere word that they would pass
through without bothering or
damaging anything? In the first place, how could Moses have guaranteed
that none of the
millions of Israelites would not turn aside to "any field or vineyard"?
After all, this same
Moses would later reprimand these same Israelites sharply and accuse
them of having been
"rebellious from the day that they had come out of Egypt"
(Deut.
9:24) and in an
incident related just before the account of the battle with Sihon's
Amorite army, the
benevolent Yahweh had sent venomous snakes into the Israelite camp to
bite the people for
having murmured against "God and Moses"
(Num.
21:4-9). So was
Sihon supposed to believe that if Moses told these people not to touch
the grapes or step
on the wheat, they could be trusted to do as they were told? Any
national leader so naive
that he would allow an army of 600,000 to enter his territory unopposed
would probably not
be the leader very long.
A point that Mr. Miller conveniently overlooked is that Sihon was an Amorite king, and the Amorites were those despicable people who Mr. Miller seems to think were responsible for bringing moral depravity into the land of Canaan. Furthermore, the Amorites were one of the seven nations that Yahweh had commanded the Israelites to destroy totally (Deut. 7:1-2), so if nations as far away as Moab and Philistia could have heard about the crossing of the Red Sea, why wouldn't the nations in all that region have known by this time that the Israelites intended to massacre them and take their land? Indeed, the Bible indicates in places that the nations in Canaan somehow had advanced notice of what the Israelites were up to. Here, for example, is what Rahab the Harlot said to the spies whom she had hidden in her house when they came to reconnoiter Jericho.
Joshua 2:8 Before the spies lay down for the night, she [Rahab] went up on the roof 9 and said to them, "I know that Yahweh has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. 10 We have heard how Yahweh dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. 11 When we heard of it, our hearts melted and everyone's courage failed because of you, for Yahweh your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.
If word of Israelite intentions had spread as rapidly as this text and the links above indicate, then why can't we assume that Sihon had also heard these reports? That probability puts the "unprovoked attack" that Mr. Miller referred to above in an entirely different light. In fact, I really don't see any way that Moses could have passed through Amorite territory in the manner that he promised without deliberately disobeying Yahweh's orders to destroy totally the Canaanite nations, one of which was the Amorites. Indeed, another biblical passage that tells of the Israelite defeat of the Amorites says that this was exactly what Yahweh had wanted. A verse before the passage that I will quote below claims that Yahweh was speaking to Moses to direct him in what to do as he led the Israelite army onward.
Deuteronomy 2:24 "Set out now and cross the Arnon Gorge. See, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his country. Begin to take possession of it and engage him in battle. 25 This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven. They will hear reports of you and will tremble and be in anguish because of you." 26 From the desert of Kedemoth I sent messengers to Sihon king of Heshbon offering peace and saying, 27 "Let us pass through your country. We will stay on the main road; we will not turn aside to the right or to the left. 28 Sell us food to eat and water to drink for their price in silver. Only let us pass through on foot--29 as the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir, and the Moabites, who live in Ar, did for us--until we cross the Jordan into the land the LORD our God is giving us." 30 But Sihon king of Heshbon refused to let us pass through. For Yahweh your God had made his spirit stubborn and his heart obstinate in order to give him into your hands, as he has now done. 31 Yahweh said to me, "See, I have begun to deliver Sihon and his country over to you. Now begin to conquer and possess his land."
So this account of the run-in with Sihon puts it in an entirely different light. Sihon did not grant safe passage to the Israelites, because Yahweh had "hardened his heart" [KJV] so that he would have an excuse to wipe out the Amorites in that region. Even the version of the battle that Mr. Miller quoted above said that the Israelites "took over his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok," so this would indicate that the Israelites all along had intended to massacre the Amorites and take their land. Mr. Miller conveniently omitted references to the account of this battle as told in Deuteronomy, and that omission may not have been made to deceive the readers. I suspect that he, like other would-be internet "apologists," simply don't know the Bible well enough to realize that positions they are presenting as "explanations" to problem passages are contradicted in other places. At any rate, if the Bible is inerrant, as Mr. Miller seems to believe, he must admit that Sihon's refusal to grant the Israelites free passage was orchestrated by Yahweh, who wanted a reason to massacre the Amorites. Deuteronomy 2:24-31 claims that the Israelites carried out Yahweh's orders to massacre totally the Amorites: "At that time we took all his [Sihon's] towns and completely destroyed them--men, women and children. We left no survivors.
The so-called hardening of Sihon's heart was not the only case where the Bible claimed that Yahweh intervened to cause the Canaanites to make the "wrong decisions" so that Yahweh would have an excuse for the Israelites to wipe them out.
Joshua 11:18 Joshua waged war against all these kings for a long time. 19 Except for the Hivites living in Gibeon, not one city made a treaty of peace with the Israelites, who took them all in battle. 20 For it was Yahweh himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
At the end of this article, I intend to show that if anyone was to be blamed for the Canaanites' failure to jump onto the Yahwist bandwagon, that blame should be put onto Yahweh himself. After all, what chance did a people have to do the "right" thing if Yahweh was exercising control over them to keep them from doing so? This "hardening of hearts" is not what I have in mind for later on to show that blame for Canaanite failure to measure up to Yahwistic standards should be put onto Yahweh himself, but it is certainly another reason why Mr. Miller's efforts to paint the Canaanites as moral reprobates won't withstand logical scrutiny.
Let's suppose that Yahweh had not "hardened" the hearts of Sihon and other Canaanite kings, as the Bible clearly claims, and that the decisions to refuse the Israelites safe passage and later confront them in battles were the kings' alone. What would have been the justice in massacring entire populations for decisions that they had had no control over? These situations remind me of Yahweh's killing of all the firstborn in Egypt (Ex. 12:29) for the pharaoh's refusal to let the Israelites leave Egypt. If we assume the historicity of this unlikely tale, the Egyptians themselves would not have been responsible for the refusal to release the Israelites, so where was the justice in killing innocent people for something that they had no control over? And, finally, there is the matter of the children. The verse quoted above clearly says that the Israelites "completely destroyed" the Amorite population, including even children. What was the justice in massacring children who would not have been responsible for Sihon's decision and who themselves would not have been guilty of any moral corruption that Mr. Miller has been trying to lay onto the Amorites?
The bottom line--which is one of Robert Turkel's favorite phrases--is that there is simply no logical way to justify the Yahwistic massacres recorded in the Old Testament.
Miller:
Till:
There is no need to keep repeating a rebuttal that applies to all of
the examples that Mr.
Miller is wagging in to try to justify the Yahwistic massacres. When a
horde of 2.5 to 3
million nomads with an army of 600,000, which has been wreaking havoc
on the peoples they
encounter, is approaching a national territory, the people there have
the right to defend
themselves. Mr. Miller didn't quote the full story, because this
passage went on to say
that the Israelites vowed to Yahweh that they would utterly destroy the
Canaanites and their
cities if Yahweh would "deliver" them into Israelite hands. Needless to
say, Yahweh delivered
them, and the Israelites "utterly destroyed" the people there (vs:2-3).
Children would have been victims of the massacre, of course, so Mr.
Miller is again left with the problem of
explaining the moral justice in massacring children for something that
they were not
responsible for.
Miller:
Till:
I have posted elsewhere a series entitled
"Crimes by Speculation,"
which was directed in part at Mr. Miller's attempts to explain secular
silence about amazing
miracles claimed in the Bible, but most of the series pertained to
Robert Turkel's attempts
to explain why Mark, Luke, and "John" would have omitted in part or in
whole the amazing
events that "Matthew" said had happened on crucifixion day. Mr.
Miller's comments immediately
above tell me that I was right to include some of his ideas in this
series, because
speculation ran rampant in this one short paragraph. I agree that
Egyptian control and
influence over the land of Canaan was present at this time, but even if
the people of Canaan
had had telegraphs, telephones, and radios to receive news that the
Israelites were coming,
how would that have justified the indiscriminant slaughter of entire
civilian populations,
including children, for nothing more than the decisions of their
leaders to resist Israelite
efforts to take their land? Even though Egypt did exercise influence in
that region, one
would think that if that influence was as great as Mr. Miller described
above, there would
have been at least some mention of Egyptian intrusions into the battles
that were fought
between the Canaanites and the Israelites, but none was referred to anywhere.
Mr. Miller was simply scraping the bottom of the barrel again to try to find some way to justify the morality of Yahweh's orders to exterminate all of the Canaanites and to leave no one alive to breathe.
Miller:
So, even the additional available data supports [sic] a very
negative and abusive view
of the Canaanites, Amorites, and Company...
Till:
When all of the distortions, omissions, and spin-doctoring are removed
from Mr. Miller's
"additional data," he is left with nothing that even remotely supports
his claim that the
Yahwistic massacres were morally justified.
We are going to see below that in addition to Mr. Miller's "additional data," he had more additional data, but we will see that he applied this additional "additional data" just as fallaciously as he did his "additional data" above. I will make my usual rebuttal comments about each of them, and then at the end of this section, I will show, as I promised above, that if anyone was to be blamed for the Canaanites' not knowing about Yahweh and his allegedly "true religion," that blame should be put onto Yahweh himself.
Till:
By "truth," Mr. Miller means, of course, the alleged "revelations" of
the god Yahweh to Old
Testament characters like Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, but he is again
begging the question of
whether those Yahwistic revelations and appearances actually happened.
Let him first prove
that they did, and then we can talk about his claim that the Canaanites
had had a "long
exposure to truth." As my rebuttal continues, I will be showing that
there is no reason at
all to think that the Canaanites had had "a long exposure to truth and
influences to
moderation," as Mr. Miller is claiming.
Miller:
Till:
"Purer stock"? There is no ethnic prejudice in Mr. Miller, is there?
Anyway, all that we
have seen about this "above" are repeated assertions from Mr. Miller
that he could never
verify, just as he could never prove his "purer-stock" view of the
Eblaites. I don't
understand why he is needlessly repeating himself here. (Will Robert
Turkel be upset by
this repetition?) I guess he thinks that if he repeats an unverifiable
assertion enough
times, his readers will eventually believe it. If readers will go to
this section of Part
Three, they will see that the Eblaite religion wasn't quite as pure and
noble as Mr. Miller
has tried to present it.
Miller:
The story of Melky is given in Genesis 14. He is a king-priest of Salem (Jerusalem) and imparts additional theological knowledge to Abe! Awesome figure in biblical history. What is interesting is that he was right in the middle of the Amorite presence, and would have been quite a beacon to those peoples.
Till:
I discussed the character Melchizedek in
this section of
Part Three to point out that the alleged presence of this biblical
character at that time in
Amorite territory makes very questionable Mr. Miller's claim that the
Amorites were corrupt to
the core. That section can be accessed with the click of a mouse
button, so there is no need
for me to rehash it here. I will have more to say about Melchizedek as
I go through Mr.
Miller's references to him again.
Miller:
But also very intriguing is the notion that he could quite possibly
have been an Amorite
himself. In Ezek 16.3, the prophet rebukes the Jebusites of Jerusalem
with these words:
`This is what the Sovereign LORD says to Jerusalem: Your ancestry
and birth were in the
land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a
Hittite. (and again
in 16.45). This would argue that Melky was either Amorite or Hittite.
Till:
I have no dispute with this, and in the section just linked to above, I
quoted Ezekiel's
references to the ancestry of the people of Jerusalem and pointed out
that, rather than
helping Mr. Miller's claim that the Amorites were wicked to an extreme,
this information
actually disputes it. Why Mr. Miller is wagging this in to try to prove
his case against
the Amorites is really quite perplexing to me. How could a culture that
had produced a
character that so epitomized righteousness and perfection as
Melchizedek did have been as
morally depraved as Mr. Miller has tried to paint it?
Regardless of his motive in wagging him into the discussion, a huge problem in Miller's references to Melchizedek is that he is begging the question of whether this person was an actual historical character. There are Bible commentators who believe that, rather than an actual person, he was an abstraction, who should be viewed symbolically. Outside of the Bible and the literature that it spawned, Melchizedek was not mentioned, and the Bible refers to him in mystical terms. In Psalm 110:4, reference is made to someone addressed as "my Lord"--whom Christians, of course, see as Jesus--whom Yahweh has made a priest forever "after the order of Melchizedek." The writer of Hebrews quoted this and, of course, applied it to Jesus, but in making Jesus a priest after the order of Melchizeked (5:6), the Hebrew writer made Melchizedek even more mysterious by saying that he was "without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life" (Heb. 7:3). Such a person could not have literally existed, and this, no doubt, is why many commentators believe that Melchizedek was an abstraction intended to symbolize righteousness or perfection rather than an actual historical person, so before Mr. Miller reads too much into Melchizedek's having lived among the Amorites, he needs first to prove that he was a real person. We frown on question begging in this forum.
Miller:
Till:
We saw just a few paragraphs above that Mr. Miller tried to present
Abraham as a person who
was easily duped in a land transaction, so I have to wonder just how
much influence for good
a man who would have been seen as a sucker could have had on the
Amorites and Hittites.
Anyway, in Abraham we have the same problem that we had with
Melchizedek. Was he an actual person or just a legendary figure? Mr.
Miller isn't going to prove anything by just constantly begging
questions. Let him establish the historicity of Abraham, and then we
can talk about the influence for good that he should have had on the
people of Canaan. To be quite frank, however, I really can't see how
much influence for good could have been effected on the Canaanites by a
man who was considered easy pickings in business deals, who lied
(Gen.
12:10-20;
Gen.
20:2-7), who consorted with his wife's handmaiden and then allowed
his wife to kick her out when jealousy developed between the two (Gen.
16:5-6), who showed felial favoritism to the point of expelling a
son and his mother from his house (Gen.
21:9-14),
who exhibited ethnic prejudice by not allowing his son Isaac to marry a
Canaanite woman
(Gen.
24:2-4), and
who took another wife after Sarah had died when he was "old and
stricken in years"
(Gen. 24:1;
Gen.
25:1-4) and then
disinherited the 16 children and grandchildren produced by that
marriage
(Gen. 25:5).
With a role
model like him to tout, it's no wonder that Mr. Miller is so upset
about the wicked
Canaanites.
Miller:
Till:
I will show readers why Mr. Miller merely cited the scriptures above
and didn't quote them.
Genesis 26:34 When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and also Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35 They were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah.
Genesis 27:46 Then Rebekah said to Isaac, "I'm disgusted with living because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living." 28:1 So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him and commanded him: "Do not marry a Canaanite woman. 2 Go at once to Paddan Aram, to the house of your mother's father Bethuel. Take a wife for yourself there, from among the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother.
So the "bad experience" that Esau's marriage to Hittite women was "for the family" was nothing more than a case of ethnic prejudice. Rebekah's and Isaac's conduct in this matter was no more than if a Caucasian mother today living in a Hispanic neighborhood should say, "If Johnny marries one of these Mexican girls, my life will not be worth living," after which his father would say to Johnny, "Don't marry a Mexican woman; go to live with your mother's brother and find a good white girl to marry." Of course, these two had had a good example set for them by Abraham, who in a text cited above made his servant swear that he would not let Isaac marry a Canaanite woman (Gen. 24:3). In both cases, Abraham and Rebekah preferred a bit of incest to the horrible prospect of having members of their families marry [gasp!] Canaanites. And Mr. Miller is trying to convince us that the Canaanites were morally despicable!
Miller:
Till:
Here is another vague scripture citation that doesn't make much sense
even when read in its
context. The reference to the Amorites was made when Jacob [Israel] was
blessing Joseph and
his children.
Genesis 48:21 Then Israel said to Joseph, "I am about to die, but God will be with you and take you back to the land of your fathers. 22 And to you, as one who is over your brothers, I give the ridge of land I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow."
The most that could be determined from this text is that Jacob [Israel] claimed that he had once taken by force a piece of land from the Amorites. According to a later biblical text, however, this statement actually referred to a piece of property that Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem (referred to above in the matter of Dinah's "rape"). Notice that Jacob said that God would be with Joseph and bring him back to the land of his fathers. As Joseph was dying, he requested an oath from the Israelites that they would "carry up my bones from hence" when they returned to Canaan (Gen. 50:25), and the book of Joshua ended with a reference to the fulfillment of that vow,which associated it with a land purchase that Jacob had made upon his return from Paddanaram (Gen. 33:18-19).
Joshua 24:32 And Joseph's bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem. This became the inheritance of Joseph's descendants.
I could facetiously say here that Jacob also got taken on his land deal, because he paid 100 pieces of silver for it, whereas Jeremiah bought a field for just 17 pieces, but I will let it ride with just this brief aside. I really don't understand Mr. Miller's purpose in referring to this scripture, and his claim that Esau's marriage to Hittite women would have given the Canaanites "numerous points of contact" with Israelites in which "worldviews" could have been exchanged is equally vague. The "worldview" of people at that time would have been that the "world" was where they lived, and the Bible says very little about contacts that Jacob's descendants (who became the Israelites) had with Esau's family. For one thing, Jacob was separated from Esau for 20 years, while he lived in Paddanaram (Gen. 31:41). Their paths crossed when Jacob was returning home from Paddanaram (Gen. 33:1-17), and they reunited on friendly terms, but Esau then went south to Seir (located in Edom about 60 miles below the Dead Sea), and Jacob went north to Succoth (about 30 miles north of the Dead Sea), so the two families were separated by about 135 miles, which would have been a considerable distance at that time. No doubt the two groups had some contacts, just as the Israelites had contacts with Moabites, Phoenicians, Ammonites, and other ethnic groups in the Middle East, but Mr. Miller is straining to find a point if he is trying to argue that Esau's marriages to Hittite women would have had some kind of influence for good on the Canaanites. The only indication of further contact between Jacob and Esau was in Esau's participation in the burial of their father Isaac (Gen. 35:29). Esau was the eponymous ancestor of the Edomites, and elsewhere in the Bible, they were not too highly regarded. Mr. Miller spoke disparagingly of the Amorites earlier, because their king Sihon had refused to give the Israelites safe passage through their territory during the Israelite trek to Canaan, but the Edomites also refused to let them pass.
Numbers 20:14 Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom, saying: "This is what your brother Israel says: You know about all the hardships that have come upon us. 15 Our forefathers went down into Egypt, and we lived there many years. The Egyptians mistreated us and our fathers, 16 but when we cried out to Yahweh, he heard our cry and sent an angel and brought us out of Egypt. "Now we are here at Kadesh, a town on the edge of your territory. 17 Please let us pass through your country. We will not go through any field or vineyard, or drink water from any well. We will travel along the king's highway and not turn to the right or to the left until we have passed through your territory." 18 But Edom answered: "You may not pass through here; if you try, we will march out and attack you with the sword." 19 The Israelites replied: "We will go along the main road, and if we or our livestock drink any of your water, we will pay for it. We only want to pass through on foot--nothing else." 20 Again they answered: "You may not pass through." Then Edom came out against them with a large and powerful army. 21 Since Edom refused to let them go through their territory, Israel turned away from them.
Another account of this contact with the Edomites, however, told it in a different way.
Deuteronomy 2:4 Give the people these orders: 'You are about to pass through the territory of your brothers the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. They will be afraid of you, but be very careful. 5 Do not provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land, not even enough to put your foot on. I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his own. 6 You are to pay them in silver for the food you eat and the water you drink.'" 7 Yahweh your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast desert. These forty years Yahweh your God has been with you, and you have not lacked anything. 8 So we went on past our brothers the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. We turned from the Arabah road, which comes up from Elath and Ezion Geber, and traveled along the desert road of Moab.
Inerrantists, of course, say that verse 8 was simply saying that the Israelites turned aside and "went on past" their brothers by another route instead of passing through their territory. It may have this meaning, but if so, it was rather confusingly stated. This meaning, if it is there, is at least doubtful enough to cast serious suspicion on Mr. Miller's apparent belief that citing or quoting a scripture is sufficient to settle any matter in dispute.
After settling into Canaan, the Israelites were constantly at war with the Edomites. They were one of the first enemies that Israel fought after Saul became king (1 Sam. 14:47), and the Israelites under the leadership of David's officer Abishai massacred 18,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt and put garrison's there to make the Edomites servants (1 Chron. 18:12-13). Skirmishes with the Edomites were recorded through the books of Kings and Chronicles, so I doubt that much exchanging of "worldviews" took place during all of these hostilities. We can conclude that Mr. Miller is straining here to find another reason to justify the Yahwistic massacres of Canaanites.
Miller:
Till:
Such a statement about a god's delivering enemies into the hand of a
victor would have had no
more impact than, say, Mesha's words on the
Moabite Stone, which
told of victories that
the god Chemosh had given to him, would have had on those who read
them, and no more impact
than the inscriptions
on the pavement stones at the temple of Urta in Nimrud, which told
of victories that the gods had given to Assurnasirpal, would have had
on those who read them. The
belief that gods led armies to victory was as commonplace as dirt in
those days, so the statement by Melchizedek--if it was ever even
made--would have been viewed no differently
from all the other claims of victories in which gods were involved.
Besides this problem, Mr. Miller must prove that Melchizedek was an actual historical character, and, accomplishing that, he must then prove that Melchizedek actually said this. I would think that rather than Melchizedek's alleged statement registering with his Amorite companions, they would have instead wondered who this "God Most High" was that Melchizedek was talking about. Whether Melchizedek was historical or fictional, what we probably have here is a matter of a biblical writer putting words into his mouth, just as the writer of Daniel attributed to Nebuchadnezzar statements of belief in the god Yahweh, which a worshiper of Babylonian gods would not have likely made (Dan. 2:29); 4:34-37).
Mr. Miller"s wagging Melchizedek into his desperate effort to find some kind of justification for the Yahwistic massacres is a bit inconsistent with the line of reasoning that he used earlier. He cited cases of individuals like Ephron the Hittite's alleged dishonesty in a business dealing with Abraham and Shechem's rape of Dinah as evidence that the Canaanites deserved extermination. His line of reasoning seemed to be this: (1) Ephron the Hittite cheated Abraham; therefore, the Canaanites were so wicked that they needed to be massacred. (2) Shechem raped Dinaah; therefore, the Canaanits were so wicked that they needed to be massacred. I wonder why the same kind of argument should not work in reverse: The Amorite king Melchizedek was an exceptionally righteous man; therefore, the Amorites were so righteous that they should have been left alone in their land.
This is a ridiculous argument, of course, but it is just as logical as Mr. Miller's attempts to depict the Canaanites as morally depraved on the basis of limited samples.
Miller:
Till:
Once again Mr. Miller is begging the question of biblical accuracy. If
we assume that Sodom
and the cities of the plain were actual historical places and that they
were destroyed by
fire and brimstone that rained down on them, how do we know that their
destruction was
"God's judgment"? How does Mr. Miller know that "God's judgment" caused
this destruction
rather than just a natural catastrophe like the thousands of natural
catastrophes that have
happened throughout time? In our country, for example, we have had a
terrible catastrope to
happen in New Orleans and along the gulf coast. Prior to this,
catastrophes less severe struck
the state of Florida. Were these judgments of God? After all, these
places are located im the
so-called Bible belt, so is "God" sending judgment on these places
where belief in the Bible
is probably stronger than in other parts of the country? I think that
Mr. Miller lives in
California but grew up in Mississippi. I don't know exactly where he
lived in this state,
but I wonder if he thinks that the destruction inflicted by the
hurricane along the coast
was "God's judgment"? Does he think that the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius
in AD 79, which
destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum and killed thousands of people was a
"judgment of God"?
What about the tsunami in Southeast Asia in December 2004--was that
also a "judgment of
God"? If so, what makes Mr. Miller think that they were? How does he
know that
earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, volcanic eruptions, and
such like aren't just natural occurrences that happen according to
scientific laws in an indifferent universe? And if he thinks that such
catastrophes today are just natural events, by what
line of reasoning does he conclude that similar events centuries and
centuries ago were
"judgments of God"? If he says that he knows that these were judgments
of God because the
Bible tells him so, does he know what the logical fallacy of special
pleading is?
I am sure that he finds these questions to be positively shocking, but it is something that he must consider. The biblical tales about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah originated in a time when people believed that natural calamities were... well, judgments or punishments of God. Mr. Miller, therefore, must offer more evidence than the mere fact that ancient documents from prescientific, highly superstitious times said that "God" once destroyed Sodom and cities on the same plain because of their wickedness; he must show that this really was why they were destroyed, and, needless to say, he cannot do that.
Miller:
Till
How does Mr. Miller know that Abraham and Lot were witnesses to "the
theological understanding
of a highly visible--and internationally applauded--action by God"?
Well, the Bible tells
hims so. Hence, he is doing nothing now and has been doing nothing for
hundreds of Ks except
to beg the question of biblical accuracy in its "history."
Nothing else needs to be said about this except to point out that the alleged "judgment of God" on Sodom and Gomorrah would have happened some six centuries before the time of Joshua's conquests, so what would the people of Joshua's time have known about that except for some vague legends that they may have heard? An unfortunate part of human nature is that people are rather quick to forget. Even in our time of mass communication, what do the people, in general, who were born after World War II really know about that period in our history? I was 12 when that war ended, and I first realized that I was getting old when a student in one of my classes asked me if Hitler was involved in the first or the second World War. The Vietnamese War was apparently so vague in our memories that the government in power foolishly started another war that seems to be going in the same direction as the other quagmire, so Mr. Miller is extremely naive if he thinks that strong memories of important events will survive for centuries in people who didn't experience them. That he would make such arguments as this in defense of the Yahwistic massacres is just more evidence of how desperate he is to find some way to defend them.
Miller:
Till:
And the above are nothing but begged questions strung together one
after the other. What I
just said about quckly fading memories is all that I need to say about
this desperate reach into left field to try to find some way to explain
the embarrassment of the Yahwistic
massacres in the Old Testament.
Miller:
Till:
Once again Mr. Miller is begging the question of biblical accuracy. If
he has done any
research at all into biblical history, he surely knows that more and
more biblical scholars
are concluding that the captivity in Egypt, the exodus, the wilderness
wanderings, and the
conquest of Canaan are fictionalized history, which was written to give
Israel a glorious,
heroic past. Furthermore, he is begging the question of "truth" by
assuming that what the
Israelites believed in their culture was "truth," but how does he know
that? What is his
proof that this Israelite god Yahweh had any real existence? The
Moabites believed that
their god Chemosh was real? Was he? The Philistines believed that their
god Dagon was
real? Was he? If these gods weren't real, then what rule of logic has
Mr. Miller used to
determine that just the one tribal god Yahweh was real?
As I previously said, I appreciate the effort that Mr. Miller puts into his articles, but he seems not to understand very rudimentary priciples of logic.
Miller:
Till:
What I said above applies here too. Let Mr. Miller first prove that
Ishmael, Esau, and Lot
were actual historical characters and after proving that, then prove
that they had the same kinds of direct contacts with the god Yahweh
that the Bible claims that Abraham had, and then we can talk about
this. for the sake of argument, let's just assume that these were real
persons and that Yahweh dropped in to chat with Ishmael, Esau, and Lot
as routinely as he allegedly did with Abraham. Why would that mean that
the Canaanites should have "taken notice and warning"? This unfounded
assumption assumes that (1) the descendants of Ishmael, Esau, and Lot
would have been evangelistic in spreading the word about a special
relationship that they had with a god named Yahweh, and that (2) the
people in Canaan, where gods were as common as dirt, would have paid
any attention to what someone was saying about another god named
Yahweh. We have Hindus in our midst, for example, but does Mr. Miller
pay any serious attention to what they say about their gods? I doubt
that he does, so why should he think that Canaanites would have cared
what outsiders were saying about some new god that they had brought
with them?
If Mr. Miller says, "Oh, well, we know that Hindu gods aren't real," he will once again be engaging in special pleading.
Miller:
Till:
Mr. Miller can't really know that Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites
would have "preserved
early traditions about Elohim." In the first place, he is begging the
question of biblical
accuracy in its references to the existence of this deity, but as I
just noticed, Hindus who have come into our midst from Southern Asia
are preserving traditions that they have about Brahma, Vishnu, Siva,
and other gods, but who among us is paying any serious attention to
what they are saying? Mr. Miller shows a remarkable ignorance of how
religion works. Basically, a religion is a cultural matter that is
transmitted from generation to generation. Mr. Miller is a Christian no
doubt because he grew up in a family where Christianity was taught or
at least in a society where it was respected as the "true religion";
hence, it really doesn't matter what Hindus living here may say about
their religion, he is not going to cast away his birth religion in
order to accept a foreign one. What makes him think that the Canaanites
would have been any different about new religions that were brought
into their culture? I mentioned earlier the climatic changes that had
caused dramatic changes
in that part of the world, so can you imagine how many new gods were
brought into the Near
East by the people migrating there from other geographical regions? Why
should someone
talking about a god named Yahweh have been any more believable than
those who talked about
other gods? This question relates directly to the blame that should be
put onto Yahweh himself for the failure of the Canaanites to know about
him, but that will be one of my final points in this article.
All that aside, the Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites were not presented favorably in Mr. Miller's inerrant Bible. The Moabites worshiped Chemosh (1 Kings 11:7), the Ammonites worshiped Milcom (1 Kings 11:5), and the chief diety of the Edomites was Qauš, who wasn't named in the Bible but has been identified by archaeological work. The Bible, however, does claim that Edom was a polytheistic culture (2 Chron. 25:14). Even thought Lot was presumably the eponymous father of the Moabites and Ammonites--through incestuous relationships with his own daughters (Gen. 19:30-38)--and the Edomites were descendants of Jacob's brother Esau, these groups evidentally didn't do very much at all to preserve "early traditions about Elohim." If the direct descendants of Lot and Esau didn't even preserve traditions about Elohim among their own people, why does Mr. Miller think that the Canaanites should have known about this god from traditions that had been preserved in Moab, Ammon, and Edom? He is apparently reaching way out into left field to try to find some point to support his belief that the Canaanites deserved extermination.
Rahab had heard about the Exodus (some 40+ years earlier),
Till:
If we assume the historicity of the exodus and the crossing of the Red
Sea, for which there
isn't a shred of unbiased evidence, then 40 years would have been
plenty of time for word of
these events to spread up to Jericho, but as I pointed out earlier,
Exodus
15:14-15
ridiculously claimed that nations like Edom, Moab, Philistia--which
didn't even exist then--and
Canaan knew about the crossing even before the Israelites had left the
far shore of the Red Sea and proceeded toward the wilderness. Such
absurdities as this give any reasonable person
sufficient cause to question biblical claims, so Mr. Miller needs to
give more evidence to
support his assertions than the mere fact that the Bible says thus and
so.
Miller:
Till:
To say that Rahad (if she was an actual historical person) knew about
the crossing of the
Red Sea (if it was an actual historical event) is one thing, but to
claim that she knew that
Yahweh had promised Canaan to the Israelites 400 years earlier is
another thing. Mr. Miller needs to show us evidence that she knew this
beyond the mere fact that an ancient document obviously written to
promote Yahwish says that she knew it.
Furthermore, he needs to brush up on his math. Exodus 12:40 claims that the Israelites "sojourned" in Egypt for 430 years, but the promises allegedly made to Abraham would have preceded the Egyptian bondage by some 200+ years.
Miller:
News traveled fast back in those days,
Till:
Indeed it did! As I have noted twice above, the Bible asserts that
nations as far away as
Edom, Moab, nonexistent Philistia, and Canaan knew about the crossing
of the Red Sea
immediately after it happened. The fact that such absurdities as this
are in the Bible should
be enough to convince reasonable people just how logically flawed is
Mr. Miller's method of
proving the Bible by quoting the Bible. He wouldn't stand still for a
Muslim to prove
Islam by just quoting the Qur'an, but he apparently thinks that we
should allow him to
prove the Bible by quoting the Bible.
Miller:
Till:
Well, the Amalekite attack happened more like months rather than
"within days." After
crossing the Red Sea, the Israelites traveled into the wilderness and
came to a place
between Elim and Sinai in the wilderness of sin "on the fifteenth day
of the second month
after their departing out of the land of Egypt"
(Ex. 16:5),
which would have
been about 45 days after the exodus. They camped there long enough for
the 2.5 to 3 million Israelites to bellyache about the food, a
complaint that Yahweh met with manna from heaven. They were in this
place for at least seven days after the manna began coming down,
because Moses reprimanded them for going out to look for manna on the
seventh day after Yahweh had assured them that if they gathered it for
six days, he would double the amount gathered on the sixth day so that
they would have food on the seventh
(Ex.
16:4-6, 16-30).
After this, they left that place, moved on, and eventually camped at
Rephidim
(Ex.
17:1-7), where the
Israelites complained about the lack of water, which complaint Yahweh
took care of by causing
water to come from a rock. In
"The Water Problem," I showed
how much time the Israelites would have needed to get just one day's
supply of water for themselves and their livestock each time they came
to a water source. In
the matter of water being brought forth from rocks, as allegedly
happened in Rephidim,
I assumed that the water miraculously provided in these incidents had
gushed out to form lakes
one thousand feet in diameter and then showed the logistical problems
that would have been
involved in drawing water from a source like this to provide just the
minimal needs of
2.5 to 3 million people and their
"much
cattle" that they
had brought with them, to which herds they added 675,000 sheep, 12,000
oxen, and 71,000
asses when they pillaged the Midianites
(Num.
31:22-34). The
Amalekites attacked the Israelites at Rephidim
(Ex.
17:8-16), but this was their seventh encampment after
crossing the Red Sea.
They left Pi Hahiroth and passed through the sea into the desert, and when they had traveled for three days in the Desert of Etham, they camped at Marah. 9 They left Marah and went to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there. 10 They left Elim and camped by the Red Sea. 11 They left the Red Sea and camped in the Desert of Sin. 12 They left the Desert of Sin and camped at Dophkah. 13 They left Dophkah and camped at Alush. 14 They left Alush and camped at Rephidim, where there was no water for the people to drink.
The third encampment would have been the one "by the Red Sea" after they had left Elim, but they didn't reach this third encampment until the 15th day of the second month after leaving Egypt, so this indicates that several days passed between each encampment, and we would understand that it would indeed have taken several days for 2.5 to 3 million people to break camp and travel any significant distance with their possessions and "much cattle" before setting up their next encampment. Hence, we can conclude that if 45 days passed between the exodus from Egypt until their third encampment, at least that much time would have passed between their third encampment and their seventh.
Don't any of these biblical inerrantists ever take the time to analyze the logistics that would have been involved in some of the tales spun in Exodus and Numbers about the wilderness adventures of the Israelites. If not, I suggest that they go to the index page of TSR Online, scroll down to "Tall Tales of Wilderness Wanderings," and read the articles there, which analyzed some of the wilderness stories to show that they were logistically improbable and in some cases even logistically impossible. These articles will give readers another reason to understand just how flawed is Mr. Miller's attempts to prove the Bible by quoting or citing the Bible.
Miller:
Till:
Yeah, right! When barbarians from the north began swooping down on the
Romans, they should
have just packed up and left, shouldn't they have? I am sure that if
migrations across our
southern borders begin to threaten Mr. Miller's home, he will just pack
up, go somewhere else,
and leave his house and other properties he may have to the intruders.
Is Mr. Miller really so naive that he just doesn't understand human
attachment to people's homelands and the properties that they have
worked to build and maintain?
Anyway, I wonder if Mr. Miller is arguing that those morally depraved Canaanites should have had enough sense to abandon their land and go to some other places, where they could have morally corrupted the people living there.
Miller:
Till:
I separated this little tidbit from Mr. Miller's statement above, which
introduced it, so that
I could show readers another reason to view with suspicion claims that
the Bible is historically accurate. The text that Mr. Miller just
quoted said that the Canaanite kings
"no longer had the courage to face the Israelites," but the next three
chapters tell about
Joshua's destruction of Jericho and Ai, after which we are told that
the Canaanite kings
were unified in their determination to resist the Israelite invasion.
Joshua 9:1 Now when all the kings west of the Jordan heard about these things--those in the hill country, in the western foothills, and along the entire coast of the Great Sea as far as Lebanon (the kings of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites)--2 they came together to make war against Joshua and Israel.
The next several chapters go on to relate battle after battle fought against Canaanite armies whose hearts, according to the text Mr. Miller quoted above, had previously melted and left them with no courage to face the Israelites. This is just one more example of inconsistency that resulted from the hodgepodge way that the Bible was patched together from different--and often variant--traditions. There are so many examples like this in the Bible that anyone who is really knowledgeable in its contents will understand why the Bible cannot be relied on to give an accurate account of the history of biblical times.
Miller:
Till:
They didn't respond appropriately, so Yahweh was justified to order
their extermination. Is
that Mr. Miller's position? Apparently so, but I have shown above that
there is no real evidence that the Canaanites should have been informed
about Yahwish, which even the direct
descendants of Lot and Esau were unable to maintain in the lands that
they settled. That
aside, Mr. Miller has yet to say anything about the reason why the
innocent children in Canaan should have been massacred too, except to
say that they died "swiftly." I guess we can assume from this that it
would have been morally right for allied forces in World War II to have
killed German children for the war crimes of the adults if the killing
had been done "swiftly."
How can anyone believe such nonsense as this? It simply goes to show the extremes that people will go to in order to defend emotionally important religious beliefs. The fact that Mr. Miller has gone to such extremes as these to defend his religious beliefs should give him pause to wonder if maybe the Canaanites were not just like him, i. e., willing to rationalize to the extreme in order to hold on to their religious beliefs, to the point that no matter how "abundant" the information about Yahwism that they may have had access to, they were not going to give up their traditional beliefs. When religion is involved, people just can't seem to think rationally, and so resisting all efforts to make them modify their beliefs seems entirely appropriate to them. Why should we think that the Canaanites would have been any different?
All that aside, I will leave this point by reminding readers again that Mr. Miller is begging the question of what is "true" in religion. He, of course, thinks that Yahwism is the truth, but beyond a collection of ancient writings by people biased to the religion of Yahweh, what is his proof that it was?
Miller:
(The other nations in the ANE seemed to respond to 'available' truth
with a degree of moderation and correspondingly did not develop the
ruthless, cruel, and degenerate practices of their Canaanite neighbors.)
Till:
This is only an assertion for which Mr. Miller offered no supporting
evidence. Which "other
nations" did he have in mind? Exactly how did they show "a degree of
moderation"? If he
will explain himself, I will be glad to reply, but I really suspect
that he had no specific
examples in mind but was merely saying something to wind down a long
section of additional
"additional data," which he probably realized offered no real evidence
for the moral
justification of the Yahwistic massacres in the Old Testament.
Miller:
Summary: These nations show up in archeology and
literature as a uniquely evil and destructive civilization, whose
culpability is increased due to the abundance of truth and religious
warnings which they were confronted with, and had access to.
Till:
I have replied to this claim earlier and shot it to pieces, so there is
no need for me to say
any more about it except for my own summary statement, which I will put
after Mr. Miller's, to show that if anyone should have been blamed for
the Canaanite failure to accept Yahwish, that blame should have been
put on Yahweh himself.
Miller:
In contrast to the vast majority of surrounding nations, the
Canaanite/Amorite cultures would not act responsibly and prudently, in
matters of foreign relations and domestic practice. The result was a
destructive and malignant force, in an already difficult ANE historical
setting. If the nations of that day could have had a vote on who [sic]
to 'destroy', they all would have voted for the Canaanite/Amorite
culture.
Till:
So the unspported assertions continue to run rampant. Just what were
these "vast majority
of surrounding nations" that acted responsibly and prudently? Egypt?
Greece, Babylon,
Assyria, Phoenicia? Carthage? What? Why didn't Mr. Miller tell us? If
he will name the
nations, I will gladly show evidence that they all, at that time,
practiced idolatry and
that many of them practiced human sacrifices and maintained cultic
prostitutes, the very
crimes that Mr. Miller found so detestable in the Canaanites. I also
have to wonder just
how Mr. Miller knows that "the nations of that day" would have voted to
destroy the Canaanite/Amorite culture if they had been able to vote on
whom to destroy. It would be
helpful if he would give us at least a hint about where he gets such
information as this.
I suspect that he is just projecting onto "the nations of that day" his
own personal
prejudices that he has acquired from the Bible.
I have said above that I would show at the end of this section how Yahweh himself must bear the blame for the failure of the Canaanite/Amorite culture to believe in him. If the Bible is to be believed--and, unfortunately, too many people think that it should be--individuals like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, etc. had very good reasons to believe in Yahweh, because he routinely dropped in to chat with them. If Yahweh would do this for me, I would believe in him too. After all, wouldn't seeing be believing? If, then, Yahweh had dropped in to chat with the Amorite king Sihon instead of hardening his heart, as noted above, he probably would have taken an entirely different attitude toward the Israelites. If Yahweh had also dropped in on all the Canaanite kings of the regions listed in Joshua 11:1-17 to tell them that he was the real thing, which they should all worship instead of their traditional idols, maybe they too would have become worshipers of Yahweh. Instead, as we have already noted above, Yahweh hardened their hearts so that he would have an excuse to "destroy them" (Joshua 11:20). This Yahweh was such a nice guy, how could anyone not adore him?
Mr. Miller continued with still more additional
data added to his "additional additional
data." All of the next section is just another desperate attempt to
rationalize the obvious
immorality of the Yahwistically ordered exterminations of non-Hebraic
nations. We will even
see Mr. Miller quibbling that the extermination of the Amalakites
wasn't really genocide, but
I will reply to all of this in a Part
Five.
