My copy of the Summer 1995 issue of The Skeptical Review arrived a week or so ago. I have enjoyed every issue I have received because of the excellent information each one contains. I also like to read those few attempted rebuttals by inerrantists who challenge the errantist view.
Mr. Marion R. Fox's "Answers to a Claim of Errancy of the Scriptures" was a puerile attempt to show that skeptics, atheists, and other nontheists cannot reason well, and to save the inerrancy doctrine. He never had a solution to the problem Farrell Till presented to any inerrantist who might want to explain why there was not inconsistency in certain of Perez's descendants holding offices that they should not have been qualified to hold, if Perez was indeed considered a bastard.
After reading all of the pertinent biblical passages, I wondered why Mr. Fox did not answer Till directly instead of asserting the ridiculous arguments he ascribed to atheists and agnostics. He could have pointed out that the persons involved in the Perez case all lived before Moses received the Law from God. It was a time when the various Israelitish clans used situation ethics. For instance, Cain did not commit incest when he took one of his sisters or nieces as a wife, because they were the only females available to him. If the race of Adam was to multiply, it was necessary for Adam's sons to marry close relatives.
Judah only suggested to Onan that he "go in to your brother's wife, and perform your duty as a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother" (Gen. 38:8). Notice that it was his duty to raise up offspring for his brother, and it seems he could have refused as easily as Judah refused to force Shelah, the younger son to assume the "duty." There was no law to compel Onan to perform a duty; it apparently was a custom of the tribe of Judah or perhaps of all the Israelites. Er, Judah's oldest son, "was evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord took his life" (v:7). There is no hint as to how Er irritated the all-loving God, and after Onan died, Judah asked Tamar to remain a widow in her father's house until his younger son Shelah had grown up, but when Shelah reached marriageable age, Tamar was not given to him to perform the "duty" of a brother-in-law.
The law not having been promulgated, there was no rite for Shelah to refuse to marry Tamar, and no rite for her to loose his shoe and spit in his face, the Law promulgated by the all-loving God (Dt. 25:9).
The story of Ruth and Boaz, also supposedly before the law of Moses was formalized, indicates that there still was no regulation concerning the childless wife of a dead husband. Boaz was not a brother or the nearest relative of Elimelech, Mahlon, and Chilion; an unnamed relative was. There was nothing written whether Orpah's husband died childless. Apparently, it was not a matter of importance or the author would have included this information. Perhaps the purpose of the story was to give David a genealogy. There still was no rite to show displeasure toward a brother reluctant to perform the "duty" of a brother-in-law.
Mr. Fox did not deal with Tamar's acting the whore. She dressed as a temple prostitute, whom fundamentalists disbelieve Israelites had. What is not mentioned specifically in the Bible either is not true or is a possibility to avert an error; it is not positive evidence of anything. Such is the way inerrantists argue.
It seems to me that what had been a tribal custom was eventually enacted into law with regulations governing the levirate marriage, or, in the event of a refusal by the brother of the deceased, a rite to embarrass him. Marriage was required, and there was no provision for another near relative of the deceased to replace the brother.
Inerrantists do not recognize gaps in genealogies or missing information concerning events to be errors in the Bible. Someone needs to explain why these lapses do not constitute errors.
Although moderns may consider Perez a bastard, the ancients apparently did not. If Perez had been looked upon as a pariah, his descendants would have become nonentities, and no one would know the names of his progeny. What member of the congregation of Israel would have married his daughter to Perez or any of his progeny? Perez's only choice for a mate would have been the daughter of another pariah or some foreigner.
Although I believe that Perez was not considered to be a bastard by his contemporaries, no one should even begin to imagine that I agree that the Bible has no errors, because I don't have to read very far in the Bible to be confronted by them.
It is unfortunate that inerrantists refuse to defend their doctrine with evidence, and only attempt to make critics inept logicians. That tactic is dishonest and useless.
(E. E. Brennaman, 1601 Airline Road, Apt. 62, Corpus Christi, TX 78413-4517.)
Would it be possible for you to inform your readers that you received my letter in January? Your articles (Vol. 6 # 1, Winter 1995, and Vol. 6 # 2, Spring 1995) leave the false impression with your readers that I did not reply "in the next few months." Would it not be fair to inform your readers when you received my article?
I am enclosing $2 for the cost of the rental on the Hovind-Till Debate. Incidentally, there was no looting in Oklahoma City after the bomb, but the United States is not a Christian nation. Some nations kill looters! I will probably send you a couple of high density disks for ASCII files of your publication "in the next few months."
I have enclosed an article on abortion for you to publish if you think it worthy of consideration.
(Marion R. Fox, 4004 Twisted Trail Road SE, Oklahoma City, OK 73150-1910.)
We were certainly glad that Mr. Fox has asked to see the video tape of The Hovind-Till Debate. We have sent this to him along with complimentary disks containing ASCII copies of all articles that have been published in TSR. Now he won't have to wait until "the next few months" to receive them.
The biblical inerrancy doctrine is the focus of The Skeptical Review, and for this reason we will not be publishing Mr. Fox's article on abortion. I am not discriminating against Mr. Fox anymore than I have against skeptics whose articles I have rejected because they did not address the inerrancy issue. I once wrote an article on abortion too, but I didn't publish it in TSR. I sent it to Truth Seeker, because it was inconsistent with our editorial purpose. ("God Is Prolife?" was published in Volume 120, Number 5, 1993, pp. 15-17, of Truth Seeker.) However, to head off any insinuations from Mr. Fox that I am evading an issue I am afraid to confront, I have written a response to Mr. Fox's article and will send a copy of both articles (his and mine) to anyone who requests them. (Please include an SASE.) I think that this is as fair as he can expect me to be.
For the benefit of those who may not have understood why Mr. Fox said that the United States is not a Christian nation, I should explain that he believes the only Christians are in the Church of Christ, which he naively believes is *the* church of Christ. The members of all other churches are apostates in his opinion, and so he doesn't consider them Christians. Since the Church of Christ, according to Information Please Almanac, has only 1,770,000 members, which is less than 1% of the population, Mr. Fox cannot consider the United States a Christian nation.
All of us certainly sympathize with the people of Oklahoma
City, and
they obviously acted heroically in the face of a great tragedy. As
horrible as the Oklahoma City disaster was, the bomb destruction was
limited
to a relatively small area of the city, so civil order would have been
much easier to maintain than in a disaster like the one in Kobe, Japan,
which leveled an entire city that is almost three times as populous.
