Why God's Mooning Moses Is Important to Our Religious Discussions

Great Debates
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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by DSeid *
**“Accordingly, Jephtheth did not offer up his daughter as burnt-offering, but segregated her in a specially built house where she spent her life in solitude.” Yeah. **

Where is this from, please? Judges 11 states clearly that

30 And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD : “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, 31 whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD 's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”

and that

39 After the two months, she returned to her father and he did to her as he had vowed. And she was a virgin.

I think this makes it pretty clear that he offered her as a burnt offering.
** Still, what was the point of that story? That God wants human sacrifice or to explain a tradition of “maiden mourning” and to serve as a warning of being careful as to what you promise? **

What is the purpose of the details of the death of Aaron or the story of how Jacob married Leah or the vow made by Lamech? It’s a compilation of oral history not unlike the recitations of African griots. If there is any point to the story it’s probably that you should be careful what you vow for God will hold you to it. The bit about the maidens spending 4 days in the wilderness seems more an aside than the sacrifice.

As for the immaturity of the OT God, how about (just to give one of the more famous verses)

Exodus 20: 5- “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,”

Is this consistent with mercy or maturity? A few years ago on the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day there were 70something and 80something year old American veterans hugging German veterans of the same age, men they would have killed without a thought a half-century before and men who very possibly were the killers of their friends or relatives who had also fought that day, yet they had forgiven each other as other no-longer-young men who in their youth had been swept in the tsunami of politics and war. (In our own country, General Sherman’s archenemy Joe Johnston served as a pallbearer at his funeral for again the olive branch had been extended in spite of the thousands of men that each general had killed from the other’s army, and in one of the most beautiful moments in the true story DEAD MAN WALKING the mother of a man who viciously raped and murdered opened her door to find the father of her son’s victim standing on her door with groceries and a pledge to help her anytime she needed it.) If men are able to forgive even the deaths of those they love, is it not immature of a deity to punish mortals not for their own acts but for the acts of their great-grandfathers?

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Just like with Santa Claus.

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“Clearly states” in the translation that you (and I) read. But it warn’t written in English, bubbeluh. David Kimchi’s translation was “will be the LORD’s, or I will sacrifice …” and the rest follows. Like I said, sounds like creative translating to me.

Oodles of Midrashim have been made just over interpreting exactly what the point was. Whether one believes that these were literal truths of oral history or myths addressing greater truths only, they are included in the Book of Law because of the points that they make.

I, for one, do not feel quaified to sit in judgement of God’s maturity. I’d be lucky to see his backside go past. My morals and ethics are presumably a result of what God has programmed into me and into our culture. I should then use them to judge God in days past? When they are result the the Laws that He gave? God is and always has been beyond me even more than He was beyond Moses.

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Aaaargggghh!!! Another long and gobbled up (EXPLETIVES DELETED EXPLETIVES DELETED) post!

Ah well, shorter is probably better anyway.

Re: Jephthah’s daughter- since I can’t read Hebrew I have to rely upon objective scholars. None of the recent scholarly translations I’ve looked at for Judges 11 has any mention of her becoming a cloistered virgin, though perhaps when the Bible comes to DVD it will be restored with the original ending.

If the Bible is a literally true narrative and God is exactly as portrayed in his official biography, then come Judgment I fear I’ll just have to proudly claim an overabundance of DNA from my ancestress Eve, for if she existed then I have an incredible amount more pride in descending from a lady who offered a choice with paradise-minus-understanding and understanding-minus-paradise proudly said “I’ll take what’s behind Serpent Number One”. Adam was a lucky man, and I hope he ate enough of that apple to know it.

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On the subject of people’s varying ability (or inability) to perceive God in the world, may I submit my very favorite prayer, which I am hoping mightily is not copyrighted:

Days pass and the years vanish
and we walk sightless among miracles.
Lord, fill our eyes with seeing
and our minds with knowing.
Let there be moments when your presence,
like lightning, illumines the darkness
in which we walk.
Help us to see, wherever we gaze,
that the bush burns, unconsumed. And we,
clay touched by God,
will reach out for holiness
and exclaim in wonder,
“How filled with awe is this place
and we did not know it.”

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I’ve always been pissed off that God can’t find where he is when he comes to earth (Eden and visit to the man formerly known as Abram). He walks around like a drunk, lost, confused, asking for directions; what’s up with that!? And with the leavened bread thing. I think there’s an alcohol pun coded in there somewhere…

-Justhink

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Point well taken.

There are a couple of possible reasons, based on Jewish tradition, why G-d wouldn’t have explicitly registered his disapproval:

  1. G-d considers the preservation of human free will to be of paramount importance, and rarely interferes with it explicitly, absent overwhelming considerations. (For example, in the case of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac, to let him go through with it would have destroyed the unborn Jewish people; and the Biblical prophets generally spoke out only against sins that were being committed by much of the nation, or at least by the leaders who were likely to be imitated.) Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter - in whatever form this took place - was surely a tragedy, but not one of such dimensions as to justify direct Divine involvement; nor was there likely to be a mass movement of people following Jephthah’s example.

  2. G-d had indeed already sent such a message - in the Torah, which had already been given several centuries earlier - and Jephthah was responsible for knowing what it says. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and doesn’t necessarily require G-d to reveal Himself (or to send a prophet) to reiterate the directions.

  3. As the expression goes, G-d helps those who help themselves. During those two months, what was Jephthah doing besides agonizing over what was going to happen? He should have been looking for sages and scholars who might be able to find grounds for revoking his vow; if he wasn’t willing to set aside his dignity and make that effort, then a direct command from G-d wouldn’t have accomplished anything either.

So to return to the original discussion, this hardly constitutes proof that G-d wanted and accepted this sacrifice.

The short answer is that an angel is even less than a subordinate - it’s simply a tool that G-d uses to carry out his wishes, but it has no independent existence or free will of its own. (Note that in the next verse the angel - without using an introductory phrase such as “So says G-d” - speaks of Abraham not having withheld his son “from Me.”) In effect, the angel was operating as G-d’s megaphone, so to speak.

There is a Chassidic anecdote related to this, though, whose punchline is: we see from this story that while one can rely on an angel to spare someone’s life, it takes a direct order from G-d Himself to condemn them.