Back in 2005 there was a minor furore when Labour MP Ashraf Choudhary stated he agreed with the Koran’s teaching that people who engaged in homosexual conduct or who committed adultery should be stoned to death. In the media spiral that followed, some commentators pointed out that it was not just Islam that held this […]
Entries Tagged as 'Old Testament Ethics'
Contra Mundum: Stoning Adulterers
May 2nd, 2011 92 Comments
Tags: Adultery · Ashraf Choudhary · Capital Punishment · Contra Mundum · Gordon Wenham · Investigate Magazine · J J Finkelstein · John Goldingay · Old Testament Ethics · Raymond Westbrook · Walter Kaiser
Unbelievable? Is God a Moral Monster? Paul Copan & Norman Bacrac
April 11th, 2011 7 Comments
Paul Copan recently debated Norman Bacrac on the topic “Is God a Moral Monster?” on a recent episode of Unbelievable? on the UK station Premier Christian Radio. Matt and I just listened to it and we both thought it was worth sharing as Copan really handled himself well and very clearly articulated his position on the […]
Tags: Canaanites · Christian Premier Radio · Is God a Moral Monster? · Justin Brierley · Norman Bacrac · Old Testament Ethics · Paul Copan · Richard Dawkins · Unbelievable?
Thom Stark on Wolterstorff and Hagiographic Hyperbole
April 7th, 2011 36 Comments
Earlier this year I finished a forthcoming article in which I defended Nicholas Wolterstorff’s take on the Canaanite massacre recorded in the book of Joshua. Wolterstorff argues that the Book of Joshua is a highly figurative, hagiographic and hyperbolic account of Israel’s early skirmishes and it is not intended to be taken literally in its details.[1] […]
Tags: Canaanites · Douglas S. Earl · Genocide · Hermeneutics · Joshua · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Old Testament Ethics · Thom Stark
Is God a Moral Monster? A Review of Paul Copan’s Book
March 17th, 2011 17 Comments
On 11 September 2001 Islamic terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Centre, killing thousands of innocent people. Ostensibly they did this because they believed God commanded them to do so. This event has reinvigorated a fear that has been latent in Western psyche since the 17th century when religious wars tore Europe apart. […]
Tags: Book Review · Is God a Moral Monster? · Old Testament Ethics · Paul Copan
Abraham, Isaac, Virginity, Rape and Child Killing (Another Old Testament Ethics Post)
January 23rd, 2011 89 Comments
Randal Rauser has published a blog post touching on Old Testament ethics called “An update in the wake of Atlanta (plus a bit on rape and child killing)“. His post gives an update on his thoughts following his interaction with Paul Copan, Richard Hess and myself in the Evangelical Philosophical Society’s break-out panel discussion “Is Yahweh […]
Tags: Abraham and Isaac · David Boonin · Don Marquis · Evangelical Philosophical Society · Homicide · John Hare · Michael Tooley · Old Testament Ethics · Paul Copan · Peter Singer · Randal Rauser · Richard Hess · Society of Biblical Literature
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part III: Two Implications of the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Account
January 16th, 2011 21 Comments
This three-part blog series is a modified version of what I presented to the Evangelical Philosophical Society meeting in November 2010. In a recent Conference at Notre Dame Alvin Plantinga suggested that the commands to wipe out the Canaanites, recorded in the book of Deuteronomy, might be hyperbolic; they should be understood more like how […]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Canaanites · Christopher J H Wright · Genocide · Gordon Wenham · Hagiography · Hermeneutics · Hyperbole · J McConville · J P U Lilley · Joshua · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Old Testament Ethics · Paul Copan
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II: Ancient Near Eastern Conquest Accounts
January 10th, 2011 14 Comments
This three-part blog series is a modified version of what I presented to the Evangelical Philosophical Society meeting in November 2010. In my previous post, God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argument for the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Interpretation, I expounded and adapted Nicholas Wolterstorff’s argument for a hagiographic hyperbolic reading of the book […]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Canaanites · Genocide · Hagiography · Hermeneutics · Hyperbole · J Van Seters · James K. Hoffmeier · John Goldingay · Joshua · K Lawson Younger · Kenneth Kitchen · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Old Testament Ethics · Richard Hess · Thomas Thompson · Ziony Zevit
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
