The Bible Law Nobody Obeys

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we try to increase the public's access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. We're gonna

Dan Beecher pull one from the Exodus, uh, because, uh, we, we like to keep things topical here. And we're gonna go to Exodus chapter 22, uh, which is part of what's known as the Covenant Code, which is- Yeah, I wanted to

Dan McClellan s- I wanted to

Dan Beecher start by saying that,

Dan McClellan like, this is... I, I,

Dan Beecher I was sort of, like, looking over this and reading through it, and I went back a couple chapters and realized that two chapters before, it starts with- Ten Commandments ... what, what we call the Ten Commandments.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But, like, the book itself doesn't say Ten Commandments.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher It just starts listing rules, and then you go to the next chapter and there's way, way, way more rules.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And then you go to the next chapter and it's all laws. It should be like the 97 Commandments or something like that. Because it just keeps going and going and going.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And it gets minutely specific in some cases.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah, and, and there's a lot of repetition as well. There are over 600 commandments according to the traditional, uh, enumeration of, of the commandments within Judaism. But just within the Book of Exodus, we actually have several different layers of collections of commandments, and that's, and that's ignoring that we also have another set of commandments in Deuteronomy, and we have other sets of commandments in Leviticus. Um-

Dan Beecher Yeah, we're gonna have to do a, just a Ten Commandments question mark.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Oh, yeah, 'cause we've got, we've got at least three different iterations of the Ten Commandments, and they are not all the same.

Dan Beecher And the only- And not only that, like, they're, they're not broken out easily- No, no ... in the text as like- Yeah, there,

Dan McClellan there are different ways to count them ...

Dan Beecher this is a discrete commandment,

Dan McClellan yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah,

Dan McClellan there are different ways to count the Ten Commandments, uh, just in Exodus 20. Uh, Exodus 36 is actually the only place where it says, it calls them the 10 words, um, in Exodus 36, and that's the closest we get to the label Ten Commandments, which is then transferred to Exodus 20, 'cause Exodus 36 is primarily about festivals and rituals and things like that. It's not your, your set of, uh, moral laws.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But we digress. Um- Yeah,

Dan Beecher so back to, back to Exodus 22. Uh, which- Exodus-

Dan McClellan Is it, is that,

Dan Beecher that's what we're on, right?

Dan McClellan Yes, Exodus 22. So this is part of the Covenant Code, which scholars identify as probably the earliest layer of legislation that is found in the Book of Exodus. So this is something that's coming from, mm, maybe 10th, probably more likely 9th or 8th century BCE, and it's being incorporated into this growing narrative. Uh, and so these are the earliest, um, layers of legislation. And in verse 29, and in, if you're looking in the Hebrew, um, it is, uh, actually verse 28. But in virtually all English translations, it's verse 29. Uh, we have this statement, and I'll read it in the KJV just for those who, um, uh, who are nasty. "Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits and of thy liquors." So we're talking about offerings, sacrifices. Uh, colon, "The firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me." And then I'm, I'm gonna briefly go into verse 30. "Likewise shalt thou do with thine oxen and with thy sheep. Seven days it shall be with his dam. On the eighth day, thou shalt give it to me."

Dan Beecher Yikes. So,

Dan McClellan yikes indeed. I'm, that, that is... I mean,

Dan Beecher if I'm reading that correctly, they just chucked something in there in the middle 'cause, like, this whole chapter has been about, like, what you do if someone steals an ox, and

Dan McClellan what you, you know, how,

Dan Beecher how all of this happens. It's about, like, livestock and stuff, and then this starts with, with, uh, with sacrifices. And then just in the middle there, they're like, "And your sons, your firstborn sons."

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher That cannot mean what it seems to mean, can it?

Dan McClellan Well, that's, uh, that's the argument that a lot of folks make. Uh, to begin with, we don't have the, the traditional word for sacrifice here. Uh, we have this verb natan, which means to give. Uh, you will give it to me. And so some people are, are arguing that that has a different, that's gotta have a different nuance here. Like, give to me in the sense of turn them over to priesthood service. So, like, what we see, uh, at the beginning of Samuel with Samuel's mother promising to give Samuel to the priesthood, um, if she is able to conceive a son.

Dan Beecher I think I can see where that argument might fall down, though. Because, uh, generally speaking, this is just a guess, I don't think that the God of Israel wants people to give the firstborn of their sheep and oxen into priesthood.

Dan McClellan Ding, ding. So the very next verse complicates that because, uh, and in the Hebrew, it says, um, ken ta'aseh, uh, which means thus you will do. In other words, do the same thing with your oxen and with your sheep, and then it repeats the u- the verb natan at the very end. "On the eighth day, you will give it to me." Uh, so yeah, that's natan. Uh,

Dan Beecher titni li,

Dan McClellan so you will give it to me. So, um, that is very clearly a reference to sacrifice. And so given that s- verse 30 is referencing, is referring back to, it's resuming the verb at the end of verse 29, we should understand them to be, um, employed, uh, with the same sense, with the same nuance, which would indicate sacrifice. Um, and there is another passage in the Hebrew Bible that I and many others, um, argue is another biblical author interpreting this passage in precisely that way. Um, so that is, uh, in the Book of Ezekiel, and it is, uh, Ezekiel chapter 20, and it's verses, uh, 25 and 26. And here we have Ezekiel is, uh, going off about how you're not, um, the, the Israelites were not living up to... They were given laws. They were not living up to them. And then, um, and then we have in verse 25, and, uh, I'll go from the KJV again just, just for fun, "Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live." And this is actually contrasting, um, the statutes and judgments that God is talking about having given at Sinai, says, "You will live by them." And so here he's saying, "I gave them also statutes and judgments whereby they should not live. And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord." And this phrase "pass through the fire" is a, uh, a colloquialism that refers to child sacrifice, offering children as burnt offerings. Uh, and so Ezekiel here i- it looks like Ezekiel is looking back at Exodus 22:29 and trying to explain why we seem to have this commandment to sacrifice children in the covenant code. And Ezekiel's explanation seems to be, "I gave you laws, uh, but you were too busy worrying, uh, trying to live by the laws of, of your forefathers, your ancestors." Uh, and so I said, "Great. Let's do that." And the point was to desolate you and to show you who was boss.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And, and so Ezekiel's kinda saying, "I gave you some good laws. You decided you didn't like 'em. I gave you some bad laws, um, just to, uh, show you who's boss." And, and there are, are scholars who have gone to great lengths to try to reinterpret this as referring to something else. Like, uh, one popular argument is that the laws that were not good is a reference to the Deuteronomistic laws. We talked about how we got the ones in Exodus, and we got the ones in Deuteronomy, and the Deuteronomistic ones are from later. And so it's talking about how those were the ones that these authors didn't like and, and- Oh, interesting ... but the, but it's not a strong case. It rests on, uh, a very thin argument that when they refer to statutes and judgments here, they must be referring some- to something other than actual thou shalt and thou shalt not commandments. But, uh, we see earlier in this chapter, in verse, uh, 18, um, "I said unto their children in the wilderness, 'Walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols.'" So the reference to statutes and, and judgments is, um, looking back at the way they, um, like Joshua says, uh, "Are you gonna follow the gods of your fathers on the other side of the river or the flood or whatever, or are you gonna follow after Adonai?" They kept returning to their ancestors' gods, which resulted in all this stuff,

Dan Beecher so.

Dan McClellan So Ezekiel is understanding Exodus 22:29 to refer to child sacrifice. Hmm. But we have other approaches to this as well. In Exodus 13, for instance, we have, uh, a reference to this idea of, uh, giving the firstborn, but it supersedes that with a commandment to redeem the firstborn. So it's, it's an odd way to think about this, uh, like you're supposed to redeem your child so that it does not get sacrificed. It's like, why not just not have the commandment to sacrifice them in the first place? Uh, I mean, if, if the point is, you know, we need a little, we need some, some walking around money- Yeah ... if you have a baby, just say, "Hey, you have a kid. Pay a, a little bit of money as an offering to God as a thank you for allowing us to have a healthy, healthy child." No need to say, "Well, what if we require they sacrifice the baby, and then at the last second, we pull it back and we say, 'No, we just want some money from you.'" Um

Dan Beecher I mean, there is one example of that, uh, that, that yanking it back in- Yeah ... that jumps immediately to mind, but- Yes ... it does seem like a bad system, especially- ... if you're gonna apply it sort of across the board.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and yet it is so firmly embedded in, in the kind of ideological, historical foundations of both ancient Judaism and Christianity, the idea that a child, uh, that child sacrifice is somehow baked into these traditions with, um, uh, we have Isaac and Abraham.

Dan Beecher Right. Uh,

Dan McClellan Abraham didn't seem like this was too much of a shock, uh, that he was being- Yeah,

Dan Beecher he kinda, he kinda just goes, shrugs and goes along with it to some extent.

Dan McClellan Yeah. He, uh, really took it in stride. Um, and, but then says, you know, "God will provide," and then we have, uh, the, uh, the substitution for, uh, Isaac is, is offered. And then there is Jesus, who is, uh, offered in sacrifice in, in one, um, interpretation of the significance of that story, and that's one where, uh, God does not provide, so to speak. Uh, there's one interpretation is that Jesus is the, the, the lamb that is provided so that, uh, the rest of humanity doesn't have to, uh not be sacrificed, but at least, uh, suffer and sin and die and, and be punished for eternity.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And there's a,

Dan McClellan there's a-

Dan Beecher Back in, but back in Exodus 22, that's, that's still centuries away. We're ...

Dan McClellan Yeah. So I-

Dan Beecher Yeah, there,

Dan McClellan and there's a, there's a great book called The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son by a, a great scholar named John D.

Dan Beecher Levenson.

Dan McClellan Subtitle is The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity, which talks about the role of child sacrifice in these traditions. So that's, uh, that's an older book. I think it's, uh, 30 years old by now, from 1993, but if anyone's interested in, in a, a wonderful discussion of the fact that child sacrifice seems baked into these traditions, uh, I would highly recommend that one. I'm just... I-

Dan Beecher sorry, I am still reeling about just the, just that initial, uh, Exodus commandment to, uh, to sacrifice your firstborn son- Right ... to God. Because there's no indication that it doesn't, that it applies only to one small class of the people, right? There's, it... I'm looking at it, I looked for a while trying to figure out if this, this was just, like, only the, the priests would have to sacrifice- Right ... their firstborn, or only the- Right ... this group or the elite of, of some sort. But it seems like it's a blanket statement that's supposed to be about everybody. Am I wrong on that? What am I...

Dan McClellan No, no. It's, uh, it's pretty straightforward. This is, uh, commandments to the Israelite people, and it's embedded right within these other commandments about, you know, bringing your, excuse me, bringing your oxen and your sheep and, and everything like that. So yeah, there's no indication that this is kind of an isolated only for, uh, for these people over here commandment. However, it, it seems very likely, two things. One, we have, we have no material remains that attest directly to any child sacrifice in ancient Israel.

Dan Beecher Okay. Um,

Dan McClellan and two, it seems like, based on the literature around it, that this was very quickly reinterpreted, renegotiated in another direction. Um, but- Yeah, it doesn't,

Dan Beecher it doesn't seem like it would be good for a society if every firstborn son of that society had to be, you know, chucked. And, and it,

Dan McClellan but this, this raises another interesting observation. There is a related society where we do have a lot of direct physical evidence of child sacrifice. So, um, in Northern Africa, in Carthage, we have a Punic-Phoenician settlement, and there is a, an area that, uh, it's be- it, it is frequently referred to as a tophet, which is the name of an area in Jerusalem where child sacrifice were, s- child sacrifices were rumored to have happened. And so this, uh, area in Carthage is, is being referred to as a tophet. They have found over 1,000 burials of infant remains, and scholars have argued for a while, "Well, this is, this must be, uh, funerary. They're just-

Dan Beecher Hmm

Dan McClellan ... these are infants that died in childbirth or shortly thereafter," which is something that was, was even more common anciently than it is now, far more common anciently.

Dan Beecher Right. Um,

Dan McClellan but, uh, s- many of these burials, one, show indication of having been burnt, and two, come with inscriptions that talk, that refer to these things as offerings and as things that are being given to a deity. Sometimes this deity is Baal, sometimes it is other deities. And there's an interesting word that is included that seems to identify the specific type of offering that it is, and, um, uh, in this langu- this Phoenician-Punic language, very closely related to Hebrew, they did not use vowels. So the consonants are M-L-K, which many scholars think is the Phoenician-Punic version of what we would pronounce Molech- Hmm ... or Moloch from the Hebrew Bible. Now, traditionally, that's been understood as the name of a deity in the Hebrew Bible, and we've talked about this, uh, to some degree in the past, that this was, this was some god of child sacrifice. Sometimes it's identified with Baal. Uh, everybody who's upset about Hollywood right now, uh, refers to them, uh, you know, uh, worshiping Baal and Molech.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Um,

Dan McClellan but based on these inscriptions at Carthage, it talks about how this, this infant is a, is a M-L-K for Baal, where the usage indicates that word is a noun. That word is a, is a category of offering or sacrifice.

Dan Beecher Okay. That's interesting. And s-

Dan McClellan yeah, so there was a, a scholar named Otto Eissfeldt who back in 1935 argued that based on, on these inscriptions, if they are relevant to the, the Hebrew Bible's discussions of, of child sacrifice and this Moloch figure, we probably need to reinterpret that word Molech as a reference not to a deity, but to a type of sacrifice. Uh, and so I, the tide has, uh, over the last almost 100 years, the consensus has been shifting, uh, in the direction of understanding this as, uh, a reference to a type of sacrifice. And I would say the balance is probably beginning to favor that.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan That it's not yet an overwhelming consensus, but in the publications that I've seen over the last 10 years or so, scholars increasingly are favoring that understanding. And a wonderful book if, uh, if anyone is interested in looking into this, and I think we've recommended it before on the podcast, is, uh, uh, Heath Durrell uh, child sacrifice in ancient Israel, where he goes into great detail, uh, about these things. So what this would mean is that there was no deity named Molech, but there are references in the Hebrew Bible to children being offered as this specific type of Molech offering, uh, which is, which is pretty horrifying. Mm-hmm. But one thing that scholars who are looking into the child sacrifice that went on in Carthage are commenting on is that if they believed that these sacrifices would bless them in the future, uh, in a world where, um, polygamy was common and where pregnancy, women were, spent most of their, their time pregnant, if you gave up the first in the, uh, expecting that, that that would mean you would have more successful and more, um, pregnancies and, and births in the future, that would not seem to be such an enormous sacrifice. And, and they also talk about how in the literature and in the way children are, are conceptualized in this time period, because infant mortality was so high, uh, there was not as strong a connection between the parent and the child until it had survived for a couple of months and seemed like it had a chance of, of making it into childhood, if not into adulthood. And so this is not to say they didn't care about their kids back then, but it's to say when they're weighing their, their family's survival and the odds of children surviving, the notion that sacrificing a child as a way to try to increase the odds that we'll have, uh, more healthy children in the future is, was not as horrifying to them as it would be to us. Um-

Dan Beecher That makes sense to me. I, the, I... You know, I've often thought that even up until fairly recently in our own history, uh, infant mortality was just a fact of life, and it was just something that, that people had to deal with very regularly, and they must have had, psychologically, a very different approach to it than we have.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Yeah, if it, it was o- it was probably over 50% back then.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So if you were hop- you know, if we are hoping to have four or six pregnancies, maybe we're lucky if two or three of them actually survive in- into adulthood. And so taking one of those and saying, "We're going to do this ourselves so that maybe the deity, whoever it is, will allow more to survive in the future," that was a, that was a calculation that, um, very clearly was made, um- Well, and isn't there- ... at least by people in Carthage ...

Dan Beecher isn't there, uh, somewhere in, I think, the Exodus laws, there... Or maybe, oh, maybe it's, maybe it's in Numbers that I'm thinking of. But are... There is some discussion somewhere of sort of a baby not really becoming a, a person almost until X amount of time in, after its, after its birth. I'm not,

Dan McClellan I'm not getting to this correctly, and I'm- ... I'm afraid I'm not- Well- I- ... this, this is something I've, I've, uh, talked about in the past, and particularly in, within discussions about the morality of abortion and things like that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The, the child was not considered to, to be a, a person until they, they drew first breath. That's when life begins within the, um, the ideologies of the societies that produced the Hebrew Bible. But yeah, there, there is indication, and I don't think it's in the Bible. I think it's, uh, it's in some of the extra-biblical early Jewish literature where, like, full personhood wa- it was, um, you know, it was a spectrum, but full personhood was really something that was achieved a couple months after.

Dan Beecher Right. Um,

Dan McClellan just when you are through that window of greatest threat to the life, uh, of the infant, that was when they were probably not considered as, uh, fully a person as, uh, as they were a little later down the road. And, and I know it sounds kind of callous to talk about children in this way and to talk about the way parents are, are thinking about their children, but, uh, these are just as, as I think you called them, just kind of, um, psychological ways to deal with the stresses of the reality of survival in this time period. This was just a way to minimize the, the trauma, uh, of the inevitability of losing children- Yeah ... uh, in this time period. And so it's, it's, uh, it's not fun to talk about, but, um, it is something that I, I think people need to understand as they look at, uh, texts like Exodus 22:29, that it's, it's not justifying it. It's explaining it. It's saying, this, this is not something that would, that, you know, it, it just could not be possible in this time period. It absolutely was possible in this time period. We have evidence that societies did precisely this on a large scale, and so there's no reason to say we can't, um, that this is not possible for the societies that produced the Hebrew Bible. And at the same time, we have no indication that despite, even though that law is there, we have no indication it was ever enforced or that anyone in Israel ever engaged in that. In fact, there's a good argument to make that this legislation was not widely known, was not widely enforced until we get down to around the second century BCE,

Dan Beecher and- Although it seems unlikely to me that it would make it this far to us, like that this law, that this, that this, uh, commandment would have been recorded enough that it got all the way to us without some of the people actually doing it. It seems almost impossible that it would never have happened It's, uh,

Dan McClellan well, it depends on how quickly it was reinterpreted. And this is something that I talk about in my, in my, um, 2022 book, Adonai's Divine Images, is that if there is ambiguity in, um, a term or in legislation or something like that, a lot of times it sticks around precisely because it is easily reread.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so things that we look at today, we're like, "How on earth could Psalm 82 or th- some of these other passages, how on earth could they have been preserved for thousands of years and people have considered them inspired and, and a part of their authoritative literature?" And it's like, if you have a, a way to kind of influence a reinterpretation of that verse to go from theologically problematic to theologically not problematic, that's all it needs. And then every other generation after it is like, "Oh yeah, that's not a problem."

Dan Beecher Hmm. Um,

Dan McClellan and so I, I don't know if, if anyone ever did it. I, I think it's plausible that this happened for a time anciently, but we don't have any direct evidence of it. Uh, and a- and another example of something that is a, that is a piece of legislation, and we don't know if it ever happened, is, um, uh, the sotah, Numbers 5, the, the ordeal of, uh, the woman suspected of adultery. That's, that's something where we see, like, rabbis debating about whether or not it's appropriate to involve a pregnant woman and all this kind of stuff, but we have no indication anyone ever did this, that anyone- Right ... was ever put through this ordeal. Um, but it served a rhetorical function in its place in the literature, uh, in which it was embedded and, and maybe that's why it's there, to serve a rhetorical function, not necessarily something that was expected to be carried out.

Dan Beecher Well, one thing I can say with absolute certainty, I feel positive that, uh, that I am in the clear to say this even biblically, um, uh, d- don't follow this particular- Yeah.

Dan McClellan ... commandment, uh,

Dan Beecher ever for any reason. Don't, you do not need to sacrifice even, even your livestock. Don't, you don't even have to do that. But definitely don't, uh, sacrifice your own firstborn sons.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Uh,

Dan Beecher leave them alone.

Dan McClellan They're fine.

Dan Beecher Yeah. There,

Dan McClellan there's a theory of ritual that, that, um, categorizes ritual as things that are what they call causally opaque. What that means is that there is no clear connection between the action and whatever the desired outcome is. And ritual and sacrifice is an example of this. We don't really have a way to show there's any connection between sacrificing animals and anything good happening.

Dan Beecher Right. Um,

Dan McClellan but, you know, and, and this extends beyond the religious sphere into what we would consider the secular world. There are all kinds of different rituals that we engage in socially on a day-to-day basis because they're ways to show others that y- you know the rules, you're a, a, an upstanding member of society, you can be trusted, you're a good person. There are a bunch of different ways we engage in rituals to do that. Uh, but according to, to ritual s- theory, they're, these are things that are causally opaque. And so I would say that this is one that is not only causally opaque, but objectively harmful and, um- Yeah. I think- And-

Dan Beecher I think you're in the clear on that.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah. I,

Dan Beecher I don't think many people will argue with you over that one.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So if, if anyone is under the misapprehension that we are claiming this is something we should be reinstituting- Right. ... I don't think they understand our podcast very well. I think...

Dan Beecher And I think it's okay to, yeah, even if it is in the Bible, I think, uh, I mean, this is just another example of, like, one of the things that you're not, like, nobody thinks that you should do this. It, so anyone who says, "I obey all of the laws of the Bible," this is a pretty good one to just point at- Yeah ... and say, "Mm- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan you don't." And as, and as I, I've said many times on, um, on different social media channels, nothing is non-negotiable in the Bible.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Everything is negotiable, and everyone has negotiated things. And this is just an example. Everybody renegotiates this- Yeah ... 'cause nobody thinks this is something that is, one, is of God, two, has any value to us today. Uh, and so yeah.

Dan Beecher But- So if someone gets legalistic with you about like, "Ah, no, you, your, your view on X, Y, or Z is non-biblical and therefore blah, blah, blah," you, you just ask them when, how they, how they did sacrificing their firstborn. That, it's,

Dan McClellan it's pretty low-hanging fruit. But, but yes, anytime someone like, "This is the word of God, you gotta do it," it's like, "Mm, what do you think about this?"

Dan Beecher Right. Um,

Dan McClellan that's always something that, that will have been renegotiated away.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But I think the case is strong. It, it, I would call it the academic consensus, uh, even though it's probably pretty close, that, uh, this was originally a commandment for Israelites to sacrifice their firstborn children. Oof. And specifically their firstborn sons.

Dan Beecher Yes. That's, yeah, that's rough. Uh, but there you go. It's, it's, it's there in black and white on the papyrus. There's nothing we can do about it at this point. Uh- Well, uh, thank- thanks for that, Dan. Uh, what a horrifying, uh, little thing, little jaunt into, i- into the laws. Uh, if you friends at home listening, viewing us, uh, on the YouTubes or in your, in your various pod blasters, if you would like to become a part of making this show go, please feel free to become one of our patrons over on patreon.com, uh, /dataoverdogma. If you'd like to write in to us about anything, uh, you can reach us at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com. And, uh, we'll talk to you again next week.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody. Hope you have a good week.