We are moving on to yet another post about Dan Barker’s book, Mere Morality. As I said in the previous post, the second half of Barker’s book really just amounts to agenda-driven rants based on decontextualized passages from the Bible. Therefore, the rest of this book-review series is going to be a simple process of correcting the record regarding Barker’s less than stellar biblical interpretation.
Disobedience
At one point in his book, Barker attempts to show how certain figures in the Bible who disobeyed God were actually more moral than God. Case in point: King Saul. In I Samuel 15, God tells Saul to eliminate the Amalekites as punishment for their actions against the people of Israel when they came out of Egypt. Saul attacked the Amalekites, but he spared King Agag and took the best of the livestock. As a result, Samuel confronted Saul about his disobedience and declared that God was going to give the kingdom to another—namely, David.
Barker’s comments are as follows: [King Saul] “obeyed orders as he understood them, but not to the complete letter of the law. The genocide God commanded Saul to commit was supposed to be a total annihilation. Notice that Saul, by God’s orders, considered innocent babies and pregnant women to be ‘despised and utterly worthless,’ but a few choice animals were ‘valuable’” (95).
And then, sarcastically, Barker writes, “So don’t worry about morality. Don’t concern yourself with suffering human beings. Kill all the children and their parents without blinking. Put the master race and the supreme dictator above everything else. Complete 100% obedience is better than sacrifice. Disobedience is evil, even if you do have (should have) a good reason for it. The writers of the bible, following orders, were blind to moral principles” (97).
Three things need to be pointed out for context:
(1) The Amalekites were a violent and blood-thirsty people; during the Exodus they continually harassed and attacked the most vulnerable of the Hebrews as they were fleeing Egypt, and throughout the time of the Judges they were the aggressors.
(2) In the ancient Near East, there is often the literary use of hyperbole when it comes to describing victories in war—we see this elsewhere in the Bible, as well as extra-biblical sources as well. Besides the Hebrew word translated as “utterly destroy” is herem, which doesn’t necessarily mean “utterly destroy.” I write more about that here. But the point is that Saul was to wipe the Amalekites out as a people who identify as Amalekites—sort of like the United States’ attempt to “wipe out the Taliban.”
(3) This particular story has to be seen against the larger literary context of Saul’s story as a whole. That is a whole subject unto itself, but the point is that Saul had a history of being a weak and feckless king who allowed his fear to lead him into disobedience and eventual madness. And here, his sparing of the good livestock showed that he was using the victory to enrich himself personally. When confronted with this, he then made up the claim he was planning to use the livestock in a sacrifice to YHWH. And his sparing of the Amalekite king shows that he was more interested in further enriching himself (possible holding him for ransom?) than executing God’s justice.
Yes, the story is jarring and shocking—it is supposed to be. But there is a lot more going on than Barker acknowledges. Instead of trying to understand the context of the story, though, Barker immediately jumps to allusions to Nazis—when that happens, all credibility goes out the window.
Curses
The next biblical passage Barker purposefully misrepresents is Deuteronomy 28. To understand that chapter, you have to understand that the entire Book of Deuteronomy is laid out as a Suzerain-Vassal treaty between YHWH as the Sovereign and Israel as the vassal. Essentially, it is sort of like a contract between two parties, in which they both pledge to honor the treaty (or covenant) with specific actions—if they honor the stipulations in the treaty, certain blessings would follow. But at the same time, they also agree to certain curses that should happen if they fail to honor the stipulations in the treaty. And so, at the end of a Suzerain-Vassal treaty, there would be a list of blessings and curses. This is standard for these types of treaties.
Deuteronomy 28 contains the list of curses—and that is why Barker seizes on it: without context, the curses sound bad! Heck, even within context, the curses are bad. They’re supposed to be–they’re curses! Go ahead and read them, they really are horrible because they describe what will happen to Israel if it breaks covenant with YHWH. Simply put, they’re going to get invaded, slaughtered and carried away by foreign nations. They are going to suffer because YHWH will no longer protect them.
Barker, though, doesn’t provide the context at all. He just rips some of the more graphic verses out of context and continues on his atheistic-fundamentalist agenda-driven rant: “This is not love. This is saying, ‘I’ll be nice to you if you do exactly what I say, otherwise I will destroy you.’ That’s what a kidnapper says to the victim, or what an abusive husband says to his wife. …If the only way you can gain respect is by frightening you lover with threats and curses, you are not a good lover. You are not moral. But why should we be surprised? Autocratic government always carries a threat of force. And that force is itself evil. Few Christians and Jews realize that their jealous God describes his own actions as evil” (102).
Notice: no context of covenant or the Suzerain-Vassal treaty; but rather an inflammatory and dishonest caricature that includes spousal abuse. Inflammatory, emotional appeals that are without context is how dishonest manipulation happens. A wife who suffers from an abusive husband is far different than, let’s say, the United States signing an alliance treaty with a small country, and within the treaty there is the stipulation that if that country violates the treaty, the United States would not protect them if and when a hostile enemy attacks them.
But again, who has time for logic, reason, and understanding historical and literary context when there is an agenda to push?
God and Evil
Another thing Barker says that I find hilarious concerns the translation of the Hebrew word Ra—basically, it often is translated as “evil,” but can also be translated something like “woe,” or “catastrophe.” Take for instance, Isaiah 45:7, where YHWH says, “I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create Ra…” The ESV has “calamity;” the NRSV has “woe.” Other translations do similar things.
Now, in my translation, I actually use the word “evil” to be consistent. Besides, I think it forces us to contemplate the complex meaning of the word Ra. The fact is, since the Israelites were monotheists, they understood that even bad things and evil somehow are still under the sovereignty of YHWH. And this is what Isaiah 45:7 is getting at: YHWH, the God of Israel, is supreme—He is sovereign over everything in the created order…even evil. And in that respect, they acknowledged that at some mysterious level, He was responsible for it. That’s the conundrum you have if you are a monotheist—you acknowledge evil in the world, while at the same time acknowledge that there is on God who is Lord over all.
But Barker isn’t interested in deep theological thought. He just takes to the page, and says, “Ha! Look! The Bible itself says God creates evil!” And then (and this is what I find hilarious), he says, “I’m not going to tell translators how to do their jobs… [but] I think it is obvious why they do this. It’s their theology. Most bible translators and most believers think God is good and Satan is evil” (104).
That’s right! He’s not going to tell translators how to do their jobs…BUT…it’s pretty clear to Barker that the only reason they’d translate Ra the way they do is because they ideological believers who want to keep God in a good light! No, it can’t be because Ra has a complex meaning and translation is a difficult enterprise—it has to be because those frothing-at-the-mouth believers are engaging in a grand cover-up!
A Few More to Close Out the Post
Barker also shows off his lack of biblical understanding in a few other ways. Let’s take a look:
Genesis 2:9—The tree of knowledge of good and evil: “…the entire human race is damned because of Eve and Adam’s disobedience” (104).
No…as I’ve written about elsewhere, the story of Adam and Eve is representative of the human race. It is our story. We are created in God’s image, have dignity and worth, and yet are naïve and sinful, and thus are in need of salvation. The Bible doesn’t tell us we are sinful because of Adam and Eve; it tells us we are sinful because we are Adam and Eve. The Adam and Eve story is our story.
“The Book of Job is the furthest thing from a moral tale. It has nothing to do with ‘do unto others.’ It has to do with bowing to a terrorist.” (110)
Who in their right mind views Job as a “moral tale”? So what if it doesn’t have anything to do with “do unto others”? Different works of literature and different stories can have different themes and lessons. And no, it has nothing to do with “bowing to a terrorist.” It has everything to do with contemplating the nature of evil and why good people sometimes suffer. It is a sober contemplation about human suffering. And the answer is a harsh reality-check: we as human beings don’t know. We’re not God.
And finally, Barker’s comments on Jeremiah 45:4-5: “It is certainly possible to find verses that say, ‘God is love.’ But just quoting those verses out of context, without seeing the broad scope of God’s words and actions, tells us little about what that ‘love’ actually entails. There is no question that the god of the bible is wrathful, violent, and evil, controlling his lover with fear and threats. ….I don’t know about you, but I would never want to have a relationship with a person who says, ‘My name is Jealous, and I love you, but if you don’t obey me, I will do evil things to you.’ Please, love someone else. I want my friends and loved ones to know what morality really means” (112).
Talk about being thick with irony—Barker, warning about taking verses out of context, and then turning around and engaging in inflammatory and manipulative rhetoric that is based off of his…cherry-picking numerous verses and yanking them out of context?!?!?
To be clear, I’m not trying to be an “apologist” here. I am fully aware that the Bible is filled with very disturbing passages. I’m not going to try to explain them away. What I do care about, though, is honest representation of what is there, logical and reasonable understanding of context, and critical thinking and engagement with the biblical text itself. Barker’s comments display none of that.
