It’s always good to hear from different perspectives. I would caution people from assuming someone’s bias because they are a Christian or that an atheist would be more objective simply because they lack theological commitments. There’s all sorts of reasons why one could speculate why an atheist would want to criticize scripture. This bias game can be played both ways and doesn’t help. As much it’s a good thing to hear from “the other side”, I don’t think anyone should be afforded the privilege of being more objective because they come from a different camp.
Great interview Suan. We need more of these "dialogue" type conversations between theists and atheists. As someone from the "other side" it frustrates me a lot when I see people (on both sides) who I consider to be of good will talking past each other and "sniping" on react streams when simply getting together and trying to hash things out can be so much more productive...
I've been following your journey as a Baptist convert to Catholicism, and I'm truly impressed by your dedication to curating some of the best Catholic intellectual content on TH-cam. I'm one of the moderators of an apologetics subreddit dedicated to discussing and defending Catholicism. Would you be interested in participating in an 'Ask Me Anything about Catholicism' session on our subreddit? It would be an opportunity for our members to engage with you directly and gain a deeper understanding of Catholic beliefs and practices.
As a Christian, I'm also looking properly into this topic right now also - trying to write a balanced blog post about it. I really appreciate people like you, Suan, who have the humility to listen to the frustrations of the opposing side gracefully. Haven't gotten through the whole video yet since it blew my mind when I saw the notification but from what I've seen so far, thanks to Dr. Joshua for being so cordial. Edit: For some reason the comments didn't let me post responses to what people have said in the comments, so I'll add my fleshed-out opinions here now that I've come back to this vid and gotten round to finishing the video. 1. Note that I said "from what I've seen so far". I hadn't made it that far into the video, and in hindsight, it might not have been prudent to make a claim about someones character that soon. However, I missed the part where he explicitly mentioned that "Kenneth Kitchen or James Hoffmeier" are necessarily biased because of their faith commitments. This could just be an honest mistake on my part though. Based on this, it is fair for me to commend Dr. Josh for being cordial in this video. 2. However, I agree with some of the sentiment below. I got round to watching Gavin Ortlund's response to Dr. Josh's stream response to Gavin's video on slavery, and I did notice that when Mythvision started making his case about the specificity of the 'tooth' and 'eye' case of Exodus 21, Dr. Joshua didn't at all correct him on the nature of casuistic law (which is interspersed throughout the Torah). I could be wrong, but it is likely that someone of Dr. Josh's standing should know that this verse represents an example, not a prescriptive situation. Though I appreciate much of Dr. Josh's sentiment in this video, I do think it would be good if he corrected the atheists when they make such outlandish claims. I think it's inconsistent to complain about the inaccuracy of the popular Christian apologetic against Biblical slavery but not speak against common atheistic strawmen (at least, if truth and proper scholarship is your goal). Edit 2: the final blog post is rookieapologist.blog/2024/06/16/flying-spaghetti-monster-3-slavery/ for those interested [@Hrrjkf821]. TH-cam's been doing this thing lately where it removes my comments for one reason or another :(
Cordial! Year, right? When he says Christian scholars like Kenneth Kitchen or James Hoffmeier are biased because of their "faith commitments", does that sound cordial to you? Second, I am wary of how Bowen defines fundamentalism because it includes a lot of Christian scholars who have also earned animosity from the wider Christian community. I worry that Suan's readers or watchers in this case will follow Bowen's facade and take him as some sort of nice guy. In reality, this is false.
@@zestotemp Nowhere did I deny that he's an atheist. The OP said that Bowen is cordial which is a conclusion that I deny and have given the relevant arguments as to why I think that's true.
As someone who thinks what was called here the “fundamentalist” view is to be preserved unless there is really good reason to think otherwise, I would say four things: 1. Every interpretation given by the guest is reasonable as the literal sense of the words. 2. On the whole this system, even in its most difficult aspects, was probably the most humane way to deal with persons in the ancient near east, especially at (i) barbaric eras, (ii) during regional wars and their aftermath, (iii) outside times of local economic success. One could expect most of these at any given time in the ANE until the Roman era. As these became less significant societal problems, there was the possibility to reevaluate the parts (especially regarding women) that no longer were the “lesser of two evils.” But the observance of these laws does not per se bring about grave moral injustice. It could, it might even be probable, but that is case by case. Following these laws does not per se bring about grave moral disorder. Admittedly the system is a kind of damage control, so we might expect per accidens much moral disorder, but this is not inherent in the system. 3. A modern philosophy of human rights is getting in the way of correctly incorporating these passages into our moral theology. If we say it was grave matter to do any one of the things permitted in this system, then we have a contradictory moral philosophy, because we believe God is the author of scripture, and God is good. If you want to say he isn’t those things, go for it, but then you are not existing in the perennial tradition of moral theology. Rather, if we see that there is a chattel slave that is treated better than a sweat shop worker, we must affirm that the former is more moral than the latter (which would be impossible if the former were grave matter), and this is not the same as saying we should be comfortable with either in our day-not because of sin, but because we want the best for the person. 4. None of these principles is altered by the Christian dispensation except that Christians are not permitted more than one spouse. But even during 2nd Temple Judaism there were authoritative tightenings of the Mosaic law that were binding on Jews, such that when Jesus said _to the Pharisees_ that you can only morally marry once, they didn’t think to respond “that’s not what Moses says” since the “seat of Moses” (the Rabbis) had long been going in this direction with their binding and loosing.
I can say that I did watch the whole stream. It wasn't the best. There was a lot of good stuff, but it wasn't the best. There were a number of unnecessary tangents that didn't add much (I'm thinking about Kipp Davis reading on the meanings of words in Genesis 1, which was probably the least relevant to the topic, but there were others). Getting Gavin's credentials wrong at the beginning wasn't great either. It was wrong to treat Gavin the way you did when you acknowledge he's a relative newcomer to this particular domain. The stream lacked professionalism and it did a number on your credibility in my mind. If you couldn't get basic things about what I thought Gavin was saying correct, why would I trust you much beyond that? Did my heart bleed during the discussions of some of the ways slaves were treated? Yes. That doesn't change that the stream wasn't your best work. You can and should do better.
14:22 I think a more succinct way to put it is that the foreigners that you were not supposed to mistreat were travelers or sojourners, not foreigners who had been conquered by Israel
I don't think they were prisoners of Israels wars either. God explicitly said to kill all the males, not to enslave them. No, these were prisoners of other nations wars that were made slaves and then sold to Israel as slaves. And the other source, not really discussed here are slaves simply born into slavery. That's Biblical too in Israel, and in the surrounding nations. So most of the foreign chattel slaves bought from them would be one of these two categories. Hope that helps!
@@progidy7 I don't know the version of the Bible you're looking at, but the better translation is "Let them live, but let them be woodcutters and water carriers in the service of the whole assembly.”. These were not slaves, but instead the Gibeonites became a vassal state of Israel as commanded by God in Deu. 20:10-11. Big difference. Besides, Joshua did not go to war against Gibeon so this isn't even an example. Gods law in Deu. 20 instructs the Israelites to kill all the men, not make them slaves. But if you want to argue there's more slavery in the Bible than there really is, you're free to do so I guess?
@@nickbrasing8786 The version I used was ERV, the version you chose was NIV. Even in the NIV, the Gibeonites were made perpetual manual labor, generation after generation forever, because they feared violent obliteration. I _guess_ you could quibble that this wasn't slavery, but it isn't black and white. "so this isn't even an example" If you want to exclude neighbors that acted _before_ they were warred against (which is a weird technicality, but let's allow it for now), I'll point out that Isaiah 14:1-2 NIV says "and the house of Israel will possess the nations as male and female slaves in the Lord's land; they will take captive those who were their captors and rule over those who oppressed them." "instructs the Israelites to kill all the men, not make them slaves" I wonder what they did with the women. What a curious thing to ignore. Numbers 31:17-18 NIV says "17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." I wonder if they were enslaved... And since I originally was offering a paraphrase of which neighbors they _couldn't_ enslave, and failed to include a comprehensive list of neighbors they _could_ enslave, I'll also mention Leviticus 25:44-46 NIV which says you could purchase slaves (they didn't have to be conquered).
I've just told by an apologist that non-debt slavery was always simply paid hired labour, free to leave at the end of a contract period. Is Dr Josh just wrong? Should I believe this apolgist? Just kidding. :) I've left him with the task of finding a single scholar who agrees with his position.
That sort of slavery existed. As did being a life long slave. Both existed. Either can be wrong given the situation, but neither are inherently evil in and of themselves
@@Thedisciplemike Yes, I know. I've been watching Josh since his first TH-cam appearance and have seen him discussing slavery at least half a dozrn times. I was posting about this exchange as I'd never seen anybody try this weird line before, was pretty surprised by it and thought it might bring a smile to a few people.
@@Thedisciplemike He has multiple sclerosis. One of the symptoms is depression. I've seen quite a lot of Josh in conversation. I can tell he's struggling with it affecting his memory here. He's not retrieving a lot of the chapter and verse sort of detail and rolling his eyes upward before talking as he thinks through his next point.
It’s always good to hear from different perspectives. I would caution people from assuming someone’s bias because they are a Christian or that an atheist would be more objective simply because they lack theological commitments. There’s all sorts of reasons why one could speculate why an atheist would want to criticize scripture. This bias game can be played both ways and doesn’t help. As much it’s a good thing to hear from “the other side”, I don’t think anyone should be afforded the privilege of being more objective because they come from a different camp.
Great interview Suan. We need more of these "dialogue" type conversations between theists and atheists. As someone from the "other side" it frustrates me a lot when I see people (on both sides) who I consider to be of good will talking past each other and "sniping" on react streams when simply getting together and trying to hash things out can be so much more productive...
Very informative. Thanks Suan for this interview and Dr. Bowen for his very profissional approach on this subject.
lets goooo your back! God bless you and your ministry
Enjoyed this very much Suan, and thought Megan was a great guest!
No boomer jokes, please.
I've been following your journey as a Baptist convert to Catholicism, and I'm truly impressed by your dedication to curating some of the best Catholic intellectual content on TH-cam.
I'm one of the moderators of an apologetics subreddit dedicated to discussing and defending Catholicism.
Would you be interested in participating in an 'Ask Me Anything about Catholicism' session on our subreddit? It would be an opportunity for our members to engage with you directly and gain a deeper understanding of Catholic beliefs and practices.
Thank you.
As a Christian, I'm also looking properly into this topic right now also - trying to write a balanced blog post about it. I really appreciate people like you, Suan, who have the humility to listen to the frustrations of the opposing side gracefully. Haven't gotten through the whole video yet since it blew my mind when I saw the notification but from what I've seen so far, thanks to Dr. Joshua for being so cordial.
Edit: For some reason the comments didn't let me post responses to what people have said in the comments, so I'll add my fleshed-out opinions here now that I've come back to this vid and gotten round to finishing the video.
1. Note that I said "from what I've seen so far". I hadn't made it that far into the video, and in hindsight, it might not have been prudent to make a claim about someones character that soon. However, I missed the part where he explicitly mentioned that "Kenneth Kitchen or James Hoffmeier" are necessarily biased because of their faith commitments. This could just be an honest mistake on my part though. Based on this, it is fair for me to commend Dr. Josh for being cordial in this video.
2. However, I agree with some of the sentiment below. I got round to watching Gavin Ortlund's response to Dr. Josh's stream response to Gavin's video on slavery, and I did notice that when Mythvision started making his case about the specificity of the 'tooth' and 'eye' case of Exodus 21, Dr. Joshua didn't at all correct him on the nature of casuistic law (which is interspersed throughout the Torah). I could be wrong, but it is likely that someone of Dr. Josh's standing should know that this verse represents an example, not a prescriptive situation. Though I appreciate much of Dr. Josh's sentiment in this video, I do think it would be good if he corrected the atheists when they make such outlandish claims. I think it's inconsistent to complain about the inaccuracy of the popular Christian apologetic against Biblical slavery but not speak against common atheistic strawmen (at least, if truth and proper scholarship is your goal).
Edit 2: the final blog post is rookieapologist.blog/2024/06/16/flying-spaghetti-monster-3-slavery/ for those interested [@Hrrjkf821]. TH-cam's been doing this thing lately where it removes my comments for one reason or another :(
Cordial! Year, right? When he says Christian scholars like Kenneth Kitchen or James Hoffmeier are biased because of their "faith commitments", does that sound cordial to you? Second, I am wary of how Bowen defines fundamentalism because it includes a lot of Christian scholars who have also earned animosity from the wider Christian community. I worry that Suan's readers or watchers in this case will follow Bowen's facade and take him as some sort of nice guy. In reality, this is false.
@@computationaltheist7267 ..."but from what I've seen so far"...
@@computationaltheist7267 ..."but from what I've seen so far"...
@@computationaltheist7267i don’t think it’s a facade, he’s an atheist. He’s not hiding that.
@@zestotemp Nowhere did I deny that he's an atheist. The OP said that Bowen is cordial which is a conclusion that I deny and have given the relevant arguments as to why I think that's true.
Thanks Suan 😊
Thanks for what you do for us all Suan! 🙏🏻
Happy Easter, cause it's still Easter!😇
Josh is great!
As someone who thinks what was called here the “fundamentalist” view is to be preserved unless there is really good reason to think otherwise, I would say four things:
1. Every interpretation given by the guest is reasonable as the literal sense of the words.
2. On the whole this system, even in its most difficult aspects, was probably the most humane way to deal with persons in the ancient near east, especially at (i) barbaric eras, (ii) during regional wars and their aftermath, (iii) outside times of local economic success. One could expect most of these at any given time in the ANE until the Roman era. As these became less significant societal problems, there was the possibility to reevaluate the parts (especially regarding women) that no longer were the “lesser of two evils.” But the observance of these laws does not per se bring about grave moral injustice. It could, it might even be probable, but that is case by case. Following these laws does not per se bring about grave moral disorder. Admittedly the system is a kind of damage control, so we might expect per accidens much moral disorder, but this is not inherent in the system.
3. A modern philosophy of human rights is getting in the way of correctly incorporating these passages into our moral theology. If we say it was grave matter to do any one of the things permitted in this system, then we have a contradictory moral philosophy, because we believe God is the author of scripture, and God is good. If you want to say he isn’t those things, go for it, but then you are not existing in the perennial tradition of moral theology. Rather, if we see that there is a chattel slave that is treated better than a sweat shop worker, we must affirm that the former is more moral than the latter (which would be impossible if the former were grave matter), and this is not the same as saying we should be comfortable with either in our day-not because of sin, but because we want the best for the person.
4. None of these principles is altered by the Christian dispensation except that Christians are not permitted more than one spouse. But even during 2nd Temple Judaism there were authoritative tightenings of the Mosaic law that were binding on Jews, such that when Jesus said _to the Pharisees_ that you can only morally marry once, they didn’t think to respond “that’s not what Moses says” since the “seat of Moses” (the Rabbis) had long been going in this direction with their binding and loosing.
His response to Gavin Ortlund was quite lacking. Regardless, i quite enjoyed this convo!
Did you watch the actual stream, or did you only watch the clips that were played in Gavin’s response?
I can say that I did watch the whole stream. It wasn't the best. There was a lot of good stuff, but it wasn't the best.
There were a number of unnecessary tangents that didn't add much (I'm thinking about Kipp Davis reading on the meanings of words in Genesis 1, which was probably the least relevant to the topic, but there were others). Getting Gavin's credentials wrong at the beginning wasn't great either.
It was wrong to treat Gavin the way you did when you acknowledge he's a relative newcomer to this particular domain. The stream lacked professionalism and it did a number on your credibility in my mind. If you couldn't get basic things about what I thought Gavin was saying correct, why would I trust you much beyond that?
Did my heart bleed during the discussions of some of the ways slaves were treated? Yes. That doesn't change that the stream wasn't your best work. You can and should do better.
Oh. My.
14:22 I think a more succinct way to put it is that the foreigners that you were not supposed to mistreat were travelers or sojourners, not foreigners who had been conquered by Israel
I don't think they were prisoners of Israels wars either. God explicitly said to kill all the males, not to enslave them. No, these were prisoners of other nations wars that were made slaves and then sold to Israel as slaves. And the other source, not really discussed here are slaves simply born into slavery. That's Biblical too in Israel, and in the surrounding nations. So most of the foreign chattel slaves bought from them would be one of these two categories. Hope that helps!
@@nickbrasing8786 Joshua 9:26 So the Gibeonites became slaves, but Joshua let them live. He did not allow the Israelites to kill them.
@@nickbrasing8786 "kill all the males, not enslave them"
Right, and what does that leave? Conquered women slaves, correct?
@@progidy7 I don't know the version of the Bible you're looking at, but the better translation is "Let them live, but let them be woodcutters and water carriers in the service of the whole assembly.”. These were not slaves, but instead the Gibeonites became a vassal state of Israel as commanded by God in Deu. 20:10-11. Big difference. Besides, Joshua did not go to war against Gibeon so this isn't even an example. Gods law in Deu. 20 instructs the Israelites to kill all the men, not make them slaves. But if you want to argue there's more slavery in the Bible than there really is, you're free to do so I guess?
@@nickbrasing8786 The version I used was ERV, the version you chose was NIV. Even in the NIV, the Gibeonites were made perpetual manual labor, generation after generation forever, because they feared violent obliteration. I _guess_ you could quibble that this wasn't slavery, but it isn't black and white.
"so this isn't even an example" If you want to exclude neighbors that acted _before_ they were warred against (which is a weird technicality, but let's allow it for now), I'll point out that Isaiah 14:1-2 NIV says "and the house of Israel will possess the nations as male and female slaves in the Lord's land; they will take captive those who were their captors and rule over those who oppressed them."
"instructs the Israelites to kill all the men, not make them slaves" I wonder what they did with the women. What a curious thing to ignore. Numbers 31:17-18 NIV says "17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." I wonder if they were enslaved...
And since I originally was offering a paraphrase of which neighbors they _couldn't_ enslave, and failed to include a comprehensive list of neighbors they _could_ enslave, I'll also mention Leviticus 25:44-46 NIV which says you could purchase slaves (they didn't have to be conquered).
I've just told by an apologist that non-debt slavery was always simply paid hired labour, free to leave at the end of a contract period.
Is Dr Josh just wrong? Should I believe this apolgist?
Just kidding. :)
I've left him with the task of finding a single scholar who agrees with his position.
That sort of slavery existed. As did being a life long slave. Both existed. Either can be wrong given the situation, but neither are inherently evil in and of themselves
@@Thedisciplemike Yes, I know. I've been watching Josh since his first TH-cam appearance and have seen him discussing slavery at least half a dozrn times. I was posting about this exchange as I'd never seen anybody try this weird line before, was pretty surprised by it and thought it might bring a smile to a few people.
Dr. Joshua Bowen seems like an incredibly depressed individual.
Thank you for pointing that out. I do have diagnosed clinical depression due to my multiple sclerosis. Nice of you to highlight it.
@@DigitalHammurabi Sad!
@@DigitalHammurabi praying for you to get better
@DigitalHammurabi your depression is caused by your sclerosis?
@@Thedisciplemike He has multiple sclerosis. One of the symptoms is depression. I've seen quite a lot of Josh in conversation. I can tell he's struggling with it affecting his memory here. He's not retrieving a lot of the chapter and verse sort of detail and rolling his eyes upward before talking as he thinks through his next point.