The Conquest of Canaan - Jimmy Akin's Position
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2024
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Suan Sonna is a Baptist convert to Catholicism who is dedicated to curating the best Catholic intellectual content on philosophy, politics, and theology. He is also passionate about engaging people outside of the Catholic tradition on issues relevant to the Church.
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35:43 Only Jimmy Akin would so casually allude to Star Gate without even clarifying. I love it.
I was wondering about that reference lol
Got more out of this video than the first one with Bertuzzi. Probably because a more concentrated dose of Jimmy 😊 Lot more historical context here, like in Trent Horn's book _Hard Sayings_ , which again surprised still didn't get mentioned
Hello again. At least you haven't said anything moronic here...yet.
@@simeonwaia Dude, if you're going to start harassing me with mere insults on every comment of mine you come across, I will make use of whatever block or report features are available on YT. Never had to do that before with anyone. At least the repeat 7th Day Adventist commenters try to make arguments rather than personal attacks.
You've been warned early to preempt any pattern. If you consider yourself Christian or Catholic or charitable, please stop. If you want to disagree, dialogue, or debate, fine, but I don't have to put up with "moronic" harassment.
@@tonyl3762Is he stalking you? What a freak.
Origen whose interpretation Jimmy motioned in the spiritualized interpretation may have literalized the passage he quoted. "And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire." - Matthew 18:9
Ironically, He cut off his own genitals. This is according to Eusebius an admirer of his who lived a few decades after Origen.
Literalism can be hazardous to your health
@@champagne.future5248 Lots of things can be.
Not be a literalist at times can be too.
Such as, diving past a signed labeled:
Dead End - Road ends at Cliff!
@@jesuslovesaves2682 true. Being wrong is hazardous to your health
Really appreciate you asking and clarifying things with Jimmy. You did a very good job Suan!
cmon u idiot u actually believe this happened😂😂😂😂
@@jj-yi1neYeah cuz we're not gæy.
One thing we should keep in mind if defending the literal view, is not just philosophical considerations about things like Divine Command Theory, but also our doctrine of sin. Sin, from a biblical view, is not merely the transgressing of an abstract moral law. Sin almost has a physical component to it, it pollutes the very land upon which sins are committed. Moreover, there is a corporate nature to sin that is often presented to us in the OT, especially vis-a-vis sins that are against God directly (like false worship) and not only against society (like unjust economical activity). Further, the sins of the Canaanites are explicitly linked to a demon god, so the Canaanites themselves had yoked themselves to a demonic spirit, whose intent is purely evil. Finally, if we look directly at the kinds of sins the Canaanites were committing, and take into account the reality of that, then we may be more inclined to think the killing, or at least the command to kill, was indeed more justified than our initial sensibilities would suggest. I mean we are talking, in some instances at least, about the burning of children alive while men and women danced and sang around the burning infant in ecstatic worship of their god. Imagine actually seeing that play out, how would you feel?
This is what I'm saying!
There is another possibility that I rarely see "scholars" address in this question. I suspect that is because the option is too wild for most of them, Jimmy Akin, on the other hand I would kind of expect to talk about it, so I'm surprised he didn't.
There is an idea present in the OT originating in Genesis 6 and continuing on into the rest of the Pentateuch, that fallen angels some how produced hybrid offspring with human beings and that their offspring were giants (the nephilim) and were essentially not fully human.
The belief that this happened was widespread in Judaism and Christianity up until about the 4th century AD. It only began to fall out of favor with St. Augustine who rejected it in favor of the "sethite" interpretation of Genesis 6.
However, even if you don't accept the angelic interpretation of Genesis 6, it is virtually undeniable that the Israelites DID accept that interpretation. Jimmy Akin makes the very valid point that we ought to be trying to understand what the historic human author was trying to say. It is at least very likely, if not virtually certain that the author would have accepted that interpretation and there is evidence in the conquest narrative that supports this. For example, the word nephilim is used to describe some of the inhabitants of Canaan. Likewise they are described as giants. Perhaps most interestingly, almost all, if not all, of the places where God told Israel to put the Canaanites under "the Ban" are places with names or tribal names that correspond to the nephilim and/or giants.
Also, I don't think Jimmy falls into this trap, but most of the people who have a problem with the Conquest of Canaan do. The trap of which I speak is the use of modern subjective morality to judge divine revelation.
Richard Weaver, in his book Ideas Have Consequences (1948 I think) said that modern man was a "moral idiot". Meaning not an idiot who is moral, but someone who has an idiotic understanding of morality.
I think Mr. Weaver was right. Modern man hasn't got a moral leg to stand on.
Consider that many of the same people who object to the "genocide" of the Conquest of Canaan, support the legal killing of the unborn. They literally support the legalized killing of over a hundred million babies, but object to the killing of what, at the very least, were a deeply evil and violent people.
Consider that modern America has more innocent blood on it's hands than Hitler or Stalin, and yet we consider ourselves to be "good people". We are a deeply deeply morally confused people, to be as generous as possible. The idea of our passing judgement on something in the past that doesn't live up to our moral standards, or even merely our legal definitions (as in Genocide) is bordering on absurd.
Regarding the Euthyphro dilemma and the Christian view.
This can be construed as a dilemma between Voluntarism (the will is primary) and Intellectualism (the Intellect is primary). In Voluntarism whatever God wills is good. In intellectualism, God knows the good and wills it because he is good.
The Christian answer to this is unique in that it says both and neither, in a sense. In the Christian view, God's will and his intellect are one and the same thing. There is no separation between them and as such one cannot be primary over the other. As such a Christian can say, God IS the Good, which means that he both knows the good, because he knows himself, and what he wills is good, because he wills only according to his nature.
This view denies the arbitrary nature of Voluntarism, because God cannot simply will anything. He cannot will to sin, to lie, to do evil, etc. He cannot will against the good of one of his creatures because that would be to will contrary to love. He cannot will to cease to be God, and so on. Thus it is impossible for God to will murder to be good, or to will for us to hate him (both of which William of Ockham argued in favor of as a Voluntarist).
However, the reality is that we also only know of the divine nature what God has revealed to us, and even that can only be understood in terms of concession to our finite capacity for understanding.
Thus, we must develop our understanding of goodness or "the Good" based on divine self-revelation which, of course, includes scripture but is perfected particularly in the person of Jesus Christ.
It is, however, exceptionally dangerous and we must be exceptionally careful when we being to try to reinterpret divine self-revelation in order to fit it better with our specifically modern understanding of morality. This is not to say that we can't question and debate it, but we do need to be careful about what we allow. I think Jimmy is correct that what we ought to do is try to understand what the historic author was really trying to say, that's entirely valid. But, we do need to be aware of the dishonesty that can easily seep in of saying "I'm just trying to understand the authors intent" when in reality we are trying to shoe horn a modernistic morality into an ancient writers mouth.
I don't see how someone being a descendant of a fallen angel makes it ok to be killed before the age of reason...
@@tafazziReadChannelDescription
I assume your difficulty here is because you are thinking of them as humans who became evil during the course of their lives.
In the ancient Jewish view, based in this account, they were not human. They did not have human souls. 8n fact in the book of Enoch, a non biblical Jewish text from around 3rd century BC, it says that the demons are actually the souls of these creatures which were condemned to remain earth bound after they were killed.
In that view they were irredeemably evil from birth and were literal demons in flesh.
@@tafazziReadChannelDescription
Does someone who is the descendent of a fallen angel HAVE an age of reason? Do they even have moral agency? or Free will?
The point would be that the offspring of a celestial being and a human, would not be fully human and thus we can't apply human standards.
For example, the whole idea of an age of reason has to do with how the human intellect develops. All human beings have that same basic path of development because it is part of human nature. At early ages, we don't have full intellectual capacity, it develops slowly, and thus at early ages we are either not accountable, or less accountable because we aren't capable of understanding.
But if a being is not human, and has a different nature, how do you even know it has an age of reason at all?
How do you know that the offspring of a celestial being doesn't have full use of its intellectual capacity from the first moment of it's existence?
We are told only a few things about them in the Bible, and a few more in Jewish writings outside of the Bible.
#1 - they were giants
#2 - they were "hero's of old" (in my opinion this is basically saying they were the demigods and "hero's" of ancient myth, basically this is the Israelites saying "yea all those pagan hero's who are children of their pagan gods... yea they are the bad guys, they are just demons.)
#3 - they were exceptionally violent (I think including eating human flesh although that one I admit is a vague memory from something I read long ago, so could be mixing it up)
#4 - they became what we now call demons after they died, because their souls were not human, and were condemned to wander the earth.
In general in this view, these beings were not like humans. Even humans who embrace evil can change, can repent, and can be redeemed. These creatures are presented as basically irredeemably evil.
Again, my point here isn't even to argue that this view is actually factual and this actually happened. My point is that this view forms a significant part of Israelite / Jewish thought in the ancient world. It is part of a wider context of the Old Testament that I get the impression that most people today (including a lot of scholars from the way they talk) don't seem to get.
The Old Testament is not just a bunch of random loosely connected cultural stories that have been compiled into one book. It is a coherent mythic text (I don't use mythic here to mean "false") that is based around the story of a cosmic struggle between the God of Israel and the gods of the nations. If you don't read the Old Testament in the context of essentially being about a cosmic turf war between celestial powers, you are unlikely to fully understand what is going on.
Whether you want to take it as literal, or as more allegorical, or somewhere in between, what is being described in the conquest of Canaan can only be understood, in my opinion, in the context that the Canaanites and particularly the Amalekites are being presented as the ancestral and intractable enemies of God who oppose God throughout all their generations and thus always seek to corrupt and destroy God's people in every generation.
@@joshuacooley1417 Brilliantly-stated. I ascribe to a mix of this view and the hyperbolic view. Very good stuff. 👍🏻
I was wondering about the Nephilim option
greatly informative! Thank you both very much for this talk!
Excellent work Suan
I'm sure there is a huge crossover/overlap between yalls channels. I certainly represent one. ❤
I can understand the view Jimmy is defending, that the text was written in or around the time of the monarchy and is warning the current Israelites of that time period about spiritual corruption. However, the way the text reads, one would not be wrong to think that even a later author is still writing to his audience in such a way as to compel his 1000's-900 BC era audience to commit violence against the Canaanites still in the land. So I don't know that it mitigates the command to kill all that much.
Right but even then there is a difference between a Biblical writer making a point about either the judgement of God, or a political point about needing to continue the war against Canaanites; and the idea that God literally appeared to Joshua to order Hebrews to butcher every baby.
I have been thinking about this issue quite a lot. I hope this post will add and not detract.
This issue draws out the complexities of basing a Christian faith almost entirely on the bible.
As most people, who have had an encounter with Christ, would tell you:
John 1:14 ” And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”
This video was not what I thought it was gonna be based on the title. I thought it was going to be about the historicity of the conquest of Canaan (sort of like an extension of "did the Exodus happen?"), asking whether the Hebrews really conquered Canaan by force, or were they really just a native ethnic group in the region, was Jericho really inhabited at the time, etc.
I see it was touched on briefly.
Thank you for this. God bless brothers
Thank you.
You know Jimmy is an OG if he gets to call William Lane Craig "Bill." 😆😆😝
For a second i read the video thumbnail as THE CONQUEST OF CANADA😂. and i clicked because Trudy sucks
Their days are numbered. By 2100, America will have conquered them.
Please don’t genocide us
Great video 👍🙏✝️🇻🇦
Thanks for this. You guys are awesome. I was hoping you were going to start with a prayer though 🙏🏼.
25:35 Dr. WLC almost sounded as though he was endorsing voluntarism. I've listened to his Defenders series twice through and many dozens of his regular show and articles, in light of what I know of him from that, I don't think he is a voluntarist, but he certainly sounded like one.
27:25 the missing point here is that God and His nature is unchanging. You can think of all kinds of absurd scenarios, but God didn't command those and so they hardly apply. I understand the reason for wanting to speculate what God could command, but ultimately He doesn't command those absurd things precisely because they are not in line with His unchanging nature.
The whole topic of what God said the Israelites did in the OT being tied to Jesus and who two primary commandments should then bring the NT into the discussion. There are passages likely based on the first commandment and mankind's failures there similar and even more severe than those in the OT because they are of eternal no temporal significance. This ties into my other post that the real discussion here is about God's eternal judgement not some temporal discussion about the distant past but really about the future one.
Great conversation! I wonder if Jimmy thinks that God could command the killing of the innocents, such as in the original literal interpretation, or if he thinks it’s against God’s nature.
There are no innocents.
@@TDL-xg5nn children/babies are incapable of sinning due to a lack of culpability, therefore being innocent.
I think God could command anything and it would be good, I think God would not command certain things
The real meat of this discussion is not what happened that God ordered at some point in the past. Did God really say?
BUT will God really judge mankind with some going to heaven and others hell. This appears to be the heart of this discussion.
No. The topic of the discussion is what God commanded and what that means.
@@MeanBeanComedy What God commanded = Did God really say?
What that means = You will not surely die (Will God really judge?)
This is where it leads.
I think the Church Fathers had it right. Obsession on the literal sense is foolish and meaningless
You're correct. Still, I worry that too much of that may reduce the OT to just symbols. Imagine if the OT was just completely symbolic. It would undermine Jesus' prophecy. As Pope St. John Paul II said, Christ would be have come to earth like a meteor.
@@computationaltheist7267 it did not have that effect historically
@@catholicconvert2119 That's because the traditional view was the dominant view and the literal meaning was still present. How long until eternal hell is also symbolic and that a literal hell is not there?
@@computationaltheist7267 Eternal hell is a state of being after death. The fire was always a symbol of what it feels like to be cut off from God.
@@catholicconvert2119No sorry! Hell is real. It's not a state of being.
Well if God’s wrath does not exist, then Jerusalem is probably not destroyed in utter violence like never was seen before and we can also delete the Book of Revelation 🤔
The ”balein"
The conquest of Canaan (Scorpio) is nothing more than the setting of Scorpio denoting the end of winter. See five signs in Rev. 9.5.
As Taurus rises, Scorpio sets (ends winter). With the rising of Scorpio and setting of Taurus we are back to winter. See Mithras slaying the bull (Taurus).
Why don't Christians just say it's a story, seeing as the conquest of Caanan didn't happen, as Israelites were caananites to begin with? (Mark S Smith et Al)
because that may not be why the conquest of Canaan is in the bible in the first place. Unless you lived 3000 years ago, and you were there when the stories were used and how the people understood these stories, then taking the stance 3000 years after the fact that the conquest didn't happen is totally absurd.
@@GarthDomokos it's not absurd at all, most scholars as Suan and Jimmy would tell you themselves believe the nation of Israel comes from the Highlands of Caanan and we're originally caananites who worshipped yahweh.
This obviously has implications on the exodus which likely didn't happen either (some scholars think an exodus might have happened but perhaps a few families rather than 600000 men as described in the Bible)
The conquest of Caanan is defintely thought to be mythos though, as said earlier, Israelites were caananites to begin with before they developed their own culture.
Egypt controlled that land up until the collapse of the bronze age, which likely led to the stories of Israel's emergence in the Bible but it has little to no historical basis but it does explain why there are Egyptian names such as Moses and Aaron.
@@TheChurchofBreadandCheese the Bible doesn't describe hundreds of thousands of families leaving Egypt, that's a mistranslation.
The city of Avaris in Egypt shows archeological evidence of being abandoned by a population that didn't eat pork, in the 1200s BC. Then, people in canaan over a bit more than a hundred year stopped eating pork. This is strong evidence for an exodus, not for a great replacement of all peoples that lived there, but for, as the Bible describes, the intermingling of the two groups despite God's warnings.
The Bible itself teaches that part of the ancestry of the israelites at the time of King David is canaanite.
@@TheChurchofBreadandCheese >>it's not absurd at all, most scholars as Suan and Jimmy would tell you themselves believe the Nation of Israel commes from the Highlands of Caanan and we're originally cananites who worshipped yahweh.
Why should Christians believe anything that the majority of scholars say? That's an ad populum fallacy. It also fails to recognize that in the past, the majority of scholars have been wrong. Take the case of Kind David or the Hittites, the majority of scholars in the past believed that they didn't exist and yet, recent archeological evidence showed that wasn't the case. I am not saying that Christians shouldn't listen to scholars but if Christians are not careful, that would end the faith.
NT scholars are also not friendly to the NT and believe that the Gospelss are contradictory nonsense. Would Smith et al accept such an assertion? If so, what does that say about the Christian faith?
Even in philosophy, the majority of philosophers are atheists so that would mean Christians abandon belief in any deity.
>>This obviously has implications on the exodus which likely didn't happen either (read scholars think an exodus might have hangened but perhaps a fawfamilies rather that 600000 men as described in the Bible)
Some scholars believe that the numbers were exaggerated as was typical of ANE literature.
@@computationaltheist7267 Well, a lot of these scholars are christians to begin with, see Mark S Smith who I have personally spoken too, considers himself a devout catholic and believes in a non literal exodus. A lot of scholars are Christians. It's not a reason for faith to end. Pope Francis recently endorsed a bible commentary edition 3 Jerome Commentary which has all these findings in it.
And in terms of philosophy, well the majority philosophers of religion are theists anyway.
Jimmy Akin is a clown
Cope more
Does the Bible condone genocide slavery, & misogyny? Probably not 🤷♀️
Don't believe the sinners
God Did NOT approve of
*genocide ( Deut 20:16-18,)
God did NOT approve of*human sacrifice JEPHTHAH’S DAUGHTER (Judges 11:30-39,)
God did NOT approve of*sxual assault (Numbers 31: 18),
God did NOT approve of *SlaVerY (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB) (Leviticus 25:44-46
@catholicconvert2119