A long overdue posting of Dr. Peter Payne's response to Ozair on this subject
Dear Ozair,
My name is Dr. Peter Payne. More than three years ago Scott Cherry passed along to me your paper on rape and pedophilia in the Bible. At that time I wrote this letter for you which I asked him to share with you. ...Did he? Either way, he has only now decided to post it here. In two or three parts I will respond to what you have said. What I had to say about point #1 below turned out to be long enough that I decided to send it by itself and send you my responses to the rest of your paper in a couple of subsequent emails. Since your paper focuses on the question of whether the Old Testament condones rape and pedophilia, I won’t respond here to why a good God would at times command the killing of everyone found in a town, and at times command command what initially may seem like genocide. (I could address that topic at another time.) Since early in your paper you raise the question of the character of God in the Old Testament, that is what I will address in this email. In a subsequent piece I will address texts you cite in support of your claim that the OT God condones rape and pedophilia. *All biblical quotations will be from the English Standard Version translation.
A long overdue posting of Claudine's response to Ozair on this subject
Dear Ozair,
My name is Claudine. A long time ago (3½ years!) Scott Cherry shared with me some of his fascinating correspondence with you about a few passages in the Old Testament books of Moses (and the Qur'an) that were stimulating intense discussion. Well, way back then I wrote this letter for you but Scott chose not to post it until now, especially focused on Deuteronomy 22:28-29.[1]
I understand your difficulty with those bible passages because like many, I share in some of your thoughts. I thought that you may like to hear from a Christian woman on the issue of what seemed to you as rape and pedophilia in the Old Testament.
Nothing can be understood if we don’t understand the beginning: In the beginning...God’s creation was perfect, but a big problem happened: Man disobeyed God. Man decided to listen and trust another voice than that of his creator even though God had warned him it would lead to death. Every other problem humanity has ever experienced stems from that.
Humans value humility in each other so what should we expect from God?
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Have you ever wondered why people value humility?
The Qur'an speaks of humility. In surah 3:159 Muhammed is praised for his humility by dealing gently with those who could have been in rebellion to him.
"And by the Mercy of Allah, you dealt with them gently. And had you been severe and harsh-hearted, they would have broken away from you." [Al Imran 3:159]
Where does this value come from? If Muhammed is praised as meek then shouldn't we expect this to be an attribute of God's? How does the Muslim God demonstrate meekness?
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Has the Bible Been Corrupted Over Time?
Muslims believe that the Bible has been corrupted and redacted by later editors. This claim is an old one and many scholars who have held this view have had to fall on their swords in the past. The fact is that modern scholarship can objectively demonstrate that:
- We can be confident that the Greek New Testament has not changed from what was penned by the original authors.
- We can be assured that the contemporaries of the original authors received the plurality of the New Testament as the inspired word of God.
- History demonstrates that the earliest Christians held to exactly 4 gospels that we can identify as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
- The process of canonization and the recognition of which books were inspired occurred extremely early.
Ever wondered why ISIS acts so contrary to reason?
Two theological schools emerged within Sunni Islam in the ninth century. The first, the Mu’tazalites, said that God is reason and justice. The Mu’tazalites held that man’s first duty is to reason because the existence of God is not self-evident.