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Is the Bible Infallible?
Sex Slavery in the Bible
Is the Bible the infallible, inerrant word of God? There is a simple test we can
conduct to determine the answer. Jesus Christ said that a good tree cannot bear
bad fruit (Matthew 7:18). If he was wrong, the Bible contains an error. If he
was correct, and if God is perfectly loving, compassionate, wise and just (as
the Bible claims and as most Christians believe), then obviously the infallible,
inerrant word of a perfect God cannot contain "bad fruit" in the form of evil,
unjust commandments. But the Bible does contain palpably evil, unjust
commandments, including a number of passages endorsing slavery: Leviticus 25:44-46, Exodus 21:7-11, Deuteronomy 20:10-14, Deuteronomy
21:10-14, Deuteronomy 22:28-29, Judges 5:30, Judges 21:10-24, 2 Samuel 12:11-14,
Zechariah 14:1-2.
Before I examine the Bible's multiple passages that endorse slavery, including
sex slavery, let me mention a passage in the New Testament that
will prove the Bible is far from infallible. Some Christians try to explain away
the obvious problems with the Bible by saying the New Testament supersedes
the Old Testament. But consider the second chapter of Revelation, in which Jesus
is speaking directly to the seven churches. In verse 18, Jesus begins speaking
to the church at Thyatira, and as the passage continues he says that he will
murder the children of a woman who has been committing adultery and eating foods
offered to idols. If Jesus did what he said he would do, that would make him a
murderer. If he didn't do what he said he would do, that would make him a liar.
In either case, he would not be perfect, as the Christian religion claims. If
Jesus is perfect, the Bible cannot be infallible, due to this passage which portrays him as a monster who murders children for their mother's
sins. And there is another problem with this passage because Saint Paul said
that he could eat foods offered to idols, and in the gospels Jesus taught that
what a person eats does not defile the person. So why is Jesus suddenly using
the eating of foods offered to idols as a reason to murder a woman's children?
This passage has Jesus saying that he will judge Christians by their works, even
to the point of murdering their children, when elsewhere in the Bible Christians
are instructed to believe in grace, to forgive unconditionally, and to love even their enemies. Since Jesus spoke strongly against hypocrisy on numerous occasions,
how can he escape coming off as a hypocrite here? I believe this
passage indicates that either (1) Jesus was a murderer, or (2) Jesus was a liar,
or (3) someone was pretending to speak for Jesus. In any case the Bible is not infallible
unless it is "perfection" to murder children for something their mother did.
Now, on to the verses about slavery and sex slavery. Most
of these commandments have been directly
attributed to Moses, the Bible's great lawgiver, and the first and greatest of the Hebrew prophets. The Bible
claims that Moses spoke to God and received commandments directly from him. But
if a wise, just, loving God spoke to Moses, how can
the Bible attribute such evil, unjust commandments to Moses? The answer may be quite
simple: perhaps Moses didn't originate the evil verses attributed to him. If you read the
Bible's own account of the "new" book of Moses "discovered" by the Levite priests during the
reign of the child-king Josiah (2 Kings 22), it seems obvious that this "new book of Moses" was
a forgery, as the priests immediately went on a
killing spree, slaughtering the priests of other
sects, and even digging up the bones of dead priests, to desecrate them. The "new" book of Moses
"discovered" by these murderous priests was probably the horrendous book of
Deuteronomy, which commands all sorts of evil actions, such as stoning children
to death, and also
constantly commands the Israelites to "share" the fruit of their labor with the
Levites, who then didn't have to work to make a living. In other words, it was a
scam.
Bible literalists will often try to worm around the Bible's evil verses by
claiming they were directed at people other than the Israelites. This is not
true. The opening verses of Deuteronomy clearly explain that Moses is speaking
“unto ALL Israel” and that the commandments in the book of
Deuteronomy were given to him by Jehovah: "These be the words which Moses spake
unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness ... Moses
spake unto the children of Israel, according unto all that the Lord had
given him in commandment unto them." The evil commandments given by
someone pretending to speak for Moses and Jehovah include:
[1] Stoning children to death for misdemeanors, a ghastly form of execution
(Deuteronomy 21:18–21). Children can be murdered in this ghastly way for being
stubborn and eating or drinking too much.
[2] Murdering girls by stoning them to death if they don’t prove their virginity
by bleeding on their wedding nights (Deuteronomy 22:13–21). When women are
stoned to death in Muslim nations, many Christians call Islam a false religion.
But here the author of Deuteronomy commands it in the name and authority of
Jehovah. But the real Creator would have known that all girls don’t bleed the
first time they have sex. So this is clearly someone pretending to speak for
Jehovah, if Jehovah is wise and just.
[3] If a girl is raped, either murder her or sell her to her rapist (Deuteronomy
22:22–31). If she is raped in a town, assume she didn’t cry out and murder her.
If she was raped in a field, assume she did cry out and no one heard her, so let
her live. If she is not engaged, instead of murdering the girl she can be sold
to her rapist with the money going to her father. Is this the “word of God” or
the cruel barbaric insanity of primitive men?
Here are examples of Bible passages that are palpably evil and prove
conclusively that all the Bible is not "infallible":
You may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live
among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners,
including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your
property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may
treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must
never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
Some translations of the Bible attempt to obfuscate the Bible's slavery and sex
slavery verses by using euphemisms for the terms "slave" and "slavery." But
please don't be fooled. The passages are startling clear and more than obviously
are talking about men owning and raping virgin girls who were the "spoils of
war." The Bible calmly talks about a "man of God"
murdering a girl's parents, then raping her, and having the option to discard
her if he tires of her. And Moses even gave fathers the right to sell their own
daughters as sex slaves to other men:
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end
of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he
may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to
foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the
slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her
as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries
her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail
to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may
leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
So according to Moses, who according to the Bible received his commandments
directly from God, a father was allowed to sell his own daughter as a sex slave,
with the option to buy her back if she didn't "please" her new master!
As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for
peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people
inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and
prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over
to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the
women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your
enemies that the LORD your God has given you. (Deuteronomy 20:10-14)
How can a loving, compassionate, wise, just God call little girls "spoils of
war" and condemn them to lives of sex slavery? Can anyone imagine Jesus doing
such horrendous things? And yet orthodox Christianity insists that the Bible is
infallible, that God is perfect and unchanging, and that Jesus is
one with the God of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). More than obviously, the
pastors and theologians who make such assertions are not being honest. But how
can a true religion be dishonest about its sacred texts?
When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers
them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among
the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife,
you may take her home to your house. But before she may live there, she must
shave her head and pare her nails and lay aside her captive's garb. After she
has mourned her father and mother for a full month, you may have relations with
her, and you shall be her husband and she shall be your wife. However, if later
on you lose your liking for her, you shall give her her freedom, if she wishes
it; but you shall not sell her or enslave her, since she was married to you
under compulsion. (Deuteronomy 21:10-14)
Here sex slavery is given the euphemistic name "marriage" but of course the rape
victim is given no choice to reject her parents' murderer. The only requirement
is that the "man of God" gives her a month to mourn before raping her. If he
gets tired of her, he can just kick her out. Some "marriage"!
They must be dividing the spoils they took: there must be a damsel or two
for each man, Spoils of dyed cloth as Sisera's spoil, an ornate shawl or two for
me in the spoil. (Judges 5:30 NAB)
Judges was written after the time of Moses. By this time, there was no talk of
"marriage" and "men of God" could take two girls as "spoils of war" and rape
them. The young sex slaves were equated with pieces of cloth.
If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he
must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young
woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.
(Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
This commandment turns a raped girl into a prostitute, her father into a pimp,
and allows her rapist to keep raping her "legally" the rest of her life. Is this
the "wisdom" of God, or sheer evil insanity?
If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has
relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and
there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though
she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife.
(Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
The Bible is far worse than Hitler's Mein Kampf in such
passages. According to Moses, if a girl was raped in a field, she was to be presumed innocent,
but if she was raped where someone might possibly have heard her cry out,
she was to be
presumed guilty and, depending on whether she was engaged or not, either
stoned to death or sold to her rapist as a sex slave, so
that she could be raped "legally" the rest of her life. Deuteronomy 22 vastly
fails every test of "perfection" and there are many other Bible passage like it,
and even worse, as we shall see together.
The "bad fruit" of these verses led directly to the even worse fruit of American
slavery and the Civil War, which is still the bloodiest war in American history. The leaders of the
Confederacy were Christians. They had read
their Bibles and, as Jefferson Davis pointed out to abolitionists, the Bible clearly commands and
condones slavery from Genesis to Revelation, making slavery a "Divine decree."
And while it was not discussed in public—probably
because their wives would have
divorced them on the spot—southern
plantation owners had also read and obviously believed those
Bible verses which clearly endorse sex slavery,
because there were many lighter-skinned slaves prior
to the Civil War. White masters who raped their slaves could even invoke
Bible verses that allow fathers to sell their daughters as sex slaves. Thus,
according to the Bible, a slaveowner could rape his female slaves, then sell his
own children to other men so that when they grew up, his daughters could also be
raped.
The presumption was that girls who had been raped were "guilty" of terrible
crimes worthy of death or life terms as sex slaves. But if extramarital sex and
prostitution are sins, as the Bible repeatedly claims, how could Moses
command that raped girls be forced to offer sex to their rapists for the rest of
their lives, in return for money paid to their fathers? And why would Moses
assume that a girl who had been raped was "guilty" of anything? What if her rapist
had held his
hand over her mouth, or a knife to her throat, or she was simply too terrified
to cry out? Even if she could have cried out and didn't, why in
heaven's name should she
be murdered or forced to become a sex slave? This is not the
"wisdom of God," but the evil lunacy of primitive barbarians who valued
virginity over a girl's life and happiness. The Bible
claims that Moses spoke to God face-to-face, as a man speaks to a friend, and
that God gave Moses the commandments that are now enshrined in the Bible. But as
we will see below, the Bible repeatedly commands or condones the worst crimes
known to mankind: slavery,
sex slavery, matricide, infanticide, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Such verses
are obviously not the "infallible" or "inerrant" word of a truly loving, wise,
just
being. So we are left with only two possibilities: (1) either the Bible is not
the infallible, inerrant word of God, or (2) God is not good. But the Bible claims that God
is perfectly loving, compassionate, wise and just. So regardless of whether God
is good, or not, the Bible is not inerrant, because once the Bible claims that
God is perfect, if it contains one less-than-perfect verse, it can't be entirely
his word. After all, someone who is perfect never makes a mistake.
Another Simple Proof that the Bible is Not "Infallible"
The Genesis
creation account claims that man was condemned to suffer and die because he
gained the knowledge of good and evil by eating the "forbidden fruit."
Therefore, if Christians don't know good from evil, they should not suffer or
die. But it is more than obvious that over the last 2,000 years, many
Christians have suffered and died without being able to discern good from evil.
For example:
• American Christians once owned slaves because they
believed verses in the Bible that clearly command and/or condone slavery, even
sex slavery. According to Moses, in a truly sickening passage, fathers can sell their own daughters as sex slaves,
with the option to buy them back if they don't please their new masters (Exodus 21:7-8). Numbers
31 says that "men of God" like Moses and his warriors can slaughter defenseless
mothers and male babies, keeping only the virgin girls alive,
obviously as sex slaves. Mark Twain pointed out that the Bible was used to justify slavery in
schools and churches throughout the South. If the Bible is the inerrant word of
a loving, wise, just God who is able to foresee the future, why didn't a single
writer of the Bible ever clearly condemn slavery? Jesus never said a word against slavery even though he ministered to slaves, according to the New Testament. Paul, the great
evangelist, even returned a Christian slave, Onesimus, to his Christian master,
Philemon, without
condemning the terrible institution. The Bible clearly commands slaves to obey their
masters, and it fails to command masters to free their slaves. How is it possible that a loving,
compassionate, wise, just God gave human beings this
enormous book called the Bible and yet never once clearly called slavery an abomination?
• The Bible expressly allows "men of God" to purchase women
and children as slaves, never freeing them, but keeping them as a permanent
inheritance:
You may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live
among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners,
including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your
property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You
may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must
never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46)
• According to the Bible, male Hebrew slaves were to be
freed after six years. But women, children and non-Hebrew slaves, could be
enslaved forever: If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only
six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his
freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward,
only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became
a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife
while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free
in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. (Exodus
21:2-6)
• If the Bible is "infallible" then killing
women, children and the handicapped is "the will of God." After all, Moses, Joshua and King David (all called "types"
of Christ by Christian theologians, priests and pastors) were mass murderers who
slaughtered defenseless women, children and the handicapped.
The Bible calls David "the man after God's own heart," and yet it also says
that David killed every woman when he "smote the land" and that he ordered the
slaughter of the lame and blind when Jerusalem was taken from the Jebusites. If
the Bible is infallible and David is the man after God's own heart, then God
must be like Hitler, who murdered women and the
handicapped. But then how can Christians claim that God is loving,
compassionate, wise and just?
• Moses, Joshua and King David were practitioners of ethnic
cleansing and genocide, the "slaying of everything that breathes." How is
it possible that the God of the Bible and the Hebrew prophets didn't know that
ethnic cleansing and genocide were evil? How could Jesus claim that all
scripture came from God when the Hebrew Bible clearly commands and condones the
most terrible of crimes: slavery, sex slavery, matricide, infanticide, ethnic
cleansing and genocide?
• Moses told his followers to stone children to
death if they were "stubborn," or if they had sex before marriage, even if
they were raped (Deuteronomy 22). How is it possible that Christians
"believe" the Bible is infallible when it tells them to murder
children?
• According to the Bible, Jesus said that thinking
about sex is the same as committing adultery, while
another Bible verse says that all adulterers go to the lake of fire. But in what
dimension is eternal torture a suitable punishment for people having sex, or
just thinking about sex?
• According to the Bible, Jesus condemns human beings
to "hell" if they don't believe in him. But if Jesus still lives, he either chooses to remain
hidden or is unable to communicate with most human beings. In either case, he
has no right to demand human belief. Therefore, Christians obviously have no
knowledge of good and evil if they think it is somehow "just" for Jesus to send people
to hell for not believing in him. And yet this is what the majority of
Christians have always believed.
Over the last 2,000 years, billions of Christians
have lived and died having no understanding of good and evil, because they
"believed" the Bible, which repeatedly claims that evil is good because the
witchdoctors who wrote the Bible attributed all sorts of evil to
God. When they wanted to steal other men's land, murder them and take their
daughters as sex slaves, they said ethnic cleansing and sex slavery were "the
will of God." When they wanted to eat the best cuts of meat for free, they said God
slavered after animal sacrifices like a wild beast. When they wanted the
commoners to be docile and subservient, they threatened them with murder by
stoning if they had extramarital sex, or converted to other religions, or just
thought for themselves. According to Genesis, Christians should never suffer or
die because they have no knowledge of
good and evil. But of course Christians do suffer and die. Therefore, the Bible
is clearly not infallible and its God is unjust for sentencing them to suffer
and die on false premises.
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