The Jephthah Affair and the Immorality of Atonement Doctrines

I became acquainted with the Jephthah narrative not through church attendance, as these embarrassing chapters are never mentioned in sermon, but by reading The God Delusion.  It's one of the most shocking chapters of the Bible, one which bears witness to the practice of sacrificing children to Jehovah in spite of frequent polemics against the cult of Molok elsewhere in the prophetic tradition.

I believe Judges 11 to be one of the most important chapters of the Bible.

In saying this, what I'm saying is that if we are to undertake the important task of assessing the values and the character of the Biblical authors, a task which no one considering the validity of any book as a moral guide should ignore, it is impossible to pass this chapter, to deny its grave importance and its moral abhorrence.  I will share here the narrative interspersed with commentary.

1. Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour, and he was the son of an harlot: and Gilead begat Jephthah.

2 And Gilead's wife bare him sons; and his wife's sons grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah, and said unto him, Thou shalt not inherit in our father's house; for thou art the son of a strange woman.

Following in the family-values tradition of Abraham, Jacob and Isaac whose sons and wives quarrelled perpetually as half-brothers and sister-wives, casting Ishmael into the desert, selling Joseph into slavery, mass-murdering the Edomites for being red-headed descendants of Esau.

3 Then Jephthah fled from his brethren, and dwelt in the land of Tob: and there were gathered vain men to Jephthah, and went out with him. 

From the get-go we learn that the sacred story deals with a Jehovah worshipper who is a son of a whore, a man of low birth and bad association.

4 And it came to pass in process of time, that the children of Ammon made war against Israel. 5 And it was so, that when the children of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah out of the land of Tob: 6 And they said unto Jephthah, Come, and be our captain, that we may fight with the children of Ammon. 

7 And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, Did not ye hate me, and expel me out of my father's house? and why are ye come unto me now when ye are in distress? 8 And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, Therefore we turn again to thee now, that thou mayest go with us, and fight against the children of Ammon, and be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. 9 And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, If ye bring me home again to fight against the children of Ammon, and the Lord deliver them before me, shall I be your head? 

10 And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, The Lord be witness between us, if we do not so according to thy words. 11 Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and captain over them: and Jephthah uttered all his words before the Lord in Mizpeh.

In order to regain his honor as a son of a whore, Jephthah agrees to become a General in the army of his half-brothers, who perhaps are hoping he will die at the battlefront.

12 And Jephthah sent messengers unto the king of the children of Ammon, saying, What hast thou to do with me, that thou art come against me to fight in my land? 13 And the king of the children of Ammon answered unto the messengers of Jephthah, Because Israel took away my land, when they came up out of Egypt, from Arnon even unto Jabbok, and unto Jordan: now therefore restore those lands again peaceably.

Land-grabbing is another moral problem in the Biblical narrative.  The decent thing to do would have been to work and save money and buy the land from the inhabitants, or marry one's children to the inhabitants, rather than go in, murder everyone and occupy cities and villages that already have people living and working in there.  But most pious readers of the Bible don't ponder the moral problems related to terrorism and genocide for the sake of land-theft.  This is only one important side-story to Jephthah.  Let's continue.

14 And Jephthah sent messengers again unto the king of the children of Ammon: 15 And said unto him, Thus saith Jephthah, Israel took not away the land of Moab, nor the land of the children of Ammon: 16 But when Israel came up from Egypt, and walked through the wilderness unto the Red sea, and came to Kadesh; 17 Then Israel sent messengers unto the king of Edom, saying, Let me, I pray thee, pass through thy land: but the king of Edom would not hearken thereto. 

And in like manner they sent unto the king of Moab: but he would not consent: and Israel abode in Kadesh. 18 Then they went along through the wilderness, and compassed the land of Edom, and the land of Moab, and came by the east side of the land of Moab, and pitched on the other side of Arnon, but came not within the border of Moab: for Arnon was the border of Moab. 

19 And Israel sent messengers unto Sihon king of the Amorites, the king of Heshbon; and Israel said unto him, Let us pass, we pray thee, through thy land into my place. 20 But Sihon trusted not Israel to pass through his coast: but Sihon gathered all his people together, and pitched in Jahaz, and fought against Israel. 21 And the Lord God of Israel delivered Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel, and they smote them: so Israel possessed all the land of the Amorites, the inhabitants of that country.

Whenever I find mention of God "delivering people into the hands of" his soldiers, it reminds me of the Muslims who cheered after 9/11, and of the narratives among the pious of how Allah orchestrated the whole episode, how there was a prophecy being fulfilled, etc.  A heinous act becomes not just unavoidable, but virtuous.  I wonder what this means, for instance, when we consider that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were said to have been 'destroyed by God'.  Were these cities terrorized by God's soldiers in a similar manner?

When military victories are attributed to divinities, people feel their hatreds vindicated and they alienate themselves from their most sinister intentions and goals, which they only recognize indirectly through apocallyptic or religious imagery.

22 And they possessed all the coasts of the Amorites, from Arnon even unto Jabbok, and from the wilderness even unto Jordan. 23 So now the Lord God of Israel hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and shouldest thou possess it? 24 Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess. 

Curious sleight of hand.  We steal your land, but because our God gave us military victory then the land is ours.  If your God had given you stolen land, it would be yours.  Again, there is no notion of justice or fairness.  Gods will do what they want and what they do, is done and it's right because they do it.  Period.

25 And now art thou any thing better than Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab? did he ever strive against Israel, or did he ever fight against them, 26 While Israel dwelt in Heshbon and her towns, and in Aroer and her towns, and in all the cities that be along by the coasts of Arnon, three hundred years? why therefore did ye not recover them within that time? 

27 Wherefore I have not sinned against thee, but thou doest me wrong to war against me: the Lord the Judge be judge this day between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon. 28 Howbeit the king of the children of Ammon hearkened not unto the words of Jephthah which he sent him. 

29 Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead, and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over unto the children of Ammon. 30 And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, 31 Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.

Now, notice that it's the Spirit of God that inspires Jephthah to make the vow.  Again, Jephthah, being a man of God and a man of faith, in fully surrendering to God, alienates himself from his vows and his deeds so that whatever happens is the deed and the will of God.  Let's see where this takes him.

32 So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the Lord delivered them into his hands. 33 And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel.

He terrorizes twenty cities.

34 And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. 35 And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back.

When he became possessed by the Spirit of his God, he had promised to his God that he would offer whatever came first out of his house as a burnt offering to Jehovah.  His daughter was ecstatic, hadn't seen him in months, and naturally couldn't wait to see him.  According to the authors of the Bible, it was his daughter that the Spirit of God wanted offered as an innocent, pure victim in the pyre.

Notice he blames her.  He says it's his daughter that "brought him very low", not his God who, he believed, had all along been hungry for innocent human victims.  But he did not believe his God or his religion had "brought him very low".

36 And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.

The Bible's wisdom tradition has many wholesome verses, but the one that is most false and immoral is the one about how fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom.  In what way can we find prudence in this one narrative of fear of God?  It was fear of God that led Jephthah and his daughter to the following course of action.

37 And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. 38 And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. 

39 And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel, 40 That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.

- Judges 11, King James Version of the Bible

Noticed how the sacred narrative accentuates that "she knew no man".  She had to be innocent.

There is another episode of human sacrifice where David hangs relatives of King Saul on a mountaintop in order to appease Jehovah's anger during a dought.  King David did this under the whispers of prophets who believed that the innocent had to die to atone for the crimes of the evil.  The crimes of King Saul were to be atoned by murdering his relatives, except those who were near and dear to David's beloved, Jonathan.

Now, notice that elsewhere it is under God's command that tribes (like the Amalekites, whose only crime was to live in coveted land) are massacred.  This judgement against Saul (or his relatives) therefore is an arbitrary act of "justice".  Genocide is only evil when God doesn't order it.  It is not evil when he does order it.  Also, at no point do the pious use God as an excuse to advance non-violent ways to resolve conflicts. These could have been moral stories, if truly moral and non-superstitious people had written them.

1 Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David enquired of the Lord. And the Lord answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites. 

2 And the king called the Gibeonites, and said unto them; (now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; and the children of Israel had sworn unto them: and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah.) 3 Wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord? 

4 And the Gibeonites said unto him, We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house; neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel. And he said, What ye shall say, that will I do for you. 5 And they answered the king, The man that consumed us, and that devised against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel, 6 Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, whom the Lord did choose. And the king said, I will give them. 

7 But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of the Lord's oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul. 8 But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite: 9 And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord: and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest. 

- 2 Samuel 21, King James Version of the Bible

And so we see here that this experiment of the introduction of God into human affairs and into history severely confuses the moral compass of men, introduces arbitrary notions of atonement and vengeance that have nothing to do with true justice and where the innocent pay for the crimes of the guilty.  When asked to die, some of these innocent victims have to be "delivered into the hands" of their killers while others accept the decrees of perceived authority figures, but no one who is innocent chooses martyrdom over life when given a choice under normal circumstances.

Perhaps, after killing so many innocent people and leaving so many orphaned in the twenty cities that he attacked, Jephthah unconsciously used his vow as a way to punish himself for the evil he had done.  Perhaps when we help to create an unjust world, we have such difficulty understanding how we are free to do so, that we use religion to torment our souls for cause of this freedom.  If this is the case, then here we see the very spring and the very root of religiosity.  Maybe men who are not evil do not project themselves against such evil religious fantasies, but does this makes religion less dangerous?

Supposedly, Christians believe that Christ was to be the last human sacrifice that would appease their God, but after Christ died the Christians sacrificed thousands, maybe millions, during the Crusades, the Inquisition, and today in countries like Uganda and Nigeria children are still being sacrificed (the religion-friendly media says by witch doctors, but invariably they cite Abraham's near sacrifice of his son as their moral justification).  In Uganda, the Kill the Gays bill has gained continuous traction and been partially approved.

Humans are still sacrificing their humanity to the One God just as they did to the Many Gods before, with the Aztecs, the Phoenicians and other nations.  Monotheism is not, as we have been repeatedly told by its proponents, morally superior in any way to polytheism when it comes to our dehumanization.  The amount of our Gods does not solve the problem of religious tyranny.

We must conclude that Molok still lives, that he returned Bible in hand and is still claiming victims.  Slaving away under the yolk of Moloks, the infantile will never mature into true, dignified men.

Capitalism and altruism are incompatible. - Ayn Rand

The Perils of Alienation

Religion then becomes the practice of alienation par excellence: it supposes the rupture of man with himself and the creation of an imaginary world in which truth is invested upon the imaginary.  Theology, affirms Feuerbach, is a psychological pathology. – Michel Onfray’s Traité d’Athéologie

I recently watched a documentary on the Heavens Gate cult, which concluded in the peaceful, even glad, suicide of 38 cult members during March of 1997.  Cult members made frequent references to “the next evolutionary kingdom above human” and made it clear that they firmly rejected their humanity, their bodily identity, their Earth identity.  The goal of life, they believed, was to become post-human.

Literally believing themselves to be working towards becoming asexual alien-like beings, cult members exhibited a severe hatred for the body which, like that of Paul of Tarsus, culminated in a strict ascetic lifestyle with its many attached neuroses.

In addition to the non-physical forms of self-mutilation (the denial of libido, the severance of normal family and social ties, etc.) several of the males who commited suicide were also found to be castrated.  Their ascetism led them to idealize a non gendered state, not too different from what monks in many traditions aspire to attain, or from Catholic priests who wear female-like robes and aspire for an unnatural, asexual, angel-like ideal.

They wanted to be anything but the sexual beings that we all are, to escape the accusation that they were animals, an accusation which was entirely accurate.  Mammals, in fact.

I mention the parallels with the Catholic cult in specific because, in addition to its central symbol being a bloody scene of human sacrifice on a cross, it has a long and well-documented history of sadistic practices based on that very idea of sacrificing our humanity.  When libido is denied it becomes distorted and at times results in sexual activity with minors, or in mutilation of the self or the other.  During the medieval days when Christian ascetic hysteria was allowed to run rampant, sexual torture of women accused of witchcraft included the mutilation of women’s breasts, and the sexual and non-sexual acts of torture carried out by the Holy Inquisition involved awful acts such as removal of the eyes (as per the Gospels, where Jesus orders his followers to cut their eye off if it leads to sinning).

Because such acts are now illegal, many priests and monks now resort to more private expressions of their sadism like the mortification of the flesh practices in Catholicism, in which the body is punished in order, supposedly, to strengthen one’s will (because “the flesh is weak”).  It’s a much more common practice than most people realize.  Pope John Paul II, we learned after his death, practiced self-flagellation.

Mortification means “to make (-ficare) die (morti-)”.  The idea of this form of ascetic sadism is “make the flesh die”.  It becomes clear that these practices of self-mutilation, castration, suicide, and other forms of radical denial of the body and the bodily identity, only make sense within the context of a death cult that idealizes non-life, non-physicality.

I find it dangerous that many secularists spend so much time accurately calling the death-cults by their proper name, but focus so much on the Abrahamic religious problem that they fail to recognize the other immaterialisms, the more New-Agey and seemingly innocent ones like the Heaven’s Gate cult that took 38 lives in 1997.

The adherents of the cult felt that they were not as credulous as the common Christian because, to them, angels were aliens … and everyone knew aliens existed.  It was aliens, not angels, who artificially inseminated the Virgin Mary.  It was aliens who appeared to Jesus at Gethsemani.  As we enter deeper into a scientific age, aliens in a cult can easily replace angels and gods.  In fact, according to official Mormon doctrine, the God of the Mormons is an human-like alien that lives on planet Kolob with his multiple wives.

And so it’s important to recognize that not all the death cults fall strictly within traditional Abrahamic religiosity.  The Heaven’s Gate practice of alienation, literally, sought to make aliens of humans and was as radical a negation of our humanity, as radical a practice and a program of de-humanization, as the Christian monastic attempts to become an asexual angel.  Hatred of the body, of the natural self, of the human animal, permeates these traditions.

The Death Cult in its Most Naked Form

“Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods.” — Lucretius

It’s understandable, in cultures where life here on Earth becomes unbearable, that people will want to transcend life and alienate themselves from their physical, inescapable reality.  But, in addition to the physical dangers of alienation, there is also a psychological and social toll.

In recent years, the cult of Santísima Muerte (Most Holy Death) has taken over Mexican culture so completely that even the most mainstream-appearing Mexicans are ready to defend the practices and beliefs of the cult, which is (many believe falsely) attributed to the indigenous beliefs of the pre-colonial past.

With copious depictions of what looks like either the Grim Reaper or He-Man’s Skeletor in drag, the cult of Holy Death is not just for celebrants of Halloween.  It is the most visible cult in Mexico.  Gang members have oftentimes commited ritual killings in her honor.  The drug war in Mexico, according to some estimates, has taken over 70,000 lives in recent years and made the country virtually impossible to govern.

Ultimately, the worship of death is a recognition that we are all the mercy of our mortality, that we will all be reaped.  Many people involved in the cult try to bargain with Death, in this way negotiating the frail balance between their constant fears and the need to leave the house daily and have normalcy.  Perhaps the cult of death comes naturally to a people accustomed to daily killings, to seeing death everywhere.  But why should it follow that we should surrender to the impulse of death instead of the impulse of life, merely because she stalks us and haunts us persistently?

A detailed comparative evaluation of the Santisima Muerte cult in Mexico versus the kindred Hindu cult to Mother Kali is beyond the scope of this article, but let’s just say that, while Kali is like a jealous lioness protecting her cubs, Santisima Muerte appears to be a much less tender Mother in Mexican culture.

What must be said here is that there is no need to worship death or be fascinated by it.  Instead, we should take the tonic of the second cure that Philodemus gave us: “There is no-thing to fear in death”, and see her for what she is.  Non-being.  She is not there.  There is nothing, no-thing to fear literally.

Grounded as natural beings

But there must be another cure in addition to taking refuge in Epicurean doctrine.  This, I believe, is the cure of what I like to call groundedness: to confidently stand within our physicality, within our humanity and our nature.  To be and to want to be what we are, no more, no less: mortals, Earthlings, humans.

That we are animals, mammals, one species of hominids descended from the great apes, is not a source of shame or of pride, it is simply a given.  We are beings of nature.

This is why, prior to the study of Ethics, Epicurus advised the study of the Canon and of PHYSICS: a good foundation of understanding about the nature of things is needed in order to live a good life.  The science of ethics can only be grasped after we understand Physics.  All true philosophy must be based on the study of nature.  We DO NOT believe that it’s healthy for people to have to choose between science and spirituality: the only acceptable form of spirituality must have a firm scientific base.

Viewed against the backdrop of these cults and the forces that create them, our animality and naturality should perhaps be even seen as having some redeeming value.  Even if we live stressfully, it’s true that the fight-or-flight instinct saves lives.  Even if we have strong body odor, it’s true that sweating saves us from overheating.  And if we hate excreting waste daily, we should only try to imagine what would happen to us if all the toxicity stayed in our bodies instead of being released.  Whatever we hate in our nature is the fruit of countless generations of natural selection and exists for a reason.  In the end, it’s always best that we are natural beings.

Natural selection is the true way in which we’re chosen.  Religious people have unnatural beliefs about chosenness: the main argument against those beliefs is that a vast number, if not the majority, of the Jewish people are actually atheists.  In what way does it matter that some believe Jews to be God’s chosen, if most of them have chosen not to believe in God?  Humans bear the burden of freedom and can not be chosen in this manner.  But natural selection has always allowed the best adapted members of a group to pass on their traits and knowledge.  It’s not difficult to understand how gifted and blessed we are as natural beings, perfectly suited for our habitat and our planet.  This is how the third cure given by Philodemus can be easily grasped: the things we truly need are easy to procure because we emerged as beings suited just to procure those things.

If, without denying our mortality, we develop a fully indifferent attitude towards the alienating forces, no matter how omnipresent Death may seem, we can then easily focus on life and remain imperturbable in the processes of living, of caring for each other, of exercising, of eating, and all of our other natural activities.

I remember that when I took martial arts classes, I felt like I was at the top of the world after my trainings.  It was an amazing mood-booster to find myself happily in my body, to see how it has the wisdom to produce ecstasy not just through the erotic or ascetic arts of reaching an orgasm or doing yoga, but also through dancing, exercising and singing.  The body can be an ally in our liberation.  We can be free AS the body, never needing to find ourselves outside of it.

There are fair warnings both in life and in all the wisdom traditions against the dangers of being embodied as human, but these should not lead us to cowardly escape.  There is nothing wrong with dreaming of freedom, but this freedom has only one healthy outlet: as an Earthling, as a natural being, as a human, starting from where we are.

Message from Cassius Amicus to the 4th Epicurean Symposium in Athens (voiceover is in English)

Cassius is the author of newepicurean.com.

New Philodemus series at Society of Epicurus

• The following are the first two in a series of reasonings based on the writings of 1st Century Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara, who taught philosophy in Rome and whose scrolls were kept in the Herculaneum and, in the year 70, mostly destroyed by the Mount Vesuvius explosion.
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• His scrolls were rediscovered in recent centuries and fragments have been brought back to see the light of day, which allows us to be able to taste the ripened fruits of Epicurean philosophy as it was taught in a second layer of culture --wealthy Rome, no longer the philosophy's Hellenic Greek cradle.
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Peri Oikonomias (On Property Management) is a commentary on a previous work by the same name that emerged from another school of philosophy.  It presents an Epicurean manual on how to manage our estate.  In these two pieces written for the Society of Friends of Epicurus, I distill the teachings of Philodemus for a contemporary audience and considering how the teachings can be applied in the contemporary world.

• On Philodemus’ Art of Property Management (Part I)
• On Philodemus’ Art of Property Management (Part II)

Boycotting Homophobia

A list of sponsors of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics is graciously provided by the host country.  It includes Coca Cola and McDonalds among its sponsors.

For more on why there is a boycott, you may want to visit the Boycott Sochi facebook page.  An article from the Spectator argues that Putin chose to pick on the wrong minority, and on how it will backfire.

Happy 20th! is live

January 2014 saw the inaugural issue of the Society of Friends of Epicurus' newsletter, titled Happy 20th.  SFE is the first contemporary attempt a Humanist missionary work of this kind and is dedicated to the teaching mission of the Epicurean Gardens.  If you're interested in Humanism, philosophy, prudence, criticizing consumerism, living a frugal and simple lifestyle, minimalism, Zen, and critical thinking, please subscribe and share!