Want to read something hilarious? Here’s a defense of the following meme:

I know I’m going to regret even going near this but…

Deuteronomy is a 7th century BC edited version of a much older oral tradition telling the story of a bronze age foundation myth and its associated law code.

Within the context of that bronze age foundation myth, the second generation of Israelites after the Exodus from Egypt are about to embark on the conquest of Canaan and are given instructions by Moses on how to form a nation once the land is taken. Those instructions are extremely focussed on the establishment of national identity by way of racial purity and religious distinctiveness.

In that context, the people, after the establishment of the nation, are told in no uncertain terms to not tolerate anyone who ‘secretly entices’ them to a foreign religion (Deut 13;6), as this is the first doorway to allow the Canaanites to dissolve the new nation. They are told that any city ‘among the towns that the Lord your God is giving you to live in’ that has fallen under the sway of ‘troublemakers’ (Deut 13:12) and has thereby effectively seceded from the new nation must be destroyed – this is not an instruction to go looking for foreign cities to destroy, it’s a policing action against ones own. They are told that if a rogue citizen, living in their cities follows foreign religious practice (and thereby declares a foreign political allegiance and the potential to be a foreign agent provocateur), they are to be put to death, but only after careful examination and concrete evidence or testimony of more than one person (Deut 17 -2-7).

There is an underlying implication throughout the Pentateuch that the worship of the Canaanite Gods is morally reprehensible – leaving aside the henotheism of the Israelites, the sexual aspects of local fertility rites broke various Israelite taboos – but the primary intent here is national security by way of religious propaganda.

The 7th Centure BC redactor who records the story and instructions for establishment of the nation is working in the imperial courts of a foreign Empire. The nation he is describing has already been destroyed by foreign powers and its people returned to foreign captivity, so there is a certain element of manifesto here – this is what went wrong last time, here is how we should do it better next time when we get the chance – stronger national, racial, and religious identity through the imposition of social control.

These were never instructions for Christians, who did not exist at the time of either the oral historian or the redactor. They are not instructions for modern Jews. They are not even religious laws – they are history and political manifesto. The proper identification of genre and context is the first key to understanding biblical text responsibly, and that alas is a skill that is sorely lacking in online discussion – the meme has been stripped of all context and nuance to create dog-whistle clickbait. A more nuanced question for debate would be whether modern Christians can or should draw lessons about the importance of distinctive identity and the dilution of religious practice from such texts given the overt bias and nationalistic intent of the dual authors, or whether those intentions are so unpalatable today that such texts should be downplayed in favour of the reframing of such matters imported by the New Testament authors…

Re Richard Fisher’s comment about God changing his mind on such things, a more nuanced way of understanding the Bible as holy text is to view it as a series of works recording history of God’s interaction with his people over time, written by dozens of authors in dozens of genres, and each with their own agendas and biases and even potentially errors. It is all inspired by God, and it is all useful for teaching and the development of relationship with the God it describes, but it is not EQUALLY useful. The knowledge of God evolves over time towards a more perfect understanding and the relationship between man and God likewise develops over time, and this is the purpose of the Bible – to chronicle this evolution. I can learn from the mistakes and agendas of the past, but in a different way that I learn from more advanced, ‘purer’ conceptions of God’s will. This is the faith position of my own Christian tradition.

So what does that mean about how we view the Bible, particularly what it says about homosexuality and forcing your religion on everyone?