For some time, I have been planning an article with the title I have given to this one. My purpose was going to be to examine the extremes that bibliolaters resort to in their defense of the untenable belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of an omniscient, omnipotent deity who lived in a tent that desert nomads carried around with them 3,500 years ago (Ex. 25:8, 22; 29:42-45; Num. 5:3). We are all familiar with the colloquial expression "leaning over backwards," which is often applied to those who go to uncommon, and sometimes drastic, ex- tremes to achieve a goal or perhaps to accommodate someone who is hard to please. "I lean over backwards to satisfy you," an exasperated wife might say to a critical husband. She means, of course, that she exceeds reasonable expectations in trying to please her husband.
Having had the title "Leaning Over Backwards for God" in mind for some time, when Marion Fox's long-awaited defense of Deuteronomy 23:2 arrived, I decided to brush the title off and finally write my article. Mr. Fox's "resolution" of the "bastard problem" provides an excellent background to show how that Christian fundamentalists go to unreasonable extremes in their efforts to prove that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. They truly "lean over backwards for God."
Let's notice first that Fox's article really solved nothing, because he arrived at no firm conclusions about what Deuteronomy 23:2 means. Like most Bible fundamentalists, he apparently belongs to the any-interpretation-will-do school of hermeneutics. In other words, when it comes to resolving a Bible contradiction, he is satisfied with any explanation that sweeps the problem under a rug of could- have-beens. Whether any of the explanations actually capture the intended meaning of a disputed passage doesn't matter. If the inerrancy doctrine is techni- cally preserved by a how-it-could-have-been explanation, that is the important thing. Thus, truth becomes incidental to doctrine and tradition, and that alone speaks volumes about the validity of this familar method of "resolving" biblical "difficulties."
This hermeneutic approach cheapens the Bible far more than the "liberal" interpretations of scripture that fundamentalists openly despise. So-called liberal theologians reject the inerrancy view of the Bible but still contend that it has an overall value on "higher levels" that transcend archaic inerrancy views. To a liberal, determining the writer's intended meaning of a given passage should be a primary goal of the Bible reader. If the meaning that honest and objective methods of interpretation lead to should conflict with another scripture, the liberal theologian will try to understand the reason for this, perhaps see it as a normal development in the course of human efforts to discover God. A fundamentalist, on the other hand, must believe that the intended meaning of a "given passage" isn't nearly as important as an interpretation that doesn't disagree with what was written anywhere else in the Bible. Ultimately, this approach to hermeneutics strips the Bible of all value. If it is indeed the "word of God," what does it matter, because it means not what the writers intended as they were writing but what- ever the cleverest apologist wants it to mean? Such an apologist could decree that the "given passage" under consideration means X today, but if biblical criticism should afterwards discover that X conflicts with another text that had hitherto gone unnoticed, then a clever apologist of that time will go to work and decide that the "given passage" didn't mean X after all but "could have meant" Y, which would eliminate the conflict. This type of hermeneutic juggling has been going on for generations, and if it gives Mr. Fox and his inerrantist cohorts comfort, all I can say is to each his own. Intellectual integrity happens to be more important to me than that.
In the matter of Deuteronomy 23:2 , Mr. Fox has presented five how-it-could-have-been solutions to the problems posed by Yahweh's ban on bastards entering his assembly. He used the usual hit-and-run tactic of fundamentalists, which is long on assertions but short on supporting evidence, so all five of his possible solutions were presented in little more than a single page with about a third of that space devoted to some general comments about "common errors made by Atheists and Agnostics." In responding to Mr. Fox's article, I will not use his assert- without-proof approach. I will instead examine his points in depth, and to do this, some rather tedious analyses of genealogical passages will be necessary to show that many of Mr. Fox's "arguments" are baseless quibbles. Complete responses to all five of his "solutions" cannot be done in the space available at this time, so this article will focus only on the genealogy of David to show that Israel's most famous king should have fallen under the ban on bastards stated in Deuteronomy 23:2 . A follow-up article will be published in the next issue to examine the other "solutions" Mr. Fox proposed.
His first argument was that "David might have been the generation that was allowed to enter the assembly (the tenth generation)." This familiar attempt to circumvent the problem has been proposed by those who have noticed that David was the 10th generation in the lineage of Perez (Ruth 4: 18-22), if Perez is considered the first generation. Since Deuteronomy 23:2 says, "(E)ven to the tenth generation shall none of his [the bastard's] enter into the assembly of Yahweh," this could mean that David, who was a 10th-generation bastard, would have been entitled to enter into the assembly. However, such an interpretation of the statement ignores obvious intent. The expression "even to the tenth generation" didn't mean that the generations descended from a bastard should be counted so that the tenth generation could be admitted to the assembly. It was simply an intensifying expression that meant "forever." In its definition of the word "bastard," Eerdmans Bible Dictionary agrees with this view:
The meaning of "forever" will be more apparent in the expression if we keep in mind that the word to in most English translations was not in the original Hebrew text. Literally, the Hebrew meant, "A bastard enters not [Hebrew didn't have a future tense] into the assembly of Yahweh, even the tenth generation of him enters not into the assembly of Yahweh," and this is the way that Young's Literal Translation of the Bible renders it. Hendrickson's Interlinear Bible translates it the same way with to enclosed in parentheses, which according to the preface is intended to identify words that may be implied but were not actually in the Hebrew text.
The misimpression (if indeed it is a misimpression and not just an attempt to circumvent a textual embarrassment) results from the fact that we are accustomed to "even to" or "even till" having the meaning of "up until," but even in English it doesn't always have that meaning. If a young man said to his girlfriend, "I will love you even till I'm old and gray," he obviously would mean that he would love her forever. What young lady hearing a pledge like this would understand it to mean that her boyfriend would love her until he was "old and gray" and then he would stop loving her?
Of course, no inerrantist defense of a problem like this would be complete without a gaps-in-the-genealogy argument, so Mr. Fox didn't disappoint us. "In order to know that his argument is sound," Fox said, "Farrell must know that there are no gaps in the genealogies." For those who may be new to the inerrancy controversy, I should explain that several genealogy-based discrepancies exist in the Bible. What is said in genealogy A disagrees with what is said in genealogy B or passage C or both, and what is said in genealogy D disagrees with what is said in genealogies A and B and passage C, etc. Exodus 12:40, for example, says that the Israelites had "sojourned" in Egypt 430 years, but this is hard to reconcile with a genealogy in Exodus 6:16-20, which indicates that Moses and Aaron were grandsons of Kohath, a son of Levi, who had already been born when Jacob took his family into Egypt (Gen. 46:11). The problem here is obvious. If Kohath, who had already been born before the Egyptian sojourn began, lived to be only 133 (Ex. 6:18) and if Kohath's son Amram (the father of Moses and Aaron) lived only 137 years (Ex. 6:17-20), then how could 430 years have passed between the entry of the Israelites into Egypt and their exodus under the leadership of the 80-year-old Moses (Ex. 7:7)? "Simple," say the inerrantists, "there are gaps in the Exodus 6 genealogy and all others that indicate that Moses and Aaron were only grandsons of Kohath." There were some generations that the writers just didn't list in their genealogies. Jerry Moffitt and I debated this very issue in the Winter and Spring 1990 editions of TSR, and this is exactly the position he took.
So what Marion Fox is arguing in the matter before us is that David could possibly have been more than 10 generations removed from Perez, but we just don't know it because the genealogists who recorded the Judah-Perez lineage could have skipped some generations. In other words, Fox's strategy is to claim a "possible" solution for which there is no proof and then to challenge me to prove that his "solution" is not true. In this case, I must prove that the genealogists who recorded the Judah-Perez lineage did not skip any generations.
I find it hard to understand why a rational person would cling to beliefs that drive him to such improbable defensive tactics as this. Let's imagine a small community in Illinois where everybody knows John Jones, who has just retired after having served as the local high school principal for 30 years. Now let's imagine that an unmasked man walks into the bank in this town, pulls a gun, tosses a black gym bag onto the counter, orders the five tellers on duty to fill the bag with money, and then flees in a blue, 1991 Chevrolet Cavalier bearing the license number HGE-692.
The police investigate and find that the car just described was registered to John Jones, and the tellers, questioned individually, all say that they recognized the robber as John Jones. Three of the tellers are graduates of the high school where Jones was principal, and the other two had personally served Jones many times when he was in the bank either to deposit or withdraw money. Ten other employees and five customers who had been in the bank at the time of the robbery testify that they all had known John Jones personally for several years and that they had recognized the robber as Jones. The tapes recorded by the surveillance cameras were viewed by four different police officers who had personally known Jones for several years, and they all agreed that Jones was the man shown on the tapes wielding a gun and perpetrating the robbery. An audit revealed that $52,540 had been taken in the robbery.
That night, John Jones is arrested at O'Hare Airport in Chicago as he was buying a ticket to Brazil. In the airport parking lot, the police find a blue 1991 Chevrolet Cavalier with the license number HGE-692. In the trunk, they discover a black gym bag and a .38 caliber pistol, and in carry-on baggage that Jones had with him, the police found $52,000. In his wallet, Jones had $320.
The situation certainly looked bad for Jones, but after all of the evidence and testimony was presented at his trial, Jones's lawyer argued that unknown to the people who had testified against him, Jones had an identical twin brother. The lawyer told the court that Jones and his twin had been born in Timbuktu, while his parents were serving as missionaries. Shortly after the birth of the twins, the parents had been killed in a plane crash and the twins separated by adoption. All contact between the twins had been lost until the week of the robbery when Jones's twin brother had suddenly shown up in a surprise visit. The twins had not left Jones's house during the visit, so that was why no one had seen them together. On the morning of the robbery, Jones and his brother had started for Chicago in Jones's car so that the brother could catch a flight to Katmandu, Nepal, where he was now living. Along the way, the brother discovered that he had left his passport at Jones's house, or so he had said, and Jones, not wanting to make the tiring drive back home, had let his brother use his car to drive back for the passport, while Jones himself had attended an early afternoon movie in Joliet. Obviously, the twin brother had taken advantage of Jones's trust and had committed the robbery. So why was Jones trying to go to Brazil at the time of his arrest? Well, the lawyer explained, he was simply fulfilling a life-long ambition. He had always wanted to visit Brazil but never could because of his job. Now that he was retired, however, the opportunity was there, and he was simply taking it. Since Jones had had to drive his brother to Chicago anyway, he had decided that it would be as good a time as any to go to Brazil. After all, is there any crime in wanting to visit Brazil? And the money in the carry-on bag? "That's not hard to explain," the lawyer said. "Mr. Jones had squirreled the money away over the past several years expecting someday to make his dream trip." The lawyer explained that Jones had kept the money at home rather than depositing it in a savings account, because having it where he could count it each night encouraged his saving habits more so than if he had deposited it in a bank. Eccentric, yes, but there is no law against eccentricity. "Is it unreasonable," the lawyer concluded, "to think that a man who had never married and therefore had never had the financial responsibility for anyone but himself could save fifty-two thousand dollars over a period of several years?" The lawyer concluded with a challenge for the prosecution to prove that the details in Jones's alibi had not happened exactly as they had been presented to the court. "To convict my client," the lawyer said, "the prosecution must know, not just think or wish but know, that the details in his alibi are wrong."
I apologize to the readers for the tediousness of this example, but I have intentionally made it tedious in order to make a serious observation about the apologetic tactics of Mr. Fox and his inerrantist cohorts. As compelling as the evidence was against Jones in my example, who could prove that the details of Jones's defense were absolutely not true? Nothing that Jones's lawyer said in his defense was absolutely not possible, yet a juror would have to be gullibly naive to accept such an unlikely story over the compelling evidence against Jones. Who would dare base important daily decisions on such unlikely scenarios?
I submit that this example is parallel to what Bible inerrantists do. Confronted with contradictions or discrepancies when the face-value meaning of the biblical text is accepted, inerrantists will postulate far-fetched, how-it-could-have-been scenarios and then challenge critics of the Bible to prove absolutely that the how-it-could-have- been "solutions" are absolutely not possible. Mr. Fox resorted to this tactic when he said at the conclusion of his article, "Farrell Till must know that all of the above explanations are wrong, not just think they are wrong or wish them to be wrong" (emphasis added).
To show the absurdity of Mr. Fox's apologetic methods, I will issue to him the same challenge that I have issued to other inerrantists, none of whom has ever accepted. If he will send me an example of what he perceives to be a contradiction or discrepancy that he has found in any written document, I will use his "apologetic" methods to prove that no contradiction or discrepancy exists. His example may come from the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Avesta, or any other holy book, or it can come from any secular document--the Iliad, the Aenid, a Shakespearean play; it doesn't matter. It can be an example from any written document whose author(s) is now dead or otherwise unavailable to explain his/her intention. If he will send me the alleged contradiction from any such document, I will use his methods to show that no contradiction exists. I will do this by simply postulating "possible" figurative meanings or how-it-could-have-been scenarios, such as copying or printing errors, different methods of calculating or the rounding off of figures, the nonexistence of original autographs, phenomenological or accommodative language, etc., etc., etc.-- and thereby prove that no contradiction or discrepancy exists. Mr. Fox's task will then be to prove that he knows, not just wants or wishes but knows, that none of my explanations is possible.
Mr. Fox wants us to consider some "common errors made by atheists and agnostics," but can any errors in the reasoning of atheists and agnostics be more ridiculous than the "logic" that bibliolaters use to protect their precious inerrancy doctrine? Their logic makes contradiction and discrepancy impossible, but anyone with common sense knows that contradictions and discrepancies are hard realities.
As for "gaps" in David's genealogy, it really doesn't matter whether there are gaps in it or not. The intent of the language in Deuteronomy 23:2 was to ban a bastard's descendants from the assembly permanently or forever, as noted in Eerdman's Bible Dictionary, so whether David was 10 generations or 50 generations removed from Perez is immaterial to the issue. The ban would still have applied had it really been a law written by Moses that was meant to apply to all Israelites impartially. Bible scholars know, of course, that the book of Deuteronomy wasn't even written until after David's reign, but that is another issue that Mr. Fox may want to debate later. For now I will limit myself to analyzing Deuteronomy 23:2 on the assumption that it was a law that Yahweh decreed through Moses.
The ban on bastards if evaluated in context should convince any reasonable person that the writer did not mean that descendants of bastards should be banned for ten generations and then with the tenth or eleventh be allowed to enter. They were to be banned forever. To determine this obviously intended meaning, let's look at the passage in context:
Although this is technically off subject, I feel compelled to say that this passage is an insult to the intelligence of civilized people. It depicts Yahweh, Mr. Fox's omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god, as an outrageously prejudiced grudge-bearer. The passage in its entirety banned people from the assembly for acquired physical imperfections (crushed testicles and amputated penises, v:1), circumstances of birth (illegitimacy, v:2), and ethnic origin (Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, and Egyptians specifically singled out for exclusion, vv:3-8). Rather than recognize this passage as the primitive, barbaric tripe that it is, Mr. Fox leans over backwards to defend it. If he sees virtue in that, let him. I will pity him but certainly not envy him.
In support of my position that saying "even a tenth generation of him [the bastard] enters not into the assembly of Yahweh" was intended to mean forever, I ask the readers to compare the expression with the next verse, which banned Ammonites and Moabites from the assembly: "(E)ven to the tenth generation shall none belonging to them enter into the assembly of Yahweh forever." By directly adding the word forever at the end of the statement, the writer clearly showed that the expression "even [to] the tenth generation" didn't mean "up until" ten generations and then after that the ban would be lifted, but rather that the ban was to be permanent, one that was to last forever. To emphasize that the ban was to last forever, he repeated it after bigotedly explaining why Yahweh wanted Ammonites and Moabites excluded from his assembly: "Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days forever" (v:6). Yahweh was a veritable paragon of compassion and tolerance, wasn't he?
The ban on Edomites and Egyptians (v:7) is also significant, because it shows that when restrictions for a specific number of generations were intended, the limitations were expressly stated: "The children of the third generation that are born unto them [proselytized Edomites and Egyptians] shall enter into the assembly of Yahweh" (v:8). Surely, then, if the writer had meant that bastards were to be banned from the assembly only up until ten generations, he would have been as specific about that as he was in stating the limitations on Edomites and Egyptians. So Mr. Fox's argument is without merit. Even if there were "gaps" in the Perez-David genealogies, David would still have fallen under the ban on bastards, because the ban was to last forever.
As for the actual number of generations between Perez and David, I'm going to surprise Mr. Fox and admit that if there actually was a person named Perez, who was born at the time claimed in Genesis 38:29, and if King David, who lived at the time claimed in the books of Samuel, was a direct descendant of this Perez, then there surely were more than just ten generations separating Perez and David. In Mythology's Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus, William Harwood shows how that Bishop Ussher's chronology of the Old Testament would have required each of David's ancestors from Perez through Jesse to have "reached the age of eighty before fathering an heir" (p. 221). That is so unlikely that we can reasonably assume that it just didn't happen.
So am I conceding this point to Mr. Fox? Not at all, because the biblical writers obviously thought that only ten generations separated Perez and David or else they were so careless in their writing that no rational person can believe that they were verbally inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity. Either way the inerrancy doctrine suffers, and Mr. Fox loses.
The genealogy of Perez through David is listed four times in the Bible: Ruth 4:18-22, 1 Chronicles 2:4-15, Matthew 1:3-6, and Luke 3:31-33. Each time, the following generations were listed: Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, and David. Luke's genealogy has Arni for Ram, but a footnote in most reference Bibles explains that "many ancient authorities" have Aram, an apparent variation of Ram. We can well imagine what inerrantists would say if anyone tried to argue that Luke's use of Arni or Aram for Ram constituted a discrepancy, so no inerrantist is going to argue that Luke's genealogy of David disagrees with the other three. So at this point, I will enter into evidence Exhibit A: Whenever Bible writers recorded genealogies that extended from Perez through David, they always listed the same ten names as those noted above, no more and no less. If biblical genealogists had been aware that there were more than ten generations between Perez and David, surely at least one of them would have filled in a gap or two that the others had left in their records. Or did the omniscient, omnipotent Holy Spirit, who verbally inspired those genealogists, intentionally complicate his "revealed truth" in this matter in order to test our faith and identify those who have "good and honest hearts" (as if an omniscient deity wouldn't already know those who have good and honest hearts)?
In addition to the four complete genealogies, there are partial genealogies that, considered collectively, confirm that biblical writers believed that the ten generations listed above constituted David's complete genealogy back to his ancestor Perez. The book of Ruth clearly teaches that Ruth's levirate husband, Boaz, was the father of Ruth's son Obed, so there would be no "gap" between Boaz and Obed. Ruth 4:17, after stating that Ruth's son was named Obed, says that he [Obed] was "the father of Jesse, the father of David." The Bible so explicitly presents David as the literal son of Jesse (1 Sam. 16:8-13) that Mr. Fox can't dare argue that there was a "gap" between Jesse and David, so if Jesse was literally David's father, then the author of Ruth surely meant that Obed was literally the father of Jesse. Hence, we can reasonably conclude that the biblical writers did not think that there were any "gaps" between Boaz and David. Otherwise, Mr. Fox must argue that the author of Ruth, within the space of eight words, equivocated on the meaning of the word father, and that would be a curious writing error for a verbally inspired author to make.
Genesis 46:12 listed Hezron and Hamul as sons of Perez who went into Egypt with Jacob, and this agrees with a partial genealogy in Numbers 26:19-22, which says that Shelah, Perez, and Zerah were sons of Judah. That the word sons was being used literally is confirmed by Genesis 38. Verse 5 says that Judah's Canaanite wife bore him a son and called his name Shelah, so Shelah was literally Judah's son. Verses 13-30 relate the story of the deception that Tamar used to trick Judah into impregnating her. She gave birth to twin sons (vv:29-30), who were named Perez and Zerah, so these twins were literally the sons of Judah. Therefore if the word sons in Numbers 26:20 was used literally in reference to the relationship between Judah and Shelah, Perez, and Zerah, we must conclude that the word sons was intended literally in the next verse, which declared that the sons of Perez were Hezron and Hamul. Otherwise, Mr. Fox must again argue that a verbally inspired writer equivocated over the space of just two verses of scripture.
If Mr. Fox tries to argue that there was a "gap" between Perez and Hezron, he will find himself in even more trouble than he now is. Biblical scholars have long recognized that the chronology of Genesis 37 through 46 doesn't allow enough time for Perez to have fathered even two sons, much less grandsons or great-grandsons, before the Israelite descent into Egypt. This subject will be discussed in detail in a debate that will be published in a future issue of TSR, so I will present the problem just very briefly here. Joseph was seventeen when his brothers sold him into Egypt (Gen. 37:2), and he was 30 when pharaoh appointed him chief food administrator (Gen. 41:46). After the seven years of plenty in Egypt and two years of famine (or nine years later), Joseph was reunited with his brothers (Gen. 45:6), whom he then brought into Egypt with his father's extended family. So Joseph was only about 39 or 40 when the Israelites went into Egypt. In other words only 22 or 23 years passed between the selling of Joseph and the migration of the Israelites into Egypt, at which time Hezron and Hamul were listed as two sons of Perez who went into Egypt (Gen. 46:12).
The chronological problem arises out of the fact that immediately after the selling of Joseph was recorded by the Genesis writer, he said in 38:1 that "it came to pass at that time" that Judah married his Canaanite wife, an event that precipitated all of the events recorded in the chapter. Judah's wife bore him three sons. The first two sons grew up and married Tamar, died without producing offspring, and then Judah's wife died, and Tamar tricked Judah into impregnating her. [What this morally corrupt country needs is wholesome literature on our bookshelves, like these stories we find in the Bible.] Tamar gave birth to the twins, Perez and Zerah, and when the Israelites went into Egypt Perez had two sons, Hezron and Hamul. Can any sensible person believe that all of this happened within the space of 22 or 23 years?
Confronted with a problem like this, surely Mr. Fox won't try to argue that there could have been a "gap" between Perez and Hezron, so he is forced to admit that the Genesis writer at least thought that Hezron was Perez's son and not his grandson or an even more distant descendant.
Exodus 6:23 says that Aaron married Elisheba, "the daughter of Amminadab, the sister of Nahshon." So if Elisheba was the daughter of Amminadab and the sister of Nahshon, that would have made Amminadab and Nahshon father and son. If not, why not? Nahshon was an important leader of the tribe of Judah during the exodus and wilderness wanderings, and he was often referred to as "Nahshon the son of Amminadab" (Num. 1:7; (2:3; (7:12, (17; (10:14). When the writer of Numbers called Nahshon the son of Amminadab, did he mean son in a literal sense? According to Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, the word son [Hebrew, ben] was used 143 times in Numbers. I have checked them all and found none that gives any reason to believe that it was used in a broader sense than the literal meaning of son. In (Matthew 15:22, for example, Jesus was called the "son of David," in a context in which the word son obviously could not have been literal, but in Numbers there are no examples like this. Instead, the writer repeatedly wrote in terms of so-and-so being the son of so-and-so. In (1:20, for example, Reuben was called "the eldest son of Israel [Jacob]," which (Genesis 29:32 tells us that he literally was; Eleazar was called the son of Aaron ((4:16; (20:25, 26, 28), and according to (Exodus 6:23, Eleazar literally was the son of Aaron. I could cite numerous examples like these among the many other times that the writer used son, so the evidence from Exodus and Numbers plainly indicates that the writer(s) thought that Nahshon was literally the son of Amminadab.
So let's look at the complete genealogy again with certain of the names emphasized in bold print: Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, and David. I have established that biblical writers at least thought that literal father-son relationships existed between all of the names in bold print, so if there are any "gaps" in the genealogy, they would have to fall between Hezron and Ram or Ram and Amminadab or between Nahshon and Salmon or Salmon and Boaz. The biblical text leaves no reasonable cause to claim that gaps could have occurred anywhere else.
(First Chronicles 2:3-13, however, dashes all hope that Mr. Fox may have of finding gaps on either side of the positions occupied by Ram and Salmon in the Perez-David genealogy. Let's notice first that the writer began by identifying the "sons of Judah" and then named Er, Onan, and Shelah, who had been born to Judah's Canaanite wife ((Gen. 38:3-5), and then named Perez and Zerah, who had been born to Tamar. "All the sons of Judah were five," he concluded (v:4), so clearly he was using the word sons literally. Next he listed the "sons of Perez," Hezron and Hamul (v:5). Since we have established that Hezron was surely the literal son of Perez, we must conclude that the word sons was being used literally in this part of the genealogy too.
In verse 9, the writer listed the "sons also of Hezron that were born unto him." Of the three sons that were "born unto him [Hezron]," Ram was listed as the second one, so any reasonable person must conclude that the genealogist thought that Ram was literally the son of Hezron. Right before Mr. Fox's eyes, then, another possibility of a gap has vanished.
As the genealogy continued, the writer said, "And Ram begat Amminadab" (v:10). Does this necessarily mean that Ram literally "begat" Amminadab or could he have begotten Amminadab only in the sense that Amminadab was a descendant, possibly only a grandson or a great-grandson? Well, the same verse says, "(A)nd Amminadab begat Nahshon," and we have already established a literal father-son relationship between Amminadab and Nahshon. So if "Amminadab begat Nahshon" meant that Amminadab was literally Nahshon's father, why wouldn't "and Ram begat Amminadab," used in the same context, mean that Ram was literally Amminadab's father. The same argument would extend to verse 11 in the genealogy where it says, "and Nahshon begat Salma [Salmon], and Salma [Salmon] begat Boaz." Unless begat means here what it meant in the preceding verses, a verbally inspired writer equivocated, and that is a recognized logical error.
So where are the "gaps" in this genealogy? All recognized rules of literary interpretation lead to only one conclusion: the biblical writers believed that only ten generations had separated Perez and David. Mr. Fox's quibble is only a desperate grasp for some straw that he can cling to in his frantic effort to defend a view of the Bible that has been abandoned by virtually all serious Bible scholars. Mr. Fox even concocted a syllogism intended to prove that I was begging the question on the matter of how many generations there were between Perez and David, but actually I had never considered the number of generations in the genealogy a serious point, because, as the evidence above clearly shows, the intent of Deuteronomy 23:2 was to ban descendants of bastards from the assembly forever. So whether David was 10 generations or 50 generations removed from Perez isn't relevant. He was a descendant of Perez, and that is all that matters. Nevertheless, I have established by Mr. Fox's own inspired word of God that biblical genealogists obviously thought that only ten generations separated Perez and David, so now we will wait for Mr. Fox to show just where I am begging the question.
I will respond to Fox's comments about "common errors made by atheists and agnostics" in the next issue, as well as his other "solutions" to the problem that Deuteronomy 23:2 poses to the inerrancy doctrine. However, one of his remarks about errors in reasoning that skeptics make was so silly that I will answer it in this article. This occurred when he presented his second syllogism as an example of how skeptics reason:
