We’ve looked only at what happened after the law was given. But what do the biblical authors tell us about before? Was the Torah itself at least partially an addendum, to earlier laws, or a continuation of prior traditions? In Deuteronomy 5, Moses says that the law they were given at Mount Sinai was brand new, not given to their fathers, but to them; this is despite the fact that he just mentioned a covenant that was given to their fathers in the previous chapter, four centuries earlier, which God promised to also uphold. But what changed between the covenants?
Of course, not even the most legalistically minded would argue that every law was new; for instance, it had obviously always been unlawful to murder, at least in principle if not practice, back to Cain and Abel; this law was even made explicit in the time of Noah, long before even Abraham. But there was definitely much that must have been new from Sinai on, such as the Aaronic priesthood, and rules surrounding Tabernacle worship, none of which could have been done before the life of Aaron and Moses and the existence of the Tabernacle. But how much of Jewish law actually was a continuation of what they were already doing? And what actually changed, even as different portions of the law were revealed at various times in the life of Moses? There are a lot of theologically significant comparisons we could make, but let’s begin with good old-fashioned matters of sex and family.
Command to Get Your Sister-in-Law Pregnant
In the law of Moses, there is a command for the brother of a dead man to take his sister-in-law as wife, and to raise up offspring for his brother, to preserve his brother’s name and property. This is called levirate marriage. It’s easy for moderns to recoil at such an idea, and struggle with the reason for this law, to even judge it as less than ideal; but most moderns have never lived in a tribal society where war, nature—i.e., one’s god—could wipe out a significant number of the male population, and the very existence of a people depend on the ability to keep every womb bearing; polygamy also aided in this, a practice which the Bible never explicitly condemns,[1] but which became taboo among later Christians. And because levirate marriage is so far removed from our culture and society today, I believe many moderns miss the main point of the account of the deaths of Judah’s sons and Tamar in Genesis 38, which is set hundreds of years before Moses’ law.
We’re told that YHVH killed Judah’s firstborn because he was evil. So his second son, Onan, took his brother’s wife, Tamar, according to the levirate rule which apparently was already in effect as we will see more evidence of. God killed Onan, too, after he used the “pull-out” method of contraception; not wanting to affect one’s own inheritance was a real concern.[2] The most popular interpretation of Onan’s sin is that it was sexual in nature. In fact, “onanism”[3] is a term applied today even to masturbation. However, his sin, for which YHVH struck him dead, appears to be that he failed to obey the apparently strict law of levirate marriage that required the producing of offspring. Interestingly, there would be no death penalty for this under the law of Moses, which doled out death like candy at Halloween for some crimes which are not even punishable at all under modern laws; Moses’ penalty for not obeying the law of levirate marriage, interestingly, was for the woman to spit in the man’s face.[4] I’ve often seen preachers gloss right over the fact that Judah didn’t give Tamar to his third son, like he was just being lazy or procrastinating. In ancient times, especially for a nomadic sheik-like paterfamilias like Judah, you didn’t just keep a fertile, espoused woman around without giving her in marriage for the enlargement of the lineage—especially when you had a special covenant from a special God who had told you that he would expand your people via procreation to produce many nations.[5] Judah probably withheld her because he was afraid for his son! He had already lost two, and was down to just one. Fast forward to the end of the story, and you’ll find preachers do even more glossing. “Ah, Judah realized his own sin!” What was that exactly? The same sin his second son had already been killed for. When Judah said “she is more righteous than I,” it was because she had found a way to make that offspring happen! And via incest, no less.[6] Yes, Judah thought his sin of not giving her in marriage to his third son (i.e., obeying the law of levirate marriage, or possibly God’s will for his descendants to become a great tribe) was greater than her dressing up as a prostitute and sleeping with her father-in-law—and all this in a time when such a sexual sin was thought grave enough for the paterfamilias to execute members of his own household.[7] And since we’re on the topic, we should make the side note that the law of Moses did not command death for sex outside of marriage, at least for a male; on the contrary, a man who raped an unmarried girl was…ordered to marry her! Not only that, but he could never divorce her. I challenge anyone to see where the conversation goes by bringing this one up in Sunday school. Though Tamar may have been considered espoused at this point, even though she had not yet been given, in which case, incest aside, just having sex would have actually been punishable by death under the law of Moses. Incest definitely was.[8] Even for a female who was newly married and did not show signs of virginity, the penalty was to be stoned to death.
You may think that we’ve cast sufficient doubt by now regarding the possibility that divine law must be unchangeable, assuming the Bible is divine. These sorts of examples often prevent moderns from fully comprehending what the authors of the Bible were even talking about, as we’ve seen above with the case of Judah and Tamar. Let’s get some practice with a few more, then they should be easier to see when reading the Bible.
Who are/is God?
Below we’ll see the fact that YHVH winked at idolatry, both in the family of Jacob, Abraham, and the rest of the world as well. But then he destroyed his own chosen people because of it? Even while he was still winking at the rest of the world? And he continued to do so at least until the time of Paul, who announced finally the end of that business.[9] I’m not saying that there couldn’t be some cosmically profound reason for a deity to reveal things in stages, or that he didn’t have good reason to treat Israel differently, but these facts shouldn’t get overlooked in Sunday school just because we want to focus on less difficult topics. Scholars even question when monolatry[10] began in the Bible. Abraham and his family weren’t commanded to worship one god that we have a record of. We do not see that command in the Bible until the account of Moses at Sinai. Scholars even argue that the belief in one God (not just the exclusive worship of one) didn’t come along until even later, and that there are multiple references in Scripture to the other gods; Psalm 82 is one of the most glaring examples.
Without getting into that here, let’s just note that in the Torah from the beginning, Elohim is a term often used for God, but is actually plural. It is the plural of the word for god, eloah. In the Hebrew when used for God, however, Elohim is always treated as a singular noun.[11] But, he does say “let us make man in our image” at the beginning of Genesis. Elohim is also used for other celestial beings, and even for man, which is in line with the ancient idea that beings fall on a spectrum of divinity, whether very divine, like the gods (who also have human traits); divinely powerful, like angels, or demi-gods who can even be mixed offspring of celestial beings and man, as we have already seen examples of; and then man, the offspring of the gods, and thus bearing similarities to them, but much weaker.[12]
The Right to Kill
Other details surrounding the societal norms that inevitably occur in tribal cultures—which is what the Israelites were born from—are regarding how justice was to be carried out. Modern Christians often preach that only the state can execute justice, right out of Romans 12. Some teach that even civil laws are a necessary combination with some biblical law, as in the case of marriage certificates. And justice has to be established by impartial people, not angry victims, right? We’ve known that since the Greeks puzzled it out with the grand solution given at the end of the plays of the Oresteia, (458 BCE), when the gods finally sent down law courts to prevent the tribal code of blood vengeance after the inter-familial body count reached that of a Shakespeare play.
And the Bible often seems quite progressive for its time, at least in some ways, even as far back as the Torah. If you knocked out your slave’s eye, you had to let him go free. Witnesses were to throw the first stone in an execution, so maybe that would deter people who hate you from bearing false witness…. If you took a woman in battle, you had to let her mourn her family for a certain period before you could “consummate” the victory.[13] Moderns probably don’t see much in such laws as progressive at all, but the ancient would have seen it clearly. Modern scholarship has even warmed to the idea that the famous “eye-for-an-eye” law that is often seen in a negative light today was actually a limitation on justice, requiring that the punishment should fit the crime.
But in some ways, the Torah was surely a continuation of older, tribal laws. In the case of an accidental homicide, the Law held that if someone killed your relative, you were bound to kill them in retaliation. Moses just gave one little protection more (remember, it’s progressive): if you accidentally killed someone, you should be exonerated in court, right? No, that’s not actually what it says. It says that the family can still kill you. However, you get one protection: if you’re quick enough on your feet (or donkey) and make it to a certain town[14], the avenger was not supposed to kill you. And you still had to stand trial, which hopefully would go your way. And you had to stay in that city until the death of the high priest. And you had to avoid little chats in the gate of the city as well. (Abner is an excellent example of an individual who forgot that last caveat, although Joab would later be punished for his brutality.[15])
There were many other pre-existing societal norms that showed through in the Mosaic law, apart from the sanction of blood vengeance, but I’d like to mention one that is quite admittedly speculative; I only bring it up because it is worth pondering when considering the nature of the Torah’s laws, and how they would have been understood by the faithful Hebrew. One of the earliest archeological evidences for the existence of the Israelites were the absence of pig bones where they lived, in stark contrast to other Canaanite towns around them which did have them.[16] It’s entirely possible that Moses, or some earlier prophet, originated the rule. However, it’s also possible that they already considered pigs to be unfit to eat, (just as most moderns don’t see crickets as something fit to eat, although the Torah allowed it). According to their own accounts, they were from nomadic herdsmen who kept livestock on pastureland. Swine are woodland creatures, and are typically kept by settled peoples who engage in agriculture. (Even Girth the swineherd[17] pastured his swine in the forest, although he is admittedly fictional.) This is not an anti-fundamentalist perspective, either, I don’t believe. YHVH could have used something they already considered unclean, swine, to teach them about ritual uncleanness. Of course on the contrary, it’s also possible that they didn’t already consider pigs unclean, and the prophet ordering them to not touch pork would have been just as radical as the command to uproot and travel to a new land, or to reject one’s trusted gods. Let’s now return to what we’re actually told in the Bible itself….
Another pagan practice which appears in the pre-mosaic accounts is when God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son in Genesis 22. Moderns probably miss the likelihood that Abraham was from or knew of a society that did such things, and that Abraham may have even seen it done. When God asked him, he was certainly willing, even if it was hard for him. It no doubt was for many of the ancients who did; after all, they were humans like us, and how else would it be sacrifice? And the fact that the story fit the culture does not change regardless of whether Abraham was a real person. How many Christians or Jews today, in a culture that lacks this element, would do likewise? The author of that portion of the Torah may have been radical by introducing a God who stopped Abraham’s hand at the very last moment, but up until then, it was not a radical story at all. Moderns have the radical and the expected totally reversed.
More Sister Marriage, Idolatry, and Witchcraft
There are several more examples of interesting comparisons between the law of Moses and earlier practice, but just a few more of the most blatant examples should suffice.
Abraham, the grandfather of Israel, was married to his half-sister.[18] Was this not considered incest before Moses declared it so? It was certainly a practice found in ancient times, especially in Egypt and among the Persians, but was also copied by the Greeks, down to about the time of the birth of the Roman Empire, which generally disapproved of it, Caligula’s supposed orgies with his sister notwithstanding. Marriage of full or half siblings is found in ancient mythology of China, Japan, Egypt, Greece, and Incan civilization; and despite the modern taboo and laws against it, incest between full or half siblings still occurs, and shows up in literature (the modern version of mythology), even if not made explicit, such as in “The Last Good Country” by Ernest Hemingway, and in Pierre by Herman Melville, which I thought was better than Moby Dick.
Interestingly, we are told that Abraham’s family were idolators.[19] The reason given—at least by the writer of Hebrews 11, (1st century CE)—for God choosing him as his vessel for the covenant was because he obeyed one command, to leave his homeland and trust God to guide him to a promised land. Genesis 26 tells us that Abraham was singled out because he obeyed God’s commandments, laws, and teachings. What were those exactly, if Sinai was still hundreds of years way? Did they include allowing sibling incest? Because Abraham came out of paganism, this incest may be a theologically justifiable variant of what God allowed, since God was winking at the idolatry of paganism, as we’ve noted elsewhere. It is noteworthy that Abraham was not commanded to leave Sarah, as the Israelites were in the time of Ezra (see below); this may provoke some cognitive dissonance among some fundamentalists, especially those who use such passages as Ezra 10 to argue that getting remarried after a divorce (sometimes said “divorce for the wrong reason”) is mere fornication that must be left; the argument being that no one wishing to please God can remain in an illicit marriage, and what marriage is more illicit than incest? After all, even polygamy was allowed. And while we’re on the topic of whether some incest was allowed before the law of Moses, there’s always that story regarding how Adam was the first man, and Eve was the mother of all living, and the options their children had for mates….
Judah was also married to a Canaanitess, which Ezra would later forbid, and there is no mention of God disapproving of it, much less commanding him to put her away. Perhaps that was when the inhabitants of the land’s iniquity was not yet full.[20] But as we’ll see, the anti-Canaanite motifs go back to the accounts of the wife selection for Isaac and Jacob[21], the grandfather and father of Judah, respectively. In later books, we’ll examine more fully this idea of what I called “historical revelation”, where such accounts are used as foreshadowing of God’s law and revelation; as such, it could actually be argued that the lesson was for later Israelites.
Jacob also married two sisters, a practice which would also be explicitly forbidden under Moses’ law. As noted earlier, it might well be argued that God had already explicitly laid out his will for marriage in Genesis 2:24, even if there was no corresponding condemnation of polygamy. Many of the ancients probably pointed to the accounts of Jacob’s domestic turmoil—which arose as a result of marrying two sisters—as a prooftext showing God’s disapproval. But both the sisters and their handmaids were the means by which God accomplished his will of creating the twelve tribes of Israel, so there’s that. It might even be argued that there is a natural order that is apparent and should not have to be spelled out by God in every instance, which might be why there is actually no law against rape per se in the Bible.[22] Paul’s argument to this effect seems a little more convincing than Philo (both 1st century CE), who tried to twist the whole Torah into fitting the Stoic model of divine law, as we’ve already seen.
We also see Jacob engaging in a practice that looks like magic, which one would expect to be forbidden under the Mosaic witchcraft laws, though not explicitly so. I am of course referring to him placing striped branches in front of his flocks in order to make them bear striped and spotted offspring, so that he might increase his herds.[23] Furthermore, not only do we not have any sign of condemnation, but the passage also seems to indicate that it worked. Of course, we’re told that God was behind it, but was the magic, if that’s what it was, a part of the process of getting God to help, just like all of the ancients believed magic could help them? Like the council of gods as depicted in Psalm 82 does not fit well with later ideas of monotheism, later concepts of YHVH would seem to be at odds with Jacob’s practice.
And while we’re on the topic of magic, divination[24] is also found throughout the Bible, even a form approved of by God in the Law of Moses using the Urim and the Thummim, although all others were ostensibly forbidden.[25] But apparently there were effective ways to inquire of God before the time of Moses, as in Genesis 25:22, 23. In fact, in Genesis at least, God would often speak to men in dreams, such as king Abimelech and even the idolatrous Laban, who claimed that he too practiced divination, when he reveals the very thing that we’re told that God actually told him.[26] Did the original author of such an account actually thereby indicate that pagans could consult YHVH or the gods via divination? When the sons of Israel were told that the viceroy of Egypt practiced divination by his cup and had found out their sin, there is no indication that they did not believe in such a thing because YHVH had taught them better; to the contrary.[27] And during the time of Moses, when the Urim and Thummim was ostensibly the only authorized method, who is this prophet Balaam who can practice divination by the power of YHVH?[28] Later examples of potentially effective sorcery include Proverbs 17:8, which mentions the effectiveness of a magic stone, and Isaiah 3:3 mentions, as God’s curse on Jerusalem (not some pagan city, mind you), the removal of skillful magicians and those experts in charms, who were perceived in the ancient world (and this passage, apparently) as a benefit to a kingdom. Even the New Testament still spoke of those false prophets who can perform signs and wonders, and even real demonic powers, such as superhuman strength or fortunetelling.[29] And it is still debated whether the witch at Endor who called up Samuel from the dead cried out because she realized it was king Saul who had requested it, or whether she was surprised because it actually worked (i.e., she was just a charlatan); regardless of which is correct, whose power brought up Samuel, it should not go without notice that this is an example of necromancy working, which is something that was widely believed in the ancient world.[30] And one little detail that often goes unnoticed by Christians, mainly due to a bias in translations, is that the “wise men” of Matthew 2 who visited Jesus were actually magi, from the same Greek word for that oh-so-sinful “sorcerer” found in Acts 13; maybe a clue could have been that the magi who found Jesus were effectively practicing astrology, even if it was YHVH who helped them. Matthew is the only gospel that mentions these sorcerers and their star-reading ability. But one of the most fascinating instances of a pagan practice appearing to work is found in 2 Kings 3, when the king of Moab’s military is losing against Israel in the war; but then he takes his son and sacrifices him, and wins! (vv. 26-27)
For a fascinating study on how the ancients’ conceptions of their connection to the divine realm were far different than moderns’, and even from later biblical understandings (and even the Mosaic Law’s), I recommend James Kugel’s book The Great Shift. I am hoping to write a logical extension to it which covers the shift that occurred after the time of Christ and into the age of reason, when magic,[31] temples, sacrifice, and even prophets would eventually be mostly lost from popular belief, except for a few isolated types such as the zodiac, which I would argue is more the exception that proves the rule. I believe bridging this gulf is essential for the average modern believer to grasp how their beliefs and worldviews are often quite different from the ancients’, especially from those who gave us the Bible.
The Command to Cut off Your Foreskin
There were several covenants in Genesis before Moses gave his law. There is an implicit idea of what is called the Adamic covenant, even though part of it was directed at Eve as well, and it includes a list of items decreed by God in Genesis 3 after man sins; these include a curse on the soil, hard labor, and pain in childbearing. But apart from curses, there is one promise that makes this one similar to later covenants, a potently veiled hope of a savior, who will bruise the Serpent’s head, though the Serpent bruise his heel.
The Noahic covenant of Genesis 9 is of course the promise that God would never commit worldwide genocide again by water, though much later prophets would promise a future judgment on the whole earth via fire.[32] Odd that God left that out when he spoke to Noah…. In this covenant, the Adamic curse on the ground is also lifted, which some scholars have argued is an ancient understanding of how agriculture began, centuries after the fact of course.
“’God looked at them and said “They are so wicked, I will have to wipe them off the face of the Earth.”’ Really, that’s your only choice, is it? …Straight to genocide? No one verbal and two written warnings? I mean, anger management….”
—Ricky Gervais
But the pre-Mosaic covenant that gets the most attention is the Abrahamic, which promised that his seed would multiply, possess Canaan, rule the nations, and bring blessings to all of humanity. It is repeated, with different detail in some cases, in Genesis 12, 15, and 17. This covenant is so great for the biblical authors, that the Mosaic covenant will fit inside it, and be simply a fleshing out of how God did what he promised to Abraham. This is true of the Hebrew prophets, but especially true of the New Testament, where we find a few arguments of how the Abrahamic is superior to the Mosaic law, as argued in Hebrews 6-8, and also in Romans 4.
Of course we skipped the Davidic covenant, which puts meat on the bones of the soteriology that possibly began in Genesis 3 with Adam, but is extensively foreshadowed within the Torah,[33] then made very explicit throughout the rest of the Hebrew Bible. It will become essential doctrine for later Jewish groups, for it’s what gives them hope through all of the time that it appears that God has not yet blessed them with the promises of the covenants.[34] However, it too is couched inside the Abrahamic promise. The descendant of David, the anointed, i.e., the Messiah, is the one who will bring about that “one world order” and salvation of God’s people, to whom the whole earth will pay tribute, or at least as described by later prophets. Interestingly though, one of the examples of the promise made to Abraham, found only in one place (Genesis 17), is that his descendants will be many nations, plural, and that his descendants will be kings, plural. And this is all in spite of the argument made in Galatians 3 that the word “offspring” or “seed” was singular, and therefore had to refer to Christ. Another interesting difference should also be noted: Genesis 12 does in fact promise that Abraham will be made into a great nation, singular, despite chapter 17’s plural promise of “nations”. But back to the Mosaic law. What does it keep from this all-important promise to Abraham, according to the Genesis account, at least? The sign of that covenant, that of circumcision. Interestingly, Christianity would ultimately dispense with this requirement, with circumcision being often used as a synonym for Mosaic Israel, despite the New Testament appeals back to the promises made to Abraham in order to show that the Mosaic law had been superseded.[35] However, there is one glaring detail: if circumcision was a seal of the covenant long before Moses, why did the children of Israel four centuries later, when Moses led them out, have to be circumcised? They had not been keeping that law at all! And as we’ll see below, they did not even keep it in Moses’ own time.
[1] There are several New Testament passages that some Christians point to as prooftexts against polygamy, and even from the Hebrew Bible; however, as I said, there is no explicit statement where God reveals that he is putting an end to that, much less a reason why he winked at it in the past but now won’t. See Genesis 2:24, Mark 10:6-9, Romans 7:2-3, and the marriage requirement wording for elders and deacons in I Timothy 3:2, 12; and Titus 1:6. Some have even argued that 2 Samuel 12:7-8 was not a sanction of David’s taking Saul’s wives, but it sure looks like it. We should also note that levirate marriage would only be possible, if polygamy were prohibited, if the surviving brother just happened to be single, which is not mentioned when the law was written.
[2] E.g., compare Ruth 4:6.
[3] Onanism would not be the only odd misinterpretation of Torah on this topic. At least by the time Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, we see that the definition of incest included marriage between brother and previous sister-in-law. That which was good and even commanded became evil—as if there were not enough confusion about what constitutes righteous action in the Bible itself. Such confusion was rife about other issues as well. Here’s a fun example: the prohibition against the eating of horse meat (or at least the commercial sale of it, as in the United States) ultimately comes from a medieval Christian reaction to pagan practice encountered in Northern Europe. The justification used was that the horse is unclean according to the Torah, which is true. But the very same people who made this argument were eating pig! In case you’re wondering, horse is not just legal but popular cuisine in Germany, Switzerland, and even Mexico. Blood puddings also remained popular in many places in Europe, despite explicit commands against such foods, even in the New Testament.
[4] Deuteronomy 25:9
[5] Genesis 17:4-7. This could actually be a theological interpretation for what law they were violating, since God had told them to multiply.
[6] I call it incest based not on modern law, but on the closest law to the textual context that we have, the law of Moses. See Leviticus 18:6ff. It should also be noted that the concept of incest is there, though the Torah has no such term. Also, the prohibition against certain types of “incest” were only in effect while someone was still living, such as the prohibition against taking your wife’s sister as wife while the first wife was still alive, and this seems to be the category of the prohibition against marrying a sister-in-law; however, as we note, the fact that she was still in Judah’s house and espoused to his third son would have probably made it be considered incest. If it was actually not considered incest before Moses, well then that’s just one more example of the entire point of this section: things changed.
[7] Where are the exegetes today who use such passages to argue against “onanism”, who also argue for execution of one’s own children? (C.f. Deuteronomy 21:18-21.) Where are the Sabbath keepers who argue for the rest of the Sabbath law, which commanded execution for those who break it? Maybe Doug Stanhope was right, and no one really believes.
[8] Deuteronomy 22 and 18
[9] See his sermon to the Gentiles in Acts 17.
[10] The worship of a single God, irrespective of how many you believe exist.
[11] Strong’s H430.
[12] Observe the following uses of elohim: in Psalm 8:6, man is said to be a little lower than the “celestial beings” or “gods”, elohim. In some passages, elohim is even used for man: compare John 10:34, 35 to Psalm 82:6. This may stem from judges who were appointed by God to give his ruling (Exodus 21:6), but in Psalm 82, sonship appears to be the reason for the designation.
[13] Exodus 21:26; Deuteronomy 17; 21. Compared to the institutionalized practice of state terrorism wreaked by the Assyrians, and the god-kings of Egypt who answered to no law, and even the code of Hammurabi which had different punishments for the same crime depending on the class of the perpetrator, yes, the Bible actually does have some radically progressive laws; I am not just speaking tongue-in-cheek.
[14] There were to be a total of six cities of refuge throughout the entire original territory of Israel, Numbers 35:6-15.
[15] 2 Samuel 3:27, 33; cf. 2:18-22
[16] The Bible Unearthed, by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, ch. 4
[17] Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott, chapter 1.
[18] Genesis 20:12
[19] Joshua 24:2
[20] Genesis 15:16
[21] Genesis 24:3; 28:1
[22] Yes, there is a punishment, at least for raping a virgin, as noted above, and the death penalty for raping a married woman. But what’s being punished in these laws is actually the deflowering of a virgin of Israel and adultery, respectively. There is, for example, no explicit condemnation for raping one’s own wife, or a captive taken in battle, after the obligatory waiting period. Paul, in an echo of Platonism, argues that the Gentiles had a law without the Law of Moses, in which their God-given consciences guided them; or at least that’s what he appears to be saying…. See Romans 2:12-24.
[23] Genesis 30, 31.
[24] I.e., the practice of acquiring knowledge of the future or the unknown via supernatural help. In case you’re wondering why I bother to define certain words, I was once teaching a class of over a dozen adults, most of whom had been to college, ages 20 to 50, and not a single one knew what divination meant. I was amazed that I had to define it, along with many other terms that I thought were common knowledge.
[25] Exodus 28:30; Numbers 27:21. Inquiring of the dead, fortunetelling, sorcery, or practicing some types of magic was explicitly forbidden in Deuteronomy 18:10, 11 and later Ezekiel 13:18-20.
[26] Genesis 20:3; 30:27
[27] Genesis 44
[28] Numbers 22-23
[29] E.g., Matthew 24:24; 2 Thessalonians 2:9; Revelation 13:13, 14; Acts 16:16; Luke 8:29.
[30] 1 Samuel 28
[31] Actually, the belief in magic persisted as a widely held belief up to the modern era; just consider the Salem witch trials at the end of the 17th century. However, what fell under the umbrella of “superstition”, that which the more “educated” would reject, would grow from around the time of the Platonists, although true Naturalism did not occur until the last couple of centuries. See Dale Martin’s Inventing Superstition. By the time of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, in the late second century, even demons would already be a rejected belief, at least by some educated elite.
[32] 2 Peter 3; cf. Malachi 4:1; Zephaniah 3:8; 2 Thessalonians 1:6-8; Luke 12:49; Revelation 20; 21; Matthew 24:35; 1 Corinthians 3:13
[33] The stories of Joseph and Moses being some of the greatest savior symbols.
[34] See following chapters.
[35] Not all of the New Testament necessarily supports this view, as we’ll see.