Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God Paperback – January 1, 2011

This has become a go-to reference for me. Copan does a great job of shedding light on the weirdness and ugliness of the Old Testament. He has reverence for the Word and a deep understanding of the goodness and righteousness of God.

Have you ever read the Bible and concluded that the picture of God you see in both Testaments seems to be in contradiction with one another? If you've ever thought that the God of the Old Testament is seemingly portrayed as an angry, blood-thirsty, jealous, worship-demanding King; while the New Testament seems to paint a very different picture - a God of love, grace,, kindness, and mercy, you're not alone.These distinctions have led some to conclude that the various writers in both Testaments talked about a different God altogether. Others have moved one step further and determined that the Old Testament should not even be a part of the Biblical canon. Others still have accepted both Testaments as inspired Scripture, yet have never understood the portrait of God they see depicted in the Old. These concerns present us with nothing new. If Christians have often struggled with trying to find a reasonable conclusion to this important issue, many others who do not subscribe to the Christian faith have all the more.In his latest book, Paul Copan confronts this issue head-on. Using the criticisms of the New Atheists as his conversation partners (specifically Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens), Copan attempts to forge a better way forward by looking through a broader interpretive lens that incorporates God's overarching goal for the Israelite people, and ultimately, for everyone who ever lived.The book is broken down into four parts:1. Neo-Atheism - This section highlights New Atheists arguments against the God they see highlighted in the Old Testament and their shared criticisms.2. God: Gracious Master or Moral Monster? - This section discusses the topics of God demanding worship, divine jealousy and abuse/bullying.3. Life in the Ancient Near East - This section is the longest in the book and deals with Israel's developing legislation pertaining to food laws, war, woman, polygamy, slavery, ethnic cleansing and the relationship between religion and violence.4. Sharpening the Moral Focus - This section concludes the book by providing arguments against Atheistic claims concerning the unnecessary relationship between God and morality and the absolute necessity of reading the Old and New Testaments alike through the lens of Jesus Christ.Copan has also included a discussion/study guide at the end of the book for use in small groups.Is God a Moral Monster? is a question that many people from various walks of life have asked over the centuries and continues to be front and center in contemporary debates. The question is one that cannot be avoided and must be confronted honestly and thoughtfully. Paul Copan does just that. Written in a style that makes it accessible to most everyone, he provides a contextual and careful examination of the issues, while offering a more biblically faithful way forward. I found the book extremely helpful in finding a way through the historical distance I face in reading the Old Testament and finished the book with answers to many of my questions. I think you will too.I recommend this book to everyone who has read the Old Testament and asked many of these same questions. I think you will find the book to be stimulating, thoughtful, engaging and profitable. If you have ever desired to better understand the context of the Old Testament, this book is a step in the right direction.

Each section of this book begins with a vicious attack on God from one of the "New Atheists" (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens) who were popular in the last decade. But many people, even fair-minded atheists, want to know if God really as bad as the New Atheists claim. This book addresses many troublesome passages in the Old Testament, verse by verse, and concludes that God's laws were not perfect but were not nearly as bad as they seem to modern laymen. Anyone interested in this topic needs to read this book because it seems to be the only comprehensive book on this topic written for laymen.Three chapters are devoted to the issue of slavery and the translation of a Hebrew word that can be translated as "slave", "servant", or "indentured servant". The best translation is almost always indentured servant. Poor people would voluntarily enter service for up to 7 years to receive free room and board and to discharge a debt. Israel's law mandated their release from service and cancellation of the debt after no more than 7 years. It also mandated the master pay compensation to the servant if he injured the servant and the death penalty for him if he killed the servant. "The critic's common association of Israel's servant laws with those of the antebellum South is seriously misguided."Three chapters are also devoted to the charge that God and Israel were guilty of genocide. First, God commanded Israel not to kill Canaanites because they did not worship God. He wanted Israel to eliminate temples and sacred pillars because they were used for immoral practices such as temple prostitution, human sacrifice, and even killing their own children. Second, many of the "towns" attacked by the Israelis were not towns but military forts outside towns containing mostly soldiers and perhaps a few innkeepers and prostitutes. And finally, the Bible contains boastful exaggeration which was common in the Near East, from Egypt to Assyria. For example, God tells Saul to "not spare" the Amalekites, "put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey". But the Amalekites continued to fight Israel for generations. Similar passages show that "utterly destroying" the Canaanites doesn't stop them from fighting Israel for several more generations.Other topics include charges that:God demands worship, praise, and sacrifice;God is jealous and flies into rages;God demands death or mutilation for many crimes;God is a misogynist because He allows polygamy and bride price; andreligion is evil because it causes violence.Many of the books explanations are persuasive and some seem a bit weak to me. Readers with different religious backgrounds will assess these explanations differently. But everyone interested in this topic will learn a lot from reading this book and will find a lot to think about, (and even to pray about).