Responding to an Accusation  Hey everybody, I was just made aware of a video that was posted yesterday by a content creator named Brandon Maguire who runs a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers called Daily Dose of Wisdom. Uh Brandon didn't tag me in the video, but here's the video. It's entitled Popular Bible Scholar Misleads Thousands. Example provided. Thought I would take a look and respond to what Brandon has to say. The Bible doesn't endorse abortion. A lot of people think the opposite is true, that the Bible condemns abortion. But if it if this is the only place where it seems to actually directly mention something about abortion and then even then it's probably not even about abortion, where does this opposite idea come from that the Bible does condemn abortion? >> The uh actually a good question. >> Most of the time folks who argue that that uh the Bible condemns abortion, they're going to appeal to a handful of passages that suggest God has knowledge of and concern for uh gestation. And so you see this in for instance Jeremiah 15 where Jeremiah says before I formed you in the womb. I knew you and consecrated you a a prophet to the nations and and the >> I formed you in the womb. I think that's important to note. You were in the womb. Jeremiah was in the womb. The person Jeremiah existed in the womb. Well, I think it's more important to acknowledge that all this is being said about Jeremiah prior to his conception. And that's why I emphasized before in that translation because it's saying that God knew Jeremiah prior to his conception. And this is a fact about this passage that just scorches by miles over the heads of everybody who thinks they have the definitive grasp on what the Hebrew Bible is talking about. And they just don't because if God's fornowledge about Jeremiah prior to his conception means that Jeremiah was a moral and a legal person prior to his conception, then it means that all people who will ever be born already have full moral and legal personhood. And you are not ready for the implications of that argument because that would mean that if a woman was according to God's fornowledge supposed to get pregnant and give birth as the result of rape that it would therefore be murder to prevent that rape or it would constitute murder to stop two 12y olds from engaging in premar marital sex. If God knew that the girl was supposed to conceive and get pregnant and bear a child, that God already knew, therefore granting that child full legal and moral personhood before their conception. What's going on in Jeremiah 15 is Jeremiah is boasting about how his consecration and calling as a prophet even precedes his gestation. Because we see that, as I've noted in other videos in Mesopotamian, in Egyptian, and in other biblical writings, that prophets and kings will say, "I was called by God or ordained by God from the womb." And Jeremiah says, "I'm going to do you one better." God knew me before I was formed in the womb, before my conception. That's what's going on in Jeremiah. And no matter how many times I point this out, it again just scorches by miles over the heads of everyone who imagines that they know what they're talking about. Argument is that well uh Jeremiah was obviously a person. Jeremiah was a human being prior to being born. Therefore, human life begins at conception. Uh you also have uh in the Psalms you have a passage about how uh God knit me together in my mother's womb. Uh you have the story of John the Baptist uh the fetal John the Baptist leaping for joy in Elizabeth's womb upon hearing the voice of Mary the mother of Jesus. Those are the three most popular passages that that get appealed to to suggest that a human being begins at conception. And the idea is uh murder is is the killing of a of an innocent human. Human lives begin at conception. Therefore, abortion is murder and therefore abortion is wrong. Um and what this neglects to take account of is the fact that when we look at u you know legal codes and legislation and stuff like that we tend to assume that if there are principles anywhere that they apply universally and that everything fits perfectly into a perfectly systematic hole. Um and so the idea would must be that uh you know if if over here we treat a a a fetus as as uh somebody who can leap for joy or something like that, well then we could never obviously um treat a fetus in another port uh part of the text as as not a full legal immoral person. Well, we would need a really good reason to not treat them as a full legal immoral person if a precedent has been clearly set. So let's see if he can give us a case for why they aren't. But what we see throughout the Hebrew Bible is that a fetus was not considered a full legal and moral person. It was considered more property. And the most explicit uh example of that is in the covenant code, Exodus 21, we have verses 22- 25 where we have this uh this peculiar bit of legislation where it says if two men are fighting and they they hit a woman uh and a pregnant woman and there are two outcomes that are addressed in this legislation. uh if the injury causes her to misaryry then there's a fine that is imposed by the husband and then there are arbitrators that are there uh to ensure that it is exorbitant. If the um injury results in permanent injury to the woman or her death then it is talionic justice which is life for life eye for an eye tooth for a tooth. In other words, if this injury causes the woman to die then it's the death penalty for the perpetrator. You see, if a pregnant woman is struck and miscarries, the only penalty is a fine. That proves the fetus wasn't a person. That proves the fetus is treated like property. But there's a very big problem with this. >> No, there's not. >> We're going to show it all in this video. >> No, you're not. >> We're going to analyze this carefully. >> No, you're not. >> What is Exodus 21 actually describing? Shout out to Logos Bible Software for helping to bring clarity to this question for me. Can someone please send the link in the description, which is logos.com/dwan mlelen. Um, because anyone who clicks that link gets 60 days totally free to explore this software. I would love for him to be able to do so because Logo software makes it so much easier to analyze that beloved data and to get to the bottom of these issues. Can someone please hook up Mr. Mlen. >> So, three things here. One, it sounds like this video is just an excuse for Brandon to put on display how to use logos to understand the Bible better so he can rack up some ad revenue. And uh what he's going to demonstrate is that he clearly doesn't know the first thing about Hebrew, but also doesn't really know how to effectively use Logos. Second thing, I don't need a copy of Logos. Uh, I wrote a dozen entries for their Lexom Bible dictionary uh over 15 years ago and was given a free copy when I lived in Bellingham, Washington, which is where Logos is headquartered and I was a graduate student at Trinity Western University. Uh, so I have had Logos for over 15 years and I actually prefer Accordance Bible software which I was also given while I was a student at Trinity Western University because I was a research assistant for Marty Abeg and tagged a bunch of Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts for Accordance to incorporate into their Bible software. So I have used both for over 15 years and I think Accordance does a much better job for close textual and linguistic analysis. And third thing, something that Logos has been doing for a while now that I don't think is a good idea is trying to convince people that if you just get Logos, you suddenly have the key to open all exegetical doors. And this leads to fewer people actually going out and getting adequate training in these languages. But as Brandon is going to demonstrate in this video, if you don't have adequate training, you're just going to fumble the tool itself. And it's just going to mislead you into believing because you have this tool, your intuitions and your misunderstandings are now suddenly authorized by Logos. And as we're going to see, uh, that couldn't be further from the truth. Two things he just said that are not actually in the text, and I'm going to prove it right now. >> All right, let's see it. The first one is the idea that this is talking about a miscarriage. It is not. >> It definitely is. >> The second one is the idea that the harm here in reference is talking about harm to the mother only. That also is not in the text. And I'm going to again prove it really quick. >> No, you're not. >> Here. I'm going to try to go as fast as I can. Here's the passage that he's talking about. Um, now the version that he was using here is right here. You can see the NRSV. And in his version, it says there is a miscarriage. But there's a problem with that. That's a very bad translation and I'm going to show why right now. >> Uh Brandon is not remotely qualified enough to assess quality in Bible translation as we're going to see. >> If you go to, for example, the ESV or the KJV, you can start to see uh the way that this is translated differently. And really the ESV is a more literal translation. Her children come out. But don't take my word for it. Let's actually look at this word right here, children. What What is that word children? Um, what is that word children talking about? Let me pull it up right here for you. Let me give you the actual um, Hebrew right here pronounced this way. >> Oops, sorry. Here. >> Yelled. >> Yelled. Okay. >> Yelled. >> Yelled. Now, this is the same word for PE uh, for children outside of the womb. And that's really important because in Dan's translation, that's just kind of glossed over. >> So, a few things here. One, nothing has been glossed over. or Brandon just doesn't even begin to know what he's talking about. And Brandon has glossed over something quite important. Why is the word for children in the plural in this passage? Brandon is talking about a single pregnant woman. And it says her children come out. Why is that plural? Does this law only apply if a woman is carrying twins or triplets? Does this mean all of the contents of the womb? Is it a plural of generalization? Is it a plural of abstract referring to the pregnancy? Why is it plural? There have been decades of scholarship pondering the question of why it's plural. But let's get to the lexographical resource that Brandon is using. He clicked on something to hear how this word was pronounced because he doesn't seem to know how it was pronounced. And it says right under that a bridged BDB. That means the Brown Driver Briggs Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament that was originally published in the 19th century. This is a public domain lexicon which means that the version of Logos that Brandon has is the introductory version. It doesn't even have a non-public domain lexicon. But let's take a look at what Yelled means in more up-to-date lexographical resources. So here is hollowotes, the Hebrew and Aramaic lexicon of the Old Testament, probably the standard biblical Hebrew lexicon for scholars today. And in the red box, we have the entry for Yelled. And if you look uh down about a third of the way, you'll see an M dash and the number one and a bold boy and then male child and then a closed parenthesis. You go down three more lines on the right side, you get B close parenthesis plural, boys, children. Okay, this is addressing why it's plural. But go down a little further to the part that I've underlined. Under the plural segment, we have miscarriage. And then we have a Samaritan penetuk version of the word Exodus 21:22. That is our text. And hollowot suggests that in the plural it means miscarriage. Well, let's take a look at some other resources. Here we have the dictionary of classical Hebrew by Klein's. This is volume four. Here's the entry for Yelled or at least the beginning of the entry for Yelled on the left side. One of the main senses as you can see in the underlined portion is unborn child fetus. Exodus 21:22 and then the Samaritan Penetuk's variant spelling of this word. But something interesting is if you look in the right column up at the top, the underlined portion, this is where Klein's is helpful because it describes what words mean when they're used in conjunction with other words. And in this paragraph, we've got this noun used in conjunction with the verb bo to come or yatsa to go out. And the underlined portion suggests that when used with yatsa in the plural specifically, it means abort. Exodus 21:22. Now, we're going to come back to these resources a bit later, but I just wanted to point out that Yelled can refer to an unborn fetus, and the scholarship is in pretty widespread agreement that in this passage, it is in the plural because it is referring to a miscarried fetus. But way more significantly, let's go to the Hebrew word that is literally translated to come out here. So, so that her children come out, but there is no harm. Okay, let's go there to that word. And here is how you pronounce that word. >> Yatsa. >> Yatsa. >> Yatsa. >> Yatsa. >> Yatsa. That's the Hebrew word for come out here. Now, what does the word mean? Where else is it used? Well, it literally means to come out. Um uh you can see all the usages of it here. Um you can see verses where it's used here. They set forth um they come out with great possessions. They went out together, etc. This is not a word that actually is talking about miscarriage significantly. This is a word that's used all over the place. So, here's where things start to get a bit more embarrassing for Brandon. He said, "You can see all the uses of it here and then moved on to another screen and overlooked something quite important." Let's go back to what that screen showed and look in the red circle down below. Abortion. Now, this is talking about a specific use of this verbal root in uh one of the psalms, but yatsa, contrary to what Brandon just said, can and does refer to miscarriage and abortion. And Brandon's own 19th century resource that he doesn't know how to use demonstrates that. But let's take a look at some more upto-date resources. Let's start with Hollowot. We're in the several page long entry for the verbal root yatsa. And we see here on paragraph 5 expressions in the underlined portion we have our clause from Exodus 21:22. She has a miscarriage. Exodus 21:22. We can look at the theological dictionary of the Old Testament. The entry for Yatsa starts here and we can go down to the underlined portion in the bottom paragraph. Uh, in a contrasting sense, we find the verb used for a miscarriage. Exodus 21:22 and Numbers 12:12. We can look in Klein's dictionary of classical Hebrew. Here's the very beginning of a very long entry for the verbal root yatsa. And we see down in the underlined portion of fetus, come out early, abort. Exodus 21:22 and Psalm 144:14. And that psalm is the one that has the form of the verb that appears on the table that Brandon showed and forgot to look at. So this verbal root absolutely can and does refer to miscarriage and abortion. It also can refer to normal birth. An appeal to the Hebrew all by itself is not determinative. But when we consider it in context, scholars are in pretty overwhelming agreement that this passage uses the word yelled and the verbal root yatsa to refer to causing a miscarriage. This is the consensus view that Brandon has entirely missed because he doesn't know what he's talking about and he doesn't even know how to use the inadequate resources to which he has access. But wait, there's more. There is a word that actually talks directly about miscarriage and I'll give you it in the same book of the Bible here. Exodus 23:26 for example saysnone shall miscarry or be barren in your land. Well, what is that word? If that's not the word that's used here, what is that word? Well, let's take a look. It's not that one. That's not that one. We already hit that. It's um Let me make sure I get this correct. Yes, it's this one here. Ready? >> Shahul. >> Shahul. That is the word that actually means misaryry. That is the word that is not used here. I repeat the word for misaryry is not used here. Rather a term for like general coming out is used here. I wanted to put this all in one place for you guys to see this because this is really important. So there is another Hebrew word nefell which goes back to the root to fall which is talking about a child falling before birth a miscarriage or a still birth. Job 3:16 says like a miscarried child and uses this word. Psalm 58:8 says like a stillborn child and uses this word. Neither of these words for actual miscarriage are used in this passage. For Mr. Mlelen to not acknowledge that and simply to say this is talking about miscarriage even though it's not using the words that would be used if it were talking about miscarriage is is crazy work. It it's just it's just crazy work. Again, I don't want to imply motive, but it's wild. So Dan is really giving the wrong idea here to Alex in that regard. So Brandon recorded this video and said, "Aha, here's the word that actually means misaryry." and then realized, oh, there's a second word that can also mean that. And so had to come back and do an edit and splice in this voice over where he's talking about another word that can mean miscary. And what Brandon entirely missed is that the words that occur in Exodus 21:22 can also refer to miscarriage because in pretty much all languages, individual concepts can be referred to by a variety of different words and phrases. It's not limited to just one word or just two words in all instances. And in this case, as the overwhelming majority of scholars agree, Exodus 21:22 is using words can and do refer to abortion and to miscarriage. Brandon just doesn't know what he's talking about. Also, he kind of smuggles in, if you listen to what he said, that the harm here is talking about harm to the mother. Now, I don't agree with that. That's not in the text. The harm here is left open. It could be harm to the mother. It could be harm to the baby. It could be both. It's really a terrible translation to see this as a miscarriage. So again, Brandon is getting rhetorically way out over his skis by presuming to pass judgments on translation quality without having the first clue what he's talking about, without having any qualification to assess quality in Bible translation. What we're talking about here in actuality is a pre-mature birth being caused by these two men driving together and the pregnant woman getting hit. >> That's what Brandon needs this to be talking about, but that's not what this is talking about. >> So, if there's no harm other than the lady going into labor prematurely, then the one who hit her has to pay a fine accordingly for the whatever kind of medical implications that might have, the risk um that that introduces into the equation, etc. So, this doesn't really make any sense. The medical implications of a pre-term birth in this time period was pretty much always the death of the pre-term child. Uh they didn't have ICUs. There was no hospital bill anybody was going to receive. Depending on how far along the child was, it was basically whether or not they survived on their own if they were born pre-term. Now certainly there would have been those that did but for the overwhelming majority again depending on how far along the pregnancy was the medical implication was death unless they just happened to be far enough along to survive. Risk is also kind of silly because the argument is that the fine is imposed if it's a premature birth and it's not followed by any harm. Which means that there's no more risk. The risk has passed. No harm has come therefore fine and then the other outcome is that there is harm. So no saying well there are medical implications and there are risks involved and that's what the fine is intended to recompense or to make whole is just making up rationalizations without knowing anything about how any of this would have worked in the middle of the first millennium BCE. and he has to pay um as the judges determined in that scenario of of the baby just being prematurely prematurely born. But if there is harm, now again we don't know if this is talking about harm to the mother or harm to the baby or both. But if there is any kind of harm in any direction, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound, wound for wound, stripe for stripe for stripe. And that is that Lex Talionis um principle that Mlelen is talking about. But again he smuggles in the the suggestion that the harm in reference here is only harm to the mother when actually the text I think like leaves that question wide open. And in the greater context of of the ch the child coming out and not it being a miscarriage, I think it's fair to say that this equally applies to the scenario of the baby being harmed, which makes this frankly a very prolife passage. But that only works if the interpretation of her children go out refers just to premature birth. And as we've already seen, it doesn't. >> Let's keep going. And uh what this indicates is that the destruction of the fetus does not result in tallyionic justice. It's just a fine. And what's more, there's no standardized value that is placed on the fetus. It's up to the husband >> to decide what fine to impose because an enslaved person has a standardized value. It's 30 shekels. And you see that elsewhere in the covenant code. 30 shekels for the life of an enslaved person. Uh but the hus it's up to the husband to decide the value of this fetus should this injury um result in a miscarriage. It's such a twisting. It is such a twisting of the scripture. I'm sorry to say it. I don't mean that as like a slur against him personally, but it it just is such a twisting of the scripture. And I hope again don't take my word for it. Go to the Hebrew. >> Brandon, you don't know Hebrew. You don't know what you're talking about. Um, I mean, so I want to say this, too. Is it it's possible that he's just reading the worst the worst translation? It's possible that he doesn't know that the that he's using the wrong word for miscarriage there. It's possible that he's just um ignoring the fact that the that the same word for a child outside of the womb is used for this baby inside of the womb. It's possible that he's just ignorant to all of that. And so, I just want to leave that possibility open. But I also want to say emphatically that the way that he's presenting this passage is just really a twisting of the meaning of the of the scripture. And and this indicates that a fetus was considered property was not considered a full legal immoral person. And and there are arguments about u that folks make about why it ought to be translated a different way to indicate that uh >> oh never mind. >> So he maybe he is aware of that. Let's see. outcome is is premature birth that isn't followed by any other injury or anything like so. This part kind of threw me for a second. I'm not sure exactly what's going on here because Brandon just got done uh waxing rhetorical about how I seem to be ignorant of the fact that I'm using a terrible translation and he's got the right translation and I just don't seem to have a clue what I'm talking about. And am I ignorant? I don't want to impugn Dan's integrity, but he doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. And then I point out that I'm aware of those translations and he goes, "Oh, never mind." Which means either this is the first time he's watching that video or he's just kind of ad hoc saying whatever comes to mind as he's reviewing it again. or he wanted to get all of those uh judgments out so that people would be influenced by that idea and then he would just add in some plausible deniability by saying, "Oh, never mind. He addressed that." I don't know which of those three it is, but I thought that was kind of peculiar, Dad. And the second outcome is the actual miscarriage. And in the book, I go through several reasons why that's just not a a plausible reading of the uh of the passage. >> So far, I think it's pretty clear why that is a far more plausible reading. So, you'll notice here that I reference talking about this in the book, and that book is the Bible says. So, what we get right and wrong about scriptures most controversial issues. And I have a whole chapter that goes over the question of whether or not the Bible says abortion is murder. And here are the four pages where I discuss the argument that this passage in Exodus 21 is actually talking about just premature birth. And I give four reasons why that doesn't make any sense. And Brandon obviously didn't read the book, obviously is not engaging those arguments, but is going to engage a couple of the points because he found a video of mine that talks about this. But I did come across this short where he addresses this exact same passage in a little bit more detail and he gives some of the reasons why he thinks that the interpretation that I'm advocating for is false. I'm now going to basically critique his reasons against the interpretation that I just gave. Hey everybody, Exodus 21 22 and 23 impose penalties should two men who are fighting injure a pregnant woman. And two outcomes are addressed. One, they cause a miscarriage that incurs a fine. two, they cause the death of the woman. That incurs the death penalty. If your translation suggests that the first outcome is premature birth of an otherwise healthy infant and the second outcome is miscarriage, that's a mistransation. And this is clear for at least two reasons. One, incurring a fine requires material loss in the penetuk and causing the premature birth of an otherwise healthy infant is not that. So again, I don't want to accuse Dan of being purposfully misleading or purposely giving misinformation, but the statement that he's making here that there's no examples of economic ret or economic uh payment for anything other than material loss or economic loss is just factually not true. Um to give one example, Deuteronomy 22:17 is a scenario where a man falsely accuses a woman of not being a virgin. And the response to that to that is that uh it says they shall find him a 100 shekels of silver and give him to the father of the young woman because he has brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel. So that's not material or economic in nature and yet there is um like I said a fine associated with that you know misconduct. So um that I don't think holds up. >> Uh it does hold up because this is a threat to the economic livelihood of the father. That's why the fine is paid to the father and not to the woman who has been defamed. And if you look at the details, the payment of a fine to the father and then the perpetrator cannot divorce the girl. That's the same as what we have at the end of Deuteronomy 22 where the man has raped a virgin who is not betrothed. Why are these fines going to the father and why is the man being required to stay married to the girl? Well, it's because marriage was a transaction where one man was paying another man for the sale of the sexual availability and the procreative capacities of a woman and that woman was expected to be in shiny new pristine condition. And to not be so is to impugn the integrity of the father which would result in his lost economic benefits not only from the sale of the woman because if she wasn't a virgin then the father has to give back the bride price that was paid. So the father's going to lose a bunch of money, but then he has a reputation of trying to marry off women who are not virgins, which means he's going to be economically hurt within good upright Israelite society. So just like with the case of raping a virgin who is not betrothed in verses 28 and 29 of Deuteronomy 22, there is real economic damage being done to the father. And there's a threat of more. or the man is trying to extort the bride price back from the father just because he doesn't like his wife. So yes, there is real actual material loss going on here as well. You just don't understand how family law and the economy of ancient Israel worked. And then second, if two men are striving and they hit a pregnant woman so that her children come out, but there's no additional harm, I think it's kind of obvious that there could be some economic or material implications to that early delivery of the baby. Um, I don't think that's too much of a stretch at all to suggest that there's going to be some economic implications to that, especially depending on how how premature the baby is actually born. Like what what economic harm is done from an otherwise healthy premature birth where no harm comes to either the child or the mother? What economic harm is coming in the middle of first millennium BCE Israel from that set of circumstances? Can you name one? Let's keep going. Two, this law is being pulled from the laws of Hammer. It's clear for at least two reasons. One, incurring a fine requires material loss in the penetuk and causing the premature birth of an otherwise healthy infant is not that. Two, this law is being pulled from the laws of Hammurabi, as are many others in this chapter, even in the same order they occur in the laws of Hammurabi. Check it. This law is found in a number of different law codes from ancient southwest Asia. And in every instance, it addresses the exact same two outcomes, miscarriage and the death of the woman. Okay, now this is a really important point that I want to break down here. In the code of Hammurabi, a miscarriage brings about a fine. Only the woman's death triggers the Lexalionus life for life principle and the unborn child is basically considered like an economic loss. Whereas in Exodus, the unborn are explicitly called children as I already mentioned. Um the harm here could apply to either. And in either case it it brings about Lex Talionis equal justice life for life. It could be to the baby, it could be to the mother. In either case, the life for life principle kicks in. So what I was pointing out there is that we have precedents for this exact kind of law. Not just in the laws of Hammurabi, which the covenant code is adopting and adapting, but from several different law codes. It's always the exact same two scenarios. that should aid us in interpreting what we see in Exodus. But Brandon here is saying no, it doesn't because we've already established it doesn't mean that which is not engaging the concern. It's just asserting the conclusion over the argument. Uh because he says, well, it calls them children, which is utterly meaningless. As I have demonstrated, Yelled can refer to an unborn child to a fetus, even to a miscarriborn fetus. So that doesn't mean that my interpretation is wrong. The fact that the uh assone the harm could maybe refer to the child or to the mother is an assertion that is not supported by any evidence whatsoever. But once we have established that her children go out is a reference to miscarriage which is the most likely reading in light of not only the precursors that we find in the other literature from ancient West Asia but also in the way that both the noun yelled and the verb yatsa are used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. We already know it's talking about a miscarriage. And so a miscarried child can't have further harm done to it. The harm is very clearly in reference to the mother. And one thing I haven't pointed out yet, but is also evidence for my reading is that the earliest interpretations that we have of this passage unilaterally interpret it as referring to miscarriage even when they're reinterpreting other parts of the passage. So for instance, Josephus writing toward the end of the 1st century CE, Jewish antiquities book four, we have in the red box, he that kickth a woman with child, if the woman misarry, shall be fined by the judges for having by the destruction of the fruit of her womb diminish the population, and a further sum shall be presented by him to the woman's husband. If she die of the blow, he also shall die. The law claiming as it's due, the sacrifice of life for life. So the earliest interpretations that we find of this passage understand it exactly as I have understood it. But we have an even earlier interpretation and that's in the Septuagent. Here's the Greek of the Septuagent passage. And in the Septuagent they seem to have understood the Hebrew ass which means tragedy which is interpreted as harm in some translations. They seem to have misunderstood assone as soma the Greek word for body. Because what we have here uh the third line down on the right and what that means is and the child goes out of her not fully formed and so it is a fine if the fetus is miscarried and it is not fully formed. It goes on to say if it is fully formed that's when talionic justice kicks in. So the septuagent reinterprets both outcomes as miscarriage. Meaning they are interpreting goes out as a reference to miscarriage. And we can see this also in Pho in the first half of the first century CE. So Moses then, as I have said, implicitly and indirectly forbade the exposure of children when he pronounced the sentence of death against those who cause the miscarriage of mothers in cases where the fetus is fully formed. And obviously, it's just the fine in cases where they are not fully formed. So Pho is reading the Septuagent's reinterpretation of what's going on in the Hebrew as a reference to miscarriage of a not yet fully formed fetus and miscarriage of a fully formed fetus. So all of the earliest interpreters of this text also understood this to be referring to either miscarriage in both instances or miscarriage in the first instance and the death of the woman in the next instance. And Brandon obviously doesn't engage with any of that. Brandon doesn't know what he's talking about. So, Exodus is not only not copying Hammurabi, it's actually correcting him. And this is a really important idea. This is a pattern that you actually see in the Torah is that it uses familiar law codes and familiar moral systems and subverts them in order to improve them for how things go down in the Torah. >> Uh, no. And if you want to see exactly how the covenant code is adopting and adapting Hammurabi's law, including places where it keeps it the same, where it makes it better, and even where it makes it worse, I would highly recommend David Wright's phenomenal book, Inventing God's Law, as you will see if you read that book. What's going on here is definitely not a correction of what's going on in Hammurabi's law. It is perpetuating the same thing. It's tweaking it a tiny bit, but it very clearly maintains the two outcomes. Miscarriage, the death of the woman. >> So when you put it all together, the unborn are called children. Um premature birth is treated as serious harm. Injury or death invokes the equal justice lexalion life for life principle. And monetary compensation is no longer considered valid when we're talking about human life here. Which again really raises the question, why would that property principle not be relevant when I if the baby in the womb is just property? Huh? Really makes one think. So the Bible is filled with data that is telling us that there is human life in the womb. Also, science is telling us that there's human life in the womb in an incontrovertible way. You have to really try to stretch the this verse out of its context, make it say something that it isn't saying, and then apply like a crazy amount of weight to it in order to try to outweigh the rest of the data that is in scripture that clearly points toward human life being valuable and human life being within the womb is the bottom line. So, obviously, this argument doesn't hold any water whatsoever. And Brandon doesn't really know what he's talking about. Not when it comes to biblical Hebrew, not when it comes to the contexts here. Not when it comes to how biblical legislation works, not even when it comes to how logos works. I think he kind of did logos dirty. Uh just trying to jin up some ad revenue for Logos. But um if you don't know Hebrew and if you have to get Logos to pronounce a verbal root for you in Hebrew, you very clearly don't know Hebrew. Please don't waste everybody's time getting on the internet and pretending to lecture other people and wonder aloud if they have any clue what they're talking about when they are experts in that thing that you don't know the first thing about. It just wastes everybody's time. And maybe you're going to make a few dollars off of it. But if that's your priority, do better. And the fit for this video is Metallica and justice for, Responding to an Accusation, YouTube, 01kfk78ecsyjy28tcqe8wmb25e.