Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today's episode will be my first retraction episode. A sort of a semi retraction since I'm not really retracting a whole concept, but more one of the pieces of evidence that I I used for a concept. And I I think this episode is is important. It's been on the docket for a while now, and it's just I was looking for a spot to kind of place it in.

But I think it's important that we eventually got to it because first, it's important to be clear that I view this podcast as a whole as a continuing discussion. Some of some of the topics that I talk about or some of the episodes that I I discuss, I I feel very confident about, you know, might have 90% certainty or something, and others I might have like 51% certainty, or I might just be kind of in dialogue with myself. I don't view this podcast overall as one that intends to just download knowledge into your head because I have the right answers, it's more of I have a passion and an ability to read a lot and research a lot and kind of have that kind of inner dialogue, and so I want to let other people in on that experience so that they can figure out where they land. And so I I I don't intend to just dictate things here. So, I expect that there are gonna be times where I need to retract some things or or edit some things.

And I think I think that's important for other people to be able to see. I am clearly a fallible human being and I I am only able to present information as I know it and understand it at the time that I present it. I can always gain more information or arrive at different understandings throughout time. So I hope to be humble enough to be changeable with truth, and I want this episode to be an example of that willingness or an attempt at that. I don't want to make any of my cases, I don't want to build any of them on shoddy information because my goal is truth and not a particular case.

Second, this retraction centers around a passage from from one of our episodes on abortion that is this passage is very important for the pro life and pro choice Christians. So I think the retraction itself is is important just because of the content. Alright, with those things in mind, let's go ahead and get right to it. I had an episode in the abortion season where I discussed bad Christian arguments against abortion. And the point of the episode wasn't to undermine the pro life position, but rather to get rid of what I felt were bad arguments against abortion, which weakened the credibility of the pro life case.

So as a part of that episode, I identified the cherry picking of pro life Christians with Biblical text. And while I I still stand by that overarching argument, one of the passages that I used in that episode was from Numbers five, where it looks like a jealous husband can have his cheating wife drink a concoction in order to abort illegitimate child. However, I've been reading more on this lately, and I've I've concluded that presenting this passage in in such a light is it really it puts forward an incomplete picture. I'm not going to say that this can't be what numbers five is saying, but at this point, I think there's a good chance that the text actually means something else, or at least has some significant nuance to it. And because of that, I wanna walk through some of the issues here, and then I'll also so I'll retract a portion, I also wanna point out where I I still end up having some problems.

Okay. So the Numbers five passage. The word in the Numbers five passage where it talks about how this husband can give his if he thinks that his wife had an adulteress, she had an affair, he can go to the priest, the priest will give her some concoction and it will make her have a miscarriage is what some passages say. But when you look at it, the word miscarriage isn't really in the Numbers passage, and only certain translations, those which take a more interpretive stance, explicitly state miscarriage. More word for word translations or formal equivalent translations, they talk about the womb swelling or the thigh rotting.

So you go with this idea that instead of a miscarriage, it's talking about maybe barrenness because the woman's it doesn't say that the woman's pregnant, it talks about her thigh rotting or womb swelling. And you can also see this when you, you know, maybe get more clarity when you look at the opposite of what is talked about then. Because when you read through the passage and see that the opposite of the punishment coming on the woman is that her womb will still be able to conceive, the implication is that the punishment is probably barrenness. And such a punishment would make a lot of sense because that would have been a huge deal to ancient Near East women back in the day to be to be barren, damaged goods. So all in all, I think that barrenness makes a lot of sense as an interpretation here, and probably more sense than the miscarriage.

I've linked two articles in the show notes that do a good job of walking through a more complex argument, and one of the articles even includes some context from Josephus' interpretation. Now as far as this event goes here though, this this number's five ordeal, there's still some things that don't sit well with with me. I mean, first it it seems like a trial by ordeal is is only for the woman, right? I mean, it's kind of like Monty Python's witch trial, and does she sink or does she float? And such a trial by ordeal seems seems like a pretty pagan and and unfair act.

In fact, we do see similar trials in pagan cultures surrounding Israel. So the whole thing feels just a bit off, feels unfair and prejudiced maybe? I don't know what the right word is. And it also seems unfair that the woman is put on trial, just like the woman who's about to be stoned in John, while an adulterous man is nowhere in view of the text. Now, where's the trial for the guy who you suspect of sleeping with your wife?

But some Christians push back and say how this this trial by ordeal was the best answer in a society where the alternative may be that a jealous husband could outright divorce or kill his wife without grounds. So maybe this this was better than just mere suspicion being a valid way to off your wife. Though, on a side note, we know that the Israeli men, at least by Jesus' time, could divorce their wives for pretty much any reason like burning dinner, at least according to to one school of thought which I thought, I think it was pretty pretty dominant or significant at the time. So, I don't know. The numbers five passage, you know, if it really did make barren or kill as Josephus interpreted it, it seems like a much more vindictive avenue than just a divorce.

In some ways, drinking this concoction that most likely did nothing to most or all women and assuaged the husband's suspicion and anger may have been protective to the women, and pragmatically, maybe that was maybe it was actually a good thing. I don't know. It's still weird and feels a bit lopsided, but that's not what this podcast was about. That's not what this episode was about or the season on abortion. But anyway, you can read the assessment of some others in the show notes and in the links and decide for yourself.

For me, explaining away this passage doesn't fully resolve the issue though. We see that God didn't have qualms with having children killed as judgment, which we see in pagan nations such as the slaughter of Canaanite infants as well as the death of David's child with Bathsheba. So to explain away numbers and ignore that this judgment on kids for the sins of parents isn't a one off passage doesn't ultimately do you much good. The difference is, and which I think pro choicers would see immediately, is that pro lifers only view the numbers five passage as a problem since it's the only passage that deals with children inside the womb, whereas the Canaanite children and David's child were killed once they were outside the womb. But isn't fantasized outside of the womb not as representative as when it's done inside the womb?

And if not, why not? Furthermore, we see passages like those in Psalm 137 where the Psalmist calls those blessed who dash the heads of his enemies infants against rocks. I mean, the Bible has infanticide as a judgment against pagan nations, the greatest of Israel's Kings and those we deem our enemies. Explaining away the Numbers five passage then in my view doesn't allow pro lifers who like to proof text the Bible for a pro life position, doesn't allow them to escape escape extreme inconsistency. So consider this episode a semi retraction.

I'm retracting the weights that I put on numbers five, and arguing that numbers five is probably not ultimately talking about abortion or miscarriages as judgment. However, I'm not retracting what I think is a huge problem with Biblical proof texting for the pro life position. In fact, I'm going to double down on that one. Hopefully, don't have to do too many more retraction episodes in the future, though I hope to have the character which would make me see truth and correction as imperative where I know I've made mistakes. And I can guarantee you that I've made some mistakes.

So hopefully those come to light and we can have more retraction episodes. But that's all for now, so peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.