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A review by codywhom
Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God by Paul Copan
1.5
"Is God a Moral Monster?": "No, because he's God."
Discussions of some aspects of Mosaic law were covered pretty nicely and helped me to develop understanding that I didn't have before – clean and unclean animals, corporal and capital punishment, for example. But a lot of this book leans heavily into the idea that the justification for any and all of the difficult events and commands found in the Old Testament come back around to the same, simple idea – that God is God, and God is infallible. To a person coming from a background that has already accepted this as fact, sure, this argument is just fine. But I can't say that Copan provided any deeper understanding of the "Canaanite question", the subject I was most interested in coming into this book. Disappointing at best; hair-pullingly frustrating at worst.
Discussions of some aspects of Mosaic law were covered pretty nicely and helped me to develop understanding that I didn't have before – clean and unclean animals, corporal and capital punishment, for example. But a lot of this book leans heavily into the idea that the justification for any and all of the difficult events and commands found in the Old Testament come back around to the same, simple idea – that God is God, and God is infallible. To a person coming from a background that has already accepted this as fact, sure, this argument is just fine. But I can't say that Copan provided any deeper understanding of the "Canaanite question", the subject I was most interested in coming into this book. Disappointing at best; hair-pullingly frustrating at worst.