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How does one reconcile viewing people like Moses and Joshua as men of God while at the same time they are said to have slaughtered many, even infants? Of course, I can understand that allegory is handy in such cases, but did these acts of violence also occur historically? Would God really command the killing of infants? Or should such passages not be taken literally?
You bring up some very good points here regarding men of God and allegory. People today think of allegory as something magical, or of just plain reading what you want into a passage. The main advantage that Origen had over all of us today is the most extensive understanding of the Old Testament and the actions taken to bury its Truth over the years after its writing. (See his historic work on the Hexapla.) The allegory of Origen was based on his extensive knowledge of all passages of the bible and an understanding at the literal, moral, and spiritual levels free of contradiction from Genesis to Revelations.
How could God (who gave Moses the commandment, thou shall not kill) tell any person to kill? One has to look closely at the ‘gods’ who supposedly told people to kill and try to understand if they were really God or just Lucifer posing as a god (see https://origenes2000.org/PDF/whychristiansfightwars.pdf ). There are many cases of the latter, and I know of only one of the former. This is the Passover story when God ordered the death of the First Born of Egypt.
This case was special in two ways; first, God ordered his angles to kill the first born and not man to do so. Second, this was the first born of Egypt or of Lucifer. It was the practice at that time in Egypt to present the virgin daughters of Egypt to the high priest of the temple when they came of age (16). Just as an Angel of God possessed (took control of) Joseph’s body at the time of the “immaculate conception” of Jesus, so did Lucifer possess the high priest when he raped the virgins of Egypt. It was the children of this act that God was destroying, and why he sent his Angel of Death to kill only the first born.
There is one other very important thing to remember about Moses. God did not let him into the Promised Land. This clearly means that God did not find favor with his life. I am astounded by those who do not read the prophets. All the prophets admonished the Jews for their ungodly acts; just look at Isaiah 1 for an example. These are the same acts of blood sacrifice that Moses allowed Aaron to bring into the Jewish practice. Aaron (and Moses) acted as the many generations that followed them; they destroyed the prophet (Miriam) who stood against these pagan acts. It was Joshua who found favor with the Lord (Numbers 14:20-38) and was not drawn into the evil acts of the elders.
What Origen was able to discover through his work on the Hexapla was how the later generations covered their tracks, putting emphasis on that which pleased them. The second writing of the Old Testament, written by the priests who came back from exile in Babylon justified themselves and the rituals they learned in the city of the devil. They adjusted the bible to paint Miriam as being the one in the wrong. They also removed many of prophets’ words which admonished the scribes for doing exactly this.
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