The god of the old testament has . . . . issues

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Aneeshm:

This is really very important.

If you want to understand Christianity, don't read the KJV from start to finish. Start with the Gospel of John, which is in the New Testament, and then move on to the other Gospels.

I would also recommend, if you can find it, the NIV, as the language is much easier and more modern. There are other bibles too that will work, the KJV is just one that is fairly popular.

Feel free to pm me any questions you may have and I will try to answer them as best as I can.

Why read it out of order? The gospel of john seems a bit philosophical and rarefied to serve as a starting point imho. Heck, that applies to the entire new testament relative to the old but john is one of the more extreme cases iirc.

[Ben Kenobi]

The gospel of John is how shall we say rather... different.

A good protestant friend of mine would say it was written to be read first because it was the last written.

It is the order I found helpful, so I recommend it to others.

The Gospels are really the bedrock of Christianity. Genesis makes much more sense in light of the Gospels, as does the rest of the OT.

[Cort Haus]

I thoroughly recommend 'Small Gods', by Terry Pratchett. Far more interesting and useful than the Bible, IMO. It's also extremely funny.

The story takes place on a polytheistic world, where a god's power is directly proportional to the number of believers.

There are billions of gods in the world. they swarm as thick as herring roe. Most of them are too small to see and never gets worshipped, at least by anything bigger than bacteria, who never say their prayers and don't demand much in the way of miracles.

They are the small gods - the spirits of places where two ant trails cross, the gods of microclimates down between the grass roots. And most of them stay that way,

Because what they lack is belief.

A handful, though, go onto greater things. Anything may trigger it. A shepherd, seeking a lost lamb, finds it among the briars and takes a minute or two to build a small cairn of stones in general thanks to whatever spirits might be about the place. Or a peculiarly shaped tree becomes associated with a cure for a disease. Or someone carves a spiral on an isolated stone. Because what gods need is belief, and what humans want is gods.

Often it stops there. But sometimes it goes further. More rocks are added, more stones are raised, a temple is built on the site where the tree once stood. The god grows in strength, the belief of its worshippers raising it upwards like a thousand tons of rocket fuel. For a very few, the sky's the limit,

And, sometimes, not even that.

(I typed that, such is my devotion.)

[Robert]

BTW, the idea that christianity /judaism is monotheism is wrong.
It says that only the One True God should be worshipped. There are other gods. "You shall have no other gods before me" is clear about that.

If you need an overview of the Bible, it's something like this:

- God created heaven and earth (Gen 1)
- God creates man in his own image (Gen 1/2)
- Man gets the choise to be god or to accept God to be their god. Man choses the first. (Gen 3)
- God promises to fix this problem (Gen 3:15)
- The result of man being it's own god is death and despair, hate and anarchy. (Gen 3-6)
- demons corrupt mankind to prevent the 'perfect seed' to be born in the future (Gen 6)
- God whipes out mankind because of the wickedness of man and to 'clean' the bloodline of man again from demon blood. (The great flood)
- God continues with Noach, a rightious man, but the Bible shows as well that even rightious men do evil deeds.
- Evil spreads over the world again, which shows that mankind is not capable to choise good instead of evil, or even know what is good and what is evil.
- God decides to continue with one family, the family of Abraham, which will become the people of Israel later.
- God gives the laws to Israel and says "Keep these laws and you will live" (in contrary to the death man received for choising to be god in Gen3). If the people aren't able to know what is good and evil, God helps them by giving them the laws. now they only have to follow the laws, since they are incapable to make good laws for themselves.
- Israel tries to live up to these laws, but fails. Apparantly mankind cannot even do good if it's told what is good and what is evil
- The prophets preach to the Jews to live up to the laws.
- The jews continue to worship other gods, and themselves in the end (since that's what you do if you follow your own path).
- God shows the results of this: death. Therefor he sends the Jews and the Israelites to another land, but promises to let them return. (only the Jews, not the israelites) (jews = 2 families part of the children of Jacob, israel = 10 families part). This symbolises the results of sin and following other Gods then god.

- Conclusion from the Old Testament:
1. Man wants to be god but fails
2. God promises to set mankind free
3. God intervenes only protect his plan for salvation (#2)
4. God selects his people (the Jews) to help them living good by giving them the law
5. even these selected people fail if they're helped
6. Conclusion: Mankind cannot live good, choise good and seperate good from evil.
In the Old Testament God shows who/what mankind is.

The New Testament:
- God becomes man and lives the perfect life. (Jesus) and shows that it's possible to be a perfect man and choise good from evil, but only if such a man is in fact God himself.
- God takes the penalty of sin himself and takes the death that's the result of sin himself.
- Jesus promises that everybody who will follow Jesus, trust Jesus, believes in Jesus, and wants to give his own 'god being' up will be allowed to be a part of the new earth, on which God will be god and humans will be humans. (as original intended).
- The rest of the new testament is spreading this good news.

Conclusion: The New Testament shows who God is, and how he wants to save the people who did the wrong choise.
The New Testament is not about God making this world perfect. This world is our world, all it's faults is a result of our own wrong choises. The good news is that God will end this evil world, the goods news is that he won't end it immediately, since he wants to save as much 'evil' people from it before all the evilness will be done away.

If people wonder about the cruelty of God in the Old Testament..... keep in mind that the world is cruel. People wage war against people, they did that in the past, they do it now and they'll do it in the future. Not only war, sexual abuse, lies, murdering, stealing, causing unhappyness, the absence of love, etc. etc.
Every man deserves death. That's our own responsibility. God has warned us: take the fruit (of being master over good and evil, some call it 'fun' though the hangover can hardly be called fun, and how can it be fun if our joy means the suffering of others? How can we have joy while others suffer? How can we enjoy our food while others are starving?) take the fruit (ignore the debate if this is literally or symbolic, this fruit) and you will die.

Every second you live is a gift for God, since we have chosen death. God wants to protect his plan, his people (Israel) and does that by removing the obstacles from it's path, in the Old Testament. He comes with important laws to prevent the Jews from extinction from sexual deseases, food poisoning and bad hygiene (in the middle ages the jews who lived up to the OT Laws in the getto's were more or less spared from the plagues!!)

This is hard for us to understand, for sure since we, people living in the 21st century, live the "We are god" to the max. But as long as we aren't able to solve all problems on earth, and make earth the hell it is right now, I don't think we have any reason to blame God.

Blame yourself.

[Robert]

And the gospel of John is indeed a very good way to start reading the Bible. It doesn't start with 'the beginning' for nothing. Remember that the Bible is not one book. It's a collection of books.

John 1:

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.
3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

6There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

10He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

15John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' " 16From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only,who is at the Father's side, has made him known.

It's good to read Isaiah 53 as well, which more or less is about the same topic:

1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by aneeshm


A small doubt - is the King James Version of the Bible authentic enough for a student like me ?

It depends upon whether or not you're setting out to study Christian theology. If not, then just get a modern copy of the Authorized Version with explanatory footnotes.

The Authorized Version (along with William Shakespeare) is responsible for a vast amount of the modern English we speak today, words and phrases. As your excellent formal and colloquial English shows, you are already familiar with passages from the Authorized Version.... and it does have the (unique?) benefit of being the only outstanding literary work created by a committee...


Of course the Old Testament angry god (as opposed to the New Testament hippy god) is hardly dissimilar to many other smash'em, bash'em and dash'em gods- even the female of the species proved more deadly than the male for a while, with Greek examples such as the man flaying and hunting Artemis, the just goddess of war, Athena and the Furies and the Gorgons. Then there's Tiamat, Coatlicue

Coatlicue, whose name means "Serpent Skirt," was the Earth goddess of life and death in the Aztec mythology. Coatlicue had a horrible appearance. She was depicted as a woman wearing a skirt of snakes and a necklace of hearts torn from victims.

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/tour_def/mythology/coatlicue_earth.html

and the Celtic goddess Morrigan:

The Morrígan ("terror" or "phantom queen") or Mórrígan ("great queen") (aka Morrígu, Mórríghan, Mór-Ríogain) is a figure from Irish mythology who appears to have once been a goddess, although she is not referred to as such in the texts.

She is usually seen as a terrifying figure, glossed in medieval Irish manuscripts as equivalent to Alecto of the Furies, or the child-eating monster Lamia, from Greek Mythology (in fact, one text glosses Lamia as "a monster in female form, i.e. a Morrígan"), or the Hebrew demoness Lilith. She is associated with war and death on the battlefield, sometime appearing in the form of a carrion crow, premonitions of doom, and with cattle. She is often considered a war deity comparable with the Germanic Valkyries, although her association with cattle also suggests a role connected with fertility and the land.

She is often interpreted as a triple goddess, although membership of the triad varies: the most common combination is the Mórrígan, the Badb and Macha, but sometimes includes Nemain, Fea, Anann and others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrigan

Lovely Coatlicue, every man's dream blind date:

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Datajack Franit
molly bloom, back from burning Danish embassies already?

So that brain implant didn't take then ?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi

In wiping out most of humanity in a flood? Read some of the passages prior to the flood and you'll see why. The big one is the one that says 'every inclination in their hearts were evil.'

What a peculiar world it must have been in Noachic days, when there were no pregnancies (so no pesky foetuses to kill in the wombs of their mothers) and no children who had yet to learn how to sin and be evil.

Just adults, who (apart from alcoholic Captain Noah and his floating menagerie and dysfunctional family) were ALL ALL ALL irredeemably evil.

What a shame of course, that the archaeological evidence of other (non-Hebrew) civilizations seems not to have picked up on this supposedly worldwide inundation, and that the Hebrew flood story also bears an uncannily strong resemblance to Babylonian/Sumerian flood myths.

[Robert]

What a peculiar world it must have been in Noachic days, when there were no pregnancies (so no pesky foetuses to kill in the wombs of their mothers) and no children who had yet to learn how to sin and be evil.

What's your problem with death?
Do you not know that everybody dies? And that it in the end doesn't matter if you die at the age of 8 or at the age of 88?

Some people could've better died at age 8 and miss the misery at later age. We don't know, so we should let them live. God knows though.
Besides that, every human already deserves death anyway.

It's your post-modern wester 21st century view on things that's the problem. Not the Old Testament.

What if Hitler had died at the age of 8? Or in his mothers womb? Or Milosevic? Bin Laden? Al Zarqawi?
The people in those days were doing evil deeds, they all did. And those children in the wombs of their parents would do the same. Like you and me do the same because we are evil at heart as well.

Or is your life perfect? Did you never hurt somebody? Physically or mentally? Are you able to live the perfect life? I am not.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by CyberShy


What's your problem with death?
Do you not know that everybody dies?

How fascinating. Are you really telling me people are mortal ?


I must brush up on my human physiology....


Perhaps I should just point out for reading impaired that what I'm questioning is Obi Gyn's glib gloss of the divine culling:

In wiping out most of humanity in a flood? Read some of the passages prior to the flood and you'll see why. The big one is the one that says 'every inclination in their hearts were evil.'

Obi Gyn


Now this is the same person who apparently thinks that humans have free will. If they have free will, and are free to sin or not sin, then exactly how did a foetus in the womb or an unweaned child have a chance to sin so much that :

'every inclination in their hearts were evil.'

and were thus as deserving of death as a thoroughly debauched adult ?

The answer of course is that the Hebrews thought nothing of their god supposedly slaying the non-Hebrews, or the non-righteous, even down to the children and unborn.

The Amalekites:

15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

King James Version: 1 Kings (1 Samuel) Chapter 15


The Pol Pot of the Old Testament strikes again !

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Flip McWho
Yeah, the thing about piecemealing the bible is that it really becomes your own interpretation of the bible then, not really an objective truth about the world.

Every religion based on scripture is an interpretation of said scripture. Even among those who consider themselves literalists, you'll find disagreements because they don't always confer the same meaning to the same words.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by CyberShy
What if Hitler had died at the age of 8?

What is your problem with Hitler? Are you one of those people who criticize him for having started an event that killed millions upon millions of people? It's absolutely all right to be a mass-murderer, since we all die anyway.

Hitler
God

[DaShi]

You know, sometimes the sequels are better than the original:

X men 2, The Empire Strikes Back, Godfather 2, the New Testament, Weekend at Bernie's 2

[Robert]

Molly Bloom: did you read my first message in this post? In there I try to answer your questions / concerns.

There's a book written by Lewis, named "Letters from hell". In this book demons write letters to each other. (Lewis is a christian). One day a demon writes a letter to his boss in which his says: "World War II has started! Huray! People will die"
His boss replies something like: "We do not care if there's a war or not. All we care about is if people die without serving God. If this happens in huge numbers doesn't really matter to us."

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by CyberShy
Molly Bloom: did you read my first message in this post? In there I try to answer your questions / concerns.

There's a book written by Lewis, named "Letters from hell". In this book demons write letters to each other. (Lewis is a christian). One day a demon writes a letter to his boss in which his says: "World War II has started! Huray! People will die"
His boss replies something like: "We do not care if there's a war or not. All we care about is if people die without serving God. If this happens in huge numbers doesn't really matter to us."

Oh that's just a super rationalization for mass slaughter by a supposedly compassionate divinity.

Makes you wonder just how god is meant to be any different from the (libelled) Herod of the New Testament and his supposed 'Masscre of the Innocents'.

Of course, there isn't in fact any difference. How exactly is a foetus or an infant meant to 'serve god' ?

Or an ox for that matter ?

What an absurd argument, and juist what one would expect from the logic-impaired C. S. Lewis.

He should have stuck to writing essays on mediaeval literature, rather than churning out nauseating Christian apologia and thinly veiled Christian allegories for the young and defenceless.