We were taught the bible every day by our splendid primary school headmaster, who had been a Spitfire pilot in WW2, and he seemed to focus on the most unpleasant bits of the Old Testament - even at at tender age this did not create a particularly positive impression of G. Years, later I did wonder if old Mr C was being just a wee bit subversive with us.
I'm sure it does. You're a product of the Enlightenment and when you read you read the Bible you interpret it as a product of the Enlightenment.
If you want to actually understand what the Bible was trying to communicate you need to remember who the Bible was written by and who it was written for. A Bronze-age Middle-Easterners is going to get a very different message from the Bible than you are.
Whoever lives his life according to the "What would Jesus do?" doctrine is likely a nice fellow, although a little extremest perhaps. Whoever lives his life according to the "What would YHWH do?" doctrine is a raging psychopath you'd be advised to stay away from.
According to Jesus, "What would Jesus do?" and "What would YHWH do?" are one and the same, see John 14:
"Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”"
"Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?"
Only if you remove or add to the context in which both were given.
The principle of eye for an eye was to __restrict__ compensation to the value of the loss, where the wickedness of man would otherwise tend to overreach. One has only to see Lamech for an early example of judicial overreach: "If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold."
And if you study the Sermon on the Mount in context, you will see that Jesus was not in fact referring to the OT when he said, "you have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" but I say to you..." but rather to the Pharisees' weakening, distortion and misuse of the OT.
The historical Jesus (according to all the earliest accounts, for which there is superfluously excellent textual reliability according to textual criticism) had a very high view of the OT, and deepened the OT, see the context of the Sermon on the Mount:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the __Pharisees__ and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."
If I were predisposed to look for puerile contradictions in the Bible, I am sure I would find as many as I would give time, but Jesus himself saw none. I would encourage you to take Jesus more seriously.
No. The principle was to restrict the scope of revenge. Yes, in the OT gouging someone's eye out to "compensate" for one of your family members having their eye gouged out was "fair compensation." But the NT turns completely against that idea. That's what "turn the other cheek" means.
While the Bible is so full of contradictions that you certainly can find support in some verse for whatever theory you want to prove, the concept of mercy and forgiveness is just not emphasized as much in the OT as it is in the NT.
I think rather the principle is one of justice. Lamech is an example of revenge (not justice). Revenge is never given to men by God ("It is mine to avenge; I will repay").
"But the NT turns completely against that idea."
No, not at all, or when last did you read the Bible carefully?
Jesus taught plainly that to turn against the words of Moses at all even in the slightest is to turn against Jesus himself.
Jesus taught plainly that if you won't accept the words of Moses, you won't accept Jesus' own resurrection from the dead.
"the concept of mercy and forgiveness is just not emphasized as much in the OT as it is in the NT."
That is a gross misrepresentation of the OT. You've fallen for Marcion's error and worse.
With the merciful you show yourself merciful;
with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;
with the purified you show yourself pure;
and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.
For you save a humble people,
but the haughty eyes you bring down.Why try to whitewash the bible? The old testament Jehovah was a vile sociopath. Jesus is a cool guy with a dad that has some screws loose. I grew up in a fundie family, the hoops fundies jump through to justify old testament idiot God are ridiculous and I have no time for that.
Understanding (and understanding in context) is not whitewashing. There's excellent scholarship in the bible, from religious and non-religious authors.
Knee-jerk reactions about "vile psychopaths" are not that.
For one, the "old testament Jehovah" was the person who gave life, the universe and everything to the people who died (e.g. in Sodom) anyway. So it was his to take. Psychopathy applies to people, not gods.
fuck off, that's gross. as humans if we ever create AI we'll (hopefully) do it in the context of a robust ethical framework, and yet all knowing Jehovah couldn't fucking do some due diligence? Jesus fucking Christ, how pathetic of him.
Sure, it is now. But it (probably) wasn't gross back when the bible was written.
The bible is a piece of art/propaganda written to support the sense of tribal unity and to ensure political power stays with the right people. The God, therefore, is just a character - a literary device - from a book written 3k years ago for a very specific target audience. We are not that target audience and we lack the cultural context to decipher the intended meaning - the meaning that the authors had in mind when writing. It's entirely possible that to the authors and their readers the biblical stories were about mercy (or whatever).
And it's not "whitewashing". Nobody denies that OT God is a mass killer. They just claim that - for a fictional character - being a mass killer (or a god for that matter) was very differently perceived 3000 years ago in a middle of a desert.
sigh
you've clearly never dealt with fundies. I was raised by people who taught me that literally every word was divine and that the entire bible is a historical document (there are millions of these idiots across the globe). These people will bend over backwards to explain to you how the wholesale murder of babies was totally justified. They'll even do it with a straight face.
You and I both agree that the Bible is no different than Harry Potter, and God happens to be a bad guy in the first half.
There are millions of people who live their lives believing that the entire bible is a 100% historical document. Having unshackled myself from these morons, this topic can be a bit of a sore point for me ;)
Then I read a comment saying that there is no morality without god and saw my previous comment above downvoted... I initially tought that you overreacted (not that I don't understand your reasons for it 100%!), but now I'm not so sure... :)
There are no grounds (rational or otherwise) for objective morality outside of God.
See Hume's "is-ought" dilemma.
And if you're into Atheism see also Sam Harris' debate with William Lane Craig.
hopefully we can do better than OT god, otherwise we're in for rough ride.
That's the Devil's oldest lie, and his favorite.
"otherwise we're in for rough ride."
That's what we've been witnessing ever since.
seems pretty fked up to me :)
I don't know anything about rationalwiki.org, it's the first site that showed up when I googled "old testament character punished"
Each statement is linked to Biblical verses though, so any objections would be to the spin they put on it rather than disputing whether those passages are actually there.
Basically, old testament Yahwe is a weird dude. Very thin skinned with a hare trigger temper. He's a sociopath who "tests" people by murdering their family among other atrocities. He does have his bro's back though. He sent 2 bears to maul 42 youths to death for mocking Elijah's bald head.