Worst or inexplicable Bible stories

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It's hard for me to imagine the God of the cross to order such a thing.

If you are speaking of the Son, He would not...and this article might help with some perspective...

One point I disagree with is the identity of the church: the church today is in fact the descendant of Israel by faith (not in a racial, insane Christian Identity idea). Unfortunately, Antisemites have hijacked the doctrine of supersessionism (sometimes clumsily called Replacement theology), giving it a bad name.

While speaking of engrafted Gentiles, I doubt "descendant" would be an accurate term there. But either way, the author's point while referencing "Israel" was not related to the identity of "the church".

God is sovereign guys, God is not on trial, we are! Elijah was not the grumpy man, he was the tormented man. Jehosapath didn't sacrifice his daughter in the end did he? I can't remember. Anyway the lesson is never make promises to God.

Kind Regards, Nay.

Jesus didn't compare the woman with a dog. She was a gentile and jesus was there for the jews first. It wasn't meant as an insult.

I had always taken what Jesus said to have been a test for the woman's faith. I can't believe he would hold someone to be lower than himself because of accident of birth.

Nay, probably the most helpful thing to do is read the bible cover to cover sometime, over the course of a few months so the finer points of the stories stay fresh in your head.

Enough time looking at it as well as looking at the puzzles behind the gospels of John and the like sent me out toward Hermeticism/Rosicrucianism because it was the only interpretation of the bible that made any sense to me once the pagan roots in most of the philosophies were incorporated. Past that it seemed like the people I knew, when I was growing up were haggling with each other over super-literal readings of the scriptures combined with no historical insight into how texts, where the ideas com from, or any of that. The more I had the chance to read of contemporary philosophies the less the bible looked like a monolith dropped in 2001 Space Oddysey and much more like something that fit the eastern Mediterranean basin like a glove.

I do like Christ as a solar logos symbol as much as I like Mary/Isis/Sophia as a lunar cosmic-feminine symbol, in a way all the great deity stories of the past were rolled up, along with the explanation of the solar cycle of the year through the twelve houses, the renewal of life in spring, etc.. I'm sure there are also deeper mysteries of rebirth, much like the labors of Hercules and Samson or the mysteries of the four elements/four faces of the cherubim.

That said I do get that the bible is something like a text-based mirror, ie. the kind of thing that you will receive a personal message from and in striking clarity - one where if you're meant to be a Christian you may very well be one for life and if you're not meant to be, it'll sling you off onto another path no matter how badly one may want to cling to it. Either way - reading it cover to cover is important.

Yes we should be very grateful. I'm not an Atheist. But this thread is about the obvious false statements in the Bible, and the fact that God didn't write the Bible. The Bible says that God ordered and facilitated repeated massacres of men, women and children in Canaan. The Bible says that God told Abraham to murder his son, as a test of Abraham's being loyal enough to murder a child. There are more things like that in the Bible, and I have no doubt that other people at this thread can tell you more of them.

The topic of this thread is merely the things the Bible says that are unlikely to be true. God didn't write the Bible. A bunch of mean, cruel, authoritarian, and barbarous men wrote it.

To the things in the paragraph before last, I'll add that, according to the book Forged: Writing for God, not only did God not write the Bible, but about half of it wasn't even written by the men whose names are on it. In other words, the Bible is full of forgery. For instance, Paul's forgers contradicted eachother a bit.

Michael829





Much Love, Nay .[/quote]

In the case of the Canaanites, it has to do with the depth of depravity of a conquered people. First, the Israelites gained a ruthless reputation in the wilderness, backed up by God’s visible presence. Even without TV, radio, and Twitter or Facebook you’d have had to live under a rock to not have known what was coming. Second, God told the Israelites that He would drive them out ahead of the Israelites. It was their fear that saved their lives, so claims of genocide I believe are bunk. Third, holdouts. “Innocent” non-combatants. Women and children so immersed in evil practices offensive to God that a change would have resulted in unlivable conditions for them, not to mention the negative influence an enslaved people would have on the Israelites, or resentful children mounting a revolt when they got strong enough. Killing them quickly was an act of mercy, not merely an act of punishment.

It helps trying to look at it from God’s perspective. I think it’s difficult for us to imagine a world or a society in which people have fallen so far that God writes them off as irredeemable. God already knows who will choose redemption. A question that used to confuse me was how God could send people to hell when they’d never heard of God. After reading the Bible a few times, the answer came to me. How do we know if someone HAD reached “primitive tribes” in isolation that a single person WOULD convert? I once read about a tribe who’d repeatedly turned back frustrated missionaries because of a tradition that held ONLY what’s perceived through the 5 senses exists. It’s materialism with a twist. Not only is a dead person gone, it’s as though they NEVER EXISTED. So you want me to believe in a God I can’t see who DIED??? Seriously? I mean, this group culturally denies any sense of history, like they’re living out a Stone Age version of 1984. The remaining tenets of Christian faith, as well as those we have in common with other religions, are already present in their culture. So what do Christians have to offer them? We can lament their destiny, but it could simply be they’re just not ready for the Gospel.

Oh, and I’m not making that up. I question the veracity of the missionary’s faith in the first place because the answers to some of his issues are obvious to me. But here’s the article from freethinker (yes, I DO sometimes check out secular humanist websites. Jesus and I are still cool. ).

http://freethinker.co.uk/2008/11/08/how-an-amazonian-tribe-turned-a-missionary-into-an-atheist/

Just how bad could they have been? Sounds like Mordor!

It's not usual for an entire community to be corrupt. There are good and evil people in every society.

The content of much of the Bible is very violent - the boys who teased Elijah about his baldness being one example. I grew up in a Christian household and went to Sunday School regularly. Excelled in the annual Scripture exams. But obviously they don't cover the dark stuff like this - only the good stuff which we can utilise in a good way and learn from.

Seriously, people can make fun of Theresa May's shoes or Trump's hairdo but they wouldn't be popular if they had to react the way Elijah did...

Like Mordor? Hey, I hold myself to the same standard as everyone else. So, honestly, I say I don’t know because I wasn’t there any more than present day skeptics and revisionists were.

But I do wonder if it was Mordor-like. I wonder sometimes if the pre-flood Nephilim generation was not the basis for some common tradition between Semitic people and the Greeks. All evidence of, say, Titans and Olympians that might have existed (assuming they existed) were swept away with the tide, so I can’t make an argument to that effect. But it’s no less fascinating.

Atlantis. We assume it was allegorical, but was it? A continent home to an advanced civilization that had become corrupt to the core and seemingly wiped out in an instant. Was it real, or was it allegory for an entire world civilization that was lost to cataclysm? Again, I’m not arguing for or against it, and maybe the whole thing was as much just a story like LOTR for all we know. But ancient stories we just assume are pure legend but that ancients might have accepted as true could very well be a product of stories shared around a post-flood campfire inspired by real events and repeated as a warning to future generations.

Unusual? Eh...depends on where you go with that. Unusual NOW. And maybe there’s a reason for it. Could be God culling the worst of the baddies and conditioning us with a degree of increasing sensitivity. Even some God-hating anti-theists have a stronger Christian moral sense than many Christians themselves. Whether we want to or not, we are committing acts that display a love and respect for God we don’t even believe in. While not sufficient for redeeming the soul, the temporal consequences are those of God’s material blessing. The Old Testament never commands us to believe in God, only to love God.

So I think over the course of human history we’ve developed a more advanced sense of outrage, while massing killing, raping, and pillaging in the ancient world was just another day at work. In our time, WWII changed EVERYTHING. It was the equivalent of the Babylonian exile in its effect, except on a global scale. After Jesus, the destruction of the Temple was the spiritual equivalent of a nuke. The fall of Rome was another capstone moment. Protestant Reformation another, this time challenging the supremacy of the RC. The failure of the Crusades. I don’t really count the medieval wars because they more represent political stagnation than significant progress. What grabs my attention is the period between, say, the Napoleonic wars, Crimea, and WWII when tech is continuously ramping up and body counts eclipse anything you read about in the Bible. Despite the violence going on in the world right now, we remain comparatively at peace, all things considered.

The recurring pattern to look for is subsequent generational amnesia. Soon WWII will be just a bad dream, a fable that we can absorb or ignore. And thus a new cycle of depravity and fall will begin, with renewed outrages and extreme sensitivity, measures taken to make sure this NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN. But it WILL happen. Sooner or later, it always does.

So...that’s just a long-winded way of saying it’s unusual in one sense, but not REALLY unusual. I think we do a good enough job of destroying ourselves that we don’t need God for that right now. I’m just grateful that God allows us to live at all. I do believe that conditions are right for another HUGE Christian revival. I’d enjoy being around for that!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PK7P7uZFf5o

I always interpreted Jephtha as a warning to not make rash oaths. Oath breaking was up there with idol worship and Molech. Therefore, yes, he was committed to sacrificing his daughter, and the Bible does indicate that he had to dispose of her.

But the Bible is unclear as to how he did that. Human sacrifice was a serious no-no, so it’s safe to assume she wasn’t killed. More likely she had to take a lifelong Nazirite vow or some kind of perpetual service close to religious rites, figuratively sacrificed to God’s service rather than to death.

In a world that takes oaths seriously, be very, VERY careful with what you promise.

The story of Job. If you're losing your faith in god, I don't recommend reading this.