Disturbing Passages in Holy Books

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Must be their abundance of midichlorians

Self-denial is also pretty much a fundamental principle in proper Christianity.

Circumcision hasn’t come up in a while.

Joshua 5:2-3 At that time the Lord said to Joshua, “Make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites again.” So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the Israelites at Gibeath Haaraloth.^[a]

a. Gibeath Haaraloth means the hill of foreskins.

Another passage involving the ark of the covenant in which YHWH gets pissed off and kills for no good reason:

There’s a lot of deaths/glorification of death in Joshua 10:24-43 which I won’t cite here although the first few verses are…interesting.

Here’s verse 40: “So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings; he left no one remaining but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel had commanded.”

I keep on envisioning that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Sir Lancelot kills a bunch of innocent people at the wedding feast. Destroying “all that breathed” would involve the slaughter of innocent children, if it actually happened and wasn’t the disturbing fan fiction that it most likely is.

Jesus kills a fig tree for no good reason:

I suppose it’s much better than killing people, but taking vengeance on a tree or killing it to prove a point just seems completely unnecessary, unkind, and silly.

Right after Jesus curses the tree he has his hissy fit in the temple, overturning the tables of the money changers and driving people out which I always thought was over the top.

Moral of the story: Avoid Jesus when he’s hangry OR make sure there’s a fresh supply of figs nearby when he’s around.

"Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."
Psalm 137:9

Why do "pro life" (anti choice) Christians exist when God according to the Bible doesn't condemn, but promote infanticide? Not to put infanticide and abortion on the same level but it's a question I've had for a long time, growing up in a Christian home and not being able to get a straight answer out of any of my family members I've always found it strange.

Here’s a particularly violent passage in Judges in which YHWH engages in capriciously malevolent behavior. It reminds me vaguely of The Iliad. There’s some bathroom silliness in verses 24-25 which is always a nice addition to a holy book.

Content warning: verses 21-22 are especially graphic.

Obviously, one death isn’t enough for YHWH, so the passage ends on an uplifting note (i.e. with lots of carnage). It’s rather unfair for the Moabites, especially since it was YHWH’s idea for them to capture the Israelites in the first place.

I’ve known lots of parents who’ve read these passages with their young children - who worked their way through the entire Bible together but anything else remotely violent was forbidden. Personally speaking, the violence in the Bible really bothered me when I was young. Since it was presented as something that actually happened and that was often even endorsed by God, allegedly making it “moral” and “just,” it felt more disturbing than violence in movies or video games.

Slavery in the Old and New Testament

Content warning: strong language.

Many pro-slavery scriptures have already been posted in this thread but not this passage in 1 Peter. I’ve heard fundamentalists apply it to different situations, including marriage. Good times. At any rate, it’s pretty messed up to not only support slavery but to suggest that it’ll please God if you endure suffering and injustice rather than fight against it.

Some of the following scriptures on slavery have already been covered in this thread and/or are in the video, but I thought I’d list them here along with others for the sake of convenience: It’s strange that an all-powerful deity can’t manage his own reputation.There are plenty more, but I think this is sufficient for my purposes here. Obviously, alleged instances of taking female captives from destroyed towns and cities under YHWH’s approval (e.g. in the passage at Numbers 31:1-28 which is partially cited in my OP) would involve slavery, too.

In contrast, there are only 6 passages people cite to support homophobia in the Bible. I will address those passages and the problems with them in a separate post when I get up the motivation. Stoning (not the good kind) and witchcraft are also topics I’d like to explore further here.

All things considered, I’m inclined to agree with the statement made at the end of the video: “the Bible is like a goddamn infomercial for oppression.”

Hymn to Zeus, by Cleanthes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj0WQDH1Dcc

It's interesting that an all knowing, all powerful, and all good being would have such backwards views. views that reflect how people thought a few thousand years ago

That reminded me of this quote -

That’s awesome!

Before I get to those 6ish Bible passages, I want to talk about a topic that YHWH seems especially passionate about going by how often he references it in the Bible:

I’m going to preface this by stating the obvious. According to the UN and just about any humanitarian organization out there, stoning is a form of torture. (See links below.) YHWH is sadistic enough that he advocates for torture throughout the Old Testament, often for extremely petty reasons, and doesn’t keep it from happening to people in various passages of the New Testament…or today, if we believe that he’s real and as described in the Bible (omnipotent, etc.). Occasionally and as was already alluded to in this thread, YHWH endorses burning people alive as well, but this post will focus on stoning specifically.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases ... punishment

https://ishr.org/abolish-stoning-and-ba ... worldwide/

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press ... -reckless/

The following verses aren’t in any rational order apart from saving New Testament stuff until the end, and it’s by no means an exhaustive list although I think it’s enough for here.

In the first passage, a man does something incredibly wicked. He gathers sticks on the Sabbath. Obviously, YHWH says that he must die by stoning. Fun for the entire community!
In the next passage, a man named Achan stole stuff. Clearly, he needs to be stoned to death as well as his sons and daughters. There is biblical support for YHWH punishing kids for the sins of their parents although he goes back and forth on this issue. I think older passages in the Bible tend to be more barbaric, but I won’t explore that further in this post because it’s beyond the scope of what I had in mind.Another shocking crime: blasphemy! My God, these were some rough characters. Anyone who tries to get you to serve other gods: Worshipping other gods: The following scripture involves stoning parents for sacrificing their kids to another deity. Although torture is always wrong, this is an activity that is actually bad. However, there’s an unfortunate passage involving a child (Jephthah’s daughter) being sacrificed to YHWH at Judges 11:30-40. Awkward. I also wanted to say that I think the mention of stoning here sets the tone for some of the other scriptures in Leviticus 20 which say “put to death” without explicitly saying how.Being a medium or spiritualist: Rebellious children: More useful guidance about problematic children: Adultery: If a man and woman have sex together and the woman is engaged to someone else, they both should be stoned to death. If she is raped but doesn’t cry for help, she still needs to be stoned to death unless it happens in the country.It’s fascinating to me that Leviticus 18:22 and the following scripture, which are open to interpretation for various reasons I’ll go into elsewhere, get so much attention compared to some of the other ones. Hmmm.If there’s no “proof” that a woman was a virgin when she got married, she’s to be stoned to death:Going near Mount Sinai when YHWH is around is a bad idea:There are various passages in the NT (and OT for that matter) like the following one where stoning someone God likes is portrayed negatively, but citing one account should be sufficient. Here, Stephen is being stoned for reasons that aren’t endorsed by God. Sure, he was annoying, but it’s not like he did anything really bad like disobey his parents or gather sticks on the Sabbath:It’s a pity God couldn’t have done something useful like, I don’t know, stop the men from stoning him. Maybe my expectations of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent deity are unreasonably high.

As far as Jesus is concerned, people like to reference the nice story where he demonstrates mercy towards the woman who committed adultery - the story in which he says: “Let the one who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone.” However, I will cite from Chapter 2 of Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why to highlight some issues with it. I underlined the especially relevant bits.
As Ehrman goes on to state, the story could’ve been part of the oral tradition surrounding Jesus, but I think it’s interesting that it was only included in John - the latest written Gospel, which dates from around 90-100 CE, but wasn’t even original there. Obviously, if we choose to put any weight on the Gospel accounts of Jesus, he does soften the Old Testament from time to time, but he upholds it as well. It’s really interesting to me how scribes likely shaped the Jesus story to fit their desired narrative while also trying to make it fit with the OT, not that it does despite their efforts.

In any case, there’s obviously a lot of support for inhumane punishments in the Bible, including torture. Most people don’t think that this stuff should be applied in our day. I don’t see why they can’t come to similar conclusions on other topics, especially when there’s way less biblical support for them, using critical thought and empathy rooted in humanism.

Another topic that the Bible spends a huge amount of time on is magic, sorcery, divination, fortune-telling, etc. It seems like the Bible writers didn’t want anything taking away from their own magical beliefs. There are a great deal more passages on this stuff in the Bible than what I’m including here although I wanted to cite a lot to provide a clear picture. It’s remarkable how many scriptures are dedicated to something that isn’t even real although it was very real to ancient people. There’s an entertaining passage involving the plagues in which magicians, under Pharaoh’s insistence, try to prove that they have the same power as YHWH. It turns out that they can do stuff like turn staffs into snakes, water into blood, and summon frogs but not gnats, etc. YHWH wins the magic-off.

At any rate, I’ve arranged the scriptures by theme. IMO, the juicer stuff begins at around theme two.

1. A number of scriptures try to differentiate magic and fortune-telling from…God-approved magic and fortune-telling.

2. In the following passage, a girl who practices fortune-telling is said to be possessed.
3. Book burning:
Speaking of book burning, Pastor Greg Locke approves:



My former church didn’t do big book burnings, but members were urged to burn stuff related to magic or the occult they happened to own because it could lead to “problems with demons.”

4. There’s a bunch of “magic is bad” scriptures: ^ Persecutors of alleged witches argued that since sorcery was a work of the flesh, castigating the flesh was a sensible response, especially when combined with other Bible passages.
5. People who practice magic are to be put to death:^ It’s interesting that Exodus says “female sorcerer” but doesn’t allude to male sorcerers here.^ Once again, stoning = torture.There are scriptures which advocate burning people alive as a punishment but they aren’t speaking about witches. However, the following scriptures were a likely source of inspiration.

6. Sorcerers are going to burn in Hell:
7. This passage is talking about Babylon, but there’s some disturbing imagery related to the overall topic:
IMO, the passages in this post highlight persecution more than anything else. Beliefs and practices that conflict or compete with the ones in the Bible are forbidden and punished. It’s fascinating for me to explore this as a former Christian. When I was a believer, I felt pushed into thinking about things as they were written rather than from a more critical point-of-view.

8. The persecution of alleged female witches as opposed to men was worse due in large part to all the problematic scriptures concerning women in the Bible. There are more misogynistic scriptures in the Bible than homophobic ones. At any rate, since that’s too large a topic to explore in this post, I’ll just cite one passage:

It’s easy to see how women who did not fit that role could be deemed Satan-influenced temptresses. This line of thinking is certainly emphasized in Malleus Maleficarum - an influential treatise on witchcraft that dates from 1486. I might explore it more in another post. It’s batshit crazy but somewhat difficult to tackle due to its wordiness. Here’s a small tidbit I’ll include for entertainment purposes:



^ From pg. 40

https://books.google.com/books?id=sBkgD ... &q&f=false

Scriptures People Cite to Support Homophobia

As was previously mentioned, there are only 6 Bible passages people reference to uphold homophobia in the Bible. Those passages are:

- Genesis 19
- Leviticus 18:22
- Leviticus 20:13
- 1 Corinthians 6:9-10
- Romans 1:26-27
- 1 Timothy 1:9-10

I will address these scriptures here although this topic is much more complex than I initially thought, so I’m not going to cover everything.

1. I’m going to start with, what I believe may be, the most offensive argument - the account of Sodom in Genesis 19. If people think that the biggest problem in these verses is related to homosexuality, perhaps a neutral reread would be useful. In this passage, two angels disguised as men visit the city in the evening. Lot sees them and urges them to stay at his house rather than outside like they had allegedly planned. Here’s what it says in verses 4-8:

The issue here isn’t about gay consensual sex; it’s about attempted gang rape. The fact that Lot offered his daughters is disturbing although relates to a lot of other passages in the Old Testament that contain violence against women. Women seem to be viewed and treated more like property than people. Strangely, after Lot’s wife gets turned into a pillar of salt and Lot and his daughters are staying in a cave, the daughters decide to get their father drunk and have sex with him so as to get pregnant. It’s an origin story about the Ammonites and the Moabites, and like many origin stories (e.g. why the chipmunk has stripes), it never happened. In any event, if one wants a more biblical interpretation of the events in Sodom and Gomorrah, this scripture may be useful:
When Lot says: “[D]o nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof,” he’s highlighting the issue of hospitality and charity more than anything else.

2. and 3. Next I’ll talk about these passages in Leviticus which receive a lot of attention:
The text here is ambiguous:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviticus_18

Even if we assume that the writer was referring to gay sex in general, the book of Leviticus contains a lot of absurd commandments and unjust punishments like here:
And here:Some other things that are forbidden by the writers of Leviticus:

- Eating fat or blood in food
- Eating - or touching the carcass of - an animal which doesn’t both chew cud and has a divided hoof
- Eating – or touching the carcass of – any seafood without fins or scales
- Planting different seeds in the same field
- Cross-breeding animals
- Mixing fabrics in clothing
- Trimming your beard or the hair around your temples
- Getting tattoos
- Having sex with a woman during her period (Here it says that a man who does so will be unclean for 7 days while here it says that both the man and woman “shall be cut off from their people.”)
- Slaughtering a cow/sheep and its young on the same day
- Working on the Sabbath

There are many more commandments in Leviticus. If people think following various passages here are silly, I’m not sure why they are giving much weight to other ones, especially when we know that being LGBTQ+ is NOT harmful and that promoting bigotry and discrimination is.

4. The following verses were written by Paul.* Paul never knew Jesus personally. These texts were written decades after his death. Jesus never talked about homosexuality. I’m going to compare two translations of the following verse.

https://unfundamentalists.com/2015/08/c ... ans-69-10/

^ It’s interesting to consider that Paul may have been inspired by the passages in Leviticus which aren’t without various problems - textually and contextually - that I’ve partially explored.

Here’s Leviticus 20:13 from the Septuagint - the Greek translation of Leviticus:

"If a man lies with a man ('arsenos koiten') as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

5. To get a sense of what Paul is talking about here, we need to read the preceding verses:
”Gave them over” here and in verses 26 and 28 is a bit misleading. The phrase translated from the Greek word paradidomi, 'hand over', refers to more than a passive withholding of divine grace on God's part, but as God's reaction to the people who turning from the truth of God and his moral requirements, that is to "turn them over.” Once again, verse 26 starts out with “For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions.” In other words, Paul is claiming that God is punishing people for engaging in idolatry by making them lust for specific sex acts - perhaps ones that Paul didn’t like. Lust, in general, is frowned upon in the New Testament. In any event, in verses 28-32:
It’s strange that people focus on 26-27 when the primary issue is about idolatry and the many problems Paul believed came from that. This passage does not appear to be talking about gay relationships in general and is not forbidding them although Paul likely had his own biases stemming from his environment, his understanding of Leviticus, and a literal interpretation of the creation account in Genesis. The use of the word “unnatural” seems to point to that. In any event, as long as people aren’t engaging in idolatry or behaviors that are actually harmful as outlined in verses 28-32, there’s no biblical reason why a Bible-following church shouldn’t accept gay members the same as anyone else.

6. Bible scholars state that, although First and Second Timothy claim to be written by Paul, they were written well after Paul’s death by an unknown writer. Interestingly, the writer seems to have been inspired by Paul’s passage in 1 Corinthians since he uses the word “ἀρσενοκοίτης” here, making it similarly open to interpretation.Many Christians cite 2 Timothy 3:16 when they make the choice to uphold the Bible’s apparent bigotry on various topics when the book of Timothy comes from an unknown and apparently dishonest source (which wasn’t that uncommon in ancient times). It seems more like the Bible was inspired and written by men. Even if one chooses to be a Christian, there’s no reason why the Bible, Paul, or anonymous writers should be above scrutiny. It’s very much rooted in the times and places it was written and contains the prejudices and biases of the writers as well as the interpolations of scribes. Translators have also had a large impact on the texts and our understanding of them.

*More toxic nonsense allegedly by Paul that most people don’t believe should be followed. Most scholars consider this an interpolation, perhaps from the same dude who wrote First and Second Timothy (as well as Titus), although most people don’t know that:

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 15 Dec 2024, 7:40 pm, edited 4 times in total.