The Quran is not worse than the Hebrew Bible

Post Reply New Topic

There is some good criticism of both works. However is rare to get a comparison that is not slanted one way or that other.

The reality is the Hebrew Bible contains much of the justified violence, inhumanity and immorality as in the Quran. In fact those things in the Quran which are problematic are very much been shown to be derived from Old Testament concepts. Every from treatment of women, attitudes to slavery, etc. Maybe not everything, but even what isn't you can't really say it is worse. The best you could say is it didn't really advance in all those centuries.

I've sometimes been guilty not giving due comparison.

With that in mind is is possible to differentiate between how moderates practice and what the doctrine says?

I very much suspect that Jesus (so long as you could call this a single person), was intending to subvert these ideas (an oppressive rule), to try and make it a bit more humane by contemporary standards. This is a theory, but it is the case that there is quite bit that doesn't match up with New Testament an Old Testament.

Thoughts?

Here is some thing I'd like to spend time studying, at least if I were younger. It is how circumstances and existing culture affect the mindset and beliefs. For example, we can see how Aristotle had ideas which can no way be acceptable today, yet it would have been difficult for him to have thought otherwise with the knowledge available at the time.

It is a problem that the Hebrews had a belief in the God who created the Universe and made Him exclusive to themselves, then later just the two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. What we do see is the honesty of the scribes reporting for the most part without what happened.

It is a dichotomy as I see it. All of The Old Testament is said to be inspired by God. So we take it that God ordered the genecides so the Hebrews could move in and do away with sin. Yet so many of the Hebrews took on the religion of Baal. We can say the prophetic books were inspired as they call the Hebrew tribes for what they were.

We see Jesus calling the super religious people to account and being crucified for doing so.

I agree. I don't think the Koran is any worse than the Hebrew Bible. They are both pretty brutal.

Thankfully, few - if any - think the rest of us should live by the OT. If any did, then you would expect just as much fanatical violence and oppression as you find in Islamist countries.

Absolutely correct.
The difference is that the (hebrew) bible has not been followed as absolute rule for centuries, but rather has been a guideline.
The more fundamentalist muslim groups, however, want to live to the letter of the qu'ran, rather than the intention. This is what makes (radical) islam more violent than radical christanity, even though they are based on basically the same laws

It is the Arabized version of Hebrew Bible.

They are both collections of stories, myths and morals, made up by men.
Many different men over different periods of time and circumstances. all thrown together by other men at a later date into a big collection, these later men chose what did and what did not go into the collections.

They have been further edited to death subsequently by yet other men trying to wring out political influence which suits their specific ends during the time and the place they lived. Often manipulating text in a totally anachronistic way to gain their selfish ends

And on it goes with scholars to this very day (men only still) again reading both books in ways that suits their particular views.

Better - worse ? who can say.... but I can tell you that they were all written by men who were proverbially afraid of the dark & the mysteries of life and death so they mythologised it in attempts to find some meaning in life.
These books have been used by later men who professed to be the only ones who could translate these books properly have subsequently been mainly used to control people.

Women not allowed.

This is a very interesting interview of a scholar explaining the Syriac origin of the supposedly totally-Arabic Quran

The video is in Arabic tho :-/

The scholar is explaining word by word of a page in an ancient Quran vs the modern Quran and showing how greatly they differ in meaning.

If anything the Qur'an is LESS violent. The violence in the Qur'an is all about self-defense. But the Old testament tells you to kill sabbath workers, kill women who are raped because they did not scream for help, exterminate the canaanites for idolatry and because God "promised them" canaan, exterminate the population of any city that has turned to idolatry, mistreat slaves in a far worse fashion than the quran ever ordered, etc. The Qur'an has a lot of violent rhetoric, but it is mostly figurative.

Also it Arabia wasn't exactly the most populated place at the time, an Mecca was illogical place to put a trade hub, there were much better places to make settlement in the Arabian peninsular. As you know Mohamed and his followed traveled much further afield.

If you look at the message in the New Testament, Quran is much more Old Testament in style. There were other more peaceful solutions to problem they faced in the story.

My opinion is:-
Just as the Mosaic Law was a "Tutor, leading to the Christ" (Galatians 3:24), the whole of the Old Testament was a Tutor leading to the Christ and the replacement of a vengeful God with a God of Love and mercy.

To appreciate something enough to evoke Love, one has to be aware of its value or necessity.

The Old Testament shows us that God is a frightening being who cannot abide anything but a level of perfection that it is not in mans ability to achieve.
Anything not perfect, including us, he destroys because his world he made has to be perfect, the sin we brought on it was by our own choice.
Having learnt from the Old Testament that we cannot be perfect and earn salvation, even when God tells us how with the Mosaic Law, God then gives us his son to kill to pay the price for our sin.
His son Jesus and the New Testament brings the message that Love is greater than all things, the knowledge that this God of wrath will show mercy causes us to Love him and his son, which in turn qualifies us to benefit from the price Jesus paid, his death instead of ours.

To sum up, we learn from the OT that God is unreasonably demanding, but God in his Love sends Jesus who in effect washes the sin from us before God sees it and kills us because of it. So fear gets replaced by gratitude then Love.
Or, if it wasn't for the OT we wouldn't appreciate how much we need Jesus as the high priest in order to be able to be close to God and gain salvation.

The Quran however, still sees only the frightening aspect of God, not the lengths he has gone to too provide grace where justice is due, the Quran does not appear to have any Love in it, just the sort of fear of a God of torture that far exceeds the Biblical God of death.
Every other page in the Quran seems to be about pain and torture, and speaking to Muslims, they have told me they are so religious because of terror of God, rather than Love for him.

That's the thing, the "God of the New Testament" is the the same God of the Old Testament, so either this God had a major personality shift or likes trolling.

Also your account of perfection really doesn't wash, for one there are many arbitrarily and erratic reactions.

Also it is totally illogical your explanation. I wouldn't put up with that, it is not as if this God has apologized, instead humanity is made to feel guilty for the crucifixion.

I think the Jesus movement fits more rationally as an attempt to subvert an idiotic ideology, pushing taboos as far as was possible at the time. It was reasonably successfully for a century or so, until it becuase as bad as what it replaced.