Was Abraham a "Good guy"?
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ChaosBorders
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cnorman18
Post #12
Only if you read the Bible like a fundamentalist.horiturk wrote:more to the story or not its not the only instance in the OT of God sanctioned brutality,its all equally sickening.
As I have written elsewhere:
There is much that is good in the Bible as well as much evil; the concepts of compassion, justice (which in Jewish though includes compassion), protection and equality for the "stranger" (i.e. the nonmember of the tribe), equality under the law; there is lyric poetry, attempts at formulating just laws, visions, dreams, stories intended to teach, to inspire, to commemorate, to provoke thought, and sometimes just to tell a good story. And it is all the product of human minds.How is the Bible to be understood and interpreted?
Again, and perhaps most significantly of all - the Bible doesn't say.
This book does not comment on itself, or at least only. very rarely. The narratives are presented without comment, the laws without explanation.
Even the characters in the Bible themselves pretty clearly don't often know what's going on or what it means.... The perspective of the Bible stories is generally immediate and personal, and the meaning and significance is left to the reader to decide. That's why it's enormously unwise to look at, say, the stories of massacres and murders in the Bible and assume that God approves of such things. In that case, it's an enormous clue that Moses himself rather often fails to carry them out as instructed.
Even when we are told that God has commanded those things, that assumption - that this is God's will - is dangerous. God is rather often shown to be wrong, as in another key passage - where Abraham argues and bargains with God Himself over the fate of Sodom. If God were the absolute Authority, not to be questioned or defied, that so many - both believers and nonbelievers - assume that the Bible teaches, that passage - and others, e.g. Jacob wrestling with God and God cheating, from which incident his name "Israel" came - would not exist.
If one approaches this book as it is, the error of the two most common polemic approaches to it becomes obvious; one is cherrypicking and rationalizing to prove that it is ALL GOOD, the other is cherrypicking and dismissing to prove that it is ALL BAD, aka "all equally sickening." Both are objectively false. It is an OLD BOOK. Both good and bad are to be expected in a book from ancient people. The Iliad isn't a G-rated Disney cartoon either, and no sane reader would expect it to be.
Both worshiping this old book and spitting on it are inappropriate and wrongheaded. It should be studied for what it inarguably is; a collection of ancient documents, the ancient literary heritage of a people.
Post #13
that heritage is one of admitting to slaughtering every man woman and child in canaan under the banner of yahweh. not off to a good start....and the literary heritage is comprised of collections of fables taken from earlier cultures and changed a bit to fit the israelite agenda at the time.
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cnorman18
Post #14
OK, thanks. I don't generally try to debate dogmatic fundamentalists. Have a nice day...horiturk wrote:that heritage is one of admitting to slaughtering every man woman and child in canaan under the banner of yahweh. not off to a good start....and the literary heritage is comprised of collections of fables taken from earlier cultures and changed a bit to fit the israelite agenda at the time.
