by evergreen 23 Replies latest watchtower bible
In all this I see a pattern, that when it came to accomplish Jehovah's purpose, it didn't matter how it just had to be done.
Exactly!
When I was reading the Bible after I left (without JW literature), I realized that for every absolute law/rule for something, there was a perfectly acceptable situation in the opposite. It's all through the book. Very confusing. So I take it all with a grain of salt now.
A bit further on the Amram-Jochabed affair...
The fellow who was making up the begats must have gotten a little confused. If you do the math, Jochabed was 260 years old when Moses was born. That would make her a couple hundred years older than her husband.
Craddle robbing bastard she was indeed
Strangely enough, the same basic story is told thrice, twice about Sarah and once about Rebeccah (Genesis 12; 20; 26) -- and only in the middle one does the redactor think of telling us, "btw, she was really his (half-)sister"... as if he perceived a more serious moral problem in having Abraham lying than being engaged in an (anachronistically according to the time of the story) "unlawful marriage".
Which leads me to Dagney's very insightful remark:
I realized that for every absolute law/rule for something, there was a perfectly acceptable situation in the opposite. It's all through the book.
What if the "counter-stories" were, in part, made for this very purpose, i.e. subverting the "official Torah" in the making? The story of Ruth, for instance, is almost perfectly opposite to the exclusivism of Deuteronomy. Many details of the Patriarchal stories are, too.
Edit to add: great to see you Gumby!
I'm afraid I also find the Bible are perverted book which explains the muddled up minds of those who follow it!
Something can be BAD and even Very Bad, but then, God might say that it's OK on this occassion. Before you know it, everyone is making up excuses for themselves and saying 'God told me to do it' and bingo! it's all OK again! Twisted reasonings from twisted minds!
I can just hear my mother say, "Jehovah allows a lot of things but that doesn't mean he approves of it". Maybe that is true but that being said He/She doesn't have a lot of use for women except for procreation. I think that is just a cop out from admitting we have created God in OUR image.
It is also interesting to know that those people back there were not anglo protestant white people. They were for the most part very suspicious, uneducated, bedouins. You just can't wrap our "values" around their conduct or thoughts. That's where those who have "passed" down the "scriptures" have really screwed up by trying to merge the two cultures and create a patriarchy that continues to "dominate" women in a way that defies questioning . After all, it is "God's Word".
At least the WT is painting JC a little less white than they used to. (Superman blue eyes..what a trip) and all those chubby Renaisance white people Saints. The Last Supper looks like an after Clan event. We all know that Adam and Eve had to be much darker than the ever white depictions ever produced.
Women are still being "circumsized" but not it's physical but emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.
I always wondered about these things too. The obvious conclusion is that God hates women and uses them as objects, a means to an end. After all it's women who always suffer and men who get away with sleeping with their daughters or with prostitutes and other disgusting things, all in the name of God's will.Lot's daughters lost their husbands and they needed descendants for their father, so it was OK to get him drunk and sleep with him. No problem with him getting drunk there.
There is another issue I don't understand about Israel's time. In Judges 19 there is the account of a Levite that gave his concubine and the man giving him lodging that night offered his daughter to a pack of perverts wanting to have sex with the Levite. Apparently it was customary of that time to offer their own daughters to strangers to have sex with them in order to protect their visitors. Lot did the same thing with his daughters. But the Bible doesn't say Jehovah was against that either.
I don't know, but I think that Jehovah, allows things to happen, it doesn't matter what it is, when it comes to fulfill his purposes. That is why sometimes I rather don't read the Bible, because it does make you think and decreases ones faith in him. On the other hand, I think that that is why religion should not be so judgmental and stop trying to condition other people's conscience into doing or not doing some things. Yes, the Bible was inspired by him, but the Organization cannot say they are the only ones capable of interpreting the Bible and explaining them to others because what is written there is what God WANTED us to know, and does not contain all his plans for us.
Worse yet Adam and Eve weren't married, so we're all products of bastardization and incest. Cain had to have a wife that was a full blooded sister(s) or else he did the dirty deed with his mom! carmel of the "who takes this stuff literally" class?
What sort of God endorses that? That's like the justification for a pedophile.
Faundy,
In God's defense, the story about Lot and his daughters is in the Bible to show their relationship and their children's relationship to the sons of Israel, since Abraham was Lot's uncle. There, for the Moabites and Ammonites were relatives of the Israelites. Also, the Bible doesn't say God "endorsed" it. Just because it's in the Bible, doesn't mean or imply that God wanted it to happen.
And Lot was drunk. You said that "nobody could be that drunk" well, when you're too drunk to do something you wouldn't do whether knowingly or unknowingly ( meaning being close to unconscious not to know what the hell is going on) then you can put in your two cents. But if that's never happened to you, then don't.
In all this I see a pattern, that when it came to accomplish "Jehovah's" purpose, it didn't matter how it just had to be done.
Thus the tragedy of "religion."
