A "My Book of Bible Stories" tale that I've always hated

by JimmyPage 72 Replies latest jw friends

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  Simon

  Interesting topic.

  To me it's a perfect example of how times have changed and the bible accounts, especially the OT ones, are shown up for being the works of men.

  It tries to make the guy look good by keeping his word and they see no problem with a woman being killed to do it. It fits with the OT view that women are valueless and worthless and property to be treated as they see fit.

  Of course this doesn't fit with the modern narrative of 'god' so the story is twisted to a happier ending but even that, how would it be right for here father to dedicate here life to something? Why doesn't she get a choice?

  Even the more pallatable interpretation relies on the girl having no say in her own future.

  BTW: the video posted earlier is fantastic - it really helps show up how rediculous the stories are and how god is such a human invention
• 

  hamsterbait

  Yeah they water it down. It's the end of Leviticus (?) where God speaks of a soul devoted to destruction cannot be ransomed. So - yes the early Jews practised human sacrifice just like other people's. Abraham finding a ram caught by its horns in a bush is echoed in Mesapotamian myth, and is prolly just a parable about why human sacrifice, other than babies in Canaan stopped.

  In the accounts, it is interesting to note that Abraham objects to killing entire cities, but does not demurr when asked to butcher his child.
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  humbled

  Sorry for writing so incoherently, Crazyguy. This topic always gets me addled-pated.

  When I first came on this board I still believed in God--but I had come to believe that it is harder to understand him than the WT Corp would have us believe. In fact, as I tried to reconcile the "Cliff Notes" version in the Book of Bible Stories with the God-of-Love I went down a rabbit hole that made me have to face not just the brothers, my bewildered friends, and the Brooklynn Bible Mafia, but --this was the hardest--myself.

  Yes, I did use the story of Jephthah to point out(using the only the reference material available to faithful JWS) that all the arguments against Jephthah killing his daughter were the same reasons that God didn't command the killing of Isaac.

  I added another reason to see that God wasn't asking for a killing: The word used by (presumably Abraham) was olah not zebach.

  If Jephthah didn't kill his girl ( others too think this didn't happen. Apologetics Press/Jephthah's daughter outlines a non-JW support of this non-blood offering), I asked the elders, "When DID the word olah/burnt offering get a spiritual sensibility. It was nonsense to say that Jephthah was the first to realize ( better than Abraham) what was meant by a burnt offering. I reckoned what really occurred in Genesis 22 was that God presented a new concept us through the story at Genesis 22. The Isaac/ Abraham drama presented a dilemma that had no clear map of faith. There was no adequate word, no adequate definition for the quality of trust/faith (what word?) of that would be described by the dark walk up the mountain.

  In fact, as I talked to the brothers, I expressed the idea that we humans--not God-- invent words--and we can only invent them from our own experience and imagination--This dilemma of Abraham was a moment of God trying to break through the blood and gore mindset of faith=death. I submitted that we continued to repeat the story as written in the bible story book then we had failed to see God as a being of light. If we held God to our own bloody ideas even after Jesus tried to persuade us of his generousity then all was lost...

  I got handed over to the CO. He hadn't completely read the letter that I had given the elders that outlined my own dilemma of conscience(Which was that I could not stomach the version on God illustrated in pictures and words in our literature of God the SOB and I knew that this put me in a delicate spot as a JW) He wasn't interested in anything but my allegiance to the FaithfullandDiscreetSlave. He asked why I didn't send my query into "Questions from Readers"? I told him that it wasn't a question.

  Crazyguy, this may be more than you wanted and yet there was more. nd maybe you really were only saying to me that I was just talking gobble-de-gook and to stop it.

  this too is perhaps goofy talk. the parsing of words from Genesis 22 seems ridiculous in the face of my current undertanding of how we humans think, experience, talk---and write of our life experience. And how we fall into a religion instead of our existential reality.

  Bible translation is the not even half of the problem. It is nothing.

  But I have to say, in honesty, that I am sympathetic with the puzzlement of an old man in the desert searching to understand his purpose in a chaotic world.

  Maeve

  Edited:

  And sympathetic to the son of the old man, too.

  How much of Isaac's life was his own perception of reality and how was it threaded through the needle of his father's reality? He might have died for his father's fumbling faith. Willing? convinced? I wonder.
• 

  Crazyguy

  Thanks humbled I have a better understanding now of what you were saying. I too no longer believe the bible is a holy book or in the god of the Hebrews. I also not sure if the writers of the nt even believed in him for they write the character of Jesus as being so different then his supposed father. And if one has any doubt of weather the god of the Hebrews is a god of love or not, there are plenty of OT scriptures showing how much he was in to death, rape, slavery and burn offerings. Not a god I would want to worship.
• 

  wallsofjericho

  marked
• 

  Apognophos

  I also feel some confusion over this account. You'd think if it was an actual human sacrifice then it would be stated a bit more explicitly. It feels like a story that was softened in the process of writing it down in the text that eventually became part of the Bible.
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  humbled

  Not only that, Apog, but in the time that the elders were dealing with the matter, I saw a picture of a potsherd from the era during which much of the scriptures purportedly were committed to writing. I took a print in of the crude rendering of words from the time--

  OMG! I asked the brothers how could anyone derive a tight theology from so crude a presentation of thought!
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  Apognophos

  It's true, the ancient Hebrew is alarmingly brief and simple when you read a direct translation. Reminds me of Japanese, actually. Much of every sentence is inferred rather than verbalized.

  Then, to make matters worse, you're looking at an ancient language where word meaning has shifted in the modern form, and some words are hapax legomena only translateable by guesswork, and on top of that, the text often shows the hand of two or three groups involved at different times in editing or compiling the stories.
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  humbled

  If anyone hasn't seen how spare the clues were in the oldest stories of the bible, have a look at this:

  www.hebrewoldtestament.com/BO1CO22.htm

  It shows the Paleo-Hebrew script of Genesis 22 along with various english translations. How could we be raked over the coals by anyone who thought they knew what was said/meant here?

  As Apog noted above,"Much of every sentence is inferred rather than verbalized.
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  Apognophos

  You probably were also referring by "crude rendering" to the fact that paleo-Hebrew looks like chicken scratch, strikingly primitive. Though it makes sense to have a simple script since the language had to be inscribed into surfaces like clay, it conveys just what a primal era it comes from. Anyway, I wanted to mention, that link isn't working for me for some reason. Just gives a 404 page.