by Mr. Majestic 115 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
The Almighty Homer: "Why won't god just ease up on us if he's said to be a truely loving and just god ?"
The JW answer is as follows. God was challenged by Satan and told that anyone who worships him is doing it for selfish reasons. The accusation Satan made to Jehovah is a prime example. Therefore God allows the Devil to have his way for a short period of time (6,000 years) to prove the point that there will be worshippers who hold fast to their integrity.
villabolo
blondie said:
I never have gotten an explanation for why little bablies would be killed as if they were just cockroaches.
The explanation I received: "If the Israelites spared the children, they would grow up and seek revenge against their captors for murdering their families and stealing their land."
Which makes perfect sense, when you really think about it. The Israelites were hell-bent on land acquisition through genocide, the entire OT reeks of that barbaric theme.
~Sue
Personally I don't see why god didn't just whack Satan in the Garden of Eden,
when he tempted Eve , thats if he really loved man and woman
of which of course he created, after all he created Satan as well.
For a god that suppose to know all where even time has no meaning or relevance.
A good god would have taken Satan out right then and there.
No dead babies , no dead humans ever
Someone commented on Deut. 1 thru 3 yesterday, that the Israelites were obedient and killed all women and children. On some occations, they did not kill all the children, and that was too bad - "cause all those things just meant trouble for them". I had a quiet though to myself, that small children were called "things" that meant nothing but "trouble". Well, they were small and until then at least, innocent lives, and they had mothers loving them.
I agree with cantleave.However,what was the time frame?: Did not the killing happen 430 years later, when Israel left Egypt?Why not kill the original Amelikite pop.Than that brings it back to cantleave answer.
Bob
The "conquest" of Canaan apparently did not happen the way the OT tells us. Those accounts are only a later rationalization/reconstruction of the nation's past, ideologically and religiously overloaded. Many scholars think that what the OT purports as a violents conquest was in reality an almost peaceful, gradual settlement of the Jewish tribes in Canaan (see for instance Karl GNUSE, Israelite Settlement in Canaan: A Peaceful Internal Process, in «Biblical Theology Bulletin» 21 (1991), pp. 56-66, 109-117; GöstaW. ÄHLSTRÖM, Who Were the Israelites? , Winona Lake, Eisenbrauns 1986; Robert B. COOTE, Keith W. WHITELAM, The Emergence of Early Israel in Historical Perspective, Sheffield, Almond Press 1987; Albrecht ALT, The Settlement of the Israelites in Palestine, in idem, Essays on Old Testament History and Religion , Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press 1989, pp. 133-169).
So all that bloodshed probably never took place (thank God).
At any rate, given that things went as the Bible relates, the practice of herem (OT "holy war", the "devoting to distruction" of the NWT) was not peculiar to the Jews: "holy" wars, "commanded" by tribal gods, and extermination of entire populations in honor of those gods were commonplace in Ancient Near Eastern civilizations (see for instance Sa-Moon KANG, Divine War in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East, in Hayim TADMOR, Moshe WEINFELD (eds.), History, Historiography and Interpretation, Jerusalem, Magnes Press 1983, pp. 121-147; Sa-Moon KANG, Divine War in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East, BZAW 177, Berlin / New York, de Gruyter 1989; Bustenay ODED, “The Command of the God” as a Reason for Going to War in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, in Mordechai COGAN, Israel EPH’AL (eds.), Ah, Assyria .... Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Hayim Tadmor , Scripta Hierosolymitana 33, Jerusalem, Magnes Press 1991, pp. 223-230).
Question for Psacramento:
You appear to be christian from the posts I have read. You state in an early post on this topic that
I do NOT believe that ALL of the OT is the word of God, No.
As I do NOT believe that ALL of the NT is the word of Jesus and God.
My question - What is your criteria for deciding which parts are inspired and which not? It would seem that the parts which you find morally unpalatable are those which you ignore.
The Bible is a product of the human mind. It was not written by a supernatural Being.
When a group of people provided their description of God, their ideas were limited by their perceptions, understandings, comprehension, culture, language, and their surroundings. The image they created of God thus reflected these very factors. Thus the kind of God portrayed by say Iron Age man reflects the people who were writing those words.
The description of God by a group tells us more about the culture of the group that wrote their words than it tells us about the nature of God.
The kind of God that the WTS portrays, as a vengeful, murderous, and strict God is actually a reflection of the nature of the organisation that created that image.
What we think of God reflects what we think of him, not what another people of another time thought. We are not them.
Doug
Behemot,
I agree with you.
I believe a key term that is included in your references is "HISTORIOGRAPHY". The sooner people come to terms with what that encompasses, the better.
Doug
Loving God?
How many babies did Satan attempt to have killed? True, there are genocides (usually in the name of God) where babies are killed, often blaming Satan. But, how many genocides have been attempted by Devil worshipers?
