The First Holocaust

by nicolaou 47 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  nicolaou

  I appreciate your input Kaleb, thank you. Maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough but I'm really not angry at god, how could I be if I don't believe he exists. My frustration is layered. I guess I'm annoyed with myself because for a large part of my life I did believe and have what I thought was a close relationship with him. Then to realise what an arsehole he really was, well it leaves a mark.

  More than that though, I'm frustrated at those who put the blinkers on and point blank refuse to acknowledge the plain facts. Is it a fact that god at one time murdered every child in existence? No of course not, don't waste time having that argument with me. It IS a fact however that this global infanticide by god is recorded in the Bible and yet that counts for almost nothing in the minds of the faithful who wouldn't even call themselves Christian if it weren't for that same book.

  Dismiss it as allegory if you like but it's still sitting there like the abusive Uncle everyone wants to avoid and hide from view.
• 

  Jeffro

  KalebOutWest:

  The original flood story comes from the Gilgamesh tradition.

  The flood story in the Gilgamesh Epic is based on an even older Sumerian flood myth from the 2nd millennium BCE.

  slimboyfat:

  It’s possible that Genesis and Gilgamesh are both based on the same events.

  Only to the extent that any myth could be loosely based on some actual event, such that any similarity to any actual event is entirely trivial.
• 

  Jeffro

  slimboyfat:

  I can assure you our pet cat Sanders is neither useful nor tasty. 🐈‍⬛

  I’d like to think that you don’t actually know how tasty your cat is.
• 

  Jeffro

  nicolaou:

  Some miss the point through a genuine misunderstanding, some through a wilful misdirection.

  For those who believe the story is literally true, they will always come up with (usually, simply repeat) some trite explanation for why it was justified, and believing that the story is a historical event necessarily has also affected their ability to rationally consider information or broader implications that conflict with their world view.

  For those who recognise it as a myth, the consideration of the moral implications is already obvious and a bit superfluous.

  Your intended (or at least, optimal) audience would be somewhere in between. Questioning the validity of such stories. They would be less likely to comment, but would take in the point nonetheless. However, there are various factors about the forum that I won’t go into here that limits the proportion in that category.
• 

  PioneerSchmioneer

  Jeffro--

  I think you quoted KOW out of context. At one point he also stated:

  In fact, some scholars are in agreement that the redactors of the Torah might be making fun of the Atrahasis (another older Mesoptamian flood legend) and the Gilgamesh story by showing...

  I believe he merely mentioned that the "original [Noachin] flood story" originated from the Gilgamesh narrative as found in Genesis in that specific reference you quote.

  Compared to the other I have pasted, he appears to be aware that Gilgamesh is not the first, and thus is talking to us in that context.
  
  
• 

  Jeffro

  PioneerSchmioneer:

  I think you quoted KOW out of context. At one point he also stated

  Not you again. 🙄 I didn’t quote anyone out of context, nor did I say he said anything wrong. I provided additional information in response to his first comment in the thread, for which there was no prior context.

  I believe he merely mentioned that the "original [Noachin] flood story" originated from the Gilgamesh narrative as found in Genesis in that specific reference you quote.

  There’s that ‘taking out of context’ you mentioned. KOW’s comment I quoted was from a day before he said what you quoted him saying. You may now apologise.
  
  
• 

  Rivergang

  ..based on an even older Sumerian flood myth

  As an aide, giving the lie to the idea that Babylon is the “source of all false doctrine.”
• 

  Jeffro

  Rivergang:

  As an aide, giving the lie to the idea that Babylon is the “source of all false doctrine.”

  Yes, with a ‘but’. The city of Babylon was further north than Sumer, and was prominent in a later period than Sumer. But both were in the Babylonia region, so a JW might think it’s a ‘gotcha’ that Sumer was ‘Babylonian’ in some sense. Except for the fact that various cultures around the planet predate the Sumerians by thousands of years (and the ‘Tower of Babel’ story is obviously another myth).