Like many Christians you're attempting to make the Bible less barbaric than it is, simply because you're presumably a decent human being whose sense of morality rightly clashes with the dictates of the Hebrew God you wish to believe in. So you pretend that it's better than it actually is. If I were forced somehow to become a Christian, I'd probably do the exact same thing.
For some reason you failed to mention that Jubilee only applied to Jewish slaves, and your characterization of slavery-lite didn't apply to non-Jewish slaves, who could be beaten and passed down to family members as possessions; a two-tiered system which sadly echoes the current racist apartheid system in Israel, whose justifications I proudly refuse to recognize or condone.
I could never understand why any supposed God should condone something as stupid as slavery in the first place. He's God. He could do whatever he wanted. He handed out Commandments right and left. Instead of wasting them on ego-stroking demands to be worshiped, why not one that went: "Hey, people! It's not cool to own other people! I can't believe I've got to actually tell you this, but knock it off!" There. Problem solved. Was that so hard? But that's what happens when you make up a God: He magically ends up endorsing every evil thing you were doing anyway.
You're of course free to believe this tribal nonsense was somehow "divinely inspired" and therefor moral, but then we would also have to believe that the genocide carried out by the Hebrews was likewise moral, something that I, basing my morality on the well-being of humankind instead of on scripture, refuse to do.
I am not attempting to make the Bible less barbaric. There is barbarity in the Bible, it is a record of historical events in barbaric times. There are difficult things in it that our 21st Century minds balk at. Just as it does at the behaviour of those living 100 years ago or those living now in tribal regions of Pakistan or Afghanistan or Africa, whether the treatment of women or devil children, witchcraft and abuse of animals, female circumcision etc. And they too may balk at our planet trashing greed that threatens to destroy their fragile way of life.
This is not the most appropriate place to engage in a deep theological exchange. But my point about the blanket dismissal of the most historically well-attested manuscript/s of the ancient world and its historical veracity ( I am referring to the book as an historical record recognised and valued by scholars the world over, atheist scholars included) can only be a position borne of ignorance. Just ask any archaeologist working in the Middle East. Let alone its cultural influence on us today from Shakespeare to animal rights to the enlightening influence of Victorian philanthropy. We have benefitted and do benefit from this record even if you don’t believe it is from God. Dismissing it as rubbish is like looking at the bizarre Egyptian health practices (like the use of crocodile dung as a female contraceptive) and saying ‘look at those ancient Egyptians, what a bunch of idiots!’. But what about the Pyramids? ‘What, those stupid things in the desert? Rubbish!’ The Egyptologist would conclude, with some justification, that the statement is ludicrous.
God is not a middle-class Oxford don who appears and imposes a will on an ancient people who will not/cannot change due to their historical or cultural baggage (I doubt you will find many vegan restaurants in Kandahar). Well he can but with limited success, the Bible is a record of Israel having limited success and mostly failing abysmally to uphold the now archaic Mosaic Law, something we have thankfully long surpassed.
Example: The genocide of certain Canaanite tribes was never carried out even though God gave the instruction, he knew they would fail in this. In the same breath he told them they would not obey this instruction and would suffer the consequence; They were sacrificing their own children alive in fire to the Canaanite god Molech within a generation.
Hard to understand I know but not that long ago in parts of the British Empire the prevailing culture expected wives to perform Suti, a religious practice of burning themselves alive on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands. The imperialist British stamped out this practice (which I think we can agree was good thing) as they did with cannibalism in certain tribes of the Pacific...sometimes brutally (I do not agree with any such brutality, they were different times, I did not live then).
I agree with you about slavery in the Bible, I have difficulty with it and other of the 600 or so Mosaic laws. Thankfully no one today is under that ancient law, a law that is as irrelevant to us today as the law of Hammurabi or ancient Roman jurisprudence. However, there are principles in those laws that we can learn from (see Michael Hudson’s latest book which references many of the debt forgiving principles in the Bible as examples of what we should be doing today economically, why did he choose the Bible as his starting point? Because it is so relevant, I don’t believe Michael Hudson is a devout Christian).
Those laws greatly benefitted the health and moral well-being of an ancient people is recognised by modern science whether moral, dietary or health a safety etc. those laws taught things unique in ancient times which remain so today. Such as a law that commanded you love not just tolerate your neighbour, to love the immigrant as a brother, not to mistreat domestic animals to show compassion for them, leave the edges of your field unharvested for the poor and vulnerable, never take someone’s cloak as collateral for a debt, they will need to keep warm at night etc. At that time these would have been extraordinary laws. It is against the law in Britain for anyone to have their utilities cut off, we employ the same principles today. Putting a parapet on a high building’s roof and so on.
But I get your point about rationalising difficult passages. And I accept that criticism. I do try to rationalise the Bible passages that I still do not understand but only because of the overwhelming weight of passages that reveal a God deeply concerned with our welfare and our future, which does not fit the profile of an ancient tribal fire god.
But there is something more troubling I find with Catlin’s comment; it is the hubris that so often accompanies the reasoning of so-called enlightened people in the West when talking about changing the world for the better, being ‘progressive’ and so on. Claiming to champion a woefully oppressed people like the Palestinians, who by and large have a deep respect for what they call the Holy Books, Muslim, Christian and Jewish Arabs, while at the same time calling their belief system made up nonsense (probably one of the few things sustaining them through the grief of such horrific times) It smacks of the same superior Western Imperialist mentality that orders the next airstrike and got us to where we are now.
I do not believe in the Talmud/Mishnah, the Quran, Hadiths or the traditions of the Eastern or Coptic Churches or indeed Atheism, agnosticism etc. but to dismiss those that do as childish believers in made up nonsense because it doesn’t fit with my beliefs is , in my opinion, counter-productive.
We can agree that this isn't the place for a full-blown discussion of religion, so instead let's just focus on Caitlin's comments.
Jewish or Palestinian beliefs in deity are largely irrelevant to Israel's ongoing violation of basic human rights as recognized by most of the modern secular world. I hope we can agree that Israel's ongoing terrorism and racism are reprehensible (although I'm sure Boeing and Raytheon find millions of reasons to keep it going) and should not be supported by the American government in any fashion.
This isn't about us imposing Western Progressive values on the hapless natives; an updated version of the white man's burden. You seem to view Caitlin's comments in that context, but what I see is someone whose basic sense of humanity and justice are intact, reacting honestly to a horrible and unnecessary oppression. To me, this is about are far from hubris as you can get.
Like many Christians you're attempting to make the Bible less barbaric than it is, simply because you're presumably a decent human being whose sense of morality rightly clashes with the dictates of the Hebrew God you wish to believe in. So you pretend that it's better than it actually is. If I were forced somehow to become a Christian, I'd probably do the exact same thing.
For some reason you failed to mention that Jubilee only applied to Jewish slaves, and your characterization of slavery-lite didn't apply to non-Jewish slaves, who could be beaten and passed down to family members as possessions; a two-tiered system which sadly echoes the current racist apartheid system in Israel, whose justifications I proudly refuse to recognize or condone.
I could never understand why any supposed God should condone something as stupid as slavery in the first place. He's God. He could do whatever he wanted. He handed out Commandments right and left. Instead of wasting them on ego-stroking demands to be worshiped, why not one that went: "Hey, people! It's not cool to own other people! I can't believe I've got to actually tell you this, but knock it off!" There. Problem solved. Was that so hard? But that's what happens when you make up a God: He magically ends up endorsing every evil thing you were doing anyway.
You're of course free to believe this tribal nonsense was somehow "divinely inspired" and therefor moral, but then we would also have to believe that the genocide carried out by the Hebrews was likewise moral, something that I, basing my morality on the well-being of humankind instead of on scripture, refuse to do.
I am not attempting to make the Bible less barbaric. There is barbarity in the Bible, it is a record of historical events in barbaric times. There are difficult things in it that our 21st Century minds balk at. Just as it does at the behaviour of those living 100 years ago or those living now in tribal regions of Pakistan or Afghanistan or Africa, whether the treatment of women or devil children, witchcraft and abuse of animals, female circumcision etc. And they too may balk at our planet trashing greed that threatens to destroy their fragile way of life.
This is not the most appropriate place to engage in a deep theological exchange. But my point about the blanket dismissal of the most historically well-attested manuscript/s of the ancient world and its historical veracity ( I am referring to the book as an historical record recognised and valued by scholars the world over, atheist scholars included) can only be a position borne of ignorance. Just ask any archaeologist working in the Middle East. Let alone its cultural influence on us today from Shakespeare to animal rights to the enlightening influence of Victorian philanthropy. We have benefitted and do benefit from this record even if you don’t believe it is from God. Dismissing it as rubbish is like looking at the bizarre Egyptian health practices (like the use of crocodile dung as a female contraceptive) and saying ‘look at those ancient Egyptians, what a bunch of idiots!’. But what about the Pyramids? ‘What, those stupid things in the desert? Rubbish!’ The Egyptologist would conclude, with some justification, that the statement is ludicrous.
God is not a middle-class Oxford don who appears and imposes a will on an ancient people who will not/cannot change due to their historical or cultural baggage (I doubt you will find many vegan restaurants in Kandahar). Well he can but with limited success, the Bible is a record of Israel having limited success and mostly failing abysmally to uphold the now archaic Mosaic Law, something we have thankfully long surpassed.
Example: The genocide of certain Canaanite tribes was never carried out even though God gave the instruction, he knew they would fail in this. In the same breath he told them they would not obey this instruction and would suffer the consequence; They were sacrificing their own children alive in fire to the Canaanite god Molech within a generation.
Hard to understand I know but not that long ago in parts of the British Empire the prevailing culture expected wives to perform Suti, a religious practice of burning themselves alive on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands. The imperialist British stamped out this practice (which I think we can agree was good thing) as they did with cannibalism in certain tribes of the Pacific...sometimes brutally (I do not agree with any such brutality, they were different times, I did not live then).
I agree with you about slavery in the Bible, I have difficulty with it and other of the 600 or so Mosaic laws. Thankfully no one today is under that ancient law, a law that is as irrelevant to us today as the law of Hammurabi or ancient Roman jurisprudence. However, there are principles in those laws that we can learn from (see Michael Hudson’s latest book which references many of the debt forgiving principles in the Bible as examples of what we should be doing today economically, why did he choose the Bible as his starting point? Because it is so relevant, I don’t believe Michael Hudson is a devout Christian).
Those laws greatly benefitted the health and moral well-being of an ancient people is recognised by modern science whether moral, dietary or health a safety etc. those laws taught things unique in ancient times which remain so today. Such as a law that commanded you love not just tolerate your neighbour, to love the immigrant as a brother, not to mistreat domestic animals to show compassion for them, leave the edges of your field unharvested for the poor and vulnerable, never take someone’s cloak as collateral for a debt, they will need to keep warm at night etc. At that time these would have been extraordinary laws. It is against the law in Britain for anyone to have their utilities cut off, we employ the same principles today. Putting a parapet on a high building’s roof and so on.
But I get your point about rationalising difficult passages. And I accept that criticism. I do try to rationalise the Bible passages that I still do not understand but only because of the overwhelming weight of passages that reveal a God deeply concerned with our welfare and our future, which does not fit the profile of an ancient tribal fire god.
But there is something more troubling I find with Catlin’s comment; it is the hubris that so often accompanies the reasoning of so-called enlightened people in the West when talking about changing the world for the better, being ‘progressive’ and so on. Claiming to champion a woefully oppressed people like the Palestinians, who by and large have a deep respect for what they call the Holy Books, Muslim, Christian and Jewish Arabs, while at the same time calling their belief system made up nonsense (probably one of the few things sustaining them through the grief of such horrific times) It smacks of the same superior Western Imperialist mentality that orders the next airstrike and got us to where we are now.
I do not believe in the Talmud/Mishnah, the Quran, Hadiths or the traditions of the Eastern or Coptic Churches or indeed Atheism, agnosticism etc. but to dismiss those that do as childish believers in made up nonsense because it doesn’t fit with my beliefs is , in my opinion, counter-productive.
We can agree that this isn't the place for a full-blown discussion of religion, so instead let's just focus on Caitlin's comments.
Jewish or Palestinian beliefs in deity are largely irrelevant to Israel's ongoing violation of basic human rights as recognized by most of the modern secular world. I hope we can agree that Israel's ongoing terrorism and racism are reprehensible (although I'm sure Boeing and Raytheon find millions of reasons to keep it going) and should not be supported by the American government in any fashion.
This isn't about us imposing Western Progressive values on the hapless natives; an updated version of the white man's burden. You seem to view Caitlin's comments in that context, but what I see is someone whose basic sense of humanity and justice are intact, reacting honestly to a horrible and unnecessary oppression. To me, this is about are far from hubris as you can get.