Epic Win

[Alaric I]

I'm going to take a crack at Fungus's original question about why the OT seems to be so filled with stories of people pissing God off (sorry - I'm new to this forum and don't really know how to quote, yet).

I'm going to help you out here.  On the bottom of every post is a button that says "quote".  Press that and it quote the entire post for you.  You can then quote different parts to break it down by using ["quote"]["/quote"] on the beginning and end(remove the quotes for the code to work). Also, I'm not usre who you were talking about, but Fungus is a rank here and I don't think we have any members by that name.  Look above that at you will see the name in color.

[Ultra Cat]

I guess this just goes to show how new I am! I never noticed the "ranking" system. I think the user name I was replying to is Sleeper. Thank you for pointing that out (and for the quoting lesson) - I shall now slink off and reflect on my own lack of observational skills!

[St Giordano Bruno]

It's so funny for the so called best selling book of all time, so few people have actually read it.

[Sleeper]

I'm going to take a crack at Fungus's original question...

"Fungus"... hmm. I like it.

And your post made a lot of sense. Thanks. Guess the bottom line is, who knows what was going on in those barbaric brains to make them write what they wrote? Xenophobic primates too susceptible to their adrenaline and anger. Enough said.

[Davka]

You sort of answered my question toward the end there, but if you're at all familiar with the OT scriptures it becomes painfully evident that there was no "We'd kick your ass but God is punishing us right now" kind of chatter. Most of the punishment wasn't even for "right now" - it was for future generations. It's language of slaughter and famine, dashing their babies against rocks, their enemies writing on the walls with their blood (many passages mention how the Israelites would be massacred and subjugated by nations that were still their enemies), the temples crumbling, the villages burning, people wishing they weren't born, mothers wishing they were barren, and so on - awful, horrifying, disgusting, inhumane, detestable language (but nothing new for Yahweh, I know).

I know they did pass down the stories to successive generations, but it's hard to imagine why they would want to. Think of a kindly old elder reading a passage from Ezekiel and saying, "So you've got that to look forward to kids."

I think this is important to understand where their minds were and why they would mercilessly and heartlessly condemn themselves and their own posterity. What purpose did that serve?

They didn't heartlessly condemn themselves or their posterity. The condemnation was for those who refused to follow YHWH. And most of those passages are either/or scenarios: "either kiss god's ass and he will bless Israel, or disobey him and he will massacre Israel."

Some of the passages seem to be after-the-fact explanations of events. Why did YHWH allow the Babylonians to destroy Israel and carry off thousands of people as slaves? Why, look, it was magically retroactively "prophesied" that god was gonna do that because you didn't listen to god's priests!

Ezekiel is not all bad news, either, iirc. Most of those OT "God is gonna judge Israel" prophecies end with "but then when you've learned your lesson, god's gonna restore your former glory and make everything OK."

If you really want to discuss specific OT prophecies, tho, you're gonna have to cite chapter and verse so I know what you're asking about. I studied this stuff for a couple of decades before I woke up.

[commonsense822]

I studied this stuff for a couple of decades before I woke up.

Were you a minister or something along those lines previously?

[Fluffhead]

[Sleeper]

^Hasn't it already? The fact that the losers won't accept defeat isn't our problem.