RE: Atrocities in the Bible
January 24, 2017 at 2:26 pm
(January 24, 2017 at 1:45 pm)phoenix31 Wrote: (January 24, 2017 at 1:31 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Thanks for the follow up. Remember, the Commandments in Exodus chapter 20 were never written on stone tablets. The ones in Deuteronomy chapter 5 were written on stone tablets but they are not called the Ten Commandments. On top of that the biblical stories are not based on them.
It seems the Bible implies that the "original 10" from Exodus 20 were written in stone.
From Exodus 32-
"And when he had made an end of speaking with him on Mount Sinai, He gave Moses two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God."
"And Moses turned and went down from the mountain and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand. The tablets were written on both sides; on the one side and on the other they were written. Now the tablets were the work of God and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets...So as it was, as soon as he came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. So Moses' anger became hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain."
You're overlooking a lot of verbiage.
In Exodus chapter 19 Moses and the herd camped in the Sinai wilderness and Moses and God chatted in the cloud. Moses does a lot of mountain climbing in that chapter and there are a lot of special effects.
In Exodus chapter 20 Moses spews out some generic behavior Commandments that people like to call the Ten Commandments. But they were not written on stone tablet nor were they called the Ten Commandments although sone Bible versions put that big heading above them.
In Chapters 21-23 Moses is still rambling off the rules. The guy just wouldn't shut up.
In Chapter 24 the people pledge allegiance, Moses does some religious hocus pocus and his inner circle go see God and feast (verse 11). Moses doe some more mountain climbing, his favorite exercise. Moses spends forty days and forty nights on the mountain.
In Chapters 25-28 God gives Moses some detailed instructions on how to make some fancy stuff for him, including images of celestial beings which he had said not to do.
In Chapter 29 God tells Moses how to do all of the rituals in fancy robe and turbans.
In Chapter 30 God gives Moses some recipes. The interesting thing in all of this is that although everyone is wandering around the wilderness like a herd of zombies some are rich and some are poor (verse 15) and everyone over the age of 20 had to put some money in the pot.
At this point in the story it seems that God had learned his lesson from his failure with Cain and Abel. In that story he didn't tell them how to worship. In this story he gives detailed instructions.
Now here's where we get to the meat.
In Chapter 31 verse 18 God finally shuts up and gives Moses two stone tablets, written with the finger of God.
In Chapter 32 the people get nervous since Moses has been gone for so long and they need to worship something or they will have a mental breakdown. So they get the dummy Aaron to make them an idol and they start partying, exercising freedom of religion. God and Moses hears the noise. God gets pissed and tells Moses that he's going to gut all of them Moses says, chill big guy, let me do it. So Moses takes the stone tablets (verses 15-16) and goes down the mountain. In verse 19 Moses flies into a rage and breaks the stone tablets. He then gets his trusted thugs and killed about three thousand.
In Chapter 33 the herd hits the road and goes to Mount Horeb. God and Moses make up.
In Chapter 34 God tells Moses to make some more stone tablets and go to Mount Sinai. This is when Moses get the real Ten Commandments.
Review the chapters at your convenience and reach your own conclusions.
