(July 22, 2020 at 1:32 pm)Greatest I am Wrote: He is described as
If all Christians were sola scriptura literalists, this would be troubling. Fortunately that type of reading is fairly new, so there is a long tradition of dealing with the criticisms you make here.
Have you looked in to what Christians say about the violence described in the OT? There are various responses.
Offhand I recall two:
Augustine bases his belief on New Testament and Platonic principles, and so concludes that God is love and would be incapable of the violence you describe. For this reason, his hermeneutic for reading the OT is that any story that appears to be unloving is allegory -- defeat of enemies is converted to spiritual warfare against sin.
This may not be what the original authors of the OT had in mind, but it shows that important Christians reject the violence that you focus on.
Perhaps most interestingly, British antinomian groups decided that Jesus is the real God, and the God described in the OT is really Satan. They agreed with you that a God of violence and prescribed morality would be evil.
Fortunately, Christianity is not monolithic, and large parts of it reject the violence described in the OT.
