Still Angry about Abraham and Isaac

[The Valkyrie]

God shouldn't ask people to kill kids, and humans shouldn't say yes when asked yo kill kids or accept moral teachings from such deity-claimants and such humans.

In my opinion, anyway.

Tell that to the voice is my head that claims to be god...

[zebo-the-fat]

The true name of god is Jim!

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The true name of god is Jim!

Wrong. God’s name is Harold Wichart. 

Source: ‘Our Father, Wichart in heaven, Harold be thy name.’

Boru

[Aegon]

[Bucky Ball]

The ancient Hebrews practiced child sacrifice. Some think it went on here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_..._(Gehenna)

Abraham was said to have migrated from Ur, which may have been a mythical reference ("memory") of the Hurrian Migration. https://www.worldhistory.org/Hurrians/
In Hebrew mythology, Abraham had 10 tests. The sacrifice of his son was one of the 10, and the fact that he agreed was simply in keeping with the local customs.
ETA : One of the really interesting things that got added to the story, was the importation of a theme from the period and local customs.
It's known as "the ram in the thicket". In Genesis, instead of sacrificing Isaac, he looks around and sees a ram in a bush, and sacrifices it instead.
Turns out it was a "thing" in the culture : https://www.google.com/search?q=ram+in+t...uvTHU4KuEM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_in_a_Thicket

The stories were invented to remind the Jews of his faithfulness and why Yahweh would/should be faithful to his promises. It was entirely mythical, but fit in exactly with their culture.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_c...-Tests.htm

There was also another god, (combo), called Javeh, (Jehovah) which came from Southern Canaan and the Jordan Valley. Javeh was the Edomite "mountain god", and is also thought to have origins associated with the Egyptian "volcano god". These traditions had within them the Moses stories, and so the origins of Moses, (Mosheh was a common Egyptian name), came from the South, and some think from Egypt. King Sargon of Babylon was also said to have been found on a riverbank and taken into the palace and raised there.

When the Judean priests were assembling the texts and myths, (around 550-575 BCE), of Genesis, they combined the materials .. which came from about 5 sources, in some ways, which are known, leaving many of the origins evident still in the texts, (idioms, vocabulary, etc etc). Scholars have known about this for about 150 years, and there isn't much dispute about it in academia, except in very fundamentalist schools, who deny it all, a priori.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacr...s%2033%3A6.
"Another probable instance of human sacrifice mentioned in the Bible is Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter in Judges 11. Jephthah vows to sacrifice to God whatever comes to greet him at the door when he returns home if he is victorious in his war against the Ammonites. The vow is stated in the Book of Judges 11:31: "Then whoever comes of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord's, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering (NRSV)." When he returns from battle, his virgin daughter runs out to greet him, and Jephthah laments to her that he cannot take back his vow. She begs for, and is granted, "two months, so that I may go and wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, my companions and I", after which "[Jephthah] did with her according to the vow he had made."

Two kings of Judah, Ahaz and Manassah, sacrificed their sons. Ahaz, in 2 Kings 16:3, sacrificed his son. "... He even made his son pass through fire, according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel (NRSV)." King Manasseh sacrificed his sons in 2 Chronicles 33:6. "He made his son pass through fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom ... He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger." The valley symbolized hell in later religions, such as Christianity, as a result.

There are some geographical anomalies/errors in the texts as told, which are impossible to reconcile.
The locations named locating the Abraham Isaac and Jacob myths are not possible to reconcile.

Child sacrifice was simply a part of ancient culture in Canaan.
Genesis 22:1–2
Exodus 34:19–20
Leviticus 18:21
Leviticus 20:1–5
Deuteronomy 12:29–31
Judges 11:34–39
2 Kings 3:27
2 Kings 23:10
Isaiah 30:33
Jeremiah 7:31

[FrustratedFool]

Yeah, those ancient cultures sucked. If only an omnibenebolent being could have intervened and explained decent ethics and the scientific method and basic hygiene and stuff to them.

[LinuxGal]

God shouldn't ask people to kill kids, and humans shouldn't say yes when asked yo kill kids or accept moral teachings from such deity-claimants and such humans.

Shouldn't, but does.

Deuteronomy 21:

[18] If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

[19] Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
[20] And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
[21] And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

[Rev. Rye]

Absolutely. I wonder what the story would be like if we had a defiant and challenging follower of god? Like, he still gets rewarded because the answer was, "That's right. Good job Abraham. If I, yer Lord, ever ask of ye any sick and twisted shite, the correct answer ist NEIN."


It doesn't. And it's not like I'm expecting better of ancient goat herders who had limited understanding of the world let alone a philosophy that wasn't "might makes right". But I am critical of the religious and believers of today who don't have the simple critical thinking necessary to look at one story condemning the barbarian child sacrifice hungry gods of the pagan neighboring nations and then look at this story and realize their god also is very much pro child sacrifice and hungry for innocent blood.

Actually, since Jehovah stopped Abraham, that kinda makes him anti child sacrifice - he substituted a ram for Isaac.

The point of the fable seems to be that the Hebrews were better than the neighbouring pagans because their god doesn’t sacrifice children.

Boru

Well, outside of the whole Jephthah killing his only daughter thing.





This video does do a good once-over of the legend, although it would have been nice if he pointed out the #1 problem with the “Jephthah just let his daughter die a virgin and didn’t kill her” is that this sort of sworn virginity thing was not actually a thing in Judaism. Maybe with the Essenes, but they were A: centuries after Jephthah’s time, and B: all-male.

[HappySkeptic]

Yes, the whole story is disgusting, but you miss one point.

Abraham was fully willing to kill Isaac, but he DID expect God to stop him. It is right there in the text, that he believed God would provide the sacrifice.

So, it was a game of chicken.

[LinuxGal]

It the Tetragrammaton. What’s so odd about it?

Boru

I have only heard the name Jehovah used primarily by Jehovah's Witnesses. I thought you mighta caught that from how I asked about it, but I guess not. ^^;;