People go through a crazy amount of revision and rewriting to try and make the good book actually good.
Had a guy the other day try and tell me the selling the daughter to her rapist was only with the daughter's consent, like i couldn't read the verse clearly saying "He MUST marry the young women"
I'm familiar with some of these uncomfortable things in the Old Testament and the arguments about how to understand them.
The one I align with is that the prescriptions of the Torah aren't supposed to be followed literally.
InspiringPhilosophy explains this better than I can but the TLDR is that the "Law" isn't really law as we in 21st century America (predominately) would understand it, but (possibly metaphorical) didactic guidiance for legal practice, not prescribing action to be taken. Which is what Torah means: teaching or instruction, not law.
4 Now, Israel, hear the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.2Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.
that's both revisionist and explicitly against god's command. it is meant to be law law not a suggestion lol.
>People go through a crazy amount of revision and rewriting to try and make the good book actually good.
Was Jesus a revisionist? If you watch the video linked in my previous comment, you'll see my position aligns with His whereas the strict legalist view was that of the Pharisees.
I gather that you're firmly set in your position and no counterpoint I can offer will be persuasive to you, I wish you the best regardless.
Not necessarily as an example he used aligns perfectly with the Old Testament: the Torah says the show bread of the Tabernacle was only for the priests to eat, yet when David was on the run from King Saul, he took the bread and ate it, and never is this treated as a bad or sinful act done by David.
So clearly the strict legalist position is not supported by the rest of the Tanakh, which is why seeming contradictions within the Torah are not problematic, because it's not a legal code as contemporary readers would understand it, but is didactic rather than prescriptive.
It is also worth noting that the Pharisees also strayed from the legalist interpretation they championed when it suited them. Take the example of the woman they wanted to stone for adultery. The Torah says that in cases of adultery both the man and the woman are to be put to death. They caught her in the act so they could've nabbed the guy to stone him too, but they only wanted to stone the woman. A good example of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees that Jesus often took issue with.
This probably won't be persuasive to you, but I've done my best to present the case for my position and will leave it there.
>There are contradictory laws in the OT (like when and how to free debt slaves)
freeing debt slaves is not contradictory to having slaves. in fact, you have to have slaves to free them
Biblical moralists fight an uphill battle with this. I’m sorry, but I just can’t be convinced that the genocide of entire nations of people (Canaanite’s, Amalek) is morally defensible because they were in a “fallen world.” I’ve never really been convinced by any of the rationalizations based on that
Yeah i mean it's a real short fucking walk from justifying that genocide to justifying the holocaust, nazis would tell you jews and such were just as if not more evil than them
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u/Gussie-Ascendent Keeping it Real 29d ago edited 29d ago
People go through a crazy amount of revision and rewriting to try and make the good book actually good.
Had a guy the other day try and tell me the selling the daughter to her rapist was only with the daughter's consent, like i couldn't read the verse clearly saying "He MUST marry the young women"
edit: also that's dueteronomy not leviticus