The problem with the whole Noah story is that in it, both God and Noah are selfish bastards. Yes, you read that right. God told him to build, and build he did. The text never refers to him preaching anything, or trying to save anyone. He only builds. Granted, the mind boggles that a construction project of that magnitude wouldn’t have generated some idle chit-chat, but that assumption is never proven. All we know is that God wanted to destroy the world and save Noah, and by damn he did. Selfish, indeed.
Not to belabor the obvious, but both hamburger and milk come from cows, and one is definitely not the other. The tribal and vengeful God given to us in the Old Testament in no way resembles the universal and merciful God presented to us in the New Testament. If you came across someone who had never heard of Judeism or Christianity and gave her the Old and New Testament as separate volumes, she would think that they had nothing to do with each other.
So you are saying that Christians never refer to the old testament ? hhmm… dont think so.
Hamburgers and Milk come from cows… so they have the same origin. Contrary to Budhism and Judaism that dont have similar origins. So it used to be the same God with a little editing in the new testament. Really depends on how your sect/cult/priest interprets it… a lot of protestant churces love the old style God.
Hmm, but the merciful Christian God sends people off to eternal damnation, something the nasty Jewish God never does. Sure, the writers of the OT were able to include horrors like the flood to try to get the people to behave, while the writers of the NT, constrained by discussing more recent events, had to put their mass murders into the future. I don’t know about all rabbis, but my rabbi and my Hebrew School teachers never threatened me with damnation, or even fear of death. Guilt sure, hell, never.
Anyway, does anybody know if there’s support for a reading like:
(18) … the LORD will see and disapprove
and turn his wrath away from him. and onto you.
That is, if you laugh at and gloat about the punishments of others, you become fair game for punishments yourself. Er… maybe not.
Anyhow, does anybody want to get all researchy on this and check out what those stuffy old rabbis had to say? They tend to be pretty on the ball with this kind of stuff.
