I disagree. See above.
Only bad people are eternally tormented. They deserve it. Now, the worst thing every one of them did was forget to accept someone as their lord and savior before they died, but rules are rules.
IMO it comes down to the difference in the authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles, as originally described by psychologist Diana Baumrind. In the Old Testament, pretty much all the moral rules and actions taken by God, whether they are cruel or benevolent, are all part of the authoritarian style. Basically it’s, as @TriPolar says, “do this because I’m telling you to do it.” In the New Testament, at least when it comes to Jesus (Paul gets back to the authoritarian style), we have a more authoritative rather than authoritarian style of relationship between God and his followers.
Although I will “fight the premise” in the sense that I don’t see the Old Testament as being taught as having a god that should be over and done with. At least not among US Catholics and the conservative Protestant sects. I went to Catholic school, and was never taught this. To the extent that children are taught that we should be done with the Old Testament god, my guess is that it would be among more liberal Christians, and for the reason that I mentioned.
I don’t mean this as a nitpick, but the Old Testament is not the “Jewish bible.” The Torah contains the first five books that were later included in the Old Testament, but there are an additional 17 books in the OT.
No, Rivkah is right. The terms “Jewish Bible” and “Old Testament” are equivalent, though Jews often avoid the latter term, since from our POV there’s only one Testament and the comparative adjective is unnecessary. The term “Torah” specifically refers to the first five books, but that’s not the word the OP used.
I don’t recall any Christian saying such a thing either. What I have heard often is literalist Christians who believe the OT is the word of God as much as the NT and as far as any difference in God’s behavior between the books is just the ‘working in mysterious ways’ thing.
Sharing a discussion I had with a Christian friend (who puts rationality first, but has faith) who was raised in a non-studious Baptist branch and converted to the Episcopal Church, while I was and remain a nearly entirely secular Jew.
He described the particular Baptist attitude as “God chose the Jewish people but they failed and fell into shyster lawyering and bickering. So Jesus was sent down to save us all, and the Jews will never have a place at God’s side again.”
NOTE - as I just said, that was his summary of the particular Baptist church he was raised with. And it wasn’t talking about how Jews were to be destroyed, just that they “blew it” and were no longer to be considered chosen people to reconcile the difference in treatment between the OT and NT.
As an Episcopalian, which he enjoys because it’s both more studious and structured (his particular group at least) they apparently tend to a more scholarly response where the OT informs the faith, but Jesus’ teachings supplant what comes before for Christians. They do grant that Jews are chosen and as long as they follow the OT rules they still have a valid relationship with God, but that trust in Jesus is a better, more “true” faith. In part because the Hebrews were chosen back when people were akin to children, and could not make good choices on their own (the story of Abraham comes in at this point) and so God set rigid rules, while Jesus came to humanity when they could better understand and therefore make more moral choices.
Again, anecdote, and ONLY speaks for those two specific sub-sets, but it may represent a path some groups take to handle the differences.
I’m really struggling not to hijack by arguing with these responses…but I can’t help wondering what the evidence is that humanity was more morally and spiritually advanced in Jesus’ day than in Moses’. The Roman Empire was all about slavery and imperialism and stuff.
He is unforgiving and vindictive when he sent Adam and Eve from the Garden, and made women forevermore have pain in childbirth. He killed everyone on earth, except for Noah and his family. He killed everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah. He killed the first born of the Egyptians (“He, himself, and not a seraph”). He banned Moses from the promised land for some transgression. He instructed the Israelites to do terrible things to their enemies. I’m sure I’m missing a few things.
Jesus did kill anyone, as far as I know.
Well, most religions and sects built upon others always seem to have the “These guys were close, but we finally got it right” are built upon the self-evident (
) evidence that they’re more moral because they got it right.
Not that it’s limited to Christianity.
And I could argue that early Christianity, before it became more organized and eventually extremely political, was more moral in it’s teachings than most. Of course, like most other human-derived organizations… well, one of my biggest faults with organized religion is that if their God exists, why don’t they clean their own houses first?
IIRC, shortly after Moses learned that he was adopted and born to Jewish parents he was waking around having a crisis. He saw an overseer beating a slave. Rather than just saying ‘Hey! Cut that out!’ Moses beat the overseer to death. For that crime, he was not allowed to enter the promised land.
Uh, IIRC, that’s not the reason.
Yeah, I looked it up. It’s much stupider:
The incident at the waters of Meribah Kadesh is recorded in Numbers 20. Nearing the end of their forty years of wandering, the Israelites came to the Desert of Zin. There was no water, and the community turned against Moses and Aaron. Moses and Aaron went to the tent of meeting and prostrated themselves before God. God told Moses and Aaron to gather the assembly and speak to the rock. Water would come forth. Moses took the staff and gathered the men. Then, seemingly in anger, Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then Moses struck the rock twice with his staff (Numbers 20:10–11). Water came from the rock, as God had promised. But God immediately told Moses and Aaron that, because they failed to trust Him enough to honor Him as holy, they would not bring the children of Israel into the Promised Land (verse 12).
The whole plagues of Egypt story is horrifying. Mainly because it’s stated over and over things like:
Then he goes and destroys their water, their crops, their animals and their firstborn in order to (checks notes) prove how badass he is.
Ew.
Huh. Apparently I did not recall correctly. Sorry about that.
Yeah, but he’s reportedly condemned billions of people to not just death, but ETERNAL TORTURE! There’s no way to argue that the Christian God isn’t far more cruel and vindictive than the Biblical one…in fact, infinitely more so!
Violent and punitive are not inherently “nasty” or offensive words. A hurricane is violent, for example, but by making this remark am I judging nature to be evil or imperfect? Courts are punitive, but by describing them so do I express any disapproval? Violence and punishment often carry negative connotations, but just because I describe the God of the Old Testament as violent or punitive does not imply that I think He was wrong.
Similarly, just because someone speaks of a God of the Old Testament and a God of the New Testament does not mean they are referring to two different entities; cf. the God of Abraham versus the God of Isaac, as appears in Genesis.
I recommend reading the Epistle to the Galatians, the Ninth book of the New Testament, in which Saint Paul argues that the Mosaic Law does not apply to Gentiles due to the revelation of Christ. It was written at a time when most Christians were Jewish, i.e. they had been circumcised as a mark of the Covenant between God and Abraham, and requiring converts to be circumcised presented a problem for the fledgling Christian movement. Some variety of supersessionism - the theological notion that the Christian Church replaces the Mosaic Law, as expressed in Stanislaus’s post #8 - is a major tenet of Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherian, Methodist, and Reform churches.
~Max
Except, the god that did all of this,
is also Jesus.
Well, you’re not wrong. According to the plain text, it was striking the rock that got him punished, and that’s the normative Jewish explanation, but if you want to look at Rabbinic literature and midrash, there are many other theories. I don’t doubt the killing of the Egyptian has been proposed by somebody.
The translation RitterSport has provided is poor and makes the connection between striking the rock and the punishment seem much clearer than the actual Torah does.
The phrase “But God immediately…” clearly implies that the sentence is directly connected to the one before it, but neither “But” nor “immediately” are actually in the Bible! It just says “God said to Moses…”, which is a standard formula in the Torah often used to signify a change of subject. Moreover, there’s a paragraph break between verses 11 and 12. So it’s certainly possible to credibly argue that verses 12ff have nothing to do with the rock scene, and Moses and Aaron were actually being punished for something completely different.
Right. I went to a Sunday school style daycare during one summer- they taught fun and very simplified Bible stories. We played games. Jonah, Moses, but mostly NT. We made a fishing pole.
However, even tho I grew up Christian, I went to public school, and we went to church maybe twice a year, generally on Easter. Preaching was always about Jesus.
It wasnt until later I took college classes in comparative religion, and “the bible as literature”, that i learned many of the bad stuff in the OT. But Jesus is the New Covenant. The OT is just history.
As for hell, remember there are the concepts that Jews have their own heaven, and that there is a nice spot for “virtuous pagans” and in some churches- if you truly repent, you get out of hell.
In some churches the punishment is knowing you are there- away for God’s love- and it is your fault, and that you have to repent. Of course, very evil people have a hard time/can’t truly repent, they are convinced what they did was Right.