Can someone explain this: In the old Testament God killed a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. But in the New Testament none of this happened! Instead, Jesus forgave a lot of people. Why the change? Why did God stop the violence?
Pkbites, this sort of question probably comes up a lot in Great Debates. You could try a search in that forum, even checking various bible threads.
Real short answer : In OT times God was attempting to establish his people on earth. Killing other people ensured that they lived and would believe in God. This wasn’t required in NT times.
(this is an answer from a Christian, and I know that many people take issue with it, but this isn’t a debate (yet))
panama jack
Matthew 10
[SUP]34[/SUP]“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword … [SUP]39[/SUP] Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Over time, even in the Old Testament texts, God had fewer and fewer direct interventions. In pre-Israelite biblical history, God wipes out the world with flood, for instance. In patriarchal history, He occasionally whollops cities like Sodom and Gommorah. During Mosaic times, there are the plagues on Egypt and various battles in which God takes a role. As the Israelites settled Canaan, during the period of Judges and Kings, there are various battles where God TELLS the Israelites to wipe out evil enemy tribes, but God does not HIMSELF do the deed. (And by the way, don’t be too quick to generalize. Only a few enemies are exterminated, and those are clearly described as of depraved levels of evil; the Biblical author(s) describes disputes/wars with other enemies where the Israelites do NOT exterminate the enemy.)
So, by around 700 BC, or thereabouts, God had ceased taking a visible, active hand in human history. ((ASIDE: Yes, I know, and many will argue with me that God continues to take an active role in human history; but that role is not evident and manifest, as in Sodom/Gommorah or the plagues on Egypt.)) The later prophets, too, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, have messages of peace, not of war.
The earlier interventions were necessary to build up His people in their land; once that was done, and once the people had confidence in God and their destiny, this was no longer necessary.
When the New Testament was written, there had been about 800 years of accepting that God did not take an active/imminent part in warfare. The Book of Maccabees (about 165 BC) was excluded from the Hebrew Bible, because it was mosly about humans fighting battles, not about God fighting battles.
This was not a sudden “change” between Old Testament and New Testament, per se; the New Testament grew from the trend in the later books of the Old Testament.
Furthermore, the New Testament was written for peoples subjugated under Roman rule; a call to arms would have been quelled pretty rapidly. There were some early Christian writings that were more war-like, but these were largely culled from the canonical text.
Also, of course, please do not confuse the text with the reality. Although the early Christians preached humility, there are plenty of examples through the centuries of so-called Christians in power who persecuted and massacred non-Christian minorities, made holy war on the Moslems, burned pagan Indians at the stake, etc.