That doesn’ t explain a lot of just “weird” (for lack of a better term) behavior, such as trying to kill Moses (for no apparent reason) as soon as he sends him on an errand to Pharaoh, or such inconsistencies as protecting Cain even after he kills his brother while killing Onan for (one would think) the lesser sin of withdrawing from his sister-in-law/wife. Somewhere twixt Malachi and Matthew he seems to have found some medicine that worked.
Again, you are simply taking stories from the presettled (and actually tribal) period* and acting as though that same view of God held true through the period of the Prophets and the Psalmist(s) and the authors of Ruth, Ezra and Nehemiah, and Ecclesiastes. Your Malachi/Matthew separation is rather arbitrary and would result in having us believe that Isaiah 49: 8 - 26 was, somehow, a New Testament passage.
- (Regardless whether the Torah was written by Moses or redacted by priests near the time of the Exile, the stories it relates are clearly very old.)
Would you concede that by the Gospels God is less likely to kill a baby to take vengeance on its father (even though the father could not be more repentant)?
The Bible is a desperate evolving contradictory lie to make adherents feel superior, comforted and to tell them that their lives aren’t crazy, stupid and meaningless — assuming of course you don’t pay attention to some of the more depressive Old Testament prophets who will tell you exactly that.
As for the God of Jesus being a kind and loving God, Bah! Humbug!
In the end 144,000 are saved. Everybody else goes to Hell. Nuff said.
Sombody once said that the worst thing about being an atheist is that there’s no one to talk to while you’re having an orgasm.
And don’t forget, kids: every time you masturbate the ghost of a beloved relative dies.
Can you choose which one?
If you’re talking about that uncle who used to play “candy cane,” he’s already been taken care of.
There is nothing to concede. I have made no claim that there are not harsh actions attributed to God in the Tanakh/Old Testament (although, as braintree points out, one can find harsh (or even vindictive) portrayals in the New Testament). My point has been that the Old vs New dichotomy is false, based on the realization that the portrayal of God has changed over a long period of time and that that change did not occur “between Malachi and Matthew,” but throughout the whole history of Judaism (and Christianity).
You might actually want to read up… Revelation 7, which begins with the Divine sealing of the 144000 Israelites, concludes with the great innumerable multitude from all nations gathering before God in Heaven. The 144000 appear later with Christ in Revelation 14, with the Great Multitude hailing His return in Revelation 19.
OK, Friar Ted, just for the sake of argument, I’m going to take your point as being valid. I’m no expert and though I do know that folks have a habit of shading the True Word to make it seem less objectional than it really is, let’s say your point is on the money. You’re still stuck with the fact that God is taking people who didn’t ask to be born and throwing them into the pit and making them suffer the worst sort of torture without end simply for not having the right opinion. So we still have a psychotic, vindictive asshole of a God who just wait to get his hands on Ghandi despite Christian propaganda to the contrary.
Let’s do a little experiment. Friar Ted, I want you to the kitchen turn one of the units on your range up as high as it will go, wait until maximum heat is acheived and stick your best hand on or into it and hold it there for one minute. That’s all. Just one minute. Now imagine that all over your body forever.
Since, according to you, only 144,000 Isrealites would be saved (as all the other Christians would be coming from all over the world) that means all the others would burn in Hell. Conclusion: God is worse than Hitler. After all, the Jews under Hitler were eventually put out of their suffering and at least he didn’t create them with the intent of torturing the poor bastards — as apparantly God has.
At the risk of being a spoilsport, I’m going to return to the OP…
Certainly, one of the reasons that God looks different in the NT is the influence of Greek culture, and specifically Greek philosophy. Greek learning was widely considered the ultimate in human reason, and Christian writers were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. Paul seems to have had a smattering of philosphical training, and Philo, a Jew who was very influential among Christians at a later time, was steeped in Platonic thought.
The philosophers described God as omnipotent, omniscient, and impassable (unable to be affected or changed). This is very different from the OT God, who often seems to need to ask people what they’re up to, who gets angry, is jealous, takes revenge, and who yields to prayers or changes his mind from time to time. The distant and abstract character comes, at least in part, from this influence.
The personal aspect of the NT God seems to come, in large part, from Jesus himself and his emphasis on God as Father. This portrayal of God was not unique to Jesus, it appears in other Jewish writings, too. But for Christians, Jesus’s words (at least as reported in the Gospels and other writings) were of paramount importance.
The competing strands continued for centuries, and indeed are not really resolved in Christian theology even today (IMHO). Aquinas was the Philo of Christianity, who tried to explain how Christian thought and Platonic philosophy could be made compatible. But that didn’t happen until the 13th century.
mmm? For Platonic thought, try Augustine of Hippo (sorta), perhaps Anselm, Duns Scotus, even Luther. Aquinas was the great explicator of Aristotelian, not Platonic, thought.