Deuteronomy (warning: long)

[Chewbaccus]

Originally posted by Dagnabit
The Old Testament God is truly a jealous God, easily angered, incredibly intolerant of other religions.

On the anger part, methinks that shall be my next project: Figure out why God calmed down.

With the intolerance, I think I have that nailed. Just pure logic solves it.

Picture this: You're a creator, you've nurtured this project of yours along a path for several billion years. You've guided, you've protected, you've taught. It's a project that's ended up forcing you to cast your brightest assistant as far away as you can, basically created total war in the workplace, and after all that, your project is giving the copyright and title rights to a shaped lump of metal instead of you. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd feel rather miffed.

Having chosen His people, he will lead them to outright destroy other tribes. So I have to figure that, regardless of translation orr interpretation, the "no killing" commandment refers specifically to the Israelites killing other Israelites for sport, and that war is not only allowed, but deeply encouraged.

My theory: That still may be the specific, but something had happened. The Israelites spread out. They married into other tribes, who married into other tribes, and so on and so on. This eventually got the "you are all humans, you are all one people" message to those that were not advanced enough to understand continental drift and population migrations. As such "Thou shalt not kill another Israelite" became "Thou shalt not kill period."

And before someone starts in on the whole "Then why do God-worshiping people fight in war?" tangent, it depends on your interpretation combined with any messages you get from on high. Pour example, killing to stop an autocratic leader who has wiped out 2/3 of an ethnic race from progressing further and implementing such a program on other peoples = OK. Killing to protect financial interests or a sphere of influece = Not kosher.

And I go to finish Algebra homework and watch "The West Wing."

~Mike



[Edited by Dagnabit on 03-28-2001 at 01:00 PM] [/b][/quote]