@Passerby #21578
I sometimes wonder if that was the implicit point of those stories….Why it’s important to explain what in the Sam Hill is going on.
Perhaps the fact that Lot was such an ethical screwup was there to drive the point home how bad the population of Sodom & Gomorrah was; If the one family worthy of saving consisted of Gawd-awful people, imagine how monstrous the whole town must have been.
I always figured that if Deity felt they had no choice but to flood the known world or nuke two cities, I’d figure EVERYBODY in them must have been like Ted Bundy if one had to be that rash.
As for the stuff with Canaan; I chalk it up to exaggeration, hyperbole and metaphor since there’s little to no archeological evidence that there ever was any sort of genocide. It’s likely that when the present version of the Hebrew Testament was put together after the Exile, the Genocide stuff was made up from the whole cloth as an epic National Myth to unite the Hebrews and make them sound “badass”.
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As much as Andrew Schlafly deserves guffaws for his dopey “Conservative Bible Project”, I’d say it’s high time to rework the Bible to reflect both archeological theories and Progressive humanitarian values….
* The Flood was a “local flood” (perhaps caused by an earthquake messing with The Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean).
* Sodom & Gomorrah were cities that consisted of nothing but extremely psychopathic rich folks who hoarded their wealth and loved to murder and gang-rape outsiders.
* The Exodus story involved a labor dispute, not slavery and the plagues were caused by God making the Santorini volcano explode.
* The Hebrew/Canaanite stuff was simply a matter of a sweeping religious/social revolution with some battles thrown in. No Genocide or murder of innocents.
* The kids who taunted Elisha only to get mauled by bears will be specified as teenage hoodlums who were a legitimate threat rather than dumb children being jerks.
* The stuff with Satan being explained explicitly with both Satan as a good guy and Satan as a bad guy with stuff about how the Spirit realm transcends time (explaining how later-evil-Satan can cause ‘The Fall’ while earlier-good-Satan can get together with Deity to test Job, later).
* Scriptures that can be interpreted as homophobic can be about decrying pedophilia/pederasty and cowardice, instead.
* Some of Jesus’ more questionable teachings can be cleared up a bit….like the “Not peace but and sword” being written as a prediction of believers being stupid in the future rather than worded as if Jesus was causing it (and thus, OOC for him). Perhaps reworded as “Though I came to bring peace, there will be a sword, for many will war in my name….”.
….and so on.
