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Therefore I will profane the princes of the sanctuary
and deliver Jacob to utter destruction
and Israel to reviling

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and your leaders descrated my sanctuary;
that is why I put Jacob under my solemn curse
and left Israel to be reviled

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Therefore I profaned the princes of the sanctuary,
I delivered Jacob to utter destruction,
and Israel to reviling.

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Originally posted by Psyduck:
Well, there's my first candidate. The Saul narrative in I Samuel 9 ff.

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Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
My current pet yuk is in Isaiah 43:28, which can be read as a prediction of the holocaust. The problem with the over-reading of Isaiah is it is not an interpretation I can reject but I am not happy with it at all.

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Originally posted by Anselm:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
My current pet yuk is in Isaiah 43:28, which can be read as a prediction of the holocaust. The problem with the over-reading of Isaiah is it is not an interpretation I can reject but I am not happy with it at all.

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I think we can reasonably rule this out as an interpretation of the passage. Within the 'narrative framework' of Isaiah this was explicitly looking forward to the Babylonian Exile and the restoration beyond that (that within a New Testament understanding would be the fulfillment found in the ministry of Jesus Christ). Seems a very odd leap to try to tie Isaiah's 8th Century BC prophecy to the 20th Century AD atrocity, skipping over other historical events like the Exile, Jesus, the destruction of Jerusalem, etc

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Originally posted by Oreophagite:
As for things in the Bible that "stink" - well, there's Ezekiel 4:9-17. You won't see that in the Lectionary.

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Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.

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Here is a "charming" extract from Psalm 137.

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Is it possible to hold to the principle that scripture is authoritative and inspired (that's not the same as inerrant) and yet be open to the possibility that some stuff in the Bible stinks!

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[7] Remember, O LORD, against the E'domites
the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, "Rase it, rase it!
Down to its foundations!"
[8] O daughter of Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall he be who requites you
with what you have done to us!
[9] Happy shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!

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After complaining he gets to use cow dung instead. Nothing wrong with cow dung as a fuel

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My commentary said the barley cakes were probably cooked directly on the hot "coals" - so directly in contact with the glowing coal-substitute.

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Wonder if they did their steaks that way? Gives a whole new meaning to "Well done, thou good and faithful servant..."

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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Originally posted by tclune:
Certainly all those passages like Joshua 6:21 would have to be candidates for our revulsion at the oldest of the OT understandings of God's will.

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[14]
"Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. [15] And if you be unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."

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And I'd print the rest of the book as a footnote, in italics...


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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Originally posted by Psyduck:
Actually, and much more seriously, of course I think that Joshua should be in the Bible. All of it. I think the questions it raises are about our reading-strategies as 21st. century Christians. It really worries me that some attitudes towards Biblical authority preclude questioning e.g. the morality of "Biblical" genocides.

I think it says something important about our attitude to the Bible if we're saying - and able to say "this is in the Bible - but I still think it stinks!"

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Originally posted by Freddy:
I like to say that "literally this is wrong, but it works as a metaphor."

Joshua is a fabulous metaphor for clearing sin from your life. Every story is priceless, and a worthy topic for sermons and lessons of all kinds. As a literal piece of history, however, it is a series of atrocities.

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Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
I'm actually uneasy with that. I think it is because once you say "this is OK as a metaphor", it opens the door for some to misunderstand it and attempt to literalise the metaphor.

It seems to me that as soon as anyone says "hate sin!", there are inevitably going to be others who hear that as "hate sinners".

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OK. I can see that people will do that.

Does this mean that we can't talk about "crushing racism" for fear that people will take this too literally? It seems to me that we are pretty accustomed to these sorts of comparisons.

Still, it is true that we are also accustomed to taking things too literally.

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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg

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Originally posted by Jengie Jon:

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Originally posted by Anselm:

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Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
My current pet yuk is in Isaiah 43:28, which can be read as a prediction of the holocaust. The problem with the over-reading of Isaiah is it is not an interpretation I can reject but I am not happy with it at all.

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I think we can reasonably rule this out as an interpretation of the passage. Within the 'narrative framework' of Isaiah this was explicitly looking forward to the Babylonian Exile and the restoration beyond that (that within a New Testament understanding would be the fulfillment found in the ministry of Jesus Christ). Seems a very odd leap to try to tie Isaiah's 8th Century BC prophecy to the 20th Century AD atrocity, skipping over other historical events like the Exile, Jesus, the destruction of Jerusalem, etc

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Only if we are also willing to forgo all the suffering servant passages as not referring to Christ after all if all the book of Isaiah was looking forward to the Babylonian Exile(dubious in many commentaries) and concerned solely with that and the return then it can not be concerned with something that happened several hundred years later.

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Originally posted by chemincreux:
This is not exegesis, of course. It's another story, if you like, the one that speaks to me.
But I didn't make it up. Tell me if you think I'm wrong.

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Originally posted by Freddy:
Joshua is a fabulous metaphor for clearing sin from your life. Every story is priceless, and a worthy topic for sermons and lessons of all kinds.

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Originally posted by SteveTom:

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Originally posted by Freddy:
Joshua is a fabulous metaphor for clearing sin from your life. Every story is priceless, and a worthy topic for sermons and lessons of all kinds.

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Would you be comfortable using the Holocaust in that way? Or the driving out of North American natives?

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Not at all. Especially as I am part Jewish and part native American.

I would be more comfortable using the defeat of Nazism or Communism that way.

Fortunately, most of the biblical stories are more like those latter than the former. Almost everyone attacked Israel after Jericho and Ai, so they make at least a partially credible victim.

But, again, I am not defending the literal stories. Those were bad times. To some extent the stories are a case of God making lemonade out of lemons.

Anyway, if they weren't lemonade you couldn't make sermons out of them. As it is they make great sermons. No one comes up afterwards all upset about what Samson did to the innocent Philistines. Yet I'm sure that the Philistines were just as innocent as anyone else in those days.

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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg

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Pussyfooting. The whole book of Joshua goes.

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But isn't that basically a piece of sanitizing? Isn't it morally better to keep Joshua in, and say "Well, this is one of the sources of our tradition - and it stinks. So we'd better be very careful about slipping into triumphalism..."

Of course, Joshua's always been in the Bible, since God invented printing , and maybe it's only since the Holocaust that we've been able to see the obscenity that was there all the time.

Shame we can't join the dots, and extend that same sense of obscenity to that revolting praise-song "Be bold! Be strong! For the Lord your God is with you..." Straight out of Joshua 1 that is.

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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Originally posted by Oreophagite:
Rather than saying that this or that "stinks", we need to understand what it MEANS. It's all there for a reason. For a lot of them, I'll go apophatic and say I have no clue WHY they're there.

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Originally posted by SteveTom:
Pussyfooting. The whole book of Joshua goes.

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I shall look forward to reading the prequel to your book with interest - it will obviously be very short.

If, as I understand it, the Bible is a window on the development of understanding about God through the centuries, it shows how people originally thought in terms of God as a vengeful God, punishing his enemies. This developed over time into the idea of a God of Love. Jesus wasn't into chucking the whole lot out, though.

Matthew 5: 17: Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.

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Rather than saying that this or that "stinks", we need to understand what it MEANS.

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Jesus wasn't into chucking the whole lot out, though.

Matthew 5: 17: Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

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If, as I understand it, the Bible is a window on the development of understanding about God through the centuries, it shows how people originally thought in terms of God as a vengeful God, punishing his enemies. This developed over time into the idea of a God of Love.

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Originally posted by Luigi:
Were women who had problems with their periods really meant to be treated as they were?

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Originally posted by Chorister:
If, as I understand it, the Bible is a window on the development of understanding about God through the centuries, it shows how people originally thought in terms of God as a vengeful God, punishing his enemies. This developed over time into the idea of a God of Love. Jesus wasn't into chucking the whole lot out, though.

Matthew 5: 17: Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

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Originally posted by Psyduck:
[QB] Oreophagite:

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Rather than saying that this or that "stinks", we need to understand what it MEANS.

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But sometimes what it MEANS is what stinks. I'd intended this thread as a place where people could simply declare their perceptions that certain things stank, and others could come along and maybe argue the contrary. Are you saying that nothing in the Bible can stink?

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With some of those passages that continue to appear to "stink" upon my feeble-minded analysis, I just have to stand back in awe and mystery.

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I can't explain God, nor do I have the authority to.

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I personally think it stinks that God had to incarnate as Jesus and die on the cross because we (humanity) are such sinful idiots.

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Originally posted by Psyduck:
But isn't that basically a piece of sanitizing?

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But Psyduck - I would argue that Leviticus is as important as Jesus because that is the very book that sheds light on how insightful and daring Jesus was. Or to put it another way, it shows just how massive the journey within the OT was. And how far things had to travel to get to Jesus.

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Originally posted by Petaflop:

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Originally posted by Oreophagite:
As for things in the Bible that "stink" - well, there's Ezekiel 4:9-17. You won't see that in the Lectionary.

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verse 15 (KJV)...

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Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.

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After complaining he gets to use cow dung instead. Nothing wrong with cow dung as a fuel: (link).

Cow dung can also be used to make a water purifier: (link)

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Originally posted by Psyduck:
It's actually the impulse to sanitize that concerns me. And I've said enough to indicate that that's there in me too. But we daren't sanitize, and even a too-quick disavowal is dangerous.

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Originally posted by Psyduck:
And I'd go so far as to say that the meaning of Joshua after Auschwitz is that there's no way back for us to an easy translation of genocide into triumphalism, or the spiritualization of what we can only now see as mass-murder.

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But we slaughtered millions of innocent Germans and Japanese, and most Westerners are happy to see it as triumphalism.

The fact is that we escaped by the skin of our teeth. The same is also true of Israel, who faced overwhelming odds, yet triumphed by the hand of God.

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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg

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Originally posted by Freddy:
But we slaughtered millions of innocent Germans and Japanese, and most Westerners are happy to see it as triumphalism.

The fact is that we escaped by the skin of our teeth. The same is also true of Israel, who faced overwhelming odds, yet triumphed by the hand of God.

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Originally posted by Teufelchen:
Careful with that 'we'. Not everyone here is from a country that was on the Allied side in WW2.

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Good point. I hope I haven't offended.

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Originally posted by Teufelchen:
The children of Israel conquered Canaan because God told them to, and they took that land from its inhabitants and lived there instead. The Axis nations attacked their neighbours, and were defeated in retaliation. And US airbases aside, I don't see Germany and Japan overrun with nationals from Allied nations. There is a difference.

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The children of Israel conquered Canaan because God told them to, and they took that land from its inhabitants and lived there instead.

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Originally posted by Psyduck:
Hi, Kiwimac! Good to have you on board. And a first post in Kerygmania - obviously a person of taste!

The peaceful infiltration model does do a great deal more justice to Judges, doesn't it? It's based on the sociology of seminomads living in the 19th century BC in Mesopotamia, but I think it transfers quite well to the 14th-13th centuries in Palestine. Mind you I have a soft spot for the sociological model of Gottwald, too, in which the lack of any archaeological evidence of people coming in from outside, coupled with extensive burning, and the linguistic evidence of loss of high Canaanite linguistic culture, followed after a hiatus of some 50 years by the appearance of Hebrew, signifies that an underclass (the Hapiru?) had taken over.

But the point is that even if you confine the Joshua narratives to central Palestine, they do say some pretty horrible stuff. Wider context is important, though, I agree.

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Psyduck,

Flattery will get you everywhere! (BTW, Psyduck is one of my favourite Pokemon) Yes, I do agree that the infiltration model does do more justice to Judges but also agree that there is some extremely yucky stuff in that there book?

Grace and peace

Kiwimac

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I stand at the altar of murdered men and while I live I fight their cause. Florence Nightingale