Disturbing Passages in Holy Books

Post Reply New Topic

I’d appreciate it if this thread could stay on the topic of Disturbing Passages in Holy Books - citing them and/or discussing them/their ramifications in some capacity - because, considering world events, I think it’s a very important one. I’d especially appreciate it if people could avoid complaints about tone or other ad hominem-ish retorts moving forward because, once again, it takes the thread off-track.

Scientology in a nutshell.

^

^



Here’s some especially barbaric passages from Leviticus and Judges that haven’t been mentioned yet.

The endorsement of people being killed in nasty ways:

Leviticus 21:9: “When the daughter of a priest profanes herself through prostitution, she profanes her father; she shall be burned to death.”

Apparently, sometimes God likes to switch things up and burn people alive instead of stone them to death. Perhaps the occasional crucifixion adds some variety as well.

The following are mass rape and carnage scriptures that haven’t been previously alluded to.

Judges 5:30a: “Are they not finding and dividing the spoil? A woman or two for every man”

After an outrageous passage involving the rape and death of a concubine (Judges 19:22-30) which I cited a while back, Israelites from the other tribes won’t allow their daughters to marry men from the Tribe of Benjamin (i.e. Benjaminites). In Judges 20, there is a big battle because the Benjaminites decide not to hand over the guilty men. Most of the Tribe of Benjamin is killed (which was perfectly reasonable /s) - only 600 men remain. Those who survive are obviously in need of new property wives since their own have been slaughtered.

If more people actually knew what was in the Bible, then they would advocate burning it, rather than requiring the study of it in public schools.

Actually, more students would probably appreciate it. I remember the fine times we had when we read the Canterbury Tales in high school.

I saw that the book of Jeremiah was referenced elsewhere which reminded me about when God threatened that disobedient people would have to eat their young in Jeremiah 19:3-9:

“Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. 4 For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. 5 They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind. 7 “‘In this place I will ruin the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, at the hands of those who want to kill them, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds and the wild animals. 8 I will devastate this city and make it an object of horror and scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and will scoff because of all its wounds. 9 I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh because their enemies will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them.’”

Moral of this and various other passages of the Old Testament that have already been cited: killing babies and children is only okay if it’s YHWH’s idea. When it involves other gods, it’s really, really bad!

On the topic of Jeremiah, here is more of YHWH’s genocidal ravings, including encouraging the use of war crimes such as destroying crops and livestock and causing a draught. The usual BS.



Jeremiah 50:18 Therefore this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says:

“I will punish the king of Babylon and his land
as I punished the king of Assyria.

Verse 21: Attack the land of Merathaim
and those who live in Pekod.
Pursue, kill and completely destroy them,”
declares the Lord.
“Do everything I have commanded you.

Verses 24-28 I set a trap for you, Babylon,
and you were caught before you knew it;
you were found and captured
because you opposed the Lord.
25 The Lord has opened his arsenal
and brought out the weapons of his wrath,
for the Sovereign Lord Almighty has work to do
in the land of the Babylonians.
26 Come against her from afar.
Break open her granaries;
pile her up like heaps of grain.
Completely destroy her
and leave her no remnant.
27 Kill all her young bulls;
let them go down to the slaughter!
Woe to them! For their day has come,
the time for them to be punished.
28 Listen to the fugitives and refugees from Babylon
declaring in Zion
how the Lord our God has taken vengeance,
vengeance for his temple.

Verse 38 A drought on her waters!
They will dry up.
For it is a land of idols,
idols that will go mad with terror.




There’s literary value here. Idols going mad with terror is fantastic! However, everything else is s**t.

We read the sermon “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God” in one of my American literature classes in college. There was a great deal of giggling involved even though we knew that such nonsense, rooted entirely in human ideas, inspired much fear, anxiety, and inner turmoil in people. It’s a harrowing thing to seriously ponder. Anyway, this sermon was written in 1741 by the influential theologian Jonathan Edwards. If you’ve never read it before, it’s worth a read, even if only some of it. Enjoy!

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear you in his sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes as the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours.

You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince, and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else that you did not got to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell since you have sat here in the house of God provoking his pure eye by your sinful, wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

O sinner! consider the fearful danger you are in! It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath that you are held over in the hand of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of Divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder. . . .

It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see along forever a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul. And you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages in wrestling with this Almighty, merciless vengeance. And then when you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point [dot] to what remains. So that your punishment will indeed be infinite.

Oh! who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it gives but a very feeble, faint representation of it. It is inexpressible and inconceivable: for "who knows the power of God's anger"!

How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh! that you would consider it, whether you be young or old!

There is reason to think that there are many in this congregation, now hearing this discourse, that will actually be the subjects of this very misery to all eternity. We know not who they are, or in what seats they sit, or what thoughts they now have. It may be they are now at ease, and hear all these things without much disturbance, and are now flattering themselves that they are not the persons, promising themselves that they shall escape.

If we knew that there was one person, and but one, in the whole congregation, that was to be the subject of this misery, what an awful thing it would be to think of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would it be to see such a person! How might the rest of the congregation lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him!

But, alas! instead of one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell! And it would be a wonder, if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons that now sit here in some seats of this meeting-house, in health, and quiet and secure, should be there before tomorrow morning!“

https://wwnorton.com/college/history/ar ... h03_03.htm

Here’s a Raiders of the Lost Ark moment which I’m surprised hasn’t been cited yet:

1 Samuel 6:19 “But the Lord struck down some of the people of Beth Shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord; he struck down 50,070* of the men. The people grieved because the Lord had struck the people with a hard blow” (NET).

Brenton’s Septuagint Translation of this verse: “And the sons of Jechonias were not pleased with the men of Baethsamys, because they saw the ark of the Lord; and the Lord smote among them seventy men, and fifty thousand men: and the people mourned, because the Lord had inflicted on the people, a very great plague.”

*“The number 50,070 is surprisingly large, although it finds almost unanimous textual support in the MT and in the ancient versions. Only a few medieval Hebrew mss lack ‘50,000,’ reading simply ‘70’ instead. However, there does not seem to be sufficient external evidence to warrant reading 70 rather than 50,070, although that is done by a number of recent translations (e.g., NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT). The present translation (reluctantly) follows the MT and the ancient versions here.”

I.e. some translators went with a smaller number even though it’s not supported by ancient texts. It’s not too uncommon for translators to try to soften the Bible and/or make it more plausible when an opportunity to do so presents itself, not that killing 70 people for such reasons would be justified.

A popular interpretation of this scripture is that God slaughtered 70 immediately and then killed 50,000 with a plague afterwards. In any case, this passage reminds me of God killing Lot’s wife merely for looking back as they were fleeing Sodom.

Moral of many passages involving YHWH’s commands: Don’t be curious. Don’t question. Just obey no matter how silly, unreasonable, unjust, or inhumane the command might be.

Now I’m in the mood to rewatch Raiders of the Lost Ark…

Older women are to encourage younger women to be submissive to their husbands. I saw this sort of thing a lot in my former church, and it’s very common in fundie culture overall. Fundie women are on the receiving end of misogyny from many angles - the Bible/the Almighty PhallusGod, male church leaders, and fellow women - and from early childhood on up. It’s just so sad because it all serves to limit their agency or their perception of it and leads to learned helplessness.

Titus 2:3-5 “Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or enslaved to much wine; they are to teach what is good, 4 so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, 5 to be self-controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, submissive to their husbands, so that the word of God may not be discredited.”

Useful advice for slaves in verses 9 and 10: “Urge slaves to be submissive to their masters in everything, to be pleasing, not talking back, 10 not stealing, but showing complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the teaching of God our Savior.”

Slaves being submissive to their masters in “everything” is like the sh***y advice for wives at Ephesians 5:24 which I quoted in the third post on this page. Anyway, the purpose of such lousy advice? “[S]o that in everything they may be an ornament to the teaching of God our Savior.”

An Israelite (Phinehas) murders a fellow Israelite man for bringing a Midianite woman into his family. The woman is murdered, too, in a particularly telling way. Naturally, this makes YHWH very happy with Phinehas. How dare people do something so unthinkably evil as partner up with those who worship other gods!

First, here’s some background info which features YHWH’s anger issues on full display:

Perhaps the Bible writers wanted to switch things up. Constantly capturing virgins, however fun and exciting that may be, gets a bit repetitive after a while.

It happens just a few chapters later to Midianite women in Numbers 31:17-18 which I quoted in my OP, though.

God is rather wishy-washy on his stance towards Midianites.