Explain to me why I should be punished for the crimes of my great-great-granduncle, or an insane fellow who lives across town.

And why should the Son of God be punished for the sins of His people? The greatest crime in history was that the only innocent man in history was condemned to torture and death.

In the New Testament, God strikes down Ananias and Sapphira for simply lying to look more generous in their Church giving than they really were. Nowadays, religious leaders like Peter Popoff can scam thousands of gullible Christians with out so much as a scratch.

Interestingly enough, Jesus talks about this:

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."

Luke 13: 1-5.

Seriously, you don't want God to be fair. You want justice? Then everyone goes to Hell. Thankfully God isn't fair, so there's grace.

Because then God has declared himself unaccountable for his actions. God can do whatever he please without accusation.

And why should the creator be accountable to the creature? Why do I get the feeling that you're just looking for an edge over God?

TBG

You mention sexism. The Bible teaches more respect for women than any other culture in the world. There are plenty of stories in the Old Testament where women played significant roles in the affairs. Deborah is one of the major judges, who ruled over Israel for a good length of time.

There are plenty examples of powerful women in ancient cultures, from Britain to Japan.

Egypt especially was noted for the higher status afforded women, far more so than in other Near Eastern cultures, including Israel:

An exception to most other ancient societies, Egyptian women achieved parity with Egyptian men. They enjoyed the same legal and economic rights, at least in theory, and this concept can be found in Egyptian art and contemporary manuscripts. The disparities between people's legal rights were based on differences in social class and not on gender. Legal and economic rights were afforded to both men and women.

It is interesting that when the Greeks conquered Egypt in 332 B.C.E., Egyptian women were allowed more rights and privileges than Greek women, who were forced to live under the less equal Greek system

http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/ ... womneg.htm

Although the vast majority of such officials were men, women did sometimes hold high office. As 'Controller of the Affairs of the Kiltwearers', Queen Hetepheres II ran the civil service and, as well as overseers, governors and judges, two women even achieved the rank of vizier (prime minister). This was the highest administrative title below that of pharaoh, which they also managed on no fewer than six occasions.
......

Indeed, neighbouring countries were clearly shocked by the relative freedom of Egyptian women and, describing how they 'attended market and took part in trading whereas men sat and home and did the weaving', the Greek historian Herodotus believed the Egyptians 'have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind'.

And women are indeed portrayed in a very public way alongside men at every level of society, from co-ordinating ritual events to undertaking manual work. One woman steering a cargo ship even reprimands the man who brings her a meal with the words, 'Don't obstruct my face while I am putting to shore' (the ancient version of that familiar conversation 'get out of my way whilst I'm doing something important').

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/eg ... n_01.shtml

Ester was a queen to the most powerful man in the world at the time and could turn his head however she desired.

Ester was a beautiful young orphan presented to the Persian King's harem by her older cousin, who consequently rose to a position of power and influence. Gaining personal, family, or clan/ethnic-group power by procuring female relatives for highly-placed men has a long and widespread history (see the Boelyn sisters) but I'm not sure it counts as Great Moments in Feminism.

Now did women have voting rights or political power? Outside the few given examples, not really, but as I've said many times, you are basing your judgement of the culture based on the mindset of today. This doesn't work.

Yes, but every time you point this out, you say we can't judge the Israelites for their actions- genocide, massacres, slavery, stoning, the positon of women- by the standards of today, but only compared to their neighbors in the region.

Which I, for one, am entirely prepared to do. Unfortunately, if you believe the Bible, these actions and laws were not just cultural developments of the ancient Hebrews: they were direct orders from God Himself.

So your defence turns out to be that, while yes, God certainly doesn't live up to our modern moral standards, give Him a break- at least He was better than the Assyrians!

]

Unfortunately, if you believe the Bible, these actions and laws were not just cultural developments of the ancient Hebrews: they were direct orders from God Himself.

How did you expect God to give the Israelites the land He had promised? And as for the law, did you expect God to give them something that fit with postmodern sensibilities? This is terribly presumptious on your part.

TBG

Explain to me why I should be punished for the crimes of my great-great-granduncle, or an insane fellow who lives across town.

In a sense we all continue to be punished for the crimes of our great-great-granduncles. I am the descendant of convicts, who, as their punishment, were sent to the continent of Australia, and I still reside here to this day. But those who migrated here afterwards, like myself, are also the survivors, and the descendants of survivors of war, oppression, famine and disease. Lots of diseases, particularly the infectious pandemics. And the same is true of Canada, USA, of Aztec Mexico, and of all nations on Earth. Especially in the Middle East, where civilizations and pandemics have been around for a long, long time.

Quite recently I read in the paper that scientists have discovered there are two kinds of autism, a disorder of boys in particular, but sometimes girls as well. Apparently there is a genetic link between autism and the immune system, a better explanation than the ones used to blame autism on a vaccination program meant to eradicate or minimise diptheria, whooping cough and measles, to give us what is known as herd immunity. Possibly autism is yet another disorder that can be traced to inheriting two copies of resistant genes to earlier pandemics, including measles, an old human disease strongly related to the distemper that dogs can get.

Genetics have also been implicated in a number of other diseases our ancestors suffered, resulting in damaged resistant genes being passed down through generations. Typhoid epidemics in Northern Europe during the Middle Ages have been linked to the modern day incidence of cystic fibrosis which even in the last century resulted in certain death at a young age. Resistance to malaria, still one of the most virulent diseases around, is known to be the cause of thalassaemia and sickle cell disease. Disorders like diabetes have been linked to genetic changes suffered by those who survived famine and severe hardship.

Wealth is a real reason why some people managed to survive better than others. How they got rich in the first place might have been due to talent, to personality or maybe through evil-doing, who knows? However, clean, well-housed and well-fed people were able to resist infections more easily, thus qualifying as the strongest and fittest selected to survive.

Clark (2010, p. 36) points out: "poor nutrition, poor housing and exposure to extremes of heat and cold weaken potential victims"..."Throughout history, the bulk of the human population was poorly fed and lived short, squalid lives" Clark also says (2010, p. 59), with their doing better or worse, depending on the economic circumstances. Even today, the inhabitants of third world countries live shorter lives and have a higher infant mortality, even when their countries are not racked with war.

As Clark (p.59) also points out, "civilization spreads successful genes". People who are bunched together in large numbers, in foul-smelling cities, infested with vermin, with poor sewerage, with polytheistic religoius practices, such as temple prostitution or magical rituals involving the dead, who engage in fertility rites, having no understanding of genetics or how the human reproductive system really works, and who seldom wash for any reason, let alone ritual cleanliness, are also targets for infection and disease. Especially if they kept in their yards fowls, and pigs for rubbish disposal, the reason why the Assyrians did not eat pork, and why the Israelites made a religious point of not eating pigs.

The up side is that whilst healthier besiegers initially have the edge against such people, the city dwellers who survive pestilence gain the sort of resistance that enables them to watch gleefully as besiegers succumb to a fresh bout of those infections, such as famously happened to Sennacherib in the time of Hezekiah. After all, diseases, themselves, select to survive, and mutate accordingly as they spread to fresh hosts.

Now I am explaining in evolutionary terms how opportunistic diseases work to influence humanity. As Clark (2010) p. 42 says: "Evolution is simply a mechanism by which different living things compete using various genetic strategies. Those that propagate their own kind more effectively increase in numbers and the less efficient go extinct. Mother Nature has no maternal instincts"... and, in fact, the idea that amoral evolution could be anything to do with morality is a religious idea.

For God is merciful, unlike Mother Nature. The Israelites who didn't know about the roles of lice, of bacteria, or how diseases can be passed between animals and humans, were onto a real evolutionary winner if they followed the instructions of Leviticus 18, and avoided Canaanite and Egyptian practices, which encouraged the transmission of disease.

Why destroy the Canaanites? Well there were the practices for one thing, many of which encouraged the spread of disease. Catching their wogs was another good reason, especially when herds of cattle, horses etc were to be destroyed as well. And as TBG points out, the Israelites were promised that land. And then since even the Bible suggests the Canaanites, a Hamito-Semitic speaking people closely related to the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians and even modern Lebanese descendants, were vaguely related to the Israelites, there was a tendency for both groups to backslide into such alluring habits.

It isn't too much of a stretch to say that Judaism is above all, the religion of ritual cleanliness and the law, whilst Christianity, which succeeded it, is a religion of healing and forgiveness. Mohammed, who was influenced by Jewish and Christian contemporaries, both borrowed and extended Jewish practices, including emphasis on cleanliness, on monotheism, and the embargo on pigs as well as banning alcohol.

Yes, but Canaan's family was cursed a long time before that because of something Caanan's father did.

And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him. And he said, Cursed [be] Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed [be] the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. (Genesis 9:24-27)

Biblical scholar Philip R. Davies says that the author of this narrative used Noah to curse Canaan, in order to provide justification for the later Israelites driving out and enslaving the Canaanites.

Davies could be right, especially if the destruction of the Canaanites was related some time afterwards, in one of the more recent bits of the Torah, in Genesis in particular, maybe not until the Babylonian captivity or later that century. That would also explain the hostility to the Canaanites, who under Sisera, were able to drive out and enslave the Israelites, in the time of Deborah the Prophetess. Who by the time of the Kingdom of Israel, that is, 1000 BC, had invented the first Alphabet, and who had reintroduced Baal and Astarte worship under the Phoenician queen, Jezebel, the wife of Ahab. When in my daily life I keep tripping over surnames like Canaan or Kanaan or Knin, or Knan or in many other varieties thereof, I am not convinced that the Canaanites are quite as extinct as what you might think.

I know I have been quoting quite a bit from David P Clark's Germs, genes and civilization, an interesting read describing, among other things, the career of the now all-but extinct disease of smallpox, which in its time did so much to favour the advance of Hernan Cortez's Spaniards. Clark doesn't mention the effect smallpox had on our own Australian aborigines, though he could have done. Instead, he expands at length on our war on the multitude of inbred Australian rabbits, poor ickle bunnies , who still have managed to survive myxamatosis, and calcivirus, to become once again tthe farmer's pain in the backside.

He could have mentioned rabies, Australia being the one continent in the world free of the disease, and which is a real reason in Eurasia to stone an aggressive animal from a safe distance. And he could have mentioned our strict quarantine laws here, which help to keep such diseases at bay. Much as the Leviticus laws were meant to do for the Israelites. But I think I have said enough for the time being.

Sorry this took so long; I have a lot going on right now. My apologies for the long post—I guess I just have a lot to say. Believe it or not, I'm trying to keep these posts short.

The fact is, we aren't told about the mechanics of extraordinary situations. We have to trust in God's dispensation here. I do not understand why it is needful to know the precise workings - that God is merciful and ever-willing that men come to knowledge of Him should be enough to satisfy our minds.

Considering that the wondering of what happens to people who are unable to "traditionally" pursue a relationship with God—as well as those affected by geographic and language barriers—has turned many a person away from Christianity, it disappoints me that God was silent on the topic.

A god that is merciful and willing that all his creation come to him is an ameliorating idea, but that god is not present in the Bible. It is made pretty clear that salvation was an impossibility for some of his children, because this god chose to reject them, and he blinded their eyes to him.

Ok, fine. However, I think we need to take a step back here because I think we've all missed the real issue here: Jesus.

Jesus, in the Gospels, treats Scripture as authoritative. Now if Jesus is who He says He is---the Son of God---then His followers are going to have to do the same. There's no getting around it.

I really don't see Christ treating scripture as authoritative. He was considered a radical at the time for a reason. He revised and revoked major aspects of scripture during his lifetime. That's not really what I would call respect.

In Matthew 5, there are the verses about the fulfillment of the law which are so often used in the defense of the Old Testament, but then the Sermon on the Mount continues to amend and annul many of the major laws, with Jesus basically saying, "Okay, that wasn't right, and that wasn't right either, and that, and that, too—stop doing it. I'm setting the record straight." He was criticizing the Law, throwing out aspects of it and raising standards.

By the standards of Christ, it is pretty clear that the old law was a system that greatly fostered sin. I don't see how else you can view it. Christ separated himself from the early scriptures on his own, in his own lifetime.

I do not think one can believe in a perfect Savior and believe in a perfect Bible at the same time because they contradict each other. The concept could work in theory, but I don't think it's happening here.

One thing I'm running across when I'm reading the Sermon on the Mount: Jesus was frequently saying "It has been said/It was said by them of old time/You have heard that our ancestors told" (varies depending on the translation and verse, but that's the gist of it) that such and such was/wasn't okay. The wording here is very strange if you're looking at it from the perspective that these old laws did not just come from the ancient people who lived by them. Jesus never says that these laws in question were something that came from God; instead he is talking as if they came from humans.

Why was he wording it like that, if these ideas where not just cultural and instead the word of God? Why didn't he just say, "Okay, that is how God intended it to be then, and this is how it must be now. Deal with it," instead of referring to it as if it were only an ancient moral code?

When I look at those verses, I can only think that he did not consider those particular laws the word of God, or at the very least, was trying to downplay that idea if they were. I don't know why else they would have that wording. It's weird, to say the least.

Please don't misunderstand: I'm not nitpicking and looking for excuses not to believe. I'm just calling it as I see it. I am genuinely trying to understand the mindset of those who hold the Bible as infallible, because I know so many who do and I really want to grasp where they're coming from. But I am repeatedly running into walls because of the moral tangles and contradictions and peculiarities in the Bible. There is so much that just doesn't add up for me.

But you can't do this is isolation. You have to submit to the Spirit working in the community of believers and the fact is that there are 66 books out there that the whole community of believers, whether Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or whatever, agree are the inspired Word of God.

The whole community of believers that hold the Bible as infallible and literal and so on, you mean. Not all Christians do.

And even under that definition, I still don't know what believing in 66 books as the inspired word of God achieves when everyone has their own take on it and divides themselves into denominations with wildly different interpretations of the same scripture—what happens when you add other books into the equation notwithstanding.

Which community is the Spirit working in? The Holy Spirit only enters those who believe in those 66 books, regardless of whether they have any understanding of them or not? What's the point of recognizing that something is the word of God if it might as well be written in a foreign language, for all you comprehend of it?

Believing in something just because a majority does isn't something I'm comfortable with. There have been many things over the course of humanity that the majority has done/believed in, and that does not mean they were right or correct.

Yes, I'm skipping apocrypha again because it's not the real issue (and going into the concept of deuterocanon and its authority versus the rest of Scripture is a tangent).

If you don't want to discuss it, that's fine. But I sure ain't fergettin' it. I don't think it's a tangent. Maybe from the standpoint of someone who is very settled in their faith, it's not a big issue, but for someone who is striking out and trying to find out what's true and what's not, it's a major question mark, and by no means something I can skip.

I think you misunderstand what I'm saying: where do you get your notions of sin, salvation, repentance, and God apart from His word? If you don't have it from Scripture, where do you get it?

Where do cultures completely removed from Christianity get these ideas?

What Jesus is doing is saying "Look, by focusing on the external forms, like whether divorce is legal, you are missing the point that divorce is this soul-wrenching thing that God only put in there because of your hardness of heart."

If we want to get technical, the verse says that Moses gave them this law. Whatever that meant.

It makes absolutely no sense to me that God would go to all this trouble to create a system of law through Moses in order to teach his chosen people how to live righteously, and then include laws that, if one followed them, one would be sinning. And doesn't even breathe a single word that, "Hey, theoretically you can do this, but it's still wrong. I don't approve. It's a sin. Only evil people with concrete hearts do it, so just keep that in mind before you kick your wife out of the house."

If you're only looking at the Old Testament, you have no way of knowing that God isn't completely hunky-dory with the idea of divorce.

I have to say, I would have been really annoyed if I had lived back then, trying my hardest to live a righteous life with the law as my guide, and then found out one day that some of these "God-breathed" laws weren't okay after all. That on the one hand, God trusted people to be able to differentiate right from wrong and tried to educate them thus so that they may lead righteous lives, and on the other hand. . . he didn't. That God didn't even try to discourage something that was not right, and endorsed it instead as being Perfectly Okay.

Essentially lying.

Why was it their hearts weren't too hard to keep the other aspects of the law? Why did God think that they couldn't even handle the idea that divorce was not right? What was the purpose of keeping that from them?

I think it would have been far better to just remain silent on some topics than to perpetrate misinformation about them. Instead, the chosen people were living under a system of law designed to encourage sin. There's no other way you can slice it.

I find it bizarre, counterproductive and disturbing, and very much like something that bears the fingerprints of humans, not the Divine.

I really don't see Christ treating scripture as authoritative. He was considered a radical at the time for a reason. He revised and revoked major aspects of scripture during his lifetime. That's not really what I would call respect.

...

Christ separated himself from the early scriptures on his own, in his own lifetime.

Go back to the part where Christ was tempted while in the desert. Each time, He responded to Satan's temptations with Scripture. If Christ did not treat Scripture as authoritative, why would He fight Satan with it? And that was not the only time Christ used Scripture as authority.

Jesus was a radical at the time. But that is less because He came to rewrite Scripture, but rather because He sought to correct the bajillions of extra, non-Scriptural rules and customs that society had come up; many of his Matthew 5 concerns were with some popular mis-interpretations of the past scriptural laws. Christ wanted to bring the Scriptural laws back to their true origin: a Love-based morality.

If you're only looking at the Old Testament, you have no way of knowing that God isn't completely hunky-dory with the idea of divorce.

First of all, the law Jesus was referring to, that Moses gave, specifies that the man gives a woman a certificate of divorce if he finds "some indecency" in the woman. Now, I may be presumptuous in saying this, but taking the rest of scripture into account, "indecency" clearly means "adultery" here. And Jesus did give an exception for adultery for divorce, too.

The problem was, people started interpreting that as to mean much lesser faults than that. And God allowed that, though He did not like it.

For more evidence that the God of the Old Testament hated divorce, see Malachi 15-16.

Also, I have to warn you about this...

By the standards of Christ, it is pretty clear that the old law was a system that greatly fostered sin. I don't see how else you can view it.

...

I think it would have been far better to just remain silent on some topics than to perpetrate misinformation about them. Instead, the chosen people were living under a system of law designed to encourage sin. There's no other way you can slice it.

You know, if you're really trying to seek the truth earnestly, I would recommend getting rid of that whole "there's no other way to view it" attitude. That is something that someone who is set in their beliefs either way would say (and even then, with the specifics, they usually are open to further learning and correction by trusted sources). But if you're still having doubts and trying to find answers, that kind of "This must be how it is!" attitude is not going to help you.

I really don't see Christ treating scripture as authoritative. He was considered a radical at the time for a reason. He revised and revoked major aspects of scripture during his lifetime. That's not really what I would call respect.

Such as? Read the Sermon on the Mount, for starters. Whenever Christ references Scripture, we find Him doing so as if it has authority (such as during His temptation). What incidents were you referring to? The reason why He was considered radical was a) He pointed to Scripture and only to Scripture (rather than to rabbinic tradition) b) He claimed to be God.

In Matthew 5, there are the verses about the fulfillment of the law which are so often used in the defense of the Old Testament, but then the Sermon on the Mount continues to amend and annul many of the major laws, with Jesus basically saying, "Okay, that wasn't right, and that wasn't right either, and that, and that, too—stop doing it. I'm setting the record straight." He was criticizing the Law, throwing out aspects of it and raising standards.

On the contrary---He's interpreting the law. Always extending it, making it more exacting, not less. For example, the divorce passage you quoted: his point is that divorce is always the result of sin.

One thing I'm running across when I'm reading the Sermon on the Mount: Jesus was frequently saying "It has been said/It was said by them of old time/You have heard that our ancestors told"

Because He's quoting tradition, not Scripture.

The whole community of believers that hold the Bible as infallible and literal and so on, you mean. Not all Christians do.

If you take the Scriptures as a basis for your theology, then (in practice) you hold to infallibility.

And even under that definition, I still don't know what believing in 66 books as the inspired word of God achieves when everyone has their own take on it and divides themselves into denominations with wildly different interpretations of the same scripture

I'm not sure I see your point here. My point is that the Christian life must be lived in submission to Divine authority. We must live in fauthful dependence upon God rather than in autonomy. The ambiguity you mention is just as present in your position.

Which community is the Spirit working in?

The Church Catholic---the Church Invisible---the Communion of the Saints.

Believing in something just because a majority does isn't something I'm comfortable with. There have been many things over the course of humanity that the majority has done/believed in, and that does not mean they were right or correct.

But what of the counsel of the Church?

Where do cultures completely removed from Christianity get these ideas?

They don't (Romans 1:19-the end).

It makes absolutely no sense to me that God would go to all this trouble to create a system of law through Moses in order to teach his chosen people how to live righteously, and then include laws that, if one followed them, one would be sinning.

The law wasn't meant to give you a righteous life. The law was supposed to show you that you couldn't live a righteous life.

Why was it their hearts weren't too hard to keep the other aspects of the law?

Have you even read the Old Testament? Yeah---they broke every commandment time and again.

I think it would have been far better to just remain silent on some topics than to perpetrate misinformation about them. Instead, the chosen people were living under a system of law designed to encourage sin. There's no other way you can slice it.

You're missing the point of the law entirely. Just because something is permitted doesn't make it right. Jesus' whole point is that the law isn't about righteousness but showing you that you are unrighteous. The Apostle Paul makes this point in Romans 3. But then says:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

TBG

If you're only looking at the Old Testament, you have no way of knowing that God isn't completely hunky-dory with the idea of divorce.

"Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away [read: divorce]: for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously."
Malachi 2:15b-16 (Old Testament)

"They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery."
Matthew 19:7-9

I think that sums it up pretty well.

*exits thread*

--- flambeau

Great Bible verses! But why must people use the KJV so often? It's not the language of the average person on the street.

Great Bible verses! But why must people use the KJV so often? It's not the language of the average person on the street.

I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the KJV. I often find I notice things in its rendering that I wouldn't have picked up on in a more modern translation. Plus I like my little leather KJV pocket-size .

TBG

I'm not saying the KJV is evil. I just think it's curious and a bit frustrating that it's quoted so often, when there are easier and more accurate translations available.

I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the KJV.

Nothing wrong with it at all. Except, of course, for the fact that I haven't the slightest clue what it's talking about.

"Putting away" your wife?

~Riellla

Ithilwen, "putting away your wife" means that the weary husband will sue for divorce, whatever he has against the lady. In those days it didn't mean very much, just a visit to the rabbi. Or did it? Caesar by that time had long since been assassinated, having previously already divorced his wife, on the grounds that 'Caesar's wife must be above reproach', even though a Roman court found her innocent of whatever she was accused of.

These days "putting away your wife" means a messy session involving divvying up assets, including the family home, determining custody of children and probably a lot of time and money spent on lawyers and court hearings. If Muslim, I understand in a hypothetical sort of way, that it also might mean a session with an imam to say 'I divorce thee' three times over a Koran and then the husband can skip off wherever, whenever and with whoever he likes, taking with him all the belongings the couple might own collectively. In that case the poor wife could be left to the tender mercies of Anglicare, Sally's or Vinnie's (St Vincent de Paul) to bail her out, whilst he acquires the extra wife or three the local law courts certainly would not allow him to have legally without divorcing his wife first.

Great Bible verses! But why must people use the KJV so often? It's not the language of the average person on the street.

I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the KJV. I often find I notice things in its rendering that I wouldn't have picked up on in a more modern translation. Plus I like my little leather KJV pocket-size .TBG

Sorry, I have to agree with W4J. I have a lovely little KJV version, given to me when I was confirmed. It has those lovely little pictures and maps at the back which I always thought was great. But the cover has fallen off it by now, and trying to read it for very long hurts my old eyes. ( Oh yes, what big eyes you have grandma... ) And that is even before I try to figure out what is meant by the old-fashioned language. The same is true of the Douai-Rheims version of the Bible, plus the English version of the Tanakh I have.

Reading a Good News Bible in terms I can instantly understand, broken up into nice little sections with easy to follow subject headings, helps me a lot these days. At Church they use another Modern English version and have thought to get large print versions which will help me no end. Maybe after all, I might get my own copy and part with the other ones.

Considering that the wondering of what happens to people who are unable to "traditionally" pursue a relationship with God—as well as those affected by geographic and language barriers—has turned many a person away from Christianity, it disappoints me that God was silent on the topic.

A god that is merciful and willing that all his creation come to him is an ameliorating idea, but that god is not present in the Bible. It is made pretty clear that salvation was an impossibility for some of his children, because this god chose to reject them, and he blinded their eyes to him...Believing in something just because a majority does isn't something I'm comfortable with. There have been many things over the course of humanity that the majority has done/believed in, and that does not mean they were right or correct....

Where do cultures completely removed from Christianity get these ideas?

I'm not at all sure that I agree with what you say. You see, especially in the bolded part of what I quoted from your post, we know that people completely removed from the Middle East did have their own ideas about ethics, good behaviour etc. The Aborigines who lived in a hunter-gatherer culture for 40,000 years before 1770, passed their lore down with rock paintings in galleries, with dreamtime stories passed around at a corroboree or around a camp fire, or in initiation ceremonies. Watkin Tench, whose diaries can be obtained through your local libraries, noted that Aboriginal ideas about ethics, ownership, thieving and murder were quite definite and were enforced among themselves.

Then in the rest of the world, including the Americas, they had war, pestilence, famine and natural disasters they couldn't explain without reference to God or Gods until modern times. Deuteronomy 24:16 says: "The fathers should not be put to death for the children, nor the childen for the fathers; every man shall be put to death for his own sin". But that did not stop Eurasians from seeing Genghis Khan's armies as the Scourge of God, even if they weren't Christians. Earlier, in the 700's AD, smallpox mutated from camelpox, its nearest relative, and swept through the Mediterranean area ahead of Islamic armies that were resistant to it, allowing everyone in those areas to believe that God was on the side of Islam. Islam got as far as France, where it was stopped by Charles Martel.

On the other side of the world in China and Japan also suffered horribly by the unleashed smallpox. The result was that in those countries people evaluated their religions, and older philosophies like Confucianism or religions like Hinduism gave way to some extent for the growth of the more compassionate religion of Buddhism. Whilst respecting the practitioners of that religion, I can't see myself endorsing their ideas of Nirvana or re-incarnation. Twenty or more years ago it was a bit of a fad to try to work out what past lives people might have had. Of course everyone who had a past life said it was as some sort of king or queen, never someone in a famous epidemic or as a result of WW2.

I expect you know that the Aztecs, the Spaniards and the Incas were all agreed that it was by the will of God or their Gods that the Spaniards would take over the Americas, due to the successive epidemics of smallpox, measles and whatever else which ravaged the native populations in the 1500's, with the same sorts of reasoning used by ancient peoples like the Israelites, Canaanites or the Assyrians as well.

I expect you also know that St Thomas penetrated India as far as Madras, called Chennai today, that St Philip who converted the Ethiopians, was crucified upside down in Turkey somewhere. One of the reasons for the success of Christianity was the many rich women who went out to nurse those less fortunate than themselves, and the lower ranking priests and nuns who helped tend to the populace through plagues etc at risk of their own lives, thus making disease more survivable.

I doubt that people today are stopped from reading the Bible because their language is different - I saw a publication that I thought was a Koran at the back of my church, only to find it was the Bible in Arabic. In some places in the world, such as the old Soviet USSR or in Iran or Saudi Arabia, it is illegal to go to Church, and owning a Bible can get you prosecuted.

And I don't see that God is not in the Bible. As a child I viewed Cecil B de Mille's Ten Commandments - for years until the Port Arthur massacre of 1996 I had the greatest admiration for Charlton Heston. But those cinematic tablets with Hebrew writing are not right. Once I had to learn the history of writing I found out that Moses would have used hieroglyphics if he wrote anything at all at that time and age. Those stone tablets were supposedly stored in the Ark of the Covenant. Does anyone know what happened to it?

Does it really matter, though? Those 10 commandments are engraved on every child's mind as he attends his Bar Mitzvah, her confirmation or their religious duties. These are the core values of the Bible and are core values at the heart of Western codes of law as well. The 10 commandments are, IMHO, definitely God given and inspired, whoever wrote the contents of the rest of the Pentateuch. Jesus said about the fourth commandment: The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath - that also suggests to me a core aspect of the Bible, that it was written for man's benefit, not man for the Bible's benefit.

Unfortunately, if you believe the Bible, these actions and laws were not just cultural developments of the ancient Hebrews: they were direct orders from God Himself.

How did you expect God to give the Israelites the land He had promised?

Well, when He was dropping manna from Heaven, He could've tossed in a few gold pieces so they could buy the land, as Abraham did.

Or He could have helped them collect some of their back pay from Pharoah
(And if the Canaanites still didn't want to sell, that's when you pull the Pillar of Fire/walls come tumblig down stuff- make them an offer they can't refuse.

Or He could have said "Look, I know I promised you this land, but after all you guys abandoned it voluntarily for the fleshpots of Egypt, and in the meantime these other people have been working hard and building their cities, so you'll have to start back in the scrub country, and maybe even do some work for these guys for a while, but if you kepp faith and obey My laws, I will send you rain and sun in due measure and you will prosper and become mighty."

I mean, He is the Lord God Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth etc.- it's not like He doesn't have options. Genocide doesn't have to be the first choice.

And as for the law, did you expect God to give them something that fit with postmodern sensibilities? This is terribly presumptious on your part.

I wasn't aware that the doctrine jus in bello was invented by post-modernism.

Genocide doesn't have to be the first choice.

It's not genocide---at least not in any modern sense. People aren't being targeted systematically based on race. See the examples of Rahab or the Gibeonites.

I wasn't aware that the doctrine jus in bello was invented by post-modernism.

Correct. It's borrowed from the Christian worldview. If you want to talk about the laws of war, you should start from the assumption that Christianity is true.

TBG