Treatments of the Bible

I took this winter as an opportunity to listen to a taped version of the bible, and I had to stop after a while, because what I was listening to was so appalling. You know the sort of thing: "And God said, 'Go and cut the throats of all three-month-old children, so that you may show yourself to be just and merciful.'" Now, if I'd come across this in any other ancient literature, it would not have bothered me at all - I would have seen it as a demonstration of how people can misunderstand divine commands or take their own vengeful impulses and apply them to God. But on the other hand, no one is out there urging that three-month-old children be slaughtered because the Greek gods exhorted it. I've seen on this very board people argue that God indeed ordered the slaughter of the Israelites' enemies because of their impiety (but for some reason had mercy on the Israelites, who were periodically impious). I have a comic book version of the bible that presents this all in a straightforward manner that must encourage religious wars today. Yet to be quite honest, I prefer this version to the prettied-up versions of the bible that try to pretend that such things don't happen. It's only by seeing how people have misused religion in the past that we can see how they are misusing it today. So I'm all for keeping in the bits of the Psalms where the narrators revel in the blood and gore of their slaughtered enemies, because otherwise one cannot fully understand the heartfelt dismay of the prophets and of Jesus over this "hate your enemy" attitude. Heather [E-mail]   [Home Page]