You're asking the wrong person
Submitted by Heather on July 07 1999 at 21:40:47
In reply to HE made me do it! Submitted by Triple Q on July 07 1999 at 20:47:58
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You should be asking a fundamentalist these questions. You have a lot in common with fundamentalists; you believe that if the Bible isn't literally true in every detail, it must be false. I don't believe that; I believe that much of the Bible symbolically expresses the theology of the Jews. The Jews believed that God's guided and loved them; they expressed this through the story of how God guided them to the Promised Land. It may well be that God had real estate concerns for the Jews (though I doubt that, myself), but his idea of how they could find a new land may well have differed from their view. What we read in the early books of the Bible, though, is the Jews' retrospective account of how blessed they were to receive the new lands. To answer your question more directly: Yes, even if the Jews go astray, God still considers them the chosen people – the Bible itself says that. It says that the Jews went astray over and over again. If you meet a Jew, get him to explain the concept of the "chosen people"; the Jews don't consider this to be a reward for moral uprightness. If anything, they consider it a burden that they were given. "Why was Jonah mad at God in the first place and why did he want to die?" According to the story, it's because Jonah didn't like being made a fool of. Picture this: Jonah walks into the city and says, "God is going to destroy your city!" The deadline passes; the city is spared. Jonah's reputation as a prophet is trashed. "And, if he just went there to tell them that they were doomed, why didn't he leave?" He did; he went outside the city. I assume that he didn't need to worry about nuclear winds. :) "Then there's the part where it says that Ninevah was 3 days journey away but Jonah entered it after only one day. Was that a miracle or a human error?" A human error; you weren't raised on Jacobean English, so you misread the translation. :) Here's the New Revised Standard Version: "Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk." Heather |