One can find and or develop parallels between almost any two events or eras.

To make a parallel between the Children of Israel encamped under Moses and the Seventh-day Adventist Church camped just outside of the Parusia is quite a reach.

True the Church Universal awaits a Promised Land and has done so since the Ascension.

Then the introspection, a la Douglass what is it that we are doing or not doing that makes Jesus Wait?

Is it two meals a day? Is it wearing belts and not suspenders? Is it turning on the TV to get the weather and then watching 5 minutes of football?

It must be some unbelief about something. Does the Church need to open more doors or close a few?

There is a line in the film "The Longest Day" The British Glider troops have to capture a bridge far inland. Their charge is "Hold until relieved; Hold until relieved".

"Are we there yet?" is for children. For adult believers: "It is Hold until relieved!" We have been given the Gospel: Let us hold it in gratitude and in generosity. "Our times are in His hands who said. "A whole I planned see all nor be afraid."

The parallel between Israel and the final generation is forced
The best we can do is to admit that man is an obstinate critter. Tom

Lawrence,
I suppose you approached this article as a homiletic exercise and not as a theological or historical excursion. And, undoubtedly, any story from the OT can be applied as widely or narrowly as one wants, but more interesting to my mind is how you decide what can be used for contemporary edification and what cannot. Especially, what do you do about those parts of Numbers or the Pentateuch that scandalize instead of inspire?

All Christians pick and choose from the OT. Nobody that I know has ever heard a sermon on Lot impregnating his daughters or Jephta sacrificing his daughter to Jahweh. I understand why but why is it ok from a theological point of view to discard some sections and retain others? Could you explain what your theology of OT homiletics is?

Aage, you are asking questions that many have raised: how is it not possible to keep mining the Scriptures ad infinitum? We not only selectively choose parts, while carefully excluding others. Is there any ancient writings for which that is not possible?

Just recently, I was relistening to a wonderful lecturer from The Teaching Company, on the Iliad and the Odyssey, recognized as the greatest epics from Greek literature. There is an enormous wealth of analogies to the human condition that can also be gleaned from those tales: which is why, like the Bible, that one "sees" in them what one is looking for.

How did the Hebrew people read and interpret their texts? Have Christians re-interpreted them to apply to themselves, rather than
remembering that they were not written for them but for a particular people at a certain time in their history. Have we tried to "rewrite" their Bible to fit our own needs today? Certainly, in the reinterpretations of some of their prophecies given for specific times then, as Adventists, we have sometimes re-written those texts to fit our specific times. Is this the proper and intended use of their texts? We have usurped the Hebrew's sacred texts and both rewritten and incorporated them and now call it our Bible.

Now, I'm waiting to see when some theologian or preacher chooses Num. 8:l7-18, or Num 5 as a topic.

From the article:

--
The wilderness experience, it seems, has been a period of testing. But testing for whom? It seems that the Israelites tested God as much as he did them.

--

That is interesting...why would the God who knows everything, beginning to end test the Israelites. Let us assume that these people after 400 years of slavery are brought out of Egypt with wonderous miracles. why would God want to test them for the next 40 years. Something is wrong with the logic there. Or else something is wrong with that kind of God.

Ron

Numbers = probably the worse book of the Bible for those who insist their willingly inherited Hebrew God is a loving Heavenly Father who takes care of his children....

It's in Numb 31 that God's lack of love, compassion, and any decent human morality at all is revealed again, after His attempted massacre of the entire world with a flood, and his murder of Egypts firstborn animals and kids....

Moses claims that in order to steal their neighbors land and stuff, that God orders them to kill everybody, even the little boys, and any women who had had sex... but to save the virgins**...presumably to use to enlarge their tribe, without realizing how this divine interracial sexual slavery would dilute their tribes genetic uniqueness...

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/num/31.html

this is one of several books of the Bible which the Pilgrims should have Banned in Boston for its misogeny, its sexual depravity, its command to rape, plunder, steal and commit murder...in the name of the Lord.

either that, or the book should come with a government mandated XXX warning for violence, sex and gender and racial prejudice.

**Just picture Dr Mengele, "inspecting" the merchandise, choosing who will live to get worked to death, which women have intact bodily features, and who gets to go to the brausebade and watch their kids get killed. And try to understand how Hitler and his willing partners in what most of the world (except a few irrational people) recognizes as a holocaust...could claim "Gott mit uns".

read the evidence and weep for Christianity
(or sign the petition to get a divorce from the Old Test)

quote
(CEV) Numbers 31:1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 "Before you die, make sure that the Midianites are punished for what they did to Israel." 3 Then Moses told the people, "The LORD wants to punish the Midianites. So have our men prepare for battle. 4 Each tribe will send a thousand men to fight." 5 Twelve thousand men were picked from the tribes of Israel, and after they were prepared for battle, 6 Moses sent them off to war. Phinehas the son of Eleazar went with them and took along some things from the sacred tent and the trumpets for sounding the battle signal. 7 The Israelites fought against the Midianites, just as the LORD had commanded Moses. They killed all the men, 8 including Balaam son of Beor and the five Midianite kings, Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba. 9 The Israelites captured every woman and child, then led away the Midianites' cattle and sheep, and took everything else that belonged to them. 10 They also burned down the Midianite towns and villages. 11 Israel's soldiers gathered together everything they had taken from the Midianites, including the captives and the animals. 12 13 Then they returned to their own camp in the hills of Moab across the Jordan River from Jericho, where Moses, Eleazar, and the other Israelite leaders met the troops outside camp. 14 Moses became angry with the army commanders 15 and said, "I can't believe you let the women live! 16 They are the ones who followed Balaam's advice and invited our people to worship the god Baal-Peor. That's why the LORD punished us by killing so many of our people.

17 You must put to death every boy and all the women who have ever had sex.

18 But do not kill the young women who have never had sex. You may keep them for yourselves."
....
25 The LORD told Moses: 26 27 Make a list of everything taken from the Midianites, including the captives and the animals. Then divide them between the soldiers and the rest of the people. Eleazar the priest and the family leaders will help you. 28 29 From the half that belongs to the soldiers, set aside for the LORD one out of every five hundred people or animals and give these to Eleazar.
....
Moses counted out 675 sheep and goats, 72 cattle, 61 donkeys, and 32 women and gave them to Eleazar to be dedicated to the LORD.
end quote

32 women..."dedicated to the Lord"...as?

temple prostitutes?
sexual slaves for the priests?
human sacrifices?

or just the cleaning crew?
after all, there was a lotta blood to clean up after...

Yes, Christians have appropriated the Hebrew stories; why wouldn't they? The leading Christian apostle, Paul, told his flocks that those stories "were written for our admonition" and he reinterpreted them whenever he thought it appropriate given the people and situations he was speaking to. Such re-reading was normal in the Jewish tradition. It was not as we now see it, "eisegesis"; it was a way to engage new realities while engaging communal histories. Karen Armstrong's biography of the Bible comments on this point (and she should probably have written much more about it).

Of course it's indeterminate. So is life. That doesn't make it without use or value.

But it would be nice if we were more careful with the controlling-others component that comes from using our stories in this way. We can be careless.

The Bible should be kept from children; and parts of it are not healthy for adults. Yet, we so often hear the admonition to read the Bible through, and children and adults are praised for doing so.

How does one explain to a child, or a rational adult why the Bible should be read when it's full of both sexual and battle violence, incest, misogyny and worse.

Yet all the while "God" was ordering the killing of the Israelite's
enemies, the Israelites were worshiping other gods--as even recognized in the Ten Commandments not to have OTHER god before the one. Was there ever a time when the Israelites were not polytheistic? Where is the evidence that they became pure monotheists? They worshiped the Canaanite gods for their entire history.

Elaine wrote:

--
How does one explain to a child, or a rational adult why the Bible should be read when it's full of both sexual and battle violence, incest, misogyny and worse.
--

Come on Elaine didn't you just extol the Illiad? It has violence and sex. No the problem is not the stories the problem is the assumptions that the stories tell us of a God who practices the violence of people and who sets aside virgins as bounty for the winners in battle. What do you see in common there? those are all common practices of the people of the time (and very nearly to this day). To the victor goes the spoils. So are we really seeing God's commands or are we seeing what the people telling to story see as God's commands?

Now let's see in the stories in Numbers how long have these people known about God? Not to long but for some reason since they write about Him, since He tries to communicate with them we assume that they must know God really well. That is a bad assumption however.

Ron

Ron said:

"Now let's see in the stories in Numbers how long have these people known about God? Not to long but for some reason since they write about Him, since He tries to communicate with them we assume that they must know God really well. That is a bad assumption however."

Ron, while I agree with your comment I can't help but go a little further and wonder why God couldn't communicate more clearly. This is supposed to be a God who spoke directly to these people, who wrote things down directly for them, who talked to the leaders like you and I can talk. Now either that isn't exactly true or there is a problem.

Did God communicate directly the things we like to hear about God (like the 10 commandments etc.) but not the things we don't want to hear about (like the genocides?) I don't understand how God could be so clear about some things and then be off whistling or something while His people were so terribly tragically wrong about genocide. If He interacted, couldn't He have sent a pillar of fire or something to strongly suggest they not do such an awful thing in His name and then pin it on Him?

Is it possible that God didn't interact anymore directly with people back then then He does now?

Is it possible that God didn't interact anymore directly with people back then then He does now?

Posted by: Beth | 29 September 2009 at 11:56
*******
Or (glass-half-full), it might be just as possible that He interacted just as directly with them as He does with us -- and it has always been our call to hear and truly listen to God's Other without interposing our Selves on Him.

Listening is an easily thwarted skill. But good relationships don't happen without it.

there may be a "natural" explanation for why the hebrews wrote that their God had commanded them to kill these people:

based on the tale of Lots incestuous, drunken romp in the cave....

here's the story:

29 When God destroyed the cities of the valley where Lot lived, he remembered his promise to Abraham and saved Lot from the terrible destruction. 30 Lot was afraid to stay on in Zoar. So he took his two daughters and moved to a cave in the hill country. 31 One day his older daughter said to her sister,

..."Our father is old, and there are no men anywhere for us to marry. 32 Let's get our father drunk! Then we can sleep with him and have children."

33 That night they got their father drunk, and the older daughter got in bed with him, but he was too drunk even to know she was there. 34 The next day the older daughter said to her sister, "I slept with my father last night. We'll get him drunk again tonight, so you can go to bed with him, and we can each have a child."

35 That night they got their father drunk, and this time the younger sister slept with him. But once again he was too drunk even to know she was there.

36 That's how Lot's two daughters had their children. 37 The older daughter named her son Moab, and he is the ancestor of the Moabites. 38 The younger daughter named her son Benammi, and he is the ancestor of the Ammonites.
end quote

If a general wanted to motivate his troups to fight well, and destroy the enemy, it might be helpful to maximize (even exaggerate or concoct) the reasons....such ad demonizing the adversary...

in Numb 31, the Israelites wanted to take back the land their ancestors had abandonned 400+ yrs prior... because of the drought that their God either could not or would not help overcome, forcing their ancestors to migrate to Egypt where the Nile would provide water and the Pharaoh jobs.

in returning from the Egyptian period, archeologists speculate that the Israelites, if they actually had left Egypt at all, would have crossed the Sinai not along the coast, where there were numerous Egyptian military outposts, but thru the center, crossing into present day Jordan, then turning north on the East Bank of the jordan River....

among the first people they needed to dispossess , ethnically cleanse, were the Moabites....

so how would a general whip up enthusiasm for his soldiers to fight? by promissing the soldiers that:
1) they could keep the spoils of war...the stuff, the land;
2) they could keep the virgins... and pick and use the ones they wanted...
3) and the word was put out that God commanded it!!!
and
4) the Moabites were SOB's, the product of Lots drunken incest in the cave, and as such, were not allowed under Heeb law to own the land they were squatting on...and thus the israelites were within their self described rights to ethnically cleanse them...at the point of a sword....

the question remains...when did this story get started?
at the time of the alleged "conquest" (which archeology says did not even happen), ...and in order to motivate the soldiers?

or

afterward, when the israeilites had learned to read and write in Babylon...and the story was a way to justify what they had already done?

but either way, one need not believe that God was the murderous tyrant that the writers of the Hebrew Biography claimed... maybe they exaggerated, or actually made up tales to be told for their own purposes....motivating soldiers to fight? or much later motivating their kids around the campfire with tales of long ago and how important their ancestors were in world history?

the Lot tale itself seems so far fetched as to have been concocted!!!

how could an old, drunken geezer get it up two nights in a row, in a cave, so drunk that he did not recognize his own daughters?

and what are the chances that BOTH daughters became fertilized two nights in a row?

and what are the chances that the gals would know immediately that they were preggers?

and both kids would be sons...

and both sons would father tribes which became enemies to the hebrews....

and both tribes would be in the way of the advancing Israelites...

this is another of the unbelieveable tales of the Old Test which make it necessary for those of us who used to believe in inerrancy and literalcy to step back and think about alternate ways of understanding many of the stories...

or get our shrinks to provide modern psych chemicals to help bridge our mental gaps between fact and fable.

It's always been important to think about the motive and social function of the stories we've told.
I once asked my mother where children learned that monsters lived in closets and under the bed. "Adults tell them," she said. The stories serve a function.

Stories weave societies, and that doesn't diminish either the story or the society.

John Alke
I'm sure that you and I share many of the same views of the OT but your language really makes me cringe. "According to Heeb law," is a phrase you use. Do you really have to dip into the language of anti-semitism to make your point? Your adolescent provocateur language offends me more than an opposite viewpoint stated with dignity.

And Laurence, sorry I misspelled your name, and maybe I should have dubbed you with your Dr title, but I remember you by your first name when you were a senior and I was a sophomore at Newbold and went with that.

What an interesting discussion this has been! Maybe we should make Numbers and Leviticus the principal books of the Bible (or at least the OT) so that we spend more time studying them, as it will inevitably lead those conservatively inclined to review the way they understand the Bible and its inspiration. Human vision of God is reflected in the legends contained in those books much more than any direct experience of God. If we are to choose between the YHWH of Numbers and Leviticus and the non-theistic, evolutionary God of John Spong and Michael Dowd, will anyone go for the former?

Beth wrote:
--
Is it possible that God didn't interact anymore directly with people back then then He does now?
--

Not only possible, I think it is the only reasonable way to understand both the Old Testament and our lives today. I also don't think God just telling you what to do or how to live will do much good. We don't learn by someone simply telling us what we should do or what we should think. Think about how much harder it would be thousands of years ago when they did not even have the vast amount of history to draw lessons from that we have today or even 1000 years ago.

How would we explain God's silence today, if he was so willing to talk so openly in the past. How do we explain why He retreated to prophets and then silence.

Then again what do you think would have happened to these people, lets assume they are a specially chosen people of God, what would have happened to them if they were told to love their enemies and do good to those who persecute them. Probably all be killed off pretty quickly.

It would be an interesting thought experiment to consider how best God could relate to human beings and still maintain the concept of free will. I guess you would have to weed out the Calvinist for that discussion group though.

Ron

Reading the Spectrum blog really requires more and more faith in God to keep on believing in spite of all of these englightened opinions. Sometimes I have to laugh a little at how outrageous some of the englightened statements come out sounding. Sometimes the bottom line seems to counsel readers not to bother to take much of the Bible seriously since it's full of so much apparent error, fable, good old fashioned myth, and horrible tales of incest, rape, pillage and nationalistic crusades. It's no wonder Adventism in North America is fading year after year. Much of the educated class does not believe in much of what the Bible, esp., the Old Testament says. If this intellectuallizing of the Bible grows year after year, some day there will only be two or three readers of progressive journals who will throw up their hands and wonder how the numbers got to be so puny. God help us to find some kind of middle ground. Don't get me wrong, I'm just as guilty of putting a different spin on parts of the bible as the next person. In the meantime, let me check out what the Adventist Review/Adventist World folk are saying this week. Cheers.

Then again what do you think would have happened to these people, lets assume they are a specially chosen people of God, what would have happened to them if they were told to love their enemies and do good to those who persecute them. Probably all be killed off pretty quickly.

Posted by: rc | 30 September 2009 at 3:18

*******
It's an odd case to make -- that an ideal is only given when it costs less to embody. But the period in which Jews were told "Don't resist evil" (first century AD) was one in which it was extremely costly to apply.

Looking at the moral stories we tell ourselves helps us ID the relationship between our ideals and our behavior. When our ideals are taller than we are, we are more likely to stretch to meet them, and in so stretching, we grow.

This is why it matters what kind of God we affirm: we'll never rise higher than our God.

"The Bible should be kept from children; and parts of it are not healthy for adults." Elaine

There's a little ragamuffin, perhaps 5 years old, dirty, hair sticking out, shirt askew, trousers twisted, who sits on the stoop of an abandoned building.

He manages to scrounge an apple from a fruitseller now and then. He has a little companion, possibly his sister, maybe a neighbor. He gives this little girl a bite of his apple in exchange for her reaching into his trousers with her grubby little paw. I observed this behavior long enough to be certain that she was exchanging a bite of his apple for her little paw in his trousers.

It's highly unlikely that they even know what the Bible is. You really think these children are going to be injured by the stories of the Bible?

"The Bible should be kept from children; and parts of it are not healthy for adults." Elaine

well, what if you could use stick figures to make the story more impressionable if not understandable for our kids....

http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2009/08/gods-27th-killing-have-y...

should we provide this to the kindergarden teachers at next yrs camp meeting?

anybody wanna keep studying Numbers?

can anybody get us out of this horrible death loop by finding a God-is-Love story, or a Love-thy-neighbor parable (other than the Way King David did it) in any of the 5 books attributed to Moses?

or are we as Christians stuck forever with the rape, murder, stealing, prejudice and pillage of Mosesianity?

John, are you able to learn by negative example?
Your comments suggest that the only way to learn is by imitation.

After imitation, and after negative example or inversion, there are still more possibilities.

"are you able to learn by negative example?
Your comments suggest that the only way to learn is by imitation?"

Isn't that the problem: we tell others, including children, that the Bible should be read as it gives us the guide of how to live?

Should we carefully (like Thomas Jefferson) cut out most of the Pentateuch from their eyes, and leave only the exemplary parts?
Negativity can teach, but only if condemned; but if blessed and ordered by God, what then? Do you tell someone that God was right in ordering killing, but nevertheless, he wrote a commandment against it, so it is always wrong? Aren't those two incidents contradictory?

Well, Raul, we're sorry to try to engage with the Bible. We know we should accept its claims and commands--however contradictory or problematic--unquestioningly as faithful Mormons and Muslims do their writings and prophets. But given this failing of ours, how would you, Raul, understand and apply the book of Numbers? In particular, how do you feel or what do you think of Moses' command to keep the virgins but kill the rest? Or what about God's command to kill the stick-gatherer on Sabbath?

Elaine, children can learn just as well from the Wicked Witch as from Glinda. It takes some time before they also understand the cautionary tale of the man behind the curtain, the munchkins who keep their filters on, and the characters who go seeking traits they already possess -- but they too are part of the story... part of our story

Excising narratives is neither necessary nor helpful. As you suggest, perhaps the best gift we can give kids is teaching them how to read... and re-read... and re-read... and re-read. Discovery.

By the way, I didn't hear the "Bible is our instruction manual" metaphor until I left home and went to college in another division. It still makes me laugh.

I tend to look at religion and science from an evolutionary standpoint.

Religion serves evolution because its impetus is to relate the parts to the whole, and the scientific drive is similar, I think.

Both have survival value, in the bigger picture, and both are aspects of the same innate human thrust, it seems to me.

The evolution of both religion and science is beset with "frozen accidents" one might say.

The poet Arthur Sze wrote, "The world of the quark has everything to do with a jaguar circling in the night."

What is the key to understanding the jaguar circling in the night, from the point of view of information?

The major insight here is that perceived regularities in the stream of data reaching a complex adaptive system — one that can adapt, learn, or evolve the way living things on Earth evolve — are compressed into models or schemata.

Those schemata are subject to change and to replacement by other schemata, so that various alternative schemata compete.

When the schemata are used to describe or predict the behavior of the world or to prescribe behavior for the complex adaptive system itself, there are real-world consequences. Those consequences feed back to influence the competition among schemata, and that's how learning and adaptation take place. (...)

The importance of accidents in the history of the universe can thus hardly be exaggerated. Each of us human beings, for example, is the product of an enormously long sequence of accidents, any of which could have turned out differently. (...)

Now, most single accidents make very little difference to the future, but others may have widespread ramifications, many diverse consequences all traceable to one chance event that could have turned out differently.

Those we call frozen accidents.

http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/zc-Ch.19.html
http://www.vs.uni-kassel.de/systems/index.php/Frozen_Accident

Let us recall that in the nineteenth century, even after Ignaz Semmelweis' worthy scientific efforts, doctors for years, until Pasteur, in fact, felt washing hands between doing autopsies and delivering babies took "too much time."

Religion is hardly immune to such artifacts and superstitions either, I believe.

I believe that religion and science are like pistons that drive the engine of human evolution, albeit by fits and starts, and that the "feedback" resulting from the "competition among schemata" between religion and science serves us all by putting us more in resonance with the Whole.

Glennspring, I feel uncomfortable with the cases you mention: "Moses' command to keep the virgins but kill the rest? Or what about God's command to kill the stick-gatherer on Sabbath?" I feel as uncomfortable with them as I do with the incidents of September 11, 2001, and the Holocaust. I choose, however, to continue to believe in the God of the Bible as I’m more comfortable with living my live with him—warts and all—than without him. Perhaps the agnostic’s path is more honest, but I am not, nor can I ever be, a member of that club. Life with a slightly mysterious God is better than one without him. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

"children can learn just as well from the Wicked Witch as from Glinda. It takes some time before they also understand the cautionary tale of the man behind the curtain."

Do those children when grown up still worship the Wicked Witch? Do they realize or recognize that the same god of the OT is the same of the NT? Do we teach them to worship both gods, although a god-in-one? Aren't they first taught "Jesus Loves Me" and stories from the New, or else the "good" parts of the Old?

Few of the millions of Christians worldwide have ever read much of the Hebrew Bible; they are much more familiar with the god represented in the NT (thanks to the doctrine of the Trinity) as a god of love. When they are informed of some of the horrible things said to be perpetrated by the god of the OT, they will say "Oh, that's quite different. We believe the God of the New Testament." So, is it lack of knowledge about the Hebrew stories that have led most Christians to readily accept the god of the NT but on discovering the god in the OT they agree that he is a monster; like "a hyped-up Ayatollah Khomeini," as Richard Dawkins has said. Who can disagree?

The god depicted in the OT is very similar to contemporary pagan gods: alternating between benovelent and angry, harmful behavior.
The god of the Hebrews, as they wrote it, was very arbitrary, often capricious, acting without reason, which is very much like the pagan gods of their contemporaries, as well as later Greek and Roman gods. In truth, there is very little difference. Only when
the NT writers began claiming that Jesus was the Messiah, and several centuries later claimed he was also a divine god, the same as one in the OT, was the dichotomy adopted, leading to a difficult paradox to explain. Millions have attempted rationalizations, but most ineffective. How can an ogre also be a loving parent?

Is there anyone here who would trade the OT god for the NT? Would you prefer to have a god that was so unpredictable that one could never guess what he might do next? Kill and destroy, or be loving?

"Glennspring, I feel uncomfortable with the cases you mention: "Moses' command to keep the virgins but kill the rest? Or what about God's command to kill the stick-gatherer on Sabbath?" I feel as uncomfortable with them as I do with the incidents of September 11, 2001, and the Holocaust. I choose, however, to continue to believe in the God of the Bible as I’m more comfortable with living my live with him—warts and all—than without him. Perhaps the agnostic’s path is more honest, but I am not, nor can I ever be, a member of that club. Life with a slightly mysterious God is better than one without him. Thanks for taking the time to comment."

Thanks, Raul. But I don't think most of the people here, certainly not I, would suggest we abandon the God of the Bible or its essential narratives. That is, I don't think anyone here is an agnostic. Maybe our doubts seem a bit much for some people. But at least for some of us, we can come to know God better through a process of challenging and engaging with the texts. Like you, I recognize the "warts and all" of scripture, but continue to accept what I think are the essential truths of its stories and people. I think I might actually relate to the Bible more precisely because of them. Anyway, through the Bible we can continue to engage with God and with each other. Those of us here may do that a bit differently than others, but our reliance on the Biblical record continues to be central.

..."I accept what I think are the essential truths of its stories and people"...

weeellll...

heres a good list of the top 50 stories to tell your kids

http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2008/05/top-50-bible-stories.htm...

and some lego people to demonstrate the value of the book of Numbers to the kids so they can understand how and why God told Moses to kill everybody, upwards of a quarter million people maybe... but save the virgins
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/search?q=numbers

this is a really cute way to explain bad things!!!http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2009/08/gods-27th-killing-have-ye-saved-all.html
but isn't it wonderful that they "saved" 32,000 virgins (to use somehow....)

http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_wilderness/massacre_of_the_midianit...

more using legos to splain Numbers
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_wilderness/

Do those children when grown up still worship the Wicked Witch?
Some who were never taught to worship her have grown up to do so while calling her grasping "Manifest Destiny." Our gods have many names, and a great deal of social consequence.

Is it lack of knowledge about the Hebrew stories that have led most Christians to readily accept the god of the NT but on discovering the god in the OT they agree that he is a monster.
It's possible that some worship they-know-not-what. My guess is that many Christians are just as ignorant of the New Testament as they are of the Old. A flip through the local bookstore says a lot of Christian publishing banks on that ignorance.

These stories have worked their way into our culture and aren't going away. We can improve our children's experience of them by helping them to recognize the link between belief and behavior, and by modeling how to use both to advance growth and community. There are some times when a common belief is helpful; there are others when it's not necessary, and when common action is much more important.

Hello Raul,

Are you attempting toclaim that the Bible is NOT "full of so much apparent error, fable, good old fashioned myth, and horrible tales of incest, rape, pillage and nationalistic crusades"? If so, I suggest you try to read it again with unbiased eyes...

Tom and Aage

Thank you for interacting with my short piece. Just a quick word of explanation to you and others which might not have been obvious from what I said. I wrote a general introduction to the Book of Numbers to provide a broad context which might help subsequent discussion in the remaining twelve weeks of the quarter. To meet the word limit I cut a couple of sentences in which I made the point that the ethically challenging parts of Numbers can be dealt with in succeeding weeks, when those specific details, I suppose, will arise for further discussion. Maybe I should have retained that bit.

Anyway, Tom, my main point in drawing a parallel between Israel in the wilderness and contemporary Adventists was based on a simple theological issue which is central to Numbers and to Adventism – that of delay. I am not making any grand claims concerning the identity of Adventism as the new Israel, etc. So I am reading Numbers analogically, which, given that none of us who read it are ancient Israelites is the only way we can read it – except if we are reading it from an exclusively academic perspective. I could have done that, but judged that this was not the appropriate forum.
Tom, you stated “To make a parallel between the Children of Israel encamped under Moses and the Seventh-day Adventist Church camped just outside of the Parousia is quite a reach.” Also, “The parallel between Israel and the final generation is forced.” I’m not sure if the latter quote was directed specifically to what I said, or was aimed at trends in the Adventist church in general. But could I gently ask you to fill this out a bit more? In what ways is the analogy forced? Where does it fit? Where does it not fit? Further, my real aim in using ‘delay’ as a connection between the text and us as readers was to see if we still feel any sense of ‘delay’. If we don’t, is that a reason we find it difficult to identify with Israel in Numbers? (I’m not talking about whether we identify with the ethical issues, that’s for another week.) Or, is the whole idea of the ‘delay’ of the second Advent an unhelpful and misleading way of looking at matters. But if it is, why? And on what basis? And how could or should the church change its approach to this? I hope you get my drift.
Aage, good to hear from you after all these years. You’re quite right, we do exclude parts of the Bible from our consideration and usually to our detriment. For example, I’m still waiting to hear a genuine song of lament (the predominant form in the Book of Psalms) offered up as an act of worship some Sabbath, rather than the inane neutered pop theology that is now pandemic.
More specifically, you mention Lot and his daughters and Jephthah’s daughter as examples. No, you’re right, most preachers ignore them. But they should be preached, and some of us do and our congregations are nurtured as a result. Unfortunately, we usually read these Hebrew narratives too superficially without an understanding of the purpose of narrative in that culture. Narrative was the major literary form used by Hebrews to address matters of first importance. They are not simply chronicle, or reportage, but are written in such a way as to involve the hearer/reader. Quite often one hears objections along the line of, “Read this disgusting story which the Bible does not condemn, and thus by implication must condone.” That is to miss the point entirely. Hebrew narrators habitually omit moral judgment because that is the task for the hearer. How do we judge these characters, and why etc., is all part of the reading experience of Hebrew narrative. That’s the reason Jesus (and Jewish rabbis in general) told parables, which are typically (though not exclusively) open-ended. “What do you make of it, dear reader?” And, lest any object that this is a new–fangled postmodern approach to reading – No, it isn’t. Any amount of objective narrative scholarship is available for anyone interested.
So, concerning Lot and Jephthah: I would preach these narratives asking the congregation to form their own judgements. Now, I’m also convinced from my reading of these stories that the narrators nudge us in certain directions. We’re supposed to be disgusted. That’s the point. So, for example, when I’ve preached on the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19), probably the bloodiest biblical narrative, I’ve attempted to show the spiritual value of the account is in its implicit moral condemnation of Israel, who is now no better than any of the nations.
Incidentally, if I am allowed a commercial here – I am co-editing a book on Christian Proclamation from the Old Testament (IVP, exact title not yet decided), which deals with preaching on difficult OT texts, Preaching Christ from the OT and a host of other topics. Should be good value!
Blessings
Laurence

..."We’re supposed to be disgusted. That’s the point.

So, for example, when I’ve preached on the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19), probably the bloodiest biblical narrative, I’ve ...ATTEMPTED... to show the spiritual value of the account is in its implicit moral condemnation of Israel, who is now no better than any of the nations."...

Here's the story...try telling this to your kids:

Judges 19...Contemp English Version:

22 They were having a good time, when some worthless men of that town surrounded the house and started banging on the door and shouting, "A man came to your house tonight. Send him out, so we can have sex with him!" 23 The old man went outside and said, "My friends, please don't commit such a horrible crime against a man who is a guest in my house. 24 Let me send out my daughter instead. She's a virgin. And I'll even send out the man's wife. You can rape them or do whatever else you want, but please don't do such a horrible thing to this man." 25 The men refused to listen, so the Levite grabbed his wife and shoved her outside. The men raped her and abused her all night long. Finally, they let her go just before sunrise, 26 and it was almost daybreak when she went back to the house where her husband was staying. She collapsed at the door and lay there until sunrise. 27 About that time, her husband woke up and got ready to leave. He opened the door and went outside, where he found his wife lying at the door with her hands on the doorstep. 28 "Get up!" he said. "It's time to leave." But his wife didn't move. He lifted her body onto his donkey and left. 29 When he got home, he took a butcher knife and cut her body into twelve pieces
end horrible quote

potential lessions our kids can learn?

you are responsible for any guest staying with you, but:

women are worthless
they are only good for sex
men are animals
sex is bad, violent, probably dirty
the Levite guy actually slept thru the rape, so maybe his tribe is not worth living
the host guy was willing to send out his virgin daughter to be raped!!!
more proof that women are worthless and father knows best

and we want our kids to read this stuff?
and reach the first conclusions readily possible?
especially good ideas for guys to keep women in their places?

the kindergardners may not get the figurative explanation..or

the "SPIRITUAL VALUE of this ACCOUNT"

I know I didn't understand it until just now, reading this thread!!!

..."I’ve attempted to show the spiritual value of the account"..

How is anybody going to understand these horrible narratives that way until they get to Div School? to learn that we should be reading much of the Bible as poetry, concocted morality plays, with hidden meanings apart from the rape, murder, and pillage sometimes just condoned, but way too often commanded by our so called Loving God?

and we make fun of some of the ancient, misogynistic, often murderous beliefs of Moslems!!!

need more great morality stories for our kids from Judges?:
http://www.thebricktestament.com/judges/index.html

maybe this tale of woe and killing is actually an improvement!!! this father doesn't send his daughter out to be raped!!! he kills her as a virgin!!! just to keep his promise to a God who didn't bother to intervene and save her, like He did for Issac.... is that again because women are worth-less than men?
http://www.thebricktestament.com/judges/jephthah_kills_his_virgin_daught...

..."..."We’re supposed to be disgusted. That’s the point"...

OK...I'm disgusted....but why do Christian women not rise up en masse and denounce the Old Test...and force us to either get rid of it, stop presenting it to our impressionnable kids, or at least reinterpret it NOT as the word of God, but as a testosterone filled collection of horrible examples of what NOT to do or be....

seemingly nothing divine about it....

of course, the problem then would be how to justify continued belief in a young earth, creation in 144 literal earth hours just 6kyo,and the need for an omnipotent God to "rest" after that, and all of that resulting in the need to pay tithe to the continuing keepers of all this truth.

One sees what he looks for. No doubt an entire sermon series could be developed from the familiar fairy tales: Cinderella; Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and the Grimm's Brothers Tales.

Think of the possibilities: Cinderella continued doing what she could, until finally, she was rescued: moral: Do what is in front of you, don't complain, and cease wishing for riches or a better life.

Red Riding Hood: We should be wary of Greeks bringing gifts; or more precisely, beware of both Christian and secular hucksters on the internet or street--especially if they identify themselves as Christians, too. Timely, today.

These would be most practical, and all will readily be acquainted with these stories; while many have not read the OT ones.

Some of you can make more suggestions. I challenge a pastor to preach from fairy tales. Why not?

John, you've already given up Mosesianity long ago - it's just that you have nothing to replace it with, and you seem to need that something, it seems to me.

I could be wrong.

Maggie, when you've either "given up" on something, or lost it, why must it be replaced? Have you never thrown out something that you felt was simply trash? Does that need to be replaced? Does the Santa Claus we believed in as children need to be replaced?

Please explain that for everything given away it must be replaced.
Humans were given certain organs, some of them we can do very well without and need not be replaced. Did the Creator give us something that was unnecessary or absolutely life-threatening without?

There are many who have given up Christiantity or other religious beliefs and are fine, upstanding people relieved of that baggage, for them. It can be replaced with a loving, kind, compassionate attitutude toward every human, without judging about their very private beliefs. It is true, humans always have a philosophical or ethical standard by which they live, but cannot adopt one set by others that doesn't fit.

Elaine, I'm just observing that John seems not to be restful about all this, so I'm wondering why, and speculating that there seems to be a needed something that's missing.

Maybe John, like me, can't consider his background to be just trash to take out.

As I said, I could be wrong.

John,

The list of morals you gathered from the story, was that list really all you felt was in the story? No, because you actually felt more than that, you took it on a crusade describing how bad the man's actions were. Don't you think that perhaps the author intended you to react like that? To feel revolution to those type of actions?

Don't you think that other readers would have condemned the man's actions? Aren't you confirming that your reaction is typical of a mature reader? Isn't that what Laurence is saying? That the condemnation is implied from the assumed listeners reactions, rather than needing to be explicitly described in the actions of the story.

Like Elaine says: "One sees what he looks for"

Actually, I think it was Elaine who made the point about Aesop's Fables, they leave the reader to feel the moral.

...when you've either "given up" on something, or lost it, why must it be replaced? Have you never thrown out something that you felt was simply trash?
Posted by: Elaine (not verified) | 01 October 2009 at 2:19

Without something positive to replace what one perceives as negative one simply remains fixated on the negative just as you and John do. You haven't thrown out the trash. You wallow in it daily. You live for it.
You offer nothing positive and as you set yourselves up as the more educated and enlightened, the rest of us look at your attitudes and viewpoints as something none of us would care to emulate. If you had replaced it with something positive you would be involved with that. However since you haven't you remain here, bitter, pessimistic, and your views only really considered by people as bitter and pessimistic as yourself.

By way of example, Maggie had it much worse than you but she is delightful and optimistic. Even if she believed as you do, people would be more likely to consider her opinions because people drawn to her positivity rather than your negativity.

Does the Santa Claus we believed in as children need to be replaced?

not necessarily!!!! and that's the beauty of that myth as opposed to those unverifiable stories about another bearded guy somewhere "up" in the sky...(maybe, "down" in the sky, if you live in Oz???)

a God who really needs your money...
who has a list of 10 things he does not like, and
7 germanic background words He really hates
along with multiple problems He hasn't yet resolved, like the Ice Capades!!! which George Carlin could better explain

http://www.celebatheists.com/?title=Main_Page

(..."Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed"... )

when I found out SC was dead, his hohohoness was quickly and harmlessly replaced by my hahahappy parents, who, to my great relief, had been impersonating him all along...and who continued with the carib soymilk, whole oatmeal cookies, gifts and good times. Only after the rotation of the earth, whenever theGleaner required, had completed its celebration of the 7th day, of course.

and now, with grandsons, I get to be SC myself!!!!

that myth is nice...it hurts no one. and its fun, watching innocent kids grow up, and learn about the world and SC's imaginary non existance, and not hafta worry about being killed to impress the Pharaoh.

but there are those who take literal direction from their version of an imaginary bearded guy somewhere up in the sky, and who try to control others by claiming that they are doing their deity's work....

at least, as opposed to fanatic moslems, who are willing to kill you in the here and now if you don't believe their way, an idea probably plagiarized from some of the same horrible stories our Hebrew friends Numbered in the Old Testyment,

most Christians (well, except a tiny but loud minority actually blessed by a literal Hebrew backgrounds) by now have evolv, ah, excuse.. my bad, have migrated away from the immediacy of the problem, and are willing to simply dismember you now, and let their God personally and painfully BBQ you later for your unbelief, even if you were simply "deceived" like Eve, ....while they will be expected to look on with presumed approval.

Except, of course, we reserve immediate and final solution FROM the here and now for those trying to kill us IN the here and now based on their (mis)interpretation of their camel herder version of divine truth. And like God, we understand the effectiveness of water torture, except we only flood a select few, and we don't actually kill them. Tho, in Al Qaida's case, we are sorry we helped make them.

Well, the thing about optimism, if it's not to be the jaw-setting, teeth-clenching, Panglossian variety, is that it has to be spontaneous.

One cannot will oneself to be either spontaneous or optimistic.

John and Elaine have witnessed plenty of my negative rampages.

To the extent I am optimistic, I stumbled into it accidentally and out of sheer desperation. I am, in short, and officially, a Desperado.

Somehow, I don't know how, I decided to just Accept History. Maybe I was just worn out. Yeah, that's probably all it was.

Well...that and the memory of some signal moments of unitive consciousness - when I was a child; when I was giving birth; when I was in abject fear for my life - which told me that there was definitely Something More to this life than the misery I was experiencing.

But it is only relatively recently that I've begun to be able to string a few moments of unitive consciousness together in a row, now and then, anyway.

Accepting History was a start. Accepting the Present Moment, and all the tumultuous thoughts/feelings contained in it, AS IS, without resisting or trying to fix any of it, is the key that gives me glimpses of peace and optimism now.

I found a place inside where I can rest and let it all be, AS IS, and that is where I want to live all the time. It feels so good, even when it feels bad!

It feels like I caught the game-winning high fly to the outfield by slamming myself into the wall and breaking every bone in my body in the process, but it was worth it.

Some of us only learn things the hard way. :)

Jag, hello. Some unpleasant material is in the Bible, but why dwell on it and make it one's crusade. That unpleasant task already has many adherents in the "God is dead or never was" movement. People of faith--if they wish to convince others that they should become people of faith, as well--need to focus on the nuggets the Old Testament has to offer. "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul and strength" are just two gems that need to be rescued from the mire of horrible tales of incest, rape, pillage and nationalistic crusades.

When I read about the man who was stoned for breaking the Sabbath I'm saddened, but I'm grateful we no longer carry on that tradition, otherwise I myself--and other Sabbath keepers--would have been done for ages ago.

Thank you for taking the time to comment. It is much appreciated.

Laurence
I find your approach to the OT stories interesting. The French 19th century writer Guy de Maupassant specialized in short stories that leave people fuming because he steps back from his own morally provocative stories to leave the reader with the task of passing judgment His fabulous short story "Boule de suif" (which John Ford adapted for his use in Stagecoach with the young John Wayne)is a good example. "Histoire vraie," is another aweful story told with aggrevating equanimity. I still don't know if I agree that that's what we're seeing in the Pentateuch.

I hesitate because moral judgments are at times attached to Mosaic stories, albeit not with the gusto of the Prophets. Secondly, in many cases the endorsed morality of the OT is unacceptable by modern standards. The slavery legislation of Ex 21 is not exactly a credit to humane, interpersonal interaction, as we define it. The story of the presumably innocent first-born sons of Egypt being slain to facilitate the Exodus is clearly endorsed, albeit implicitely, by the story itself. The destruction of Jericho and the massacre of its inhabitants for the sole purpose of plunder is not a Maupassant story from which the writer retreated, nor did Judeo-Christian tradition.

I tend to believe that those who first heard these stories had no problems with the morality of what their side had done. They would have been outraged at those who killed the Levite's wife but I'm not so sure that they blamed him. After all, his hand was forced, wasn't it, and it wasn't as if he had sent out his son or visiting deities, was it?

I wish you the best as you head into a book project dealing with these thorny issues.

"Without something positive to replace what one perceives as negative one simply remains fixated on the negative just as you and John do. You haven't thrown out the trash. You wallow in it daily."

Surely, you are not agreeing that the Bible or the SDA doctrines are "trash"?

What better forum than this? Adventists, whoever and wherever they are need to know their history and what it has wreaked on many of its members. Each is different: Maggie admits she was a devotee of EGW, and read her as much or more than the Bible. So there are different personalities and temperaments.

John has the gift of irony and plays it well--for those who are able to laugh at themselves--too many take religion so seriously that it has no earthly joy.

I cannot rid myself of Adventism, anymore than I can rid myself of my ancestry (which I have no desire to do) but we are all, inescapably bound by earlier ties. I have no animus against the Adventists I know, but I do reject many of their doctrines, as well as the zealotry some perpetrate on others: i.e. Goldstein, who would like to cleanse the SDA church and rid it of all who did not believe just as he does: he denigrates even those members who cannot accept his way--or the highway.

How can anyone, especially non-SDAs be attracted to such an exclusive church? While it may not represent the church, each member represents it, and particularly those who have the power of the pen. Today, on this and other forums, every member has some power through the internet. Why should we not have every right and privilege to discuss doctrines? Or we less important because we don't have the privilege of the official SDA press? What other alternative is there? Or, should we simply accept the doctrines, no questions asked (that is, before dunking, after that, all questions should cease) and bow to the official "Pope."

Elaine
I was commenting on your example of "throwing out the trash" from your POV. You think adventism is trash. Yet you dont move on to whatever faith system you find your "happy place" in.
You dont replace your former superficial belief in Adventism with anything you believe to be better except your own opinion. Hence you remain here dealing in the negative. Even your study in the Jesuit University doesnt represent an area of positive interest since your beliefs no more echo their perspectives and belief systems than your beliefs represnt any form of adventism.
Do you delude your self into thinking you are some type of positive force for change? Do you think the church will EVER come to believe the bible according to your beliefs of the bible or impliment any of the viewpoints you espouse??

You know better than that. So, what do you hope to accomplish by constantly bringing up your Unitarian interpitations of everything?
At somepoint it becomes as sad as Edmond Dantes quote where he says; "If you ever loved me, don't rob me of my hate. It's all I have."
Perhaps after one is so focused on negativity one can only respond as does Abbe Faria in the Count of Monte Cristo
"Here is your final lesson - do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, Vengeance is mine.
Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God.
Abbe Faria: It doesn't matter. He believes in you.

Applying the experience of the Children of Israel, left in the Wilderness, to the experience of the Church, awaiting the second coming is not a stretch - the Old Testament has been applied in this way since the time of the early Church - by the Church Fathers, by the Protestant Reformers, and by theologians ever since. The discussion began with whether Numbers had an applicability to the 21st-century Church, but has wandered well away from it - perhaps it wouldn't hurt to look again at the issue of spiritual applications or lessons of the Children of Israel's experience, for Christians today.

Michael
One of the differences between you and some of us outside the pale is that we're not out to convert anyone. We just enjoy talking about things that matters and explore and challenge our own and other peoples' views. We're not representing an organization nor do we try to destroy one. What is enjoyable about the blog is that it allows us to do something we could never do while we were members--to speak openly and pursue open-ended questions. I'm sorry that you don't share that joy. We're not your enemies but neither are we wilting lilies.

..."perhaps it wouldn't hurt to look again at the issue of spiritual applications or lessons of the Children of Israel's experience, for Christians today"...

so, what would Gods recommendation given in Numbers be to us today as we discuss "health care reform"?

(CEV) Numbers 5:1 The LORD told Moses 2 to say to the people of Israel, "Put out of the camp everyone who has leprosy or a bodily discharge or who has touched a dead body. Now that I live among my people, their camp must be kept clean." end quote

So by God's instructions, the sick are to be abandoned and left to suffer and die alone, presumably in the desert, where they won't infect anybody, and their wailing won't bother God's people.

Since we want to provide a clean camp for ourselves and our Lord, should we expel sick people from our midst, in order to not catch their leprosy, or suffer their bodily discharges?
and save the cost of health care? Didn't a Fla SDA hospital just get in trouble for doing that? sending a very sick guy back to Central America was it? to avoid paying for his perpetual health care?

doesn't this sound like Obama's Granny must die theory.... ?
we'll save lots of resources if we just send the sick and suffering away....

otoh, if we abandon Mosesianity, take up Christianity, and try to offer universal health care, and do not require proof of citizenship, maybe our neighbors will just send their sick and suffering to us...drowing our system in further debt...

but here it is, in black and white KJV:

Numbers 5
5:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, (5:1-4)
"Put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead."

5:2 Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead:

5:3 Both male and female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye put them; that they defile not their camps, in the midst whereof I dwell.

5:4 And the children of Israel did so, and put them out without the camp: as the LORD spake unto Moses, so did the children of Israel.

Hi Raul,

Thank you for your view.

It's not really about dwelling on the unpleasant materials in the Bible. It's about finding why it's there. It's about the search for the truth. Because such material certainly proves that the Bible is neither inerrant nor infallible. Quite the opposite in fact. And only once we acknowledge that can we liberate God from the human imprefection of the Bible's human authors. The only alternative you have is to pick and choose what you like in the Bible and discard what you don't, which does not appear to me to be an honest attitude and smells of censorship.

I never suggest we abandon God. I merely suggest that we re-discover God for our own generation, that we do not freeze God in outdated human concepts, and that we do not treat the Bible as if it had fallen from heaven.

continuing the ...."spiritual applications or lessons of the Children of Israel's experience, for Christians today"...

Numbers 5 has some very good news for SDA pastors and officials...as well as victims of crime...

5 The LORD told Moses 6 to say to the community of Israel:

quote: from the CEV:
If any of you commit a crime against someone, you have sinned against me. 7 You must confess your guilt and pay the victim in full for whatever damage has been done, plus a fine of twenty percent. 8 If the victim has no relative who can accept this money, it belongs to me and will be paid to the priest. In addition to that payment, you must take a ram for the priest to sacrifice so your sin will be forgiven.
end quote

so good news for victims...they should be compensated plus 20%, not just settle for watching a perp being punished in jail...

doesn't this sounds like a great idea for our society?
why not demand repayment instead of incarceration?
why should the state provide free room, board, education and full medical to the perps, while almost ignoring the victims?

but can we modify the command a bit, and overlook the part about killing the innocent goat?

but what if if the victim is gone? with no relatives to pay out the comp to? award it to the church? not a bad idea, presuming the church uses it for the good of society, and not lavish living as some religious leaders have been known to do...

but the continuation of the text, $eems to authori$e the leader$ to take the $$ and live the high life$tyle!!!

heres the quote:
numb 5:9, 10: When you make a donation to the sacred tent, that money belongs only to the priest, and each priest will keep what is given to him.
end quote

wow!!! no restrictions on the money's use... which seems to be the current way that rule is interpreted by some....
as in a modern version of the golden rule:

...them what has or gets the gold can make the rules...

We can't read and make any meaningful sense out of Numbers, or for that matter any biblical book, especially OT books, without serious consideration of authorship and context. The writer or writers of Numbers lived in a place and time with its own peculiar dynamics that inform the book's worldview and "politics," which in turn shapes the kind of God presented in its pages. For the most part the type of God introduced to us from the pages of Numbers and other Deutronomistic history accounts are grounded in national politics, and the party in power and ascendancy often rewrote the history of Israel to conform to its agenda and objectives. To read these books without paying serious attention to such background issues is to play the academic ostrich game. We may pretend that these are stories that tell of Gods unvarnished association with Israel, as though human beings had nothing to do with the manipulations of God's name in the process. But if we choose to go that route then we better be ready to explain the repulsive aspects of God's behavior as when he orders one genocide after another. It will not do to blame such heinous actions ordered by God and effected in his name on the bad people God had to deal with. Maybe a lot of bad people did a lot of bad stuff and then put God's imprimatur on it. Maybe it isn't everything that is stated to have been said and or done by God in the Bible were actually said and done by him.

Again, and I say, again... The Bible is not a univocal document. Throughout the Old Testament the writers grew in their understanding. The earlier writers wrote in their times and cultures and worshiped a God(gods) more like those of the surrounding cultures.

What made Israel's God unique - was his personal relationship with his people. He sought to be among them, to make himself known to them.

Each generation must wrestle anew with the question, "who do you say I am?"

..." Maybe it isn't everything that is stated to have been said and or done by God in the Bible were actually said and done by him"...

that's my vote, Papa....

because why would a loving, all knowing Creator God tell his fave tribe of nomads to use the dust off the floor test for your wife's (in)fidelity?

and then, if you accuse her, and she is guilty, she becomes barren!!! and cursed among her people.

but if you are wrong, you do not get punished for being wrong and accusing her!!!

the gals might want to read this (and either weep or revolt)

Numb 5 again, from the CEV

11 The LORD told Moses 12 14 to say to the people of Israel: Suppose a man becomes jealous and suspects that his wife has been unfaithful, but he has no proof.

15 He must take his wife to the priest, together with two pounds of ground barley as an offering to find out if she is guilty. No olive oil or incense is to be put on that offering.

16 The priest is to have the woman stand at my altar, 17 where he will pour sacred water into a clay jar and stir in some dust from the floor of the sacred tent. 18 22 Next, he will remove her veil, then hand her the barley offering, and say, "If you have been faithful to your husband, this water won't harm you. But if you have been unfaithful, it will bring down the LORD's curse -- you will never be able to give birth to a child, and everyone will curse your name."

Then the woman will answer, "If I am guilty, let it happen just as you say." 23 The priest will write these curses on special paper and wash them off into the bitter water, 24 so that when the woman drinks this water, the curses will enter her body. 25 He will take the barley offering from her and lift it up in dedication to me, the LORD. Then he will place it on my altar 26 and burn part of it as a sacrifice. After that, the woman must drink the bitter water.

27 If the woman has been unfaithful, the water will immediately make her unable to have children, and she will be a curse among her people. 28 But if she is innocent, her body will not be harmed, and she will still be able to have children.

29 30 This is the ceremony that must take place at my altar when a husband suspects that his wife has been unfaithful. The priest must have the woman stand in my presence and carefully follow these instructions.

31 If the husband is wrong, he will not be punished; but if his wife is guilty, she will be punished.
end quote

**********************************

so what spiritual messages for today should we get from this passage?

God must be a He...no SHE in her right mind would ever treat women that way?

God must have temporarily fogotten how He created a women's reproductive system separate from the alimentary system, cause its hard to "swallow" how the "dust" test could physically work, tho if it made a woman nervous about past indiscressions, such as lusting after David Letterman, the anti-placebo effect might have caused anyone prone to hypochrondria to react negatively.

Men made the laws back then? and did not want to take responsibility for their false accusations?

a guy does not need proof to accuse his wife to his priest/witch doctor who will make a divine concoction (dustbuster formula 666) to prove the facts?

the Lord is the one who brings down the punishment, not the husband?
..."But if you have been unfaithful, it will bring down the LORD's curse "...
so, should we be punishing women for infidelity...or should we leave that to the Lord?

wasn't fidelity necessary back before the invention of birth control to insure that a guy would not have to pay for college or leave his goats in his will to one of his many wives' kids who had been fathered by another guy ...?

wasn't the the whole point of protecting virginity and the double standard?

**********************************

Laurence, I'm still waiting to understand how...
as you put it...

..."We’re supposed to be disgusted. That’s the point"...

are you suggesting that the point of God's inspiration in the stories, actions, and rules alternating between horrible and amusing, so often attributed to our Loving God is to disgust us? and make us not want to be associated with it all?

if so, are you suggesting that we divorce ourselves from Mosesianity, and take up Christianity to replace it?

smoe might claim to see a progression from horrible morality toward better ideals in the Bible...

in the beginning God created things,,,,and even tho disappointed in how things turned out, He showed a forgiving side, He protected the worlds first murderer, Cain.....tho later, He tried to massacre everybody with a flood...
but possibily had 2nd thoughts about the severity of that, and worrying about hod badly it would look later as the Hebrews wrote His biography, He left only sketchy evidence behind so as to not incriminate Himself for that mass killing.
Even today, there are many believers in Him who do not actually believe He did that.

and later,tho He did massacre Egypts innocent children... it was not a world wide genocide, so fewer killings might seem as progress...

God even told His friends via the Olde Abe/Issac legend to stop killing their own kids, and to substitute goats, which might not be understood as progress by the animal kingdom, but it enabled families to stay together.... tho later Jesus said he came to tear families apart, which is hard to explain.

and when it is alleged that our Loving God told Moses to have his soldiers kill all the women who had had sex? but to save the virgins probably to use? where is the confirmatory evidence? since there is none, we are left with the possibility that God did not do this either...His favorite tribe may have made up the story to justify what they wanted to do, or later, after they had already done it...
ya know, the Nuremburg excuse... God made me do it.

and in all the accusations against women of ill repute, didn't some allegedly if not actually participate in Jesus genetic line? Didn't God suggest one prophet even marry a "professional"? Didn't Jesus say to forgive the woman who apparently had been the good time had by all who were afraid to throw the first stone?

I wish the collection of books had not ended with nightmares we have to tell our kids from which our church translates into God raising people up from the dead, then, after showing them where they went wrong, and after they cry out...

...OH...NOW I GET IT...WHY DIDN'T YOU SHOW ME ALL THE VERIFIABLE PROOF and LOVE AND FORGIVENESS THE FIRST TIME???

....then, those of us who are lucky to have our passports stamped, either by works or grace, we get to watch and applaud as infidel geologists, deceived friends , relatives who ignored our threats, and neighbors who went to the wrong church on Sunday get burned to a 2nd death in some horrific imaginary lake-o-fire along with the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot, and probably George Carlin and his ilk...... such as

Douglas Adams, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Woody Allen, Lance Armstrong, Darren Aronofsky, Isaac Asimov, Dave Barry, Ingmar Bergman, Lewis Black, Richard Branson, Berkeley Breathed, Warren Buffett, George Carlin, John Carmack, Adam Carolla, John Carpenter, Asia Carrera, Fidel Castro, Dick Cavett, Noam Chomsky, Billy Connolly, Francis Crick, David Cronenberg, David Cross, Alan Cumming, Rodney Dangerfield, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, David Deutsch, Ani DiFranco, Micky Dolenz, Harlan Ellison, Brian Eno, Richard Feynman, Harvey Fierstein, Larry Flynt, Dave Foley, Jodie Foster, Janeane Garofalo, Bill Gates, Bob Geldof, Ricky Gervais, Ira Glass, James Gleick, Robert Heinlein, Nat Hentoff, Katharine Hepburn, Christopher Hitchens, Jamie Hyneman, Eddie Izzard, Penn Jillette, Billy Joel, Angelina Jolie, Wendy Kaminer, Diane Keaton, Ken Keeler, Neil Kinnock, Michael Kinsley, Richard Leakey, Bruce Lee, Tom Lehrer, Tom Leykis, James Lipton, H.P. Lovecraft, John Malkovich, Barry Manilow, Todd McFarlane, Sir Ian McKellen, Arthur Miller, Frank Miller, Marvin Minsky, Julianne Moore, Desmond Morris, Randy Newman, Mike Nichols, Jack Nicholson, Gary Numan, Bob Odenkirk, Patton Oswalt, Camille Paglia, Steven Pinker, Paula Poundstone, Terry Pratchett, James Randi, Ron Reagan Jr., Keanu Reeves, Rick Reynolds, Gene Roddenberry, Joe Rogan, Henry Rollins, Andy Rooney, Salman Rushdie, Bob Simon, Steven Soderbergh, Annika Sorenstam, George Soros, Richard Stallman, Bruce Sterling, Howard Stern, J. Michael Straczynski, Julia Sweeney, Matthew Sweet, Teller, Studs Terkel, Tom Tomorrow, Linus Torvalds, Eddie Vedder, Paul Verhoeven, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Sarah Vowell, James Watson, Steven Weinberg, Joss Whedon, Ted Williams, Steve Wozniak,

http://www.celebatheists.com/?title=Main_Page

of course, somebody should thaw Ted Williams out first for him to appreciate the full effect...

Even though John's irony is very funny, it is just humorous because it is true. No one yet has adequately explained why we should believe much of the Bible and still maintain our sanity. There are so many discordant and terrible atrocities for which God is claimed, can anyone in complete rationality justify belief in such a god? How can any reasonable person relate to such a capricious, unmerciful and unloving god--unless we finally come to realize and explain that the Bible is only, and solely of man's perspective and it was the god that they believed in, but no one today could possibly accept--unless they desire a god like Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot. Perhaps there are some who wish that right now that god could eradicate all the evolutionists, the gays, the divorced, the Muslims, Hindus, and atheists--then the Second Coming would occur the next day.

But wait--that would not allow the everlasting destruction of all those in the lake of fire after 1,000 years had past. Gotta work on that one.

prodded to re-read Numbers again ...this time by this thread, I ran into another set of problems I had not known about before:

the question of who was Moses father in law raises two specific problems:

since the pentatuch cannot get it consistantly right, how could Moses himself not have known who his fil was, and therefore how could Moses have written all 5 books...

and lastly, if others wrote in the name of Moses, but it was all inspired by God, how could it be that God did not see that the record was kept and written down accurately?

or am I missing something?

Numbers 10:29 says Moses fil is Hobab.

And Moses said unto......... Hobab,
the son of Raguel the Midianite, ....Moses' father in law,
We are journeying unto the place of which the LORD said, I will give it you: come thou with us, and we will do thee good: for the LORD hath spoken good concerning Israel.

so does Judges:

Judges 4:11 Now Heber the Kenite, which was of the children of

...Hobab the father in law of Moses,

had severed himself from the Kenites, and pitched his tent unto the plain of Zaanaim, which is by Kedesh.

but in Ex...there appears to be a different story:the fil is Reuel, the "priest of Midian"...who gives Moses his daughter, Zipporah...

2:15 Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well.

Ex 2:16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. 2:17 And the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock. 2:18 And when they came to ....

....Reuel their father, he said, How is it that ye are come so soon to day?

2:19 And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock. 2:20 And he said unto his daughters, And where is he? why is it that ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread. 2:21

And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter

but in the rest of Ex, the fil is Jethro...but who is also named as the priest of Midian:

Exodus 3
3:1 Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian:

4:18 And Moses went and returned to Jethro his father in law, and said unto him, Let me go, I pray thee, and return unto my brethren which are in Egypt, and see whether they be yet alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace.

but then this is followed by one of the strangest events in the Old Test....God tried to killMoses!!! but He relents when Moses wife circumcises their son!!!! what is so important about cutting off a part of his anatomy is not explained...leading scholars to interpret this event as having been added to the story later after circumcision had become a Jewish ritual...

quote from Ex 4:24 from the CEV:
24 One night while Moses was in camp, the LORD was about to kill him. 25 But Zipporah circumcised her son with a flint knife. She touched his legs with the skin she had cut off and said, "My dear son, this blood will protect you." 26 So the LORD did not harm Moses. Then Zipporah said, "Yes, my dear, you are safe because of this circumcision."

Exodus 18 repeats over and over and ov..that Jethro is Moses fil... and Jethro even gives Moses good advice...get some help!!! you can't do it all alone!!!

18:1 When Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father in law,

heard of all that God had done for Moses, and for Israel his people, and that the LORD had brought Israel out of Egypt; 18:2

Then Jethro, Moses' father in law,

took Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her back, 18:3 And her two sons; of which the name of the one was Gershom; for he said, I have been an alien in a strange land: 18:4 And the name of the other was Eliezer; for the God of my father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh:

18:5 And Jethro, Moses' father in law,

came with his sons and his wife unto Moses into the wilderness, where he encamped at the mount of God:

18:6 And he said unto Moses, I thy father in law Jethro

am come unto thee, and thy wife, and her two sons with her. (18:6-27) "Thy wife, and her two sons with her"

18:7 And Moses went out to meet his father in law,

and did obeisance, and kissed him; and they asked each other of their welfare; and they came into the tent.

18:8 And Moses told his father in law

all that the LORD had done unto Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel's sake, and all the travail that had come upon them by the way, and how the LORD delivered them. 18:9 And Jethro rejoiced for all the goodness which the LORD had done to Israel, whom he had delivered out of the hand of the Egyptians. 18:10 And Jethro said, Blessed be the LORD, who hath delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of Pharaoh, who hath delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. 18:11 Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods: for in the thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them. (18:11)

18:12 And Jethro, Moses' father in law,

took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God: and Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with Moses' father in law before God. 18:13 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the people: and the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening. 18:14 And when Moses' father in law saw all that he did to the people, he said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even?

18:15 And Moses said unto his father in law,

Because the people come unto me to enquire of God: 18:16 When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws.

18:17 And Moses' father in law said unto him, The thing that thou doest is not good. 18:18 Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone. 18:19 Hearken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee: Be thou for the people to God-ward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God: 18:20 And thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shalt shew them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do. 18:21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens: 18:22 And let them judge the people at all seasons: and it shall be, that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge: so shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee. 18:23 If thou shalt do this thing, and God command thee so, then thou shalt be able to endure, and all this people shall also go to their place in peace.

18:24 So Moses hearkened to the voice of his father in law, and did all that he had said.

so, if the OT cannot even agree who is Moses father in law...
...Hobab, Reuel, or Jethro....
how could Moses have been the author of it all?

and why did our teachers, pastors, and parents constantly assure us that the Bible is inerrant?

the basic message to be taken from Numb 11-14
could be to ....

STOP COMPLAINING!!!! or else the Lord will (cruely???) punish you!!!

(CEV) Numbers 11:1 One day the Israelites started complaining about their troubles. The LORD heard them and became so angry that he destroyed the outer edges of their camp with fire.

4 One day some worthless foreigners among the Israelites became greedy for food, and even the Israelites themselves began moaning, "We don't have any meat! 5 In Egypt we could eat all the fish we wanted, and there were cucumbers, melons, onions, and garlic. 6 But we're starving out here, and the only food we have is this manna." ... 10 The Israelites stood around their tents complaining. Moses heard them and was upset that they had made the LORD angry. 11 He prayed: I am your servant, LORD, so why are you doing this to me? What have I done to deserve this? You've made me responsible for all these people, 12 but they're not my children. You told me to nurse them along and to carry them to the land you promised their ancestors. 13 They keep whining for meat, but where can I get meat for them? 14 This job is too much for me. How can I take care of all these people by myself? 15 If this is the way you're going to treat me, just kill me now and end my miserable life!

snip

31 Some time later the LORD sent a strong wind that blew quails in from the sea until Israel's camp was completely surrounded with birds, piled up about three feet high for miles in every direction. 32 The people picked up quails for two days -- each person filled at least fifty bushels. Then they spread them out to dry.

33 But before the meat could be eaten,

...the LORD became angry and sent a disease through the camp.

34 After they had buried the people who had been so greedy for meat, they called the place "Graves for the Greedy."

CEV) Numbers 12:1 Although Moses was the most humble person in all the world, Miriam and Aaron started complaining,

"Moses had no right to marry that woman from Ethiopia! Who does he think he is? The LORD has spoken to us, not just to him."

The LORD heard their complaint 4 and told Moses, Aaron, and Miriam to come to the entrance of the sacred tent. 5 There the LORD appeared in a cloud and told Aaron and Miriam to come closer. 6 Then after commanding them to listen carefully, he said:

"I, the LORD, speak to prophets in visions and dreams. 7 But my servant Moses is the leader of my people.

8 He sees me face to face,

and everything I say to him is perfectly clear. You have no right to criticize my servant Moses." 9 The LORD became angry at Aaron and Miriam. And after the LORD left 10 and the cloud disappeared from over the sacred tent, Miriam's skin turned white with leprosy
end quote...

begin PERSONALLY wondering who is right: God, who said in that quote above that Moses and He see each other ..FACE TO FACE..., or...Exodus 33:20 (King James Version) where God says:

20And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

or, if you prefer to believe the New Test:

John 1:18 (King James Version)
18No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
or
1 John 4:12 (King James Version)
12No man hath seen God at any time.

but I should stop complaining, because God doesn't like a complainer:

BEGIN QUOTE:

(CEV) Numbers 14:1 After the Israelites heard the report from the twelve men who had explored Canaan, the people cried all night 2

...and complained to Moses and Aaron,
"We wish we had died in Egypt or somewhere out here in the desert! 3 Is the LORD leading us into Canaan, just to have us killed and our women and children captured? We'd be better off in Egypt."

snip
! 10 The crowd threatened to stone Moses and Aaron to death. But just then, the LORD appeared in a cloud at the sacred tent. 11 The LORD said to Moses, "I have done great things for these people, and they still reject me by refusing to believe in my power. 12 So they will no longer be my people.

I will DESTROY them, but I will make you the ancestor of a nation even stronger than theirs." END QUOTE

BEGIN COMMENT!!
but then Moses tried to use psychology on the Lord....
but it may have backfired....

open negotiation:
13 16 Moses replied: With your mighty power you rescued your people from Egypt, so please don't destroy us here in the desert. If you do, the Egyptians will hear about it and tell the people of Canaan. Those Canaanites already know that we are your people, and that we see you face to face. And they have heard how you lead us with a thick cloud during the day and flaming fire at night. But if you kill us, they will claim it was because you weren't powerful enough to lead us into Canaan as you promised. 17 Show us your great power, LORD. You promised 18 that you love to show mercy and kindness. And you said that you are very patient, but that you will punish everyone guilty of doing wrong -- not only them but their children and grandchildren as well. 19 You are merciful, and you treat people better than they deserve. So please forgive these people, just as you have forgiven them ever since they left Egypt. end quote

begin personal comment:
wow...Moses was quite an advocate for his people in the face of an angry Lord....but the Lord does not relent, and promises that because of their complaining, they will all die!!! over the next "40" years!!!

continue quote:
20 Then the LORD said to Moses: In answer to your prayer, I do forgive them. 21 But as surely as I live and my power has no limit, 22 23 I swear that not one of these Israelites will enter the land I promised to give their ancestors. These people have seen my power in Egypt and in the desert, but they will never see Canaan. They have disobeyed and tested me too many times.

26 The LORD told Moses and Aaron 27 28 to give this message to the people of Israel: You sinful people have complained against me too many times! Now I swear by my own life that I will give you exactly what you wanted.

...29 You WILL DIE right here in the desert, and your dead bodies will cover the ground. You have insulted me, and none of you men who are over twenty years old 30 will enter the land that I solemnly promised to give you as your own -- only Caleb and Joshua will go in. 31 You were worried that your own children would be captured. But I, the LORD, will let them enter the land you have rejected.

32 You WILL DIE here in the desert!

33 Your children will wander around in this desert forty years, SUFFERING because of your sins, until
ALL OF YOU ARE DEAD!!!!!

34 I WILL CRUELLY PUNISH YOU every day for the next forty years -- one year for each day that the land was explored.

35 You sinful people who ganged up against me will die here in the desert. 36 Ten of the men sent to explore the land had brought back bad news and had made the people complain against the LORD. 37

So he (GOD) sent a deadly disease that killed those men,

conclusion?

we knew that its not nice to fool mother nature ,
but who knew how bad things could get if you complAined to or about the loving heavenly father we inherited from the Hebrews...

question:

could the Hebrews have possibly "exaggerated" some of these stories for the effect of convincing kids around the ancient campfires to believe, obey, and to put the "fear of God" into them?

iow...should we believe it all? literally? word for word?
even when even Jewish archeology so far cannot show any verifiable proof of a couple mil people wandering around the desert for "40" yrs?

no landfills? few potshards? few campfire pits? no collection of coprolites or latrines surrounding unfound campsites? no signs advertising: "SALE: 50% off"?

where are the wells to support 600k men, with their families which could have totaled over a million people looking for food and water...

no wonder the people complained!!!

John,

First, all comedy is rooted in/framed by one or more of three characteristics: the absurd, the exaggerated, and/or the tragic.

Second, to loosely quote Bishop Blackie Ryan, a character is Fr. Andrew Greeley's novels: If you don't like how the church behaves, how it treats people, or it's traditions & interpretation of sacred texts, there's only one person to blame. God! It's all God's fault. God could have done the job much more efficiently, with less uncertainty or ambiguity, if S/he'd given the task to angels. Instead, for reasons best known to H/erself, God picked people to defend, explain, and mediate God's grace. That strikes me as comical, but also keeps me hopeful & optimistic.

Incidentally, my wife Edie (you knew her as Edie Hall at SLA in the early 60's) asked me to give you her warm greetings.

Shalom!
Jeris E. Bragan

Numb 15 presents two stories with either serious or comical "problems":

the stone 'em to death one:

32 Once, while the Israelites were traveling through the desert, a man was caught gathering firewood on the Sabbath. 33 He was taken to Moses, Aaron, and the rest of the community. 34 But no one knew what to do with him, so he was not allowed to leave. 35 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Tell the people to take that man outside the camp and stone him to death!" 36 So he was killed, just as the LORD had commanded Moses.

and the purple tassel issue:
37 The LORD told Moses 38 to say to the people of Israel, "Sew tassels onto the bottom edge of your clothes and tie a purple string to each tassel. 39 40 These will remind you that you must obey my laws and teachings. And when you do, you will be dedicated to me and won't follow your own sinful desires. 41 I am the LORD your God who led you out of Egypt."

the first one...raises serious issues if it applies to us today...

for example...should we stop heating the church on friday night, so the faithful will have to wear their ski clothes to church?

must we turn off the furnaces in our houses? risking freezing the pipes in the middle of winter?

or are the prohibition against picking up sticks and the command to wear tassels part of the old law which we can safely assume no longer applies, since we are not the people whom God led out of Egypt by killing Egyptian kids...

when Moses passed on the above laws, nobody had to worry about their pipes freezing (too warm, and they had no pipes!!), and everybody wore robes to which the tassels could be attached...

today, everything has changed.... how much change are we allowed before we are no longer in compliance?

and if we wore purple today, people would ask if we were not indicating a tendancy to break another of God's laws...

could Numbers get any worse?
is this God's 19th killing?

http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2009/07/gods-19th-killing-opposi...

lets check it out in cpt 16...
where God opens up the ground to kill Korah et al, and their families!!! even the children!!!, God also burns to death 250 guys who had tried to offer incense to the Lord, but the Lord had promised that option solely to the Levites, so He kills the 250 who want to worship without the Levites.... and then when the complaining doesn't stop, God kills 14,700 more Hebrews!!!

(CEV) Numbers 16:1 Korah son of Izhar was a Levite from the Kohathite clan. One day he called together Dathan, Abiram, and On from the Reuben tribe, and the four of them decided to rebel against Moses. So they asked two hundred fifty respected Israelite leaders for their support, and together they went to Moses 3 and Aaron and said,

..."Why do you think you're so much better than anyone else? We're part of the LORD's holy people, and he's with all of us. What makes you think you're the only ones in charge?"

4 When Moses heard this, he knelt down to pray. 5 Then he said to Korah and his followers: Tomorrow morning the LORD will show us the person he has chosen to be his priest, and that man will faithfully serve him. 6 Korah, now here is what you and your followers must do: Get some fire pans, fill them with coals and incense, and place them near the sacred tent. And the man the LORD chooses will be his priest. Korah, this time you Levites have gone too far! 8 You know that the God of Israel has chosen you Levites from all Israel to serve him by being in charge of the sacred tent and by helping the community to worship in the proper way. What more do you want? 10 The LORD has given you a special responsibility, and now, Korah, you think you should also be his priest. 11 You and your followers have rebelled against the LORD, not against Aaron.

12 Then Moses sent for Dathan and Abiram, but they sent back this message: "We won't come! 13 It's bad enough that you took us from our rich farmland in Egypt to let us die here in the desert. Now you also want to boss us around! 14 You keep promising us rich farmlands with fertile fields and vineyards -- but where are they? Stop trying to trick these people. No, we won't come to see you."

15 Moses was very angry and said to the LORD, "Don't listen to these men! I haven't done anything wrong to them. I haven't taken as much as a donkey."

16 Then he said to Korah, "Tomorrow you and your followers must go with Aaron to the LORD's sacred tent. 17 Each of you take along your fire pan with incense in it and offer the incense to the LORD." 18 The next day the men placed incense and coals in their fire pans and stood with Moses and Aaron at the entrance to the sacred tent. 19 Meanwhile, Korah had convinced the rest of the Israelites to rebel against their two leaders. When that happened, the LORD appeared in all his glory 20 and said to Moses and Aaron,

21 "Get away from the rest of the Israelites so I can kill them right now!" 22 But the two men bowed down and prayed,

"Our God, you gave these people life. Why would you punish everyone here when only one man has sinned?"

23 The LORD answered Moses, 24 "Tell the people to stay away from the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram." 25 Moses walked over to Dathan and Abiram, and the other leaders of Israel followed. 26 Then Moses warned the people, "Get away from the tents of these sinful men! Don't touch anything that belongs to them or you'll be wiped out." 27 So everyone moved away from those tents, except Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and their families.

28 Moses said to the crowd, "The LORD has chosen me and told me to do these things -- it wasn't my idea. And here's how you will know: 29 If these men die a natural death, it means the LORD hasn't chosen me. 30 But suppose the LORD does something that has never been done before.

For example, what if a huge crack appears in the ground, and these men and their families fall into it and are buried alive, together with everything they own? Then you will know they have turned their backs on the LORD!"

31 As soon as Moses said this, the ground under the men opened up 32 33 and swallowed them alive, together with their families and everything they owned. Then the ground closed back up, and they were gone. 34 The rest of the Israelites heard their screams, so they ran off, shouting, "We don't want that to happen to us!"

35 Suddenly the LORD sent a fire that burned up the two hundred fifty men who had offered incense to him. 36 Then the LORD said to Moses, 37 "Tell Aaron's son Eleazar to take the fire pans from the smoldering fire and scatter the coals. The pans are now sacred, 38 because they were used for offering incense to me. Have them hammered into a thin layer of bronze as a covering for the altar. Those men died because of their sin, and now their fire pans will become a warning for the rest of the community." 39 Eleazar collected the pans and had them hammered into a thin layer of bronze as a covering for the altar, 40 just as the LORD had told Moses. The pans were a warning to the Israelites that only Aaron's descendants would be allowed to offer incense to the LORD. Anyone else who tried would be punished like Korah and his followers.

41 The next day the people of Israel again complained against Moses and Aaron, "The two of you killed some of the LORD's people!" 42 As the people crowded around them, Moses and Aaron turned toward the sacred tent, and the LORD appeared in his glory in the cloud covering the tent. 43 So Moses and Aaron walked to the front of the tent, 44 where

the LORD said to them, 45 "Stand back! I am going to wipe out these Israelites once and for all."

They immediately bowed down and prayed. 46 Then Moses told Aaron, "Grab your fire pan and fill it with hot coals from the altar. Put incense in it, then quickly take it to where the people are and offer it to the LORD, so they can be forgiven.

The LORD is very angry, and people have already started dying!"

47 48 Aaron did exactly what he had been told. He ran over to the crowd of people and stood between the dead bodies and the people who were still alive. He placed the incense on the pan, then offered it to the LORD and asked him to forgive the people's sin. The disease immediately stopped spreading, and no one else died from it.

49 But fourteen thousand seven hundred Israelites were dead, not counting those who had died with Korah and his followers.
end quote

************************************
not sure there is a valuable contemporary moral to this story.... except that

...God apparently is NOT love
...does NOT forgive rebellion
...punishes complainers
...and can send disease to kill whomever He wants
or
...make the earth quake open on command and swallow both the guilty and their potentially innocent families.

is this any way for God to treat his best friends?
the people who were going to write his biography?

or, were the Hebrews just scientifically ignorant, superstitious uneducated nomads who feared that any natural event (disease? earthquake? wild fire?) that impacted them was because of their inability to please their tribal divinity?

the question we face today is this:

is the Hebrew God, and thereby, our adopted heavenly Father the terrifying ogre that Numbers makes Him out to be?
and we should be sewing purple tassels onto our gowns, and stoning the janitor who lights the fire and turns up the heater in Church during sabbath?

or are we reading exaggerated, maybe even made up legends,
God's 19th killing, as depicted here:

http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2009/07/gods-19th-killing-opposi...

and as chanted by Hebrew raconteurs around the campfire to educate, motivate, and put the fear of God into their kids?...

if so, maybe we should not be taking it all 100% word for word literally? and we need not formally fear firing our furnaces on the Lords favorite day in winter, when the sun, making its daily circuit around the earth, as explained by Joshua, lingers long but low on the horizon, and here, far West of Eden's date palms and far North of Silver Springs centcom, we risk freezing.

Numbers 17 may be easy to understand, and for once, nobody dies (tho threats are made)

(CEV) Numbers 17:1 The LORD told Moses: 2 Call together the twelve tribes of Israel and tell the leader of each tribe to write his name on the walking stick he carries as a symbol of his authority. Make sure Aaron's name is written on the one from the Levi tribe, then collect all the sticks. 4 Place these sticks in the tent right in front of the sacred chest where I appear to you. 5 I will then choose a man to be my priest, and his stick will sprout. After that happens, I won't have to listen to any more complaints about you.

6 Moses told the people what the LORD had commanded, and they gave him the walking sticks from the twelve tribal leaders, including Aaron's from the Levi tribe. 7 Moses took them and placed them in the LORD's sacred tent.

8 The next day when Moses went into the tent,
...flowers and almonds were already growing on Aaron's stick.

9 Moses brought the twelve sticks out of the tent and showed them to the people. Each of the leaders found his own and took it. 10 But the LORD told Moses, "Put Aaron's stick back! Let it stay near the sacred chest as a warning to anyone who might think about rebelling.

If these people don't stop their grumbling about me,

....I will wipe them out."

11 Moses did what he was told. 12 The Israelites cried out to Moses, "We're done for 13 and doomed if we even get near the sacred tent!"
end quote

possible moral for us today?

1)stop complaining, or the Lord will "wipe you out"
2)be careful which tent you approach or you are doomed,
and
3)God can perform miracles to demonstrate which leader is in charge, and the leader will tell you that he is the leader.

or,

maybe,

could this part of the Hebrew Biography have been written, edited or inserted by the Levite Tribe? to point out why they are in charge, and why everybody should give up their divinely commanded 10% vig?

or if Moses wrote the story, could it be a veiled clue that no actual miracle was involved? Moses quietly but deliberately modified Aarons walking stick or substituted the new one with the flowers and almond's already spliced on? while it was hidden overnight in the "sacred tent" (the tabernacle) which nobody but Moses had access to? and while everybody else was asleep? and in this way, Moses personally chose Aaron, claiming a divine source of his own authority?

Remember that back in EX the tale was told about Moses holding up his magic walking stick to enable the Israelites to beat the Amalakites....so walking sticks allegedly contain magic and authority.

was all this "divinely ordained"? or was Moses just being a strong general? could there be a hint here?

..."6 Moses told the people what the LORD had commanded"...

remember, in previous chapters, the people had been complaining about Moses autocratic ways....

and no claim is given in the text above that the people heard the Lord suggest the walking-stick-test, or make the command for the winner to be high priest...it was all done thru Moses!!! (or "by" Moses???)

the same Moses who "claimed" to have been alone on top of MtSinai, for "40" days without food or water? while God "gave him" and only him...the 10C's? which Moses quickly and personally chose to trash in a fit of pique ?

are we reading about God's personal involvement back then?

or about how Moses led the people to believe that he was the divinely appointed authority? and if the people rebelled,
or grumbled, Moses, using his authority, threatened that their God would...

..."If these people don't stop their grumbling about me,

....I will wipe them out."...

end divine quote
as explained by Moses
in a book attributed to Moses,
and preserved for us by his followers.

numb 18 seems straightforward... again, nobody dies, tho, apparently as usual, God threatens death to any who don't follow directions; and if one person goes bad, you all die.

quote:
(CEV) Numbers 18:1 The LORD said to Aaron: You, your sons, and the other Levites of the Kohath clan, are responsible for what happens at the sacred tent. And you and your sons will be responsible for what the priests do. 2 The Levites are your relatives and are here to help you in your service at the tent. 3 You must see that they perform their duties. But if they go near any of the sacred objects or the altar,

.....ALL OF YOU will die.
halt quote to swallow hard at that one!!

so, bad news again...if any one misbehaves, everybody must die.... a method later adopted by the nazis because it works!!

resume quote:
4 No one else is allowed to take care of the sacred tent or to do anything connected with it. 5 Follow these instructions, so I won't become angry and punish the Israelites ever again. 6 I alone chose the Levites from all the other tribes to belong to me, and I have given them to you as your helpers. 7 But only you and your sons can serve as priests at the altar and in the most holy place. Your work as priests is a gift from me, and anyone else who tries to do that work....

.......... must be put to death.
interrupt quote

so, the Lords picked whom he wanted as his priests, and promised to kill anybody else who tried to do that work!!!

resume quote:
8 The LORD said to Aaron: I have put you in charge of the sacred gifts and sacrifices that the Israelites bring to me. And from now on, you, your sons, and your descendants will receive part of the sacrifices for sin, as well as part of the grain sacrifices, and the sacrifices to make things right. Your share of these sacrifices will be the parts not burned on the altar. 10 Since these things are sacred, they must be eaten near the sacred tent,

.....but only men are allowed to eat them.
interrupt quote:

so what do the women eat?.....apparently not from the sacrificial meat, but from the 10% value added tax which will be imposed on all israel...

resume quote:
11 You will also receive part of the special gifts and offerings that the Israelites bring to me. Any member of your family who is clean and acceptable for worship can eat these things.
interrupt:

so, anybody who is NOT CLEAN, or somehow deemed "acceptable", cannot eat?

resume:
12 For example, when the Israelites bring me the first batches of oil, wine, and grain, you can have the best parts of those gifts. 13 And the first part of the crops from their fields and vineyards also belongs to you. The people will offer this to me, then anyone in your family who is clean may have some of it.
stop quote:

the next part gets scary.... even your kids are to be "offered" to the Lord? what? as firey sacrifices?
but you can buy your kids back, if you have enuf silver?

resume bad news:
14 Everything in Israel that has been completely dedicated to me will now belong to you. 15 The first-born son in every Israelite family, as well as the first-born males of their flocks and herds, belong to me. But a first-born son and every first-born donkey must be bought back from me. 16 The price for a first-born son who is at least one month old will be five pieces of silver, weighed according to the official standards.
halt this scary news:

phew...you can buy back your own kids, if you have enuf shekels of silver instead of letting them become sacrificial offerings (or whatever) for the Lord... however... you gotta give up the firstborn animals...
cause the Lord likes the smell of a good BBQ.

resume quote:
17 However, all first-born cattle, sheep, and goats belong to me and cannot be bought back. Splatter their blood on the altar and send their fat up in smoke, so I can smell it and be pleased. 18 You are allowed to eat the meat of those animals, just as you can eat the choice ribs and the right hind leg of the special sacrifices.
hold that thought....

what about the left legs? and the forelimbs?
can we eat those?

now comes the question of...does this still apply to us today? just like the keeping of the 10C's is a requirement? and keeping the Sabbath either to commerate a 144 earth hr literal creation, or to celebrate the Israelites exodus from egypt after God killed Egyptian kids?

resume quote:
19 From now on, the sacred offerings that the Israelites give to me will belong to you, your sons, and your daughters. This is my promise to you and your descendants,

.....and it will never change.
begin wondering:

does that still apply to us?

resume:
20 You will not receive any land in Israel as your own. I am the LORD, and I will give you whatever you need. The LORD said to Aaron: 21 Ten percent of the Israelites' crops and one out of every ten of their newborn animals belong to me. But I am giving all this to the Levites as their pay for the work they do at the sacred tent. 22 23 They are the only ones allowed to work at the tent, and they must not let anyone else come near it.

...Those who do must be put to death,
and
the Levites will also be punished.

This law will never change.
snip:

never? do you have to be a levite today to work at the church? and if anybody who is not authorized tries to minister in the tabernacle, then EVERYBODY must be killed?

here's why, along with the constant death threat:

Since the Levites won't be given any land in Israel as their own, 24 they will be given the crops and newborn animals that the Israelites offer to me. 25 The LORD told Moses 26 to say to the Levites: When you receive from the people of Israel ten percent of their crops and newborn animals, you must offer a tenth of that to me. 27 Just as the Israelites give me part of their grain and wine, you must set aside part of what you receive 28 as an offering to me. That amount must then be given to Aaron, 29 so the best of what you receive will be mine. The gifts and sacrifices brought by the people must remain sacred, and if you eat any part of them before they are offered to me, you will be put to death.
end cpt 18

conclusion:
everybody must kick up 10% of their take or increase, to the Levites... even their firstborn kids, unless they can afford to buy them back.

and the levites must kick up their 10% of that directly to God...who apparently will be picking up only 1% of everything...

The parallel might work for the church today:

you pay your 10% tax to the Conf or Union....which kicks up 10% of that to the Division? not sure how the World Wide Central Command would be able to get by on the 1% the Division would be expected to pass on......

but you could buy back your kids as required by paying to send them to SDA schools?

Here is a simpler problem, John.

In Num 3:22, 28, 34 - the number of Levites are 7,500, 8,600 and 6,200 respectively. Which totals 22,300.

Then in Num 3: 39 - the number is rounded off to 22,000. That would be OK - EXCEPT - a tax is then levied based on the rounded off number.

In Num 3:430 The "first born" who needed to be "redeemed" totaled 22,273 and since only 22,000 Levites were available to substitute, their folks had to fork out 5 shekels each for 273 boys. Levites really made out.

Didn't anyone ask for a recount?

..."We’re supposed to be disgusted. That’s the point."...

signed...LT, who started this thread

weeeellll, Numb 19 comes as close as any, so I'll skip any commentary, and just paste Gods word here for all to chew on and try not to imagine a typical witch doctor ceremony in the jungles of New Guinea or the backwater Amazon, or even the remote appalachians uphill from SAU where you can almost hear the dueling banjos, and where dental ignorance, animistic superstition and tribal tradition plus the overarching importance of the magic number 7 all seem to be the main lessons to be gleaned, tho one needs to be careful just reading about it since almost everybody who touches anything becomes unclean. Lets all pray that none of this applies to us today. And hope that our kids and any new believers we spend our treasure and time convincing to join us, never find much less believe any of this Numb. stuff.

(CEV) Numbers 19:1 The LORD gave Moses and Aaron the following LAW!!!!!

(note, this is not a suggestion, this is a L-A-W !!!)

begin disgusting quote:

The people of Israel must bring Moses a reddish-brown cow that has nothing wrong with it and that has never been used for plowing. 3 Moses will give it to Eleazar the priest, then it will be led outside the camp and killed while Eleazar watches. 4 He will dip his finger into the blood and sprinkle it.... seven times ...in the direction of the sacred tent.

5 Then the whole cow, including its skin, meat, blood, and insides must be burned. 6 A priest is to throw a stick of cedar wood, a hyssop branch, and a piece of red yarn into the fire.

7 After the ceremony, the priest is to take a bath and wash his clothes. Only then can he go back into the camp, but he remains unclean and unfit for worship until evening. 8 The man who burned the cow must also wash his clothes and take a bath, but he is also unclean until evening.

9 A man who isn't unclean must collect the ashes of the burnt cow and store them outside the camp in a clean place. The people of Israel can mix these ashes with the water used in the ceremony to wash away sin.

10 The man who collects the ashes must wash his clothes, but will remain unclean until evening. This law must always be obeyed by the people of Israel ..
.......and the foreigners living among them.

The LORD said: 11 If you touch a dead body, you will be unclean for..... seven days.

12 But if you wash with the water mixed with the cow's ashes on the third day and again on the...

...seventh day,

you will be clean and acceptable for worship. You must wash yourself on those days; if you don't, you will remain unclean.

13 Suppose you touch a dead body, but refuse to be made clean by washing with the water mixed with ashes. You will be guilty of making my sacred tent unclean and will no longer belong to the people of Israel.

14 If someone dies in a tent while you are there, you will be unclean for..... seven days.

And anyone who later enters the tent will also be unclean.

15 Any open jar in the tent is unclean. 16 If you touch the body of someone who was killed or who died of old age, or if you touch a human bone or a grave, you will be unclean for ...seven days.

17 18 Before you can be made clean, someone who is clean must take some of the ashes from the burnt cow and stir them into a pot of spring water. That same person must dip a hyssop branch in the water and ashes, then sprinkle it on the tent and everything in it, including everyone who was inside.

If you have touched a human bone, a grave, or a dead body, you must be sprinkled with that water. 19 If this is done on the third day and on the..

.... seventh day, you will be clean.

Then after you take a bath and wash your clothes, you can worship that evening.

20 If you are unclean and refuse to be made clean by washing with the water mixed with ashes, you will be guilty of making my sacred tent unclean, and you will no longer belong to the people of Israel.

21 These laws will never change.

The man who sprinkled the water and the ashes on you when you were unclean must also wash his clothes. And whoever touches this water is unclean until evening. 22 When you are unclean, everything you touch becomes unclean, and anyone who touches you will be unclean until evening.
the end, please....

except for the threat above....

............These laws will never change.

Donna...I'm happy to have you speak/blog up....I've been afraid that, having been a math teacher, I was the only one even mildly interested in Numbers.

I'm rereading it for the first time in contemp English (thru Olivetreedotcom)...so I finally think I understand what's happening....

(and its not a pretty picture if I understand it all literally...
so I don't think I will)

John, I take the Bible too seriously to take it literally...

Donna,

Trying to understand...Is that kinda like how some men hear their wives? :~)

Which reiterates the questions John is asking all of us: If all those laws were to be forever (this includes ALL the laws given by God, not just those here in Numbers--laws were never divided); does that pertain to us today if we are to be called "The New Israel"? Moses' Law is how it is usually referred to and as Jesus did also, so is Moses' Law to be held in perpetuity? If not, why not, and how can they be separated today when it was a crime of death to disobey ANY of them?

Which parts (if any) of the Bible should we take literally, and which are not? Is the entire Pentateuch not literal, including the 7-day creation, the Ten Commandments, the numerous laws in Leviticus and Numbers, the entire corpus? How, and what is the rubric for which to divide the entire Bible, but especially the OT?

What would happen to the "pillars" of Adventism if: the Creation in Gen. 1 is no longer literal; the command to tithe is no longer literal. What if all the laws in the OT are no longer literal? There goes the Sabbath; tithe; the IJ and more.

THEN, Adventism would become a Christian, rather than a Judeo-Christian religion. It could begin to disseminate and practice NT Christianity rather than OT Pharaisaical Judaism.

A suggestion, Elaine, that I am sure you make with tongue-in-cheek. However, reality trumps cynicism... these things are already happening, and the Adventist Church I belong to is not the same as the one you rejected.
Albeit slowly, things are changing, and if you were to turn up one Sabbath morning, you would find us far more Christian than you remember...
Of course the fear that the "pillars" would "disappear" is not a valid one. Real change means we keep what is of value, discard what is not.
Now there is a debate for you!

And Jesus said, "the kingdom is like a fish net - Keep what is good and throw out what is bad...Or like a householder who brings many things out of his treasure - some old and some new..." One must use their powers of discrimination. Matt 13

Thanks, WD. What makes you assume I do not regularly "show up" on Sabbath morning? And there are wide differences from one SDA church to another, as you should know. When is change "too fast" and "too slow"?

Sorry Elaine, not an accusation, just an observation....
there is no inherent value in "showing up", but it is an opportunity to share, and to promote change.
Personally, I think change is too slow, I am sure administration feels it is too fast.
I have developed what I call the elastic band theory of change: we stretch things, and someone else pulls them back. What we need to do is adjust our focus, so the stretching is from that new position. And, Elaine, I do admire the way you insist on a new focus.And keep stretching - I do not want to be the person who 'pulls back' on your efforts.

studying on....to Numb 20, where thankfully there's no killing, just the continuing complaining; later we learn how NOT to get water from a rock, and learn two places Aaron is buried.

the "children of Israel" move on, camp at kadesh. Miriam dies.
And they complain again:

...<"Moses, we'd be better off if we had died along with the others in front of the LORD's sacred tent. 4 You brought us into this desert, and now we and our livestock are going to die! 5 Egypt was better than this horrible place. At least there we had grain and figs and grapevines and pomegranates. But now we don't even have any water.">...

which again makes one wonder how several million unhappy displaced urban folks raised as slaves, and never trained as nomads, nevertheless tried to live as nomads and survive with no apparent source of food or water in the desert for a very long time (actually, "40" yrs...as many years as two ignorant nomads could count on their combined digits...two "score")

moses prays for a solution, and

...<"The LORD appeared to them in all of his glory 7 and said, "Moses, get your walking stick. Then you and Aaron call the people together and..... command that rock .....to give you water. That's how you will provide water for the people of Israel and their livestock." 9 Moses obeyed and took his stick from the sacred tent. 10 After he and Aaron had gathered the people around the rock, he said, "Look, you rebellious people, and you will see water flow from this rock!" 11 He raised his stick in the air and struck the rock two times. At once, water gushed from the rock, and the people and their livestock had water to drink. 12 But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you refused to believe in my power, these people did not respect me. And so, you will not be the ones to lead them into the land I have promised." 13 The Israelites had complained against the LORD, and he had shown them his holy power by giving them water to drink. So they named the place Meribah, which means "Complaining." >

at least no killing this time....but the Lord punishes Moses and Aaron for either striking the rock with his magic walking stick instead of just asking the rock for water, or, because the Israelites had refused to believe in the Lords power....

one hopes its the later, because it must have been confusing to Moses to hear he was punished for using his magic walking stick like he had been told to do so many times before. Why did the Lord command him.... and then later punish him for using it?

but either way, God shows his lack of understanding or forgiveness by punishing Moses and Aaron so that they will not reach the promised land...as had been promised.

...<"You and Moses disobeyed me at Meribah, and so you will not enter the land I promised the Israelites. 25 Moses, go with Aaron and his son Eleazar to the top of the mountain. 26 Then take Aaron's priestly robe from him and place it on Eleazar. Aaron will die there." 27 Moses obeyed, and everyone watched as he and Aaron and Eleazar walked to the top of Mount Hor. 28 Moses then took the priestly robe from Aaron and placed it on Eleazar. Aaron died there.">...

Numb 33 later confirms this,

BUT.....

here's a different claim in Deut 10:6

...<"10:6 And the children of Israel took their journey from Beeroth of the children of Jaakan to... Mosera: there Aaron died, and there he was buried; and Eleazar his son ministered in the priest's office in his stead">...

so whom do we believe? the writer of Numb? or the writer of Deut?

and how could both stories have been written by Moses...wouldn't he have known where Aaron died since he witnessed it?

why is it all so confusing?

Numb 21 may not have much in the way of educational benefit for us today...except, the idea again that you will be punished for complaining, and the excuse that if you claim its for the Lords benefit if you have to kill your neighbors, just don't leave any survivors.

...<"2 The Israelites prayed, "Our LORD, if you will help us defeat these Canaanites, we will completely destroy their towns and everything in them, to show that they belong to you." 3 The LORD answered their prayer and helped them wipe out the Canaanite army and completely destroy their towns.">...

but the way from Mt Hor was difficult, and the complaining started up again:

...<"they complained against God and said to Moses, "Did you bring us out of Egypt, just to let us die in the desert? There's no water out here, and we can't stand this awful food!" ">...

so, of course, the Lord had to punish them....

...<" 6 Then the LORD sent poisonous snakes that bit and killed many of them.">...

and killing masses of people apparently works because...

...<" 7 Some of the people went to Moses and admitted,
"It was wrong of us to insult you and the LORD. Now please ask him to make these snakes go away.">...

so

...<" Moses prayed, 8 and the LORD answered, "Make a snake out of bronze and place it on top of a pole. Anyone who gets bitten can look at the snake and won't die." 9 Moses obeyed the LORD. And all of those who looked at the bronze snake lived, even though they had been bitten by the poisonous snakes. ">...

could that be how the international medical symbol started?
and hadn't God told the people not to make graven images? but apparently an image of a snake was ok?

the rest of the chapter is dedicated to how the Lord helped the Israelites commit divine genocide... killing not just the armies, but also the families...

...<" 34 The LORD said to Moses, "Don't be afraid of Og. I will help you defeat him and his army, just as you did King Sihon who ruled in Heshbon. Og's territory will be yours." 35 So the Israelites wiped out Og, his family, and his entire army -- there were no survivors">...

Once upon a time......the writer(s) of Numb try to pin the tale on a donkey:

(CEV) Numbers 22:1

...<" Israel moved from there to the hills of Moab, where they camped across the Jordan River from the town of Jericho. 2 When King Balak of Moab and his people heard how many Israelites there were and what they had done to the Amorites, he and the Moabites were terrified and panicked. 4 They said to the Midianite leaders,

..."That bunch of Israelites will wipe out everything in sight, like a bull eating grass in a field."

So King Balak 5 sent a message to Balaam son of Beor who lived among his relatives in the town of Pethor near the Euphrates River. It said:

I need your help. A huge group of people has come here from Egypt and settled near my territory. 6 They are too powerful for us to defeat, so would you come and place a curse on them? Maybe then we can run them off. I know that anyone you bless will be successful, but anyone you curse will fail.

7 The leaders of Moab and Midian left and took along money to pay Balaam for his work. When they got to his house, they gave him Balak's message. 8 "Spend the night here," Balaam replied, "and tomorrow I will tell you the LORD's answer." So the officials stayed at his house.

9 During the night, God asked Balaam, "Who are these people at your house?">...

uh, oh...could that mean that God resorted to a rethorical question? or could it be He actually didn't know the answer to His own question,, casting doubt on His omniscience?

resuming the donkey's tale:
...<10 "They are messengers from King Balak of Moab," Balaam answered. "He sent them 11 to ask me to go to Moab and place a curse on the people who have come there from Egypt. They have settled everywhere around him, and he wants to run them off."

12 But God replied, "Don't go with Balak's messengers. I have blessed those people who have come from Egypt, so don't curse them."">...

so God commands Balaam not to go....
but the next morning, Balaam is offered a really good financial deal, but still says he won't.

...<"I wouldn't do anything to disobey the LORD my God
"Go on back home. The LORD says I cannot go with you." ">...

but that night, apparently the Lord changes His unchangeable mind, and tells Balaam....

...<"20 That night, God said, "Balaam, I'll let you go to Moab with Balak's messengers, but do only what I say."

21 So Balaam got up the next morning and saddled his donkey, then left with the Moabite officials. 22 Balaam was riding his donkey to Moab, and two of his servants were with him.

But God was angry that Balaam had gone, so one of the LORD's angels stood in the road to stop him.

hard news to believe?

but hadn't God TOLD Balaam to go? has He changed His divine mind again?

23 When Balaam's donkey saw the angel standing there with a sword, it walked off the road and into an open field.">...

whoa...a donkey can see angels that its rider cannot?
this is some, special donkey!!!

continuing the tale
...<"Balaam had to beat the donkey to get it back on the road. 24 Then the angel stood between two vineyards, in a narrow path with a stone wall on each side. 25 When the donkey saw the angel, it walked so close to one of the walls that Balaam's foot scraped against the wall. Balaam beat the donkey again. 26 The angel moved once more and stood in a spot so narrow that there was no room for the donkey to go around. 27 So it just lay down. Balaam lost his temper, then picked up a stick and smacked the donkey.">...

good thing there was no PETA back then....or are you expected to smack donkeys when they see angels and lay down?

...<"28 When that happened, the LORD told the donkey to speak, and it asked Balaam, "What have I done to you that made you beat me three times?"
29 "You made me look stupid!" >...

what? Balaam appears to not even be surprised that his donkey can speak? and hold an entire conversation?

...<"Balaam answered. "If I had a sword, I'd kill you here and now!" 30 "But you're my owner," replied the donkey, "and you've ridden me many times. Have I ever done anything like this before?" "No," Balaam admitted.

31 Just then, the LORD let Balaam see the angel standing in the road, holding a sword, and Balaam bowed down. 32 The angel said, "You had no right to treat your donkey like that! I was the one who blocked your way, because I don't think you should go to Moab. 33 If your donkey had not seen me and stopped those three times, I would have killed you and let the donkey live.">...

so lets see.... the Lord tells Balaam NOT to go, thenchangesHismind, but then sends His angel to KILL Balaam if he actually goes, but the donkey saves Balaamslife by seeing an invisible angel, who later decloaks sword and all for Balaams benefit and tells Balaam that he was almost killed for disobeying God, after God had told him to go!!!
why is it all so confusing?

...<"34 Balaam replied, "I was wrong. I didn't know you were trying to stop me. If you don't think I should go, I'll return home right now." >...

but the Lord changes His mind again, and lets the angel authorize Balaam to proceed!!!

quoting theangel:
...<"35 "It's all right for you to go," the LORD's angel answered. "But you must say only what I tell you." So Balaam went on with Balak's officials.">...

and the balance of cpt 22, 23 and 24 tells the story of Balaam having his hosts set up several sets of altars, burn several animals, but not be able to curse Israel.....

good news in this story? neither God nor the Israelites kill anybody, but the inhabitants of the land that the Israelites said God had promised them become frightened by the murderous advance of the Israelites...

the part of this tale which makes it a tale? the talking donkey. the decloaking angel.

the confusing part of this tale? an allegedly unchangeable God changes His mind several times in the story. almost kills His prophet for doing what God himself had authorized Balaam to do.

why is it all so confusing?

what if anything about this donkeys tail should be believed literally?

and what if anything can we take of this for our
present day?

could one lesson be to not blindly trust 100% in what you think God tells you?

such as, if you think God tells you to kill your own kids as sacrifice, is it justifiable to disbelieve that?

if you believe God tells you to kill your neighbors, including any women who have had sex, keep their goats, camels and land, should you save the virgins to use and thereby dilute your tribes genetic uniqueness??
....more on that later

The Bible, like Aesop's fables, gives animals the power of speech.
The Bible, like other ancient literature, gives all power to the gods.

The first is not taken literally but for the morals presented.

The Bible, unlike these other stories, is called "The Word of God"
and as such, must be taken as 100% and never to be questioned.

Or, should we understand the Bible just as we do these other contemporary stories?

(CEV) Numbers 25 poses the next set of questions:

did these things really happen as described?

or were the stories made up to deprecate the Moabites who, after all, according to another story, were the illegitimite offspring of Lots incestuous romp in the cave...that way Gods favorite tribe of nomads could claim Abe as their direct ancestor, and ethnically cleanse the Moabite SOB's who's ancestry was illegit? and therefore according to hebrew law, unable to inherit the land they occupied?

would this have been told as propaganda to Moses soldiers to motivate them to attack the Moabites as bad people BEFORE the action? along with the promise of keeping their stuff, land, and virgins?

or was it written as apologetic history AFTER the attack to justify what had already been done (kill them all, take their land and stuff, but save the virgins)

heres the story in the CEV

Numb 25:1
...<"While the Israelites were camped at Acacia, some of the men had sex with Moabite women. 2 These women then invited the men to ceremonies where sacrifices were offered to their gods. The men ate the meat from the sacrifices and worshiped the Moabite gods. 3 The LORD was angry with Israel because they had worshiped the god Baal-Peor. 4 So He (the Lord) said to Moses,

..."Take the Israelite leaders who are responsible for this and have them killed in front of my sacred tent where everyone can see. Maybe then I will stop being angry with the Israelites.">...

it may not have been the "sex" with non Hebrews the lord disliked, because later, the lord says to keep the virgins, presumably to use...

it must have been the "worshipping-other-gods-part" that made the lord so angry....so He told Moses to kill the leaders.

but Moses doesn't follow the Lords command, he has a different way of punishing people...

...<"5 Moses told Israel's officials, "Each of you must put to death any of your men who worshiped Baal." ">...

the KJV says to hang up their heads!!! whether before or after beheading it is not said...

...<""Take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the Lord.">...

Moses said to kill those who had sex, and nothing about killing the leaders as demanded by God. Either way, we are not sure who or how many were killed as a result of this, except that at the same time, the Lord was killing 24,000 Israelites with a divine plague if you believe Numbers, but only 23,000 unfortunate souls if you believe Paul:

...<"1 Corinthians 10:8
Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.">...

so what cowardly act of the murder of an unarmed couple finally convinces God to stop killing the israelites?

...<" 6 Later, Moses and the people were at the sacred tent, crying, when one of the Israelite men brought a Midianite woman to meet his family. 7 Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron the priest, saw the couple and left the crowd. He found a spear 8 and followed the man into his tent, where he ran the spear through the man and into the woman's stomach. The LORD immediately stopped punishing Israel with a deadly disease, 9 but twenty-four thousand Israelites had already died. ">...

and its a goood thing Aarons grandson speared that couple to death in flagrante dilecto, because otherwise our Loving Heavenly Father had planned to kill everybody...

...<" 10 The LORD said to Moses, 11 "In my anger, I would have wiped out the Israelites if Phinehas had not been faithful to me. 12 13 But instead of punishing them, I forgave them. So because of the loyalty that Phinehas showed, I solemnly promise that he and his descendants will always be my priests." ">...

and because of this sex and other-god-worship, God tells the israelites to treat the Midianites as enemies:

...<" 16 The LORD told Moses, 17 18 "The Midianites are now enemies of Israel, so attack and defeat them! They tricked the people of Israel into worshiping their god at Peor, and they are responsible for the death of Cozbi, the daughter of one of their own leaders.">...

for SS lessons for the little kids, here is the story in Lego people. This should really lead them to love and understand the Old Test...(or not)

http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2009/07/gods-25th-killing-killin...

Numb 26 is a boring list of tribes and members....but cpt 27 offers the first inkling of Womens Issues being considered!!!

quote:

(CEV) Numbers 27:1 Zelophehad was from the Manasseh tribe, and he had five daughters, whose names were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. 2 One day his daughters went to the sacred tent, where they met with Moses, Eleazar, and some other leaders of Israel, as well as a large crowd of Israelites. The young women said:

3 You know that our father died in the desert. But it was for something he did wrong, not for joining with Korah in rebelling against the LORD. Our father left no sons 4 to carry on his family name. But why should his name die out for that reason? Give us some land like the rest of his relatives in our clan, so our father's name can live on.

5 Moses asked the LORD what should be done, 6 and the LORD answered: 7 Zelophehad's daughters are right. They should each be given part of the land their father would have received. 8 Tell the Israelites that when a man dies without a son, his daughter will inherit his land.
end quote

and here is the remaining order of inheritance....seemingly reasonable:

...<"9 If he has no daughter, his brothers will inherit the land. 10 But if he has no brothers, his father's brothers will inherit the land. 11 And if his father has no brothers, the land must be given to his nearest relative in the clan. This is my law, and the Israelites must obey it.">...

but no mention of the wives getting anything!!!

Next, its very bad news for Moses...apparently because Moses didn't stick up for God the way God wanted...he must die before reaching the Promised Land...

...<"12 The LORD said to Moses, "One day you will go up into the Abarim Mountains, and from there you will see the land I am giving the Israelites. 13 After you have seen it, you will die, just like your brother Aaron, 14 because both of you disobeyed me at Meribah near the town of Kadesh in the Zin Desert. When the Israelites insulted me there, you didn't believe in my holy power." >...

but God acceeds to Moses request to promote Joshua as maximum leader with Aarons son, Eleazer as imtermediary/priest
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Chapter 28 lists the animals which must be killed, and burned because the odor pleases God....

I wonder how many folks still believe that any loving god, creator of all, including animals, is worthy of honor and worship after demanding the following slaughter of innocent life....... just because he likes the smell of burning flesh:

begin quote and revulsion if you love animals:

Numbers 28:1 The LORD told Moses 2 to say to the people of Israel: Offer sacrifices to me at the appointed times of worship, so that ...

...I will smell the smoke and be pleased. 3 Each day offer two rams

vs 8: The smell of the smoke from these sacrifices will please me.

The LORD said: 9 0 On the Sabbath, in addition to the regular daily sacrifices, you must sacrifice two rams
11 On the first day of each month, bring to the altar two bulls, one full-grown ram, and seven rams a year old that have nothing wrong with them. Then

...offer these as sacrifices to please me. 13:The smell of the smoke from these sacrifices will please me.

16 Celebrate Passover in honor of me on the fourteenth day of the first month of each year. 17 The following day will begin the Festival of Thin Bread, which will last for a week. During this time you must honor me by eating bread made without yeast. 18 On the first day of this festival, you must rest from your work and come together for worship. 19 Bring to the altar two bulls, one full-grown ram, and seven rams a year old that have nothing wrong with them. And then

... offer these as sacrifices to please me.

20 Six pounds of your finest flour mixed with olive oil must be offered with each bull as a grain sacrifice. Four pounds of flour mixed with oil must be offered with the ram, 21 and two pounds of flour mixed with oil must be offered with each of the young rams. 22 Also

...offer a goat as a sacrifice for the sins of the people.

23 24 All of these are to be offered in addition to the regular daily sacrifices,

.... and the smoke from them will please me.

26 On the first day of the Harvest Festival, you must rest from your work, come together for worship, and bring a sacrifice of new grain. 27 Offer two young bulls, one full-grown ram, and seven rams a year old

...as sacrifices to please me.

28 Six pounds of your finest flour mixed with olive oil must be offered with each bull as a grain sacrifice. Four pounds of flour mixed with oil must be offered with the ram, 29 and two pounds of flour mixed with oil must be offered with each of the young rams. 30 Also

...offer a goat as a sacrifice for sin.

31 The animals must have nothing wrong with them and are to be sacrificed along with the regular daily sacrifices.
end quote.

nothing there about feeding the people...but over and over and over its God wanting to be pleased by the suffering and death of thousands of his creatures, simply, it seems, for the love of the smell of burning flesh.

culminating in the greatest mass slaughter of Gods critters since God Himself tried to drown them all in the alleged flood.

quote from 1 Kings 8
verses 62 63 Solomon and the people dedicated the temple to the LORD by offering twenty-two thousand cattle and one hundred twenty thousand sheep as sacrifices to ask the LORD's blessing. 64 On that day, Solomon dedicated the courtyard in front of the temple and made it acceptable for worship. He offered the sacrifices there because the bronze altar in front of the temple was too small. 65 Solomon and the huge crowd celebrated the Festival of Shelters at the temple for seven days. There were people from as far away as the Egyptian Gorge in the south and Lebo-Hamath in the north. 66 Then on the eighth day, he sent everyone home.
end quote.

Lets assume that the killing went on 24 hrs per day, for all 7 days, and only up till noon on the 8th day...

thats 142,000 animals slaughtered in 7.5 daze, or almost 19,000 animals per day, 788 animals per hour, or 13 animals killed per MINUTE in front of Solomons temple....24 hours per day, for 7 1/2 daze straight!!!! thats an animal killed every 4.6 seconds....

and for what?

personal note? years ago, as a "student missionary" in Central America, I witnessed chickens being butchered on the steps of the Catholic Cathedral in Chichicastenango, Guatemala.. so apparently, a few believers feel a need to butcher God's creatures for Him.

the divine plan for slaughtering innocent animals continues

(CEV) Numbers 29:1 The LORD said: On the first day of the seventh month, you must rest from your work and come together to celebrate at the sound of the trumpets.
2 Bring to the altar one bull, one full-grown ram, and seven rams a year old that have nothing wrong with them. And then

offer these as sacrifices to please me.

3 Six pounds of your finest flour mixed with olive oil must be offered with the bull as a grain sacrifice. Four pounds of flour mixed with oil must be offered with the ram, 4 and two pounds of flour mixed with oil must be offered with each of the young rams. 5 You must also offer a goat as a sacrifice for sin. 6 These sacrifices will be made in addition to the regular daily sacrifices and the sacrifices for the first day of the month.

The smoke from these sacrifices will please me.

7 The tenth day of the seventh month is the Great Day of Forgiveness. On that day you must rest from all work and come together for worship. Show sorrow for your sins by going without food, 8 and bring to the altar one young bull, one full-grown ram, and seven rams a year old that have nothing wrong with them.

Then offer these as sacrifices to please me.

9 Six pounds of your finest flour mixed with olive oil must be offered with the bull as a grain sacrifice. Four pounds of flour mixed with oil must be offered with the ram, 10 and two pounds of flour mixed with oil must be offered with each of the young rams. 11 A goat must also be sacrificed for the sins of the people.

You will offer these sacrifices in addition to the sacrifice to ask forgiveness and the regular daily sacrifices.

12 Beginning on the fifteenth day of the seventh month and continuing for seven days, everyone must celebrate the Festival of Shelters in honor of me. 13 On the first day, you must rest from your work and come together for worship. Bring to the altar thirteen bulls, two full-grown rams, and fourteen rams a year old that have nothing wrong with them. Then offer these as sacrifices to please me. 14 Six pounds of your finest flour ....

... 16 You must also offer a goat as a sacrifice for sin. These are to be offered in addition to the regular daily sacrifices.

17 34 For the next six days of the festival, you will sacrifice one less bull than the day before, so that on the seventh day, seven bulls will be sacrificed. The other sacrifices and offerings must remain the same for each of these days. 35 On the eighth day, you must once again rest from your work and come together for worship. 36 Bring to the altar one bull, one full-grown ram, and seven rams a year old that have nothing wrong with them.

Then offer these as sacrifices to please me.

37 You must also offer the proper grain sacrifices and drink offerings of wine with each animal. 38 And offer a goat as the sacrifice to ask forgiveness for the people. These sacrifices are made in addition to the regular daily sacrifices.
end bloodbath

and what is this all for? just because it "pleases God",
He likes the "sweet savour" of burning flesh as the KJV translates it?

is it really as explained in verse 7 above:
...<"to ask forgiveness">...

Paul explains that the blood of animals is not the way to gain atonement!!!!

Hebrews 10:4
For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.

Hebrews 10:11
And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.
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the SS lesson for us today?

we've come a long way, baby!!! no need to kill innocent animals anymore. even Paul admits it was not effective.

but couldn't that raise the question of whether or not we should keep other ancient Israelite rules?

like not mixing cotton AND spandex in our robes and underpants?

not planting alternating crops?

guys required to let their hair grow and not shave?

should we still treat leprosy and mold by wringing the necks of a few birds, dipping in hyssop if you can find it, then, witch doctor like, sprinkling the blood on the affected parts...?

or even ritually keeping the 7th day as a memorial of either the 144 hr creation, or as thanks to God for His alleged massacre of innocent Egyptian kids to convince the Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go...

maybe if we were Hebrew that might still hold our interest...
but does our religion require us to be tied to the past?

"religion"...even the very word "ties" us to the past....

re = again
lig = to tie, as in ligament...ligature..

but didn't Jesus cut the Gordian Knot tying us again to the past? saying that He took away all the old rules, and gave us a new one...

....Love one another....

Numberd 30: promises, promises, promises!!!

quote:
(CEV) Numbers 30:1 The LORD told Moses to say to Israel's tribal leaders:

2 When one of you men makes a promise to the LORD, you must keep your word.>

so guys must keep their word....

...<"3 Suppose a young woman who is still living with her parents makes a promise to the LORD. 4 If her father hears about it and says nothing, she must keep her promise. 5 But if he hears about it and objects, then she no longer has to keep her promise. The LORD will forgive her, because her father did not agree with the promise.">...

so, a womans promise (to the Lord?) can be overridden by her father, who has the last word...or if she is maried, her husband controls whether or not she keeps her "promise" according to the next paragraph:

...<" 6 Suppose a woman makes a promise to the LORD and then gets married. If her husband later hears about the promise but says nothing, she must do what she said, whether she meant it or not. 8 But if her husband hears about the promise and objects, she no longer has to keep it, and the LORD will forgive her. ">...

but without a husband or father,....

...<" 9 Widows and divorced women must keep every promise they make to the LORD. ">...

but in any case, the woman is subserviant to the man's decision:

...<" 13 Her husband has the final say about any promises she makes to the LORD. 14 If her husband hears about a promise and says nothing about it for a whole day, she must do what she said -- since he did not object, the promise must be kept. 15 But if he waits until the next day to stop her from keeping her promise, he is the one who must be punished. 16 These are the laws that the LORD gave Moses about husbands and wives, and about young daughters who still live at home. ">...

conclusion?
...it's a man's world...and
...probably God is a man since a woman would not have made up those rules allowing men final control.