Macfistowannabe said:
Anyways, "Thou Shall Not Kill," a commandment carved in stone, is for the most part, universally accepted. Yet, there are a few exceptions given by society.
So what was God's exception?
I'm not sure what you mean by 'God's exception,' but I just wanted to mention that
tirtzakh--the Hebrew word usually translated 'kill' in Christian texts of the Commandments--actually had a narrower meaning than that. Whether there's an exact English equivalent is debatable, but Jewish Bibles, at any rate, have traditionally translated
tirtzakh as 'murder.' So, for most Jews, this commandment has never been taken as a blanket ban on killing.
Originally posted by nbcrusader
God instructed the Israelites to wipe out most of the peoples in the land He was giving to them.
The express purpose was to prevent the Israelites from mixing with these other peoples and corrupting their faith and practices.
( ^ Deuteronomy 20: 17-18)
This is generally considered the most problematic command in the entire Torah. Especially compared to the forgiveness mandated towards the (one would think) far more threatening Egyptians: 'You shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land' (Deuteronomy 23:8). The usual explanations for this discrepancy emphasize the holiness of the land of Israel, and the Torah's repeated warnings that this land will 'vomit up' its corruption (meaning idolatry and, in particular, certain sexual and sacrificial 'abominations' associated with it).
The Israelites did not fully follow this command.
Or even close to it, apparently. Archaeological findings have consistently contradicted the Biblical portrait of the Israelites swooping in and ruthlessly crushing the Canaanites in one triumphant, glorious campaign. Instead, the bulk of the evidence suggests they straggled in over the course of decades (or longer), sometimes engaging in skirmishes, sometimes not.
Originally posted by melon
The "God" of the OT is homicidal, genocidal, and all around petty. This is in keeping with how all cultures depicted their gods prior to c. 500-600 B.C.
The "loving God" emanated from Zoroastrianism, which is mostly forgotten today, but was the world's most powerful religion of around 600 B.C. to A.D. 700, when it collapsed after the rise of Islam in Persia (present-day Iran).
So
that's why Darius and Xerxes were such sweet guys!
'...to find the spirit of the religion of the Old Testament in
Joshua is like finding the distinctive genius of America in the men who slaughtered the Indians.'--Walter Kaufmann