Thursday, March 19, 2015

You Should Try Reading The Thing Because You Don't Know How The Story Goes And What It Means

Considering how the bright young people today don't realize that you have to know what you're talking about in order to make a valid point in argument, it shouldn't be surprising to find out that they also don't know that you have to hold to a single standard of judgement or your argument doesn't cohere with even the most basic rules of logical argument.  What you're claiming about "Christians sacrificing humans" on the basis of the story of Abraham and Isaac only shows how the educational system and the real basis of what passes as erudition today, what you absorb through TV, movies, popular novels and the internet, has made you irrational.   You are living the dark age that you mock and ridicule.

It is one of the most bizarre things I've learned from being online how transparently the rules are rigged in the opposite of reason or justice.   You don't like me bringing up the evidence of the bog burials of those sacrificed by the pre-Christian Pagan folk of Europe as evidence that they practiced ritual slaughter rather often and that what documentary evidence we have confirms they doid so as part of the mandated religio-political practices they maintained, apparently for a very log period, based on the dating of well preserved corpses and remains available through the chemistry of bodies submerged in peat.   There is no way to claim that such ritual sacrifices were rare or that they were some kind of outliers from fanatical cults.  The practice was, apparently, so well ingrained and the priestly class who almost certainly mandated and likely performed the murders involved could choose their victims from the upper classes, perhaps even the political ruling class, if the analyses of some of those bodies is correct.   That rap on Druidism and other forms of pre-Christian paganism is as solid as it is possible to have.   They weren't the peaceful nature worshipers who liked to prance around in the forest worshiping trees and rocks and making monuments to the sun, friends to flora and fauna, harming none in the process, they were pretty savage and ruthless in many of the only documented practices we have of them.

As I said, there is no way to say that human as well as animal sacrifice was not fully sanctioned by those religions.  The same is not true for Christianity, the many sins of those who took political power under a cross cannot square those with the words of Jesus or his earliest followers which forbade the taking of life, the oppression of others and the inequality that is necessary for those to happen.  That following those teachings will make you the mark of anyone who chooses to rob you isn't only certain, it is contained in the teachings that constitute the basis of Christianity.  I dare you.   Look at Luke chapter 6, verses 27 through 36 and tell me how those can be anything but a condemnation of the entire range of sins attributed to the political and religious authorities, the definitive rap against Christianity.   The difference is that the people who did those things were violating the teachings of a man they claim to believe spoke with the authority of God.

That's the opposite from the human sacrifices of Paganism, in nothing I've ever seen does anything in Pagan literature indicate those were a violation of the wishes of their gods.

Which brings me to your point.  As so often happens you bring up the story of Abraham and Issac as an example of "Christian human sacrifice".  I know that anyone who does that has not performed the most basic obligation of someone who talks about something, that you read what the story says.   Here it is, from chapter 22 of Genesis (in the Hebrew scriptures, by the way, not the part of the Bible attributable to Christians).

22 After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5 Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” 6 Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. 7 Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.

9 When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill[a] his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13 And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, 16 and said, “By myself I have sworn, says the Lord: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, 18 and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.” 19 So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham lived at Beer-sheba.

Revised Standard Version

You'll find it's pretty much the same in any version you'll find.

It was a test in which God had never intended that Isaac be sacrificed but to see if Abraham was willing to give up everything, including his legitimate son and heir, his link to the future, to God.   If you look around the Mediterranean, you'll be hard put to find people who were less inclined to practice human sacrifice than the people who believed that story  was true, instead of the allegorical legend that I would think most Christians would believe it to have been.  Human sacrifice was never practiced by any Christians I've ever heard of and it would be against everything in the Bible I ever read.

The only exception is that story of the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter in the book of Judges and no where in that story does God ask Jephthah to sacrifice a person, that's something Jephthah promised in return for victory in battle.  That was a result of human choices.  It's certainly not compatible with anything else found in the Hebrew scriptures or anything at all in the Christian scriptures.   Like just about everything else in the blood soaked book of Judges, I doubt it's much more than legend, a warning about making rash vows to God in return for victory in battle.   You can contrast it with the very similar story in Greek Pagan mythology of Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter, Iphegeia, the gods were totally involved in that one.  The gods mandated that he give his daughter to be sacrificed or he would be defeated by the Trojans.  Clearly he valued victory over his daughter, but it wasn't his idea to begin with.

Of course, if Jephthah had been following the teachings of Jesus, he wouldn't have been warring to begin with.  The earliest followers of Jesus were notably pacifists.  Too bad they hadn't remained so, they had to ignore his teachings to do the things later ones did.

Update:

Having taken time in the last hour to read through the incredibly bloody and incredibly confusing and complicated Book of Judges, I think there are useful things to take from it.  First and foremost is a warning against libertarianism. After recounting the disastrous, violent, depraved 400 years + it purports to cover,  the final verse says:

In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Well, if what happens in the book, even with the continual intervention of God, is any indication as to what happens when "every man does what is right in his own eyes" then it's a really bad advertisement for the libertarian nonsense that is so popular among so many Bible thumpers these days.

About the only bright spot in the book is the identification of Deborah as a righteous judge.  So, one for equal rights.  And Deborah isn't exactly perfect, either.

The book is a series of legends of a really bad period in the memory of the Israelites told in a later period of disaster (a lot of people think it was compiled during the Babylonian exile).   One of the footnotes to the story about Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter said it was to make the point that they were so corrupt in that period that they were even taking up the Pagan practice of sacrificing their children, as the Molochites were condemned for.   Just about no one comes off well in the book, its heroes are a pretty bad lot.   Everyone is killing someone else in it.

As to the lessons of what happens when there is no civil authority, you can take note of what happened when the people had had enough and they asked Samuel to find them a king to stop the chaos that was so oppressive.   In that book God has Samuel warn them that a king would only be as good as they were and that any king would pretty likely end up oppressing them.

10 So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12 and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15 He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16 He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle[b] and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17 He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18 And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

Something that is as much today's news as it was back then in country after country, including Israel, as this weeks elections show.

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