Not to get all religiony but why in the old testament God was all fire and brimstone and fatal consequences? But the new testament God is all about forgiveness and such??
Because it's all fake. Everyone who actually reads it finds way too many inconsistencies.
That's because it underwent some serious transformations across the millennia. Yahweh started as a storm god (basically Thor of Canaanite religion). Back then each nation in the religion had their own patron god and guess which god did the Israelites happen to have? Good old storm god Yahweh.
Over centuries the religion evolved and among Israelites Yahweh slowly took on attributes of other gods, mostly El (the all-father and creator of the universe) and Baal. First the other gods were degraded and monotheism was required, even though other gods were known to exist (you might remember the whole "jealous of other gods shtick" even though the rest of the Bible says there's only one god).
Then the other gods were slowly edited out of the Bible, though some remains persevere (the aforementioned jealousy of other gods, some gods are even mentioned by name). If the gods couldn't be removed because the story wouldn't make sense, they were mostly changed into angels or other mythical beings.
It's pretty funny rereading the Bible with this knowledge, you can clearly recognise which parts were the original Yahweh-the-storm-god and which used to be El-the-actual-creator by how he behaves in the story. When he's all jealous, rageful and angry, it's mostly based on the original Yahweh.
Anyway, that's basically what Old Testament is - a bunch of edits of much older religions. IIRC Yahweh precedes even the Canaanite religion, so it's a really old and grumpy storm god.
Now, New Testament is something else entirely, that was basically just slapped onto Judaism to have some legitimate and widely recognised vessel. Unlike the other edits, it didn't evolve naturally over time, it was just violently slapped onto the Old Testament.
Fun fact: try finding Satan anywhere in the old testament. You won't. Satan has been retrofit on multiple characters, but neither is mentioned directly as Satan, devil or really anything. The most famous one, the snake in the garden? Just a snake (which checks out with older religions where animals had a lot of influence). Then some morons come and say "actually, that snake was the grand adversary." The concept of a grand adversary wasn't really common in older religions, there usually wasn't a Satan-like figure. Compare for example with Greek, Roman or Norse gods.
So, in conclusion, the Bible is a horrible mess of edits that were made so the religion would serve the needs of the time they were introduced in. IIRC the Israelites were having some trouble with their neighbours back when Yahweh got the promotion, so having a strong sense of nationality would really help in keeping the nation together. New Testament is even more obvious because it didn't even really try to fit with the rest. They just tried to retrofit a few things and called it a day.
Well, this got longer than I planned, but I really like the topic and I don't think you can do it justice in two paragraphs. If anyone's interested, do some research, it's honestly fascinating! For example, what's the connection between Dionysus and Yahweh? That would be a homework for ya!
I have studied this topic academically, a little bit. My answer:
I like this reasoning a lot, however:
#2. In terms of there being a real-life Y'shua, AFAIK it's hard to know if such a person ever really existed in the first place, or if they were in fact more of an amalgamated 'King Arthur' / 'Robin Hood' type, very much inspired by earlier legends & mythology, and greatly elaborated upon in later years, via oral traditions, before finally being documented hither & tither by various writers scattered around the region.
AFAIK there is no archeological evidence whatsoever for that exact person's existence, and no contemporaneous writing from the time, describing his life.
In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart D. Ehrman wrote, "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees."[13] Richard A. Burridge states: "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church's imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more."[14] Robert M. Price does not believe that Jesus existed but agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars.[15] James D. G. Dunn calls the theories of Jesus's non-existence "a thoroughly dead thesis".[16] Michael Grant (a classicist), "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."[17] Robert E. Van Voorst states that biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted.[18] Writing on The Daily Beast, Candida Moss and Joel Baden state that, "there is nigh universal consensus among biblical scholars – the authentic ones, at least – that Jesus was, in fact, a real guy."[19]
One Theory I like is that the Jesus we know is an amalgamation of multiple Messiah figures that were walking around around that time, one of them was the basis for the religion and then other stories about those other Messiahs were folded in over the years
a lot of what he was teaching was for-real insight about life
yaaa cept for the fact that most if not all the things 'jeebus' supposedly said were said in older books already. So there is nothing new in the new testament, they stole all of it from older books like code of hammurabi and then invented a character to say the things.
They switched writers.
I guess they did some market research between the two testaments
"nobody shares my kinks"
My take is that it's a reflection of the Israelite people. It's easy to be all fire and brimstone when you can back it up with military force. Suspiciously that all went away after they got conquered...
Yahweh was originally a Levant god of war.
Fiction usually has highs and lows. Unfortunately all the authors wrote under pseudonyms, and multiple editors went through the plagiarized stories, some books were left out, and the consistency is just a mess. Not to mention the terrible translations. Your local Library most certainly has better Fiction books that are very well written and highly entertaining.
Because god was pregnant with jesus so she was all crazy lol
Because they're completely different gods. The old testament is only a part of christianity because in order to gain some legitimacy for their early church, they decided that their new god must be the same dude as the the god of the people that they were living among.
But in reality, they are very different books, written in very different times, by two very different religious cultures.
Also, the old testament god is not a single god.
It started as a god among other equally powerful and important gods and was later turned (by the writers) into the most important god.
Then it turned into god and satan as being similar in power.
Nowadays, the majority of church people flip the switch whenever they want a bi-theism (god vs satan) or a monotheism (god is all powerful and even satan can't act with god's explicit orders).
Similar thing with free will.
You have free will until you don't have and you have no free will until it is convenient to say you actually have.
Yeah, they are "very different books" each individually comprised of "very different books," and all of the other books that eventually got left out are a lot of the best parts. I haven't read them, but it feels like how my friend used to describe the Star Wars extended universe books.
Because the people who wrote the old testament wanted to scare people into subservience
And those who wrote the new testament thought positive reinforcement was better
IIRC that's not actually positive reinforcement. Common mistake to make though
It's all fiction. Different fiction from different people at different points in history. It was even re-written at certain points in history, to conform with (then current) ideas and morality.
Why doesn't it all make sense put together? It's fiction written by many, very different types of people with completely different ideas.
Why Hulk can defeat Wolverine in one comic but in the next one gets obliterated by someone weaker?
The old guys message wasn't working anymore, the age of Pharos and godkings was done. You couldn't just mass execute people anymore, everyone was really woke and PC.
The ruling class needed to revamp the religious arm of the machine that enslaves us all to get with the times or there were going to keep being problems.
You know how corporate media are, it's easier to sell a sequel.
You know what, we're going for a kind of apple vibe, we're literally just going to call this thing "THE BOOK".
Everyone will step into line after we nail a few to boards and stuff
The old guys message wasn’t working anymore
The new testament is just old testament fan fiction. By that reasoning all these newer religions like Mormonism are fan fiction based on other fan fiction... and Im sure I dont have to tell anyone how loony tunes Mormonism is.
I feel like y'all are forgetting about all the heinous shit God does in the new testament. Just because he's not all up front fire and brimstone about it doesn't mean he isn't still an evil bastard in the new book
Spoken like someone who mixes their fabrics and eats shellfish.
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Let's not forget that prior to Jesus any punishments were over when you died. Permanent Hell was a new testament thing.
Could you link something cause when I Google any combination of "new testament god angry/vengeful" I'm not getting allot besides religious sites sane washing it.
I'm not gonna link a source, but here's some chapters from the good book itself:
Acts 5, God kills Ananias and Sapphira for withholding too much of their taxes. Seems like an overreaction for the new forgiving, loving, kind God.
Acts 12, God strikes down King Herod for accepting praise or some shit, which is similar to the egotistical, vengeful, immature punishments the God of the old testament frequently handed out.
Jesus (who is also God) throws some incredibly immature and irresponsible super-powered toddler tantrums, like in Mark 11 where he curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit when he was hungry, even though it was out of season, and in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus forces demons to possess a bunch (like, thousands) of pigs that just happen to be nearby, causing them all to cast themselves off a cliff and die. Jesus suggests/condones rape as a punishment in multiple instances, which is pretty fucked up, but is consistent with the whole "the sexual punishment fits the sexual "crime"" motif you see all throughout the New Testament. Jesus himself isn't just the peace-loving, love-thy-neighbor hippie they try to portray him as - in Matthew 10 he says "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword", basically acknowledging and condoning religious violence. Very like, un-kumbayah of him, man.
Pick a page from Revelation, that whole book is basically just God bringing about the apocalyptic end times in increasingly violent and cruel ways, including killing people a second time by tossing them into a lake of fire for not being Christian enough to make it onto his nice list.
The continued existence of hell is a big one for me as well. You'd think a truly loving, kind, and forgiving God would get rid of the eternal damnation spirit torture prison. He also doesn't end other universally-accepted-as-immoral practices like slavery, but instead doubles down on it in Ephesians, Colossians, and probably a bunch of other places. All in all, the God of the new testament is just as much of a bastard as in the old, he's just hiding behind the introduction of his new son (who is also a bit of a bastard, but maybe a tad less so, so people accept it) and the weird blood magic ritual sacrifice storyline.
Edit: my claim that the God of the new testament is unchanged from the one in the old is also supported by scripture - James 1 and Hebrews 13 say as much, and even Jesus says he's not coming to shake things up, that all the old laws (including the fire and brimstone ones) still apply in Matthew 5.
It's because the Old Testament is actually just the Torah, rearranged and edited to fit the beliefs of what was once a sect of Judaism. That sect branched off when they decided that Jesus Christ was their Messiah, then progressively became more open and split away from the rest of Judaism and became their own religion.
That might be a bit oversimplified, but that's really the gist of it. Jesus made a new covenant with god, which was meant to replace the old one, chronicled in the New Testament; but the old covenant was kept in as background, becoming the Old Testament.
the only "um akshually" I would even bother adding to this is that the Torah / Pentateuch is just the first five books of the Tanakh, which is the best / closest approximation of books that later became the Christian old testament. The Tanakh also includes the Prophets (Nevi'im), and the Writings (Ketuvim). There's also a few books in there that the council of Nicaea (the council of og old Catholic dudes who decided which books were true or not) chose not to include. Also relevant is the Septuagint which was the first translation from Hebrew into a mainstream language (which at the time was Koine Greek) which is relevant because that specific translation has had a profound effect on translations since, which really hammers in that concept of "a translation of a translation of a translation of-"
Because they exist for different audiences.
What works to keep people in line in prehistory is not the same as what works in ancient Rome, is not the same as works now.
Thats why all religions change over time, even if they like to say they don't.
Keep in mind that most likely the historical Jesus was just one of many apocalyptic preachers going around telling people that, within the lifetime of some present, God was going to come down and vanquish evil once and for all, so one had better be prepared and be on God's good side when this happened. (Incidentally, the Romans probably could not have cared less about this; it was when they got word that he was claiming to be an earthly king--which may have been how Judas actually betrayed him--that they got seriously pissed and executed him because they had a zero tolerance policy for that kind of thing.)
You can see imminent apocalypse theme in the epistles where John Paul writes that there is no real point making big life changes like getting married since the world is going to end any day; amusingly, when this did not happen, they needed to start coming up with alternative policies, and so other letters start to set down rules which thematically contradict the earlier letters, but it turns out that there are other things about these letters that make them different too so I'm many cases they are considered to be forgeries. (Obviously this is an oversimplification of the academic research!)
(Also, it's also worth noting that John Paul and the apostles had really different notions of what Jesus was all about, and part of the whole point of Acts is to paper over these differences and make it seem like they had all been past of one team all along.)
Finally, it is worth pointing out that there were a lot of texts floating around in the same genre as Revelation, so it was not all that unique and it almost did not make it's way into the Bible, but the Church Fathers thought incorrectly that the John who wrote it was the same as the author of the Gospel of John; if they had known that these were two different Johns, then the Left Behind series would never have been written (amount other consequences).
So in conclusion, be very wary of trying to read a lot of significance into the New Testament as a whole because it was not a unified document written with single purpose.
Edit: Gah! I wrote John above when I meant Paul. How embarrassing!
The old testament is essentially Judaism which is an ethnic religion. There is no marketing needed because it is a religion for a specific group of people from a theoretical single lineage. There is no need for God to be accepting or patient since the goal appears to be unify and keep people under control during times of great strife.
Christianity is a universal religion ie. it tries to create new followers. If you're a religion that is trying to grow your following, you need to have a message of openness and acceptance.
Going well beyond my competencies to answer, but I think a lot of it comes down to monotheism changing the nature of god.
Judaism thinks of itself as starting monotheism; and that is largely true. However, the old testament is still littered with vestiges of it's polytheistic origins.
If there are multiple God's, then those God's will come into conflict. That is simply the nature of human storytelling.
Looking at the old Testament, probably the most violent God has been was during exodus. In addition to freeing the Jews, he smite the Egyptians with 10 plagues, among which was the death of all firstborn sons.
For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD. (Exodus 12:12)
Note the polytheistic origins of this story. God is not merely intervening in the Earthly affairs of us lowly humans. The Jewish God is fighting with the Egyptian gods. He does not have the luxury of being nice and good. Even if he wins this fight without resorting to such drastic measures; he still needs to do so to act as a deterrent against other gods acting against him. That is not so much a specific tactical calculation in this case, but the way humans tend to imagine polytheistic gods working (reflective, of course, of the way human conflict tends to work).
It probably doesn't help that Yahweh was the god of War before becoming the only God.
By the time we get to the new testament, the situation is different. Beyond merely declaring that their god is the only God, the early Christians believed it, and had believed it for generations of storytelling. Their view of God had shed the vestiges of polytheism and morphed into what is truly possible under monotheism. God can be good because he lacks a peer rival. There is no narrative reason for God to be mean, because he can simply win any direct confrontation he faces.
We see similar dynamics play out in modern story telling. When we have vastly overpowered characters, the nature of the conflicts they get in us not fights. Perhaps they are trying to mediate between lesser parties. Perhaps they want to get something while respecting the rights and interests in weaker parties. A story where a vastly superior force wants something and just takes it is boring; so we don't tell it.
Not a particularly informed comment, but I always figured because people started getting scared of the Christian god, so they started turning towards other religions. As a consequence, the Christian church needed to figure out how to make Christianity a bit more approachable, so the new testament and forgiveness were created.
There were no Christian before Christ. They were Jews, as was Jesus.
Wow, this comment section... Yikes. Without getting deep in the weeds, testament means covenant. It was god's new agreement with man. In layman's terms, matthew 1:1 starts out like, "here's the deal man".
It was god’s new agreement with man
Um, isnt 'gawd' the boss? Cant he just make rules and a system that works and boom it happens?
Frankly instead of all this armchair biblical experts, its probably better to get answers from real experts like Justin from Deconstruction Zone.
Oh dude I just saw Justin on The Line last night with Forrest Valkai, dude seems to know the Bible like the back of his hand
No argument here. Literally. I have no dog in any respective race. Figuratively.
And I would imagine that the community "no stupid questions" is not intended to be a repository of questions exclusively for SME's. As I understand it is an open forum to ask unspecified questions judgement free. I would presume that since the question is judgement free, the responses should be too. But this comment section is seething with judgements that add very little to the conversation regarding the basic query from OP. So, thanks for the suggestion on Justin. I assume they have a lot to say and I'm sure others will find it invaluable. This is not something I have a significant interest in myself so I'll take your word for it. Thanks.
The Old Testament is a bunch of books, letters, poems, historical and legal documents. That when read tell the story of the Jews and their relationship with God and the world over a couple of thousand years. They reflect the culture in which they were written. Many of the documents were written during wars where the writer is convinced God is on their side. There are many prophesies especially in Isaiah which point to Jesus. So when Jesus arrives and fulfills the prophesies some of the Jews follow Jesus but many powerful leaders are awaiting a different, more normal king figure and they are comfortable as they are so choose not to follow. The New Testament is written in a time of relative stability during the longtime invasion by the romans. The writers of those letters and books, some of whom are eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. (Almost unique in historical documents) take a different stance to who God is. But they don’t all agree. Basically Bible means library.
A nitpick, none of the gospel writers were eyewitnesses, the documents were written long after Jesus was gone. They are interpretations of stories passed down, and all four gospels have different takes on events. So the phrase "gospel truth" is very ironic in its definition.
Jesus did not fulfill prophecy in any confirmable way, it seems like some of the contradictions between the scriptures exist because different authors made up new stories to attempt to have jesus fulfill prophecy.
Figuring out which, if any, of the gospel stories are true is an impossible task.
Full disclosure Im an atheist. The answer ive been given before is something along the lines of 'after jesus died and did his whole thing, part of the deal with jesus dying is now mankind and god enter into a "new testament" and now the new one supersedes the old one', but thats a very rough paraphrasing.
How any of this makes any sense is beyond me. God killed himself for himself to have himself stop hating us...?
How any of this makes any sense is beyond me
In religions nothing makes sense and thats the entire point. All religions are a basically a gullibility test, and they only want the ones who Fail that test to be in their cult. Its been like this for thousands of years.
Jesus was the OG Nigerian Prince!
There's a Jesus quote about specifically this. Here's the first search result.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17–18).
That's the convenient quote that conservatives can point to when they still want to enforce old testament shit. For instance, claiming to follow Leviticus when they're being homophobic, rather than going with their homeboy's forgiveness and loving the sinner.
Different guy
Different guy
Oh wait so now jeebus wasnt "god"? Wow nice post hoc rationalization you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it
It's like that Shaggy song, "It Wasn't Me"
If I had to guess, it's because they were written by different people at different times.
This is one of the reasons Gnosticism exists. In the gnostic interpretation the God of the old testament was the demiurge, while the snake is identified with God or Jesus.
Maybe because JC was a great guy and a lot of people believed in what he had to say. So, in order to benefit from his fame and gain the trust of his past and potential future followers, there was a gathering a hundred or so years after his death where they chose suitable accounts of his life to include in the book called the new testament. Accounts like the ones later found in the Nag Hammadhi texts and "gnostic gospels" were excluded because they undermined the authoritiy of the church and the power of priests to be the only ones to interpret the will of God.
PR mandated rebranding
The new testament is just as vile and filled with hate as the old one.
How so?
Behold a bunch of unrelated out of context quotes from the New Testament chained together to play into @ChetManly@lemmy.world 's fictional narrative
How about eternal torture for something as petty as non belief? Sounds pretty manipulative, insecure, and evil to me.
The simple answer is that the gospel wasn't working as well as it had been, so they had to change it up to continue attracting people. Cults are basically popularity contests, and you can't win if you're scaring everyone away.
He's very much not.
I mean, using Jesus to recontextualize the Old Testament God definitely misses the mark. Jesus was here on a mission of mercy to cross the boundary between the sinful ape and the rising angel, and to bring as many people along with him as he could.
But once you're grafted into the tree of Judaism through Christianity, you still have to abide by the rules of Judaism (with the exception that foods are no longer verboten or whatever).
Jesus was an incredibly stern man who was very rigid and inflexible on his views because he had the eternal viewpoint.
He refused to perform an exorcism for a Samaritan woman's daughter who was half Jewish because she wasn't full Jewish even though she was perfectly faithful until she made such a hue and cry that she publically shamed him into it.
He would snap at his own friends if they said the wrong thing or failed to understand something because he didn't effectively communicate it to them so that they would understand at the same level he did.
And I don't hold any of these actions against him, he was on what should be the most important mission in all of human history, right?
But the modern Christianity teachings of Christ where he's like buddy Jesus and he's just a happy-go-lucky, I love everyone peace, love, and harmony dude is absolutely not the way he's actually represented in the Bible by his closest followers.
It was not out of the realm of normalcy for him to do things like beating the fuck out of a temple full of salespeople.
But once again, the sheer stress of his every moment, the fact that if he told a lie, if he felt lust, envy, greed, selfishness, anything that even approximated a sin, it would destroy all of humanity, and himself in the process, must have been so stressful, that in a way, I believe it was a mercy that he died so young.
If Jesus had had to stick it out into his 80s, I don't know.
Maybe he would have fallen along the way.
It made sense to scare people into being reasonable. That was the Old Testament.
Once they acted less stupidly, it became safer to let people be as they are. That was the New Testament.
If you think the old testament rules are reasonable ones, I hope you are never in charge of any person, place, organisation or animal.
There are more than a few disrespectful answers here, but if any of these ppl talked to someone who honestly believed, they'd be more inclined to tell you to investigate the new covenant
Am a Christian atheist ftr--just feels bad to see so many accept convenient lies over the honest truths of a worthwhile series of stories (wether they factually happened is of little to no value in the pursuit of truth, no?)
God is not about forgiveness and such in the New Testament. That’s a retcon by later Christians to make it more palatable.
He preached violence:
Matthew 10:34: Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
He was just as happy to send people to hell:
Matthew 13:41-42: The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Every single horrible decree in the Old Testament still applies in the new (despite modern Christians trying to redefine what ‘fulfil’ means):
Matthew 5:17-18: Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
That’s last one includes all the slavery, rape, genocide, etc. Jesus could have spoken out against those things, but instead he said all those judgements were just and should be continued.
Matthew 10:21: And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.
Pretty violent, and not very loving.
And let’s not forget the revelations, in which Jesus will doom billions of people to a horrific existence followed by eternal hellfire, not for doing wrong things, but merely for not being devoted to him. Even the devout and righteous of other religions, and even babies who haven’t had the chance to sin.
Remember, Jesus is the same god as in the Old Testament – if god is eternal and unchanging (which the Bible says he is), he is literally the same entity who committed atrocities before he decided to wear human skin and sacrifice himself to himself.
This is not a loving god.
The old testament was all about acting a certain way and laws, laws, laws. The new testament says just try your best to love and respect each other. In theory anyways. Humans be humaning though and human nature trumps religion every time.
Because Yahweh was originally a lesser Canaanite deity of war and destructive storms, while his counterpart, Baal, was all about gentle restorative rains. Part of that population moved around, and took him to be their primary deity when they broke off. He eventually merged with El.
Then that shit for further rehashed a few millennia later to soften his image.
Because it's all fake and the authors changed.
God a bitch
It depends where you read. There is fire and brimstone in the new testament. Revelation is a book that doesn't hold back and we see a wrothful God of judgment. But then there stories of Josiph and his brothers, or the book of Daniel, shows that there is forgivness in the old testament as well.
In the gnostic belief it is just two different gods.
Old Testament -> young people behavior.
New Testament -> old people behaviour.
( yeah I know there are exceptions )
Read again keeping that in mind. Read news to look for allegory. People don't change at all.
Actually if you read the book of revelations jesus sends the whole planet to hell except 7 cities that he told people to go to. he really lays into the sinners.
The reason is because those texts are much older, and that was the style of religion practiced back then. Most God stories and stories about Gods in that period were like it. Most city states and tribal states had their own Gods that reflected them, and conflicts were gravely exaggerated. Also literally everything that happened in that state were an attribute or reflection of that particular God. With stories of how that attribute came to be, which reflected back in the people and in that way religion was a complex social interaction.
The people who wrote the stories we now know as the old Testament didnt write them as a part of a bible. These were stories of people who were taken out of their states and captured. Forced to live outside their land, but they took their God with them. Who became this omnipresent God that would lead people back to a promised land. Including all the complex social interaction people had with their mostly oral religious stories and traditions.
And it's the continued tradition that lead to the formation of religious scholarship and the idea that Gods could be of the earth and not just of a state. Which brought about new thoughts, new traditions, new religious complexity written down in the New Testament. Which lead to the desire to make religious books encapsulating all of religious thought.
And only much later came literalism, the mistake to take everything in the Bible literal. which sparked the formation of atheism as we know it today.
Not the same gods, not the same authors, written at completely different times, and written in the context of completely different cultures.
its almost like the whole thing is an amalgam of thousands of texts edited and repurposed across thousands of years by human beings with various motivations.
The religion of the Israelites wasn't even monotheistic at first. Yahweh was one of many gods.
And Christianity isn't technically monotheistic either, as it has the trinity of God, Christ, and the Spooky Spirit... errrm... I mean Holy Ghost.
Also, he was a war god.
The book of Job is literally written in different parts in entirely different dialects that were spoken hundreds of years apart. The opening and ending is from the older dialect, and written much like a folktale. The middle is newer and written much more like an epic poem.
Even the a single book of the Bible comes from numerous sources.
Not just single books. Single chapters.
And yet they persist, so it's almost like it's not quite that simple either, eh? Funny how the devil stays in the details, no matter which side you lean
absolutely correct. humans have been scamming humans since inception, and the best methods last the longest.
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