The Old Testament kicks ass

aneeshm

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It seriously does.

Whenever I've come across Christian ethics in modern culture, they've struck me as particularly insipid and pathetic.

However, a few days back I resumed by reading of the NIV Bible, Old Testament, and it's a very refreshing change. War, murder, rape, killing thousands with donkey jaws, mutilating hundreds of penises, genocide, prostitution, drunken incest, treachery, it's got it all.

What I like is the complete unselfconsciousness displayed by the authors. No moralistic BS. God is Isarel's pimp, Israel his beach, and that's very very clear. Israel prostitutes herself to Baal and Asherah, God delivers Israel into the hands of her enemies. Israel is the faithful to the LORD, the LORD provides. It's a very clear relationship, no moralising, no preaching, no nothing.

Who else likes the OT far better than the later "love they brother" and "mercy" and other boring-to-death stuff?
 
It seriously does.

Whenever I've come across Christian ethics in modern culture, they've struck me as particularly insipid and pathetic.

However, a few days back I resumed by reading of the NIV Bible, Old Testament, and it's a very refreshing change. War, murder, rape, killing thousands with donkey jaws, mutilating hundreds of penises, genocide, prostitution, drunken incest, treachery, it's got it all.

What I like is the complete unselfconsciousness displayed by the authors. No moralistic BS. God is Isarel's pimp, Israel his beach, and that's very very clear. Israel prostitutes herself to Baal and Asherah, God delivers Israel into the hands of her enemies. Israel is the faithful to the LORD, the LORD provides. It's a very clear relationship, no moralising, no preaching, no nothing.

Who else likes the OT far better than the later "love they brother" and "mercy" and other boring-to-death stuff?
I prefer the OT over the NT for various reasons. Although reading the NT (especially the gospels) is more challenging since it's written in a code and cracking that code is fun in itself.
 
Hehe yeah that's Judaism for ya. :D
 
The OT is a great fiction read. A good rewriting of it in a more palatable writing style would do it wonders.
 
The OT is a great fiction read. A good rewriting of it in a more palatable writing style would do it wonders.

I agree with skadistic ! As a fiction story it is far more interesting than NT. Evil God Kicks us for plot development of minor episodes of it.
 
It seriously does.

Whenever I've come across Christian ethics in modern culture, they've struck me as particularly insipid and pathetic.

However, a few days back I resumed by reading of the NIV Bible, Old Testament, and it's a very refreshing change. War, murder, rape, killing thousands with donkey jaws, mutilating hundreds of penises, genocide, prostitution, drunken incest, treachery, it's got it all.

What I like is the complete unselfconsciousness displayed by the authors. No moralistic BS. God is Isarel's pimp, Israel his beach, and that's very very clear. Israel prostitutes herself to Baal and Asherah, God delivers Israel into the hands of her enemies. Israel is the faithful to the LORD, the LORD provides. It's a very clear relationship, no moralising, no preaching, no nothing.

Who else likes the OT far better than the later "love they brother" and "mercy" and other boring-to-death stuff?
It's a pretty good novel, but that's about it.
 
Oh you guys trying to offend the Christians on the board. :D
 
It seriously does.

Whenever I've come across Christian ethics in modern culture, they've struck me as particularly insipid and pathetic.

However, a few days back I resumed by reading of the NIV Bible, Old Testament, and it's a very refreshing change. War, murder, rape, killing thousands with donkey jaws, mutilating hundreds of penises, genocide, prostitution, drunken incest, treachery, it's got it all.

What I like is the complete unselfconsciousness displayed by the authors. No moralistic BS. God is Isarel's pimp, Israel his beach, and that's very very clear. Israel prostitutes herself to Baal and Asherah, God delivers Israel into the hands of her enemies. Israel is the faithful to the LORD, the LORD provides. It's a very clear relationship, no moralising, no preaching, no nothing.

Who else likes the OT far better than the later "love they brother" and "mercy" and other boring-to-death stuff?

the story content itself is good, but the writing style is pretty dry, repetitive and boring. don't forget there are lots of tedious sections (numbers and leviticus come to mind) which contain boring details, genealogies, specifications for how to build the temple, etc.

i agree, a rewrite would be good.
 
There's a list of here the best parts of the Bible. Check it out the link has cool pics too:

http://www.cracked.com/article_15699_9-most-badass-bible-verses.html

The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses
By David Wong, Owen Ball
article image

If the Bible had been written by King Leonidas and the rest of the Spartans from 300, it would probably read pretty much the same as it does now.

It turns out, the Bible is already chock full of ass kicking. Here are the verses that make us want to take to the streets and put some unbelievers to the sword.
#9.
Exodus 2:11-12

Sure, Moses was a great leader, an emancipator of his people and a prophet. Most people don't know that he also was the Biblical equivalent of Splinter Cell's Sam Fisher--a well-honed killing machine, able to slay from the shadows without pity or remorse. Martin Luther King may have had a dream, but Moses had a body count.

You can almost picture the scene: An Egyptian soldier is wailing on a hapless Hebrew when Moses, clothed in head-to- toe black, drops down from the ceiling. Moving with cat-like grace, he sneaks up behind the soldier and, taking his head in his hands, snaps the man's neck with one savage twist. As the lifeless body slumps to the ground, Moses lights up a cigar. "Well," he quips, "looks like someone bit off more than he could Jew."


Moses, seen here, is about to murder the hell out of an unsuspecting Egyptian.

Moses later defeated the Egyptian Pharaoh, who, if we remember correctly, had been using Hebrew slaves to construct a 40-foot-high armored battle suit capable of launching nuclear missiles to anywhere in the world.
#8.
II Kings 2:23-24

We've all been there. You're walking along, minding your own business, when a gang of cocky, young bastards start hurling abuse at you. Most of us would just keep walking, or maybe, yell some insults back or flip them the bird. Elisha (commonly regarded as the Luke Skywalker to the Prophet Elijah's Obi-Wan Kenobi), however, decides to take it one step further. Invoking the name of God, he summons mother. .. .. .. .ing bears to come and claw the . .. .. .. . out of them.

Christians are constantly asking for prayer in schools to help get today's kids in line, but we beg to differ. We need bears in schools. If every teacher had the power to summon a pair of child-maiming grizzly avengers, you can bet that schoolchildren nowadays would be the most well-behaved, polite children, ever. It's a simple choice: listen to the biology lesson, or get first-hand knowledge of the digestive system of Ursus horribilis.


Every year in Israel, divine-bear attacks kill over 500 children.

It should be pointed out that even after his death, Elisha continued to kick ass. II Kings 13:20-21 tells us that when a dead body was thrown into his tomb and touched Elisha's bones, it sprang back to life. It's unknown whether Elisha had this power in life, as well as death, but we like to think he did and that he had the habit of killing his victims with bears, resurrecting them, and then promptly re-summoning the bears to kill them, again. He'd just repeat the whole thing over and over until he got bored.
#7.
Ezekiel 23:19-20

Contrary to what you may think, the Bible has never shied away from talking about sex. In fact, the entire Song of Solomon is dedicated to describing a couple getting it on, complete with lines like "I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers". This verse is particularly explicit, though, informing us that Egyptians are hung like farmyard animals, and can ejaculate in quantities to rival the annual flooding of the Nile.

Keep in mind, the Egyptians were the Jews' former slave masters and are the bad guys in this story. So, you know their reputation for supreme endowment was well earned when the worst their enemies could say was, "Go on! Go back to those big-cocked bastards! I hope you're happy with their enormous dongs."

The old Egyptians didn't exactly run from their reputation. Egyptian ruins are littered with statues like the one on the right (this one is Min, the god of huge dong-having). They even invented the phallic obelisk to advertise it (picture the Washington Monument, that's an obelisk). That was their statement to the world: "Gaze upon our dick tower and despair."

This passage creates a problem for many new Bible readers. Once you've read this, it is impossible to go back and read the above story of Moses killing the Egyptian guy the same way. When it speaks of the Egyptian beating the Hebrew slave, you have no choice but to imagine him turkey slapping the man. If anything, however, it makes Moses' deadly intervention all the more justified.

#6.
Judges 3:16-23

They say that history repeats itself, and this verse illustrates that clearly. Our hero Ehud came up with the idea of concealing a weapon by strapping it to his body several thousand years before John McClane did in Die Hard.

Instead of strapping it to his back, Ehud chose to tie it to his thigh. One wonders why the royal guards didn't comment when they frisked Elud and felt 18 inches of rigid steel in his pants. Maybe, they just assumed he was Egyptian.

After bypassing the tight security, Ehud continues to act like a Bruce Willis character by busting out a snappy one liner: "I have a message from God for you," he declares shortly before whipping out his blade and shanking the evil, grotesquely obese King Eglon in the belly.

Really, the only way to improve on this would be by shoehorning an awful pun into it, such as "You should really cut down on your fat intake!" or "Looks like being king takes guts!" As he leaves, Ehud shows he hasn't forgotten his good manners by considerately shutting the door behind him. It doesn't say if he went flying across rooftops Assassin's Creed-style, so we're forced to assume he did.

As bad as the delivery of that particular message from God went for Eglon, he got off lucky. As you'll see, God sometimes delivers the message himself.
#5.
Numbers 16:23, 31-33

The above happened years after Moses killed the Egyptian guy and led a country's worth of Hebrews into the desert where they wandered aimlessly for several decades (as seen in The Ten Commandments). At some point, a troublemaker named Korah and 250 supporters banded together and aired a series of complaints about the fact that they were wandering aimlessly in the desert.

God listened carefully to their complaints, weighed their points, then made the earth eat them alive. The text does not make it clear whether or not the earth made that "OM NOM NOM" sound, so scholars are forced to speculate.

This really puts things in perspective for the anti-religion critics. They can complain all they want about religious "intolerance" and pushy evangelicals trying to censor TV and annoy people into conversion. But, that's a hell of an improvement over the situation during the Exodus, when God would feed nonbelievers to the mighty Sarlacc.

Two verses later, God sends down a ball of fire and incinerates the other 250 rebels. You have to imagine there was a moment of tentative relief when the 250 rebels saw that they had not been swallowed up along with Korah. "Yeah," they probably said. "Thank you! We were just about to bury that . .. .. .. .. .. .. . ourselves! Fortunately, we all have learned the error of our rebellious ways and--hey, what's that ... AAARRRGGGHHH! FIRE!!"
#4.
Deuteronomy 25:11-12

This is a man's law, right here. When Conan became king at the end of Conan the Destroyer, you can bet he made sure there was a rule just like this his first day in office. "Ladies, we respect your right to resolve disputes in whatever manner you feel necessary for the situation. But, DO NOT GRAB THE JUNK."

The words in the Bible are actually those of God, speaking to the Hebrews and taking time to add the junk-grab rule into the supplemental commandments that didn't make it into the original 10. This had to be right after God realized his plan for a male-dominated society had a fatal flaw, which is that the women could prevail in any conflict simply by grabbing the men's junk.

Now, you nervous, liberal types are complaining that this is barbaric and misogynistic. Perhaps, a little context helps. Just a couple of pages earlier, in Deuteronomy 23:1, we get this:

"Emasculated by crushing?" Gah! Everything in the Bible has to be understood in context of the times these people were living in. And, apparently, these people lived in a time when "crushing" the nuts was so common that the crushed-nuts victims were an entire demographic that had to be accounted for in the law. Call these commandments savage if you want, but if you were God, how many nuts would you have to see "crushed" before you overreacted? We're thinking the answer is two.

Of course, if you're not a believer and don't think this "grab the nuts, lose a hand" commandment is from the almighty at all, then it becomes obvious what happened: The rule was handed down by some angry clergyman within the first minute or so of having his junk crushed. All perspective tends to go out the window at that moment.

#3.
Quote from: 1 Kings 18:24,38-40

That is how they used to do religious debates back in the day.

The situation was that people of Israel had taken to Baal worship, a faith that added a lot of whores to its rituals and thus gained immediate popularity. Elijah (not the one with the bears, that was Elisha) decided that the people had to choose between Baal and God.

Rather than write a series of books or give a bunch of boring speeches, Elijah invited 450 Baal prophets to a contest, where both sides would set up an animal sacrifice. Whichever God could rain down fire on its sacrifice would be the one everybody worshiped.

It's brilliant in its simplicity, and we're surprised religious debates were ever carried out any other way after that. You can raise all the intellectual challenges you want about faith and the origins of the universe, but at the end of the day, you have to worship the god who can set you on fire. It's common sense.

We like to think Elijah stood in front of the howling column of heavenly fire, straightened his robes, turned to the crowd and said, "Thus, my opponent's argument falls." Then, he finished the debate in the way that all debates should be finished: by having the losers slaughtered.
#2.
Judges 15:15-16

Samson could have dominated this list if we had let him. He was a sort of biblical superhero, who could basically call down the powers of the Lord to turn himself into a hurricane of ass kicking.

His whole story involves a feud with the Philistines, people who lived in part of what is now Israel and embraced the long tradition of going to war with the Jews. Or, specifically, the Philistines went to war against just Samson. And, they pretty much lost.

On this particular day, the Philistines had burned Samson's wife to death, and sent some men to capture him. Specifically, they sent 3,000 men. So, at that point, Samson either had the reputation as a world-class badass, or the Philistine army was the equivalent of those horsehockey battle droids from the Star Wars prequels that could only kill an enemy soldier by crushing him under a pile of their own corpses.

Either way, they didn't send enough. Samson tore apart the skull of a nearby dead donkey and grabbed one of these:

... Then killed a thousand men with it. A thousand.

What should be emphasized in this story was the bravery of the Philistine soldiers, specifically the ones in the back who kept charging even after seeing 700 or so of their comrades go down with shattered skulls. We're talking about guys who probably climbed over a pile of bodies 15-feet high to get to him.

If this story seems improbable, you can always claim mistranslation (for instance, in some versions of the story it's 20 Philistines instead of a thousand). We like to think they merely made the mistake of confusing a donkey's jawbone with that of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Or, perhaps "donkey's jawbone" was mistranslated from the original Hebrew word for "minigun."

Runners up for this spot on the list included Josheb-Basshebeth, who according to 2 Samuel 23:8, "... raised his spear against eight hundred men, whom he killed in one encounter." Obviously he lost points for killing fewer men and for using an actual weapon to do it, which almost seems like cheating at this point.

There was also Anath in Judges 3:31, who "struck down six hundred philistines with an oxgoad." An oxgoad is a sharp stick you used to poke oxen. That started the Israeli tradition of killing large numbers of their enemies with farmyard tools, which continued through Samson and onto modern times, where the Six Day War of 1967 was won by a crippled Israeli peasant wielding a watering can.

Either way, the Philistines almost certainly remembered Samson as the worst thing that ever happened to them.
#1.
1 Samuel 18:25-27

... until David came along.

This passage raises several thousand questions. Just off the top of our head:

What did Saul (the king at the time) want with 100 foreskins? Was he going to make a scarf?

Did David think this was a strange request?

If this was secretly a plan to have David killed, why didn't he require he bring back, say, 100 bear foreskins?

Did David just wander into Philistia and kill the first 200 men he saw? Did they think this was odd? Or, with all the other . .. .. .. . that went down back then, did they just shrug it off?

How do you forcefully circumcise 200 men without violating the "Don't grab the junk" commandment from earlier?

Whose job was it to count the foreskins after David came back? Do they make a pair of tongs long enough for that task?

We're guessing we'll never know. It doesn't matter, because at its heart, this story is about love. For the hand of Micah, David went further than any man would have gone. Way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way further.

Ladies, when a man finally proposes to you, ask him one simple question: "How many dongs would you mutilate for me?" If you demand a hundred and he doesn't blink, he's a keeper. But, if he's David, who was sent after a hundred and then came back with twice that many just for the hell of it, well, you've got a love for the ages.
 
I find the OT is primarily a setting for the NT. Figure that the OT is about 400 years older than the NT and probably comes from precursor materials even older, so it's easily a more primitive, more violent time.

Personally, I find large tracts of both sections to be highly repetitive and poorly written. I think the problem with the NT is that the story quality is lacking, the only really good narratives are Paul and Revelations. The OT has a couple of good adventure tales by comparison, like Ruth, and miscellaneous excerpts (Joseph, etc..).

From an ethics perspective, some of the OT is about ethical law and punishments for those not keeping with the law, but mostly amounts to Just So stories and history of the people. The NT is mostly an ethical criticism of a society that isn't particularly written up; You can only infer what life was like during the NT, or go to outside sources like Josephus.

So I have to say it's apples and oranges.

Who else likes the OT far better than the later "love they brother" and "mercy" and other boring-to-death stuff?
 
Lamech lays down the first violent rap in Genesis 4:

"Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
wives of Lamech, hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for injuring me.

If Cain is avenged seven times,
then Lamech seventy-seven times."
 
Y'all should read the Brick Testament. It helpfully skips most of the non-violent bits and provides state-of-the-art graphics.

Edit: I should point out that there are some real gems in the NT section. Love and forgiveness are crueler than you think.
 
The Old Testament kicks ass
Yes, it does!
I'm from the chosen people :trophy:
Well, I must say (as a survivor of many Bible lessons in school) that not all of the bible is interesting and it has a very large part were it has rules of Judaism and it has many fables that you will probably won't understand...
 
Hehe yeah that's Judaism for ya. :D

So here's the deal. Even though I know you are not serious, I'm going to reply mostly seriously to this post. and...go!

First of all, you kinda just failed as we speak. The Jews do NOT in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM believe in the OLD TESTAMENT. that is a CHRISTIAN creation that is BASED on the Torah, much as a movie adaptation can be based on the books. The OT is based on the Torah, or Pentateuch, but they are different.

As an example, the ten commandments are different between Judaism, Anglicanism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy. I don;t understand how anyone can take a commandment, remove some text, and now all of a sudden it is perfectly okay to make pictures of god. or as well, the fact that they believe that sunday is the sabbath, and that is because of Jesus' resurrection, but as the sabbath is on SUNDAY not SATURDAY, then all the many restrictions on observing the sabbath disappear for them.

Deuterocanon
Tobit · Judith · 1 Maccabees · 2 Maccabees · Wisdom (of Solomon) · Sirach · Baruch · Letter of Jeremiah · Additions to Daniel · Additions to Esther
Greek and Slavonic Orthodox canon
1 Esdras · 3 Maccabees · Prayer of Manasseh · Psalm 151
Georgian Orthodox canon
4 Maccabees · 2 Esdras
Ethiopian Orthodox "narrow" canon
Apocalypse of Ezra · Jubilees · Enoch · 1–3 Meqabyan · 4 Baruch
Syriac Pehorsehockyta
Psalms 152–155 · 2 Baruch · Letter of Baruch

NONE OF THOSE APPEAR IN THE TANAKH, YET APPARENTLY THEY ARE PART OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

Now on to debunking part of the OP:

NOTE: this is NOT trying to say that the things that you said were 'cool' didn't happen. However, this is giving you the other side as well.

ואהבת לרעך כמוך
Ve'ahavta Le'Reacha K'mocha. The basic tenet of judaism, love your neighbour as yourself.

and now for a short story:

Rabbi Shammai was an engineer, known for the strictness of his views. The Talmud tells that a gentile came to Shammai saying that he would convert to Judaism if Shammai could teach him the whole Torah in the time that he could stand on one foot. Shammai drove him away with a builder's measuring stick! Hillel, on the other hand, converted the gentile by telling him, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it."

however, all the things you say happened (rape, murder, more murder, more murder, attempted genocide, incest, drunken incest, prostitution, etc.) does all occur. the point of this is that the other things were in the Tanakh as well, not simply the "cool" things, and that the OT and Tanakh are not the same.

EDIT:

Yes, it does!
I'm from the chosen people :trophy:
Well, I must say (as a survivor of many Bible lessons in school) that not all of the bible is interesting and it has a very large part were it has rules of Judaism and it has many fables that you will probably won't understand...

As a survivor of YEARS of jewish school, I COMPLETELY endorse this message :thumbsup:. the torah is REALLY REALLY boring, especially Vayikra. Berehorsehocky is about the beginnings to the forefathers, which is all stories to teach morals. Shmot is about being slaves, plagues, and leaving Egypt, becoming a nation and a people, and getting punished (a lot) for disobeying god (a lot). Vayikra is LAWS, LAWS, AND MORE LAWS, and there are is are books (the talmud), which contains books of commentary (gemara) about books of commentary (mishna) based on the Torah. and most of it is based on vayikra. its boring as ****. Bamidbar is about how things are going in the desert, more nation-forging, sending out spies, lies, rebellions, lashon hara, tzara’at (leprosy), and more. Dvarim is about RETELLING THE STORIES ALL OVER AGAIN!!! WHY??? I JUST READ THEM ALL!

so trust me, it isnt all interesting.
 
Ezekiel 23:19-20 is showing how whorism is a long standing tradition. It takes a good prostitute to enjoy the massive ejaculations of her clients.
 
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