Was the Passover more acceptable than UN sanctions?

[holy king]

There has always been death on both sides, even in sanctions. Sanctions did not stop 9/11.

well, the sanctions didnt stop el nino either, but what's your point?

 

[ParkCungHee]

It's pretty clear that the ancient jews murdered all those children of their oppressors and then blamed it on god. That was a despicable act of terrorism, although in those times no one played nice.

It never ceases to amaze me that when people try to remove the supernatural from the bible, they consistently come up with something more improbable, contrary to physical evidence and absurd then any of the supernatural elements.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

@tim. No.

 

[timtofly]

It's pretty clear that the ancient jews murdered all those children of their oppressors and then blamed it on god. That was a despicable act of terrorism, although in those times no one played nice.
The UN sanctions on the other hand were not designed or intended to kill children. After all, Saddam could have diverted money from polishing his gold furniture to improving the infrastructure, but instead he chose to let his people suffer and blame the foreigners for it.

So, by modern standards the UN sanctions are definitely more acceptable than Passover, which was essentially an act of terrorism.
Although, back in those days killing children was probably no biggie.

It never ceases to amaze me that when people try to remove the supernatural from the bible, they consistently come up with something more improbable, contrary to physical evidence and absurd then any of the supernatural elements.

Not only the supernatural, but how many firstborn were babies, children, teenagers, adults with their own 1st borns. I am a firstborn and I have a firstborn. Egypt took a bigger hit, than loosing a couple of babies.

Historically speaking would such a hit have left a mark in Egyptian society?

well, the sanctions didnt stop el nino either, but what's your point?

On a global scale, sanctions do not work period.

 

[Aroddo]

It never ceases to amaze me that when people try to remove the supernatural from the bible, they consistently come up with something more improbable, contrary to physical evidence and absurd then any of the supernatural elements.

Er, how is God strolling down to kill babies more probable than a fringe group of an oppressed tribe deciding to terrorize their oppressors?
Furthermore, since the Israelis and not the Egyptians wrote that particular historic account of what happened, there is no reason to believe that the Israelis beefed up certain details of the story.

They probably only killed a couple of dozen kids and later wrote down that God murdered every firstborn in the whole of Egypt.
Propaganda was the most fundamental part of leadership and religion since the invention of speech.


Btw, how strange is it to celebrate mass-murder (by god or not) as one of your holy days?

 

[timtofly]

Er, how is God strolling down to kill babies more probable than a fringe group of an oppressed tribe deciding to terrorize their oppressors?
Furthermore, since the Israelis and not the Egyptians wrote that particular historic account of what happened, there is no reason to believe that the Israelis beefed up certain details of the story.

They probably only killed a couple of dozen kids and later wrote down that God murdered every firstborn in the whole of Egypt.
Propaganda was the most fundamental part of leadership and religion since the invention of speech.


Btw, how strange is it to celebrate mass-murder (by god or not) as one of your holy days?

It is even stranger to do it every year for almost 2000 years, if it were based on a lie. Maybe it effected them more profoundly than it did the Egyptians, not because the Egyptians died, but the Israelites survived? They could not even muster a defence, how is one expected to believe that they went around and attempted to figure out who the firstborn were to kill even a few babies, children, teenagers, adults?

Most struggling nations of that age would revel in their prowess as defeating another nation. Why would they paint themselves as cowards leaving Egypt and cowards fighting for Canaan, if it were a lie? People cannot be that humble can they?

 

[Maimonides]

Btw, how strange is it to celebrate mass-murder (by god or not) as one of your holy days?

It is even stranger to do it every year for almost 2000 years,

We do not celebrate any of the ten plagues, least of all the death of the firstborn.

 

[timtofly]

We do not celebrate any of the ten plagues, least of all the death of the firstborn.

I said that it would be strange if it were based on a lie.

I stand corrected if it led one to infer that the killing was being celebrated.

I do not believe that the Hebrews did any killing, but that the Passover was the reason to celebrate.

 

[Maimonides]

I said that it would be strange if it were based on a lie.

I stand corrected if it led one to infer that the killing was being celebrated.

I apologize. In hindsight I shouldn't have included the quote from you as I was mainly replying to Aroddo's comment.

I do not believe that the Hebrews did any killing, but that the Passover was the reason to celebrate.

That & other things like freedom from slavery, the Torah, etc.

Aroddo has a habit of mischaracterizing Judaism. I usually try to ignore that stuff when I see it here, but had to repudiate his claim that we celebrate infanticide which is ridiculous.

 

[timtofly]

I apologize. In hindsight I shouldn't have included the quote from you as I was mainly replying to Aroddo's comment.



That & other things like freedom from slavery, the Torah, etc.

Aroddo has a habit of mischaracterizing Judaism. I usually try to ignore that stuff when I see it here, but had to repudiate his claim that we celebrate infanticide which is ridiculous.

Why is it that the firstborn = baby any ways? That would mean that every Egyptian family only had one baby at the time of the Exodus. That would be a miracle just to set that up.

 

[Maimonides]

Why is it that the firstborn = baby any ways? That would mean that every Egyptian family only had one baby at the time of the Exodus. That would be a miracle just to set that up.

Again, my mistake. "Infanticide" was the wrong word to use. A firstborn could be any age. I guess I think of it that way because the thought of children being killed is worse than adults.

This line of discussion deviates a bit from the thread's purpose & I don't wanna be a derailer so let's agree to leave it at that.

 

[Agent327]

It is even stranger to do it every year for almost 2000 years, if it were based on a lie. Maybe it effected them more profoundly than it did the Egyptians, not because the Egyptians died, but the Israelites survived? They could not even muster a defence, how is one expected to believe that they went around and attempted to figure out who the firstborn were to kill even a few babies, children, teenagers, adults?

Most struggling nations of that age would revel in their prowess as defeating another nation. Why would they paint themselves as cowards leaving Egypt and cowards fighting for Canaan, if it were a lie? People cannot be that humble can they?

I don´t know about that, but

We do not celebrate any of the ten plagues, least of all the death of the firstborn.

It is interesting to note two things: in Exodus the whole of Egypt is struck by 10 plagues, because the Israelites are being oppressed by (unnamed) pharao.° So apparently pharao conquering the lands of the Israelites wasn´t oppressive, only the treatment after. But if the Israelites were conquered, they would have been slaves (war captives), making them no different from any other ancient people being conquered. Now it is generally impossible to make an entire population war captive, but apparently this is what happened to the Israelites, as they had no land of their own at the time of the 10 plagues. Curiously, it is also mentioned, that the reason for the oppression is that the Israelites were ´more numerous´ than the Egyptians. Nevertheless, these 10 plagues went totally unnoticed by the Egyptian chronicles. In conclusion, there´s definitely some embroidering in the Exodus story - which, again, isn´t surprising, as it was written down hundreds of years after the events.

Secondly, the combined effects of the 10 plagues would have been far worse than any UN sanctions.

About the only difference, I can see, between El_Machinae's comparison is that there were no "repressed" people trying to leave Iraq. As history has shown things got worse after Saddam left the scene.

Actually, refugees were leaving Iraq both during and after Hussein´s regime - which, by the way, did far worse things than raise mortality rates in those under 5 years old.

° The building of Ramesses of Pithom mentioned (apparently Israelites got a thorough training in masonry while in Egypt) would make the unnamed pharao identical to Ramesses II, who indeed survived his firstborn, but no plagues striking Egypt are mentioned. In fact, Egypt did rather well under his reign.

 

[Mise]

In the Bible story, the Egyptians are being ruled by their unelected king. The king has shown a level of brutality against civilians that warrants that he enact political reforms. In order to pressure the king, the external force decides to kill all the firstborn Egyptians as a way of showing that the external force means business. Whether this is designed to impress, to pressure, or to guilt the king is not too clear.

In the modern day, Iraq was being ruled by a tyrant backed by military force. The tyrant had used unacceptable levels of brutality against civilians, and so the UN used sanctions in order to enact political reform. The side-effect of these sanctions was a skyrocketing of the under-5 childhood deaths. The way these sanctions were intended to pressure Hussein are not entirely clear, but there're a multitude of possibilities.

In both cases, the anti-civilian pressures were followed by a decisive military defeat.

So, which of those two scenarios do you find more acceptable? Which are you less horrified by? Now, 'both' is not an acceptable answer, because you've been hearing about both of these stories for a long time, and I think that you (at least) implicitly more accepting of one event than the other.

I find the general idea of UN sanctions more acceptable than an equivalent action by God, ceteris paribus, because the UN is accountable to the people, whereas God is not. The UN has a degree of democratic legitimacy that God lacks.

In this particular comparison, I find the UN's actions more acceptable than God's, because God deliberately killed each and every first-born Egyptian. God's express intent was to kill every single first-born Egyptian, man, woman or child. The UN sanctions, on the other hand, were not intended to cause any deaths at all; any death that arose was an accident. The UN would have preferred those deaths not to have occurred at all. So by the doctrine of double effect, God's actions were more morally wrong than the UN's.

 

[Aroddo]

I apologize. In hindsight I shouldn't have included the quote from you as I was mainly replying to Aroddo's comment.



That & other things like freedom from slavery, the Torah, etc.

Aroddo has a habit of mischaracterizing Judaism. I usually try to ignore that stuff when I see it here, but had to repudiate his claim that we celebrate infanticide which is ridiculous.

oh, sorry, i completely missed the fact that firstborn can mean people of any age. so that means the actual bodycount was even higher.

anyway, what DOES judaism celebrate on passover if not the ten plagues? Only the tenth plague, then? Since "The spirit of the Lord" passes over the marked homes of the israelite slaves (hence the name passover) I simply assumed that that's exactly what gets celebrated.

If your folks simply wanted to celebrate the exodus from egypt, then you could have named your festival Exodus or The Great Escape or something.

 

[classical_hero]

Er, how is God strolling down to kill babies more probable than a fringe group of an oppressed tribe deciding to terrorize their oppressors?
Furthermore, since the Israelis and not the Egyptians wrote that particular historic account of what happened, there is no reason to believe that the Israelis beefed up certain details of the story.

They probably only killed a couple of dozen kids and later wrote down that God murdered every firstborn in the whole of Egypt.
Propaganda was the most fundamental part of leadership and religion since the invention of speech.


Btw, how strange is it to celebrate mass-murder (by god or not) as one of your holy days?

All the Egyptians had to do was follow what the Israelites were doing. God warned Pharaoh 9 times before this that bad things would happen if they did not release the Jews. The simple remedy for stopping this would have been to release the Jews and no one would have died. But considering the intransigence of the Pharaoh that he caused suffering on the whole nation. The simple thing was to have the blood of a sacrifice that covered them. "When I see the blood I will pass." This is clearly a picture of what Christ does for the believer. Everyone is under God's wrath and at any time he is ready to execute his wrath. God specifically tells Moses that he is bringing judgement to the nation and to the Gods of Egypt. The killing of the firstborn male of every house is a very telling judgement since the firstborn male was dedicated to the various gods in Egypt. God was sending a message that if you put your trust in false gods then you will suffer. If the gods were real then they would be able to protect them, but they did not. But you would have thought that such a terrible tragedy would wake up the Pharaoh, but he did not, since he tried to recapture the Israelites later on, so clearly the message did not get through.

So just like the Israelites we need to be under the blood so that God's wrath will not come to us. 1 Corinthians 5:7 tells us that Christ is our passover. But just like the Egyptians, those who do not put their trust in Christ will suffer from God's wrath.

 

[Puck Nutty]

All the Egyptians had to do was follow what the Israelites were doing. God warned Pharaoh 9 times before this that bad things would happen if they did not release the Jews. The simple remedy for stopping this would have been to release the Jews and no one would have died. But considering the intransigence of the Pharaoh that he caused suffering on the whole nation. The simple thing was to have the blood of a sacrifice that covered them. "When I see the blood I will pass." This is clearly a picture of what Christ does for the believer. Everyone is under God's wrath and at any time he is ready to execute his wrath. God specifically tells Moses that he is bringing judgement to the nation and to the Gods of Egypt. The killing of the firstborn male of every house is a very telling judgement since the firstborn male was dedicated to the various gods in Egypt. God was sending a message that if you put your trust in false gods then you will suffer. If the gods were real then they would be able to protect them, but they did not. But you would have thought that such a terrible tragedy would wake up the Pharaoh, but he did not, since he tried to recapture the Israelites later on, so clearly the message did not get through.

So just like the Israelites we need to be under the blood so that God's wrath will not come to us. 1 Corinthians 5:7 tells us that Christ is our passover. But just like the Egyptians, those who do not put their trust in Christ will suffer from God's wrath.

You're ignoring one important point. While Pharaoh was initially stubborn, Exodus 10 clearly states that God intentionally hardens Pharaoh's heart so that he can heap more curses on the Egyptians, culminating with the slaughter of the first born.

So, your point stands as it pertains to the first part of Exodus, but it falls apart with the coming of the plague of locusts. God took away Pharaoh's free will and then punished his entire nation in a most harsh manner.

Would Pharaoh have eventually relented and freed the Israelites? I guess we'll never know.

 

[Traitorfish]

Oh, that God, he's such a card.

 

[Masada]

Ya'll need to stop being apologists for genocide and read the damned evidence.

Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.’ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labour. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labour. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ‘When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.’ But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, ‘Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?’ The midwives said to Pharaoh, ‘Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.’ So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘Every boy that is born to the Hebrews* you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.’

If we accept this, it would seem to indicate that Pharaoh I had undertaken genocidal policies in contravention of the United Nation's Convention on Genocide (See: Article 2, sections (a), (c) and (d) in particular). There is moreover, no indication that Pharaoh II had ameliorated these policies or changed them and there remains strong evidence circumstantial evidence that he continued them (Pharaoh II is noted to have spoken against the numbers of Hebrews on a number of occasions, continued to work them as slaves despite 10 pleas for their release and has remained silent when questioned about the fate of Hewbrew children) which, I believe, constitutes prima facie evidence of a continuation of his predecessors policies. We also question why Pharaoh I had sought to keep female children; which we suggest may have been part of a policy intended to 'breed' the Hebrew out via forced adoption and/or assimilation as a means of supplementing his more violent policies. Further evidence collection would be required to prove this. On balance, I think these constitute sufficient grounds for at minimum an indictment under international law for crimes against humanity with a genocide trial to be convened subject to additional information being recovered.

 

[ParkCungHee]

This is a good post.

 

[classical_hero]

You're ignoring one important point. While Pharaoh was initially stubborn, Exodus 10 clearly states that God intentionally hardens Pharaoh's heart so that he can heap more curses on the Egyptians, culminating with the slaughter of the first born.

So, your point stands as it pertains to the first part of Exodus, but it falls apart with the coming of the plague of locusts. God took away Pharaoh's free will and then punished his entire nation in a most harsh manner.

Would Pharaoh have eventually relented and freed the Israelites? I guess we'll never know.

You will notice that first Pharaoh Hardened his heart, so he was the one to first do it. So God was allowing the Pharaoh to do this so God could show himself to the Nation of Israel and the nations around them. The facts of what God did in this instance were still to bear fruit latter when they go the Canaan. Even after this horrible plague that caused massive loss of life, which caused the people of Egypt to give the Jews precious items and rush them out, even after they made that statement the Pharaoh went after the Jews and he died as a result of his attempts. He was stubborn to the end even after seeing such judgement place upon him and his nation. When you are warned about consequences of your action and then as a result of them you get punished, you only have yourself to blame for not taking heed of the warnings. There was plenty of warning of the coming judgement and he took no heed of it, so it is his fault that all these things happened to him.

Ezekiel 33:1-19 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2 Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman:
3 If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;
4 Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.
5 He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul.
6 But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand.
7 So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me.
8 When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.
9 Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.
10 Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel; Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?
11 Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
12 Therefore, thou son of man, say unto the children of thy people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression: as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness; neither shall the righteous be able to live for his righteousness in the day that he sinneth.
13 When I shall say to the righteous, that he shall surely live; if he trust to his own righteousness, and commit iniquity, all his righteousnesses shall not be remembered; but for his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die for it.
14 Again, when I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right;
15 If the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die.
16 None of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto him: he hath done that which is lawful and right; he shall surely live.
17 Yet the children of thy people say, The way of the Lord is not equal: but as for them, their way is not equal.
18 When the righteous turneth from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, he shall even die thereby.
19 But if the wicked turn from his wickedness, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall live thereby.