Sulla responded to my reference to "today's standards" as follows:
Today's standards? Well, the complaint that the Hebrew scriptures are full of stories of a wrathful God
doing horrible things through nasty and brutish agents is a pretty old one. Marcion, for example, figured
that the OT God was a different dude from the NT God entirely for exactly this reason. So, it isn't exactly
like we've raised our standards.
On the contrary, it is precisely "today's standards" and a raising of these standards into law that more sharply than ever before exposes the significant chasm between "old testament" thinking and "our" superior human rights standards.
Human rights, including those for minorities such as ethnic and religious groups, women and non-heterosexuals, have "only" been acknowledged and enshrined in law in (many) Western countries in the past five or six decades. Their recency stands out.
So Sulla, your statement that "complaints" about the violence of the Old Testament are not new is correct on one level (e.g., the New Testament was a relative "improvement" on the blood-soaked pages of the Old) but on another level (e.g., the increased awareness in many countries about the need to protect human rights) you miss the point that I could have made clearer.