Cold Steel said-
In baptism, we are lowered into the water to symbolize the death of Jesus and his going into the grave. When we are brought out of the water, it represents Jesus coming forth from the grave in his resurrection. Even though there’s nothing special about the water, baptism itself is for the “remission of sins.”
Wait: wasn't Jesus baptized by John the Baptist, long BEFORE Jesus died? So what cockamamie thing can you dream up for baptism to symbolize for Jesus' baptism, and for all those others who were baptized by John the Baptist and Jesus' disciples, LONG BEFORE Jesus died?
Cold Steel said-
Baptism, alone, cannot remove sins. ...... The efficacy of baptism is in the death and resurrection of the Savior, and baptism, like animal sacrifice, is symbolic. And, again, though neither will save on their own merits, obedience to them will save. Recall Naaman, the leper, great captain of the armies of Syria. Naaman came to the prophet Elisha to be healed and was told to bathe in the Jordan River seven times, and that his leprosy would be gone..... So Naaman was obedient and washed seven times in the Jordan and came out clean of the disease. (See 2 Kings 5). Naaman was right. There were larger, more impressive rivers in Syria. But it wasn’t the water that healed Naaman; it was obedience to the prophet’s directions. He could have bathed in the Abana and Pharpar rivers, in Damascus, for seven years and he would not have been cleansed.
OR, Naaman could have simply taken oral antibiotics, since modern men know that leprosy is not caused by sin (!), but actually results from an infection by Mycobacterium leprae, a slow-growing obligate parasite which is an acid-fast, rod-shaped bacillus . Nowadays, the treatment for leprosy is NOT baptism in the Jordan (!), but antibiotics.
In fact, the World Health Organization has performed 14 million miracles (eh, cured patients) Worldwide over the past few decades, without requiring travel to the distant Jordan River to bathe in it, or to splatter pigeon blood on themselves (the Priestly treatment as described in Leviticus).
By my count, that makes the score for successful cures:
WHO: 13,999,99x
Jesus: 0X
The best part is, antibiotics actually WORK!
While curing leprosy was a pretty amazing claim circa 30 CE, modern medicine has absolutely drank Jesus' milkshake when it comes to curing leprosy and actually, ANY disease you can name that he "cured". In other words, science reality now surpasses religious fiction.
Cold Steel said-
What animals knew before coming to Earth is immaterial to the discussion. No flesh was ever wasted, and as for the animals themselves, they were not harmed in any way. Like humans and wild animals, they have spirits that survive death and return to God, who gave them life.
What is your proof for the existence of this "soul" you speak of? I mean ASIDE of ancient myths....
(I'll wait....).
Cold Steel said-
It also may be that the animals themselves are made to understand the law of sacrifice before coming into mortality. God ordained the use of animals for the benefit of man, and sometimes that includes teaching. As someone rightly observed above, when Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit, God gave them animal skins to cover their nakedness.
I hear Jehovah is a shoe-in to take PETA's coveted, "Deity of the Year" Award!
I suppose you've not heard of (let alone read) Mahabharata, the great Sanskrit epic that contains Bhagavad Gita, which likely predates the Torah? I much prefer the hindu deities view of animals, which is the basis of Hinduism's "sacred cow" (where they view all living creatures as having the same soul as humans, even housing their deities that have taken on animal form). Heckuva lot more advanced view than Judaism, where animals are treated without any rights but used as sacrifices.
I'd recommend reading, "The Book of Noah: The Bible as if Animals Mattered". It's written by an Unitarian Minister who makes some excellent points about how the Bible needs a "freshing up" to bring it up to date with more modern views of animal's rights.
Cold Steel said-
We all know the story of Abraham’s binding of Isaac, and how the Lord stopped him. Again, it was a teaching aid, and binding his only begotten son, he prepared to sacrifice him to God. In other words, it was in the similitude of the binding and sacrifice of God’s only begotten Son. According to some extrabiblical accounts found in the last hundred years or so, Abraham doubted the Lord would let him go through with it. And still another account has him ready to sacrifice Isaac, but that he had faith that God would subsequently bring Isaac back to life.
Yes, you're referring to Paul re: resurrection in Hebrews 11, where Paul was improperly applying concepts from the 1st Century CE which weren't even in existence until AFTER the idea was introduced into Judaism by syncretism with Persian thoughts on resurrection, since the concept simply didn't exist in early/mid Judaism. It's well-documented in numerous scholarly studies by historians and OT scholars, and Leolaia's even written extensively on the topic on this very site.
Cold Steel said-
As for Jephtha, let’s stay real, here. What makes you think this is the type of sacrifice approved by the Lord?
Uh, why do you THINK the story is in the Bible, in the first place? The concept of blessing after making a sacrifice, and asking for assistance and promising to do something in return is a bog-standard concept: heck, that's the ENTIRE PREMISE of the sacrificial system, LOL! Give up a little sumtin, sumtin to God, and you get blessings and abundant returns for the investment! Surely that is not NEWS to you?
Cold Steel said-
Jephtha didn’t even have the priesthood, which would have been required to offer sacrifice.
Nonsense. Although the account of Abraham and Isaac occurred LONG BEFORE this, Abraham took his son to a high place (balat) and constructed an altar: no Temple needed, as the sacrifice didn't require a priest (eg atonement of sin, guilt offering, etc). Jephthah's sacrifice was made by a vow, which is a different matter from the type of sacrifice which had to be made in a Temple by a priest.
The story is clear: Jephthah feared breaking his hastily-made imprudent vow to Jehovah, where he promised that if God handed him military victory over the Ammonites, he would offer the first living thing to emerge from the door of his house (yeah, right: can't you smell some dramatic foreshadowing with that kind of awkward wording? Why phrase it THAT way, UNLESS his daughter was being set up for death? Doesn't the idea of a cow or sheep walking out of the living quarters to greet him seem just a bit "Ancient Near East" to you?)
Jephthah clearly felt that God kept his end of the bargain by securing a military defeat for him, and Jephthah felt obligated to keep his vow: he feared God's vengeance MORE than the reluctance to kill his own daughter, since the message is do NOT break a vow made to God, at ANY cost. Children (esp daughters) weren't like we think of our children today, but were as mere property/chattel in ancient Hebraic culture. The lesson to ancient listeners was clear: don't make a hasty vow to God you don't intend to keep.
Cold Steel said-
Jephtha was of the tribe of Joseph, through Manassas. The story’s legitimacy also has been questioned by biblical scholars and historians. What is agreed on, however, is that human sacrifice is in no way condoned by God.
It's not questioned by OT scholars and rabbis: you remember them, the ones who wrote the Tanakh? Even though the story has undergone heavy redaction (as has the rest of the Torah, for that matter), it's not any more contested than others. It has received literary criticism for it's lack of uniformity, but that's not unusual.
Main thing is that Jephthah isn't viewed as a righteous or Godly man, but more of a fool, which is the point of the story: he's a descendent of a Gileadite and a harlot, and is cast in the role of an anti-hero "bad boy" archetype. His offering of his daughter to God is seen as his punishment, but not that it matters: by allowing it to happen, Jehovah comes off as evil and bloodthirsty.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8584-jephthah
Cold Steel said-
The word of the Lord was very specific on this. Even though the wandering Israelites had seen God’s presence on Sinai, the thundering command of Jehovah underscored the ever-serious nature and threat of the Canaanite atrocities: “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord.” He also stated:
Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land...hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not; then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people.
Molech’s profligate priests were little more than pagan pimps, and here the Lord says it’s not enough to simply not engage in these practices; if a man witnesses someone else engaging in them, “and kills him not,” then the Lord will curse that man and his family. The reference to the Lord cutting someone off is very much like excommunication, or being disfellowshiped. It's a cutting off from the people of God. If it's a stranger who transgresses, he is killed. If a local engages in the sexual rites of the Molech cult, he, too, is killed; and if Person A knows that Person B has engaged in Molech worship, he and his family are cut off from the people.
You're missing the point that the problem was the Chosen People offering a sacrifice to Molech, where Jehovah declared his jealousy on Mt Sinai ("I am a jealous God"), and warned, "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me." The problem wasn't child sacrifice per se, but that they were worshipping MOLECH, not Jehovah.
In fact, Jehovah had a bloodthirsty appetite for first-borns, since some scholars have pointed out how Jehovah didn't wait for sacrifices to be made to him, eg he took all of the first-born sons of Egypt in a campaign of killing during the original Passover.
Besides, are you forgetting about Exodus 22:27-29?
You will not curse God, and a prince of your people, you will not smear. For your goods and your wine-pressings do not be late, your eldest son offer to me. Thus you will do for your oxen and your sheep: seven days it will be with its mother, on the eighth day, give to me. And a holy people thou shalt be to me, and predated carcasses in the field you will not eat, you shalt throw it to the dogs.
That's no accident, as later on we read this in Exodus 34:19-20:
All that breaks opens a womb, and all your livestock remember, first birth a bull and a sheep. And first birth of donkeys you will redeem with a sheep, and if you will not redeem it, break its neck. All your firstborn sons, redeem, and they will not see my face devoid of these.
The threat is made crystal-clear: a father needs to 'redeem' (i.e. often an animal in it's place) his first-born son, or else offer his God to him in sacrifice.
Now obviously the practice was a point of contention amongst various redactors, and eventually the concept of child sacrifice gave away to prohibiting it.
Cold Steel said-
This cult was one of the most wicked in world history. Not only did they engage in degenerate sexual practices with prostitutes who acted as priestesses, they heated idols into red hot furnaces, then put infants into the arms of the idol and by means of a device attached to the contraption, delivered the screaming child into the belly of the furnace. And they used drums to drown out the cries of the infants. Yet atheists never fail to label the wiping out of such cults as "genocide."
Yeah, unfortunately that kind of excuse rings hallow, since WHO wants to claim all the credit for creating humans, but then suddenly wants to deny any blame when they turn out imperfect, again?
You're also clearly unaware of results of archaeological digs in ancient Israel, where one finding in a few towns is tiny human infant skeletons found buried in the cornerstone of many houses, apparently offered as a sacrifice to keep evil spirits away.
You might want to look at Prof Francesca Stavrakopoulou's research into child sacrifice in Israel under Jehovah, called, King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities, W. de Gruyter, 2004.
Here's her bibliography.
And her biography:
Francesca Stavrakopoulou is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion in the Theology and Religion department.
Francesca studied Theology at the University of Oxford, where she also completed her doctorate. She spent a further three years teaching and researching in Oxford, first as a Junior Research Fellow and then as the Career Development Fellow in the Faculty of Theology, before joining Exeter's Department of Theology and Religion in 2005. She was appointed to a personal chair in 2011. Alongside her scholarship and teaching, Francesca also undertakes various media actvities, including presenting the BBC 2 TV documentary series Bible's Buried Secrets, which aired in the UK in 2011.
Others have written on the topic, too, of course, but few Christians (or Jews) want to admit to having a history of child sacrifice in their "God-given" religious history.
Adam
