The Sins of the Father: Bible Error

by JosephAlward 29 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  JosephAlward

  JOE ALWARD

  The Bible contradicts itself in the matter of punishing children for the sins of their fathers. In one place is says that it is strictly forbidden, but in another the Lord speaks of slaughtering sons for the sins of their forefathers, and in yet another place the Lord orders the murder of suckling babes. Here is the evidence:

  The Lords Rule: Don't Punish Children for the Sins of the Fathers

  "Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin." (Deuteronomy 24:16)

  Note: children are NOT to be put to death for the sins of their fathers. Compare this to the contradictory teaching below:

  The Lord Breaks His Rule and Punishes the Children

  Prepare a place to slaughter his sons for the sins of their forefathers; they are not to rise to inherit the land and cover the earth with their cities. "I will rise up against them," declares the LORD Almighty. ' I will cut off from Babylon her name and survivors, her offspring and descendants,' declares the LORD.(Isaiah 14:21-22)

  Note: children ARE to be slaughtered because of the sins of their forefathers! This is clear evidence that the editors who compiled the various books of the Bible didn't really pay much attention to whether the teachings were consistent. This contradiction makes it clear that not all of the Bible's writings are the word of God.

  Perhaps the most famous example of the Lord violating his own rule about not punishing children for the deeds of their fathers is found in 1 Samuel, where we find the Lord telling Samuel that the suckling babes are to be killed:

  2 This is what the LORD Almighty says: "I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." (1 Samuel 15:2-3)

  The contradiction between what the writer of Deuteronomy and the writers of Isaiah and 1 Samuel believed about the Lord is just one example among hundreds of disagreement among the Bible writers about the nature of God. If the Bible writers were wrong about the sins of the fathers, then they could have been wrong on every page, and perhaps they were wrong about the resurrection, too.

  Joseph F. Alward
  "A Skeptical View of Christianity and the Bible"
  http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html

  Edited by - JosephAlward on 13 October 2002 2:29:21

  Edited by - JosephAlward on 13 October 2002 2:29:52
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  openminded

  witnesses take the cake at this one....and the god

  they claim has done the following in the form of a

  plague against egypt....

  Here is how trippy and evil this one is....so god

  tells moses and aaron that the first born of all shall

  be put to death. If this isnt fucked up enough...just

  to spice things up...this same ol' god requires that

  the angels...oh yes...angels doing the killing will

  only kill those first borns that do not have the blood

  of a lamb sprinkled an the door post....wow! SO lets

  just go ahead and kill another life form to save a

  life form.

  So this crazy form of mass murder was for what? Oh

  yeah, to teach all those that formely doubted that

  Jehovah is the TRUE god. So imagine, you are citizen

  joe. Living amongst a society over one million

  strong, you never catch wind of this warning. With no

  knowledge of the escape clause to save your young boy,

  you do not slaughter a lamb, most likely part of your

  live stock for subsistance. The next day, your young

  boy is a cold corpse killed by the god jehovah so that

  YOU will know that you are part of a wicked rebellious

  country...and every time you think of your dead boy,

  you will realize that you should have served the very

  god who killed him. Bullshit.
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  patio34

  Hi Joseph,

  I used to puzzle over this point a lot when I was a JW, because it flies in the face of children being destroyed at Armageddon.

  Pat
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  JosephMalik

  The Bible contradicts itself in the matter of punishing children for the sins of their fathers. In one place is says that it is strictly forbidden, but in another the Lord speaks of slaughtering sons for the sins of their forefathers, and in yet another place the Lord orders the murder of suckling babes. Here is the evidence:

  The Lords Rule: Dont Punish Children for the Sins of the Fathers

  "Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin." (Deuteronomy 24:16)

  Note: children are NOT to be put to death for the sins of their fathers. Compare this to the contradictory teaching below:

  JOE ALWARD

  This is not a contradiction. The Law given to Israel in Deut 24:16 had nothing to do with the punishment prophesied for Babylon in Isaiah 14:4 which would be administered by the Medes and Persians. Matthew Henrys commentary explains:

  II. The utter ruin of the royal family is here foretold, together with the desolation of The royal city.

  1. The royal family is to be wholly extirpated. The Medes and Persians, that are to be employed in this destroying work, are ordered, when they have slain Belshazzar, to prepare slaughter for his children (#Isa 14:21) and not to spare them. The little ones of Babylon must be dashed against the stones, # Ps 137:9. These orders sound very harshly; but,

  (1.) They must suffer for the iniquity of their fathers, which is often visited upon the children, to show how much God hates sin and is displeased at it, and to deter sinners from it, which is the end of punishment. Nebuchadnezzar had slain Zedekiahs sons (#Jer 52:10), and, for that iniquity of his, his seed are paid in the same coin.

  Law should not be confused with prophecy and the responsibility for the destruction goes to the Medes and Persians. That God knew they would do this or considered it justice in view of the circumstances does not make Him responsible for such acts.

  Joseph Malik
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  Anastasis

  Good point Joseph. God provokes nations against each other. Nebukadnezar is probably the most prominent mighty man the Bible. He is called both god, king of kings and "my servant".

  But let us also remember that if you are not in covenant relantionship with God, you are without God and without hope (Eph. 2:12). The law given to Moses has absolutely nothing to do with the conditions of gentile nations, they have in fact no rights. Perhaps the contradtive JW view of Jehovah as humanistic is the real problem here. And.. those that consider Jesus to be God himself must be totally of the track here. In Hebrews 13 the writer tells us that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. I can't find God descending in the OT and starting to discuss anything with the gentile kings.

  God Bless

  Edited by - Anastasis on 12 October 2002 6:7:34
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  JosephMalik

  Anastasis,

  That's fine Anastasis. Alward's claim for contradiction was completely unfounded. It goes towards his credibility as well. This is all I wanted to bring out. No need to try and answer all of it in such cases once the accusations are shown to have no substance but are just clever deceptive remarks.

  Joseph
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  Navigator

  It is ridiculous to pin the responsibililty on God for the slaughter of the enemies of the Hebrews including women and children just because a bunch of Jewish editors wrote it that way. This sort of reasoning is typical of the warped JW mindset. The reason for the contradictions is well known to serious scholars. The Priestly editors combined sources from the northern area of Israel where the term for God is typically Elohim and typically referred to as the E source, with somewhat later material from the Judah area where the term for God is Jehovah and generally referred to as the J source. The minimal editing of these sources is referred to as the JE source and was supplemented by added material called the P source. Genesis 1 is from the P source. They had two much respect for the source material to edit out the inconsistances. That is why the same story gets told multiple times with different names for the characters. (e.g.-Where Abraham passes off Sarah as his sister)Those slaughted by the Hebrews were God's children, created in his image, just as much as the Hebrews were.
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  A Paduan

  What is it with the insistance on literal reading of spiritual teaching - in this day and age?

  This snippet of a sermon is nearly a thousand years old - from a paduan.

  I will destroy the name of Babylon, and the remains, and the bud, and the offspring. [Is 14.22]

  The name of Babylon is the name of ownership- mine, yours. Christ destroyed not only this name, but the remains of ownership. And not only this, but the bud (the temptation to have things) and the offspring (the desire to possess).

  paduan
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  JosephAlward

  A PADUAN writes,
  
  What is it with the insistence on literal reading...?
  
  JOSEPH ALWARD responds:
  
  If the Bible-believer is forced to agree that some of the passages in the Bible are not literally true, then he has little defense against those who would argue that perhaps most of the stories about Jesus in the gospels are not literally true, either. That means that perhaps the "resurrection" was not a bodily resurrection, but merely a spiritual one. In other words, Jesus didn't die physically for our sins, didn't spend three days and nights in the tomb, and didn't ascend to heaven. In other words, perhaps it's all make believe. This is the argument that faces those who don't insist that the Bible be taken to be literally true in all of its parts.

  Of course, this insistence causes no end of problems for the apologist, who must explain, for example, how it could be that there were "mornings" (sunrises) and "evenings" (sunsets) on the first three "days" of creation, even though the sun wasn't created until the fourth day. Or, how it could be that Jesus spent three days and nights (literally) in the tomb, even though he was buried just before sundown on Friday (just before the beginning of sabbath), and was missing from the tomb on the "first day of the week" (Monday). Count the days and nights, and you will see they don't add up to three each. There are many other problems that face the apologist who insists that the Bible is literally true, which he MUST do, according to Saint Augustine, who wrote:

  "The most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books....If you [even] once admit into such a high sanctuary of authority one false statement, there will not be left a single sentence of those books, which, if appearing to anyone difficult in practice or hard to believe, may not by the same fatal rule be explained away as a statement, in which intentionally, the author declared what was not true." --St. Augustine in Epistula, p. 28.

  Joseph F. Alward
  "A Skeptical View of Christianity and the Bible"
  http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html
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  JT

  NAV --

  "because a bunch of Jewish editors wrote it that way"

  are you saying that the bible is not the inspired writing of god, but a novel written by some old dudes sitting around watching sheep with nothing to do ( you know, it ain't like they had Gameboys to keep busy)