by jws 20 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Well, I think I see what you mean, there, and it's no big surprise that God loves Himself. Really prosperous times were scant for His chosen people.
I had never noticed the contradiction. I wonder why God changed his mind about what the 10 Commandments should be?
Ten commandments are all about worship and sacrifice....other regulations dealt with human relations...like do not uncover the nakedness of....honoring parents has nothing to do with love really...you could hate them but treat them with respect....and as for loving your fellow man, that would have put a serious crimp in genocidal raids....raping, looting, etc...
He gave a lot of laws and pronoucements. But only the ones in Exodus 34 were labeled the 10 commandments and written on tablets. I don't know why he gave the other list other than he was always giving commands of some kind.
And, if you think about it, if you're calling exodus 20 the 10 commandments, then god is flip-flopping. Exodus 34 is supposed to match the ones Moses broke. So first, god gives these commandments about celebrating festivals, firstborn, etc. And Moses breaks them. Then the thunder cracks and god verbally gives another set of commands (never calls them the 10 commandments), but it's another set. Then, he goes back to the original about festivals and the firstborn. Again on stone tablets.
I think the Exodus 20 ones are a little more useful and should have been written in stone. But god disagrees.
The 10 commandments represent the people who wrote them. It's not difficult to come up with better ones:
True, but the point I'm trying to also make is that most Christians have no idea what the ten commandments actually were. Their bibles have a page annotation on Exodus 20 that says Ten Commandments. But the bible never calls those the 10 commandments. Rightfully so, most people also think of the stone tablets carved by god as being the true 10 commandments. But even the famous 10 commandments movie doesn't get that list right.
In Exodus 34, god tells Moses he's replacing the stone tablets that Moses broke. Doesn't say he's rewriting them. He's replacing the broken ones. Then it give a list and says these are the Ten Commandments. And the list is mostly different from the ones most people usually think of when they think of the ten commandments.
The ones in Exodus 20 are actually better, IMO. They have some practical advice like don't kill, don't steal, etc. Not things like not including yeast in your blood sacrifice.
But all over you used to see these debates about monuments with the ten commandments. And mostly they showed a stone tablet or tablets with a list of commands that was NEVER on the tablets. IF you were to put the correct words that were on the tablet on the monuments, most Christians would be in an outrage because it's all this Jewish "stuff". Festival of Weeks? WTF is that? Where's the REAL 10 commandments? Sorry, but those are the REAL ones - according to the bible's own words.
The finger of god? Yep God gave the finger to mankind for sure! Probably twice!
just saying!
Why is it atheists know more about the bible than Christians?
Well as an atheist you surely know that the text is cobbled together from a number of oral traditions and is not the contiguous whole that Christians believe it to be. .
Or are you assuming the Christian view to be true for the sake making a point to Christians?
I'm not assuming the Christian point to be true. Just that for claiming to be followers, they don't even know it.
Making statues of stone tablets that show the Exodus 20 commandments is like having a statue of Spock with his hand in the Vulcan greeting, but the plaque reads "May the Force Be With You".
Christians are like "fans" of the bible. They should know what it says, but often the critics seem to know more.
And yes, it was cobbled together from oral stories eventually written down. And then the written stories they could find. And then they picked and chose what they liked. And voila! The inerrant word of god.
There are two contradictory lists of 'ten' commandments. One of them usefully forbids boiling a kid in its mother's milk.
Not one word about why a human should not ever own another human as a possession. Not one fucking word!
Any intelligent adult could write a more useful set of edicts in ten minutes.
Does anybody seriously believe that humans were morally illiterate for over 100,000 years until Moses came down the mountain and revealed the startling news that murder and theft was prohibited?
Hammurabi worked it out centuries before Moses.
