No Gospel without Law, no Mercy without Wrath

Hi Faith,I have a slight problem with the following and would appreciate an explanation: When you state this: How do you square this with the fact that neither the Canaanites nor the Amelikites had the Ten Commandments to follow.So, how can God judge them and find them guilty of disobeying His universal moral law when they didn't know what His universal moral law is?I could see the point if God had given the Commandments to the Canaanites and they had ignored them, but He didn't, at least the Bible doesn't say that He did.Cheers.Brian.

Hi Faith, How do you know this, the Bible certainly never mentions that they were given any law from Yahweh? But the time period that we are talking about is just after the Commandments were given to the Israelites, we have no mention of any witnessing to the Canaanites. How do we know this? The New Testament is a totally different collection of literature, we are talking about the Old Testament. Does the Old mention anyone receiving the law outside of the Israelites? If not, then IMO it’s pretty unjust to punish people for transgressing laws that they do not know exist. I do not see how we can view God as a just entity if He condemns people for breaking Laws that they have no knowledge of, seems pretty cruel to me. The Canaanites would hardly come into this category though would they? Yes, given to the Israelites, not to the Canaanites. Other cultures had their own laws, some very similar to a number of the Old Testament ones.I could see the point if the Canaanites were aware of God’s laws, but I don’t see any evidence that they were.Brian.

Hi, The thing about the 'external evidence' for the Bible stories is that this evidence only becomes credible the closer we get to the time of the writing down of the text.If you work your way from Genesis through the Bible it is quite striking how amazingly inaccurate the early books actually are. From Genesis through 2 Kings you will struggle to support a single event or person as being supported from external evidence. But, the texts slightly improve when the post exilic writings are examined. I think you will find that she only has to marry you IF you want to marry her. There are other criteria taken into consideration as well, for example whether it was a rape or whether she consented or not, and whether she was betrothed or not. But these 'laws' reflect the society that they were used in, there is nothing supernatural about them.Brian.

Hi, It does make you think why God would create such a horrible disease, but I suppose He knows the answer. But Deuteronmy 24:16 says:"The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." Apparently sin is not passed on to children, although it also appears that certain circumstances are excluded from this. For example: "A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD." It appears that Jesus (being a bastard) is not allowed to enter His own Kingdom, and none of his children would be allowed either. God sure messed up when He invented sin.Brian.

This wasn't the point that I was referring to.Obviously everyone is punished for their own sin. However, the point I was commenting on was the one that you made about Adam's 'disease' spreading down the line. You claimed that: You imply that the disease of sin is spread down the line, but the Bible *appears* to disagree with you. It would be a better analogy if you stated that you never had a drink before, you didn't know what being drunk was like and it was God that got you drunk. Then God gave you keys to the bike, he placed the bike right in front of you to make it a little more tempting then He made sure that the lady and her baby were in the right place at the right time to satisfy His bloodlust. Neither Adam or Eve knew what these words meant, they had no idea that to 'disobey' God was wrong because they didnt know what right or wrong was until after they ate the fruit. The whole story is so obviously a man made fiction that I am surprised that anyone actually thinks that this happened. Again, another error by God. What is the point of telling Adam he would die when Adam didn't know what death was? Apparently, so the fundies tell us, nothing died until after the Fall so how could Adam possibly know what God was on about? I would have preferred God to be honest and supply Adam with all the facts instead of deliberately setting up mankind. God could also have placed the tree on Pluto, where it would be nice and safe. Alternatively, God could just have not bothered creating this tree as he knew that mankind would Fall. It is really nasty when you think about it, God knows that man would Fall, yet not only does He allow it to happen, he actually manipulates the circumstances to ensure that it does, what a nasty nasty being Yahweh is. There is an easier explanation when we consider the symbolism of trees in near eastern mythology, but the Bible doesn't contain any myths does it? Why not? He has created quite a few fundamentalists and they are nothing but brain dead automatons, so what's the problem?Brian.