Brian Zahnd: No, God didn't command genocide in the Old Testament (X-posted)

[guillaumeb]

From the article:

Even a casual reader of the Bible notices that between the alleged divine endorsement of genocide in the conquest of Canaan and Jesus’s call for love of enemies in his Sermon on the Mount, something has clearly changed.
What has changed is not God but the degree to which humanity has attained an understanding of the true nature of God. The Bible is not the perfect revelation of God; Jesus is. Jesus is the only perfect theology. Perfect theology is not a system of theology; perfect theology is a person. Perfect theology is not found in abstract thought; perfect theology is found in the Incarnation. Perfect theology is not a book; perfect theology is the life that Jesus lived.

To read more of this very interesting article:

http://religionnews.com/2017/08/29/brian-zahnd-no-god-didnt-command-genocide-in-the-old-testament/

[bobbieinok]

1. Thank you for this link

In my SBC church of the 40s and 50s (after the radical conservative take-over in the70s and 80s the denomination is no longer the one in which I grew up) we never heard of the various OT passages where God commands genocide. It's only within the last decade or so that through the internet the interested lay person has become aware of them and their implications.

Articles such as this can help me as I continue working out what I believe about the nature of what/who might be termed 'God.'

Once again, thank you.

[guillaumeb]

2. I read it and thought it was a very interesting viewpoint.

That Jesus is the ultimate message, and that His life is the blueprint.

I think that many of us work out how we perceive the Creator and how we can relate to the Creator.

The book is inexpensive and I plan on ordering it.