{"id":47146,"date":"2024-05-09T11:06:19","date_gmt":"2024-05-09T17:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=47146"},"modified":"2024-05-09T13:05:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T19:05:01","slug":"rethinking-the-ot-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/05\/rethinking-the-ot-narrative\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking the OT Narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christians expressed concerns about stories and divine commands in the Old Testament since early in Christian history. Setting aside Isaac and Abraham, things get so much worse with the conquest of Canaan and all the genocidal commands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Christians have long attempted to make sense of the contrast of the significant difference between the divine commands in the OT and NT: \u201cthe schoolmaster to bring us to Christ\u201d (Galatians 3:24-27), allegory, Gnostics who said the OT God wasn\u2019t the highest God but was the lower, problematic demiurge. I heard growing up that God gave the law as a result of the rebellion of the golden calf (sort of like DC 84:24-26 and Exodus 32:19 mixed together). I\u2019ve heard the idea in Mormon circles of Jesus as Jehovah got a lot nicer after he lived on earth.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For me, there\u2019s an easier explanation. These aren\u2019t really descriptions of God but simply descriptions of how the writers (problematically) conceived of God, as I explained to my daughter a number of years ago.<\/a><\/p>\n

As I blogged about quite a while ago, that daughter was ready to leave the church at age 8<\/a>, telling us that she found the Genesis stories they were teaching her in Primary absurd and immoral. She specifically found the story Jacob tricking everyone to get the birthright totally absurd. I really felt caught off guard trying to think about how to respond, but do we really want to insist that\u2019s how God operates?<\/p>\n

That same daughter was also troubled some years later in seminary when they went into more depth on the OT. She really didn\u2019t like all the smiting talk and was particularly horrified by the \u201csteadying the arc\u201d story. God really killed someone for trying to be helpful?<\/p>\n

So my question is, do we really need to say this is how God operates when Jesus presents such a different picture? Isn\u2019t this more of humans\u2019 problematic notions than things that God really did? If historians and archeologists show that a whole lot of the main narratives elements didn\u2019t happen, do we really want to hold onto stuff like the conquest of Canaan (I know in response to my last post<\/a>, many said they were okay getting rid of the conquest, but I\u2019m REALLY good with no Moses).<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t to say that we can\u2019t derive useful lessons from the narrative, but it DOES concern me that we often derive ones that don\u2019t look very good to me like steadying the arc (we will be smitten for wanting to be helpful to the church, the metaphor says). I\u2019m VERY concerned about what is going on in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Jesus presented a higher law. Why do we need to go back to what he overturned, especially since so much of it isn\u2019t historical or moral?<\/p>\n

Yes, I know that we have a whole narrative based on the OT of how God has worked in history. Can we not rethink that narrative? Must we really insist on the dichotomy between accepting the OT God or having no God at all?<\/p>\n

I do think there are other narratives we can consider. More on that in later posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christians expressed concerns about stories and divine commands in the Old Testament since early in Christian history. Setting aside Isaac and Abraham, things get so much worse with the conquest of Canaan and all the genocidal commands. Christians have long attempted to make sense of the contrast of the significant difference between the divine commands in the OT and NT: \u201cthe schoolmaster to bring us to Christ\u201d (Galatians 3:24-27), allegory, Gnostics who said the OT God wasn\u2019t the highest God but was the lower, problematic demiurge. I heard growing up that God gave the law as a result of the rebellion of the golden calf (sort of like DC 84:24-26 and Exodus 32:19 mixed together). I\u2019ve heard the idea in Mormon circles of Jesus as Jehovah got a lot nicer after he lived on earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47146"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47150,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47146\/revisions\/47150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}