History Fridge / TheBible

* Why does the Bible say that God created the world in seven days when science seems to contradict this? The Hebrew language's word used for "day," Yom (the word used in the celebration of Yom Kippur) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom] is not a 24 hour period, it can be almost any length of time.

* I'll toss out this theory about Abraham and Isaac: it's one of many religious reforms that populate the bible and the post Jesus history of Christianity. In Abraham's day, he was immersed in a society that worshiped the Canaanite Gods. These God demanded Child sacrifice. So when JHWH ordered him to kill Isaac, he makes no protest, nor does Isaac. Off they go to do the deed in the prescribed manner, and at the last minute JHWH says "stop - don't do that anymore. Kill this ram instead" thus the substitution of killing livestock instead of humans. Later Jesus comes along when animal sacrifice is a major industry and he, too says "stop - don't do that anymore. Instead sacrifice your spirit / will". Pretty much any major shift in worship is the same thing - a method of worship becomes outdated, or morally repugnant, or obviously damaging to society, and someone invokes God to change it. Islam replaced the brutal fights over the divinity of Christ. Protestantism replaced Catholic secular power (to a certain extent). Other examples are left as an exercise to the reader.
** I'll point out that this only makes sense in a secular context. If you believe the word of the Bible, social reform is not God's prerogative, and His Word does not grow old. - UltimateCK
** Actually, such a narrative could still make sense ''in'' a religious context. Maybe social reform ''was'' God's prerogative all along. After all, while most of the Old Testament laws are no longer observed by Christians, the Ten Commandments still are. Not to mention, while God's mercy is emphasized more in the New Testament, it still exists in the Old Testament. (In the book of Jonah, for example, as well as allowing David and Bathsheba to live when normally they would have been executed for adultery). Remember that not every part of the Bible is meant to be a universal command to all believers. - Tropers/GrumpyOldYouth

* This was pointed out to me in jest, but it makes complete sense upon further meditation: Old Testament God was a giant raging jerk of the brimstone and hellfire sort; if you sinned against him he'd call down plagues and curses and floods and all sort of nasty stuff, and woe betide you if you were even a little rude to his Chosen People. New Testament God preaches mercy and kindness and turning the other cheek and treating your fellow man as you would have him treat you and being understanding to the ignorant. What happened in between? [[YouNeedToGetLaid He got laid.]]
** Like many, He mellowed out after having a kid.
** Joking aside, one way you could to explain the CharacterDevelopment between OT/NT God was His becoming human and gaining the experience of a human life, human pain, human hopes and dreams, achievements and failures, love and loss, and a human death. He experienced what it was like to be on the ''other'' side of wrath, mysterious ways and a plan for everybody. He experienced fear and loneliness and immense suffering, just like everyone else. God became more merciful and less angry when He gained a human perspective of His own world and Himself. Imagine you made yourself live as one of your [[VideoGame/TheSims Sims]] for thirty years or so. You'd probably be less inclined to go back to removing doorways so you can watch someone cry til they wet themselves and fall asleep in the puddle.
** He did not seem to go much against people for being mildly rude, mostly going after those attempting or having committed mass murder. The plagues in Egypt for instance went against those who had killed presumably thousands of babies and toddlers. Going from flood to brimstone to the other curses from above, there also seems to be a far greater selectivity as time goes on, with those areas being punished becoming smaller and smaller.
** Another explanation is simply that God never ''was'' all fire and brimstone. This idea comes from narrow reading of the book. God's wrath is spread out between long spans of mercy, and never over trivial matters. - UltimateCK

* There's an instance in the new testament where Jesus healed a blind man by spitting into his hand and rubbing said hand over the man's face. Up until recently, this seemed like a random and gross thing for Jesus to do, considering there are other points where he heals people without even touching them. However, with the development of modern biology and forensics, saliva is known to be the most pure and potent source of DNA, the building blocks of life. Going on the assumption that Jesus is the son of God, then the blind man had just received a face full of super-duper holy DNA. A case of modern science adding a layer of context to biblical lore.

* In the book of Mark Jesus explains one of His parables; "“Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)" Mark 7:18-19. In this time, for example, the Egyptians still thought that the heart was the center of thought while the brain was useless and the Romans still practiced bloodletting using leeches. Also, using a corpse for anything other than interring the deceased was strictly forbidden in Hebrew society, so there wouldn't be medical exams of that nature (much of the knowledge we have of human anatomy today came from illegal autopsies and studies carried out hundreds of years later). Adding to this, Jesus lived as the son of a carpenter in a time and place a man did the same job as their father and career choice was almost non-existent. In conclusion, He wouldn't have had a natural opportunity to learn about anatomy, so how did Jesus understand digestion? Then I realized, Jesus is the Son of God, and it was God who made the human body; who else could understand the workings of the human body better than its Maker?
** Any person can feel that food goes into their stomach to digest there. This really isn't compelling evidence of divine knowledge. Everyone knew this.

* What's up with the different portrayals of Satan between the Old and New Testaments? In one, he seems to be just another angel doing his job, which happens to involve tempting people to test their moral fortitude and accusing those who fail to God. In the other, he's the lord of all evil bent on destroying everything. How did this happen? Consider what his job means. He's effectively the agent of God's wrath towards sin. When Jesus comes along and is forgiving people of their sins and healing them and all, Satan can't take it. This would put him out of a job, or at least displace him from a job he has learned to do quite well over the centuries. He snaps and blames Jesus, putting him to death on a cross. When God vindicates Jesus' message by resurrecting him, Satan declares all-out war and moves to trying to destroy anything he can find to spite God. This makes sense of statements that God spares us from his wrath; Satan was the guy for that!
** There is very little difference between OT Satan and NT Satan. This troper is confused about the premise of the above comment. In both Satan is a tempter, liar, accuser, proud, and both capable and willing to harm people. His "job" was to lead God's praise up until his rebellion. The accusations afterward are just his hobby. - UltimateCK
** If Satan fell due to Jesus, how can he be associated with the Serpent? Satan originally existed in ''Heaven'', [[PlaceBeyondTime which doesn't follow regular causality.]] From his perspective, the Serpent already [[TimeDissonance served his duty.]]
*** Ah, but who's to say that working through the serpent wasn't part of his job as tester of men's faiths? In fact, viewing the whole temptation as a divinely ordained test makes a lot of sense. God doesn't even really punish the serpent; he just details what will happen between it and humanity as a result.
*** The serpent was also condemned to lose his legs and having to crawl on the ground for all eternity. So no, he was not let off the hook at all!

* If one looks at the first chapters of Genesis as an allegory, rather than a literal account, then the events described make a great deal of sense. The Earth is initially described as "formless" and "without shape". The implication is that it hasn't even come together yet, and is still a cloud of space dust. However, the greatest evidence for Genesis chapter 1 being allegory is that the order in which God creates the Earth is anachronistic. The first three days see the creation of Sky, Sea and Land, while the second three days see the Sun and Moon, then Birds and Fish, then Animals and Man. If the chronology were correct, the order would be Sky, then Sun and Moon, then Sea, then Birds and Fish, then Land, then Animals and Man. Instead, the order presented shows God creating the ''Realms'' for the first three days, then next three days are spent ''populating'' those Realms.
* Genesis chapter 3, the fall of Man, God may seem [[DisproportionateRetribution overly cruel in condemning women to painful childbirth]] for Eve's part in eating the fruit, considering Adam gets off with [[KarmaHoudini having to toil in the fields to survive]]. However, recall that the fruit is specifically referred to as the "Fruit of '''Knowledge''' of Good and Evil". After they ate of said fruit, Adam and Eve actually became smarter and more aware of their surroundings (and gained the capacity to commit evil, which is likely the main reason for their removal from the garden). Remember that knowledge is stored in our brains, which are located in our heads, and during childbirth, the head is the first thing that comes out, and is also the only real obstacle (everything below the neck pretty much just slides out after). Pain in childbirth may not have been an actual punishment, but an unfortunate consequence of the newfound knowledge of humanity requiring us to have larger heads and more advanced brains to store it all.
** Adam isn't a KarmaHoudini. Have you ever ''been'' a farmer?
** It seems like they both were forced to evolve into what would be the ideal gender roles way into the 20th century. Women had to become the legal property of their husbands and give birth to children, and men had to become the bread-winners of their families (the farmer bit shouldn't be taken so literally; a man could just as well live in a city and have a more urban occupation, as long as he had a job and supported his wife and children).

* Why is the serpent in Eden able to talk? A lot of Christians would appeal to Revelation 12, where Satan is referred to as "the ancient serpent," but this doesn't appear anywhere in Genesis, and it still doesn't mean that Satan possessed the snake. However, compare the other talking animal in the Torah: Balaam's donkey. The angel opened its eyes and it was able to talk. After the man and woman ate from the tree "their eyes were opened." Wouldn't it make sense if the serpent ate of the tree and gained the ability to talk? That explains his sentiment, "You will surely not die!" because he knows from experience.
** Why ''just'' the serpent, then? Multiple creatures eat fruit. There's another option: the ''angel'' opened the donkey's eyes. Satan was an angel. Jesus once moved demons into some pigs. There's precedent for a fallen angel to possess an animal and change its abilities, assuming it isn't just an example of VoluntaryShapeshifting a la Literature/TheScrewtapeLetters (wherein Screwtape gets agitated and turns into a large centipede).

* In Matthew, Jesus says "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." We don't think twice about this mention of the cross today, but wait a second: Jesus was still living when he said this. The cross wasn't yet associated with him. "Taking up the cross and following him" was only given its full weight later. Yeah, he talked about his death several times, but never so specifically (at least as far as this troper can remember). Even if you believe this was a later addition, it's still a nice, subtle bit of foreshadowing. Besides, according to traditional Christian lore, many of the disciples did in fact die on crosses.
** Or he forgot that not everyone could see the future like him.
*** The crime Jesus was actually crucified for was sedition. The punishment for sedition was death via crucifixion. When Jesus says that his followers must take up their cross, it might have been less of a reference to the symbology associated with Jesus and the cross and more that he was telling his followers that to follow him is certain death. Whether you subscribe to the Kingdom of Heaven being an actual physical place (which would require a physical king) or an otherworldly realm, it was an insult to Rome and inherent challenge to its authority.

** On the same topic, it's worth pointing out that, in the bible, God (who has already lived forever) seems to consider immortality a good thing. If one accepts the Bible's logic, the logical conclusion is that spending eternity in Heaven is most certainly a good thing.

* In the story of Abimelech being king and being overthrown, he asks to be stabbed by his armor bearer so that no one would know that "a woman killed him". A part of my brain can imagine the armor bearer told the story exactly as requested, something like "Abimelech is dead. He wishes it to be known that [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial he was not killed by a woman dropping a millstone on his head]]"

* The whole idea that God can't allow sinners into Heaven almost makes it seem as though God demands that humans become doctrinal androids of perfection in their faith or else He will personally destroy them or send them to Hell. This is in fact a frequent cause of people rejecting Christianity, as they cannot reconcile this with the idea that God is supposed to actually love all life despite hating so many of the things we do. However, there are numerous Biblical excerpts/phrases which talk about how God is destined to consume all sin, and that sin cannot exist in His presence. One such expression, which is frequently repeated throughout the Bible, states that God is an '''all-consuming fire''' (which is backed up by the Holy Spirit being represented as a flame). Take these hints literally, combined with the also-frequent statements about sin in fact causing death and decay, and it tells an entirely different story than the one the RageAgainstTheHeavens crowd believes. It's not that God is a prick who arbitrarily demands people copy His perfection and punishes those who can't just for the sake of it. It's that sin is like a [[TheVirus virus]] which erodes the ability of anything it taints to withstand the all-consuming fire that is God's presence. Those afflicted with sin '''literally cannot survive in God's realm''', thus He refuses to allow such beings to even enter His realm without special protections attached to ensure they don't get vaporized on arrival.
** This interpretation throws out half of Paul's epistles, especially Romans and Galatians. God doesn't ask us to become perfect, because that's impossible. He asks us to take Christ as our substitute, and our life. - UltimateCK
*** Our initial salvation is the starting point of our holiness. See what Paul says in Galatians 2:20-21 - ''I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.'' It is because of our faith (not works) that God sends us the Spirit, who enables us to no longer sin.
** Which makes Christ the "special protections" in question.
* Looking at the story of Joseph in Genesis, at first glance, it appears to be a RagsToRiches story about a guy who really [[EarnYourHappyEnding earns his happy ending]]. Fred Clark, in a Slacktivist blog entry titled "Joseph and the Appalling Tyrannical Despot", shows the FridgeHorror behind this, discussing how the story credits Joseph with establishing the system of despotic tyranny and slavery that characterized the Pharaohs' regime in Egypt. He concludes that this is a "just-so story", about how Egypt got its tyranny. However, taking the story in combination with the Exodus narrative leads to an alternative interpretation - as a cautionary tale. The lesson advanced is that an absolute government might serve you well for the present, especially under a benevolent ruler; however, in creating such a state, you are in fact fashioning the tools of oppression that can be used by a less ethical successor. NiceJobBreakingItHero indeed. [[note]] This anti-absolute government interpretation would certainly be in keeping with Samuel's warnings to Israel about the dangers of having a king (cf. 1 Samuel 8). Such an interpretation, if accurate, would make the Bible a very revolutionary text for its time; when the Bible was written, people generally took it for granted that absolute government was the way to get things done. The notion of the enlightened despot who brings prosperity remains with us even now, motivating such disparate entities as ISIS, North Korea, and the People's Republic of China. [[/note]]

* In Matthew 17 (the Transfiguration), Jesus takes three disciples onto a high mountain. Moses and Elijah show up. Moses - the great prophet who never got to set foot in the Promised Land while he lived. -{{@/Robinton}}
** Peter then offers to build a tabernacle to all three, to which the Father responds by darkening the sky and saying "This is My Son, hear Him!" And then Moses and Elijah were gone. Moses, who brought the law, and Elijah, the chief among prophets, the two defining aspects of the previous covenant. Peter was putting the Old Testament on the same level as the New, and God wouldn't have that! - UltimateCK

* It is kind of understandable even for a modern audience, that Haman, the villain of ''Literature/BookOfEsther'', was executed when he tried to have all Jews in the Persian Empire killed after he was insulted by one man (Mordecai, who just so happens to also be Esther's cousin and foster father). But it's much harder to accept that Esther also asks her husband the king to have ''Haman's sons'' (who seemingly had done nothing wrong) executed, so much that most modern re-tellings of the story will ignore that detail. But when you think about it, Esther's insistence that Haman's sons must die too makes some sense. She had just seen how close her whole nation had come to going extinct, and she probably was really afraid that if Haman's sons would live, they would attack both her and Mordecai and maybe also the other Jews, so they could have revenge for their father's death. All of this will be lost on a modern audience though: Most people today are reluctant to believe that a whole family can be evil and deserve to die.

* Adam named all animals in Earth. Including himself, since he was the only human alive at the time.

* The many various references to all of humanity/the entire world being evil to the core and literally under the control of Satan, to some has seemed like a strange thing to try to say...until you think about the various sufferings in the time period the books were written. Many, many, many things that now would fall under ValuesDissonance ran rampant, such as many entire groups lacking rights (women, slaves, animals, etc...). As well as other evils such as lack of a modern education, little understanding of hygiene or good medical care, short lifespans, a high child death rate, and lack of the many, many, [[MundaneLuxury basic luxuries]] we take for granted today. It suddenly feels more like a understandable thing to think about the world if you had to live during that time period.

** Adam isn't a KarmaHoudini. [[CriticalResearchFailure Have you ever]] ''[[CriticalResearchFailure been]]'' [[CriticalResearchFailure a farmer?]]

** Also, one could argue that Solomon asked more for "being able to make the right decisions based on what I have/know" than "knowing more"?

* At the Crucifixion, Pilate hangs a plaque above Jesus' head, on the cross, reading 'Jesus, King of the Jews' in three languages - Hebrew, Latin and Greek (since those were the most spoken languages of the time). Several Jews immediately protest, and ask Pilate to change it into 'Jesus, the ''supposed'' King of the Jews'. He doesn't do it. At first, this seems like a petty complaint, until you realize that, because it was in three languages, the Jews read the Hebrew, and not the Greek or Latin. 'Jesus, King of the Jews' in Hebrew is ' '''Y'''eshua Hanozri '''V'''emelech '''H'''ayehudim', and if you take the first letter of each word...you realize that Pilate subconsciously wrote down the four-letter acronym for God!

*** Because they're illustrations.

* After reading first and second Samuel, I could never quite get over what David did to Bathsheba in Samuel 2. There were times I could succeed in not feeling anger whenever I thought of him, but I always held a certain amount of venom towards him for a short time. I thought "well so what if they patched things up? Bathsheba still got downgraded from being that special woman in marriage to a loving, monogamous man, to simply being another one of David's wives". I thought "why didn't David dissolve the marriage so she could go out to be someone elses only wife, instead of living the rest of her days competing with his other wives for attention?" I knew that God said he'd give David's wives to Absalom, but it later describes Absalom as laying with his ''concubines'' instead, so I always thought David had circumvented that command somehow....And then it hit me. Those concubines must've been David's wives at one point, as they were described as widows after David puts them in a house and doesn't lie with them again, therefore, it seems Bathsheba was the only wife David had left, as she isn't forced to live in confinement like David's former wives. Upon this revelation, one wonders whether God taking away David's other wives was to serve the double purpose of punishing David AND compensating Bathsheba so that she'd once again have a husband all to herself, and not have to be reduced to competing with other wives. In any case, it was upon this revelation that I was finally able to get over it completely (instead of only partially), knowing that Bathsheba was able to get David's full UNDIVIDED attention.
** You have to remember though that Bathsheba hardly was innocent. While she didn't kill Uriah, she did cheat on him. So losing her firstborn and having to compete with rivals was quite fair, when you think about that she had commited not only a great sin, but it was also a serious crime at the time, and the normal punishment would have been that she and David would have been ''executed''. So it was really merciful of God, that he would let them survive and become the parents of the next king of Israel (Salomon).

* Actually, a more careful analysis will reveal that what appear to be contradictions are pretty much misunderstandings of the timeline which can be easily cleared up by using historical context. The most obvious of these, and the one which is most frequently pointed out as a contradiction, would be Genesis two, which upon careful examination, is really just the latter part of Genesis one, but in slightly more detail. Other examples of seeming contradiction usually have to do with misunderstanding particular terms used in modern translations, due to the fact that English doesn't have words with quite the same meanings as their Greek/Hebrew counterparts. A good example of such a word, while not controversial in meaning, would be the Hebrew word "Hesed" which has no direct translation, but is frequently used to mean "lovingkindess," "covenant love," etc. So basically, whenever one runs into a contradiction, it's prudent to assume that one is misreading, and do the research to clear it up, mainly due to the fact that the Bible has, heretofore, proven to be an impeccably reliable historical resource.

** Noah most likely didn't look up on Wikipedia how many species he had to take. More likely, he did what everyone did before Linnaeus: classified things by phonetics. If there's no obvious visual way to tell the difference between two species, he probably just assumed they were the same. So he would have only had, say, 2 ants, 2 bees, 2 wasps, 2 beetles, etc.. Not to mention, "the world" to Noah may have just meant Europe, Africa, and Asia. So if that's true, then that means that perhaps the Americas and Australia were uneffected and so any species that lived there wouldn't have been effected either - and beetles and ants live just about everywhere.
** Some ArbitrarySkepticism there yes? We are dealing with an event that flooded the Earth, which even if Big G melted Antartica there isn't actually enough water on Earth to do that, plus it then all disappeared. Heck has anyone examined the logistics of if the Ark could house sufficient resources to sustain Noah's family and domestics for a long enough time. And that's not even getting into a question about globalized flood damage. I believe the traditional FanWank on the matter is that much like this site when in doubt... Noah was Time Lord and the [[BiggerOnTheInside Ark his TARDIS]]

** Anyone's who's read the Book of Esther or seen the film "One Night with the King" can testify to the fact that this is 100% correct. The pregnant wife of King Agag survived the Israelite's genocide against the Amalekites and her son, Haman, made it his mission in life to commit genocide against all of the Jews in the Persian Empire (and would have succeeded if not for Esther). A very chilling answer to the question of "Why couldn't God tell them to spare the children?"

** We live on an InsignificantLittleBluePlanet, out on the arm of one of many, many galaxies, themselves made of many stars, varying radically in size and composition, each possibly containing several other orbiting bodies. I'm sure He kept Himself occupied somehow.

** [[CaptainObvious Be animals, right?]]

*** They did ''not'' have other children in Catholic tradition. The "brothers" mentioned later in the gospels act as if they're older than Him, so they may have been Joseph's by a previous marriage or cousins ("adelphios" literally means 'from the same womb,' but was commonly used for any male relatives of the same generation or even for close friends).

*** The crime Jesus was actually crucified for was sedition. The punishment for sedition was death via crucifixion. When Jesus says that his followers must take up their cross, it was less of a reference to the symbology associated with Jesus and the cross and more that he was telling his followers that to follow him is certain death. Whether you subscribe to the Kingdom of Heaven being an actual physical place (which would require a physical king) or an otherworldly realm, it was an insult to Rome and inherent challenge to its authority.

*** The crime Jesus was actually crucified for was sedition. The punishment for sedition was death via crucifixion. When Jesus says that his followers must take up their cross, it was less of a reference to the symbology associated with Jesus and the cross and more that he was telling his followers that to follow him is certain death. Whether you subscribe to the Kingdom of Heaven being an actual physical place (which would require a physical king) or an other wordly realm, it was an insult to Rome and inherent challenge to its authority.

** Why ''just'' the serpent, then? Multiple creatures eat fruit. There's another option: the ''angel'' opened the donkey's eyes. Satan was an angel. Jesus once moved demons into some pigs. There's context for a fallen angel to possess an animal and change its abilities, assuming it isn't just an example of VoluntaryShapeshifting a la Literature/TheScrewtapeLetters (wherein Screwtape gets agitated and turns into a large centipede).