History Fridge / TheBible

* 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. And to really make this point clear, it is implied that Haman was the descendant of a King Agag, who had been the enemy of Israel centuries earlier, during the days of King Saul. So according to this story, hatred against the Jews would have run in the blood of that family. All of this will be lost on a modern audience though due to ValuesDissonance: Most people today are reluctant to believe that a whole family line can be evil and deserve to die.

** 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 [[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.

* What was God doing before He created the Earth?

* What was Good doing before He created the Earth?

** Maybe the plants did what life in the deepest parts of the ocean do.

*** The sun is a big, burning ball of gas. Light isn't just generated by gas, mind you. Though, plants do need sunlight to survive. However, think about what kind of plants these must have been to survive in a world without life.

** * Some of God's stronger punishments (such as killing thousands for mourning or the Plagues of Egypt), especially how there are more strong punishments in the Old Testament than the New Testament, may be off-putting and have at times been cited by critics as reasons to question His benevolence. However, what happened in both cases was not "a few sinned so God punished many" but "''many'' sinned so God punished '''some of them'''." It's not DisproportionateRetribution, but MakeAnExampleOfThem.
** * What happened to Ananias, Sapphira, and Herod Agrippa I in the Acts of The Apostles also shows that God still hates sin as much as he does in the Old Testament
** * 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?"

* 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 worshipped 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.

** Adam and Eve technically were not the first humans, something Jewish scholars noted since at least the fifth century. The book of genesis describes the creation of people, male and female, with the order to populate the Earth and the founding of what will eventually become nations on day six. God rests, then goes on to create a garden and a man to tend to it named Adam. Adam gets Eve, Adam and Eve are kicked out and start mating with the older population. Giants start emerging in the older population(what happens when you mix too similar but ultimately different species?), God floods the Earth. Some books blame the flood on these hybrid giants, of course they also change the giants into half human angel hybrids rather than the product of two groups meeting so maybe it is better those books are not canon to most denominations.
** If it helps, think of Adam and Eve as a metaphor for cell division.
*** First you have Adam, a single cell.
*** God makes Eve from his rib - Adam divides, one cell becomes two.
*** Eve has two children by Adam - two cells become four.
** The Bible isn't meant to be taken literally (even Jesus taught in parables, after all). It is a compilation of attempts by early man to understand humanity and the universe we inhabit. Whether they had divine help is a matter of belief, but to take the stories in it literally is to deliberately make oneself ignorant of the many layers of knowledge and truth contained within. Adam and Eve are just one example, where in nitpicking the unlikelihood of inbreeding as the origin of life, we fail to spot it actually does describe in a sense the origin of life.

*** But that only leads to a new question: If there was no sun on the first day, where exactly did that light come from?

** Some people might argue that since David was the king, Bathsheba had no choice but to let him do what he wanted to do with her. But she ''did'' have a choice, as we could later see with Susanna in the Apocrypha version of The Book of David (she refused to cheat on her husband, even if that almost ended badly for her). So if Bathsheba had been as righteous as Susanna, or if she simply had really loved Uriah, it is very likely that she would have refused to sleep with David, even if that could have had harsh consequences for her. Of course, we never got to hear her side of the story or hear her feelings about what happened. But it makes sense to think that Bathsheba was stuck in a loveless marriage to a man, whom she found nice but boring and whom she couldn't love back. So when David summoned her to him and told her that he wanted her, she found it flattering and exciting and didn't care if what they did was wrong or not. Either way, it is pretty safe to conclude that she wasn't innocent. Because if she had been a guiltless victim of David's lust for her, the text would have ''told us'' that she was.

*** But that only leads to a new question: If there was no sun on the first day, where exactly did the light come from?

*** But that only leads to a new question: If there was no sun on tehe first day, where exactly did the light come from?

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

** 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.

*** The Bible isn't meant to be taken literally (even Jesus taught in parables, after all). It is a compilation of attempts by early man to understand humanity and the universe we inhabit. Whether they had divine help is a matter of belief, but to take the stories in it literally is to deliberately make oneself ignorant of the many layers of knowledge and truth contained within. Adam and Eve are just one example, where in nitpicking the unlikelihood of inbreeding as the origin of life, we fail to spot it actually does describe in a sense the origin of life.

** OR the plants were already feeding on the day 1 light and since God is pretty OCD with context, established the rule on an object to generate said light. IE, he didn't create fire until the point for having a fire in the first place was present

** I couldn't help but think while reading the above that Jesus is referred to as the firstborn of all Creation, and is commonly acknowledged (in Christian circles, at least) as God's son. And in keeping with the pattern, God has put the younger children--Christians--ahead of the firstborn by sacrificing him. -SirMayday

* Jesus is technically a bastard child. Going on the assumption that Mary was a virgin who had never done the deed, he quite literally had no father. Going on the assumption that Mary was a virgin--as in unmarried--he was also a bastard child.

*** The crime Jesus was actually crucified for was sedition. The punishment for sedition was death via crucifixion. When Jesus tells 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.

* 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]]

** Some people might argue that since David was the king, Bathsheba had no choice but to let him do what he wanted to do with her. But she ''did'' have a choice, as we could later see with Susanna in the Apocrypha version of The Book of David (she refused to cheat on her husband, even if that almost ended badly for her). So if Bathsheba had been as righteous as Susanna, or if she simply had really loved Uriah, it is very likely that she would have refused to sleep with David, even if that could have had harsh consequences for her. Of course, we never got to hear her side of the story or hear her feelings about what happened. But it makes sense to think that Bathsheba had become stuck in a marriage to a man, whom she found dull and didn't love. So when David summoned her to him and told her that he wanted her, she found that flattering and exciting and didn't care if what she did was wrong or not. Either way, it is pretty safe to conclude that she wasn't innocent. Because if she had been, the text would have ''told us'' that she was.

** As stated above, God was giving Abraham a SecretTestOfCharacter, which the latter passed. Before he had to carry it out, God stopped him and provided a lamb for sacrifice. Even if that hadn't happened God, being TheOmnipotent, could have easily done something such as reverse time, [[BackFromTheDead bring Issac back to life]] or prevent the knife from penetrating his skin to name a few.
** The location where Abraham was willing (probably) to sacrifice Issac has been lost to history. Oddly enough, one decent guess is Golgotha - the place Jesus was crucified. (Also note: if the location was remembered, would crucifixions have taken place there? Probably not...) -Robinton

* This was pointed out to me in jest but upon further meditation it makes complete sense: 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.]]

* The story of Jesus healing the 10 lepers in Luke 17:11-19 ends with only one of the lepers coming back to thank Jesus - and he was a Samaritan. I initially assumed his ethnicity was meant to be some sort of contrast to the other 9 who should have been the grateful ones instead, being the ones waiting for the Messiah and all. Then it hit me, Jesus told the lepers to go show themselves to the priests, which was normal Jewish custom to do if you wanted to be 'officially clean'. The problem is that Jesus wasn't exactly a popular figure back then with the high priests and all and it was most likely said priests would dissuade the lepers from going back to Jesus. Of course not all the lepers were told this - the Samaritan was left out because he would be ostracized by the priests! He would then be the only one who felt a need to go back to Jesus! - Tropers/{{Pachylad}}

* 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 ([[http://members.optusnet.com.au/~lakolberg/transcripts/C101B.html see here]]). 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.

** Some people might argue that since David was the king, Bathsheba had no choice but to let him do what he wanted to do with her. But she ''did'' have a choice, as we could later see with Susanna in the Apocrypha version of The Book of David (she refused to cheat on her husband, even if that almost ended badly for her). So if Bathsheba had been as righteous as Susanna, or if she simply had really loved Uriah, it is very likely that she would have refused to sleep with David, even if that could have had harsh consequences for her. Of course, we never get to hear her side of the story or know her feelings about what happened. But it makes sense to think that Bathsheba had become stuck in a marriage to a man, whom she found dull and didn't love. So when David summoned her to him and told her that he wanted her, she found that flattering and exciting and didn't care if what she did was wrong or not. Either way, it is pretty safe to conclude that she wasn't innocent. Because if she had been, the text would have ''told us'' that she was.

* Speaking of [=The Bible=], 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. -- {{Fionordequester}}
** You have to remember though that Bathsheba wasn't 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 serious crime at the time, and the normal punishment would have been that she and David would have been ''executed''.
** Some people might argue that since David was the king, Bathsheba pretty much had no choice but to let him do what he wanted to do with her. But she ''did'' have a choice, as we could later see with Susanna in the Apocrypha version of The Book of David (she refused to cheat on her husband, even if that almost ended badly for her). So if Bathsheba had been as righeous as Susanna, or if she simply had really loved Uriah, it is likely that she would have refused to sleep with David, even if that would have had harsh consequences for her. Of course, we never get to hear her side of the story or her feelins about what happened. But it becomes more and more reasonable to think, that Bathsheba had become stuck in a marriage to a man, whom she found dull and didn't love. So when David summoned her to him and told her that he wanted her, she found that flattering and exciting and didn't care that what she did was wrong or not. Either way, it is pretty safe to conclude that she wasn't innocent. Because if she had been, the text would surely have told us that she was.

** Speaking of [=The Bible=], 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. -- {{Fionordequester}}
*** Remember, Bathsheba wasn't innocent. While she didn't kill Uriah, she did cheat on him, so losing her firstborn and having to compete with rivals is quite fair.
** On another note, Abraham's apparent willingness to sacrifice Isaac, even though God said that he would provide a sacrifice, always bugged me. Abraham was about ready to kill his son when he heard the ram. But then again, this is the same guy who lied to both Pharaoh and Abimelech about his wife (saying she was his sister) and who lost faith that God would provide a son through Sarah and slept with her servant Hagar. By this point in the story Abraham has a well-established track record of jumping the gun and making baseless assumptions ''even when God has already demonstrated his will and his power in Abraham's life on numerous occasions''. The attempted sacrifice of Isaac is well within Abraham's character and experience ([[http://gallery.sjsu.edu/sacrifice/sumerians.html he did come from a society that practiced human sacrifice, after all]]).
*** I once heard a different interpretation of that story where Abraham is secretly testing God to see if he is the kind of deity that would demand a man to kill his son. Not sure if the text supports this at all, but it's given the story a greater poignancy and depth for me.
*** Here's the thing. God promised to make Abraham's descendants through Isaac a great nation, and if Isaac died, God wouldn't be able to keep his promise. God had already proven himself to be more than faithful in keeping his promises to Abraham (i.e. giving him a son when he was older than 100). In addition, he'd proven himself to be very, very powerful. In Abraham's place, I would assume that God would provide (provide a lamb, [[BackFromTheDead bring Isaac back to life,]] etc. Abraham knew what he was doing.
*** Abraham was stopped before he touched the knife, meaning it was the thought that counted. He was also extremely old, compared to a son who would have been in the prime of his youth. It may have been that he told his son about this and agreed to it. It could also then be tied in Jesus's (The Lamb's) sacrifice later on. It could be shown as practicing what you preach, in being willing to have yourself/your son do what you asked others to do, though goes even further in instead allowing animal sacrifices as a stopgap measure until the point when there was one final sacrifice that could pay for all.
*** As stated above, God was giving Abraham a SecretTestOfCharacter, which the latter passed. Before he had to carry it out, God stopped him and provided a lamb for sacrifice. Even if that hadn't happened God, being TheOmnipotent, could have easily done something such as reverse time, [[BackFromTheDead bring Issac back to life]] or prevent the knife from penetrating his skin to name a few.
*** The location where Abraham was willing (probably) to sacrifice Issac has been lost to history. Oddly enough, one decent guess is Golgotha - the place Jesus was crucified. (Also note: if the location was remembered, would crucifixions have taken place there? Probably not...) -Robinton

* 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.

* Some of God's stronger punishments (such as killing thousands for mourning or the Plagues of Egypt), especially how there are more strong punishments in the Old Testament than the New Testament, may be off-putting and have at times been cited by critics as reasons to question His benevolence. However, what happened in both cases was not "a few sinned so God punished many" but "''many'' sinned so God punished '''some of them'''." It's not DisproportionateRetribution, but MakeAnExampleOfThem.

* Some of God's stronger punishments (such as killing thousands for mourning or the Plagues of Egypt), especially how there are more strong punishments in the Old Testament than the New Testament, may be off-putting and have at times been cited by critics as reasons to question His benevolence. However, what happened in both cases was not "a few sinned so God punished many" but "many sinned so God punished some of them." It's not DisproportionateRetribution, but MakeAnExampleOfThem.

** In addition, this in light of the fact that the other gods were unreal and it was in the face of everything God did for them (right down to giving the Israelites a variety of food because they grew bored with the first food item He gave them).