Line #20 Fridge/TheBible


1	[[AC:FridgeBrilliance]]
2	* An argument is made that God wanted Man to figure out evolution on his own, because the first positive commandment given to Adam (as opposed to telling him NOT to do things) was to name all the animals. This requires a person to categorize animals in kinds and notice the similarities and difference between the categories, which inevitably leads to realizing how different species are related.
3	* The genealogies in the early part of Genesis seem superfluous, don't they? But what's this bit that doesn't follow the pattern? Enoch? What's so significant about him? Everyone else mentioned died, which is to be expected. After all, you've studied and, in studying, you must have learned that man is mortal. But Adam and Eve had that shot at the Tree of Life after they ate of the fruit of Knowledge. God denied them that shot because of their sin. Enoch's mention bridges the narratives of Gen. 1-11 by indicating that God is still willing to give immortality to those who live faithfully. In short, he still gives a crap about people, which will be very important to a guy named Noah.
4	* I swear, I'd been stressing over the accusations made by Philip Pullman and many others that the Lord doesn't want humanity to be wise and think for ourselves when I suddenly remembered: when he offered King Solomon one wish, and Solomon wished for vast wisdom, the Lord could not have been more pleased! -{{Lale}}
5	** If God wants us to be wise then why does he give us so much misinformation and then tell people to not question his word?
6	*** "The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men." A lot of things are counter-intuitive, and trying to reason them without faith in God leads to the wrong answer. All wisdom ultimately comes from God, and if we try to be wise without Him, we get in over our heads without even realizing it.
7	*** Outside the first chapters of Genesis, which many now take figuratively anyway, I'm curious as to what this "misinformation" is, exactly. - UltimateCK
8	** 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"? After all, the word here is vast ''wisdom'', not vast ''knowledge''.
9	* 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 '''H'''anozri '''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!
10	* A hundred Philistine ''foreskins''? Ugh. King Saul, why would you command David to perform such a ''disgusting'' CollectionSidequest? Well, Saul wanted David to give him proof that he had slain 100 of the enemy, and a taking a tally of heads, hands or whatnot made it far too easy to cheat, since those could be collected from David's own dead soldiers. With that in mind, what part of the body did their [uncircumcised] Gentile foes still have that the Israelites did not?
11
12	* 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 else's 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.
13	** 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 committed 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).
14	** 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 Daniel (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.
15
16	* 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]]).
17	** 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.
18	** 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.
19	** 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.
20	** 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 Isaac back to life]] or prevent the knife from penetrating his skin to name a few.
21	** The location where Abraham was willing (probably) to sacrifice Isaac 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
22	** For Christians, Hebrews 11 discusses the event, and says that Abraham, knowing that God had promised that his descendents would come through Isaac, reasoned that God was planning to return Isaac from the dead. Which, "[[FromACertainPointOfView in a manner of speaking]]", he did. (Given the nature of Hebrews 11, this doesn't necessarily mean that was Abraham's only motivation, though, so this doesn't invalidate the other things listed here.)
23
24	* 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 "loving kindness," "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.
25
26	* You never really "get" God's behavior toward the end of the Old Testament until you go through a brutal breakup in which the other party was entirely to blame. Yeah, I have more respect for him now, considering Israel was effectively cheating on him for centuries and he patiently put up with that s___.
27	** In fact, once you see God this way, a lot of his actions make more sense. He freed Israel from slavery (certainly a good thing) and initiated a relationship with them. But it was exclusive, as far as deities go. It helps that any other gods are unreal. But, we wouldn't bat an eye at a boyfriend or girlfriend insisting that a relationship be exclusive. For some reason, it can be hard to see God the same way. Thus when the Israelites immediately go and worship a Golden Calf, it wasn't a matter of God being selfish, but Israel being spiritually slutty.
28	** In addition, this in light of the fact that the other gods were unreal or a case of mistaken identity regarding another supernatural being, albeit one less powerful and benevolent than God, 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).
29	*** Even then, God still offered reconciliation, after the numerous times Israel cheated on Him.
30
31	* In light of the example above, there is insight into when God ordered Israel to inflict genocide (such as what happened to the Amalekites), extreme as that may be seen. People in those days tended to get caught up in [[CycleOfRevenge tribal wars that spanned generations]], and there had been a long and bitter feud between the Amalekites and the Israelites; [[TheExtremistWasRight a genocide would stop that completely]] and given the length of the feud it's possible other methods were tried but they failed (also note that the Amalekites were a tribe, like Ghana's Ashanti and Fante tribes, possibly not a race/ethnicity). Also, these people were attacking His chosen, so instead of doing something extreme like killing everybody in the nation but his chosen, [[MakeAnExampleOfThem God only ordered this on a select few when all else failed so the others would leave His people alone and thus peace, or at least co-habitation, was achieved]].
32	** 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.
33	** 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
34	** 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 descendant, 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?"
35
36	* I was reading the Old Testament, and noticed the pattern of younger siblings being put over older siblings, especially with Abraham's descendents, but also with Rachel and Leah. Then an idea hit me - both the Jews and the Christians are called God's children, right? I'm not writing this to insult the Jews, because I think Judaism is awesome, but I think there's a parallel that has Jews as the firstborn like Ishmael, Esau, Leah and so one, while Christians are the second child, like Issac, Jacob and Rachel. -DandelionFire
37	** 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
38	** Funny you should say that because the early Church writers like Irenaeus & Tertullian make the exact same point about Jacob and Esau.
39	* There's the really common belief that Ishmael's children are the Muslims while Issac's are the Jews. I think it might be in the Koran, but when it comes to the Bible, that's Fridge Logic. -DandelionFire
40	** The Apostle Paul's allegorical comparison of Hagar to Jewish law and Sarah to the Law of Life in Galatians 4 may in fact have doubled as a prophetic prediction of the rise of (highly legalistic) Islam and that's awesome.
41	* 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.
42	** Born to a ''teenage mother'', no less.
43	*** ALL mothers were teenaged before modern medicine. Childbirth was often deadly for both mother and child and probability of survival was greater if the woman STARTED having kids as early as possible. Women without children could die if they had their first at an advanced age. This is the real reason men had multiple wives. Women DIED. Now, not so much.
44	*** Uhh... where does it say that?
45	** Joseph, Mary, and Jesus went to Egypt for a good many years so it is unlikely they told anyone about what happened. Joseph and Mary also seemed to have had multiple younger children, who I imagine would look generally the same as the other two. My personal theory is that Jesus basically took after Joseph in looks.
46	** Not only that, but recall Deut. 23:2 "No one born of a forbidden union may enter the assembly of the Lord." Jesus knows exactly how it is to be an outcast, which may have something to do with why he's so eager to reach out to those on the fringes of society.
47	* Why was Cain "protected" by his mark? Because it's a metaphor for vengeance and war. If Cain is killed, his sons will avenge him then they will be the targets, so on and so forth. - Tropers/{{Damus2300}}
48
49	* Ever wonder what was so bad about the man and woman eating the fruit and gaining knowledge? So did I for the longest time. Then it hit me: when questioned about it, they pass off blame to God, the woman, and the serpent. They failed to take responsibility for their own actions. This is further complemented when you notice the emphasis on the serpent as a "beast of the field." What's significant about that? The humans were supposed to rule over the beasts of the field (in addition to everything else on the Earth), not take their orders from one! They were betraying their very identity as humans, who are capable of shaping their own destiny. Cain then does the same thing, blaming Abel for his shortcomings. I could go on, but that would get tedious.
50
51	* 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}}
52
53	* 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. 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.
54	** Saliva was actually used a lot in the folk medicine of the time. It is true though that as far as we know, Jesus used it only that once.
55
56	* Language barriers were created at the tower of Babel when humanity tries to make itself equal to God and was at the height of hubris. The language barriers get removed at Pentecost after God has made himself human and accepted death humbly.
57
58	* I've heard a number of times the criticism that an eternity of bliss would become boring and eventually be even worse than Hell. But today I noticed this verse which sums up the philosophy of Ecclesiastes: "A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God." That reminded me of another verse from Isaiah about the New Earth: "They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit." It's not an eternity of just sitting around being happy and other saccharine ideas; it's a lifelong employment, in which you will be forever content.
59
60	* 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.]]"
61	** Yeah, someone must have spilled the beans. Otherwise, we wouldn't have known about it.
62
63	* Why does King Hezekiah of Judah turn out so differently from his father Ahaz? Because Ahaz fathered Hezekiah when he was eleven years old. Since Ahaz would not be able to be properly raise a child at that age, the young Hezekiah may have been raised by someone who actually obeyed God and taught Hezekiah to do the same.
64
65	* After Adam ate of the fruit, God asked "Where are you?" Of course, He being omniscient, He knew where Adam was, so why ask? For Adam's sake, as it always is when God asks questions. In this case though, what did Adam gain? Well, by answering, Adam was willingly coming to God, not waiting to be found. This is the first instance of repentance and coming to God in the Bible. After this, God gave Adam and Eve clothing made of a lamb's skin. And Who is the lamb? Jesus, of course, covering our sins as the skin covered Adam and Eve's nakedness. By asking this question, God set the pattern of repentance, and foreshadowed Christ's sacrifice in the very first chapters of the Bible!
66
67	* Why didn't God stop the serpent from deceiving man? It was the seventh day, He was still resting!
68
69	* 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.
70
71	* God gets very angry with Saul for offering sacrifices to him, rather than letting a priest do it. Because of this, God takes the kingdom away from Saul and his family and gives it to David. This kind of feels like DisproportionateRetribution, especially since Saul seems to have genuinely had good intentions. But Hebrews discusses (at length) that one important aspect of the Messiah is that he would be "in the order of Melchizedek" - i.e. that he would be a king who is also a priest. And this, according to Hebrews, is a sign that he would be doing away with the law and the old covenant. By acting like he was also a priest, King Saul was at best messing all the foreshadowing that God had been carefully laying out, and at worst was accidentally committing blasphemy by acting as though he were the Messiah. Either way, it was necessary for God to make it clear that an old testament king was absolutely not allowed to be a priest as well.
72
73	[[AC:FridgeLogic]]
74	* Adam and Eve was driven out for eating the ForbiddenFruit. The snake for tempting them. What did the rest of the animals do?
75	** Be animals, right?
76	** Since humans were created to rule over animals, the rest of the animals were moved out to make that possible.
77	** While we're on the subject, the snake is punished for his actions by being forced to walk on his belly for the rest of time. Which begs the question - how did the snake move before it was punished? Did it have some kind of snake-legs? Why then, in every illustration of the story, is the snake depicted as a modern, legless snake?
78	*** There are ''some'' illustrations, where the snake ''does'' have legs until it is punished. One good example can be found in "The Lion Graphic Bible" by Mike Maddox and Jeff Anderson.
79	* It is thought that there are as many as five million distinct species of beetle. Given the dimensions of the Ark stated and the surface area of the average beetle, Noah and family (and everything not a beetle) must have spent the entire 40 days and 40 nights swimming in a sea of 10 million beetles, making sure not to crush any. And then there's the issue that colony-based insects like bees or ants can be considered as each colony being a single individual...
80	** [[FridgeBrilliance Unless most of the species we have around today weren't around at the time and have since evolved.]] (Or maybe it's all just a non-historical parable, but where's the fun in talking about that?)
81	** Eh, what are kind of issue is time or space to one who cannot be contained by the grand total of his whole creation? All Noah had to do was show his devotion by building the arc and searching for that with which to fill it, God could provide the rest. Consider there is not even enough water on Earth for the flood described leading some Rabbis to suggest God went back in time (tehom) to make sure there was enough rain.
82	** 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 unaffected and so any species that lived there wouldn't have been affected either - and beetles and ants live just about everywhere.
83	** Some ArbitrarySkepticism there yes? We are dealing with an event that flooded the Earth, which even if Big G melted Antarctica 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]]
84	* If Adam and Eve were the first humans, how did they manage to populate the entire human race? Wouldn't their kids (assuming that they had more than just Cain and Abel) have had to commit incest to help populate the world? And if they found other people to populate the world with, then where did those people come from?
85	** But Adam and Eve were created perfect. Their offspring could safely inter-breed without fear of genetic mutation. It wasn't until much later that God implemented laws against such things. [[FridgeBrilliance God was protecting his people from genetic mutation.]]
86	** This doesn't even warrant being mentioned. If you read the rest of Genesis, incest is ''clearly'' mentioned many, many times. There is no fridge logic here, just a troper who didn't read the Bible. - UltimateCK
87	* If you read Genesis carefully, you may notice that the part about God telling the land to produce plant-life comes ''before'' the part where he creates the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars. In other words, plants, which depend on sunlight, existed before the Sun. Presumably, AWizardDidIt was considered a viable explanation back in biblical days.
88	** He created the plants, then realized the next day that he would need a way for them to sustain themselves while he was taking care of other problems, so he created photosynthesis.
89	** 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.
90	*** But that only leads to a new question: If there was no sun on the first day, where exactly did that light come from?
91	*** God is light, 1 John 1:5.
92	*** 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.
93	** Maybe the plants did what life in the deepest parts of the ocean do.
94	** This one's actually explained in Revelation, from 21:23 to 22:2. The New Jerusalem has a river coming from God's throne, with a dozen trees of life on each side. And it also explicitly doesn't have a sun or moon; the glory of God lights it up, and the Lamb, Jesus, is the source of that light. (Which makes sense, since Malachi 4:2 describes Him as "the Sun of Righteousness... with healing in His wings.") Clearly, Sonlight is just as good for plants as sunlight, if not better.
95	* What was God doing before He created the Earth?
96	** 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.
97
98	* 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.

Context Fridge / TheBible