The dark side of the Bible

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

As TiK said above, the Bible was written by various people at various times. Still, it's thousands years old and aside of fruitcakes no one takes these verses literally anymore.

Personally I call the Old Testament the greatest crime/gore book of all times.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

At risk of being buried under the mounting outrage, there was no such concepts as "homophobia" or "misogyny" when the Bible was being written and adopted.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

At risk of being buried under the mounting outrage, there was no such concepts as "homophobia" or "misogyny" when the Bible was being written and adopted.

And wiping out tribes and taking women as spoils of war wasn't either. Not being facetious; we see that sort of mentality with ISIS.

Well, the Book of Jozue is explicitly about barbarian hordes exterminating entire cities just cause, sometimes sparing one person or family for the lulz. I haven't defended this, obviously, but they way of thinking back hundreds of years ago was diffrent than ours (fortunately), and that should be remembered when discussing the content and the context.

For sure taking such stuff as literal directions now is homophobic/misogynic etc.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I always enjoyed the way the Bible is narrated: describing all these gross/scary/disturbing stuff in a truly deadpan tone. It's extremely climatic.

So many times Yahweh appears as simply the best-written villain of all times. To use a modern analogy, the entire Exodus is basically "the Chad Yahweh and the Virgin Pharaoh" meme personified.

And at the same time there is a lot of wisdom in the book I feel I can relate to. For example, I find Exodus 23:9 as particularly relevant today ("You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt").