There's a religion that makes do with the OT as its entire written scripture, and does so without being markedly more martial compared to other religions. It's called Judaism.
Rabbis have been discussing these aspects of the OT for thousands of years and their perspectives are generally a lot fresher than the stale "muh Old Testament harsh and punishing God and muh New Testament gentle and forgiving God" takes in this thread. Much of God's behavior in the OT represents the earliest strata of the Jewish religion and of the covenant with God that Jews and some Christians believe the Jewish people still to have. God uses His power of life and death over His creatures, a power which was apodictic and unanswerable then and is still apodictic and unanswerable now, much more actively and obviously in the "heroic" (so to speak) period of the Patriarchs and Former Prophets than He does later on; the Jewish people's forebears are living in hard and violent times and the ways in which God manifests His providence towards them comport with that hardness and violence because the covenant is relational and affects God in addition to affecting the Jews.
I'd appreciate elaborations or (if need be) corrections from any Jewish posters who might read this; I'm writing it as a Christian with relatively remote Jewish ancestry and a primarily academic familiarity with Judaism as practiced.
If Jews were literalists, perhaps. They are not.
I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental trash that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.
https://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2Further.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.htmlRabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."
Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.
"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."
Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02ciandvg&feature=BFa&list=PLCBF574DRegards
DL
