The Character of God in the Bible

[thoughtful (Valerie (non-scientist))]

Discussed also a few months ago on this thread if you’re interested in reading through all the posts.

God, Genocide and Slavery

I’m not sure what you think I was agreeing to. My point was, regardless of whether you consider the OT to be ‘divinely inspired’, its narrative gives God a fairly influential role, including a speaking part in which he, not infrequently, instigates atrocities. This is where we would strongly disagree. We would need to pick a verse and discuss it. I would have thought that the issue was fairly well known (given that there seems to be a body of Apologetics purporting to defend God’s excesses). And it is far beyond a single verse. But let’s start with Numbers 25 & 31, where God commands genocidal war (“Treat the Midianites as enemies and kill them”), on the thinnest on pretexts (“They treated you as enemies when they deceived you in the Peor incident involving their sister Kozbi, the daughter of a Midianite leader, the woman who was killed when the plague came as a result of that incident”), ending in a massacre of captured women and children (“Now kill all the boys. And kill every wom…

You also have to decide on what basis you judge God’s actions to be needlessly violent or not.