Blacknad ... thanks for coming out to play.
wrote:
"Genesis 19 - The Bible simply reports it. It does not condone it."
This is your testimony? Under oath? Are you sure you want to stick with it?
Lot and his family were saved? Why? That is the lesson of Genesis 19. God saved the good person and destroyed the evil people. Lot, by definition, is a good person. And the context is that just before that he gave his virgin daughters to be raped to save a man ... and we all know because a stranger, male, is more valuable than a female child. That is truly the meaning of the story when read in context.
Blacknad wrote:
"2 Kings 2 - I posted a long explananation of that passage for you. You probably didn't read it. I'll post it again so that you can not read it again"
I read it. And when I got done shaking my head in disbelief I went on about my life.
Blacknad wrote:
"Jephthah made a hasty and stupid vow and then stupidly carries it out"
And is equally stupidly rewarded by God for doing so. You are so heck-bent on defending the bible you forgot the point of my putting the text into my answer was the claim by rlb that it is beautiful. This, my friend, is bloody awful: It is not beautiful. And your explanation does not, can not, and will not, make it a thing of beauty: Ever!
The problem with your explanations, and each might be plausible if it stood in isolation, is that there are many hundreds of equally horrible goings on in the Bible. You can explain away one or two or ten ... but not all. The totality of the evidence is not a thing of beauty. Is the thing of which war crime tribunals in the Hague sit in judgement.
