Because it’s all fake and the authors changed.
Not to get all religiony but why in the old testament God was all fire and brimstone and fatal consequences? But the new testament God is all about forgiveness and such??
Submitted 5 months ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
ieGod@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
God is not about forgiveness and such in the New Testament. That’s a retcon by later Christians to make it more palatable.
He preached violence:
Matthew 10:34: Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
He was just as happy to send people to hell:
Matthew 13:41-42: The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Every single horrible decree in the Old Testament still applies in the new (despite modern Christians trying to redefine what ‘fulfil’ means):
Matthew 5:17-18: Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
That’s last one includes all the slavery, rape, genocide, etc. Jesus could have spoken out against those things, but instead he said all those judgements were just and should be continued.
Matthew 10:21: And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.
Pretty violent, and not very loving.
And let’s not forget the revelations, in which Jesus will doom billions of people to a horrific existence followed by eternal hellfire, not for doing wrong things, but merely for not being devoted to him. Even the devout and righteous of other religions, and even babies who haven’t had the chance to sin.
Remember, Jesus is the same god as in the Old Testament – if god is eternal and unchanging (which the Bible says he is), he is literally the same entity who committed atrocities before he decided to wear human skin and sacrifice himself to himself.
This is not a loving god.
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Because Yahweh was originally a lesser Canaanite deity of war and destructive storms, while his counterpart, Baal, was all about gentle restorative rains. Part of that population moved around, and took him to be their primary deity when they broke off. He eventually merged with El.
Then that shit for further rehashed a few millennia later to soften his image.
Alsjemenou@lemy.nl 5 months ago
My goodness, these comments make me feel we’re back in the edgy atheism days. Please.
The reason is because those texts are much older, and that was the style of religion practiced back then. Most God stories and stories about Gods in that period were like it. Most city states and tribal states had their own Gods that reflected them, and conflicts were gravely exaggerated. Also literally everything that happened in that state were an attribute or reflection of that particular God. With stories of how that attribute came to be, which reflected back in the people and in that way religion was a complex social interaction.
The people who wrote the stories we now know as the old Testament didnt write them as a part of a bible. These were stories of people who were taken out of their states and captured. Forced to live outside their land, but they took their God with them. Who became this omnipresent God that would lead people back to a promised land. Including all the complex social interaction people had with their mostly oral religious stories and traditions.
And it’s the continued tradition that lead to the formation of religious scholarship and the idea that Gods could be of the earth and not just of a state. Which brought about new thoughts, new traditions, new religious complexity written down in the New Testament. Which lead to the desire to make religious books encapsulating all of religious thought.
And only much later came literalism, the mistake to take everything in the Bible literal. which sparked the formation of atheism as we know it today.
NovaSel@lemmy.world 5 months ago
If I had to guess, it’s because they were written by different people at different times.
GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Because the God of the old testament is the demiurge…
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself
nekbardrun@lemmy.world 5 months ago
And Christ died in the cross to teach us (only those who have a fragment of the divine) how to ascend to perfection and get out of the Demiurge’s hand. Btw, those who don’t have a fragment of the divine are just NPC (just like myself who am also an NPC)
maxxadrenaline@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Actually if you read the book of revelations jesus sends the whole planet to hell except 7 cities that he told people to go to. he really lays into the sinners.
Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Because they’re completely different gods. The old testament is only a part of christianity because in order to gain some legitimacy for their early church, they decided that their new god must be the same dude as the the god of the people that they were living among.
But in reality, they are very different books, written in very different times, by two very different religious cultures.
nekbardrun@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Also, the old testament god is not a single god.
It started as a god among other equally powerful and important gods and was later turned (by the writers) into the most important god.
Then it turned into god and satan as being similar in power.
Nowadays, the majority of church people flip the switch whenever they want a bi-theism (god vs satan) or a monotheism (god is all powerful and even satan can’t act with god’s explicit orders).
Similar thing with free will.
You have free will until you don’t have and you have no free will until it is convenient to say you actually have.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yeah, they are “very different books” each individually comprised of “very different books,” and all of the other books that eventually got left out are a lot of the best parts.
blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Because the people who wrote the old testament wanted to scare people into subservience
And those who wrote the new testament thought positive reinforcement was better
Jarix@lemmy.world 5 months ago
IIRC that’s not actually positive reinforcement. Common mistake to make though
ChetManly@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The new testament is just as vile and filled with hate as the old one.
pcr3@lemmy.world 5 months ago
How so?
ChetManly@lemmy.world 5 months ago
How about eternal torture for something as petty as non belief? Sounds pretty manipulative, insecure, and evil to me.
bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Behold a bunch of unrelated out of context quotes from the New Testament chained together to play into @ChetManly@lemmy.world 's fictional narrative
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 5 months ago
That’s simply not true. God talks more about Hell in the New Testament than He does in the old testament. He also is forgiving in the old (Exodus 34:7, Psalm 103:12, Psalm 86:5)
There’s basically no change.
m0darn@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
The book of Jonah revolves around Jonah not wanting his god to forgive Nineveh.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 5 months ago
Another good example, and God forgiving them anyway
Redditmodstouchgrass@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
My take is that it’s a reflection of the Israelite people. It’s easy to be all fire and brimstone when you can back it up with military force. Suspiciously that all went away after they got conquered…
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yahweh was originally a Levant god of war.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
I feel like y’all are forgetting about all the heinous shit God does in the new testament. Just because he’s not all up front fire and brimstone about it doesn’t mean he isn’t still an evil bastard in the new book
Tinidril@midwest.social 5 months ago
Let’s not forget that prior to Jesus any punishments were over when you died. Permanent Hell was a new testament thing.
kreskin@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Spoken like someone who mixes their fabrics and eats shellfish.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
🤘😈🤘
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 5 months ago
Could you link something cause when I Google any combination of “new testament god angry/vengeful” I’m not getting allot besides religious sites sane washing it.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
I’m not gonna link a source, but here’s some chapters from the good book itself:
Acts 5, God kills Ananias and Sapphira for withholding too much of their taxes. Seems like an overreaction for the new forgiving, loving, kind God.
Acts 12, God strikes down King Herod for accepting praise or some shit, which is similar to the egotistical, vengeful, immature punishments the God of the old testament frequently handed out.
Jesus (who is also God) throws some incredibly immature and irresponsible super-powered toddler tantrums, like in Mark 11 where he curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit when he was hungry, even though it was out of season, and in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus forces demons to possess a bunch (like, thousands) of pigs that just happen to be nearby, causing them all to cast themselves off a cliff and die. Jesus suggests/condones rape as a punishment in multiple instances, which is pretty fucked up, but is consistent with the whole “the sexual punishment fits the sexual “crime”” motif you see all throughout the New Testament. Jesus himself isn’t just the peace-loving, love-thy-neighbor hippie they try to portray him as - in Matthew 10 he says “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword”, basically acknowledging and condoning religious violence. Very like, un-kumbayah of him, man.
Pick a page from Revelation, that whole book is basically just God bringing about the apocalyptic end times in increasingly violent and cruel ways, including killing people a second time by tossing them into a lake of fire for not being Christian enough to make it onto his nice list.
The continued existence of hell is a big one for me as well. You’d think a truly loving, kind, and forgiving God would get rid of the eternal damnation spirit torture prison. He also doesn’t end other universally-accepted-as-immoral practices like slavery, but instead doubles down on it in Ephesians, Colossians, and probably a bunch of other places. All in all, the God of the new testament is just as much of a bastard as in the old, he’s just hiding behind his new son (who is also a bit of a bastard, but maybe a tad less so, so people accept it).
m0darn@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
homura1650@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Going well beyond my competencies to answer, but I think a lot of it comes down to monotheism changing the nature of god.
Judaism thinks of itself as starting monotheism; and that is largely true. However, the old testament is still littered with vestiges of it’s polytheistic origins.
If there are multiple God’s, then those God’s will come into conflict. That is simply the nature of human storytelling.
Looking at the old Testament, probably the most violent God has been was during exodus. In addition to freeing the Jews, he smite the Egyptians with 10 plagues, among which was the death of all firstborn sons.
For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD. (Exodus 12:12)
Note the polytheistic origins of this story. God is not merely intervening in the Earthly affairs of us lowly humans. The Jewish God is fighting with the Egyptian gods. He does not have the luxury of being nice and good. Even if he wins this fight without resorting to such drastic measures; he still needs to do so to act as a deterrent against other gods acting against him. That is not so much a specific tactical calculation in this case, but the way humans tend to imagine polytheistic gods working (reflective, of course, of the way human conflict tends to work).
By the time we get to the new testament, the situation is different. Beyond merely declaring that their god is the only God, the early Christians believed it, and had believed it for generations of storytelling. Their view of God had shed the vestiges of polytheism and morphed into what is truly possible under monotheism. God can be good because he lacks a peer rival. There is no narrative reason for God to be mean, because he can simply win any direct confrontation he faces.
We see similar dynamics play out in modern story telling. When we have vastly overpowered characters, the nature of the conflicts they get in us not fights. Perhaps they are trying to mediate between lesser parties. Perhaps they want to get something while respecting the rights and interests in weaker parties. A story where a vastly superior force wants something and just takes it is boring; so we don’t tell it.
vane@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Old Testament -> young people behavior.
New Testament -> old people behaviour.
( yeah I know there are exceptions )Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 5 months ago
God became terrified of us after the tower of babel, so he told his minions to write the new testament in a more positive way, so we wouldn’t seek to invade his realm and take control over creation in revenge for the atrocities he did to us.
ZMonster@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Wow, this comment section… Yikes. Without getting deep in the weeds, testament means covenant. It was god’s new agreement with man. In layman’s terms, matthew 1:1 starts out like, “here’s the deal man”.
KneeTitts@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It was god’s new agreement with man
Um, isnt ‘gawd’ the boss? Cant he just make rules and a system that works and boom it happens?
Frankly instead of all this armchair biblical experts, its probably better to get answers from real experts like Justin from Deconstruction Zone.
ZMonster@lemmy.world 5 months ago
No argument here. Literally. I have no dog in any respective race. Figuratively.
And I would imagine that the community “no stupid questions” is not intended to be a repository of questions exclusively for SME’s. As I understand it is an open forum to ask unspecified questions judgement free. I would presume that since the question is judgement free, the responses should be too. But this comment section is seething with judgements that add very little to the conversation regarding the basic query from OP. So, thanks for the suggestion on Justin. I assume they have a lot to say and I’m sure others will find it invaluable. This is not something I have a significant interest in myself so I’ll take your word for it. Thanks.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Oh dude I just saw Justin on The Line last night with Forrest Valkai, dude seems to know the Bible like the back of his hand
Jhex@lemmy.world 5 months ago
PR mandated rebranding
Redacted@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Full disclosure Im an atheist. The answer ive been given before is something along the lines of ‘after jesus died and did his whole thing, part of the deal with jesus dying is now mankind and god enter into a “new testament” and now the new one supersedes the old one’, but thats a very rough paraphrasing.
How any of this makes any sense is beyond me. God killed himself for himself to have himself stop hating us…?
Zink@programming.dev 5 months ago
There’s a Jesus quote about specifically this. Here’s the first search result.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17–18).
That’s the convenient quote that conservatives can point to when they still want to enforce old testament shit. For instance, claiming to follow Leviticus when they’re being homophobic, rather than going with their homeboy’s forgiveness and loving the sinner.
Jarix@lemmy.world 5 months ago
So Jesus was a Jew, who didn’t want to change for things are done, so halal/Jewish food laws should still apply to Christians?
Yo put the bacon down you heathens!
KneeTitts@lemmy.world 5 months ago
How any of this makes any sense is beyond me
In religions nothing makes sense and thats the entire point. All religions are a basically a gullibility test, and they only want the ones who Fail that test to be in their cult. Its been like this for thousands of years.
Zink@programming.dev 5 months ago
Jesus was the OG Nigerian Prince!
MissJinx@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Because god was pregnant with jesus so she was all crazy lol
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
The old testament was all about acting a certain way and laws, laws, laws. The new testament says just try your best to love and respect each other. In theory anyways. Humans be humaning though and human nature trumps religion every time.
SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Different guy
KneeTitts@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Different guy
Oh wait so now jeebus wasnt “god”? Wow nice post hoc rationalization you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it
SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
It’s like that Shaggy song, “It Wasn’t Me”
remon@ani.social 5 months ago
They switched writers.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Why Hulk can defeat Wolverine in one comic but in the next one gets obliterated by someone weaker?
MissJinx@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I don’t see how hulk can defeat wolverine.
C0untWintermute@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Hulk’s power level has no upper limit. Wolverine can heal, sure. But if Hulk smashes him down to atoms, and smashes those atoms together, it’s gonna be a long healing process.
rikudou@lemmings.world 5 months ago
Because it’s all fake. Everyone who actually reads it finds way too many inconsistencies.
That’s because it underwent some serious transformations across the millennia. Yahweh started as a storm god (basically Thor of Canaanite religion). Back then each nation in the religion had their own patron god and guess which god did the Israelites happen to have? Good old storm god Yahweh.
Over centuries the religion evolved and among Israelites Yahweh slowly took on attributes of other gods, mostly El (the all-father and creator of the universe) and Baal. First the other gods were degraded and monotheism was required, even though other gods were known to exist (you might remember the whole “jealous of other gods shtick” even though the rest of the Bible says there’s only one god).
Then the other gods were slowly edited out of the Bible, though some remains persevere (the aforementioned jealousy of other gods, some gods are even mentioned by name). If the gods couldn’t be removed because the story wouldn’t make sense, they were mostly changed into angels or other mythical beings.
It’s pretty funny rereading the Bible with this knowledge, you can clearly recognise which parts were the original Yahweh-the-storm-god and which used to be El-the-actual-creator by how he behaves in the story. When he’s all jealous, rageful and angry, it’s mostly based on the original Yahweh.
Anyway, that’s basically what Old Testament is - a bunch of edits of much older religions. IIRC Yahweh precedes even the Canaanite religion, so it’s a really old and grumpy storm god.
Now, New Testament is something else entirely, that was basically just slapped onto Judaism to have some legitimate and widely recognised vessel. Unlike the other edits, it didn’t evolve naturally over time, it was just violently slapped onto the Old Testament.
Fun fact: try finding Satan anywhere in the old testament. You won’t. Satan has been retrofit on multiple characters, but neither is mentioned directly as Satan, devil or really anything. The most famous one, the snake in the garden? Just a snake (which checks out with older religions where animals had a lot of influence). Then some morons come and say “actually, that snake was the grand adversary.” The concept of a grand adversary wasn’t really common in older religions, there usually wasn’t a Satan-like figure. Compare for example with Greek, Roman or Norse gods.
So, in conclusion, the Bible is a horrible mess of edits that were made so the religion would serve the needs of the time they were introduced in. IIRC the Israelites were having some trouble with their neighbours back when Yahweh got the promotion, so having a strong sense of nationality would really help in keeping the nation together. New Testament is even more obvious because it didn’t even really try to fit with the rest. They just tried to retrofit a few things and called it a day.
Well, this got longer than I planned, but I really like the topic and I don’t think you can do it justice in two paragraphs. If anyone’s interested, do some research, it’s honestly fascinating! For example, what’s the connection between Dionysus and Yahweh? That would be a homework for ya!
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 5 months ago
Me when I listen to tiktok instead of doing actual research
m0darn@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Could you be more constructive with your feedback?
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 5 months ago
So like the Jorge Joestar novel ?
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Fun fact: try finding Satan anywhere in the old testament. You won’t.
What about the Book of Job? That was all done by a bet between God and Satan to make Job suffer. Like, I’m sure he was still an edited deity from another religion. But he’s straight up referred to as Satan, right there in the Old Testament, which seems to be the exact thing you’re claiming can’t be found.
rikudou@lemmings.world 5 months ago
I meant the character, not the name, I perhaps worded it poorly. Satan in this context is meant in the “accuser” sense. As in it’s a role in a divine court, not an entity. Anyone could be the “satan” for the specific case, it’s not a person, but a role.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I could be wrong but isn’t Ha-Satan just the title for “the accuser” and not the biblical satan who is the fallen angel
Cassanderer@thelemmy.club 5 months ago
You just taught me as much bible as I have ever learned, last lesson being south park raining frogs.
Bakedtaint@lemmy.world 5 months ago
God a bitch
StrongHorseWeakNeigh@piefed.social 5 months ago
In the Coptic belief it is just two different gods.
DreamAccountant@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s all fiction. Different fiction from different people at different points in history. It was even re-written at certain points in history, to conform with (then current) ideas and morality.
Why doesn’t it all make sense put together? It’s fiction written by many, very different types of people with completely different ideas.
TheJesusaurus@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
The old guys message wasn’t working anymore, the age of Pharos and godkings was done. You couldn’t just mass execute people anymore, everyone was really woke and PC.
The ruling class needed to revamp the religious arm of the machine that enslaves us all to get with the times or there were going to keep being problems.
You know how corporate media are, it’s easier to sell a sequel.
You know what, we’re going for a kind of apple vibe, we’re literally just going to call this thing “THE BOOK”.
Everyone will step into line after we nail a few to boards and stuff
KneeTitts@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The old guys message wasn’t working anymore
The new testament is just old testament fan fiction. By that reasoning all these newer religions like Mormonism are fan fiction based on other fan fiction… and Im sure I dont have to tell anyone how loony tunes Mormonism is.
boolean_sledgehammer@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Not the same gods, not the same authors, written at completely different times, and written in the context of completely different cultures.