Message #1071

[AndyHB]

So it's not as if a God of Love is non-existent in the OT, but that the picture is inconsistent - just as you'd expect it to be, since the Bible is a set of books written by a variety of people with a variety of inconsistent views about God.   It's the barmyness of the idea that the Bible is a consistent whole that has no real mileage and is the province of the dogma-bound liar.

But isn't the very inconsistency of the material part of the very validity of the witnesses' (aka authors') evidence, Martin?, along with the fact that the different materials are from different literary genres?

As for dogma-bound liars, this means that there must be a lot of such liars, especially when they have studied the material in as much depth as they have, and even - in some cases - changed their views from dogmatic opposition/disagreement.  I would have to suggest that there are clearly similarly dogma-bound liars on the other side of the debate (where have we had this particular discussion before  ) because they state categorically opposing opinions - and both sides of the debate can't be correct.

Finally, for now, I find a lot of the so-called inconsistencies to be totally irrelevant.  For instance, when does one 'accuse' a poet of hyperbole or using poetic licence or other poetic techniques?  There are large portions of the Old Testament, especially, that are in poetic form.  Similarly, there are portions - such as the early parts of Genesis - which are making no attempt to provide scientific answers to scientific questions, but that are trying to discover the often far more important answers to abstract questions, such as the purpose of humanity, the nature of love and hate, of the nature of God himself.

Too often, the detractors - and I would include you amongst this group at present - seem intent on ignoring the whole aspect of the literary nature of the material, trying to simply treat it as a scientific/historic treatise - with all the inevitable flaws that it clearly has when approached from that direction alone.