comparative religion rant

[breadandroses]

Can I just say that I'm really sick of references to the "Old Testament God" as some kind of vindictive asshole who likes to smite people? Especially as contrasted to the "New Testament God" who is just a hippie peacenik. It's facile and annoying, and totally misses the point.

I can't claim the same degree of familiarity with or attachment to the New Testament as to the Tanach, but I have spent a fair bit of time in hotel rooms, so I know something whereof I speak. There's a lot of "blessed are the peacemakers" but there's also Jesus having hissy fits and throwing people out of the Temple. There's "leave your father and mother and follow me." There's Paul, who had quite the stick up his butt. Not all peaches and light. While in Tanach you have Psalms, you have Shir Ha-Shirim (song of songs), you have Abraham, you have lots of rules about justice and mercy and compassion in all of those chapters in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers that people are so fond of bashing.

And that last is the real point, which I am backing into as is my wont. The two books have very different purposes, so of course the philosophies will be different. Jesus and his disciples, my understanding is, were acting as though the world was going to end very, very soon. Under those circumstances you don't need rules or long-term structures or anything except "love each other." None of that matters. The Torah is focused on building a just,humane society of people who can be or la-goyim, a light to the rest of the nations. To do this, especially with a group of people who have spent centuries as slaves, who have no concept of how to live as free people, you need rules. Lots of them. Rules that they can understand from where they are, like "if thou at all take thy neighbour's garment to pledge, thou shalt restore it unto him by that the sun goeth down." Or, "thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block before the blind."* Small, concrete examples from which you can draw larger lessons about justice and compassion.

My point being, religious texts are complex and multilayered and all have parts that are disturbing to us enlightened 21st century types. God knows I have trouble with plenty of what I find in Tanach. But dismissing the whole thing is obnoxious and short-sighted.



*apologies for the thous; it's from the Machon Mamre translation.

Comments

coming from someone who is completely and utterly unqualified

[attrice.livejournal.com]

I never got that either. Growing up, I would hear people express similar ideas "The old testament is so outdated and barbaric" blah blah blah.

Um ok, but Paul wasn't exactly progressive and doesn't the new testament have a bunch of stuff about women not speaking and men being in charge etc. etc.

"well yeah, but you have to look at that in historical context."

Honestly, I always thought it was

1) A thinly disguised way to express anti-semitism

2) Complete ignorance of both other's religion and their own

3) A sort of dumping of fundamentalist thought processes onto every other religion

The third I see a lot when I read pagan blogs. People coming in and saying "How can you believe that these Gods really live on top of a mountain and hey, what about the rape and brutality and all that in the stories? Is that ok?"

Like, just b/c you have a simplistic way of relating to your faith and a need to take every part of your religion (even the contradictory parts) as literal, factual truth doesn't mean that anyone else has the same problems.

Re: coming from someone who is completely and utterly unqualified

[breadandroses.livejournal.com]

Ack, my response got eaten and I didn't notice til now.

I don't think it has to be those three, though they certainly exist. I think when a text is central to your own faith, you are less likely to be shocked by something than if it's unfamiliar. And I know that Christians claim these texts, of course, but if it's the prequel to something else, you aren't as likely to read it with the same focus. Maybe? I mean, just because there's more to work with.

More to say when my brain isn't fried.

[m0g0.livejournal.com]

As someone who's dumped on the Old Testament before, thanks for this. It's a perspective on the OT that I hadn't really considered, and it makes more sense.

I do think that people who warm up more to the NT do realize its problems (well, some of us -- I've always known Paul was a dick). But its emphasis on love and forgiveness and not judging is a huge comfort to me.

It tends to be more accessible, too, which I think is part of people's discomfort with the OT. To get the OT, you really need a lot of history, or it's just very, very confusing.

And I *am* still uncomfortable with the amount of smiting in the OT. Is that completely bad? Parts of it depress me. Parts of do seem barbaric. What do you do with those parts? I don't mean that as a rhetorical question. How do you interpret or deal with those parts of OT/Torah/Tanach(?) (sorry, I don't know what the Tanach is) :)?

Re: coming from someone who is completely and utterly unqualified

[breadandroses.livejournal.com]

Sorry, Tanach is basically the books in the Hebrew Bible/OT (not a term I generally like to use). It's an acronym - Torah (first 5 books (Genesis-Deuteronomy), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (basically everything else - psalms, history stuff and a whole bunch of little books like Ruth and Esther).

Anyway,

I don't think there's a problem with being uncomfortable with the smiting and stuff. I certainly am. But I think there's a way of criticising the text that comes from understanding it, rather than the kind of blanket dismissal that I was reacting to in this rant (an attitude, btw, that I have never seen from you).

As for ways of dealing with it, there are a bunch. There's historical context - not as an excuse, but as a way of understanding the mindset of the people hearing this (or writing it) and what point they were trying to get across. Who is being smitten (smited?) for what, and what are you supposed to get from that?

There's midrashic interpretation (traditionally done by the rabbis of a few milennia ago but an ongoing method), which involves some literary analysis, some mysticism, and a decent imagination :) It can be a way of finding something sweet in a text that, on the surface, isn't so much.

Mostly there's looking at the text as a whole, and yes, really knowing it well, and neither ignoring the dark parts, or mistaking them for the whole.

I struggle with Torah a lot. But I try to stay engaged.

Does this make sense? Is it remotely helpful?

Re: coming from someone who is completely and utterly unqualified

[m0g0.livejournal.com]

Very helpful, thanks. :) And yeah, I think the history is what I don't have. I'd like to get that figured out at some point.