Abraham was the first story where God decided human sacrifice was wrong.
He told Abraham to sacrifice his son… and decided at the last moment to tell him not to.
Abraham didn’t kill his son as a sacrifice to God.
What we know from this is that God made a decision to prove to Abraham that god chooses against human sacrifice at the last moment for blood atonement.
If god wanted the blood atonement, he’d never have yelled at Abraham at the last moment not to kill his son on an alter.
Abraham obeyed god and didn’t kill his son.
That’s a covenant. God chose for the beginning of his statement upon the world that human sacrifice is not his will.
Abraham is the beginning of gods covenant.
The father of the Jewish people.
Abraham is Moses’ great grandfather times 6.
The first covenant was Abraham.
God chose Abraham to obey not killing people for a sacrifice to god.
There is a huge understated difference here, fir it’s one thing to sacrifice another, from sacrificing (His)self. Christ really was predominantly understood as God Himself, rather than some other man.
This is essentially not merely a matter of factual speculation
It’s very straight forward. The father of Israel’s story was about god deciding to never do blood sacrifice to god again.
So… god sacrificed his blood to himself? (Commuted suicide to atone for all sin!!!). That’s crazy-talk. It’s even crazier when god pops back up after committing suicide to atone and says… “just kidding! It’s impossible to kill me, but wow, I feel so much better about myself for hurting everyone now.”
There’s a very good reason that Jews don’t see Jesus as their predicted messiah. Jesus fits 0% of the criteria from the Old Testament. The Old Testament is read by Jews not in cryptic sense, but in plain sense…
It’s not even true if you read it cryptically. There is zero percent for Christ to be the Jewish messiah.
For one: the Jewish messiah was said not to be a miracle worker.
Jews don’t believe in the trinity as well. To the Jewish readings, there are no gods equal or above the one god.
The Jewish messiah also is predicted to convince everyone simultaneously … its impossible from Jewish scripture for someone to disagree and have that be the messiah.
Yes and no. He did not sacrafice Himself, only His sentiment , created part of Himself, And not for measures of atonement, but to prove His presence through faith in the miracle of creation.
Again a subtlety easily missed. Generalities can only be expressed in analogies, and they do not offer the absolute proof that nominal perceptions require.
Meno. You’re talking out your ass… making shit up.
You know I’m an atheist.
I’m critiquing the Jewish understanding of god against their prophets and Jesus’ life.
The actual plain reading of text.
Now. “The father is in me and I am in the father, this is an ineffable mystery”. (Throwing a couple passages together to make one quote).
So think about this…
The father in Jesus can send us all to our personalized eternal heavens. The father in Jesus can prevent his own crucifixion. Not preventing it is the same as suicide. But it’s worse. God already knows god can’t die… so there was never a sacrifice.
So why is it so important for people to say that god made a sacrifice when a sacrifice is impossible for god?
Very simply, if a religious psychology or psychology of religion were to denote the above discussion, then it could be said that the above referenced difference could make sense even to an atheist.
Let me clarify.
If God and Man are simply anthropomorphic images of reversible ideas, then a God sacrifycing his son( part of Himself) and sacrifycing of Abraham’s progeny, would differ analogously as self suicide of the firmer and sacrifice for the latter.
There is considerable difference between self sacrifice( suicide) and the killing of another.
Let’s take this further.
Even if such acts were induced into the sphere of metafir, such deliniations could differ along the lines of an inner to an outer directional self.
Inner directional thought compromise the unity of a single human introspective being,while the outer directed compromise is understood in terms a projection, denying a self destruction.
Deconstruction en-mass was more in line with projections of mass nihilization as a reaction to the unacceptable horrors that betook WWII.
In today’s very complex and changed global situations, fine tuning such many variable interconnected scenarios, make even that analogy to the previous world wars not too far a stretch.
I add this not to disagree with Your assessment, only yo point to farther reaches into depths which comprise religious belief in view of their latent/ patent simulations.
The covenant with Abraham, when God gave him the promises, did involve sacrifice, and is a different event.
It is not the first or only covenant in the pentateuch.
When God stopped the sacrifice of Isaac (after Abraham obeyed the command to sacrifice him—though…yes, God stopped him), it set Abraham & offspring apart from other cultures that did human sacrifice, but more …it showed Abraham believed the promises and that God could raise Isaac from the dead to fulfill them. I somewhat disagree with Kierkegaard’s interpretation. Also, God provided a ram in place of Isaac. Prefigures Christ.
It did not end all sacrifices. More rules came regarding them with Moses after the exodus from Egypt. Jesus’ death put an end to them. So did the temple’s destruction.
Jesus meant for his death to be a substitutionary atonement/ransom as typified/prefigured (foreshadowed) and prophesied, and he fulfilled it. Meno_ is right that it doesn’t count as a ritual human sacrifice - but not just because Jesus is also God. It was intended by his accusers as a punishment, not a sacrifice. The high priest Caiaphas mentioned it is better for one man to die for the people. He was not referring to human sacrifice.
Places to start: Daniel 9. Mark 10. John 11:49-50. Hebrews 10 & 11 (see 11:19).
Is that enough? I have fat books that go into the covenants, messianic prophecies, theories of atonement, etc, etc.
That not everyone accepted/accepts Jesus as God (or even from God) says nothing against that fact. That was also prophesied.
So tell me - how would you communicate “I love you no matter what” if you were God?
How would you show anyone that you love them? Would you change your mind about showing them if you knew they would never believe it? Most instances of God appearing to people result in them thinking they’re gonna die. It’s not something that he can just do willy-nilly. It’s who he is. It’s why we even exist. It’s gonna mean something.
The thing w Adam & Eve… the fig leaves bit… no animals harmed (oop… & they procured those on their own)… the actual covenant was to leave alone the tree of the knowledge of good & evil and only eat everything else (biologos.org/questions & stuff William Lane Craig (Reasonable Faith) is studying.
Regardless if you believe the adversary appeared as a talking serpent like so many creation/early myths that have talking animals (nm a talking donkey way later than creation… pretty sure we’re no strangers to the strange…)… there is a first for everything, including sin.
The first sin, and every sin that followed/s… whether systemic or individual… poisons/deadens everything. Toil, painful labor, gender conflict are the death that (apparently?) resulted. The point is, it makes life harder … it was an early attempt at theodicy. A beautiful one, I think.
My fave part… “Who told you you’re naked?” He didn’t shame them. Our early stories… fricken deep.
I understand you always try to talk around topics.
Not eating from that tree was not a covenant…
Without eating from that tree, they wouldn’t know what a covenant was to begin with.
More to the point…
After god cursed all beings except god to eternal torment forever for eating from the tree…
A lot was glossed over.
It was about the concept of nudity, when really it should have been, “who told you about being bothered by something or anything, others, and myself most particularly?”
You want me to say this, even though you reflect you know it? Ok. Eating broke the covenant—a merely symbolic, completely arbitrary command that gave us a choice, a boundary to respect… that is what makes it possible to be in relationship as a choice. They had everything…why doubt it? The wage (price) of sin is death (material, social, psychological)… It’s not something anyone knows until they sin and experience the consequences. The command and the consequence is a tutor on the way to actual life/grace/love — lovelessly going through the motions/rituals is not the goal. This is interesting: redeeminggod.com/hebrews-9-22-s … -sins/amp/
Every time I say hell has to be a viable choice if love (God himself, particularly) is going to be a viable choice, this is what I’m saying. If there was never anything you didn’t want, you could never (refuse) consent. You would be ignorant of want or nakedness, but also joy and intimacy.
This is really testing my comfort zone. I hate taking sides on early Genesis stuff.
Let’s take this further. They had unbroken communion with God (for who knows how long, or how old the earth was) before they had choice, like a baby and mom. They were made in God’s image (they could treat other as self), but unless there is a boundary to respect or transgress, there is no choice to love free of inclination/conditioning (thoughtfully). What sort of boundary do you give someone who never knew a boundary or consequence? They don’t even know enough to question you, so how do you explain it? It has to be arbitrary. That’s why Good is primary even though knowledge of the primary implies knowledge of the privation. Like you said. They are not opposites. That’s how we are born good, born capable of choosing either good or evil, while it is obvious by looking around that the world is fallen and in need of (accepting) redemption. Babies are little singularities or reminders of innocence - that we lost - and before they realize right from wrong… even when we wrongly think they already do… they are unblemished in his eyes. And his point on the cross is that no matter how blemished we really, actually are - he loves us like we’re brand new, crapping our diapers. We’re the ones who need to let shit go and grow from it.
I understand you’re frustrated that my “good news of the kingdom“ document blends verses together without explicitly stating their source verses, but not in the way you are doing it. You’re hilarious.
Why are you throwing in little details like apples? There are no apples in the narrative. I feel like I need a disclaimer in my signature for when I don’t reply to such details.
Yes—Adam & Eve were already like God in the respect that they could treat the other as self. And they could understand boundaries, but not the sort of death brought by violating them. Again, I hate talking about this narrative literally. it feels like taking literally the song of Deborah and Barak in Judges 5.
The toil part (consequence, not agreement) is also symbolic like the fruit (not a fricken apple… but maybe??… it wasn’t a magical apple, though, I can tell you that much! …or a poison one!). Sigh. Fine, have it your way. I’ll take sides & refer you back up to where I said it was an early attempt at theodicy. Not saying it was 100% fabricated. Neither was the song of Deborah and Barak. The agreement (covenant) was to not eat the forbidden fruit. God knew they would anyway, obviously. This whole thing was complete before it started.
So. Again. You’re timeless. You’re love. You overflow love. How do you express it without killing the creature(s)… given you can bring them back to life? Go.
How does that make God evil? How is that even in and of itself evil? I guess it depends on how you’re using the word evil. Some people do use it to mean just bare adversity. But when they are using it that way, then to call God evil is the same as saying he disciplines those he loves. I consider that a good thing. And even the sort of evil that isn’t bare adversity (the sort of evil God is not, and that will pass away like nihil that isn’t anchored in the atemporal/transcendent eternal)…can be turned back to good. Count it all joy.