Originally posted by Volt
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For me it comes down to a matter of literature.
Each and every book which was chosen to be included in the Bible was written by a human being, in some cases more than one.
Each of these human writers lived in a particular culture, at a particular time in a particular place, and each had a different view of God (to what degree of difference is debatable).
That the chroniclers of the conquest of Canaan gave God the credit for their already-established practice of butchering noncombatants after conquering a city does in no way reflect upon Christ.
That too many people treat the Genesis story of the first man and the first woman (which reads very similarly to the creation myths and folktales of other countries) as literal history, and by that assumption of literality conclude that incest must have been involved in the birth of the human race, neither means it factually happened that way nor that God caused it to happen NOR that God approves of such a practice now.
Nor that the originators of the Genesis 1 poem (which was passed down for generations before being written down) ever meant it to be treated as literal history.
Even the written words of Jesus, which are FAR more applicable to us than ancient Hebrew history, must be scrutinized via the cultural context of those writing them in order to gain a more full understanding of the writing and avoid eisegesis.
Thus by acknowledging and studying these cultural differences, instead of treating the writings as timeless in the sense that they all automatically apply to us in the 21st Century, we avoid the moral quandary of our faith being tied to ancient barbaric practices.
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