Originally posted by ivanhoe
..... whether all these threads dealing with the "evilness" of the Jewish people and their "Monster" God in the Old Testament are in fact veiled expressions of anti-semitism.
What are your thoughts about all this ?
I think that, in some cases, it could be. For example, one of the
earliest Christian heresies was the Marcionite heresy. In it, Marcion
formed his own canon (the first such Christian canon) comprising
some 10 (?) Pauline letters and a modified version of the Gospel of
St Matthew. He rejected the God of the Hebrews as a pagan God and
considered the God that Jesus represented to be the One True God
(that is, he saw them as different entities).
Unfortunately, Marcion's writings are all but lost -- only a few
fragmented citations still exist in responses by Orthodox Christians to
his claims.
That having been said, I, too, have difficulty reconciling the actions of
the seemingly aggressive God of the OT with the one Jesus talks
about. However, I have a deep love and reverance for the Jewish
people and their customs (i.e., I am not anti-Semitic).
My explanation is that the Jews
interpreted their unlikely
victories in difficult situations as Divinely directed; that is, they
anthropomorphized God as having their anger and used this to
justify their merciless actions. We see this sort of stuff all the time,
both in the Bible and in modern times: I got a parking ticket,
therefore God was angry with me (and the like). When the Jews lost
a battle, they claimed it was because God was angry at them and
when they won, it was because God smiled upon them. Of course,
their opponents could make the same claims (when they defeated the
Jews, it was because God was smiling on them, and vice versa).
At least, this is how I interpret these otherwise difficult passages.
Nemesio