• Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.caEnglish
    20·
    6 天前

    Because they’re completely different gods. The old testament is only a part of christianity because in order to gain some legitimacy for their early church, they decided that their new god must be the same dude as the the god of the people that they were living among.

    But in reality, they are very different books, written in very different times, by two very different religious cultures.

    • nekbardrun@lemmy.world
      7·
      6 天前

      Also, the old testament god is not a single god.

      It started as a god among other equally powerful and important gods and was later turned (by the writers) into the most important god.

      Then it turned into god and satan as being similar in power.

      Nowadays, the majority of church people flip the switch whenever they want a bi-theism (god vs satan) or a monotheism (god is all powerful and even satan can’t act with god’s explicit orders).

      Similar thing with free will.

      You have free will until you don’t have and you have no free will until it is convenient to say you actually have.

    • potoooooooo ☑️@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      6 天前

      Yeah, they are “very different books” each individually comprised of “very different books,” and all of the other books that eventually got left out are a lot of the best parts. I haven’t read them, but it feels like how my friend used to describe the Star Wars extended universe books.

  • blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works
    181·
    6 天前

    Because the people who wrote the old testament wanted to scare people into subservience

    And those who wrote the new testament thought positive reinforcement was better

  • Redditmodstouchgrass@lemmy.zip
    251·
    7 天前

    My take is that it’s a reflection of the Israelite people. It’s easy to be all fire and brimstone when you can back it up with military force. Suspiciously that all went away after they got conquered…

  • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
    161·
    7 天前

    I feel like y’all are forgetting about all the heinous shit God does in the new testament. Just because he’s not all up front fire and brimstone about it doesn’t mean he isn’t still an evil bastard in the new book

    • Tinidril@midwest.socialEnglish
      14·
      6 天前

      Let’s not forget that prior to Jesus any punishments were over when you died. Permanent Hell was a new testament thing.

    • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayEnglish
      4·
      7 天前

      Could you link something cause when I Google any combination of “new testament god angry/vengeful” I’m not getting allot besides religious sites sane washing it.

      • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
        141·
        7 天前

        I’m not gonna link a source, but here’s some chapters from the good book itself:

        Acts 5, God kills Ananias and Sapphira for withholding too much of their taxes. Seems like an overreaction for the new forgiving, loving, kind God.

        Acts 12, God strikes down King Herod for accepting praise or some shit, which is similar to the egotistical, vengeful, immature punishments the God of the old testament frequently handed out.

        Jesus (who is also God) throws some incredibly immature and irresponsible super-powered toddler tantrums, like in Mark 11 where he curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit when he was hungry, even though it was out of season, and in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus forces demons to possess a bunch (like, thousands) of pigs that just happen to be nearby, causing them all to cast themselves off a cliff and die. Jesus suggests/condones rape as a punishment in multiple instances, which is pretty fucked up, but is consistent with the whole “the sexual punishment fits the sexual “crime”” motif you see all throughout the New Testament. Jesus himself isn’t just the peace-loving, love-thy-neighbor hippie they try to portray him as - in Matthew 10 he says “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword”, basically acknowledging and condoning religious violence. Very like, un-kumbayah of him, man.

        Pick a page from Revelation, that whole book is basically just God bringing about the apocalyptic end times in increasingly violent and cruel ways, including killing people a second time by tossing them into a lake of fire for not being Christian enough to make it onto his nice list.

        The continued existence of hell is a big one for me as well. You’d think a truly loving, kind, and forgiving God would get rid of the eternal damnation spirit torture prison. He also doesn’t end other universally-accepted-as-immoral practices like slavery, but instead doubles down on it in Ephesians, Colossians, and probably a bunch of other places. All in all, the God of the new testament is just as much of a bastard as in the old, he’s just hiding behind the introduction of his new son (who is also a bit of a bastard, but maybe a tad less so, so people accept it) and the weird blood magic ritual sacrifice storyline.

        Edit: my claim that the God of the new testament is unchanged from the one in the old is also supported by scripture - James 1 and Hebrews 13 say as much, and even Jesus says he’s not coming to shake things up, that all the old laws (including the fire and brimstone ones) still apply in Matthew 5.

        • lazylion_ca@lemmy.ca
          4·
          7 天前

          Jesus’ instructions on divorce are pretty unJesus like.

          Slightly off topic but DAE find it convenient that Jesus’ first lecture to his new disciples was about divorce? Like hey, guys. Forget fishing and making money and handling business, and dont worry about your wives anymore.

        • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayEnglish
          3·
          7 天前

          I’ve been out of the church for a while but always imagined Jesus as a current day socialist with feeding the poor & “how you treat the least of me…” stuff. Shame that book is so contradictory.

          • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
            41·
            7 天前

            The entire thing is contradictory, on purpose, to give people excuses to commit atrocities in the name of their “kind and loving” God

  • homura1650@lemmy.world
    13·
    7 天前

    Going well beyond my competencies to answer, but I think a lot of it comes down to monotheism changing the nature of god.

    Judaism thinks of itself as starting monotheism; and that is largely true. However, the old testament is still littered with vestiges of it’s polytheistic origins.

    If there are multiple God’s, then those God’s will come into conflict. That is simply the nature of human storytelling.

    Looking at the old Testament, probably the most violent God has been was during exodus. In addition to freeing the Jews, he smite the Egyptians with 10 plagues, among which was the death of all firstborn sons.

    For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD. (Exodus 12:12)

    Note the polytheistic origins of this story. God is not merely intervening in the Earthly affairs of us lowly humans. The Jewish God is fighting with the Egyptian gods. He does not have the luxury of being nice and good. Even if he wins this fight without resorting to such drastic measures; he still needs to do so to act as a deterrent against other gods acting against him. That is not so much a specific tactical calculation in this case, but the way humans tend to imagine polytheistic gods working (reflective, of course, of the way human conflict tends to work).

    It probably doesn’t help that Yahweh was the god of War before becoming the only God.

    By the time we get to the new testament, the situation is different. Beyond merely declaring that their god is the only God, the early Christians believed it, and had believed it for generations of storytelling. Their view of God had shed the vestiges of polytheism and morphed into what is truly possible under monotheism. God can be good because he lacks a peer rival. There is no narrative reason for God to be mean, because he can simply win any direct confrontation he faces.

    We see similar dynamics play out in modern story telling. When we have vastly overpowered characters, the nature of the conflicts they get in us not fights. Perhaps they are trying to mediate between lesser parties. Perhaps they want to get something while respecting the rights and interests in weaker parties. A story where a vastly superior force wants something and just takes it is boring; so we don’t tell it.

  • CXORA@aussie.zoneEnglish
    161·
    7 天前

    Because they exist for different audiences.

    What works to keep people in line in prehistory is not the same as what works in ancient Rome, is not the same as works now.

    Thats why all religions change over time, even if they like to say they don’t.

  • Redacted@lemmy.zipEnglish
    10·
    7 天前

    Full disclosure Im an atheist. The answer ive been given before is something along the lines of ‘after jesus died and did his whole thing, part of the deal with jesus dying is now mankind and god enter into a “new testament” and now the new one supersedes the old one’, but thats a very rough paraphrasing.

    How any of this makes any sense is beyond me. God killed himself for himself to have himself stop hating us…?

    • KneeTitts@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      7 天前

      How any of this makes any sense is beyond me

      In religions nothing makes sense and thats the entire point. All religions are a basically a gullibility test, and they only want the ones who Fail that test to be in their cult. Its been like this for thousands of years.

    • Zink@programming.dev
      5·
      6 天前

      There’s a Jesus quote about specifically this. Here’s the first search result.

      “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17–18).

      That’s the convenient quote that conservatives can point to when they still want to enforce old testament shit. For instance, claiming to follow Leviticus when they’re being homophobic, rather than going with their homeboy’s forgiveness and loving the sinner.

  • LillyPip@lemmy.caEnglish
    41·
    6 天前

    God is not about forgiveness and such in the New Testament. That’s a retcon by later Christians to make it more palatable.

    He preached violence:

    Matthew‬ ‭10:34‬: Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

    He was just as happy to send people to hell:

    Matthew‬ ‭13:41-42: The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

    Every single horrible decree in the Old Testament still applies in the new (despite modern Christians trying to redefine what ‘fulfil’ means):

    Matthew‬ ‭5:17-18‬: Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

    That’s last one includes all the slavery, rape, genocide, etc. Jesus could have spoken out against those things, but instead he said all those judgements were just and should be continued.

    Matthew‬ ‭10:21‬: And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.

    Pretty violent, and not very loving.

    And let’s not forget the revelations, in which Jesus will doom billions of people to a horrific existence followed by eternal hellfire, not for doing wrong things, but merely for not being devoted to him. Even the devout and righteous of other religions, and even babies who haven’t had the chance to sin.

    Remember, Jesus is the same god as in the Old Testament – if god is eternal and unchanging (which the Bible says he is), he is literally the same entity who committed atrocities before he decided to wear human skin and sacrifice himself to himself.

    This is not a loving god.

  • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
    3·
    6 天前

    Because Yahweh was originally a lesser Canaanite deity of war and destructive storms, while his counterpart, Baal, was all about gentle restorative rains. Part of that population moved around, and took him to be their primary deity when they broke off. He eventually merged with El.

    Then that shit for further rehashed a few millennia later to soften his image.