Religion
In reply to the discussion: Brian Zahnd: No, God didnt command genocide in the Old Testament [View all]muriel_volestrangler
(101,311 posts)Just to say "I disagree" with the obvious interpretation of the article you posted is a waste of everyone's time.
The article says, at length, that the Old Testament is not a 'true' guide to God's ethics, and that it is wrong. It says we know this because we have the New Testament which the author believes is a true guide. He says "Jesus is the only perfect theology"; "Perfect theology is not a book; perfect theology is the life that Jesus lived". But we only have a description of the life that Jesus lived in the gospels. He is saying we must take them as true.
"What the Bible does infallibly and inerrantly is point us to Jesus"
"we understand Jesus Christ as the exact imprint of Gods very being."
"We should acknowledge that in the late Bronze Age, Israel made certain assumptions about the nature of God, assumptions that now have to be abandoned in the light of Christ. It is abundantly clear from the Gospels that Jesus has closed the door on genocide, just like he has closed the book on vengeance."
For any of this to work, you have to take the gospels as literally true.