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Communism is so powerful that even God fears it
The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. - Genesis 11:6
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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christianity
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That isnt communism and god isnt afraid of it. You are lionizing mesopotamian empires based on slavery and exploitation. Story of Babel is about class society and empire and god is horrified/appalled by it.
The city of Babel being built isnt a good thing. Think about this story in historical context rather than in the abstract. Babel is a mesopotamian city. It would be built using forced labour, would involve more intensive exploitation for the construction of monumental architecture and upkeep of an urban ruling class. Biblical god is distinctly not a fan of these things (slavery, exploitation, and urbanization all get you on his shitlist).
Unsettling the Word has a nice analysis of Babel in the modern canadian context, with Babel called "Petropolis" and the single language being the liberal jargon around development and profit.
This is not an interpretation I have encountered before. The old testament god loves slavery, genocide, exploitation, dick chopping offing, mass infanticide, and lots of other cool things. He doesn't like golden idols, his ex wife, other contemporary gods from the Levant, and being held accountable.
Plus the ot is like thirty different documents from a bunch of different time periods and different authors with different agendas so acting like it has an consistent editorial tone and message is best left to Rabbis and fan fic writers.
God being a conservative deadbeat dad tracks.
Or online discussion on the c/christianity comm created specifically for good faith leftist discussion lol
In terms of creating a consistent tone, literally all I'm doing is reading the book of prophets as the critique of the 'historical' books (meaning Genesis to 2 Chronicles) that it quite explicitly is. Book of Jeremaiah quite explicitly calls out priests and scribes for handling the text falsely, book of Isaiah calls israel out for the genocide and slavery and exploitation (and then israel famously gets completely owned, in the story explicitly because its hands are full of blood).
When I found out there were two creation accounts and two exodus accounts, I was as pissed off as when I learned the conquests in Joshua never happened
Granted, it's way more interesting to read them as historical artifacts and a developing theology reacting to its environment but being like "fucking what" when you're taught it's perfectly infallible is a wild feeling
Interestingly enough the "the bible is the literal and infallible word of god" people are a fairly recent (post 1500) thing.
Through most of theological history, its been understood as figurative (e.g. iirc Augustine saying that the days in Genesis 1 are God-Days each representing 1000 years), and not taken as "word of god" (at best, the first five books were "word of god through moses" and not everyone believed that) so it wasnt seen as "infallible".
Yeah, the Chicago Statement and it's consequences etc. reading about how capitalism both birthed and enabled American Christianity now, particularly evangelicalism but also mainline protestantism in their anti-communist fervor
Unless, of course, you're related to Abraham then all those things are fine
Israel gets repeatedly owned by god in the book explicitly bc they do all three of these things lol
Deuteronomy 20 is a full chapter about how good it is to do genocide on everyone else, enslave women and children, destroy everything other than things you'll use afterwards, and take their cities as your own.
Find me the line in Deuteronomy 20 saying any of this is good.
Also as I and others have said in other comments
this isn't exceptional for bronze age and iron age near eastern warfare; the weird part about biblical god is that there are written and codified limits to the destruction and plundering;
Genesis through 2 Chronicles are 'historical' books and not necessarily endorsements of the behaviour or laws depicted, as god can and quite explicitly does change his mind (e.g. Jeremiah and the Potter);
this behaviour (the killing, expansion of Israel and forced labour) is explicitly cited as one reason for Israel's destruction in Isaiah and Jeremiah;
Jeremiah explicitly says that the "lying pens of the scribe have handled it [the holy texts] falsely" and we know from linguistic and historical/archaeological research that the Pentateuch (the first five books) are the most heavily edited of all the books especially in terms of and around the sections of laws;
Deuteronomy is known to be one of the later and most priestly of edits;
So all in all I don't think Deuteronomy 20 is the gotcha you think it is (it is also bad priestly fanfiction to justify bad kingly fanfiction, but extratextual debunking is less fun)
Sorry but that's just not true. God is a big fan of slavery, genocide, and city building.
Additionally; Most of Genesis is just early Jewish priests making shit up to spite their rivals.
God has patrician tastes in games.
The book of Nehemiah is literally just some guy rebuilding Jerusalem like it's the Sims.
Said guy also 'purified' the Jewish population through things like debt cancellation, assisting in the enforcement of the laws of Moses and enforcing the divorce of Jewish men from their non-Jewish wives.
God of the bible fucking sucks, man.
You're right with the making shit up though (see for example Schmid The Making of the Bible), but this is reductive, and ignores the fact that the majority of the non-priestly text-sources were likely oral traditions before being written down.
I was making a joke
It was a good joke also
my autistic ass desperately wishes people would tonetag their jokes, especially outside of joke comms (and particularly when the joke is something so often said seriously and taken seriously by most people in comments)
Your comment was good even if it was a joke anyway so everyone is a winner here.
Whew! Good thing different languages prevented slavery and coerced labor from becoming a thing.
oh yeah god was a real big abolitionist??
Depending on the book the answer is either "yes" or "no, but he is very very critical of the institution". My personal fanon is that he had a sorta "wait and see and then limited intervention" approach to post-flood human evils (I do not headcanon an omniscient unchanging god in these books)
if god hated slavery so much.... why did he invent it
I mean...he doesn't? First time he mentions it (after doing a very small genocide in Egypt to get them to stop slavery (Interestingly non-military slavery is very rare in ancient Egypt, only really existed in the middle kingdom) he's like "Nope, you gotta let them go after 6 years unless they want to say".
Now admittedly he then says his wife and children remain slaves, but in fairness god is trying to gently introduce to the people of Israel the concept of being human. There's a theological argument in some parts of Judaism that god chose them because they were the literal Worst, and if he can beat them into shape the rest will be easy.
Slavery: exists
Existence: created by god
Slavery: created by god
Ipso facto, truth be extracto
Ik is lighthearted bc emote (ty) but my assumption would be slavery is part of why he said "dont eat the fruit of knowledge, is bad for u"
yeah except the actual intention and or even divine intent of the text is kind of irrelevant. The actual translation and depiction of it has been popularized as “god was scared of strong people together” and that’s what people now believe the story is about: The hubris of those who think they can stand up to God is bad and leads to punishment, even if that hubris is sourced from cooperation
Are you saying that, because the popular conception and depictions of babel are the later tower-focused version etc, there's no point discussing the original context in the comm created for such discussion about the religion and its development?
Nah you’re right that it’s worth talking about and your points are both good and insightful, I’m just saying that the original post also has value as a subversion of the popular narrative