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I believe that an ancient tribe of bronze-age goat herders called Hebrews intermingled with other tribes who sacrificed animals to appease their gods and the Hebrews said, "This might work" so they picked up the practice. Like all other ancient practices it evolved into a very elaborate ritual complete with fireside stories of being led out of a hostile land by a great man and into their own dwelling place. Eventually this became known as Passover. The rest, as they say, is the Old Testament.
I don't see it as unnecessary for those of us who were taught that we MUST believe that God demanded a blood sacrifice (Jesus) in order to be saved from an eternity of torment. Such teachings -- for those of us who were indoctrinated with it from a very young age and accepted it -- left us with a very warped understanding of what love is (since we were also taught that God IS love). And it forced us to accept a self-contradictory premise, which isn't a great precedent to set for sound reasoning.
Very good point, thank you. We were kinda taught to love a monster filled with wrath, a need for blood, punishing and jealous ...also separate from ourselves...somewhere "out there".
That reminds me of Rod Taylor in the future, in 'Time Machine'...the Morlocks sounding
a whistle and without question the blonde youth march to their deaths.
i say seeing is believing unless you want to live in a fantasy world like a child...which I
must say is rather comfy.....makes me not want to rock anyone's boat
because they are all so comfy in their dreamy sleepy beliefs. ..WHICH the ONLY one I am talking about is that our Father would EVER want blood to be satisfied with us in any way. That is preposterous.
Isaiah 1:11..To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord:
I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts;
and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.-KJV
Why is it so hard to think of God as never possibly wanting such a thing?
I don't know how anyone could believe it....the blood need.
No one that has exp'd God would EVER think it.
That is the first indication if someone has known God...he now knows 'He' is a Being of Pure Love, and Joy and everything light and wonderful.
Now watch...Christians will come out of the woodwork to say, No...He created hell
and is punishing, jealous and just.
Really? Then, you don't know the God I know!!! You know a God from a book written by
well-meaning, superstitious primitives.
It's better to not believe in a God cuz you haven't seen 'Him', than believe 'He', Who has gender...is a bloody monster.
Last edited by Miss Hepburn; 09-07-2018 at 04:56 PM..
The time of blood sacrifices is done and over with. The old covenant has been replaced with Jesus, and his sacrifice was the final "big" one to end all.
I've never understand why all those animals got their throats cut and their blood poured out and then burned. Then Jesus gets away with the more dramatic, but less gory, method of getting killed via a Roman crucifixion gadget. I mean, if he was to be sacrificed for our sins in traditional Hebrew style shouldn't he have been roasted on a spit or something.
I've never understand why all those animals got their throats cut and their blood poured out and then burned.
Then Jesus gets away with the more dramatic, but less gory, method of getting killed via a Roman crucifixion gadget.
I mean, if he was to be sacrificed for our sins in traditional Hebrew style shouldn't he have been roasted on a spit or something.
I'm not being sacrilegious...I love Jesus...but this is an interesting point ...as the lamb of God...
a quick slit of the throat was the custom, causing very little trauma...right?
I do not.
I can not even imagine a Being of such love and magnificence wanting
a goat sacrificed on this teeny, far off planet hidden amongst billions and billions of planets,
amongst billions of solar systems ...(What kind of sacrifice was it anyway?
People came to the market to buy animals just to sacrifice! Where's the sacrifice? Did they then eat the sacrifice or toss it? )
Another man-made concept?
Discuss...
Convince me that God needed a blood sacrifice...why would you personally think this...understanding that a verse from the Bible would convince no one.
Why do YOU think a magnificent, brilliant Spirit, unseen, maintaining billions of solar systems would need a goat killed - or a human. What sense does it even make?
And this is not to say I don't love and follow Jesus and His Father God.
I am not an atheist, by any means.
But this belief in blood letting to appease God is pretty 'out there'! Come on...
Before I answer this by explaining my thoughts from Islamic point of view, do you want to apply your own logic of OP on Jesus being put on the cross? - It undermines the entire Christian doctrine because the entire concept is based on a sacrifice - which means you are perhaps not a Christian anymore. IMO.
I'm not being sacrilegious...I love Jesus...but this is an interesting point ...as the lamb of God...
a quick slit of the throat was the custom, causing very little trauma...right?
Well, regardless of the method of the blood sacrifice, it's quite apparent that the Hebrews performed these horrific acts of murder on a somewhat regular basis.
The key is in the Abraham and Isaac story whereby Abraham is commanded to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice to God.
Perhaps THE most important thing to take away from that story is how Abraham simply agreed to murder his own son ... and he did so without question, without emotion, and without protest. Any father who loved his son would have begged and pleaded with God to "take me instead and let my boy live!" or something similar.
But if human blood sacrifices were not run-of-the-mill in Hebrew religious practices, why did Abraham take this command so casually, so matter-of-factly?
The almost flippant way in which Abraham agreed to sacrifice Isaac shows without doubt that human blood sacrifices were just a normal part of life; Abraham saw nothing at all unusal in God's command.
If human blood sacrifices were uncommon or unheard-of, then Abraham should have been wondering why, all of the sudden, Yahweh is acting out of character -- perhaps going as far as wondering if this wasn't a trick by Ol' Scratch.
Instead, he just picked up his knife, got his friends together, lied to Isaac to lure him to the sacrifical site, and off they went -- without a single question being raised. You don't just casually saunter off with your son to murder him unless you're a complete sociopath/psychopath OR your God frequently demands these sorts of sacrifices and Abraham was so desensitized to human blood sacrifices that it no longer bothered him.
Of course, the ultimate expression of human blood sacrifices is God needing to crucify Jesus in order to forgive humanity for all of our sins ... up to that point, I guess.
Naturally, most Christians like to believe that their Biblegod Yahweh is the literal wellspring of goodness, love, and morality when the Bible itself proves without question that nothing could be further from the truth.
Yahweh is a tribalistic wargod invented by the Hebrews to both justify aggressive warfare in the form of genocidal landgrabs in the region of Palestine, and to form a cultural identity and create unity among the tribe of Israel. BUT Yahweh was a savage and primitive god -- like all gods were in those days.
Modern Christians simply superimposed their desire for a good, just, fair, and loving god over the old, savage, primitive personna of Yahweh -- attempting to change God's character by introducing Jesus who does at least try to pass himself off as good.
The reason why I say "pass himself off" is because there is still the problem of the infamous "hellthreat" that Jesus bandies about in the New Testament -- which did not exist in the Old Testament. Now, suddenly, one can find himself being tortured forever if you don't immediately join the Christ cult, give all your possessions to the poor, and then learn to hate your family.
(And once the poor receives all of those possessions, they are no longer poor ... thus requiring THEM to give away all the stuff they just got to different poor people ... and then THEY have to give their stuff away, and on and on ... until one singular person somehow ends up owning ALL of the possessions with no one left to give them to. I guess that person can only hope a camel passes through the eye of a needle before Judgment Day ... or else!)
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