Summations Only

Genesis 22 refers to a mountain in Moriah to which God will direct Abraham. You really want to deny that that's "Mount Moriah?"

Boy are YOU out of line. The example is of a man who DIDN'T do according to God's Law, not an example of how to live a God fearing life at all. God condemns both rash vows and human sacrifice.

You have to know the Bible, AZ, you have to know God's law, you have to know what He has said throughout scripture about rash vows and human sacrifice. Perhaps I can spend the time to do the research later to show you what I mean but from your attitude I doubt it would make any difference.

The Bible isn't a collection of morality lessons, though that's what you seem to think it should be. It simply records things that happened and often draws no conclusions from them at all, leaving that up to the reader. You can't tell from the account of Jephthah whether he was punished by God or not simply because it wasn't recorded there. We can only know from knowing the character of God from other parts of scripture that He condemns both rash vows and human sacrifice. A

In the time of the Judges the Law of Moses had already been given. The people, while no doubt having some knowledge of their history and the Law of Moses, nevertheless were living according to their own views. NOT reading the Bible according to the whole context only keeps you in the dark. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

For context, the Book of Judges is about a period of time in which Israel was led by a series of "judges" who were raised up by God to deal with specific threats from enemies, brought about by the sins of Israel. The account of Jephthah is given because he was one of the judges, in his case called to be a military leader against the Ammonites. The vow he made is part of the story but it isn't the reason the story is there, which is simply that he was one of the Judges God raised up in response to a threat from enemies.

Bunch of revisionist theology there, that's for sure.

Israel kept falling into the idolatrous practices of the heathen nations around them, against all the measures the Law had erected to try to prevent it. They were not "still" polytheistic they were influenced by their heathen neighbors to backslide. The scripture is very clear about this.

You are talking about the people's following the religions around them. This is some five hundred years after the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai which condemns idolatry, and it is this idolatry that brings on the later judgments by God against them too, the scattering of the northern kingdom by the Assyrians and the captivity of the southern Kingdom by the Babylonians. This is for breaches of the Law, not for "still" being polytheists.The particular religions they followed ought to tell you that. These aren't the golden calf of the Egyptians that they erected as their god while Moses was on Sinai with God, these are the religions of the Canaanites and other heathen nations of the land they finally settled in. The followers of Molech, which was a god of the Phoenicians, seduced the Israelites into sacrificing their children to him just as they did. They had the Law and they were violating it by imitating the heathen nations that surrounded them.

Oh NONSENSE! It was the work of good king Josiah of destroying the idolatrous altars tended by ISRAELITE priests who should have been attending in the temple of God. He wasn't attacking foreign priests but the priests of Israel who had become idolatrous tenders of the altars of demon gods.In Josiah's time they also rediscovered the Torah which had been lost, and he was zealous to bring Israel back under the God they had covenanted with. This involved cleansing Israel of the idolatrous altars that were on the "high places," into which idolatries Israel kept falling over and over, all the more when the Law was lost and out of sight.When the Law of Moses was recovered Josiah understood just how far the people had fallen from the God of Israel and set about restoring proper worship. This involved putting the idolatrous priests to death as the Law prescribes, breaking all the idols and altars, and he burned the bones of the priests on those altars to put finality to his cleansing. It was certainly no sacrifice, since the altars were polluted anyway and human sacrifice forbidden, it was punishment of idolatry and cleansing of the religion of Israel from which they had so far fallen that their own priests were minding the altars of demon gods. Perhaps the burning of the bones was itself a polluting of the altars as an act of condemnation of the false religions.Israel had made a covenant with Jehovah, to obey His Law. Your claim that they were "still" polytheists is utterly wrong. They merely kept losing their understanding of their own covenant and falling into idolatry under the influence of the religions around them.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Pogrom implies an attack on another people. The priests were priests of Israel. Correction: priests of Judah, the southern Kingdom.No it is not about the conflict between Israel and Judah, it's about the idolatry of Judah with gods of the heathen religions. Israel's idolatry was even worse."The book of the law" that was found was the five books of Moses. It says "found" therefore it was found.They were not polytheists they were apostate Israelites who had a covenant with Jehovah they were violating.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sorry I meant priests of Judah. But it still isn't another nation, since both were under the covenant of Jehovah. It was the priests of Judah who had built the altars Josiah tore down, and the same priests that he subjected to the death penalty.Torah means Book of the Law, ask an observant Jew. The book that was found was the Torah. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You are right that I shouldn't have said they were the same nation, I should have said the same people, God's people.They were separate states but originally they were all Israel and had all agreed to the covenant with Jehovah before they split into two. Are you saying that covenant had been broken?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Your rewrite of the Bible is diabolically clever, but all you have to do is read the original, to see that Israel was Israel, one people under covenant to Jehovah, certainly up through the reigns of David and Solomon but even after the division into the northern and southern kingdoms.Read 2 Kings 17 where the northern Kingdom is finally dissolved under Assyria as described in 2Kings 17:6. After that the following explanation is given: Judah is included in this general indictment in 17:13 So according to God's version of the Bible, as opposed to your version, Israel, the northern kingdom, and Judah, the southern kingdom, are both His people, under His covenant, and both had sinned against His covenant by worshiping other gods, and here He is explaining why the northern Kingdom has been dissolved. He has elsewhere said He is going to preserve the descendants of David for His name's sake, as the Messiah is to come from the line of David, which explains His allowing the southern Kingdom to continue at all. But the southern Kingdom also had more righteous kings than the northern Kingdom did.Anyway, together they formed the twelve tribes of Israel that God had brought out of Egypt, God's people even though they had committed such sins of idolatry against Him.

All I'm doing in this post is showing that jar's version of events is not the Bible's. The account says what it says as I have presented it, and at this point I'm not arguing for its truth, although of course I believe it and certainly not jar's revision.To make the comparison you suggest, I think you'd have to find another ancient people who considered themselves to be under covenant to the Creator God the same way Israel is presented to have been, as opposed to a local "god" or "gods."