[Carl] Caramba! I was trying to agree with you there. I'm in full accord with the view that the Bible has a poor signal-to-noise ratio. Those lyrical passages are diamonds set in mounds of rubbish edification-wise. Perhaps the most notorious example of the Good Book red in tooth and claw is when God put out a Holy Contract on the Amalekites and became Almightily pissed with Saul for failing to execute per specs. 1 Samuel 15 tells the tale: "Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." In the event, Saul the hit man went out and "utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword." However, he did spare some of the livestock -- for use, as it happens, as sacrifices to the LORD of hosts. Nice gesture, bad reception. The L of H thunders, in effect, "What part of 'spare them not' don't you understand?" Divine spokesman Samuel later informs Saul that he is being discharged for insubordination, viz.: "Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king." Tough love all around!
BTW, in checking up on this topic I encountered this interesting comment on a biblical blog: "I'm aware that in the OT God gave commands to the Israelites to destroy the entire Amelekite nation because of their evil. However, that was a single instance command -- it was not generalized: 'Go kill any nation you find that happens to offend me or practice evil.' Rather it said (something like this): 'go destroy this nation, the Amelekites, because their evil is so great.' So again, let me request: please point me to an instance in the Bible where God gives a generalized command for believers to kill unbelievers."
I believe the intent there is to say that the God of the Bible is more civilized than the God of the Koran since the G of the B is only a first offender genocide-wise. QED! Cue the praise and thanksgiving! This reminds of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the King of Swamp Castle (Michael Palin) tries to buck up the (few) wedding guests who have escaped being mistakenly slaughtered by Sir Lancelot (John Cleese): "Please! Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."
> [John] ... Feel free to condemn Italian Fascism in my presence. I won't feel
> compelled to point out how Italian Futurism has been a profound
> influence on my art work and how breathtaking much of it is.
Say what you will about Mussolini & Co. as humanitarians; they were dab hands as designers. In fact, Italy was pretty artsy about its whole approach to WWII. It might be argued that dangling Il Duce and his mistress from girders in front of the Esso station in the Piazzale Loreto, Milan, prefigured the work of, say, Damien Hirst.
Carl