Debunking Noah, and I need some help

[Leumas]

You can’t debunk a story that can be propped-up with divine intervention (aka magic).

Well…. If you mean debunking it to a believing dupe….. then yes.

But if you mean debunking it to anyone who can think….then no…. you can certainly still debunk the story despite allowing for a miraculous intervention.

EVEN IF we were to allow the divine intervention we can still LOGICALLY debunk most of the stories in the Bible.

That is the main problem with the Bible….. even if we allow and accept FULLY the existence of YHWH the stories can still be debunked.

In the example of the Noah story it is in fact particularly SIMPLE.

Forget the thing about the science of it…. All this can be waved away by saying YHWH did it.

But there is no way you can wave away the fact that it depicts a HEINOUSLY UNJUST and NEEDLESS DESTRUCTION.

Why didn’t YHWH just remove the bad people? Why not just flood the world but part the waters (ala Moses) in the places where Noah was? Why not just THINK the whole thing done and it would be done? Why save such a flawed lot as Noah and his son Ham but not all the babies and children?

A million questions like these that EVEN IF we take it as given that YHWH did it all….even with the miracles… the story is still STUPID at best and Heinously Vile and Unjust if you THINK about it.

So…yes… god did it is debunk proof ONLY FOR FOOLS….but not for even believing thinkers.

Even if you believe fully and utterly in YHWH and all the woo in the bible…. If you are a GOOD and reasoning person you still cannot accept the bible as a coherent, self-consistent and righteous story.

No…. even if you were to believe in YHWH as utterly true…. Reading the bible you cannot escape the conclusion that he is an

Infanticidal, Megalomaniacal, Homicidal, Racist, LYING, RAPING, INCESTUOUS, Jealous, Lustful, Gluttonous, Greedy, Slothful, Envious, Vain, Pompous, Wrathful, Vengeful, Deceitful, Egotistical, Malevolent, Benighted and heinously vile MORON.​

Unless of course one is a psychopath who does not care about other than himself or his tribe.

 

[roger]

Height of Everest above sea level (hence, minimum depth of the water): 29000 ft

29000 ft / 40 days / 24 hrs/day = 30 ft rain/hour.

That's not rain, that's a solid sheet of water falling continuously from the sky.

Just one of the many stupidities of the story.

 

[ynot]

Well…. If you mean debunking it to a believing dupe….. then yes.

But if you mean debunking it to anyone who can think….then no…. you can certainly still debunk the story despite allowing for a miraculous intervention.

EVEN IF we were to allow the divine intervention we can still LOGICALLY debunk most of the stories in the Bible.

That is the main problem with the Bible….. even if we allow and accept FULLY the existence of YHWH the stories can still be debunked.

In the example of the Noah story it is in fact particularly SIMPLE.

Forget the thing about the science of it…. All this can be waved away by saying YHWH did it.

But there is no way you can wave away the fact that it depicts a HEINOUSLY UNJUST and NEEDLESS DESTRUCTION.

Why didn’t YHWH just remove the bad people? Why not just flood the world but part the waters (ala Moses) in the places where Noah was? Why not just THINK the whole thing done and it would be done? Why save such a flawed lot as Noah and his son Ham but not all the babies and children?

A million questions like these that EVEN IF we take it as given that YHWH did it all….even with the miracles… the story is still STUPID at best and Heinously Vile and Unjust if you THINK about it.

So…yes… god did it is debunk proof ONLY FOR FOOLS….but not for even believing thinkers.

Even if you believe fully and utterly in YHWH and all the woo in the bible…. If you are a GOOD and reasoning person you still cannot accept the bible as a coherent, self-consistent and righteous story.

No…. even if you were to believe in YHWH as utterly true…. Reading the bible you cannot escape the conclusion that he is an

Infanticidal, Megalomaniacal, Homicidal, Racist, LYING, RAPING, INCESTUOUS, Jealous, Lustful, Gluttonous, Greedy, Slothful, Envious, Vain, Pompous, Wrathful, Vengeful, Deceitful, Egotistical, Malevolent, Benighted and heinously vile MORON.
​

Unless of course one is a psychopath who does not care about other than himself or his tribe.

First "proof" - God can do magic so anthing is possible.
Second "proof" - God works in mysterious ways and it's not our place to question or doubt the ways of god.
Third "proof" - You can't prove god doesn't exist therefore "he" does.

 

[Leumas]

Mudcat, tell your Mom this Orthodox Rabbi gives her permission not to understand the flood narrative as history.

I want to elaborate on this. You might want to suggest she consider what the story is trying to tell her as opposed to whether it happened the way the text tells it. The historicity of Genesis narrative was never the point. More recent believers were simply never taught that.

In your eyes, perhaps, but those aren't the eye she's using. The point of the story isn't whether it's possible. It's myth - and I don't mean myth in the "just a fantastical story" sense, but in the sense that it's intentionally metaphorical. We moderns tend to get as literal as - or more than - fundies when it comes to ancient texts, when the ancients themselves had no problem seeing the stories as mythical and true at the same time.

The language of Genesis in general is profoundly mythical. This is not a story about an actual, historical guy who behaves better than everyone else and gets rewarded by being forced to hole up with animals (not to mention no one to talk to but his own family) for months and months (though that would explain why he went and got soused as soon as he could afterwards); it's a continuation of the story of the evolution of human individual and societal sensibilities that we all experience. How does a person react to surviving a loss or trauma? How does that contrast with other similar episodes, such as Lot surviving Sodom? Should Noah have tried to sway the people around him to shape up? What does the answer mean for you and me as individuals? For a society? What message underlies the narrative element that has the deluge result from interpersonal crimes rather than cardinal sins such as idolatry?

The insistence on seeing the story as historical is a distraction from its purpose at best, and otherwise detracts from what it's getting at. Likewise the earlier quibbles in this thread over the amount of food and whatnot. The author(s) wasn't/weren't writing an apocalyptic survival manual, but an exploration of human emotional (and spiritual) development. So of course it has value. How much value the reader derives from it depends greatly on the attitude one takes in studying it, and how deeply Noah's circumstances resonate with him or her. That varies greatly from individual to individual, and I would suggest to your mother that she focus primarily on the internal themes rather than the superficial narrative. It'll be a healthier result for all involved.

So nothing means anything and yet it all means everything.

A table is a chair if you just think about it the “right” way and a turd is an apple pie if you just accept to redefine your terms to suit.

It is all a metaphor and the metaphor is what some Rabbi defines it despite a thousand other Rabbis defining it in a thousand orthogonal and contrary ways.

It is a dream unless you want it to be true and it is not true unless you prefer it to be so and who knows unless you do and it is all fine unless you oppose me and then it is not.

I am off to find me a joint.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

A burning question...

Is he still carrying a torch for her?

 

[ynot]

So nothing means anything and yet it all means everything.

A table is a chair if you just think about it the “right” way and a turd is an apple pie if you just accept to redefine your terms to suit.

It is all a metaphor and the metaphor is what some Rabbi defines it despite a thousand other Rabbis defining it in a thousand orthogonal and contrary ways.

It is a dream unless you want it to be true and it is not true unless you prefer it to be so and who knows unless you do and it is all fine unless you oppose me and then it is not.

I am off to find me a joint.

Convenient how believers cherry-pick what they claim is mythical and what is factual. If only there was some consensus it might have some credibility worthy of at least a small amount of consideration.

 

[Lowpro]

Hey I think that David is actually the beginning of the end for Monotheism; he's a shade of atheism when he gives up the literal truth of the Tanakh as told by the Rambam so really I take this as an olive branch. Of COURSE they aren't true, just take from it like you'd take from perhaps a Mark Twain novel!

 

[JudeBrando]

Height of Everest above sea level (hence, minimum depth of the water): 29000 ft

29000 ft / 40 days / 24 hrs/day = 30 ft rain/hour.

That's not rain, that's a solid sheet of water falling continuously from the sky.

Just one of the many stupidities of the story.

Mt. Everest is 29,029 ft. today.

If the entire earth was rocked by a global cataclysm such as Noah's alleged flood,
you have no idea what Everest's elevation was before that time.

You assume you know, but you don't know.


Dr. Walt Brown's Hydroplate Theory



http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview2.html

 

[bikerdruid]

Mt. Everest is 20,029 ft. today.

no it isn't.
man, you gotta get some better reference material.

 

[Lowpro]

Mt. Everest is 20,029 ft. today.

If the entire earth was rocked by a global cataclysm such as Noah's alleged flood,
you have no idea what Everest's elevation was before that time.

You assume you know, but you don't know.


Dr. Walt Brown's Hydroplate Theory

Debunked

Claim CH420:
The Flood's waters came from a layer of water about ten miles underground, which was released by a catastrophic rupture of the earth's crust, shot above the atmosphere, and fell as rain.
Source:
Brown, Walt, 1995. In the beginning: Compelling evidence for creation and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, pp. 87-98. http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/
Response:

The rock that makes up the earth's crust does not float. The water would have been forced to the surface long before Noah's time, or before Adam's time for that matter.

Even two miles deep, the earth is boiling hot (260 to 270 degrees C at 5.656 miles in one borehole; Bram et al. 1995), and thus the reservoir of water would be superheated. Further heat would be added by the energy of the water falling from above the atmosphere. As with the vapor canopy model, Noah would have been poached.

The escaping waters would have eroded the sides of the fissures, producing poorly sorted basaltic erosional deposits. These would be concentrated mainly near the fissures, but some would be shot thousands of miles along with the water. Such deposits would be quite noticeable but have never been seen.

References:

Bram, Kurt et al. 1995. The KTB borehole -- Germany's superdeep telescope into the earth's crust. Oilfield Review 7(1): 4-22. http://www.oilfield.slb.com/content/services/resources/oilfieldreview/ors95/jan95/01950422.pdf

 

[JudeBrando]

no it isn't.
man, you gotta get some better reference material.

Oops. Fixed. Happy? Of course not.

 

[bikerdruid]

Happy? Of course not.

of course i am...ecstatic.
why would you assume otherwise?

 

[David Swidler]

So nothing means anything and yet it all means everything.

A table is a chair if you just think about it the “right” way and a turd is an apple pie if you just accept to redefine your terms to suit.

It is all a metaphor and the metaphor is what some Rabbi defines it despite a thousand other Rabbis defining it in a thousand orthogonal and contrary ways.

It is a dream unless you want it to be true and it is not true unless you prefer it to be so and who knows unless you do and it is all fine unless you oppose me and then it is not.

I am off to find me a joint.

Convenient how believers cherry-pick what they claim is mythical and what is factual. If only there was some consensus it might have some credibility worthy of at least a small amount of consideration.

Hey I think that David is actually the beginning of the end for Monotheism; he's a shade of atheism when he gives up the literal truth of the Tanakh as told by the Rambam so really I take this as an olive branch. Of COURSE they aren't true, just take from it like you'd take from perhaps a Mark Twain novel!

That's right, pile on the Rabbi.

I erred earlier in suggesting that the reader's own interpretation is paramount, without qualification. There's a very important qualification: it must be supportable from the text, and from sources that themselves give the integrity of the text its due. Otherwise, yes, you're absolutely right, all interpretation is an exercise in stupidity, whether the subject is Tanakh, Shakespeare, Dr. Suess or the New England Journal of Medicine. The line of discussion for Mudcat with his mom (remember them? This thread is about them) is anchored in such sources: Rabbi Avhraham Yizchak Kook, the Tiferet Yisrael (he had a whole treatise lauding paleontological discoveries in the early 19th century precisely because they highlighted the pitfalls of misunderstanding Biblical chronology), Maharal, and scores of Talmudic passages (not to mention the entire attitude of Jewish mysticism, which takes all of Scripture as an exploration of emotional and spiritual themes, regardless of what the "plain" meaning of the verses seems to say), all anchored firmly in the way the text uses words and gives terms context. It's not flying blind, or saying what you feel like saying.

In general, we get hung up on looking for one authentic meaning of a passage, while Jewish tradition actually insists on the opposite. Clashing interpretations are the lifeblood of the Talmud, and only rarely is one position actually rejected. On points of practice there must necessarily be a decision one way or another, but that does not mean the opposing positions are wrong. Intentional ambiguity underlies every Biblical narrative, precisely because that's the human experience.

As for Maimondies (Rambam), his Guide has never been considered even his last word on matters of doctrine, as it was especially written for an audience struggling with certain specific challenges to their understanding of normative Jewish theology of the time, let alone the last word for all other, different situations. The aforementioned sources, not to mention a good number of Maimonides's contemporaries and commentaries, do not uniformly accept his pronouncements as fundamental principles; his position simply became the most prominent.

None of these sources consider the text just stories; they hold to the understanding that the text is of divine origin with eternal truths embedded in it. You can say what you want about Twain, but that's not really what he was aiming for.

Let's try to remember the purpose of this thread: giving Mudcat a way to engage his mother in healthy discussion. My point is simply that there's plenty of legitimately frum source material in Jewish tradition to afford some flexibility, and we can only hope she acknowledges that.

 

[Craig4]

My mom is getting deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole with religion and has become positively obsessed with the book of Genesis, believing every word of it to be true. Normally I wouldn't be concerned with it except that she keeps on trying to force that crap on me.

'Why me?' is a huge mystery here. I'm not her only child, I am the oldest of three. None of my siblings are any more religious I am, in fact she about made herself unwelcome at my sister's house for trying to press this crap onto my niece and nephew. My brother made it clear he didn't want anything more to do with religion either.

I've done warned her if she didn't curb her enthusiasm I would take the wind out of her sails. Needless to say she didn't listen. Oh well, I did warn her... she has no one to blame but herself.

Right now she is obsessed with the story of Noah. Here is what I have so far in my dismantling of the story:
Which is about as far as I got, but I need more. So [damsel in distress mode]Help me JREFF, your my only hope![/damsel in distress mode]

The story itself is simply stolen from the earlier work "Gligamesh". Only in the Hebrew flood myth there's one god who is sort of a composite character of the several mentioned in "Gligamesh". The rest of the story is the same.

Of course there's also the distribution of animals. How do you get the biodiversity of Australia, Indonesia and the Galapagos when you just open the doors and let the critters go on a mountain in Turkey?

Of course what you're really up against here is that she'll say it's a matter or faith or the Sky Fairy works in mysterious ways. Hate to tell you but some people just have a hard time giving up their teddy bear that got nailed to a tree.

 

[Lowpro]

*snip sensible stuff*

Fair enough, the problem is that the truth of the divine origin is VERY suspect, and contradicted by evidence found.

On the subject of the Rambam I thought of Guide from a more historical perspective. It was then that Maimonides had to reaffirm the Tanakh as the literal word of God, the literal truth. Of course, Maimonides isn't the final word, the ONLY word is the Tanakh, with its interpretation the continued endeavor of (some call it futile) humanity. As a friend of mine said, "welcome to Judaism"

But that's all well and good, we are still left with the elephant in the room, that the events of the Tanakh do not match up historically to geological evidence, paleontological evidence, and even biological/chemical evidence. There are theories that try to make the puzzle pieces fit, but they are stupid. I mean they really are. Hydroplate theory is a half baked idea, it isn't even grounded in science. It's about as legitimate as a stoner on his heaviest toke taking a flash of supposed brilliance.

At this moment, I suggest that, and I half-heartedly took as an olive branch is that YOU YOURSELF said "Don't concern yourself with the literal truth (completely removing the Rambam's concerns) concern yourself with the message"

That's GREAT, but that also means we can actually treat it a Mark Twain novel (by all means a much more legitimate "divine source" imo )

I have a feeling Judaism will be the first to lead the rest to atheism*. It's concern with interpretation has left a lot of room to drop literal elements and concern itself only with the message, the interpretation of the Tanakh, and to ME that's fine. But Noah and his Ark actually have occurring? Definitely not, and I'd like to know if you'll just say "It's not true, but its meaning of YHWH removing the flaws of humanity and starting a new (a revolution story) has a message of hope in strife" or something.

*American Judaism BTW, I don't know how it's taken in Israel or around the rest of the world, wherever they may be.

 

[Sideroxylon]

One of the issues is the spread of the animals from the ark. When the floods receded, the ark came to rest on a mountain, and the animals were released. We can actually test and look for this.
If a world spanning flood occurred, with every animals, we should see two things.

One: Mass graves in silt and debris with animals and people.

Two: Mass migrations of ALL animals spreading from one point on the globe. We would see remains of the animals leading from the starting point to their destination. This, at least, we do not see in any way in either remains, or records of peoples. [...]

This is a massive problem for the global flood narrative and one easily understood without any special knowledge. Australia and its iconic unique wildlife is a great example, especially koalas. Without resorting to miracles, they could not have migrated to the Australian continent given their relatively poor mobility and dependence on specific kinds of Eucalyptus trees for survival. It is also rather odd that when I get out on the highways of Anatolia there is a distinct lack of kangaroos and wallabies.

The global flood is perhaps the weightiest millstone around the necks of fundamentalists, dragging them down into intellectual dishonesty and willful ignorance of even the most basic knowledge of the world we live in. Sure they can don the flimsy negligee of intelligent design and its pretensions to rational thought but they are absolutely starkers when they try to tout the Deluge account as historical fact.

 

[David Swidler]

Fair enough, the problem is that the truth of the divine origin is VERY suspect, and contradicted by evidence found.

No argument on the physical evidence, since that's not my expertise (though I do understand the documentary hypothesis to be mostly supposition; there really ISN'T very much evidence other than the text we have, and the existence of similar stories in neighboring, earlier cultures only means that the familiar stories were used as a vehicle for other messages, much as Americans use baseball and football references to convey more complex, symbolic themes). But there's a vast gulf between "it's not meant as a literal history" and "let's treat it the same as Twain."

On the subject of the Rambam I thought of Guide from a more historical perspective. It was then that Maimonides had to reaffirm the Tanakh as the literal word of God, the literal truth. Of course, Maimonides isn't the final word, the ONLY word is the Tanakh, with its interpretation the continued endeavor of (some call it futile) humanity. As a friend of mine said, "welcome to Judaism".

But that's all well and good, we are still left with the elephant in the room, that the events of the Tanakh do not match up historically to geological evidence, paleontological evidence, and even biological/chemical evidence. There are theories that try to make the puzzle pieces fit, but they are stupid. I mean they really are. Hydroplate theory is a half baked idea, it isn't even grounded in science. It's about as legitimate as a stoner on his heaviest toke taking a flash of supposed brilliance.

It's actually not the only word, and the Rambam himself asserts as much in his introduction to Mishneh Torah, his magnum opus on Jewish law (and some doctrine) that he wrote as an expression of normative positions - he treats the Talmud's decisions as the last universally applicable work, against which no subsequent authority may rule. And the Rambam focused in that work primarily with practice, not faith (in fact he eschews the word in general). And since the Talmud leaves plenty of room for treating large swaths of Tanakh as statements of relationship and the human condition primarily and historical accounts secondarily (if at all), there's no conflict with archaeology or paleontology. Tanakh concerns itself with humanity's relationships, not its history.

At this moment, I suggest that, and I half-heartedly took as an olive branch is that YOU YOURSELF said "Don't concern yourself with the literal truth (completely removing the Rambam's concerns) concern yourself with the message"

That's GREAT, but that also means we can actually treat it a Mark Twain novel (by all means a much more legitimate "divine source" imo )

Whatever floats your boat down the Mississippi. But my point was not that "it never happened," which may or may not be the case, my point was that the text's purpose does not presuppose taking it as history, and that getting stuck on that point, even for a believer, detracts from its message. I actually don't care one way or the other whether it is factually, historically true, and I think it's a waste of time trying to convince anyone either way.

I have a feeling Judaism will be the first to lead the rest to atheism*. It's concern with interpretation has left a lot of room to drop literal elements and concern itself only with the message, the interpretation of the Tanakh, and to ME that's fine. But Noah and his Ark actually have occurring? Definitely not, and I'd like to know if you'll just say "It's not true, but its meaning of YHWH removing the flaws of humanity and starting a new (a revolution story) has a message of hope in strife" or something.

*American Judaism BTW, I don't know how it's taken in Israel or around the rest of the world, wherever they may be.

That's an interesting feeling, and I can see what you mean, even if I disagree. Certainly in the view of the aforementioned Rav Kook, atheists play an important, even sacred, role: their arguments serve as constant reminders of the inadequacy of human language to truly express anything about God, such that any term used to "define" God will necessarily fail.

But I think we should now let Mudcat decide whether by continuing we're helping now or just adding confusion...

 

[Leumas]

It's actually not the only word, and the Rambam himself asserts as much in his introduction to Mishneh Torah, his magnum opus on Jewish law (and some doctrine) that he wrote as an expression of normative positions - he treats the Talmud's decisions as the last universally applicable work, against which no subsequent authority may rule. And the Rambam focused in that work primarily with practice, not faith (in fact he eschews the word in general). And since the Talmud leaves plenty of room for treating large swaths of Tanakh as statements of relationship and the human condition primarily and historical accounts secondarily (if at all), there's no conflict with archaeology or paleontology. Tanakh concerns itself with humanity's relationships, not its history.

And in regards to that aspect…. It is a heinous testament to how retarded and egregiously vile humanity can be.



Deut. 11

22 If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow —to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him and to hold fast to him— 23 then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you. 24 Every place where you set your foot will be yours: Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. 25 No one will be able to stand against you. The LORD your God, as he promised you, will put the terror and fear of you on the whole land, wherever you go.

Deuteronomy 28:

49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. 51 They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or olive oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined. 52 They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the LORD your God is giving you.
53 Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you. 54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, 55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. 56 The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter 57 the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.
58 If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the LORD your God— 59 the LORD will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. 60 He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. 61 The LORD will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. 62 You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the LORD your God. 63 Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.

Deuteronomy

{22:13} If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, {22:14} And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: {22:15} Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth [the tokens of] the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: [....]
{22:20} But if this thing be true, [and the tokens of] virginity be not found for the damsel: {22:21} Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

Deuteronomy

{13:6} If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which [is] as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; {13:7} [Namely,] of the gods of the people which [are] round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the [one] end of the earth even unto the [other] end of the earth; {13:8} Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: {13:9} But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. {13:10} And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. {13:11} And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you.

Deuteronomy

{13:12} If thou shalt hear [say] in one of thy cities, which the LORD thy God hath given thee to dwell there, saying, {13:13} [Certain] men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known; {13:14} Then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, [if it be] truth, [and] the thing certain, [that] such abomination is wrought among you; {13:15} Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that [is] therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword. {13:16} And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil thereof every whit, for the LORD thy God: and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again. {13:17} And there shall cleave nought of the cursed thing to thine hand: that the LORD may turn from the fierceness of his anger, and shew thee mercy, and have compassion upon thee, and multiply thee, as he hath sworn unto thy fathers; {13:18} When thou shalt hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep all his commandments which I command thee this day, to do [that which is] right in the eyes of the LORD thy God.

Leviticus

{20:13} If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them.

{20:14} And if a man take a wife and her mother, it [is] wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you.

{20:15} And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast.

{20:16} And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them.

 

[Resume]

Of COURSE they aren't true, just take from it like you'd take from perhaps a Mark Twain novel!

Except the story of Noah reads more like Dreiser than it does Twain.

 

[bluesjnr]

She is your mother….she is a Jewish mother…. They are the BEST EVER and she deserves all the comfort you can give her.

How dare you denigrate my mother based on the fact that she is not Jewish.