Explanation:
After the death of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem, Christianity as we know it was beginning to take off amongst Greek and Roman Gentiles thanks to the efforts of people like Paul.
However, this created a problem amongst early Christians because a lot of them had simply never read the Torah or Old Testament. They were just convinced purely by the teachings of Jesus and had been heavily influenced by Platonism as a base philosophy. And when Jewish Christians from Jerusalem and Palestine met these converts, they tried to teach them about the “Old Testament”.
Unfortunately, the Gentile Christians often refused to believe the god of Jesus and the god of the Jews was the same god because they thought the Old Testament god was wraithful and evil (my favorite example is when god let bears kill some kids for making fun of a bald guy 2 Kings:23-25).
One such group of Christians were the Marcionites founded by Marcion of Sinope. It claimed the god of the old testament was the Creator deity, the Demiurge. They aren’t a gnostic sect because Marcion was using what would become canon such as the writings of Paul and a source of Jesus sayings. This is opposed to the Valentinians who used revealed or gnostic information to form their theology.
Unfortunately, we mostly know about these early so called “gnostic” sects of Christians through condemnations from early church fathers. We have a good portion of Marcions cannon texts, but not a complete picture of their church. But they were significant at the time. Early Catholics had official instructions for their congregation to ask for a “Catholic Christian Church” when they travelled because a Gnostic church was just as likely to be in the town as a Catholic one.
they right thoFavorite example of OT God being a wrathful bitch go!
Mines the bears that kill the kids.
Even hippy Jesus is sort of a dick though.
For example when he’s walking along and sees a fig tree. He’s hungry so asks his disciples to bring him some
datesfigs (lazy fuck, go get your own damndatesfigs). They report that the tree doesn’t have anydatesfigs, so Jesus uses his necromancy to make it wither and die.EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT PRODUCTIVE WILL BE PURGED FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH. GOD IS LOVE.
Sounds like he would have been disappointed even if the tree did have fruit on it, because dates grow on date palms, not on fig trees…
Oops. In my righteous indignation I messed up the details halfway through the retelling. 🙈
Anyway, more details:
The one where the god commands a follower to kill his son to prove his loyalty, then goes “jk just a test” just before the follower goes through with it. Loyalty tests like this are a classic manipulator tactic, and how TF is this supposed to convince people to follow this god?
There are rabbinic writings claiming that Abraham actually did kill Isaac, just not the full sacrifice. Apparently the type of sacrifice that would have been done includes plunging a knife into the heart of the sacrificial animal while its burning. Abraham was already at the last step which means Isaacs body was on fire.
Also only Abraham returns from the mountain. Isaac isn’t mentioned.
The Rabbinic writings claim Isaac was revived though. I think they brought his ashes to the Temple, and God reconstituted him. I need to find the reference.
Damn, that’s even worse.
Fuck them kids, tho, that one’s justified.
My favorite is when he commands genocide*.
*the joke is that this happens constantly
quantity over quantity: destroying the entire world and every living thing except one dinky boat because some angels raped human women.
Quality over quantity?
when god cursed the serpent for telling the truth. (adam and eve didn’t die… and the issue really was that god didn’t want them to be “like him.” Also if the story is to believed, god set them up anyway.)
There’s some really funny coping about Adam and Eves death.
I’ve read one claim that, to god, a day is actually a thousand years. So god saying they will die a day later is true because Adam lived to 999 and 364 days or something.
Eventually, god figures out time, but before that he struggles and that’s why oldtest figures are hundreds of years old.
It’s always weird how for these copes to be true, god has to not understand the thing he made.
Another pretty damning example of that? God didn’t understand female anatomy.
Specifically that 60% of women do not bleed the first they have sex. Yet one of his laws say that women who say they are virgins on their wedding night and do not bleed… are to be stoned.
Strange how, despite creating the universe, god only has a 500 BC Jewish Man’s understanding of the human body.
I’m sure that’s just a coincidence though.
