So your solution is essentially, "let's ignore how Yahweh is portrayed as a moral monster in the Old Testament and focus on Jesus because it's easier to highlight his pleasant aspects." The problem with this is that Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, clearly believed in the Yahweh of the Old Testament and never objected to the genocidal monster we see there. According to the New Testament, the Old Testament accurately portrays Yahweh the way he wanted to be portrayed. Additionally, according to Christian theology, God cannot change (i.e. a perfect being cannot change because any change could only move them away from perfection). Therefor the God (and Jesus too if you accept mainstream trinitarian theology) of the New Testament is the exact same person who delighted in bloody genocide in the Old. No excuse, either from you or from the authors you cited, has ever come close to justifying for me the horrors perpetrated by the Biblical God.
I didn't say to ignore how Yahweh is portrayed and focus on the more pleasant Jesus at all. I said to read the entire Bible as the literature of our neighbors across space and time and to love them enough to let them speak for themselves with the complexities of oppressor and oppressed that are woven throughout the entire Bible. Anybody can read the Bible like that, including atheists. There's no faith requirement to read the Bible that way.
Ok, but that seems to contradict your tile which asks: "How could God command the violent murder and plundering of Israel's neighbors?", which certainly implies that you intended to answer that question.
My point was that if one examines the Biblical Jesus, you can't detach him from the God who ordered genocide, slavery, and rape. Whether you accept that Jesus is God or not, the Jesus the Bible describes plainly affirms the Old Testament scriptures and the God contained therein. The "love-ethic" of Jesus you describe is linked to the blood-soaked Yahweh. To separate the person of Jesus from the Old Testament scriptures is to create a character entirely of your own invention. It's about as meaningful as fan-fiction that reimagines Captain Ahab as a vegan environmentalist, perhaps fun for you but the rest of us can safely ignore it.
More often than not, Christianity has been a tool employed by oppressors to control their victims. The New Testament is no better than the Old on multiple clear moral issues like slavery and LGBTQ+ rights. While much of Jesus' teachings were good for the time, they were hardly unique or original. Almost all of his good ideas were duplicates of proceeding philosophers, and many of his other ones were just bad advice (See unconditional forgiveness. As a survivor of narcissistic abuse enabled by my belief in Christian forgiveness, I can clearly attest to the harm it can cause) He also used racial slurs and demanded his followers prioritize him at the expense of everything else like almost every other cult leader throughout history.
Nothing about Jesus or Christianity suggests to me that it is a philosophy worth organizing one's life around, whether you claim it is actually true or not. Christianity has not been an overall force for rescuing the oppressed throughout history; more often than not it has been a tool the oppressors have used to control their victims. Why do you think colonizers were so keen to indoctrinate their victims with Christianity? Because it erased any native cultures and beliefs they could rally around and told the slaves to obey their masters.
The Bible starts with cataclysmic slaughter in Gen 7 and ends with genocide in Revelation and is sprinkled with other atrocities throughout. It's a text we can safely do without.
So your solution is essentially, "let's ignore how Yahweh is portrayed as a moral monster in the Old Testament and focus on Jesus because it's easier to highlight his pleasant aspects." The problem with this is that Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, clearly believed in the Yahweh of the Old Testament and never objected to the genocidal monster we see there. According to the New Testament, the Old Testament accurately portrays Yahweh the way he wanted to be portrayed. Additionally, according to Christian theology, God cannot change (i.e. a perfect being cannot change because any change could only move them away from perfection). Therefor the God (and Jesus too if you accept mainstream trinitarian theology) of the New Testament is the exact same person who delighted in bloody genocide in the Old. No excuse, either from you or from the authors you cited, has ever come close to justifying for me the horrors perpetrated by the Biblical God.
I didn't say to ignore how Yahweh is portrayed and focus on the more pleasant Jesus at all. I said to read the entire Bible as the literature of our neighbors across space and time and to love them enough to let them speak for themselves with the complexities of oppressor and oppressed that are woven throughout the entire Bible. Anybody can read the Bible like that, including atheists. There's no faith requirement to read the Bible that way.
Ok, but that seems to contradict your tile which asks: "How could God command the violent murder and plundering of Israel's neighbors?", which certainly implies that you intended to answer that question.
My point was that if one examines the Biblical Jesus, you can't detach him from the God who ordered genocide, slavery, and rape. Whether you accept that Jesus is God or not, the Jesus the Bible describes plainly affirms the Old Testament scriptures and the God contained therein. The "love-ethic" of Jesus you describe is linked to the blood-soaked Yahweh. To separate the person of Jesus from the Old Testament scriptures is to create a character entirely of your own invention. It's about as meaningful as fan-fiction that reimagines Captain Ahab as a vegan environmentalist, perhaps fun for you but the rest of us can safely ignore it.
More often than not, Christianity has been a tool employed by oppressors to control their victims. The New Testament is no better than the Old on multiple clear moral issues like slavery and LGBTQ+ rights. While much of Jesus' teachings were good for the time, they were hardly unique or original. Almost all of his good ideas were duplicates of proceeding philosophers, and many of his other ones were just bad advice (See unconditional forgiveness. As a survivor of narcissistic abuse enabled by my belief in Christian forgiveness, I can clearly attest to the harm it can cause) He also used racial slurs and demanded his followers prioritize him at the expense of everything else like almost every other cult leader throughout history.
Nothing about Jesus or Christianity suggests to me that it is a philosophy worth organizing one's life around, whether you claim it is actually true or not. Christianity has not been an overall force for rescuing the oppressed throughout history; more often than not it has been a tool the oppressors have used to control their victims. Why do you think colonizers were so keen to indoctrinate their victims with Christianity? Because it erased any native cultures and beliefs they could rally around and told the slaves to obey their masters.
The Bible starts with cataclysmic slaughter in Gen 7 and ends with genocide in Revelation and is sprinkled with other atrocities throughout. It's a text we can safely do without.