From: J.M.A.Gilman@newcastle.ac.uk (J.M.A. Gilman)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: "God is unfair" Bible passages.
Date: 5 Nov 92 10:31:35 GMT
Organization: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK NE1 7RU


    [N.B. this has been posted before, but was reported to me by
     Mathew of alt.atheism.moderated as not having arrived on
     his machine, and also received no responses that I could see.]


        Baldilocks and the Two Bears .....

           an ancient-and-modern Fairy tale !

    Once upon a time, there lived an old man called Baldilocks, well
known for his shining bonce, which had once been covered with a thick
mat of hair. That was many years ago, and Baldilocks resemblance to
an egg was now known far and wide.                                
    One day Baldilocks went for a walk to a distant city, where he 
would be busy with work as a seer. As he was travelling on the road
between a town one one side, and a forest on the other, a crowd of
joyful, laughing, innocent little boys came out of the town gates.
    "Hello, mister man, what do you do ?" they asked him. 
    "Why, little boys, I'm a seer. I prophesy for the Christian God,
and bless those who do good and curse those who do evil."
    "Oh, and who taught you to be a seer ?", they asked again.
    "My teacher was Elijah, who went up to heaven in the fiery
chariot of the Lord !" he replied.
    "Aha ! Can you go up to heaven, too ?" they said, and danced       
around him in a ring, singing "Go on up, you Baldy head, go on up,
you Baldy head !".
    Baldilocks became most indignant at this ! He was a serious 
prophet of a serious God ! "A curse on your heads, in the Lord's name !"
he declared. He pushed his way through the now silent children, the
youngest of whom were beginning to cry at such harsh treatment.
    Two bears came out of the woods, chasing the poor little fellows
and ripping forty-two of them to shreds ! So end those who mock and
jest against the Christian God and his serious prophets !
    "That'll tell 'em," said Baldilocks. "I'm not REALLY bald," he 
added, brushing a few remaining strands of hair from over his left
ear, dragging them across his scalp in an attempt to salve his hurt
ego. Even this would not work, as a strong wind was soon to blow,
causing the remaining strands of his mop to stream out like the tail
of a comet .....










        .... at least, that's the way it's normally told - it's 
meant to be the story of Elisha and the two bears, see Second 
Book of Kings, chapter 2, verses 23 to 25 (in the Bible). 

    This story has been the subject of a lot of flack on the alt.
atheism and alt.atheism.moderated groups, so I decided to check out if
the text really does say this. First, in the King James Version, it
does indeed say that "little children" came out of the town, and that
after the exchange of views concerning baldness and curses, two she
bears "tare (olde englishe = tore - JMAG) forty and two children".
    Then I decided to check it up in a newer translation, for two         
reasons.
(i) The King James Version, to be honest, is not a perfectly accurate
translation, and the translators have discovered a lot more about the
meanings of the Hebrew words in which the Old Testament was written.
(ii) The English Language has changed significantly in the last 300
years, and hence the KJV is no longer readable as a useful source of         
doctrine to any but a minority of Olde Englishe experts. Just as a            
child needs new shoes - REGULARLY - so with the church and transl-             
ations of the Bible as centuries pass.

    The New International Version (trans. circa 1973-9) talks about 
this passage in a different vein. The "little children" are now 
"youths", and the bears now "maul" them. As this could JUST POSSIBLY
be due to translational bias, trying to avoid "NASTY" passages, I
had a go at the original ancient Hebrew (the original language in 
which it was written & is translated from). It's not too hard using
a Hebrew-English Interlinear Old Testament, and a Strong's concord-
ance with all the word meanings in a dictionary at the back.

    The results were VERY interesting : Let's have a look at THREE
key words in the passage.
(i)    The word translated "little".
(ii)    "    "      "      "children", and 
(iii)   "    "      "      "tare/mauled".

    (i), for "little" in the KJV (King James Version), the Hebrew
word is "qaton", Strong's Hebrew word numbered 6996 (N.B. this is 
a Hebrew diction number system devised by Strong). This means
(according to the word meanings dictionary in the concordance)
little in the sense of importance or number, as well as in age or
size, and is DIFFERENT from the word used for "little ones" (as in
"you and your little ones"). There it's Strong's no. 2945 (see Ex.      
ch. 10, verse 10, Pharaoh talking about not freeing the Hebrews and                
their kids as well), and is a word with connotations of happy, dan-            .
cing children. This is NOT the word used in the passage concerning 
Elisha+lads+bears.
    I wonder if the word "little" is used in an insulting        
sense here ? Note, there's a difference between "what nice little 
boys" and "what a horrid little man !" in English ! If one word in
English can mean two such different things, obviously two different
words in Hebrew may differ far more widely in their real implications.  
We sometimes talk of people with "low character", where "low" does
not carry its literal meaning. I personally suspect these lads were
the kind who hang about parks waiting to mug old men and rape young 
women, as we sometimes see on the news.

    (ii) The Hebrew word here is Strong's no. 5288, "na'ar", and can
describe a male child from infancy anywhere up to adolescence - lad,
servant, or young man. A problem here is the change of English - in
KJV time, the word "child" extended to a greater age than that it    
implies now - the word "teenager" wasn't invented until the 1950's,
remember - and the ridiculous insistence of the KJV's use by a small
minority of Christians may be in part responsible for the bad
press given God, Elisha, and Christians by this passage.

    (iii) For "tare" or "mauled", read Strong's #1234, "baqa". This 
root word, as reported in the Hebrew dictionary, indeed is trans-    
lasted as "tear, rip, cut out, ...", but by no means
necessarily implies tearing apart and killing, as some seem to think
this passage says (e.g. one may tear a strip OFF OF a piece of paper
as well as tear it IN TWO).

    The story of Elisha and the two bears therefore discusses the
wounding of a number of male youths, possibly thugs, NOT the     
slaughter of innocent little children. Knowing God, I'm sure that,    
while he does deal out violence to people, it is always those who
deserve punishment, and the lads in question probably got a well-
deserved lesson in respect for the elderly.

    WHAT ABOUT LOT ?

    Another Bible story which is used to "prove" the Judaeo-Christ-
ian God to be an unjust, arbitrary, genocidal savage is the story
of Lot (Genesis chapter 19). In this, the inhabitants of Sodom are
destroyed by God, supposedly because the wouldn't stop banging on
Lot's door asking to "know" two visitors who are guests in Lot's
house.
    Because Lot offers to let the gang outside have his virgin 
daughters to do with as they please, Lot is seen as the vilest of
hypocrites and God as an unfair mass-murderer of a city of innocent
people. What REALLY happened becomes clear if one either reads a
modern Bible translation or knows some old english colloquialisms.
When the KJV says the Sodomites wanted to "know" the visitors, the
expression means "know in a carnal sense". In other words, to have 
sex with them, the subjects of this lust obviously NOT being given
the option in this case to refuse.
    The Sodomites, therefore, were the most vile bunch of homosexual
gang-rapists who ever walked this Earth. The "sin of Sodom" was not
just (say) a few boys at a boarding school getting sexual relief
due to not being near women, nor a number of consenting male adults
engaging in homosexual acts. The text of Gen. 19 says ALL the men
of the city gathered around Lot's house to see the visitors, not
just a particular group or small minority.
    Sodom was a city, therefore, in which it was SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE
for men of ALL SOCIAL STRATA INCLUDING "MORAL" (religious) and 
"POLITICAL" LEADERS to FORCIBLY GANG-RAPE visitors who were NOT IN
ANY WAY used to their practices or willing to experience such a
horror. Lot, in contrast, at least tried to persuade them to stop, 
and when he offered his daughters, it seems most unlikely they were
virgins (as he claimed), given the moral tone of the city he had
foolishly decided to live in in the first place.
    [Note added at last minute : today in the national papers there
appeared a story of a young man who was kidnapped at gun-point and
raped by three other men ! People ARE this wicked and DO COMMIT SUCH
CRIMES TODAY !]

    ... AND CHILDREN SENT TO HELL ... ?

    Yet another misapprehension about God's judgment on the evil 
cultures destroyed by the ancient Israelites or by God directly,
is that the innocent children of the Sodomites, along with their 
guilty parents, went STRAIGHT TO HELL, NO MORE CHANCES, BYE-BYE !
    Sorry to disappoint those who like to excuse their own guilt on
the basis of God's alleged wickedness, but in several passages in
the New Testament, God's treatment and forgiveness for those in
O.T. times is alluded to, e.g. :

    1 Peter 3 : 19 - "... he (Jesus) went and preached to the        
spirits in prison, who disobeyed long ago ..." (Talking about the
Flood, but the principle is obvious).

    Romans 7 : 9 - "Once I was alive apart from the law ..." (About
original childlike innocence).

    Acts 17 : 30 - "In the past, God overlooked such ignorance (as
far as eternal punishment was concerned), but now commands all
people to repent."

    Psalm 68 : 18 - "When you (Jesus, see 1 Peter Ref.) ascended
on high, you led captives in your train (Victory, that is, not
125)."

    If even the wicked were given second chances, how much more 
those who had been killed with them. By the way, the Sodomites'
children were probably abused in many ways and infected with the
most horrible diseases. Hence their deaths could be a mercy
killing as much as anything else - not that WE are then allowed
to make the same kind of decisions, being only human.


    IN SUMMARY :
    In the case of Lot, God did NOT destroy a city of innocent people,
they were a bunch of gang-rapists, and if atheists who want to attack 
Christians bothered to read contemporary translations of the Bible, 
they would not get mislead by confusing "Olde Englishe" expressions, 
such as "know", which have changed colloquial meaning since the 
Seventeenth century.

    Innocent people were not permanently condemned in O.T. times,
as the Bible clearly teaches, but were given, so it seems, the
same opportunity of repentance we are now.       

    REQUEST :

    As a Christian who reads alt. atheism, I get more than a little
upset when I get accused of believing in and loving a God who would
unjustly punish innocent people. More important by far, the person
I love, respect, and care for the most is being slandered unjustly.
    It is TRUE that God has judged and will continue to judge 
wrongdoing FAIRLY, and that is often a violent process, but he DOES
NOT punish people for anything other than their own sins which they
have deliberately committed.
    Could atheists who wish to denigrate Christianity please make
EVERY effort to verify what is said in a particular Bible passage,
as you not only mislead yourselves but others also by passing on
SLANDEROUS ACCUSATIONS which have NO BASIS IN FACT. I understand
most of you have no respect for the Bible passages I have quoted -
 YOUR DECISION - but can you please be consistent - i.e. not claim
the Bible to imply things which it in fact does not.

    Thank you.

    FINALLY :

    Responses are welcome, but while I may see them on the newsgroups,
I can't guarantee any reply unless I get a copy DIRECT BY E-MAIL.
    I could try to answer more difficult questions with other
examples of these "GOD is NASTY" Bible passages (some more of which
have been floating around while I've been writing this) BY E-MAIL,
and I may go into the Hebrew/Greek (say if I get ~ 6
independent replies/flames for an individual passage). I can't do
it for every passage that gets mentioned on such a well-used pair
of groups, though, it's too much like hard work.
    Fellow Christians - Feel free to pass this on to other newsgroups
or mail it anywhere you want.

           Blessings all round,

                 James Gilman.



       J.M.A. Gilman @ newcastle.ac.uk
 'Tis the glory of God to conceal many things :                             
 To uncover them, then, is the glory of kings !
      Proverbs ch.25, v.2 (JMAG Version)