Atonement in the Old Testament

originally posted by: windword
There is no lesson learned from transferring blame onto an innocent animal, or person. There is no lesson learned, nor freedom earned, from "the sheer multiplicity of rituals", which are based in ignorance and superstition.

There is no redemptive value in "scapegoat" rituals.

Even if they don't objectively achieve redemption, and the very repetition implies that they don't, they convey the message that redemption is necessary and possible.
Once that idea has been implanted, the lesson has been learned. The next lesson can be about finding a more effective means of redemption.

a reply to: DISRAELI

The lesson from the creation story of Genesis doesn't imply that redemption is needed or forthcoming, from a third party. It gives no indication that the newly gained challenge of "being able to know "Good and Evil", without the protection of the gods, is because of a wrong, or a sinful nature. A scapegoat invalidates that challenge.

Genesis' creation story tells us that we are created in our makers' image and that, while under their care, something happened that made us even MORE godlike and divine. That event required mankind to meet the challenge of "knowing" our nature without the protection of the "Garden", but to subdue and rule over the mundane in order to understand the divine. Then we will be "Godlike", one with our maker.

The Creators of Genesis didn't allegorically throw man out of Garden, his offspring to be redeemed in the far off future, by an elusive third party acting as a scapegoat, but only if they believe. The Creators sent us out to learn about ourselves and conquer our own nature, by ourselves, through experiencing and conquering the mundane; "knowing good and evil".

a reply to: windword

You are missing one of the points of the rituals. You are thinking that YHWH gave Isreal rituals to please himself.

YHWH gave Isreal a religion of rituals because they asked to be like their neighbors who performed ritual sacrafice.

For Pagans ritual sacrafice was always based on physical principles.

YHWH's rituals are based on spiritual principles.

It is obvious to some of us today that Ritual Sacrifice can't lead a man away from sin. But many people even today are tied to belief in both ritual sacrifice and perfection through the temporal law.

Spiritually speaking we have not evolved much from the past. Even in the eastern religions where the spirit is more obvious many are still bound by physical practices that lead to spiritual truth, although many still fail to truly find the path of spiritual truth.

The fall of man is a depiction of ignorance. The rituals represent escaping from the ignorant addictions of the flesh into the spiritual realm of freedom.

The blood of the scapegoat can not release your mind from the physical nor push you past the temporal. The blood of Christ does not move you from the physical to the spiritual, it only offers forgiveness.

The flesh of Christ is a metaphor for the word, scriptures. Which is why it is said the word became flesh.

The blood of Christ is a metaphor for spiritual life. The indwelling of a perfect spirit which can lead you into a spiritual union with the father.

Within this spiritual union one truly learns to obey the law of love your neighbor. Once this law is learned the temporal law is overcome by the Spirit that instinctively does no unjust harm to anyone. Thus becoming obedient to the whole law. Walking the path of love and peace without stumbling back into sin. Which is the true purpose of the OT rituals. To become holy in the sight of God, which is to become like Christ.

a reply to: Isurrender73

YHWH gave Isreal a religion of rituals because they asked to be like their neighbors who performed ritual sacrafice.

In Genesis, the first offering ritual has nothing to do with a scapegoat, it has to do with offering the best of what one has to the one who gave it to you in the first place. When Cain killed Abel, the "LORD" didn't create a scapegoat, that he sent out on Cain's behalf, he sent Cain out.

Not only that, but the "LORD" did NOT impose the death penalty on Cain or require Cain to offer a sacrificial animal to atone for his "sin".

For Pagans ritual sacrafice was always based on physical principles.

YHWH's rituals are based on spiritual principles.

This is pure biased BS! Pagans gave us lots of rituals, based in spiritual principles, that Christians still use today.

There is nothing spiritually advanced in ritualized a scapegoat.

The fall of man is a depiction of ignorance.

There's nothing in the creation story to indicate that, other than to say that mankind had gained qualities, from eating the fruit of the "Knowledge of Good and Evil", that made them "Godlike". Then, they were sent out to learn how to "know" "Good and Evil", without the protection of the Garden.

The flesh of Christ is a metaphor for the word, scriptures. Which is why it is said the word became flesh.

This has nothing to do with the OP or what we are discussing.

originally posted by: windword
The lesson from the creation story of Genesis doesn't imply that redemption is needed or forthcoming, from a third party.

The story certainly DOES imply that something happened in Eden which should not have happened.
God told the couple not to do something, and they ended up doing what they had been told not to do.
Now I hope you are not going to use the foolish argument that "He meant Yes when he said No". That answer is not valid in a rape trial, and it should not be valid here. The straightforward statement "I do not want you to do that" must be understood as "I do not want you to do that". In other words, there was disobedience. That is where something went wrong.

A scapegoat invalidates that challenge.

Indeed it does. You are quite right. And since the scapegoat ritual and the Eden story are part of the same belief system, the clear implication is that the alleged "challenge" is not intended in the Eden story either.

Genesis' creation story tells us that we are created in our makers' image and that, while under their care, something happened that made us even MORE godlike and divine.

As I have already observed, ""more" like gods in one respect only, and that was the consequence of disobedience, something which should not have happened.

The Creators sent us out to learn about ourselves and conquer our own nature, by ourselves, through experiencing and conquering the mundane; "knowing good and evil".

The story does not give that motive to the exiling from the garden.
The explicit motive given in the story is removing access to the Tree of Life. Again, this is understood as a bad result, something which should not have happened.

Since these current threads are about the solutions proposed in the Old Testament, I won't at this stage be discussing what the New Testament puts forward. That is another piece of the jigsaw.

a reply to: windword

I apologize for not including that most of what I said comes from the Quran in regards to the reasons Isreal were given rituals, and what the fall of man implies.

Ignorance is a great way to teach us good and evil. In ignorance we learn what is evil by making mistakes. In knowledge we overcome what is evil by learning from our mistakes. Thus the knowledge of good and evil has been made obtainable through ignorance.

Me personally I would prefer a world devoid of evil. But as one can clearly see we do live in a world full of good and evil, and thus we do obtain the knowledge promised us at the fall of man. And since all flesh perishes we do live in a world of death. But through the spirit we overcome death, a concept deeply imbedded in eastern philosophy. Spiritually we obtain deathlessness through recognition of the immortal spirit. A process called Nirvana in Buddhism, born again in Christianity.

I understand that the rituals of scapegoats came much later through Moses. The NT confirms this by declaring that Abraham was declared righteous before the law of circumsiciom, and many other OT verses confirm that righteousness is more important than rituals. The OT and NT agree that God was not pleased with the emptiness of rituals that became a substitute for righteousness.

You are taking the metaphor of the scapegoat far too literally.

I was only referring to the Pagans mentioned in the bible. As far as Pagan rituals that invite one into a spiritual union with the creator, I personally would not call them Pagan. Many church people called the Native American rituals Pagan. But I believe that the Great Spirit, Wanka Tanka, aka the Holy Spirit is the foundation of most of their rituals, therefore they are not Pagan.

The churches definition of Paganism reflects neither the OT version of Paganism nor my understanding of Paganism. Just because a church has labeled something Pagan does not make it Pagan.

Add- Atonement is found in the Word/flesh and overcoming sin is found is the Spirit/blood. These concepts are heavily tied in with the OP.

a reply to: DISRAELI

The story certainly DOES imply that something happened in Eden which should not have happened.
God told the couple not to do something, and they ended up doing what they had been told not to do.

A perfect Being can't make an imperfect creation.

This implies that God wasn't in control, in that, something that SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED, DID HAPPEN. How could it NOT have been an "all knowing" and "all present" God's will for Adam and Eve to eat of the very tree he placed in the center of the Garden. If it was God's will, then it couldn't be "wrong".

You're implying that the Serpent was able to foil God's plan for mankind, but that makes for an imperfect God.

And since the scapegoat ritual and the Eden story are part of the same belief system, the clear implication is that the alleged "challenge" is not intended in the Eden story either.

I'd say that "Scapegoat" rituals are a spin off, and are probably adopted from various nomadic tribes. It's a natural response to want to blame someone else for one's own shortcoming, but, in reality, that is as far away from subduing one's animal nature as possible!

The man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate."

Did God accept Eve as a scapegoat for Adam's weakness? Nope!

6Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7"If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it."

You can't master "sin" if you're ritualistically placing it on a goat that you're running out of town, or a "lamb" that you're killing, to ritually bathe in it's blood.

As I have already observed, ""more" like gods in one respect only, and that was the consequence of disobedience, something which should not have happened.

You call it disobedience, I call it an turning point in maturity, representing the adolescence of mankind. If mankind is created in the image of its makers, and mankind was evicted from the Garden for becoming Godlike after eating a fruit created by the creators, then it isn't disobedience. It was a "Rite of Passage", signifying a "Coming of Age", and the moment "we" inherited the "world" to dominate and subdue. But first, we must dominate and subdue our own nature.

The story does not give that motive to the exiling from the garden.
The explicit motive given in the story is removing access to the Tree of Life.

That's right. When children leave the protection and provisions of their father home, they are challenged to make it on their own, starting from scratch. They typically don't have access to Daddy's wallet.

They get jobs to buy themselves a cars, the kind of clothes THEY WANT TO WEAR, go off to college to make life long friends and develop skills to propel them through life, to hopefully become just as successful, if not more successful as their father before them.

originally posted by: windword
A perfect Being can't make an imperfect creation.

A perfect Being can decide to make whatever he likes. If he also chooses to "relax" control in some way, it is not for us to decide that he can't do it.
In other words, he goes by his own definition of "perfection", not by yours.

You can't master "sin" if you're ritualistically placing it on a goat that you're running out of town, or a "lamb" that you're killing, to ritually bathe in it's blood.

In fact I agree on this point. I haven't been arguing that these rituals are objectively successful.
I've been treating them as a kind of teaching aid.
As I said in the scapegoat thread;

On previous occasions, I’ve described Original Sin as humanity taking itself out of alignment with God’s will, a misalignment which interferes with their relationship with the God who made them.
If this is a fair description, then it’s obviously not possible for sin to be literally “carried away”.
What we have here is a dramatized metaphor which expresses and teaches two important points...

I've already quoted the following words about the message which the people were absorbing.

You call it disobedience, I call it an turning point in maturity, representing the adolescence of mankind.

More to the point, the story calls it disobedience. You can only make it something else by writing your own story.

a reply to: DISRAELI

More to the point, the story calls it disobedience. You can only make it something else by writing your own story.

That doesn't mean that this "disobedience" wasn't part of "God's" plan. There a comes a time in everyone's life when it is no longer tenable to live under our parent's rules. Those rules are only meant to apply for a limited period of time.

A perfect Being can decide to make whatever he likes. If he also chooses to "relax" control in some way, it is not for us to decide that he can't do it.
In other words, he goes by his own definition of "perfection", not by yours.

Nor yours! The Biblical characters presented as our creators, in the book of Genesis, do NOT present as perfect nor benevolent beings, not by a long shot! The story says that mankind was created in "THEIR" image, and reinforces that man has become "LIKE THEM".

The battle between the "Biblical God", Yahweh, and "his people: seems to be one of jealousy. He seems to be jealous that mankind has the ability to be like him. Yahweh is the one who want's to subdue mankind through slavery to him, while in the the creation story, clearly, mankind is meant to subdue his own nature, and inherit the "Earth".

Good volley both of you!

SnF

Please continue.

originally posted by: windword
The Biblical characters presented as our creators, in the book of Genesis, do NOT present as perfect nor benevolent beings, not by a long shot!

This is just the game of "argument by definition" which has become so prevalent on ATS.
The fundamentalist says "I have invented a definition of "atheist" which proves that you cannot be an atheist".
The antitheist says "I have invented a definition of "good" or "omnipotent" which proves that your God cannot be good or omnipotent".
The response of the atheist in the one case, and of the God in the other case, is going to be "This is what I am going to do and be, and I don't care whether it fits your imposed definition or not".
So the Genesis God doesn't fit your chosen definition of "perfection". He doesn't care, and I don't care.

The battle between the "Biblical God", Yahweh, and "his people: seems to be one of jealousy... the one who want's to subdue mankind

As I observed to another poster, if he is the one who brought us into existence, then it is perfectly reasonable that he should expect to have authority over us.
Resentment of that idea seems to be an extension of people's resentment of human authority, but there is a difference; human power may be based on unfounded claims of superiority, but the authority claimed by God is based on genuine superiority, of the Creator over what he has created.

while in the the creation story, clearly, mankind is meant to subdue his own nature, and inherit the "Earth".

Yes, but there is no conflict there with being under God's authority.
Mankind is meant to be under God and over everything else. As a kind of deputy.

a reply to: DISRAELI

This is just the game of "argument by definition" which has become so prevalent on ATS.

No it's not. It's a very old and legitimate argument against the so called "fall of man" and the concept of "original sin", both Christian concepts, taken from Jewish scripture.

In fact, your whole train of thought, from Adam and Eve finding out they were naked, and wanting to "cover" themselves in shame, to ultimately being "covered in the blood of Christ for redemption, invalidates the whole creation story, as I've pointed out.

The capacity of humans to do evil, even to kill in the heat of anger, like Cain in the next part of the story, makes us like God—for we all know that God has a terrific temper, to the extent that He employs human beings, prophets like Moses in the desert, to try to talk Him out of destroying the Israelites when they make Him angry. And the Israelites firmly believed that evil as well as good came from God, even evil that was inexplicable and unpredictable, or unfair, by any standard of human justice. God punishes children for the sins of the parents (Exod. 20:5, 34:7); causes the Israelites to disobey Him, and then punishes them for doing so (Isa. 63:17); and hardens Pharaoh's heart, prolonging the Israelites' suffering, to magnify His great name (Exod. 4:21, 7:3, 9:12).

I say this to make the point that Cain's murder of Abel doesn't mean that humanity after the garden has become less God-like. In fact, it means the opposite. You might object that if Cain's act of murder is another example of human beings behaving like God, then why does God disapprove of Cain's actions? However, I think I can handle this objection by saying that it is a recurrent theme of the early parts of Genesis that God wants to keep humans from becoming like Him (for another example, see the story of the Tower of Babel), so His disapproval of Cain's actions and His prohibition of murder fits that pattern well. According to God, only God has the right to take human life, and Cain trespasses by arrogating that right to himself.

Seen in this way, chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis, which tells the story of how human beings come to be like God, can be seen as a commentary on the claim in chapter 1 that God created man in His image. If my reading is correct, then our creation in the image of God is true of Adam and Eve before they ate of the fruit, but much more so afterward, when they acquired personalities as interesting and morally complex as that of God Himself and, of course, as that of the snake.

www.jtsa.edu...

Got ma popcorn out, seein a philosophical debate! I could tell how everyone is wrong, but i enjoy this to much.
And i learn how to be philosophical.

originally posted by: windword
In fact, your whole train of thought, from Adam and Eve finding out they were naked, and wanting to "cover" themselves in shame, to ultimately being "covered in the blood of Christ for redemption, invalidates the whole creation story

No it doesn't, as I've pointed out before.
The creation story is "God puts mankind in charge of the earth, under himself".
The Eden story is mankind rejecting the "under himself" part of the package.
The rest is about doing something to restore it.
I haven't been discussing the "Christ" element in this train of thought, so you don't actually know how I will be expressing it.
I'm not going to go into it now.

a reply to: DISRAELI

The creation story is "God puts mankind in charge of the earth, under himself".
The Eden story is mankind rejecting the "under himself" part of the package.

Adam and Eve's crime wasn't pride or arrogance, it was becoming God-like, which was a magical attribute of the fruit, that they couldn't possibly have contemplated. The "LORD" clearly placed it within their reach. Since the "LORD" doesn't make mistakes, it MUST have been within his will.

Their eyes were opened, and realizing their nakedness, they lost innocence, but gained a "Rite of Passage".

a reply to: windword

windword, were you finally kicked off all those Baptist web sites?

a reply to: ChesterJohn

I'm sorry, I think you have me mistaken for someone else.

a reply to: windword

possibly someone who uses the same user name in many many religious sites. You words however are awful close to those of the windword of those other forums so it was an assumption that you may be the same one.

Not to worry I was kicked off them

a reply to: ChesterJohn

Hmm. No. I'm not on any other site but this one, although I'm registered with the Daily KOS, I've never posted there, either. I wonder if someone is reposting my posts on other sites? Flattered...or?

a reply to: windword

it is not uncommon for others to have the same way of using scriptures.