Have you fully read a religious text?

[The Mikado]

Yes and yes.

I've said before and I'll say again that the best part of the Bible is the streak of books between I Samuel and II Kings. I adore some of the stories in there. Rehoboam being such a monster that Jeroboam leads a successful revolt, only for Jeroboam to resort to idol worship and losing his hand. Hezekiah forced to rip off the doors of the Temple to buy off the Assyrians, left with the horrible moral choice of desecrating the Temple or letting Jerusalem get sacked. Josiah rewriting the entire law code based on the discovery of an old Holy Book and reconsecrating the entire Kingdom of Judah, only for his experiment to be cut off because he fell in battle with Egypt. King Zedekiah forced to watch as all his children were executed, and then getting blinded immediately thereafter so that that act was the final thing he saw. There's drama, war, political intrigue, and a vibrant cast of characters.

[The Mikado]

How can the Bible not speak to you? The distinctly human greed, rage, jealousy, vanity, arrogance, foolhardy shortsightedness, and inner turmoil of its characters rings very true to human experience. Eli is a jerk who accuses a woman pouring her soul out in prayer of being a drunk vagrant and raises two jackass sons who steal from the treasury and whore around...and they're the High Priests of Israel..but then Eli's sons die in battle and Eli dies of shock and grief upon hearing the news.

Supreme clergy can be greedy, corrupt assholes, but their position won't save them in the end. The deep flaws of Eli and co. do a great job of stting up the righteous-to-a- fault Samuel as a foil.

[The Mikado]

I just don't get how someone can dislike a book with such fantastic stories. Who can forget Gideon, the least son of the least family of the least tribe of Israel, being the one to drive off the Philistines? Who can forget Joshua's spies in Jericho, in danger of certain death upon discovery, surviving only because a common prostitute named Rahab hid and sheltered them, only for Rahab and her family alone to be exempted from the general slaughter of the people of Jericho after the battle? Who can forget Korah rebelling against Moses, arguing that Moses didn't have a better theological justification for rule than anyone else in the tribes, only for Moses to have God literally open the ground beneath Korah and his followers and drop them straight into Hell? The stories are fantastic and vivid and compelling.

[The Mikado]

I just don't get how someone can dislike a book with such fantastic stories. Who can forget Gideon, the least son of the least family of the least tribe of Israel, being the one to drive off the Philistines? Who can forget Joshua's spies in Jericho, in danger of certain death upon discovery, surviving only because a common prostitute named Rahab hid and sheltered them, only for Rahab and her family alone to be exempted from the general slaughter of the people of Jericho after the battle? Who can forget Korah rebelling against Moses, arguing that Moses didn't have a better theological justification for rule than anyone else in the tribes, only for Moses to have God literally open the ground beneath Korah and his followers and drop them straight into Hell? The stories are fantastic and vivid and compelling.

Indeed, but are they moral enough to have adherents to the bible and Christianity ablre to build an worthy ideology around?

Seems these intelligent and moral Jews did/do not think so.

 https://vimeo.com/7038401

Regards
DL

These figures aren't supposed to be moral paragons. Look at David, whom the Bible flat-out claims is a "Man after God's own heart." David is a monstrous war criminal with a con artist's heart. That is irrelevant to his status as God's favorite person in the Old Testament. Why? Because David was a heroic figure, a conquering hero, and a man of unshaking faith even when God afflicts him (having his father-in-law go mad and try to murder him, having his first son die stillborn, etc.). The biggest mistake people make when they read the Bible is acting like these people are somehow supposed to be role models. They aren't trying to set a moral example for us.

EDIT: David is one of only two people in the entirety of the Hebrew Bible given the title "Messiah," or God's Anointed One (along with the pagan king Cyrus). The title that Christians put so much stock in for Jesus was only given to two figures in the entire OT, one of whom was a pagan nonbeliever and the other of whom was David, who is a pretty terrible king from a moral point of view. I'm sure if the authors of the Bible were looking for a moral role model to be called the Anointed of God then Josiah or Hezekiah would be called "Messiah" and not David, but they didn't. It's not David's morality or immorality that is at stake, it's his wild success. Unlike Hezekiah, who gave up the doors of the Temple to the Assyrians, or Josiah, who died in combat with Egypt, David won. David conquered Jerusalem. David defeated the Philistines again and again.

[The Mikado]

TL;DR on the previous post:

The Bible is not for seven year olds. Its heroes are not necessarily good people or virtuous people and make no pretension to be so. There are murderers, con artists, thieves, adulterers, and liars in the pages of the Bible and it's because these people aren't supposed to be role models, they're complex, flawed characters.

[The Mikado]

God is not nice, God is not friendly. God is a King. I fail to see how that is a problem with the Bible.