This is one of the reasons Gnosticism exists. In the gnostic interpretation the God of the old testament was the demiurge, while the snake is identified with God or Jesus.
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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The Old Testament is a bunch of books, letters, poems, historical and legal documents. That when read tell the story of the Jews and their relationship with God and the world over a couple of thousand years. They reflect the culture in which they were written. Many of the documents were written during wars where the writer is convinced God is on their side. There are many prophesies especially in Isaiah which point to Jesus. So when Jesus arrives and fulfills the prophesies some of the Jews follow Jesus but many powerful leaders are awaiting a different, more normal king figure and they are comfortable as they are so choose not to follow. The New Testament is written in a time of relative stability during the longtime invasion by the romans. The writers of those letters and books, some of whom are eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. (Almost unique in historical documents) take a different stance to who God is. But they don’t all agree. Basically Bible means library.
Jesus did not fulfill prophecy in any confirmable way, it seems like some of the contradictions between the scriptures exist because different authors made up new stories to attempt to have jesus fulfill prophecy.
Figuring out which, if any, of the gospel stories are true is an impossible task.
As a wise man once said. “Well that’s just like, your opinion man”
El Duderino
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The old testament was all about acting a certain way and laws, laws, laws. The new testament says just try your best to love and respect each other. In theory anyways. Humans be humaning though and human nature trumps religion every time.
That's simply not true. God talks more about Hell in the New Testament than He does in the old testament. He also is forgiving in the old (Exodus 34:7, Psalm 103:12, Psalm 86:5)
There's basically no change.
The book of Jonah revolves around Jonah not wanting his god to forgive Nineveh.
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Maybe because JC was a great guy and a lot of people believed in what he had to say. So, in order to benefit from his fame and gain the trust of his past and potential future followers, there was a gathering a hundred or so years after his death where they chose suitable accounts of his life to include in the book called the new testament. Accounts like the ones later found in the Nag Hammadhi texts and "gnostic gospels" were excluded because they undermined the authoritiy of the church and the power of priests to be the only ones to interpret the will of God.
Old Testament -> young people behavior.
New Testament -> old people behaviour.
( yeah I know there are exceptions )
Read again keeping that in mind. Read news to look for allegory. People don't change at all.
Not a particularly informed comment, but I always figured because people started getting scared of the Christian god, so they started turning towards other religions. As a consequence, the Christian church needed to figure out how to make Christianity a bit more approachable, so the new testament and forgiveness were created.
There were no Christian before Christ. They were Jews, as was Jesus.
The reason is because those texts are much older, and that was the style of religion practiced back then. Most God stories and stories about Gods in that period were like it. Most city states and tribal states had their own Gods that reflected them, and conflicts were gravely exaggerated. Also literally everything that happened in that state were an attribute or reflection of that particular God. With stories of how that attribute came to be, which reflected back in the people and in that way religion was a complex social interaction.
The people who wrote the stories we now know as the old Testament didnt write them as a part of a bible. These were stories of people who were taken out of their states and captured. Forced to live outside their land, but they took their God with them. Who became this omnipresent God that would lead people back to a promised land. Including all the complex social interaction people had with their mostly oral religious stories and traditions.
And it's the continued tradition that lead to the formation of religious scholarship and the idea that Gods could be of the earth and not just of a state. Which brought about new thoughts, new traditions, new religious complexity written down in the New Testament. Which lead to the desire to make religious books encapsulating all of religious thought.
And only much later came literalism, the mistake to take everything in the Bible literal. which sparked the formation of atheism as we know it today.