Into the Wardrobe

::Your allegory simply means "read whatever you like into the text".

That is exactly what people like Falwell always say to we allegorists.

:Cultural sensitivities aside, the import of the story is fairly plain. A jealous God demands a level of sacrifice and loyalty that is akin to dictators that we abhor.

I don't get it. It is clear from both early Judaic and early Christian commentaries on the story of Sodom and Gommorah that it is a story about how God cares for how we treat strangers: be good to them, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt. In sharp contrast to much of the Ancient Near East, the God of the Hebrews shows remarkably early development of great concern for how his followers treat one another (many ancient near east creation stories are allegories for sacrifices and offerings made to the gods; the two Hebrew creation stories are allegories for marriage and the sabbath, respectively. many ancient near east priestly laws are instructions for sacrifices and offerings made to the gods; while the Hebrew certainly includes this, much of God's instruction pertains to community life).

What that has to do with you ongoing comparison of God to Hitler, I do not know.

::This has nothing to with taking a childish lesson from the text, as in Grimm. It is applying adult ethics to an idea, no matter how beautifully presented, is abhorrent. It is your unwillingness to express a similar disgust that leads me to suspect you like the idea (regardless of how you got that idea). In my books that means you believe in the principles of a totalitarian state.

I did not say childish, I said moral, as opposed to allegorical. If you derive conclusions from the story about how women are to be treated, you are reading it too physically; like most Biblical literalist Christians, you think that every description in the Scripture is actually a prescription: another mark of the Falwell approach.

I have disgust for totalitarian states, but I don't see the parallel to the Jewish God, so I will not have disgust for Him just because you, by some weird stretch of logic, have equated the two. The difference between this disagreement and simply being a closet brown-shirt seems obvious.

Adam