Into the Wardrobe

Yeah, it contradicts itself. Then again, I think the Bible is a history book, much of it originally transmitted by word of mouth, and that it contains an imperfect picture of God, just like any other book contains an imperfect picture or story of whatever it is about. This means I am not a "literal interpretationist." I don't think it is all true. It is, in fact, several books with different authors writing about the same subject. The further back you go, as with many histories, the more "mythical" it becomes. The Bible reports what some people think God said. I don't necessarily believe all of it. But since I have to sift through the same kind of mixture whenever I read a newspaper, a textbook, or a history book, I'm pretty used to it.

Some Christians take the New Testament as proof of the Old, namely, they consider Paul (especially) and others as authoritative on their own merit, and claim that since these people believe the older writings, they must be accurate.

There is clearly a change between the Old Testament view of God as a Power willing to command the destruction of other nations ("Gentiles" in the N.T.) while the N.T. says we should embrace all of the nations. Either the O.T. contains an imperfect or flawed view of God (the view of Thomas Jefferson among others); the O.T. God is not actually the same God that Jesus calls "Father" (the Gnostic view); something actually changed about Man or the relationship between God and Man (the view of many churches today, with the change being the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross); or we just "don't get it" and the two treatments of man are actually the same (also professed by many modern churches). There are probably other views too, and variants on these.