[madnak]

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The OP pretty much summed up most of my thoughts. The god of the old testament is getting worse and worse. When I read the "hitleroonism" thread I thought it was a little far-fetched in some parts, but now I have little choice but to think that the OT God was an evil sadistic being.

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M^2,
So it just summed up what you already thought? Don't we have a name for that? When you're reading these stories do any alarm bells go off that maybe there's some type of "moral to the story," other than summing up your preconceived notions?

I mean at one point we have the children of Israel who are slaves in Egypt. Then God performed a series of dazzling miracles and gets them out. Now they have their freedom and are heading for the Promised Land.
(Warning! Plot Spoiler) But they never got there. Why not?

Well, they griped about the food - they had just been delivered from slavery and they are complaining about the food?!
They whined and cried and griped about the water. In the desert they HAD water to drink, but... it didn't taste that good?!
They whined and complained about the leadership... that had just delivered them from slavery?!
They complained that it was too hot, too cold, too far, too difficult, too rocky.
They whined and cried for years - forty to be exact.
Finally, God said, "that's it - I've had it - Trip Cancelled!"

Can you find any moral to this story at all?

I know this sounds facetious, but I'm really not trying to be. This is just boggling my mind.

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This isn't lost on us. Yes, it has a similar structure to a fable in some ways. But the ant didn't vivisect the grasshopper, the tortoise didn't commit genocide on hares. Let me tell you the story of the fox and the grapes.

The fox raped the hen. Then he broke her neck, but she was still alive. He ripped her innards out while she squirmed. Then he found the monkey and asked to meet his family. The monkey showed the fox to his home, and the fox barricaded the door and burned the whole house down with the monkey family inside it. Then the fox saw some grapes, but he couldn't get them. Then the fox lined up all the hen's chicks and swallowed them up one by one. They died in his stomach. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention - when the fox didn't get the grapes, he said they were sour or something.

Isn't that just the most pleasant fable?

You can't arbitrarily omit some elements, string together others, and clarify ambiguities, and then claim that you have the message of the original work. Particularly when the original work is full of gratuitous atrocities.