Old Testament

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The Book of Jonah places Jonah in the northern kingdom of Israel, perhaps in the eighth century BCE. Scholars continue to debate whether the story was actually written in Israel or, much later (perhaps even after the Babylonian Exile), in the southern kingdom of Judah.

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The Book of Isaiah, which at first appears to be the work of one person, is considered by most biblical scholars to be a composite work, consisting of contributions from three different authors over a very long period of time.

Chapters 40-55 were written by an anonymous author living in exile in Babylon during the sixth century BCE, called Second Isaiah, II Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah. Chapter 49 should therefore be read in the context of the Babylonian Exile.

Second Isaiah knew that the Jews would soon be released to return to their homeland and so, in typical flowery language, announced that God had chosen to deliver them, and that soon it would be their enemies who would be oppressed.

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The Book of Leviticus was written by the Priestly Source during, or just after the Babylonian Exile, when the Jewish nation was moving to a theocratic model after the end of the monarchy. More than any other book of the Hebrew Bible, Leviticus is really about establishing the dominance of the priesthood, largely achieved by mandating moral codes and instructions for worship.

The Holiness Code is found in Leviticus 17-26 and is so called due to its highly repeated use of the word Holy - approximately half of all the occurrences in Leviticus of this word are found in these nine chapters. Some biblical scholars have regarded chapters 17-26 as a distinct unit and have noted that the style is noticeably different from the main body of Leviticus. The Holiness Code appears to have been written in isolation from the Priestly Source, either during the late monarchic period or even later than the Priestly Source, then incorporated into Leviticus.

The Holiness Code has no special traditional religious significance. Of the many laws it contains, no particular three standout, perhaps apart from some emphasis on sexual relations and a prohibition on child sacrifice.

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As a gentile, I relate to the gentiles in the Old Testament. So when the Bible says that God ordered Joshua to deprive the gentiles of their cities and to kill every living person in Jericho and Ai, I struggle to see this as showing us that he is our loving father. Only faith can teach that genocide is love.

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We can see that God is our loving father through the way He dealt with the nation of Israel and various individuals in the Old Testament. For example God spoke to Adam and Eve and to Cain and to Noah and to the nation of Israel. God continued to speak to Moses as He led and guided the Israelites towards the land He promised to give them, and so on. Throughout the Old Testament God reached out to people and continued to bless those who followed His ways in spite of repeated failure.

But to say that God is a loving God is not the complete truth about God as revealed in the Bible. The Bible also tells us about God the judge, the wrath of God, the goodness and the severity of God. The Bible tells us God is holy and righteous, merciful. So all these aspects of God's character must be taken into account along with the knowledge that God is love.

It was God the judge who told the nation of Israel to destroy the people who lived in the land He gave to Israel.

Genesis 15:16 It will be four generations before your descendants come back here, because I will not drive out the Amorites until they become so wicked that they must be punished."

God judged these nations because they had turned away from Him:

Exodus 23:24 Do not bow down to their gods or worship them, and do not adopt their religious practices. Destroy their gods and break down their sacred stone pillars.

God is the same today (yesterday and forever). He deals with His children as He has revealed Himself in the past.

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According to the Bible, yes - Ahab and his wife, Jezebel, introduced the worship of Baal to Israel. However, even the Bible itself provides evidence - inadvertently - that the worship of Baal did not just begin with Ahab.

The Israelites and their neighbours often included the name of a favourite god in the names they gave their sons. Names ending in 'el' were common in Israel and to a lesser extent in Judah - this ending represented El (biblical 'Elohim), the father of the gods. Names ending in 'ah' represented Yahweh (biblical: YHWH). One of Saul's sons has a name compounded with Baal: Eshbaal ('man of Baal') and Jonathan's son was Meribbaal. These names are often overlooked because the Samuel texts substitute surrogate names compounded with the word 'shame' (Ishbosheth [2 Sam. 2.8]; Mephibosheth [2 Sam. 21.7] ), but they are correctly preserved in 1 Chronicles (8.33-34; 9.39-40). Replacing 'Baal' by 'shame' in their names demonstrates the mindset of a later century.

Modern scholars say that the early Israelites had always worshipped Baal and other gods of their Canaanite ancestors, and only later did the people of Judah remove Baal from their pantheon.

Finding specific biblical examples of his wisdom proves difficult. In fact, the story of the two mothers is the only biblical account that purports to show Solomon's wisdom. Soon after God granted Solomon wisdom, two women asked for judgement over the ownership of a small baby. In this episode, Solomon gave his most famous judgement. The reader is expected to agree with Solomon when he knew that only one woman would be willing to give up her claim to the child rather than have it killed, and that woman could only have been the birth mother.

The Jewish people needed a glorious past, with both great and wise rulers, and Solomon became part of that past. So, although not actually a wise ruler on the biblical evidence, he was a wise ruler in tradition. To support this tradition, the Books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and even some Psalms were eventually attributed to King Solomon, although scholars can prove that he could not have been the author.

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No matter how real we may think that the nephilim were, they were certainly not dinosaurs. The last of the dinosaur species died out around 65 million years ago, long before the events portrayed in the Bible.

There are two distinctly different stories of creation in the Book of Genesis - at Genesis 1:!-2:4a and Genesis 2:4b-25. The Garden of Eden is the main setting for the second creation story.

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation