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Old 03-06-2015, 06:48 PM   #136
macousticboy
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SaulT View Post
It is incorrect to say that the people who wrote the Old Testament "knew nothing about nothing". While they did not have the technological advances that other societies did (unsurprising, given their oft-nomadic nature), they did have various forms of art, including poetry and music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_poetry
https://bible.org/seriespage/5-poetical-books


On the other hand, we should keep in mind that they were people just like us - with many of the same foibles (sins, if you will) plaguing them that plague us. We should not make them out to be paragons of virtue or wisdom, for they were not all that much different than we are today, e.g.



Us, too, actually. Our divorce rate is actually below 50%. Around 40%, which is high, but it is dropping. The "50%" number is thrown around a lot, it made me happy to learn that it wasn't true.

http://www.divorcesource.com/ds/main...ics-1037.shtml
(see "Divorce Statistics that Mean Something")



Actually, Numbers 31, especially verses 16 and 17 seem to indicate that they were aware of STDs and went to extreme measures to combat them. It's a fascinating subject, the paper below talks a bit about syphilis and gonorrhea in the Old Testament.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage...31&version=KJV
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...00171-0032.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23007208



They went around killing each other back then just as much as we go around killing each other now. See the rest of Numbers for one example. There are a number of other examples in the Old Testament of very bloody military activies, including some that could be categorized as genocide.

I've spent years delving into this stuff - the Bible is interesting, the history of Abrahamic religions is fascinating, and it's all completely waaay off topic in a forum about digital audio.


TLDR;
arguing about religion is boring, arguing about fixed point vs floating point is.... well, also boring. How about focusing on the music and leaving the boring stuff for elsewhere?
Interesting stuff. Yeah, I wasn't attempting to make them paragons of virtue, but to point out that every culture in every time period has it's ups & downs. Which of course, is exactly what you're saying.
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