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Communism is so powerful that even God fears it
The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. - Genesis 11:6
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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christianity
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That isnt communism and god isnt afraid of it. You are lionizing mesopotamian empires based on slavery and exploitation. Story of Babel is about class society and empire and god is horrified/appalled by it.
The city of Babel being built isnt a good thing. Think about this story in historical context rather than in the abstract. Babel is a mesopotamian city. It would be built using forced labour, would involve more intensive exploitation for the construction of monumental architecture and upkeep of an urban ruling class. Biblical god is distinctly not a fan of these things (slavery, exploitation, and urbanization all get you on his shitlist).
Unsettling the Word has a nice analysis of Babel in the modern canadian context, with Babel called "Petropolis" and the single language being the liberal jargon around development and profit.
Unless, of course, you're related to Abraham then all those things are fine
Israel gets repeatedly owned by god in the book explicitly bc they do all three of these things lol
Deuteronomy 20 is a full chapter about how good it is to do genocide on everyone else, enslave women and children, destroy everything other than things you'll use afterwards, and take their cities as your own.
Find me the line in Deuteronomy 20 saying any of this is good.
Also as I and others have said in other comments
this isn't exceptional for bronze age and iron age near eastern warfare; the weird part about biblical god is that there are written and codified limits to the destruction and plundering;
Genesis through 2 Chronicles are 'historical' books and not necessarily endorsements of the behaviour or laws depicted, as god can and quite explicitly does change his mind (e.g. Jeremiah and the Potter);
this behaviour (the killing, expansion of Israel and forced labour) is explicitly cited as one reason for Israel's destruction in Isaiah and Jeremiah;
Jeremiah explicitly says that the "lying pens of the scribe have handled it [the holy texts] falsely" and we know from linguistic and historical/archaeological research that the Pentateuch (the first five books) are the most heavily edited of all the books especially in terms of and around the sections of laws;
Deuteronomy is known to be one of the later and most priestly of edits;
So all in all I don't think Deuteronomy 20 is the gotcha you think it is (it is also bad priestly fanfiction to justify bad kingly fanfiction, but extratextual debunking is less fun)