From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2004 5:52 PM
To: rgroegle@enndee.edu
Subject: RE: Your Website

Hopefully I'll get something out to you within the next 1 1/2 weeks/2 weeks.

OK. Meanwhile, one more response to your comment:

You seem to read ALL of the actions of Yahweh in the OT at face level, which is not at all how so many of them should be/were meant to be interpreted.

Jesus himself certainly interpreted the OT crimes of Yahweh literally, as shown by his own words quoted in the gospels:

Luke 17:

"Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day no one who is on the roof of his house, with his goods inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything. Remember Lot's wife! Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left."
"Where, Lord?" they asked.
He replied, "Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather."

Matthew 24:

"As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left."

Jesus couldn't be much clearer here that he believed in and endorsed the genocidal Flood and the murderous destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (and of Lot's wife). No competent and benevolent deity would allow his revelation to include an endorsement of crimes so heinous. Your deity is either incompetent/malevolent or fictional.