It's only because you vomit forth five page answers where two-sentence responses already show that you're living in your own little world, your last response an excellent case in point.

Little gems like



have nothing to do with what we're talking about. If you're going to make point, just make it. These little asides are exactly the verbal diarrhea I'm talking about.

1. You say that Solomon not being the holiest king doesn't make him "a demon in a crown". Now that's hyperbole, introduced by you on the basis of God only knows what. The entire point about Solomon was the fact that I said he wasn't the "holiest, wisest and greatest" king (according to the Bible) as you claimed he was.

It is funny, of course, that you misread 1 Kings 3:13. God says Solomon will have no equal among kings during his lifetime, but does not say he will be greater. The whole of what he says is also premised on Solomon keeping God's commandments, so we see, at 1 Kings 11:11, that God says to Solomon that because he did NOT keep God's commandments, his kingdom would be torn away from him, but "for the sake of David your father" God said he would not do it during Solomon's life.

However, to David God said "Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men of the earth...Your house and your kingdom will endure forever." 2 Samuel 7:9,16.

The version in II Chronicles is in conflict with the version in 1 Kings. It's not surprising, since Chronicles contradicts the Samuel-Kings corpus of writings in many places. You can continue to try to say that Solomon was the "greatest" king if you want to, but it is clear that all that God gave to Solomon he then took away, though he waited until Solomon was dead out of respect for David, his father.

2. Your smarmy willful ignorance about "common sense" is ridiculous. My statement regarding "fornication" is that the passages in the Bible which are translated as "fornication" bear a meaning that does not correspond to the modern meaning of that word. This does not mean that when I type and discuss things I need to use the original sense of every word, so that "artificial", for example, might mean "filled with artistry". When I mentioned "evangelicals" I was speaking, not the Bible. That was obvious. I was using a common-sense meaning and you used it as an opportunity to beat your chest and declare that you are the true evangelical, not the fundamentalists who bear that name. I could care less about that.

Now, back to your delusion regarding the Old Testament.

You are misreading Deuteronomy 22:13-30.

22:13-19 discuss a situation when a man levels charges against a woman that she was not a virgin but said she was. Presumably, David wasn't going to request that Bathsheba was a virgin, nor would any man who married a woman who wasn't a virgin. Hebrew law is very clear about this. The problem comes about not with the fact that the woman is not a virgin, but that the husband expected that she would be and is now bringing a shem ra upon her as a result. If the father had said prior to the marriage, "You know that my daughter is not a virgin," then there is no issue. The phrase "whoring in her father's house" - zonoth beith aviha - refers to the fact that she was obviously running around behind her father's back and brought shame upon her entire family, their word, their reputation and their honor.

Deuteronomy 22:22 has the ever-so-fun definition of adultery as a man sleeping with a married woman, which we are clear on.

Deuteronomy 22:23-29 discuss rape.

Deuteronomy 22:"30" is actually in Deuteronomy 23 in Jewish tradition, but it talks about not marrying one's stepmother.

These situations do not in any way prohibit premarital sex or extramarital sex except as explicitly set forth in this section (sex with another man's wife, a woman who was one's stepmother or rape).

The woman is not stoned for being a whore - zonah (not "zanah" as you say) - but for being "whoring her father's house". There is a big difference.

Now it's clear that prostitution is not considered "good" activity, but it's not prohibited, either. Your statement:



is patently false. The point is that a young woman would need to still be under her father's roof, so to speak (or tent flaps, or whatever), and presented as a virgin, and not be a virgin, in order for her to be stoned to death. A young woman could be a virgin, a very young widow, a rape victim, or lying to her father and thus a whore. A grown woman not living in her father's house or tent for whatever reason was not subject to any of the strictures as she would not be "given in marriage as a virgin by her father".

Deuteronomy 23:19 (18 in non-Hebrew texts) actually shows that prostitution is not a punishable offense in Israel. The text, which you conveniently truncated says:

"There shall not be a qadeshah (sacred prostitute) from the daughters of Israel nor a qadesh (male form of the same) from the sons of Israel. You shall not bring the price of a zonah or the cost of a dog to the House of Yahweh your God for any vow, because both are offensive things to Yahweh."

This means that temple prostitutes are forbidden, as are paying for any vow the same amount that would be paid to a prostitute. The second statement comes immediately after the first, it has been hypothesized, because this is an attempt to ensure that no INDIRECT temple prostitution exists. Because common prostitution is legal (if frowned on), the High Priest could theoretically say, "The temple [note: at this time it would be the Tabernacle, but that's a technicality] does not have sacred prostitutes. However, one can pay the temple 20 sheqels on this woman's behalf as she needs it to pay for a vow and she will sleep with you." The second phrase makes sure that the priests are not getting around the injunction in order to profit from holy prostitution, which was a major source of revenue for temples around the ancient world. Yahweh is specifically not allowing this.

Male prostitution is not a crime in the Torah per se, by the way. It is only a crime if the client is a married woman or a man.

Leviticus 19:29 says that Hebrew men should not desecrate their daughters. This is a very strong phrase - in Hebrew they are "making them impure" - this is having sex with one's daughter, a major improper activity in any society.

Prostitution was frowned upon, but prostitution was not a crime in the Torah law. Prostitutes are not prescribed any sentence. No stoning, no fine, nothing.

And once again, there would have been plenty of women who were not married that men could have sex with - their servants, divorcees, widows, women who for some reason were unmarried and living on their own and yes, prostitutes.

However, I don't know why you are so hung up on prostitution since it is only one of many options of sex outside marriage.

4. I'm not the one who said that genocide was "well-documented" in antiquity when it isn't. How do you argue with that? Well, you can't, unless you lie (or you're insane). It's that simple. Ancient propaganda is not a means of determining a genocide - the example I gave was pretty clear and fairly easily proven. Merenptah claimed that he had wiped out Israel over 3000 years ago, and the subsequent 3000 years of history stand as a testimony that this statement is not true. Carthago delenda est (Carthage must be destroyed) was simply the motto of Cato the Elder, something that he finished all his speeches with because he hated Carthage. It may betray a murderous intent, but it's no different than Iran chanting "death to America, death to Israel" at all their rallies. Of course, it's amusing that you would bring up Carthage as an example and then ask "How many places was Punic spoken even two centuries later?" Obviously you've never read St. Augustine (who lived some six hundred years later), who knew Punic, or Plautus, who actually quotes Punic words in several of his plays. The fact that a national identity slowly died in various cultures is not evidence of a genocide. Medes and Assyrians are gone as separate and distinct peoples, but their descendants live in Iraq today, just like the descendants of the Pharaohs live in Egypt and the descendants of Cilicia, Pontus and the Hittites live in Turkey today, having lost their cultural identity several times over (becoming Roman citizens, then that peculiar form of Roman known as Byzantine, then finally as Turks). Changes in religion, language and ways of life wash away old identities. Or did you really think that a few thousand Arabs conquered Egypt, butchered everyone living there, procreated like rabbits with houris (I assume, since the war host didn't have women in it) and magically produced the "Arab" population of Egypt? Or that a small group of Turkish nomads (who looked like Mongols) butchered the population of Anatolia to the last Byzantine and then repopulated the area, but somehow magically stopped looking quite so Asian?

If your "point" was not to talk about the facts, then you succeeded. If your "point" was to say "well-documented" when that was not the case, you succeeded.

The "racial purity" you've now brought up, after realizing you can't back up your claims in any way, is ridiculous even if you were to accept the Bible as straight history, since Amalekites pop up again here and there. Israel was never a purely Hebrew land at any point in its history - EVER.

5-6-7. Christianity mixes the worst aspects of the legalism with the overarching "spirit of the law" issues. I don't care about the paternity points, by the way, and so I'm not really talking about them anymore. I repeat the point about Christianity, however. However, I should be clear that this is really mostly applicable to the evangelical Bible-banging sola scriptura literalists. They force every passage to be taken literally in the worst spirit of Jewish legalism and then extend the meanings in all directions to prohibit anything and everything they've decided they don't like. Oh no, I said "evangelical" again.

The rest of what you wrote was just self-righteous bullshit.