The God of the Old Testament is a shadow of the image of those who wrote it. Their God acts as they would act!
It doesn't, didn't matter to me at that point: ALL that mattered is whether Jesus quoted them or not. Shoot, even Sadler, Kellogg, and company 'quoted' the Old Testament, Caino. THINK! You simply must learn to actually think!
They seem to be hearing the voice of God telling them to slaughter men, women and children when really they are hearing their own ideas.
Because you say so? :doh: You've undone the entire power of God and His ability to answer prayer at that point Caino! Do you REALIZE you don't think things out to the end very well?
Your circle would tell you that to question them is actually Satan's doing!
You went to a different church than I. I was taught to wrestle through it, like Jacob did. You do baby out, keep some bathwater and toys and miss the whole thing for such simplicity. So did Sadler and Kellogg. They just weren't brilliant people.
You aren't allowed to question the historic claims of the Israelites nor their portrayal of God because they have convinced you that to question them is to question God and that's a lack of faith! Your arguments don't come from the superlative Father demonstrated in the triumphant life of Christ, it comes from the need to deny your own God given sensibilities when defending the claims of those who rejected that Father and killed his Son! (children of the devil according to Jesus) That is why you have to "wrestle with God" to try to figure out what its saying because it didn't make a lot of sense to begin with. To me it would be wrestling with people who developed a nationalist, racist, chosen people delusion trying to figure why things weren't going according to their own expectations?!
To one point I agree: I'm arrogant. Even so, as far as my I.Q. will take me, I do agree that 'my' sense of right and wrong is human and not THE standard. Then along comes Caino, who doesn't have an 140 I.Q. who will try and tell me his 'sensibility' is not only better than mine, but better than anybody else's too. : Plain: The thing that makes God, God, is that He doesn't answer to mere finite created beings. We, rather, and rightly, answer to Him. "Will the creature argue with His Creator?" But you do. If you knew your bible better, a lot of this would all sound like scriptures I'm quoting.
While the Israelites drew from material that was true and has great depth of meaning when recasting their ordinary secular history into a miraculous fiction,
Ah, a man without 'miraculous' faith. Sad, but yeah, I see where you are coming from: You are incredulous out of the gate. God has LITERALLY and miraculously answered many of my prayers. You don't have any room for such 'miraculous fiction.' : Plain: Either God exists, or I'm a magician (I'm not a magician).
the final product isn't deep at all. The Father reveled by Christ simply discredits it!
It is a meaningless platitude IF Jesus' words mean anything to you. You, Caino, elevate what Sadler and Kellogg say over what Jesus says, just like the Mormons do with Joseph Smith. ANYBODY reading Jesus first, will be a different kind of person. "He who has the Son, has life." "He who does not have the Son, DOES NOT have life."
He didn't need to directly attack it, his truth, beauty and goodness trump the portrayal of God in parts of the OT as well as the false expectations of an exclusively Jewish Messiah.
Incorrect: He corrected them where they were wrong, BECAUSE it was important Caino! One would think you've read the UB "to the neglect" of Jesus' words. You know, like you were following somebody else but Jesus at that point! Yes, its an accusation: You are woefully ingnorant of the Red Letters.
"Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation."
Matthew 23:33-39 Point?
The Bible represents layers of mans own false expectations, Gods response followed by more speculation and false expectations.
Sodom and Gomora were destroyed by a meteoric anomaly.
Jesus, you know, God, disagrees with you:
Luk 17:26 Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.
Luk 17:27 They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Luk 17:28 Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building,
Luk 17:29 but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all—
Luk 17:30 so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed.
Luk 17:31 On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back.
Luk 17:32 Remember Lot's wife. Matthew 10:15 Luke 10:12
2 Peter 2:6-9
and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds)
But no, Caino has no room in his mind, but for what he figures out. None of this listening to smarter or 'God.'
In that age every natural event was seen as Gods direct intervention.
Rubbish. You don't believe God does miracles today either. You CANNOT believe God answers my prayers directly. Sad but you've a carnal skeptical mind and it isn't good: It literally declares, itself, what is true and will not believe. Thomas was like that too btw: "Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe." You and I are of the 'seen' crowd. I have seen. You won't. The rest will believe simply because God is real to them even if they never see what I have or you have not. You and I have lost a blessing of belief unseen. 1 Peter 1:8
So they wrote in retrospective that God destroyed the cities.
Rationalizations. Jesus said it happened. You and I will stand before Him.
The problem is that there are numerous such cities all over the world, over all time and today as well.
Pompeii didn't have a prophecy. Nobody made up stories. Do you even realize your arguments remove the hand of God from all existence? That you are just an evolutionary accident? There is no interaction of any kind of God in your world.
Jesus' words likely won't mean a thing to you: Luke 17:32
Remember Lot's wife. 
