Yeah, it's fucked up and hard to reconcile. The word itself is like a Stockholm syndrome weighing down on any Jew.
Burnt offering means an animal that has been cooked over fire for eating. That is what holocaust means. It does not mean death by fire, such as burning a perceived heretic/witch. The animal can be cooked after it has died humanely, it doesn't literally have to be burnt alive. In fact the Bible has instructions given to the Jews to prepare these burnt offerings in such a responsible way so as not to taint the meat. They are taught by their "LORD" to be good butchers and chefs.
It was called an offering because the animal had to die. It's life was offered to sustain another life.
If it was an offering to the "LORD" then it was probably a nearby king or subordinate officer ordering them to bring him food. Kings do this, they have other people cook and provide them with food. And the Jews were not really known for having their own Kingdom, they were nomads much of the time. Which means Kings came along and ordered them around.
It all gets very confusing when the act of cooking meat (burnt offerings) gets conflated with the bronze statue of Moloch where people were supposedly sacrificed.
Then you have the other angle that perhaps this "holocaust" was embellished from the act of cremating dead bodies, to control the spread of disease like typhus. A form of burial that perhaps the Jews did not appreciate.
Hard to put it all together, but it smells rather fishy.
Why did an omnipotent and all-good god savor the scent of burnt flesh?
I think you made this part up!
Let's say you and your wife walk into a restaurant and ask the waiter to bring you their best dish.
They bring out a searing hot juicy steak for your wife. Then for you, they bring out a cold potato.
What's so difficult to understand? You'd rather have the steak.
Abel is the breadwinner and thus he is awarded a wife who will bare him children who he can take care of with his propensity for fat sheep. Fat sheep = fat bloodline. Potato = famine.
Furthermore in order to rear a fat sheep you must have good animal husbandry skills. A shepherd has that, he can lead his flock, and thus is the desirable husband for the wife to rear a flock of children, not just any children, Abraham's bloodline. Shepherd is the man for the job.
Check this video series out, some really interesting ways of looking at the scriptures from someone tasked by the Vatican with helping prepare the “official” Spanish translation of the old testament. That is, before he was fired for voicing some intense divergences from the dogma inspired by his intense and focused analysis of the texts he was tasked with translating.
He mentions that when you look at the text it isn’t the meat itself that pleased god, it was the odor of burnt flesh, a “holo caust” of the original definition.
A gruesome way of saying the man liked the savory smell of steak.
It's interesting how translations work. Meaning gets lost.
Odor implies a negative aspect and so does burnt flesh in our language.
Char-broiled cheeseburger sounds tasty. Burnt cow flesh sounds a bit horrid and vulgar. But they didn't have a whole lot of word options to distinguish between "good burnt" and "bad burnt".
So a person of today's language hears "burnt offering" and immediately thinks this is a "bad burnt" e.g. human sacrifice.
Yeah, it's fucked up and hard to reconcile. The word itself is like a Stockholm syndrome weighing down on any Jew.
Burnt offering means an animal that has been cooked over fire for eating. That is what holocaust means. It does not mean death by fire, such as burning a perceived heretic/witch. The animal can be cooked after it has died humanely, it doesn't literally have to be burnt alive. In fact the Bible has instructions given to the Jews to prepare these burnt offerings in such a responsible way so as not to taint the meat. They are taught by their "LORD" to be good butchers and chefs.
It was called an offering because the animal had to die. It's life was offered to sustain another life.
If it was an offering to the "LORD" then it was probably a nearby king or subordinate officer ordering them to bring him food. Kings do this, they have other people cook and provide them with food. And the Jews were not really known for having their own Kingdom, they were nomads much of the time. Which means Kings came along and ordered them around.
It all gets very confusing when the act of cooking meat (burnt offerings) gets conflated with the bronze statue of Moloch where people were supposedly sacrificed.
Then you have the other angle that perhaps this "holocaust" was embellished from the act of cremating dead bodies, to control the spread of disease like typhus. A form of burial that perhaps the Jews did not appreciate.
Hard to put it all together, but it smells rather fishy.
What was it about Abel’s offering to god (burnt flesh) that Cain’s offering (fresh produce) was so insulting?
Why did an omnipotent and all-good god savor the scent of burnt flesh?
I think you made this part up!
Let's say you and your wife walk into a restaurant and ask the waiter to bring you their best dish.
They bring out a searing hot juicy steak for your wife. Then for you, they bring out a cold potato.
What's so difficult to understand? You'd rather have the steak.
Abel is the breadwinner and thus he is awarded a wife who will bare him children who he can take care of with his propensity for fat sheep. Fat sheep = fat bloodline. Potato = famine.
Furthermore in order to rear a fat sheep you must have good animal husbandry skills. A shepherd has that, he can lead his flock, and thus is the desirable husband for the wife to rear a flock of children, not just any children, Abraham's bloodline. Shepherd is the man for the job.
Do you have a more reasonable explanation?
https://youtu.be/j4MXLB6SwPg
Check this video series out, some really interesting ways of looking at the scriptures from someone tasked by the Vatican with helping prepare the “official” Spanish translation of the old testament. That is, before he was fired for voicing some intense divergences from the dogma inspired by his intense and focused analysis of the texts he was tasked with translating.
He mentions that when you look at the text it isn’t the meat itself that pleased god, it was the odor of burnt flesh, a “holo caust” of the original definition.
I will check that out thanks.
A gruesome way of saying the man liked the savory smell of steak.
It's interesting how translations work. Meaning gets lost.
Odor implies a negative aspect and so does burnt flesh in our language.
Char-broiled cheeseburger sounds tasty. Burnt cow flesh sounds a bit horrid and vulgar. But they didn't have a whole lot of word options to distinguish between "good burnt" and "bad burnt".
So a person of today's language hears "burnt offering" and immediately thinks this is a "bad burnt" e.g. human sacrifice.