They had Jebusites even then? Hell, I can't blame them for wanting to destroy those guys.

In this you can clearly see the parallels between early Judaism and early Islam.

Sounds like the plot of a Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

Human Nature 101

@5 Jesus might say,"wow, my (deadbeat) dad (who is me by the way), was a real dick to those other people he also created.

So, this lord dude admits there are other gods, over which he apparently has no power.

So much for that all-powerful omnipotent thing.

Is there any substance in that book that isn't contradicted?

Rated G for genocide!

Yet another exhibit of why this moldy old book is not a good moral guide.

We're better than you are
We're better than you are
We're better than you are
Nanny nanny boo boo

Trouble is, THESE nanny and boo are lethal. This "god" is the ultimate cosmic bully... and his followers are thugs.

@2

"Parallels" between Judaism and Islam? You think? Eerie, isn't it?

Until God comes down and tells us otherwise, we can just assume that we're God's chosen people, and kill anyone else who has the audacity to believe they are God's chosen people.

Nothing about giving daughters to daughters or sons to sons. Just saying.

didn't work out quite the way yahweh planned, did it.

All bluster. The Girgashites would have kicked their ass, and they know it.

Dubya's foreign policy framework?

"That which is hateful to you, do to those I declare Other. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn."

As I've done in the past, I have to ask Christians to please reconcile THIS version of Yahweh with the one described by Yeshua in the New Testament, because, I for one cannot fathom how the cruel, petulant, jealous, vindictive, bloodthirsty psychopath from this passage could, in any way, shape or form, be the "God of Love".

Huh. Apparently the Phelps gang has it wrong. Their signs should read: GOD HATES GIRGASHITES!!!

Sounds like the Puritans' playbook, to me. And the Catholic Church's (throughout history). And our contemporary fundamentalists' playbook, too. Wonder how that happened?

Early gnostic Christians believed that the god of the old testament who called himself the creator - the petty, jealous, very male figure - was actually just a demigod created by the real God, a being with both male and female forms. The female face was called Wisdom, and when she saw what the demigod was up to she got pretty mad. It is still crazy, but probably would have made believers a little less douchey.

Praise Jeebus!

Asherah, btw, was a much older goddess. In Yahweh's younger centuries, he and Asherah ("Queen of Heaven") had quite a major thing goin' on.

@23:

Which is precisely why Gnosticism was crushed by the faction that evolved into the Catholic Church. If YOUR god has already proclaimed themselves to be the "one, true LORD of LORDS", it puts you in a pretty embarrassing position (not to mention calling into question the fundamental investiture of your absolute authority) to have this other faction running around claiming there's an even higher (or rather, several higher) levels of godhood above that.

So that two-state solution should totally work out.

@20 - My mother, a very thoughtful and intelligent Christian, claims that Jesus came to correct the mistaken ideas that led to people's understanding of God as violent and vindictive. Which of course is completely unsatisfying, because then you're admitting that the Bible was written by flawed humans and is deeply contextual. And then it's just an all-you-can-pick-and-choose buffet.

It drives me batty that the smartest Christians, the ones who think deeply about this stuff, will justify it intellectually until they're backed into a logical corner - and then you just have to have faith. ARGH!

@22, indeed. Amazing how those loving Christians followed their loving God of the New Testament and continued killing anyway.

Sort of like the saber rattling with Iran.

Sort of like the Spaniards in the New World.

@14 If you know you're right, you know you're right. (Specially if it works well for you.)

@2 and @12. There are few parallels between early Islam and biblical Judaism. Whatever you may think of Islam, it was not fundamentally race based. Islam has no chosen people, only a chosen path to God. In that respect it is far more like early Christianity, but with dynamic military forces. This passage shows profound insecurity about the strength of the Jewish people of that time. Here they seem more like some weird ass white racists or nazis afraid of dilution of their bodies and culture. The original Arab Ghazis who spread Islam did not care what race people were and this allowed the religion to be incorporated by the vast tribes of the Steppes and sophisticated peoples of the cities. Great peaks of both Persian and Turcic culture and civilization happened in Islamic times. Sheesh, in American today you can just spout the most ignorant made up stuff...

I don't see any commandment of genocide here. It says to drive them out and disperse them as a people and to destroy their idols, not to kill them all. To the best of my knowledge, the only people we've ever been commanded to wipe out to a man is the Amalekites.

@33: "Whatever you may think of Islam, it was not fundamentally race based."
You should read about the issues that arose once the Persian and Berber inhabitants of the lands conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate started wanting to convert. Since the jizya made up such a large portion of state revenue, the Arab rulers of the early states didn't encourage conversions by non-Arabs.
Not to mention that for quite some time, the caliph and most high-ranking officials had to be from the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe: that is, from Mohammed's family. Islam was primarily an Arab phenomenon that gradually spread to other peoples. Also, the Ghazis did not spread Islam. They were purely about looting and harassing non-Islamic neighbors.
I just took two quarters of Islamic History and Society; don't fuck with me.

@34 I will fuck with you! Sounds like you are playing that game of careful distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide, arguing the ethnic cleansing is somehow benignly morally relative at best.

@34. It says your must destroy them totally...show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them, as is typical when one nation conquers another but does not massacre them. Your attempts to mentally twist yourself around this passage are not persuasive. Just admit it: the Old Testament is pretty messed up.