mg01

Check out the cover of Illustrated Stories From The Bible from the American Atheist Press.

I think I need a copy. It would make a good coffee table book.

Clivedurdle

42?

spamandham

Could this story actually be a symbolic story about Chicago trouncing Dallas?

Voice of reason

Yes it actually predicts the future.

spamandham

It's most certainly a false professesy. The 'boys will easily shred those bears.

Clivedurdle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ans...and_Everything

Jane H

O.K., lets have a crack at this one, then.

As a non-fundi, I might look for a defence along the lines of “It’s a never happened folk tale that tells us not to mess with God, God’s holy things and generally not to be horrible to anyone”. But I think we can improve on that a little.

To recapitulate some points and add to others:

The term na'ar is indeed a variable term, and it certainly gets used for people old enough to be soldiers and to marry. Isaac was called na'ar when twenty-eight years old (Genesis 21:5-12); and Joseph was called when he was thirty-nine (Genesis 41:12). Also 1 Kings 20:14: "And Ahab said, By whom shall the Assyrians be delivered into my hand? And he said, Thus saith the Lord, by the young men/benaarey, of the princes of the provinces." These were soldiers, probably militia, or a selection from the militia, which served as a bodyguard to Ahab. (etc. references)

So we can think of the group as a gang of ‘hoodies’ as we would call them in the UK, or ‘adolescent punks’ as for the OP.

If (purely for simplicity’s sake) we run with 42 thugs mauled; there must have been a massive horde of them to start with. This was something organised. Elisha’s opposition to the movement towards Baal worship, and general holy approach to life, would have gone down badly in certain quarters, and it is entirely possible that the youths were sent to ‘give him a good kicking’.

The baldy thing wasn’t about an Elton John style hair loss. Elisha lived 50 years more (13:14) and probably was too young to be bald. A much more likely explanation is that he had his hair shaved for recent ’death’ of Elijah. Shaving your head was a common rite of mourning in OT times. The hoodies were aggressively threatening Elisha about his friend’s death, and threatening more death to come.

Thus “go away, baldhead” means ‘f*** off and die like your friend’. There must have been a high probability Elisha was going to be fatally beaten by a crowd of feral youths. As in many other places in the OT, God was asked to destroy those who try to destroy his people.

Now a massive crowd of hoodies yelling would have been seen as a threat to any she-bears in the area, (could they have been looking after young cubs?). Their reaction to the threat was the violence common in nature.



Personally I see this as a ‘type’ of story which gets frequently repeated in the OT and NT.

spamandham

You win points for creativity.

Although I think it would have been more fun if you had thrown in a time machine and a d'lorean. :jump:

haitu

where are all the christians in this forum? why are they not defending anything in this thread?

Keith&Co.

So, what, you're suggesting that a biker gang threatened someone, who called upon God for a smiting and by a strange coincidence two bears were there with cubs and they attacked, right after a prophet was threatened?
Then, as two bears attacked a really large group of threats (do bears charge towards groups of (at least) 42? I'd think that would be enough to make them cautious, esp. if they had cubs to worry about), the biker gang stood around long enough for the bears to tare up 42 of them? But left Elly alone?