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Originally Posted by The Demon
There are things in the Torah that have explanations in separate books...
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Agreed. I think it is a testament to the evolution of religion -- which stems from progress in human moral reasoning -- the result of which is that certain aspects of earlier religious texts and traditions are either expanded on, explained later in nuanced terms or even discarded/rejected.
Of course, this is suggestive of the whole enterprise as a human invention, IMO. In fact, it resembles
Kolberg's stages of moral development just at the national level.
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...and there are things, events that you would take literally. The flood is a literal event, and one that has been researched for a while. Evidence exists that it did in fact happen. The popular belief was that it was a volcano and then a tsunami...
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I'm sure there was such an event -- at a regional level -- that inspired the story. In fact, I pointed out once before the
Epic of Gilgamesh which is the likely
source for the biblical Flood story.
In any event, it does not support a world wide flood as described in Genesis. Noah and his family were not the sole humans left on earth, they did not have an Ark full of all the remaining animals, etc. IOW, most of the story is bunk even if it is partly based on a real event (ca. 2700 BC) that most scholars believe predates biblical Israel.
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Do I know why Moses did what he did? Does the Torah specifically state that God commanded Moses to destroy the Midianites because of what they were doing? I think so but that's something I'd have to ask a Rabbi. I can't give you an answer until then but I doubt it's the same thing as modern rationalizations using God.
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I don't know what the difference would be. People have used bad reasons to do stupid and immoral things throughout recorded history. 'Thus saith the Lord' does not change the moral implication of an act or the rationalization regardless of whether it is used in modern times or in the Bronze age.
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Find me one and I can give you an explanation of that rule/law/rationalization.
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I'm not sure what you are asking for.