Elisha, bears and 42 children dead

[_Hoops]

CFRs (--or its a wholecloth fabrication)

Of what do you want a CFR?

[_Hoops]

One would think that if one were to make all of this up, this story would be an ideal candidate for deletion. What were they thinking?

If they deleted all the made up stuff out of the Bible, there wouldn't be anything left to read.

Evidence?

[_Hoops]

God could've prevented them from mocking in the first place.

How so?

Future Hoops: But, but EA...that would interfere with their free will!

I can answer for myself, thank you.

[_Drifting]

Why does it seem there were more than 42 "little children"? Did you just make that up out of wholecloth?

No, I did not make it up out of whole cloth. As I recall, the hebrew is best read as young men. Nor does the text explicitly read that. But the situation certainly could be seen this way. As a literalist, I would only assume that 42 people did, in fact, get mauled. Is it reasonable to assume that only 42 people were there? That seems unlikely. If 42 were mauled, how many would have been there? A hundred? Two hundred? We are free to make calculations of the situation based on what we know of the time, the customs, and the Bible as a whole.

What proportion of the crowd would it be unacceptable, in your eyes, as a percentage for God to send bears to maul?

[_Hoops]

What proportion of the crowd would it be unacceptable, in your eyes, as a percentage for God to send bears to maul?

I can play that game to. why shouldn't they be mauled by bears?

[_EAllusion]

What proportion of the crowd would it be unacceptable, in your eyes, as a percentage for God to send bears to maul?

I can play that game to. why shouldn't they be mauled by bears?

For the same reason that we don't sentence people to being mauled by bears for making fun of people's bald head. It's disproportionate to the offense. (To the point of being comically evil.)

[_EAllusion]

How so?

Is your God no longer all powerful and all knowing?

[_Drifting]

What proportion of the crowd would it be unacceptable, in your eyes, as a percentage for God to send bears to maul?

I can play that game to. why shouldn't they be mauled by bears?

Because that would indicate Your God was unnecessarily cruel and sadistic, you don't believe that do you?

[_sock puppet]

CFRs (--or its a wholecloth fabrication)

Of what do you want a CFR?

That the "little children" were about the same age as Elisha, for one.

[_sock puppet]

God could've prevented them from mocking in the first place.

How so?

Something proportionate for mocking a man because of his baldness might, for example, be causing them to be mute for an hour.

If you were omnipotent, Hoops, what if anything would you have done to intervene?