April 5 – 2020

During the 2 weeks covered by this review, we received 2 articles on the following subjects:

Book Reviews

Christian Tourism

Book Reviews 

Iton 77, March 24, 2020

This was a review of Moshe Granot’s book, The Three Books of Horror: the Bible, the New Testament, the Quran. Granot’s thesis in his book is that “torahs” or teachings that feign to speak with the commanding voice of God have been dangerous for humanity. Granot focuses on the three monotheistic religions, which impose on their believers commandments from God; but he sees similar “torahs” dictating the lives of secular peoples. Granot argues that all three monotheistic religions made up tales about past events in order to provide a foundation for the moral teachings. Messengers of God pretended to be able to speak for God in each – somehow knowing what God said and how he intends to act. 

Granot raises the many contradictions and absurdities in the Bible, the New Testament, and the Quran, noting that each makes the same claim to alone have access to God’s truth. The God of all three holy books is uncompromising, vengeful, cruel, and cannot be pleased. Granot says, however, that the Hebrew Bible is at an advantage because it at least has books that do not mention God (Songs of Songs and Esther), and also tells stories about the complexity of human life (David and Saul). While the New Testament is often perceived as a text full of mercy and forgiveness, Granot points out that it includes verses that call the followers of Jesus to hate their father and mother, or that say Jesus did not come to bring peace but the sword. Christianity inflicted many horrors upon humanity, and made the Jews forever cursed for allegedly crucifying the Son of God. 

Christian Tourism

Haaretz, April 3, 2020

This was an interview at the airport with an outgoing tourist, Diana Porter from Utah. Porter came to Israel with a group of Christian believers from all over the USA. The group had left a month prior, but Porter stayed longer because that’s what God had told her to do. The interviewer asked if Porter regularly talked to God, and Porter responded by saying yes, but that it’s hard for people to understand. Sometimes God speaks to her in her dreams, or through other Christians, or through reading the Bible, or sometimes through hints she finds in numbers. Porter said her relationship with God is intimate, and that God knows her well. When asked if she was afraid of the new Coronavirus, Porter said she was not afraid, and that the virus was the work of Satan. People blame God, she said, but Jesus protects us and fights for us. “We need to understand that we don’t have the understanding and the strength and the wisdom and the knowledge, and we have to rely on God.”