Originally Posted by mordwyr

Of course. The Bible is not a book of merely morality. It is a history book. You think God approved of the man who let his wife get gangraped on his doorstep by his enemies and then in the morning, when he found her dead, cut her body up into pieces and mailed it to the twelve tribes of Israel because he was a warmonger? No. But it's written in the Bible as part of Jewish history. Just because it's written there doesn't mean God approves of it. We must use our brains and know right from wrong. The instruction of St. Paul in his letters is more along the lines of moral teaching. The old testament is almost all history.