It’s a creation myth, and they rarely do make sense. The really problematic stuff starts with the second generation when they have well documented sons who seemingly created their own progeny with very little thought given to the women who must have been involved. So either you need some divine intervention, spectacularly dangerous breeding pattens, or something that would have made even Freud blush.
Most theologians with an ounce of sense merely pass these off as folk tales with a metaphorical message of some sort. Either that or they end up barking at the moon on street corners.
So, the old testament is basically a folk tale, no more, or less relevant than 1001 Nights, or King Arthur?
If so, why include it at all? Why link it to Jesus?
The whole thing is so full of contradictions and inconsistency, I just don’t get why otherwise intelligent people are convinced by it.
Not just a folk tale, but a collection of folk tales from a varied collection of peoples with completely different ideas about who/what god was, who they worshipped, and how. These were people living in a polytheistic society and the stories borrow from various religions of the region of the time. Positioning it as a book of the Jews and their single god is a MASSIVE retcon, and in academia there isn’t a widely accepted point at which the people sharing the stories recognized themselves as the Jews the story was supposed to be about.
Take the story of Jacob, the father of Israel. He spent an entire night physically wrestling with god, a god we are led to believe from other descriptions of him in the OT that encountering him is like what the Nazis faced when opening the Arc. There are explanations put forward to explain away that difference - it is a metaphor (does a metaphor make sense when it requires God to be completely different in nature?), it was an angel (requires us to ignore what is written and decide when using the word god rather than the word angel that something else was meant). But the far easier explanation is simply the father the Israel was describing an experience with a different god than the one who would come to be worshipped by the Israelites like Moses 500 years+ later, or Saul 1000 years later.
I see it as a wonderful reservoir of old stories. Culturally important, and many still extremely interesting. More than anything else, they tell the story of mankind, its cruelty, bloodlust, inconsistence, cowardice (90%) and also at times, its heroism and penchant for spirituality (10%).
Basically, it helps people reflect about themselves if not taken in a literal sense, which is the problem of many idiots right now. And some stories are really good. My preferred one is the tale of Joseph, a profound story about human weakness and strength.
That being said, I agree with you that the old and the new testament should be separated. They tell very different stories. Compared to the ruthless God in the old testament, the one who orders his folks to destroy Jericho, to kill everyone: women, children, animals, and to destroy everything (rings a bell maybe?), would Jesus be happy with that?
At least, the new testament tells a tale about love and forgiveness, in a universal spirit. The same can’t be said about the old testament, which is the mythical tale about the Jews, the so-called ‘chosen people’. Other populations are either dangerous, ignorant enemies who must be fled when they are stronger (ie. the Egyptians) or can be destroyed without an afterthought if they are weaker (Jericho and others).
In light of what happens at Gaza nowadays (a mere echo of that same old mentality which has prevailed since millenaries), people should see these two testaments as two very different things, and thus read them separately.
I am a Christian and just want to affirm there is a very large difference between the testaments. In fact, I half wish they were sold separately. One would be the Hebrew Scriptures and the other the Christian scriptures.
The former, the OT, would not be dismissed entirely by Christians. It is useful in all the ways you describe, but it does not have the same authority for the Christian for faith and practice.
The problem, when it comes to the MAGA-sphere, is they are drawn to Hebrew Scriptures because - in their mind - it gives a certain “permission” for manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, and the sort of unequivocal backing we see for Israel today.
All those things are far removed from the core message of Jesus, but we are living in an age where critical thinking is on the wane. In fact it’s much worse than that, hence we have what we have in America.
Edit
I prompted this little spate of posts on the religion thread as I mistakenly posted on the US Politics thread, so apologies for going off topic.
The overlap was an American Pastor, and Christian Nationalist, taking an extreme view on the role of women in society, and the main point I was trying to convey was to highlight just how at odds he is with his own Holy book.