Anyone who believes the Torah portrays a warmongering God has never read the book in context. Remember that the time when the stories of Abraham through Moses through David took place was the age of warlords and warmongers.

Know that, at the time, kings and pharoahs ruled with iron fists. If they wanted to start a war because another king looked at him sideways the people served. Then you find in the Torah that a king is only allowed to make wars for God and any other wars can only be faught with volunteers or paid soldiers. You find that there is an obligation to allow your enemy to flee instead of besieging them. You have to offer them the chance to surrender and become vassals instead of slaughtering them. You're not allowed to rape women on the battlefield - but have to wait several months at least before laying with them in an honest relationship. Heck, you're not even allowed to destroy fruit trees to build siege engines.

The same goes for many other issues... 'oh no there's slavery in the Torah!' yeah, that's because there was slavery in the world... it doesn't say 'thou shalt have slaves' though, it says 'IF you have a slave, THEN you have to make sure he has a pillow and a blanket even if you don't'. 'oh no, there's multiple wives in the Torah!' Yeah... and they call the second wife 'suffering' and say that you better be able to care for them both (not the other way around). 'Oh noez there is a DEATH PENALTY!'... which requires 71 judges to preside over it with a majority rule where a unanimous vote is thrown out since whenever you get 71 Jews agreeing on ANYTHING you know something's fishy. Such a requirement was made, by the way, during a time where kings would have people executed for scuffing their shoes. And the list goes on.


Getting on to Forgiveness... it amazes me that people equate Judaism with war and Christianity with forgiveness. First of all, looking at the past 2000 years, who made all the wars and who did all the 'turning the other cheek'? Secondly, yeshu didn't present a single new idea in anything he said. All his ideas on forgiveness are straight from the Torah. Only I believe the originals were much better. A few brief examples:

Jeremiah 36:3 “That every man shall return from his way, and I will forgive him.”
1 Kings 8:33-34 “If they return to You, and confess Your Name, and pray...then You will hear in Heaven and forgive their sin.”
Malachi 3:7 “...Return to Me and I will return to you...”


Hope that starts to clear things up.