Not a refutation, but a commentary on what Mary Anne said here:

If you prefer the Old Testament, OK. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", and all that -- a fine American tradition. Just remember that Yahweh had psychotic episodes. We have enough psychosis in this country as it is, without worshipping a clinical God.

My guess (and I sincerely hope she'll respond if I'm mistaken) is that Mary Anne was mainly referring to one particularly bizarre episode recorded in Torah as Exodus 4:24-26 --

(24) At a night encampment on the way, the Lord encountered him [Moses] and sought to kill him. (25) So Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin, and touched his legs with it, saying "You are truly a bridegroom of blood to me!" (26) And when He let him alone, she added, "A bridegroom of blood because of the circumcison."

-- Jewish Publication Society (Reform tradition)

24. Now he was on the way, in an inn, that the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. 25. So Zipporah took a sharp stone and severed her son's foreskin and cast it to his feet, and she said, "For you are a bridegroom of blood to me." 26. So He released him. Then she said, "A bridegroom of blood concerning the circumcision."

-- Judaica Press, found at Chabad.org (Lubavicher tradition, and see note below)

120 - On the way, at a night lodging, Yahweh met him -- and was ready to kill him. Zipporah took a flinty stone, cutting her son's foreskin; touched it between Moses' legs: "Because you are my blood bridegroom." He withdrew from him. "A blood bridegroom," she said, "marked by this circumcision."

-- The Book of J; David Rosenberg, translator; commentary by Harold Bloom; (c) 1990

My attention was brought to this episode a few years ago by reading The Book of J (and I know Mary Anne has read it - that's the basis for my guess above). Bloom's commentary (pp. 245 -247) is illustrative of the "psychotic" diagnosis:

The descents of Yahweh, even if benign in intention, always seem to have their equivocal and ambivalent aspects in J. Moses somehow senses this when he insists that the people will not listen to him. Minor miracles, such as sticks that become serpents, and hands leprous as snow, cannot persuade the heavy-tongued Moses, who departs [for Egypt] only when Yahweh's rhetoric overflows into sheer authority.



...The reluctant prophet sets forth, and Yahweh comes after him to kill him: without cause, without reason. Of all the problematic incidents in J's narrative, the most uncanny, indeed horrifying, is Yahweh's attempt to murder his prophet, Moses...

...The enigma is Yahweh's motive, and the answer J implicitly gives us is that there is and can be none. Normative tradition, impatient even with Rashi*, came up with the mad explanation that Moses was to be slain precisely because he failed to circumcise his son! I myself [that is, Bloom] read Zipporah's final remark - "A blood bridegroom marked by this circumcision" - as the Redactor's triumphant editorializing, and so J's own passage becomes instead a weird founding event for the praxis of circumcision."



We need to keep in mind, however, that the J manuscript is not the whole of Torah. While transcribing the three translations of Exodus 4:24-26 given above (and comparing them with each other and to the King James Version of the "Old Testament"), I believe Yahweh's motive can be inferred from the verses which immediately precede - Exodus 4:22-23

(22) Then you shall say to Pharaoh, "Thus says the Lord: Israel is my first-born son. (23) I have said to you, 'Let My son go, that he may worship Me, yet you refuse to let him go. Now I will slay your first-born son." [JPS translation]

Recall that Moses is so frightened of failing his mission that Yahweh has needed to trump that fear with a greater one to get Moses to move at all. I see the incident at the encampment as Yahweh's ace of trumps - and, taken with Verses 22-23, as a metaphor presaging the Passover. Thus: Zipporah, whose understanding of Moses' mission is not clouded by personal fear of inadequacy**, symbolically sacrifices her first-born by way of his foreskin and uses the blood to mark the "pillars of the house" - that is, with explicit ribald euphemism, "between Moses' legs", emphasized by allusion to the blood expected on their wedding night - causing Yahweh's sentence of death to pass over and the mission of Hebrew liberation to continue.

In other words, though Yahweh's behavior is drastic in the extreme, it is not without motive, and therefore not "psychotic".
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Adherents of the "New Testament" very often speak almost as if there were two Gods; in doing so, they invariably characterize "the God of the Old Testament" as angry and retributive, and "the God of the New Testament" as loving and forgiving. Perhaps they should remember that in spite of all of the punishments meted out, deservedly, for various transgressions of the Law, YHWH has continued to forgive and has never completely abandoned His children, when a less loving parent might have.

Shalom,

Fox

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* - Rashi's commentary is found to the right of the Torah passages at the link to Chabad.org.

** - Bloom's thesis is, in part, that J was a woman in the court of King Solomon; he makes much of 'her' irony in assigning this role to Zipporah. I personally think it's unfortunately natural for the man to be focused on himself and for the woman to put others first... but I don't disagree with Bloom that it takes a woman to record it that way.