I generally agree that most people prefer the NT to the OT.
Might want to check out the history of Christianity on this one: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09645c.htm
At What Point?
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I generally agree that most people prefer the NT to the OT.
Might want to check out the history of Christianity on this one: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09645c.htm
Fuck off. You aren't worth the effort.
Kamala Trump
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I blew your mind just now.
you saw in an insant how retarded anti-semitism hysteria is.
You are repulsive.
Kamala Trump
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We just needed more lube.
I think there's also a value to understanding God via the OT. It is, after all, where we are first introduced to God. And that God has some very unpleasant attributes (like ordering a genocide of the Amalekites via his prophet, Samuel and then further punishing Saul when he failed to completely genocide the A's) and those unpleasant attributes are IMPORTANT. It's like seeing the life story of a person who took care of puppies in their later years and was a nice person, but started off as a vicious advocate of severe nationalism and genocide. OF COURSE we would prefer the version that takes care of puppies. But don't we understand the WHOLE person better when we have the full picture?
The point is NOT that God commanded the genocide but rather to show that the god concept has EVOLVED. Exactly as a human construction would be expected to.
THIS is why the OT is important in theology. Is God to be experienced only in 'cherry-picked' nice and pretty ways or in totality? Is there "moral truth" that is unchangeable? Not in THIS theology there isn't. Clearly so.
If Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Jimmy Carter, and Martin Luther King, Jr. want to believe Jesus is the resurrected Christ, it's not going to piss me off, and it's not going to make me think they are childish low IQ idiots.
I said none of that.
First of all, I cannot stand Obama or Pelosi. Biden is giving weapons to Israel for genocide.
The fact that you really want the OT to be a fundamental framework to Christian practice and theology doesn't change the fact that many Christian sects consider the OT to be reference material and prophecy. And that they base their practice, theology, and eschatology on the NT.
It's not up to you or me to demand they recognize the OT as a fundamental authority to their theology and religious practice. Paul said two thousand years ago that the laws of Torah do not apply to gentiles. It is widely thought in Christianity that the NT is the final revelation that supersedes the OT, and that Torah is not a direct revelation, but one that has been mediated by humans.
Ritual purity laws, sacrificial laws, Temple practices, circumcision, kosher laws simply don't apply to christians.
It is. Sorry 'bout that but it is. It is part and parcel and I've shown you the heresy.
Which is why I provided the link about the Marcionite Heresy.
And if you read Acts you know that this was NOT a universally accepted decree. There was a good deal of fight about this.
Per dispensationalists, yes.
Which is, as I said, an EVOLUTION of the faith. It changed per HUMAN NEEDS. Not for some theological reason but because the faith was changing and expanding.
The Bronze Age religion of the Torah doesn't even exist anymore, not even in modern Judaism. The Bronze Age Israelites practiced a religion that can be thought of as Yahwehism. The modern rabbinic Judaism we know did not exist in the Bronze Age. Reform Jews focus on the the Hebrew prophets in the prophetic writings of the TaNaKh. Even the conservative Jewish sect downplays or ignores the requirements of Torah.
Talmudic scholarship and Rabbinic Judaism are what we recognize as Judaism today.
If Jews have totally reimagined their relationship with the books of Moses, why all of a sudden do atheists demand Christianity make the OT a central authority and focus of Christian practice and theology? Is it just because atheists think the OT is a more fruitful target for scorn and humiliation?
There's a lot of crazy shit in the Bhagavad Gita and the Dhammapada too, at first glance. But one has to read them as stories and aphorisms about the human condition and the human relation to the transcendent.
But reading them didn't inspire me to approach Hindus and Buddhists and call them idiots.
A six thousand year young Earth, and dinosaurs frolicking with cavemen is stupid. But that's not the bible's fault. That's the fault of idiots who misuse the bible
Then perhaps you can tell me what the "aphorism" is that one should learn from the Book of Joshua wherein countless towns are handed over to be slaughtered and murdered by God's chosen people?
I get it: I'm the last person to say that any of this is "real" per se, but it DOES make up part of the "biography of God" whether you like it or not. And the Church itself has already told you explicitly that you are not allowed to simply throw away the OT.
Who is calling anyone "idiots"? I'm certainly not. 99.9999999% of my friends are Christians. And most of them are very smart and kind people.
I'm talking THEOLOGY HERE. Not personal grudges, not personal feelings. No matter how much you wish to shoehorn this all into a "personal" thing it isn't.
Then you will be surprised to learn that many Christian activists have wanted to keep that as a viable alternative history in our schools. This isn't something that happened 3000 years ago. This is stuff schoolboards STILL deal with.
How is it a "Misuse" of the plain language of the Bible? Just because you and I don't like a literalist reading doesn't change the very real fact that literalists DO live amongst us and have an impact on our education system and our society.
To ignore the fundamentalists because they are a small subset is to lose sight of history. All one need do is look to Afghanistan today.
The Book of Joshua wasn't written by God, and what does it have to do with Christian theology and practice?
When you post a quote from the bible, it is almost always from the Jewish scripture, and intended to supposedly paint Christianity in the worst possible light. That makes it seem like you have an agenda, an axe to grind, rather than an impartial academic interest in religion.
Is there a website you find these OT quotes from, and was the website set up to paint Christianity in the worst possible light?
I really don't think Joshua has ever been mentioned in any Orthodox Sunday liturgy I have attended.
The reason I have been called both a holy roller and an atheist on of this forum is because I have an impartial interest in religion, I try to have a fair historical perspective, and I don't have an ulterior agenda or axe to grind.
None of the books of the BIble were written by God. So we can dispense with that. But I will point out that today's issues in the Middle East carry with them this idea of the Chosen People being given the land. That reverberates down to today.
Please try to discuss this topic for once without making it personal.
Nope. As I've said many times before: I was a Christian and almost all of my friends still are. People I respect and love. So let's drop this whole personal attack side. It doesn't fit.
No, it's from reading the Bible.
I am unfamiliar with Orthodox services.
Couildn't care less about what you are called or what you think you are or whatever. Just trying to discuss theology. And clearly I raise points you find uncomfortable for some unknown reason.
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You know I really resent this phrase. I have said on NUMEROUS times that there is good in the BIble. There is a lot of good stuff.
YOU focus only on those cases where I talk about the bad stuff. That sounds like it is YOU who is attempting to cast things only in one way.
I have been quite clear and said many times that I value a great deal of Christianity.
I wish you could discuss the topic fairly and without making it personal.
Interesting the agnositics and ath
Sure. You are an atheist who always talks about the Bible.
If you have an agenda and an axe to grind about Christianity, that's fine.
Just be honest about it. It's not against the law to have an axe to grind.
Some holy rollers like Vlad Putin certainly have an axe to grind against modern secular culture
The reason I am so frequently misidentified as either a bible thumper or an atheist is because impartiality is a difficult concept for those with an axe to grind to recognize or appreciate.
My interest in religion is impartial, and I have read most of the landmark sacred texts of the major Western and Eastern religions. There's a lot of wild shit in the Dhammapada, but it has never compelled me to approach Buddhists and state that they are idiots for buying into nonsense.
Clearly I don't. Why do you need to make this personal? How could I? Especially given that I'm on the record saying REPEATEDLY that there's a lot of value in Christianity and stuff I actually like a lot.
So you are simply put, wrong. About as wrong as you can be.
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