SharpCircle

I was having a conversation with my mum who is a christian in the loosest sense of the word. She believes all of The New Testament but thinks that the Old Testament is more of a moral code. Now this got me thinking, what do clergy tell their congregation? Do they say that the Old Testament is a moral code or that it actually happened word for word?

My mum doesn't go to church and keeps her beliefs fairly private, she has never spoken to me about them before and I have to say I'm reluctant to push that matter as I think she's a little dissapointed I don't really believe in anything.

I would appreciate anyone letting me know

Mageth

Different clergy will say one or the other, or both, or all sorts of other things about the OT. There's not just one belief about the OT in Christianity.

What gets really confusing is that some will claim it all as literal truth, the inspired Word of God, but when you point out particularly sticky parts of it (like some of the Laws that instruct the Israelites to kill rebellious children and such) they'll start hem-hawing and making all sorts of excuses for it.

SharpCircle

Then how would you go about teaching this to a child? If you don't want to be part of an organisation or a group, how would you know what 'God' has actually intended the bible to mean?


EDIT

I should point out that I am not intending to teach this to anyone, I am curious as how Christians would interpret it and why different Christians have different views on how to percieve the OT.

Mageth

Do you realize you're asking an Atheist this question?

To me, large parts of the OT are mythical, other parts are legendary, other parts poetic, other parts historical, etc. There is no God's intent, only Man's intent, to the Bible.

SharpCircle

Heh sorry, for a moment I thought you were a christian. Like I said this is all for curiosity more than anything else. I find it baffeling that different christians have different views about the OT. Surely that if there was a God and he spoke to 'people' he would have made it clear what the hell the OT was about

Doctor X

SharpCircle:

Welcome to the forums . . . mind the hounds. . . .

People can have an assumption and so long as they never seek evidence the assumption remains.

Many Christians [Strawmen--Ed.] I know do believe in a historical flood, exodus, et cetera but have never actually read the texts and confronted the absudities. Heck, I did not know the OT had passages demanding child sacrifice until I read about them in a published lecture on violence and religion!

The assumption is that "it happened" and "it makes sense." One can keep shouting this over and over again to drown out the evidence. Just check some of the threads on the Flood Myths. . . .

--J.D.

SharpCircle

Thanks Doctor X - I'll do that now

Marduk

From what little I remember from Sunday school & church it was primarily all Jesus & the New Testament and at certain times of the year some Exodus, 10 Commandments stuff. They seemed to believe the Exodus was real in the Cecil B. DeMille sense, with the parting of the waves etc. There was talk of Adam & Eve & the ‘Fall’, hard to say if this was a literal or metaphoric interpretation at this late date. But the gist of it seemed they took most of it literally. This was a Lutheran Church.

my dog earl

Is that not where the name "fundy" comes from? The literal interpretation of the bible right down to the fundamentals of even the old testament?

Marduk

Fundy as in fundamentalist comes from a late 19th or early 20th century movement away from the ‘liberalization’ of the Christian church, not from Lutheranism per se, which is Catholicism without the Pope and faith vs. good works, in the days of Luther, and before the 1700's, everyone took every word of the Bible as literal truth.