rostau

Something that has always made me wonder. If the New Testament (ie, God's new promise to mankind) renders the Old Testament (God's promise to Abraham) irrelevant, why do Christians continue to read the Old Testament? In my understanding, when Jesus was allegedly crucified, the curtain on the Holy of Holies was rent asunder, signifying that God's promise to the Jews was now null and void, replaced by his new promise to all mankind through Jesus, allegedly the messiah. So that would mean the Old Testament is redundant.

Another question here is this: did God know before he created the Earth that he was going to make a promise to Abraham that he would later replace by sending Jesus to Earth? That seems like weird behaviour. Or did God make a promise to Abraham and then everything turned to shit, so he changed his plan and sent in the cavalry (Jesus) to solve things?

Magus55

The Old Testament has all the prophecy, the NT its fullfillment. The NT completes the OT. The OT also has all the history and beginnings as to how God brought about the Savior of the world through one race. I personally read the OT because I'm Jewish, and probably hold more value to it than many Gentile Christians because its my heritage.

Extrapolation

One interesting point to note is that Jesus seemed to be a follower of Orthodox Judaism, and often presents the Torah as something worthy of highest reverence, such as in Matthew 5:17-20: (emphasis mine)

It's also clear that in early development, there were competing sects within "The Way," as it was called at that time; two of these were those who adhered to the Torah, and those who taught a more open, Gentile-oriented gospel. One such confrontation is recorded in Acts 11:1-2: I don't believe it's necessary to quote further passages; such arguments are all over the NT, especially the book of Acts, until they're finally solved when James puts his foot down in Acts 15:19. Significantly, even in James' more generous ruling, he still mentions parts of the Law which must subsequently be obeyed even by Gentiles. Not that modern Gentiles bother with this much, of course.

The idea of the Law being superceded or abolished by Jesus seems to originate with Paul, which makes sense, since he was no doubt ashamed of his previous occupation of slaughtering converts to The Way, in the name of the Law. Examine Galatians 2:15-16: (emphases mine)

Compare this with Jesus' ideas about the law, and it becomes clear there was a sort of schism forming. History, though, is written by the victors, and Pauline theologians re-spun interpretations of the old theology to fit Pauline teachings.

Long story short, if Jesus' own teachings, as well as those of James, had won out, Christians would have no excuse to be breaking the OT Law today.

Shameless Hussy

Yup, He knew. That is, *if* He is omniscient. And His followers pretty much insist on that characteristic.

Triple Six

For fundy types the OT has better ammunition for justifying a hate filled right wing ideology.

rostau

So, do you think that, according to Christians, God knew he was just shucking Abraham?

rostau

I presented a similar idea when I was studying comparative religion. Christianity would be more properly called Paulinism, because most of the ideas in it do not originate with anything allegedly said by Jesus. Paul, in my understanding, pretty much invented the whole shebang out of his own neuroses and manias.

There's a book that I read at around this time called 'The Lost Gospel', which despite it's sensational title is really a reasonably scholarly attempt to reconstruct Q, which is a document that scholars surmise must have existed as a basis for the synoptic gospels. In other words, it's a kind of proto-gospel, now lost, which is a common ancestor of the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. Efforts to reconstruct this document are quite interesting, and a reading of the 'reconstructed' document reveals a very practical philosophy with very little overtly religious or supernatural elements. A kind of Jewish Dhammapada, only much shorter :-)

Chief594

In regards to your original question as well as subsequent posts, I find a lot of important information lacking.

First, the reason Christians read the Old Testament is because it is the inspired word of God. The Old Testament (OT) provides indespensible background information to make the New Testament understandable. First and foremost, it explains the foundation of the world and why we (humans) were created. That is, to have a relationship with God. It then goes to show (via Adam and Eve) that we humans were not able to be perfect but that we were disobedient to God's commands. This disobedience, or sin, is what has seperated us from God. The OT also gives us the law. The law is an objective measure to show ourselves that we are not perfect (for no one can keep the law). God choose to use the Israelites as his means of bringing redemption back into the world (via Jesus Christ). The OT provides dozens of prophecies written hundreds of years in advance to act as a sort of road map as to who the Messiah would be. (The Messiah being Jesus). Without these prophecies we wouldn't know who to look for as the Messiah. Without the foundation the Old Testament provides we wouldn't understand who we were, how we got here, why we were here, what happens when we die, and what needs to be done with the problem of sin. Instead we would have a collection of writings about Jesus dying for us, which is important, but we wouldn't truly understand the significance without all that background knowledge.

The OT also provides valuable insight as to how the world was created, how the different races came to be, why we act the way that we do, what happens when we are disobedient to God and scores of valuable wisdom we can apply to our daily lives.

Vorkosigan

Prove it.

Quite true. For example, the Jesus stories in the Gospel of Mark are crafted almost entirely out of the Old Testament. If you didn't know that, you might think they were history.

Really? Show me some proven prophecies. List 5.

But there was a whole branch of Christianity, Marcionite, that discarded the OT. What you really mean is that you would understand the NT in a different way, not that you wouldn't understand it at all.

The world was not created, and the OT gives no insight into "how."

What races? Are there races?

Like how to sell your daughter into slavery? I was looking for that information the other day. Fortunately, there it was, in Exodus.

Vorkosigan

Toto

The OT provides mythology as to how the world was created, which should embarrass any modern person who uses the internet.

The OT doesn't provide a clue as to how the different races came to be, but some recent racists have tried to read their own prejudices into the text.

And what does happen when we are disobedient? Hurricanes and tropical storms attack Florida?