happyboy

well, you know, Jehovah eventually figured out that "unending wrath and fierce judgement" doesn't bring in the crowds as much as "unending love and acceptance" added on top of "unending wrath and fierce judgement." so, He manifested as Jesus to create the most schizophrenic religion on earth.

and boy did it work! Jesus managed to convince us puny simians that unending love also means God will torture you for all eternity for failing to live up to impossible moral codes.

happyboy, glad to know God is such a straight-talker

Bobzammel

Jesus seems to be split on the Law, strangely enough. There are passages where he supports commandments; and others where he tears them down. He also criticizes those who break the commandments at times, but then goes on to break them himself!

Perhaps the reason for this is evident: As the rest of the New Testaments state, there is a conflict between certain Christian sects as to whether the Law should be followed or not. There were those who figured they should follow the Law(Peter and James, probably) and those who didn't (Paul and co.). There are to this day some small Christian sects who still practice the Law.
It is possible that the Gospels mixed the two traditions together when they were edited from all the Q stuff.

Likewise, Jesus considers most of the OT historical reality(Such as Noah and the flood, Abraham, Sodom & Gommorah, Kings David & Solomon), and states repeatedly that he was foretold in the Law, prophets, and Psalms.
Jesus seemed to think he was the prophet foretold in Dueturonomy 18, mainly; however it is clear from that passage in it's original Hebrew that it was talking of ANY Hebrew prophets!
One theory I suppose by Christians is that God and Moses compromised on some aspects of the Law to cater to the stubborn Hebrews; however I highly doubt the same God who destroys whole villages simply because they accidentally performed the wrong ceremony would compromise!

Other Christians tend to throw away the OT altogether, mainly the Gnostic faction. However this doesn't fit with what I stated above about Jesus verifying the scripture.

As for later on, Paul throws out the Law entirely; but he and the other Epistle writers still consider the Old Testament stories-such as those of Abraham-to be "examples of faith" and the prophets fufilled in Jesus.

happyboy

i think nothing livens up life like a murderous psychopath as a Supreme Being! He kills people at whim, makes up arbitrary laws that no one can really follow, commits a planet-wide genocide, and then changes His mind as to why He did it in the first place, sets adam and eve up for the biggest gag in existence, and sends His own son to get brutally murdered in order to forgive humanity, when a simple "I forgive you" would have sufficed.

yup, we have on our hands a brutal God with a lust for blood and mayhem. He's trying to sugar-coat Himself as a Deity of "love and acceptance," but the problem is, He's too stubborn to edit His own autobiography, so we can all easily find out what an ass He is.

happyboy, glad to know God is a monstrous butcher

Baidarka

What use is the Old Testament to a Xn?
Credentials, context, hoary old books that gave a phony baloney young cult the proper patina it needed to be taken seriously when it was young and some decent literature and poetry which the NT lacks now that it is old.
The NT cult benefits from the pretension, inherited from the OT, that it can explain the history of the world and explain the What of all existence.
Like any good religious texts the OT is ambiguous enough that it needs to be explained. The elect get to interpret these texts anyway they claim that God wants them to.
The interpretations of scholars and thinking people are totally irrelevant.
Thinking people don’t give their hearts, minds and money over to cults. This is like not voting. If you don’t vote politicians won’t give a damn what you think.
Religions only care for their own mindless gullible horde.
This is about POWER, MONEY, and CONTROL.
This has nothing to do with logic.
There is no need to worry about the OT embarrassing the NT believers. If virgin birth, resurrection, and hokey miracles don’t embarrass Xns then there is no need to worry about some OT metaphors that some silly fundies take too literally.

Sojourner553

The earliest Christian sects experimented with different themes/dogmas (before these were declared heretical by the Orthodox Church)

It is interesting to see how they interpreted the doctrines of the OT vs NT:


============================================
"One important offshoot of the Docetists was a movement known as the
Manichees. The leader of this sect, a Greek Christian convert named Marcian
quarreled with the Roman Christian authorities in 144 C.E., and took his
body of believers eastwards with him. Marcion believed that only the
letters of Paul and the gospel of Luke and Acts were inspired. Stressing
a pure God of "love", Marcion rejected the use of coercion and force to
bring about obedience. (Jehovah of the Old Testament was rejected as
the "true" God according to this view). Manichees held the gnostic
dualistic view that all matter was evil. The true God gave humanity a
spark of the light that could lead one to salvation through self-knowledge.

Although none of Marcion's writings have survived, orthodox Christian
critiques of his movements do exist. The orthodox Christian Tertullian
raged against followers of Marcion for their naive belief that only love
of God is needed to be a good Christian, and not fear:

"They say it is only an evil being who will be feared, a good
one will be loved. Foolish man! Do you say that he whom you
call LORD ought not to be feared, whilst the very title you
give him indicates a power which MUST be feared?' Without fear,
men would "boil over into lust" thus indulging in all the
sinful activities such as frequenting games, circuses, and theatres."
===========================================
http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/CHURCH.TXT




========================================

Also interesting is to see how the Gnostics (which had a powerful influence on many early Christians) interpreted some of the OT stories:

Gnostics also pointed to Genesis verses where God says in the plural,
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (Genesis 1:26) and
"Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil,"
(Genesis 3:22) to prove that he was speaking to other lower divine beings
such as himself.

Gnostics argued that the Old Testament God was really evil for destroying
the earth with a Flood. Their position that the God of the Hebrews was
in reality the demiurge led them to an especially heretical interpretation
of the Adam and Eve story. In the gnostic work THE TESTIMONY OF TRUTH
(found with the Nag Hammadi texts) the author repeated the story of how
God had become so angry that Adam and Eve had listened to the serpent
and eaten from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that He cast Adam
out of Paradise "lest he take from the tree of live and eat and live forever."

The author continued then with the following heretical analysis:

"But of what sort in this God?
First [he] maliciously refused Adam from eating of the tree of knowledge.

And secondly he said, 'Adam, where are you?' And God does not have
foreknowledge; (otherwise), would he not know from the beginning?
Afterwards he said, 'Let us cast him [out] of this place, lest he
eat of the tree of life and live for ever.' Surely he has shown himself
to be a malicious grudger.

And what kind of God is this? For great is the blindness of those who
read, and they did not know him. And he said, 'I am the jealous God; I will
bring the sins of the fathers upon the children until three (and) four
generations'. [see Exodus 20:5].

And he said, 'I will make their heart thick, and I will cause their mind
to become blind, that they might not know or comprehend the things
that are said' [see Isaiah 6:10]

But these things he has said to those who believe in him [and] serve him!"

These gnostics in analyzing the Adam and Eve story in Genesis, went on to
argue that the demiurge forbade Adam to eat from the fruit of the tree of
knowledge, to prevent Adam from obtaining knowledge (giving him enlightenment
or gnosis). The highest good God, saw what was happening and sent the serpent
to the Garden to induce Adam to eat of the tree of knowledge, thus
escaping from his bondage of ignorance to the demiurge.

http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/GNOSIS.TXT

http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html