What the Bible Says

I have a fair amount of familiarity with the Bible. That being the case, I'm more than a little astounded at some of the things I hear and have heard, because people's interpretations of it are wildly varied, even regarding things that are outright stated. This is where I want to discuss that.

Now, I want this discussion to be broad-ranging, but so we can have a starting point, I'll ask about something that I brought up in the gay marriage thread:

To me this says that the Old Testament has not been revoked, that "anyone who sets aside the least of these commands" will be "least" in the kingdom of heaven. I realize that the greater context is Christ telling people that under the new covenant, the spirit of the law need be fulfilled as well as the letter, but he is explicit about the point regarding the old law - it is still valid.

Other threads keep getting derailed regarding this topic, so I figured we could have one unified place to discuss it. That does mean we will have to exercise self-control here. This is a heated topic, and the mods will only let us keep it as long as we don't attack each other. If you find yourself mad at someone and you have the perfect talking point to shut them up - walk away from the computer. Come back later and see how the discussion is gone, and then make your point. I would like this conversation to stay open, if for no other reason than to stop derailing other threads.

Opened!

One thing to keep in mind: the Law and the Prophets applied to Israel, not to humankind as a whole. Neither I nor, as far as I know, my ancestors were part of the Old Covenant: by eating pork, I am not violating any rule whatsoever, because I am not a Jew.

From a Jewish perspective, I think that the only rules which I or other Gentiles might be required to follow are the ones of the Noahide Law, and nothing more than that.

Now, the New Covenant does not cancel the old one, that too is true — Paul himself says this quite directly. But, again as Paul says, the New Covenant is of a more universal nature than the old one. It does not only apply to the Jewish people, and it makes no sense to require a prospective Christian to convert to Judaism in order to convert to Christianity...

Now, a difficult case could be the one of a Jewish person who wished to convert to Christianity. In this case, I think, they could either decide to belong to both the Old and the New Covenant or to "move" from the Old to the New one — but I'm honestly not sure here, I could easily be completely in the wrong.

edited 26th Feb '12 11:43:35 AM by Carciofus

Most FUCKING post ever.

Mentioned on Made of Win.

Also Vericrat, another thing to keep in mind is this, the real unchaning law is the Ten Commandments.

All the other old Mosaic Law was clearly drafted for the Isrealites. The overarching laws for all mankind is the original tablet 10.

edited 26th Feb '12 11:49:44 AM by TheStarshipMaxima

I'm flattered

Now, of course, someone else will probably comment and prove me conclusively in the wrong, so I'll enjoy this until it lasts

Correct, that's how I understood it to be. There was a problem in the early church with some Jewish followers of The Way requiring Gentiles to be circumcised in order to be in the Church, what to eat and not eat, which holidays and customs to follow, and so on. This was corrected by one of the Epistles, but I can't remember the exact one off the top of my head.

Paul got into a tiff with Peter over this very subject, as Peter appeared to suck up to the Jews when around fellow Jews, and ignored any Gentile converts that happened to be around. Paul didn't dig that scene. Peter himself saw a vision, in which various animals and such were presented before him, and was commanded to rise, kill and eat. He refused, saying that no unclean thing had touched his lips, but was told "do not call anything impure what God has called clean". This was specifically about reaching out to the Gentiles.

Some would interpret the Great Commission "witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" as first reaching out to Jews, and then branching out to the rest of the world, the Gentiles.

Anyway. I'm happy they did so, as I am a foreign branch grafted into the Tree.

It's worth noting that despite saying he wasn't there to abolish the old law, Jesus did a whole lot of bending around it when there was a greater point to be made. Part of the reason he made as much of a stir as he did was because he thumbed his nose at so much of the Mosaic holiness code on behalf of the "unclean".

A lot of this has to do with notions at the time that illness was in many ways equivalent to sinfulness, no doubt formed because so many of the worst afflictions were transmitted/caused via sexual contact or infected wounds. Much of the Leviticus code reads more like a codex of hygiene and sanitation than morality. Needless to say, when you're a small nomadic tribe among several constantly beset by war and with little medical knowledge, breaching these laws was an endangerment to the entire tribe — even if whatever you brought on yourself didn't spread, you were still slowing up the caravan and bringing your army up short.

By the time Jesus came around, civilization was a bit more established and a lot of these things were no longer a matter of life and death. In many ways, one of Jesus's goals was to separate those distinctions and start getting people to think beyond the letter of the law about what's actually right or wrong behind it. That's why I don't put a whole lot of stock in the old Mosaic code verbatim, but instead think about why it would have been given. If that somehow makes me "the least in heaven", I really don't care, and I get the feeling that's the point. Heaven wouldn't be heaven if it was full of people who were full of themselves and fighting over positions of acclaim by rules lawyering.

edited 26th Feb '12 4:31:08 PM by Pykrete

This is very true, and a very good point for those who do not believe everything in the Bible should be followed verbatim because it's the direct word of God and the be-all to end-all of morality. People who do believe that, though, have bigger problems, like figuring out what to do with all of those cotton-polyester blend shirts.

The way fashion is going anymore, those should be burned for entirely different reasons.

edited 26th Feb '12 4:49:57 PM by Pykrete

,

I remember Jesus being recorded as saying that the Greatest Commandment was to love, and he blessed the poor, the humble, and the peacemakers. And Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 said that of faith, hope and love, that the greatest was love.

But if you dare to say that Christians have a duty above all things to love, the you risk being labeled as a liberal hippy leftist communist socialist atheist secularist heretic etc. After all, loving your enemies is a dangerous idea.

Then Lawyerdude, we'll gladly wear that label.

Actually, when you study the early Church, they lived a communal life. So yeah, communist is actually a bit accurate, from a certain point of view...

Which doesn't square with the whole name it and claim it mentality, which, as far as I know, is only found in developed nations. Churches in third-world nations have a totally different feel to them.

Of course, most Christians would be offended by being called Communists because, you know, the Communists murdered Christians.

Shit. There is that.

Sure, but look at those who represent Christianity and who hold themselves out as speaking for Christians. How many of them are pushing for loving your neighbor? What I see is them using "love of God" as justification for hating people. After all, if God says that these people are wrong and bad and sinners, then I am loving God by hating these peoples sin, right?

Don't Shoot the Message. To clarify what I mean: just because some people think you should hate "sinners" doesn't mean that's what God really wants, or what Christianity really means.

edited 26th Feb '12 6:42:31 PM by Chimaera

I've been asked to lay off the whole 'true Christian' thing. So I won't go there.

But needless to say, I would argue that "those" people aren't truly representing the teachings of Christ.

edited 26th Feb '12 6:42:22 PM by TheStarshipMaxima

Well I haven't, so I'll keep doing it.

(Chimera and Starship see a bunch of hypocrites trolling the OTC, using Scripture. Maxima pulls his phaser and sets it to "are you sure you don't even ashes to remain?" setting and is about to pull the trigger. But Chimera stops him)

Lt. Commander Chimera: Captain. You can't do that. Remember you've been asked to lay off.

Captain Starship: DAMN! Shit!

Chimera: Sir, might I point out, I wasn't asked to lay off.

(Starship stops for moment and then grins a wide grin).

Starship: Chimera you just got promoted. Now, Commander Chimera, shoot these fake posers.

Chimera: (drawing his own phaser) With pleasure, sir.

Now, since this issue seems to be resolved, I'm going to talk about another persistent derail in another thread: rapist marriages. I believe Vericrat brought it up. He had a quote saying a rapist shall marry his victim, pay the bridal price, and cannot divorce him. I'm honestly puzzled, because that's not what my Bible says. In my Bible, she may choose to marry him. Her choice, not his. The reason for this seems to be that a guy caught screwing his girlfriend could take the blame, say he raped her, and marry her. I'll try to get a quote for you tomorrow.

Of course, this might be just a pointless translation issue, but I'd be interested to know which edition Vericrat got his quote from. Mine's the New American Bible.

If you want to call somebody a hypocrite or a troll, by all means go ahead.

All I'm saying is that I, as a nonbeliever, have no way of determining who is or is not following the tenets of Christianity other than by looking at those who represent the religion. It's not like you can do a blood test, after all.

My understanding of the "you raped her, you marry her" bit is that it's forcing the rapist to provide for the woman (since by ancient standards a woman who lost her virginity outside of marriage, even if it wasn't consensual, was considered "defiled" and nobody would want to marry her) - obvious values dissonance now, but that passage definitely wasn't intended to mean "rape is a-okay" like I sometimes see people say nowadays...

Most of the law codes were written while the Israelite peoples were under Babylonian captivity. What better way to try and preserve your specific culture and people than to make strict rules to keep them as separate as the other nationalities, cultures, religions, etc. around them? That's what preserved the identity of the lower kingdom. The upper kingdom of Israel was conquered and the people assimilated to the point they disappeared. The lower tribes didn't want to suffer that fate.

The division of the laws was between Peter and Paul for the most part. Peter was saying people had to become Jewish first and adhere to Jewish law before they could become Christian. Paul was all about skipping the Jewish step and moving straight to Christianity because the disciples honestly felt that Jesus would be coming back in their lifetimes. Paul didn't want to waste time. Paul also understood that no convert who was an adult would want to become circumcised, divorce their spouse, or other problems that could come from having to go straight to Judaism before accepting the ways of Christ.

Paul's view ultimately won because while he was converting on the outskirts of town, the Jewish Christians were being martyred to extinction in the Roman Empire. So the idea that the Old Law became Guidelines while the New Gospel became law prevailed.

Here's the passage. It doesn't get any better with other translations; try it.

It also gets significantly WORSE in context.

(Oh, but MI is probably right; at the time of the Bible, the problem was rape was understood to be that nobody would marry a non-virgin, not that rape was an inherently traumatic act. Which is the point of the rapist-marriage; the distinction between rape and pre-marital sex is not drawn and so what happens if you make a woman unable to marry and thus derive support from any other man is that you must marry and support her yourself. It is in that cultural context definitely NOT the worst part of the passage, although it still makes the Bible FIRMLY not perfect or infallible.)