What's the relationship between the Old and New Testaments?

[wickerwoman]

Specifically, what is the basis for moderate Christians' claims that they have a "new covenant" and that they aren't bound by OT dictums like stoning their children for heresy or going to hell for eating shellfish? Is there a quote somewhere in Christian scripture that says you don't have to follow the rules in the OT?

Thanks in advance for helping me understand.

[Erika]

1. Christ came to create the new law

The Old Testament was the old law. The New Testament showed the New Law under Christ.

Kind of like Bush Sr, tossing out Reagan as Bush Sr. said he would go for a new and gentler America.

The audience was the same.

[TomInTib]

5. The Old Testament was the Law of Man

The New was the law that men wrote.

And that set of "laws" was what kept the poor from gutting the wealthy.

[LostInAnomie]

2. Well, if you're a fundamentalist...

... you completely disregard the NT except Revelations and cherry pick the parts of the OT that suit your needs for the moment.

[Erika]

4. THE Bushbots certainly did away with turn the other cheek

W says "blast their cheek to hell" so they can't turn it as he authorized shock and awe on a population who were never even interested into being a threat to us.

I'll never forget the 13 year old Iraqi boy who had both his arms shot off in W's shock and awe campaign.

[Erika]

7. You're right

The Fundies have negated Christ's every message.

The poor are dumb and lazy, the ill deserved their conditions because they weren't smart enough to buy insurance or look for a better job. Freeper talk.

W is a self made man that raised himself from his bootstraps. Got it. He's Godly, even though he admitted he wasn't sober until in his 40's. Got it.

He sure suckered in a lot of good people. But then I remember the rich older GOP women saying they would would vote for because he was "so cute".

[beam me up scottie]

10. Fundamentalists say the same thing about liberal christians.

Don't all christians cherry pick?

[LostInAnomie]

12. Yep

Good thing I quit that whole religion nonsense years ago.

[beam me up scottie]

13. yay! One for our side!

Just kidding.:)

Interesting thread.

[varkam]

3. I seem to recall something in the NT to the effect of...

The old ways have come to pass - which I would think is what you're looking for. I think it's in the gospels, but it's been a while :)

[jobycom]

6. It's not that simple

First, some of the rules, like shellfish or stoning children, a Christian would argue was specifically for the Jews, not for Christians. These rules are in a list in Leviticus and Numbers, and they are given to the Jews specifically, and some deal with punishments such as exiling the culprit from the group, so Christians interpret this as being specifically for Jews. Of course, many pick and choose, such as on homosexuality, but that's their argument for not having to obey those rules.

Second, Jesus in several cases specifically overrode Old Testament rules. Keep in mind that at the time of Christ, there was no Old Testament, there were just books of scripture and law and tradition, some of which became part of the Christian Bible, some of which didn't. When Jesus was asked which commandment was greatest, rather than picking one, he said "to love God with all your heart, soul and mind," or something like that. He also said to love your neighbor as yourself, and to love your enemy. When he was asked whether a person should take an eye for an eye, he said a person should turn the other cheek, and when asked how many times a person should forgive, he said 70 times 70 times, or always. So Jesus reinterpreted the law, and this was one of the reasons he ran afoul of the authorities.

In more general terms, he is the "Word," he is the son of God, and he was sent to the world by God (all claims in different parts of the Gospels, especially John). So the basic belief is that if Jesus said it, it over-rides what's in the Old Testament, and where Jesus didn't say anything about it, the Old Testament rules are still valid. A Christian would generally say that Jesus didn't over-ride the Old Testament, he simply complemented it--Jesus as an Amendment, in other words. Thus, even though he specifically rejected the "eye for an eye" rule, many Christians, especially fundamentalists, believe that Jesus couldn't have canceled out the old law, he only added to our understanding of it. So, you should forgive, but you should also take the eye as a form of justice.

[Erika]

9. Christ's penance for peace

negated the Old Testament law. Or shall we start teaching "Jesus threatens you, rather than Jesus loves You?

Jesus is not the warring and vengeful God of the Old Testment.

[jobycom]

11. Not completely

It negated, in Christian theology, the need for blood sacrifice for sin and to appease God. It was penance for the sins of mankind, and, if I remember my theology, for original sin. I think, IIRC, that Jesus's sacrifice means that people are cleansed of original sin (the sin of Adam and Eve eating the fruit) by accepting Christ's sacrifice (through baptism), but that they have to receive addition forgiveness for sins they themselves commit.

But Christ's penance didn't negate the Old Testament. It negated only the blood sacrifice requirements, and it offered a kinder, gentler way to God, through his Son (in Christian language).

Jesus and the Father are part of the same God, and both love everybody (as does Lyle Lovette), but before Jesus a tougher penance was required. Once Jesus died, or rose from the dead, or ascended out of Hell, depending on what theology you believe, the tougher penance wasn't required.

But the commandments are something different. They are simply God's laws on how to live. Jesus, who is God, gave more commandments, he didn't negate the old ones.

I'm not arguing religion, I'm explaining what a fundamentalist believes. I'm an atheist, I don't believe any of it. But I grew up in a fundamentalist church, and am still surrounded by them. That's roughly what they would argue. Although, honestly, most of them don't understand their own theology enough to argue it. I once had a fundie Southern Baptist tell me Jesus wasn't God, he was only the Son of God. So many of them don't grasp their own religion, they just do what they are told by someone they think knows more than them.

[The Straight Story]

35. I'm a christian myself

And sadly you are right about many not grasping things.

As far as Jesus and blood sacrifices, my grepping of it was this was tied to the fall of satan and his punishment. Satan knew god had to be consistent so he tricked man into sinning as well, so now man had to eventuall pay. Only thing is, God was the first lawyer and said he never said who had to be punished. Jesus came into the picture (part of god himself) and did not break the rules, so an innocent man paid the price for the guilty and scales balanced out.

The OT laws were more geared, many believe, to be like a boot camp for the Jews. Moulding and forming them for a specific task in the world and a specific time. Jesus hit the world at the perfect time - the romans. Roads, etc, and ease of getting out the message while people were still searching for answers. From that point on the jews slipped a bit in history and the christians became a large force in history. Jews were dispersed, christians were gathering.

The new laws were for a new time. Peace, love, and so on - but like the jews people got power hungry and turned faith into hell for others. They lost their way. It is a constant battle (as we see in the OT) and if you look carefully at the NT you see once again God is chasting believers more than anyone else. Even in revelation, the letters to the chruches, the whore of babylon, etc and so on.

[wickerwoman]

20. That seems pretty clear,

but it doesn't make sense to me how someone can believe that that Bible was actually written by God (or even inspired by God and corrupted by human interpretation)and then only applies to some people (parts of the Holy Book are for Jews and parts for Christians) or that God revised His opinions for the New Testament. Do they see the NT as a revision of the OT- God clarifying His message? But then how can that be squared with the belief that God is perfect and doesn't make mistakes? And how can the NT add to our understand of the OT when in many places they are completely contradictory?

[jobycom]

27. Ah, all good questions

As an atheist, I just nod in a resigned manner, and then shrug non-committaly. But, to explain it (and keep in mind that for much of the history of Christendom some of the most intelligent minds in the world believed this, so it's not a matter of them being stupid. Aquinas, Abelard, Bernard, Anselm, Augustine--these were brilliant people.)

First, the parts of the Old Testament law that Christians claim were specifically for the Jews claimed they were for the Jews. They were God's instructions to Moses and the Hebrews who fled Egypt.

Second, it's not that God is correcting his message, just better defining it. Plus, some things changed with Jesus's crucifixion. It's believed by Christians, at least those educated in their own beliefs, that Jesus's death and resurrection changed God's requirements. Humans are tainted by two types of sin. There is Original Sin, which is the taint from Adam and Eve disobeying God, and it was such a great sin that it affected all humans afterwards (this is more Catholic than Fundie, but it's where the theology comes from, anyway, whether they realize it or not), and there is sin that people themselves commit. The second is just like Karma, you have to offset it with good actions, which most Christians take to mean asking God's forgiveness and being really good after that. The first is just there in all humans. It used to be that to overcome this sin, God (remember, Jesus is the human incarnation of God the Son; God is three part but only one God) required an animal sacrifice. Never understood why, but he did. With Jesus, Jesus became the sacrifice himself, so all humans had to do was accept this sacrifice, and it would cleans their original sin, and would allow Jesus to forgive their other sins. It's more complicated than that, and it's been a long time since I cared, but basically, Jesus changed a lot of the OT requirements through his actions, by changing the fundamental relationship between Heaven and Earth (there is theological debate on how).

So, the NT doesn't supercede or correct the OT, it adds to it and in some places explains new rules that didn't apply in the OT. Catholics are very god at drawing up exactly where the changes are and why they are, whereas Protestants are more mystical and just sort of beieve that through prayer and careful guidance they will understand the differences. Thus, they seem more arbitrary in what the accept and reject. Catholics are like the Sunni, and Protestants like the Shi'a, if that helps. Actually, it probably doesn't. I have way more religious knowledge than an atheist should have, don't I?

[NMMNG]

8. Some info

Christian view of the Law
Traditional Christianity affirms that the laws or Torah of the Old Testament is the word of God, though some Christians deny that all of the laws of the Pentateuch apply directly to themselves as Christians. The New Testament indicates that Jesus Christ established a new covenant relationship between God and his people (Heb 8; Jer 31:31–34) and this new covenant speaks of the law or Torah being written upon the heart. Some have interpreted Mark's statement "thus he declared all foods clean" (Mark 7:19) to mean that Jesus taught that the pentateuchal food laws were no longer applicable to his followers. However, there is a growing trend among Christians to return to following the Biblical guidelines for healthy living including the dietary regulations. The writer of Hebrews indicates that the sacrifices and the Levitical priesthood foreshadowed Jesus Christ's offering of himself as the sacrifice for sin on the Cross, and many have interpreted this to mean that once the reality of Christ has come, the shadows of the ritual laws cease to be obligatory (Heb 8:5; 9:23–26; 10:1). On the other hand, the New Testament repeats and applies to Christians a number of Old Testament laws, including "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev 19:18; cf. Golden Rule), "Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul and strength" (Deut 6:4, the Shema), as well as every commandment of the Decalogue or Ten Commandments (Exod 20:1–17). In fact, in the Expounding of the Law, Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it; the opposite of Marcion's version of Luke 23:2<6>: "We found this fellow perverting the nation and destroying the law and the prophets".

While some Christians from time to time have deduced from statements about the law in the writings of the apostle Paul that Christians are under grace to the exclusion of all law (see antinomianism, hyperdispensationalism), this is not the usual viewpoint of Christians. An example of one more common approach is found in the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), which divides the Mosaic laws into three categories: moral, civil, and ceremonial. In the view of the Westminster divines, only the moral law such as most of the Ten Commandments directly applies to Christians today. Others limit the application of the Mosaic laws to those commands repeated in the New Testament. In the 1970s and 1980s, a movement known as Christian Reconstructionism (Theonomy) argued that the civil laws as well as the moral laws should be applied in today's society as part of establishing a modern theonomic state. Others are content to grant that none of the Mosaic laws apply as such and that the penalties attached to the laws were limited to the particular historical and theological setting of the Old Testament, and yet still seek to find moral and religious principles applicable for today in all parts of the law. The topic of Paul and the law is still frequently debated among New Testament scholars, for example, see New Perspective on Paul.

In the late 20th century, some Christian groups, primarily those found in or influenced by Messianic Judaism, have asserted that Torah laws should be followed by Christians. Due to a different understanding of Biblical passages such as those referenced above, dietary laws, seventh day Sabbath, and Biblical festival days are observed in some way within such segments of Christianity. As with Orthodox Judaism, capital punishment and sacrifice are not practiced because there are strict Biblical conditions on how these are to be practiced. Most Christians who attempt to follow Torah law do not do such works in order to achieve justification and hence salvation, but rather because they believe is it a way of more fully obeying God. See sources below (Lancaster and Berkowitz).

http://www.answers.com/topic/old-testament

[heidler1]

17. I believe that you got it right. What I wonder about is if the old T.

agrees with the Hebrew version? Especially the story about Job's Daughters. I read a Hebrew interpretation of it and in it Satan who was just curious about what Job would do if God took away all of Job's goodies including his daughters, without malice. In the story Job stayed true to God. To me it was like Job's Daughters were like chattel, much like the Talaban. Another thing if Satan does have God like powers, why do they claim the Bible is mono theistic?

[NMMNG]

19. Daughters were pretty much chattel back then

They could be sold into slavery (Exodus 21:7-9) and fathers would offer them as sex toys to others (Genesis 19:6-8).


And Satan is allegedly a fallen angel, a demon. He may have godlike powers but he is not God. It's sort of like the three criminals from Krypton had powers like Superman (Superman 2, I believe), but that didn't make them Superman.

[NAO]

14. The Old is the Hebrew Bible; the New was written by a new cult

in the second century known as "Christians".

This new dying/rising god cult wanted to avoid the harsh criticism that all "new" religions received in the contemporary culture where "old" religions were respected and "new" religions were not.

So they worked the classic Osiris/Dionysus dying/rising god myth into the Jewish religion and claimed that they were the "updated" version of Judaism and it's fulfillment.

In the mid-second century they wrote "biographies" of their godman (our canonical gospels) and then claimed that he had been an actual human who had lived and died. They placed his story into a plausible historical setting so that it would look like historical material.

The only problem was that there were lots of Christians before any gospel biographies were written, and before there was any belief in a human Jesus. Paul wrote lots of letters to these early Christians, and he never mentions Joseph and Mary, or the virgin birth, or Jesus' baptism, or any of the miracles that Jesus did, or anything Jesus said! For Paul, the god he called "Christ Jesus" was a heavenly being.

There were lots of early Christians of all different varieties that did NOT believe that Jesus was ever a human being. They flourished until Catholic Orthodoxy brutally suppressed them and destroyed their writings.

Earl Doherty - The Origins of Christianity
http://jesuspuzzle.com

Jesus Never Existed
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com

[Erika]

16. The Catholic Church

had no problem with the impoverished. As long as they contributed to the Papal wealth. None at all.

Religion has always been used to control the poor in the promise of an afterlife with which they will finally be rewarded.

The GOP has mastered this concept. They've refined it to the wealthy deserve their wealth now and it will only grow in heaven.

I wonder how Ken Lay is doing after the destruction he caused the working class.

[Erika]

15. Jesus loves me or I will be stoned to death

and hung if I'm not obedient to his Father.


This, after all, is a man's theocratic world.

I'm only a poor and lowly American woman tax payer.

No wonder our founding fathers didn't go for a theocracy. I'm already sick of the fundies wanting to make it such.

[Speck Tater]

18. In a nutshell...

The New Testament is really ancient fiction, while the Old Testament is really, really, really ancient fiction.

[nealmhughes]

21. There are several that point out that the old laws were "nailed to the

Cross" with Christ and that we now live under grace when before we had lived under law. Specifically, Paul had a vision that showed all kinds of "unclean" animals before him and God ordered him to "kill and eat," and that nothing was now unclean.

In orthodox (little o, which includes big O) theology, Christ is the High Priest and sacrifice is ended with his own, which is commenerated/renewed in communion. Therefore, no Levite is required, as all are a "royal priesthood." That is to say, through baptism, we are all mystically members of the House of David and priests simultaneously.

In other words, no orthodox Christian follows any of the laws laid out in the Old Testament. yeah, right...

Fundamentalists the Old Testament because it allows them to hate with clean hands and minds in their eyes, completely missing all the Love thy neighbor and Let he who is without sin cast the first stone stuff...

The Bible is so full of stuff that it amazes one at times what people can cook up from a bunch of Aramaic and Greek and Hebrew quasi-poetry.

[zeemike]

22. There is a scripture that explaines it

And I am always suprised that no one seems to know it.
When Jesus was telling his deciples that "it is said of them of old times an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth..." he was clearly chalanging the laws of Moses and at the end of that he said "Think that I am not come to destroy the law but to fullfill it"
When a law is fulfilled it is made obsoleat.
That did not however apply to the comamdmnts which he upheld in many places because they are the comandments of God and the law of Moses was the law of man.

[wickerwoman]

23. But how does doing a 180 fulfill a law?

ful·fill
1.) To bring into actuality; effect: fulfilled their promises.
2.) To carry out (an order, for example).
3.) To measure up to; satisfy. See Synonyms at perform. See Synonyms at satisfy.
4.) To bring to an end; complete.

Going from "eye for an eye" to "turn the other cheek" certainly doesn't fit the first three definitions. And even in the fourth sense, I think it means follow the law until completion not suggest the opposite of the law to replace it. But Jesus didn't follow "an eye for an eye" until it was no longer necessary.

So Christians believe that the OT are laws written by men (but inspired by God) but the NT contains the actual laws of God?

Now my head is spinning. :-)

[xchrom]

25. i forget where -- but jesus talks about

following the letter of the law is dead -- but that his sacrifise -- part of god's purpose is to bring a new spirit -- i.e. it's the spirit of the law that becomes important -- not the letter.

jesus is confronting the fundamentalism of his time.

i.e. jesus touches lepers -- nothing could have more against mosaic law that -- nothing.
jesus raises life from the dead.

jesus proclaims the first two commandments as paramount.


the old law IS broken -- it's the spirit of christ that comes with the holy spirit that is the fullfilment.

[zeemike]

26. Well it helps to understand the history of Israel

The Law was given by Moses at a time when Israel was in revolt against him and God. You remember Moses returning from the mountain and finding Israel worshiping a golden calf. So the laws were very harsh as would be any law to control an out of control people. Now the dietary laws were probably for the reason that they had just came from Egypt that had many pestilences but the harsh laws and the 40 years spent in the wilderness was to develop them into a nation.
And the porpoise for Israel? It was to be the vehicle for the bringing on of the Messiahs, the one who would save mankind.
So once Jesus came the law had been fulfilled. there was no necessity for it and it was fulfilled.
Think of it this way. A law has a purpose like the traffic laws against speeding. If some time in the future we have a mass transit system the laws against speeding could be moot. So in other words Mass transit could fulfill the traffic laws we now have.

[Stevepol]

24. I think these takes on the difference betwe OT & NT are just superficial.

I come from the assumption that there's a divine contact or Oneness within each person with the God nature or Christ Consciousness.

Taking that as a jumping off point, the OT is a record of a race or people trying to understand how to live with one another in the external world so as to get along and succeed and express that inner God nature. As such, the basic ideas are to treat others fairly, esp the poor and the weak. The OT is rife with commandments about helping the poor the orphan the weak, etc. It reads like something from a Democratic platform committee. This is how people succeed in the outer world, esp groups of people, countries. It's why we are failing in Iraq. We failed to obey the "laws" of social and international relationship.

But basically the OT is an attempt to understand the INNER law of karma, that is, that whatever I do to others I am doing to myself since we are all one on the inside. This is the real meaning of an eye for an eye. It's an attempt to make external the internal truth that whatever I do to someone else I do to myself or it will happen to me.

This assumes actually a belief in reincarnation I think, at least among those of deeper understanding, the prophets and rabbis of old. That such a belief was present in Christ's time is clear from the blind man that was born blind and people were perplexed, wondering if he had sinned or his parents "that he was born blind." In other wds, the law of karma was really at the bottom of the endless stream of social laws to define and clarify national life.

Christ didn't change the law (it can't be changed. It's a part of spiritual law, just like gravity or the new "laws" of quantum mechanics or whatnot), he merely re-interpreted it, showed how it can be turned to create the "Kingdom of Heaven." How? By realizing that if you want peace, you pursue peace; if you want love, you pursue love. You don't just avoid killing to avoid being killed: you pursue creative and constructive activity in your life and in the lives of others because that's God's nature and you can achieve "heaven" that way. Christ showed how the inner laws trump the outer every time.

Anyway, that's my take on it, tho it's hardly original with me. When anybody is ready to understand it, his eyes will be opened to it, but only to him, not to anybody who's not ready yet. You have to be led to truth by your own real peraonsl experiences or your own understanding.

[SPKrazy]

29. Sounds Like A Good Take On It To Me

beats the "believers are too stupid to tell the difference between the two" philosophy that I've heard before from people who have no concept except that of a literalist viewpoint that seemed to lead them away from God.

[wickerwoman]

30. Thanks for your post.

It's really clarified the sacrifice aspect for me. But I'm still not sure about "the OT is a record of a race or people trying to understand how to live with one another in the external world so as to get along and succeed and express that inner God nature" when we come to all the genocidal passages in the OT. For example:

"Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I am driving out from before you the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst. But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images (For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.)"

Exodus, Chapter 34, verses 11-14

How is driving other people out of their lands and destroying their property "learning how to live with one another"?

Also:

"And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword." Joshua 6:21

"So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded. And Joshua smote them from Kadesh-barnea even unto Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon." Joshua 10:40-41

“and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.” Deut 7:2

And I'm pretty sure there's another one about killing all the men over 12 and then raping the women.

If that's the Democratic Platform then clearly I'm in the wrong party. I just don't understand how Jesus' message is a "reinterpretation" of these kinds of passages.

[Stevepol]

32. I guess I had too broad a brush. The OT has a lot of history too.

In a sense the OT is a record of the historical evolution of a religious sensibility from ancient times to Christ.

I doubt that God was screaming for the Jews to annihilate the nations round about, but that's the way the leaders understood God at the time. I heard it said once that the only way God can do something to you is to do it through you. God can only communicate with the people who are around at the time. If circumstances had been different, then different people would have been around for God to communicate with so those people would have understood God a little better.

Here's an interesting idea to roll around and think about. I believe in reincarnation, and I like reading Edgar Cayce. Cayce said that Joshua was an incarnation of Jesus (Jeshua of the NT). How can that be if Joshua did all the ethnic cleansing that is attributed to him? A guy writing about the incarnations of Jesus based on Cayce material was concerned about that. He didn't like Joshua because of his ethnic cleansing, but in the writing of his book (Lives of the Master, Glenn Sanderfur), he had a dream in which he heard some advice; Check where Joshua killed and Jesus healed. Sanderfur checked where Joshua's ethnic cleansing happened and found that it was also where Jesus went to heal during his ministry.

Maybe at different times in history, because of the development of society and the exigencies of circumstance, you just can't have something like what Jesus expressed in his Palestine incarnation. In that later incarnation, he identified so strongly with the universal Christ spirit that he BECAME that spirit. He was Jesus who became the Christ.

Something to think about anyway.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

28. There's an (in my view) excellent summary of the relationship

by a guy called Andrew Rilstone at http://www.aslan.demon.co.uk/gaybishops.htm#_Toc62921621


1.The Bible is split into two halves.

2.The first half is labeled in large friendly letters The Old Testament

3.'Old' as in superceded, past, we've moved beyond that now. (Jews find this quite irritating, oddly enough.)

4.The 'old' Testament contains rules. Don't eat this kind of food, refrain from that kind of sexual practice, sacrifice goats, don't touch icky things.

5.The second half of the Bible is labeled the New Testament.

6.A very large proportion of the 'new' Testament is given over to answering the question 'Do Christians have to obey all those rules in the Old Testament? If not, what was the point of them?' See Romans, Hebrews, Galatians, etc.

7.Be honest, you gave up half way through Acts and skipped to the juicy bits of Revelation that are mentioned in that Clint Eastwood movie, didn't you?

8.Christians say that God is Holy and Man isn't. They say that as long as we aren't holy, we can't talk to God. (This is called 'Original Sin.')

9.In the 'Old Testament' God picks a particular tribe and says, 'If you do try really hard to be clean, abstain from certain foods and certain sexual practices, do special holy washing and wear special holy clothes and don't touch icky stuff; and then kill animals in the temple to 'pay' for sins, then I'll treat you as if you were Holy and let you, or at any rate your priests, talk to me, even though that stuff can't make any difference really. '

10.The theological sections of the New Testament say: 'Because Jesus (God) really did die for our sins, it is not necessary to kill sheep and goats in the temple. Because Jesus (God) really washes us clean of sin, it is no longer necessary to do all the washing and abstaining from 'unclean' foods. We actually are holy again. We can talk to God whenever we want to. Hurrah!'

11.Or words to that effect.

12.But that doesn't mean you can do what you like: God hasn't changed his mind about the moral stuff in the Old Testament, like not killing and not stealing.

But please look this stuff up in the Bible, though: St Paul says it much better than me.

[TreasonousBastard]

31. Some pretty good answers here, and...

essentially it boils down to looking at the Bible as a continuum.

For one thing, there is no sacred text anywhere in any religion that can claim to have all the answers. Even the Koran has huge volumes of commentaries that Muslim scholars regularly refer to and are important to understanding it. And a Hindu scholar once said that the Vedas and Upanishads are useless to one who has achieved true understanding of the religion.

So, first we ignore the Biblical literalists who have decided that the few books included in the canon by a few bishops around 300 AD are the actual Bible, and the King James translation is the only good one. They are really only a small part of fringe Christian thought, although they are becoming a very loud one in this country.

And, we have to understand that Christians view the OT much differently than Jews do. Many of the Hebrew passages in the OT have been translated by Christians to give them meanings that are completely foreign to Jews. This is not in itself a bad thing, but it should be understood just how and why these changes were made.

So, what we end up with, according to traditional Christian thought, is that the OT was was primarily a work of prophecy. It set up the concept of God and the human relationship to God and then prophecied the coming of a time when God's true relationship with man was to be fulfilled. To a traditional Christian, the OT is the legitimizing of the appearance of Christ. This appearance of Christ is what God had intended all along.

As to why God did it this way? Who knows...

[SPKrazy]

33. One's Old

and one is New

:woohoo:

[MisterHowdy]

34. Both were written by Humans

Humans who knew nothing of science, only their own brutal existence that was softened by thinking that an eternal paradise awaited them after death.