Not-That-Bright said:
The new testament is seen to be a set of laws which came after the old testament... where there is a conflict you're supposed to side with the new testament.
That's not completely true. Both the Old Testament and the New testament are on about the same thing. They both are pointing at Jesus.
The Old Testament (or first covenant God made with his people) is that he will be their God and live with them. But an imperfect person could not stand in the presence of the perfect God. Unless they were righteous like God, they would not be able to come face to face with him.
Hence all the Law. "These are all the requirements of being righteous... keep the Law and God will be with you." But the problem still remained that we cannot keep the Law, we cannot be as righteous as God.
Hence the prophets foretold the judgement of God on the unrighteous, but also the promise of a time when people would be right with God. A saviour would come and people will be able to live with God as he intended.
Then Jesus came and fulfilled what God had promised through the prophets. He lived EXACTLY how the Law was meant to be lived out. He was the one man to obtain righteousness by following the Law. He did not come to do away with it, but to fulfil it's purpose.
Yet to show the extent of God's love while not discoursing with God's justice (sin needed to be punished, it's not just forgotten), this one righteous man took the punishment deserved by the unrighteous. For the glory of God, he exchanged his own righteousness for the sin of those who could NEVER be righteous.
And that is what Christianity is all about. Knowing that we could never satisfy God by keeping the Law as best we could, but trusting in the righteousness of Jesus who kept the Law.
Does that mean Christians should not follow the Law? Should we continue to sin because God's judgement is not based on our performance? No! Christians are to be imitators of Jesus Christ, and therefore keep the Law just as Jesus kept it. We are still subject to judgement, the difference is that our final judgement is based on where we stand with Jesus.
In short, the New Testament is not different to the Old Testament. It is a fulfilment of the Old and the covenant God has made remains the same.
Not-That-Bright said:
I get this from christians too, claiming unless you have read the aramaic version of the bible you cannot TRUELY understand it... (of course if you read the english baby version and come to a conclusion they like, you have understood it fully).
I think that's an cheap way for a religious to tap out of a conversation about their text. Sure some words will convey a different meaning in their original language, but in the end the message is still the same. It's not like you'll say "WOW! Now i've read the bible in ancient Greek, it says something totally different that I can understand!"
There are heaps of different english "translations" (i use translation like that because some bibles are just paraphrased and not translated). Some, like the English Standard or North American Standard, stay extremely close to the original language so it's like a version in the original language for those who cant read the old languages.
Others. like the CEV, are translated into more modern language so that you can get a feel for what the writers were trying to say. And some, like the Message, are paraphrased from other english ones and written in such a way that you get more of a feel for the emotions and passion going through the writers.
Personally I think you can get everything you need out of an english version. To say anything else is to go back to the days when only people who could read Latin could tell you what the bible meant. The whole reason it was translated into english was so people who spoke english could understand it!
malkin86 said:
If all things are clean, does that mean that a person with a potentially fatal allergy to peanuts (as in if they have any contact with peanuts, they will die) should eat peanuts, because God said they were clean, and they were afraid that to do otherwise would bring 'consequences'? I don't think so.
Hehehe... Interesting logic. But i dont think so either
Just because something has been made clean doesnt mean that God will punish you for not eating it. The penuts themselves would be clean, but if you were eating them because God made you even though they'd kill you, it wouldnt be bringing him much glory would it.
It means is that there is no limits to what God can make clean. But just because it's clean it doesn't even mean you have to eat it! It just means you can.
Tabris said:
There are not only versus ignored but aso entire books.
The Bible and the church doctrine i think, was created by the Council of Nicea, which comprised of the prominent Christian leaders in the 4th century AD, what people read is what was generally accepted by this council as acceptable doctrines and natural law by christians as a whole.
Entire books were rejected from the bible because they were controversial, because of splits in the council etc or simply its validity is hard to explain.
If u count the years from Creation to Revelations, it is obvious that there should be more texts, after all, what is in the bible right now is a text list of the only surviving and accepted books.
There are heaps of other books, just look them up.
Theres a ton of other stuff that Christians ignore, and find it ahrd to comprehend.
This is ebcause the ordinary christian goto church where the bible is interpreted for them and the controversial stuff is left out, the ordinary christian does not pour over page by page.
Hooray for the first Nicene Council. 318 church leaders meeting together to discuss the uniformity of Christianity, and in turn the standardisation of the Bible. It was especially important to organise so that heretics did not undermine true christianity.
A common misconception is that this council was a few religious nutters put in charge of making a book, but this is not true. Everyone of these men had to be familiar with all the books and had to agree on which books would not be selected. And I'm sure you can imagine getting 318 people to agree with each other is not very easy.
In the end texts were selected because of their continuity (that they agreed with what Jesus had taught), because of their antiquity (which books were written closest to the time of Jesus), and because of their authors (were they people who actually knew Jesus or had close contact with people who knew him and were they credible).
For these reasons the biographies of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were selected. Copies of these existed about 100-200 years before the council was held. Other "Gospel" books were left out, such as the Gospel according to Thomas. It had some interesting stuff in it, but being written 200 years after Jesus died and rose again did not help it's credibility
Letters from Peter (the Apostle and one of Jesus' closest mates) and Paul (a Pharisee and persecuter of Christians, "the worst of sinners", who was converted and passionatly persued Christ) and James (a leader of the church and most likely Jesus' brother).
Letters that were not included are along the lines of "The book of the Orgasmos"... three guesses for what that's about
There are a group of people known as the Gnostics who have tried to collect the "ignored books" to create a Gnostic bible. Basically the Gnostic stance on things is that they have "secret knowledge" requiring you to know more than what the bible says to be saved.
But I believe that the church leaders at the council would have known their stuff and wouldn't have taken such a large task lightly. I also believe that if God wanted people to be saved, he would have included enough in the bible that these men were lead to put together.
On the subject of people being spoon fed what they believe... It's heaps important for Christians to learn what they believe for themselves. Personal holiness is a really important thing because in the end it doesnt matter about what you know or how your church performs, it's about how you stand with God.
Church isn't a place where you go to learn a lot from a preacher... its where christians who have been living what they believe meet to encourage each other. So it's important people actually are living it out.
We should be well informed of the controversial issues in the bible because Jesus himself was controversial. Everything he said was with deep conviction but also with compassion and understanding. That is what christians must strive for.
Tabris said:
Here's a common question.
When Cain killed Abell, he travels east and finds a wife. Problem is, seeing how cain and abell are the sons of the only human beings Adam and eve, then his wife must be his sister...unless of course it says God created one for him (which doesnt get mentioned in Gen)
Perhaps it was his sister (the bible tends to follow the male lineage), but people would have been so genetically dis-similar at the time it wouldn't have mattered. But maybe God did create other people as well, it doesnt change the history of the bible.
The family of Cain is not really recorded. It was Adam's next son, Seth, who the biblical lineage follows.
hopeles5ly said:
read my post before you start making assumptions of what i said. the point i was making was that the context of say 2AD, 300-400AD and 2005 is very different. for this when the bible was created, they included verses and teachings which were based on how the people back then lived, which in some aspects could be similar to ours. but 1500-2000 years later many many things change and our society is much different from what it was back then, which means that we shouldn't do EVERYTHING the way they did it. like example slaughting a sheep to sacrifice to God. do people still do that? in this case we much find our own way to sacrifice something to God which could mean like giving up to thoughts or giving to charity once a week. i never said anything about them being inferior to us or even stating anything about these verses being irrelveant to us. i said that we should not take everything in it literally as it is in two different timeframes, but at least we should adapt the basis of these verses and teachings in our lives. thats why it would be a good idea if the Bible was rewritten for our time. thus thats what councils such as Vatican II were for as they tried to bring its traditions and teachings into the modern world.
My bad... I mis-understood what you meant.
My point that i wanted to make though was that the human condition has not changed no matter how much time has passed. Our dreams and desires and needs are still the same.
I personally dont find it difficult to take the bible literally because I see all the issues dealt with correlating to issues that i have faced or will face in the future. I have to take the whole bible literally because if i say "This is only meant for people back then..." It lays the foundation for not taking other things literaly.
By that I don't mean that i sacrifice animals... which is for two reasons.
1. I think its there to show how much my sin costs. For every time I wrong someone, for everytime I want to thank God, for everytime I needed forgiveness, this many animals would die. My sin is literally so damning that it costs the life of X amount of animals. That's a sobering thought when taken literally.
2 Christs sacrifice was once for all. He has made me right with God for the rest of my life. It doesnt matter how many animals i sacrifice i will not be as righteous before God as Jesus has made me. My body is now a living sacrifice as everyday i die to my sinful desires and say yes to the life of Christ.
But i do understand what you are saying with "modernising" the bible. I think it would be useful for some people to have a bible that is more relevent for today... but in the end it is not the bible that convinces people of God, it's God who does that.
If we can learn a lesson from the Jesus Movement, though, I'd say that modernising is both good and bad for the church. It opened the way for so many more people to become Christians, but tore a rift between the generations. I think whatever happens people need to think very hard about things