Jarod: Nope sorry, my friend. That's not in the Bible. You are looking at a New Age (Watered Down) Version of the Bible. Here is Ezekiel 25:17... "And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them." http://kingjamesbible.com/B26C025.htm If your interested: Here is a book that compares the passages between the Bible (KJV) and New Age Versions. It's a very interesting read that I would highly recommend. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0963584502/ Again, like many religions (that try to twist the Bible to the way they want it to be). I mean, the Bible is literally under attack in every way imaginable. The very proof of people's reactions of it proves the point even more. In mean, you don't see the Flat Earth Society folks getting persecuted as bad as the Christians or anything thru out history. Why? Well, if something has value it will be held in regard. If it is something that doesn't have value (or is of little cost or consequence) then no one will give it that much thought. I mean, that's why people will walk over a penny and yet pick up a lost 100 dollar bill. But see. These were not true Bible believing Christians that followed the teachings of Christ. There are many Christians today who claim to be Christian and yet don't follow the Bible. In 1095, Urban spoke to a great crown at Clermont in France. He called for a war against the Muslims so that Jerusalem was regained for the Christian faith. In his speech he said: "Christians, hasten to help your brothers in the East, for they are being attacked. Arm for the rescue of Jerusalem under your captain Christ. Wear his cross as your badge. If you are killed your sins will be pardoned." Every true Bible believing Christian who follows the Bible knows that your sins are forgiven through asking Jesus to come into your heart and forgive you of all of your sins. In essence: it is a gift from God. "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." ~ Romans 6:23
I pissed off a Christian not too long ago for asking where he got all of his "knowledge" of the bible. The snarky reply was, "Bible-study at church". I see. Well then, did you also learn that the Christian bible STOLE a lot of it's stories from Zoroastrianism, that the Great Flood story pre-dates the OT by several thousand years, and that the teachings of Jesus very closely mirror that of Buddhism? Oh, and did you know that according to the very, very old Jewish texts, Adam had a wife named Lilith, who would not submit to him? There was also another wife which very little is know, and then came Eve. Things that make you go, HMMMMMMMMMMMM
Don't you know those are all lies. LIES. *sigh* I, personally, have no problems with faith, religion, any of it. I do have problems with those who would turn back the clock on knowledge and return us to the dark ages of superstition and ignorance of the world around us. Faith and Science are NOT incompatible. One is about how the world is, the other teaches us how to BE in this world with each other.
Flying Spaghetti Monster: I say tomato (tuh-mey-toh) you say tomato (tuh-mah-toh). As I said before. It is not facts that are going to win you over. Even people who had met Jesus (God in the flesh) and still did not believe Him. It's that first step of faith that needs to happen before a person can see. I mean, it's like trying to convince a paranoid pilgrim (who is deathly ill of heights) from the past who traveled to our time (in the present) and you tried to convince him he is not going to fall out of the sky when he flies in an airplane. You may show him all the proof in the world. But unless he rides that plane for himself. He is never really going to believe you. Especially if he is afraid of heights.
Faith is not a good way to assess reality. It's really more like wishful thinking, and subscribing to the claims and values of those living in the Bronze Age is not very prudent.
I feel the sudden urge to travel back in time and put a cooking recipe in there. Because then it will be worshipped as the favorite dish of God. Preferrably holy blueberry muffins. How can anyone take a collection of hundreds of stories written by hundreds of different authors across a timespan of more than a thousand years and believe that these are "the words of God"? It's a collection of fairy tales and Best Practices. It is fiction. The same kind of fiction that Lord of the Rings is, the same kind of fiction that Star Trek is. A tale about how society could be, about good and evil, about normal people and their struggle with supernatural powers. The New Testament has more credibility than the Old. Because it is a collection of eye-witness accounts of the journey of a man who tried to reform the established system, and various other sources have confirmed that such a guy existed. He was growing up in a time of Roman governance and Jewish beliefs. He wasn't happy with the situation, so he tried to change it. The whole myth about him being the son of God... it's a clever hoax. Jesus was a sect leader, as there are many, many, many sect leaders around this world today. And these tend to play with their followers. Why should Jesus have any more credibility than any of those? Because he said so? Big deal. Because some people imagined they saw him after he died? Many people who are mourning see their beloved ones after they passed away, that's a natural psychological reaction. Difference is: there is not a SINGLE proof in the world of God's existence. The Bible is not a proof, as stated above. The Bible is just as much proof of God's existence as The Lord of the Rings is proof of Lord Sauron's existence. And faith is just wishful thinking.
All right. Answeer me one quesiton Luther Sloane, and just be honest: Is somehting moral because God says it is moral, or does God say something is moral because th actually is?
The texts of the Old Testament were written in Hebrew, with a small portion in Aramaic. The New Testament was written in an ancient form of Greek. The King James Bible wasn't the first English version. It's just one of many translations of the Bible over hundreds of years. Who's to say one translation is more accurate or truer than another? "Eyewitness accounts"? The Gospels were written by unknown authors decades after Jesus supposedly lived. Sorry, I can't help myself . . . NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Yeah, eyewitness might be a strong word. But they were - as far as I know - supposedly written between 40-60 AD, which is not that bad. Might be as credible as the usual unauthorized biography about some VIP. Nobody should ever take them word for word.
On the other hand, that risks falling into the "ancients were stupid" fallacy. If you're dealing with any matter of the material world or any technological matter, with items that are physically verifiable, then absolutely I am going to be looking to the cutting edge of modern science for an explanation. On the other hand, basic principles as to how we should treat each other have not changed. (Now, how people actually DO treat each other--that has changed, big time.) An interesting thing I have noticed is that the Bible actually contains a lot of what I would call "subversive" material, and anyone looking to base worldly authority upon it, laws, and so forth, should be very uneasy. While the Bible does not put forward violent opposition to said social institutions (and I think that to some, the fact that there's not an immediate, violent overthrow of those institutions is something they criticize), especially once you get to the New Testament there's a whole lot of this sort of thing, where there may be instructions on how to cope with a particular institution for a time, but the core principles make it very clear that said institution has no moral authority to last. Slavery is one (practical instructions do detail how to live where this is a day-to-day reality, but people took these instructions as an excuse). The core principles of the Bible--not to mention other statements, most particularly in the book of Galatians--make it very clear that slavery has no moral standing in a society run according to the ideals of Christ. Treatment of women is another, though this one is harder to see. There are instructions asking women to submit, yes. But there are also instructions telling men to do the exact same thing, even though they're phrased differently. Men are to love sacrificially as Christ did...and it's very interesting to note that one thing Christ did was to refuse worldly authority the society around Him said He would be perfectly justified in taking! Society was all for giving men terrible powers over women, but a Christian man was to step down from all of that, refuse to accept that worldly "crown." (Regarding the comments about women keeping quiet in church, etc., the issue there was that they needed to get caught up on the religious education that had until then been denied them, and then once they were qualified, would be perfectly capable of speaking on par with men. But again, people used this as an excuse instead of seeing the point.) But easily the most striking example actually comes from the Old Testament, and I posted it last night from the Book of Micah. Usually when those either inside or outside the faith think of subversiveness, they tend to associate that sort of thing with Jesus, who was most definitely interested in (NONviolently) upending corrupt social institutions. This is the material I was talking about with sacrifices last night, where one of the prophets outright states the following: The fact that there would actually be something in the Bible itself--even before Jesus' day where calling out the Pharisees was frequent--calling out the institutions of the day in such a blunt fashion is very striking. Even more stunning that it would be couched as directly as that, marking out a CLEAR difference between man-created institutions and the desires of God! This well pre-exists the break between Christianity and Judaism, so we have a very clear tie between this prophecy (and other statements I could pull up as well, including statements in the first person from God, though I did so way back on pg. 11 of this thread already) and the attitude it shows, and the attitude demonstrated in the NT. But the other point I wanted to make with it was the fact that if the Bible were simply a lie meant to create an institution for the sake of power (not to say some didn't DO that in spite of the warnings, because they did, and flagrantly), this kind of "check" upon such self-aggrandizement would have been omitted to ensure that the priestly class could get away with whatever it wished. Anyone who tries to base a claim to worldly power or institutional power based on the Bible is on very uneasy ground indeed. While offices are established, those holding those offices can get called out in a heartbeat if they misuse authority. (Lording it over other people actually seems to be one of the most frequent things that people get called out for, in the Bible--though I do not have a number for it.)
It is a fact that "ancients" for example thought that thunder and roar were a sign of the wrath of Gods, as with every phenomenon for which a perfect rational explanation was found centuries later. So one needs to read these texts very carefully. The basic principles are the only thing you can take for granted. Even Atheists believe in the basic principles of for example not murdering anyone. But when you start taking the events described in these texts literally, then you get a problem.
John: So you think every Bible believing preacher just ignores the Old Testament? Wow. Think of the Old Testament as training wheels on a bike. You can't start riding that bike until you get used to riding your bike with the training wheels. The Old Testament was a temporary way of meeting man where he was at and showing us valuable lessons as time went on. And slavery was one part of that lesson of meeting man where he was at. Plus, slavery was only temporary. It wasn't a permanent thing. They were let go after a certain year of service. It was God's way of trying to get His people to show mercy upon his fellow man. Besides, in many ways we are forced to do things within our society that we don't like to do (but are required to do so). If you want to read more on the subject of slavery in the Old Testament. I would recommend this book. It doesn't make it as evil as the version of slavery that your thinking it is. http://books.google.com/books?id=3BYUhL_nvtkC&dq Simply type in slavery into the search box and read up on it. Anyways, the whole point is that God was meeting Man where he was at until He could come down in the flesh and die on the cross for his sins. His sacrifice (The New Testament) was His way of showing how much He loved and cared for us. This also changed everything. This in effect allowed Man the opportunity to live by a higher set of standards because of what He had done on the cross. So Man could be closer to God. But the Old Testament still needed to be exist, though. It was God's way of showing His people valuable lessons and that He is a God who keeps His promises and that His Word is true (In the fact that His sacrifice was foretold in the Old Testament).
Why would he first punish and exile them, only to free them of their sins a couple of thousand years later? Did he change his mind? Did he have regrets? The Almighty?
Jarod: Jesus was fully aware of what He said. In fact, he mentioned both of them in the same discussion. This is not contradictory information or teachings. The Old Testament were teachings for THAT time. It was to reach Man where he was at and teach His people valuable lessons. "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."
So, if the Old Testament was temporary, who is to say that the New Testament isn't as well? Yeah. Tell that to the Slaves brought over to the US, justified by religion. And, hell, even science. In that case, both were wrong.
Once again, what I said went RIGHT over your head. Simply put -- the NT is supposed to be the final covenant between God and his people. It is to have done away with everything beforehand (IIRC there were *AT LEAST* 11 covenants up until then). So, if the NT is the final piece of the pie, why bother with anything of the OT? Christians LOVE to preach against homosexuality, citing the OT, but when asked about beating an unruly child, gathering slaves, concubines, and stoning people for committing various acts -- WHOOPS -- suddenly it's pick and choose what to believe/practice You can cite all of the bible verses you want and it's not going to mean anything to me. I spent many a summer being sent to Christian indoctrination camp as well as many a Sunday of my youth in church. The funny thing is, a lot of it didn't just didn't add up back then, and then I did something bad -- I got an education. Heck, even in high school I knew about the monks who assembled the Christian bible (picking and choosing from various manuscripts). I bet you can't answer me why churches use grape juice for communion even though Jesus told his disciples to drink the wine, for it was his blood. Then, ask yourself why the Christians had to take over everyone else's holidays (holy days), like the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. So sorry, but stop trying to peddle your hokey religious beliefs on people and insist that said beliefs "make sense".
A linguist could make that call--and there are two distinct types of translations one can look at, short of actually learning the original languages: a form-driven translation that seeks to mirror the original phrasing as much as possible (though sometimes losing comprehensibility to the modern ear because of it) and a meaning-driven translation (which focuses on the figurative sense at the cost of literalism, or other elements that may have been visible in the original language). Availability of source texts as well as further understanding of the original languages is another issue...more has been found since the translation of the KJV; a more modern translation is not so likely to have these issues. I actually find it best to refer to multiple translations--not to cherrypick meanings or anything of that nature, but to ensure that I get a good perspective on what I am reading. Most history from that time period isn't going to be written down as "breaking news," with the exception of official paperwork--court/royal decrees, etc. Newspapers weren't in existence yet...the closest you'd get to that is the graffiti on the walls. Books and other sorts of works were inevitably going to take much longer. In this particular case, the background of (most of) the disciples also introduces another reason why we would expect a lag. Aside from Matthew, who would have had to be literate to perform his old job of tax collector, it is quite possible that up to 11 of the 12 other apostles could not read or write (and that number depends on whether John the Apostle and John of Patmos are the same person). Given this, that those closest to Jesus excepting a few possibly did not know how to read or write, I am not surprised it took so long to get a more literate account out. (Indeed, look at the backgrounds of Paul and Luke and you're seeing a VERY different educational background than most of the original apostles.) BUT--and here's the big caveat...the fact that someone has not had the same educational opportunities does not make them a fool. (And had they been fools, then people like Matthew, Paul, and Luke would have sussed that out and had no part of it.)