Bootie reads the bible....

[Bootie]

I think you have quoted him out of context... was he not refering to God making things less complicated by saying

sex before marrige BAD, does not matter if it is rape teenage lust, out with the boys and drinking too much, sex addict,...ect., all equal under the law, BAD.

... of course I may have read it wrong... carry on gentlemen its an interesting read.

 

[PoorOldSpike]

..Religions quite naturally consider that their book lays down all the foundations required and are suspicious of any secular organisation attempting to devise or teach ethics courses. A solution may be a long time coming..

If you know any better ethics than these, let us know..-
"Love one another, feed the hungry, house the homeless, clothe the destitute, tend the sick, visit the prisoners, look after the poor"- Jesus of Nazareth

 

[PoorOldSpike]

Windows versions 1/2/2.1/3.1/95/98/ME are all obsolete because nowadays most people have got, XP,Vista, and Win 7.
Likewise, the New Testament replaced the Old Testament, so it makes no sense to dwell on the OT.
The New T is the only human Operating System around, a spiritual Survival Manual-
Re Jesus:- "There is no other name under heaven that can save us" (Acts 4:12)

 

[McIvan]

I think you have quoted him out of context... was he not refering to God making things less complicated by saying ... of course I may have read it wrong... carry on gentlemen its an interesting read.

Well, the criticism gets levelled against either Ratski or God or both, no matter what way you look at it. I take Ratski as subscribing to it because of his views expressed in a modern context that "complexity" in differentiatiing between crimes or sins leads to criminals on the street, but if that is not so it is still just as forceful a criticism levelled at God.

Obviously my view is that the laws of the Bible were constructed by men from a distinctly male viewpoint and wanting to preserve to themselves the power of the Judaic church and their rulership over their families, with no divine input whatsoever. In that context, and in the context of the culture of the time, they are entirely consistent, even if we wouldn't adopt them in Western democracies today.

It is only if you try to superimpose an alledgedly loving God that you run into trouble, because of the laws that are objectively evil. The knots that then have to be constructed to try and rationalise the unrationalisable are evident above.

 

[Bootie]

Ok to many big words for me

Over to Ratzki.

 

[McIvan]

If you know any better ethics than these, let us know..-
"Love one another, feed the hungry, house the homeless, clothe the destitute, tend the sick, visit the prisoners, look after the poor"- Jesus of Nazareth

Depends whether you're a socialist or conservative. You could argue that those ethics lead to untrammelled growth of the welfare state It has been amazing to me to see people like Conserveapedia (a sort of fundamentalist lunatic-fringe wikipedia) try to interpret Jesus as a far right philosopher and discount any of his socialist principles....to the point where they are actively talking about a new version of the Bible.

Seriously tho, I don't have a problem with half the New Testament ethics wise. As long as you cherry pick the best bits and ignore the rest, you can get a pretty decent human being. I have a big problem with the idea of forgiveness of any psycopath who asks for it while some virtuous person in a land that never heard of God gets condemned to hellfire for eternity for no fault of their own, but that's another story.

The problem is making sure people cherry pick the best bits of the New Testament and ignore the Old Testament. And the problem with that is this:

Jesus: "It is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass away than for the smallest part of the letter of the law to become invalid." (Luke 16:17 NAB)

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place." (Matthew 5:17 NAB)

Basically, the Old Testament is fully valid Biblical Law and remains so because Jesus said so. You can't explain away the various cruelties of the Old Testament that easily.

 

[Ratzki]

Boy oh boy, where to begin. First off, I will say sorry to all who have read my above posts on this latest subject. I have not done my due diligence, and went off as I often do, half cocked. Having a little time tonight, I managed to do some reasearch on Deut. 22:28-29, seeing as this is where McIvan has decided to make his stand on God and his laws. Both the New and Old Testaments recognise that there should be strong rules reguarding the importance of sex. Paul, in Col. 3:5-8 confirms that sexual sins are not innocent dabblings in forbidden pleasures. They are destroyers of relationships. They confuse and destroy respect, trust, and credibility. All of these are essential for solid marriges and secure kids.
We have been discussing the alleged rape of the non-betrothed virgin. Let us see if it is in fact rape that is being spoken about. Going back to the Hebrew, the word used for "lie with" in this passage is shakab, which means to lay down for rest or sexual connection. A stronger word would have been shagal, which is to lie with-ravish. This second word would have left one with no question about it being rape, but it was not used.The stronger Shagal is used in Deut. 28:30 and suggests a much more violent sexual encounter. Add to this the quote "..., and they are found out,..." makes a person ponder just how much this virgin has to do with the sex, she might be a little more willing. Definately not as cut and dry as McIvan might want it to appear, and actually, now seems like quite a stretch that we are talking about rape at all, but lets not count it out yet.
Now remember, the Bible is to be read as a whole, so take a look at Exodus 22:16-17. First note that the word is again the less violent shakab. Also loook at the word "entices" instead of "seizes". ( A side note here, I use the New King James Version for word for word translations in modern english. It reads better with the original Hebrew and Greek.) This refference is made by persons smarter then myself, and say that we are dealing with the same law, written in two different places in the Bible, but worded just a bit differently. Now, it brings into question the rape thing even more, but I like entices a little better. And seeing as this is the same law, the word seizes must not mean what our 21st century brains might want it to mean. So, is it rape that we are dealing with? How's it look from your side?
Anyhow, Exodus 22:17 states that the father does not have to agree to the marrige and can actually void the marrige if he so wishes. The Man must still pay the mohar (bride-price) to the father, and it would loook like the potential bride is off the hook for stoning as well.
Again, you have to read the Bible as a whole and not cheery pick verses. To do so would show a lack of understanding, and how would you know if what you cherry picked is intended for what you would like to make it stand for. I have to let the Bible defend itself, it is quite capable of doing so if I let it, all I can do is potentially screw things up and give more ammo to those that like nothing more then to make it say what it clearly does not. St. Augustine of Hippo said that no one should question the Bible writings without first reading it in the original language. To do so proves one's foolishness.

 

[McIvan]

Ratski:

Well played, sir. Doing a little research on your post, a site I looked at listed the same verse from all the various Bible translations. It was split about 50/50 in the translations between words that arguably look like rape (but might not be) and others that arguably look like consensual sex (but might not be). So your view is certainly tenable. It seems to me that your interpretation that the verse refers to consensual sex is more likely right than not.

Doesn't exactly transform it into a loving law, but if you subscribe to a strict view of sexual conduct it is consistent. If correct (and I think it is), it certainly takes it out of the downright evil category. It also well demonstrates the difficulty of taking any English version of the Bible at face value.

Well that's one down. Unfortunately no one need go far to find other examples of evil law in the Bible...eg if a husband claims a girl wasn't a virgin on marriage and her family cannot prove her virginity (blood stained sheets, I presume, which I think were kept as a matter of course) then the girl gets stoned to death. One can only imagine how many girls whose hymens had broken entirely naturally (a fairly common event, and the way God had designed them) ended up suffering a horrible and evil death....and that is a separate question from whether you believe stoning a woman to death for actually not being a virgin would be a just punishment (which I don't). But perhaps this too is a question of interpretation.

Actually I started writing out a heap more, but its futile really. The Old Testament is chock full of wildly disproportionate punishments and innocent people including children being killed for the acts of others or the most utterly trivial things such as mocking a prophet for his baldness. We'll just lay this one to rest until Bootie reads a bit more....

 

[Ratzki]

Great, I think that I am ready for the next verse as well. You are correct in that English is not a very good translation to be reading the Bible in, but as long as one is able to look a little deeper than the surface, the real meanings can come through. Both sides have to be careful to not make the Bible say what it does not. It is the same as science, people often make it state something that it clearly does not.
I still cannot believe that we actually came to some sort of agreement on a Bible verse's meaning. You had better be careful, more then one person has set out to prove the Bible wrong and ended up joining the team. ;o)

 

[PoorOldSpike]

Jeremy Bowen TV docu 'Son of God'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1243954.stm

 

[Bootie]

LOL that TV Documentary was 9 years ago!!

 

[McIvan]

I still cannot believe that we actually came to some sort of agreement on a Bible verse's meaning. You had better be careful, more then one person has set out to prove the Bible wrong and ended up joining the team. ;o)

I'd hate to be a hypocrit who talks about reason and logic but then dismisses an argument because of my emotional position. If it's a good argument, it's a good argument. Coming from a legal background, I can appreciate interpretation problems.

You're getting a bit carried away about whether it proved the Bible wrong or not though....it was just a question of whether a particular law was:

(a) evil; or
(b) a typical example of tribal law of its time in terms of the control of sexuality and women as the property of men.

You would have a very tough task convincing me that it was a good law, or in particular the product of an all powerful all loving and just God. I would see it as recording tribal law of the time, and not really anything pronounced by any God.

As for joining the team....I was brought up in a Christian household and did my best to subscribe to it all for fifteen years or so. Unfortunately as I became old enough to think for myself it simply didn't stack up to me, for reasons I've set down at length in other forums. Reading bits of the Old Testament was the start of the crack....if I remember rightly it was an episode where God tells King David not to marry a woman called Bathsheeba that he had previously had an adulterous relationship with (and had arranged for her husband to be killed in battle so he could marry her). David does anyway because he loves her. Ok...he's clearly gone too far in arranging the husband's death and deserves to be punished. But as punishment what do you think happens to David?

God kills their innocent baby, that's what. God takes his time and uses seven days to do the job despite fasting and pleading from David.

It also seems that God had David's wives taken out and raped in broad daylight, although nothing more is said about that than what is below, whereas the murder of the baby is covered in more detail:

11Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.

12For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.

13And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the LORD. And Nathan said unto David, The LORD also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.

14Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.

II Samuel 12, 11-14 (and the child does die)

David did wrong................so God kills their child? Has his wives - ie innocent women - taken out and raped in public? That shook me to the core and made me re-evaluate the Bible completely. How many of us would, if we found our neighbour guilty of some heinous offence, decide that murdering the neighbour's child or raping his (other) wives (probably only in Utah) would be sufficient penalty? (Let's leave aside whether having more wives is already punishment enough)

Reading the Old Testament with fresh eyes was enough to see that the God of the Old Testament is a thoroughly evil deity. God then swops personalities for a while in the New Testament, before dropping back into character to end with a bloodbath of epic proportions in Revelations (billions die, instead of just getting on with it and judging everyone). Suddenly I was looking beyond the battle stories and noticing for the first time the resulting slaughters of non-combatants and the division of surviving virgin girls as the spoils of war.

Personally I simply could not reconcile the alleged qualities of the diety (love, justice, mercy, all knowing, all powerful) with the events of the Bible and the way the world and the creatures within it have actually been put together. What kind of a personality murders a baby out of spite that its father disobeyed them?

On the other hand, if you view the OT as a mixture of myths and some history and as a bunch of priests doing what priests have done to obtain wordly power from time immemorial, and regard the NT as the philosophy of several fairly remarkable but otherwise mortal men (the nonsense of Revelations aside), then it all makes reasonable sense and you can cherry-pick the best bits.

 

[McIvan]

LOL that TV Documentary was 9 years ago!!

When that bloke Bowen talks about a Jewish historian referring to Jesus, he has unfortunately been sucked in by a blatant forgery inserted into the history text by one priest/scribe by the name of Eusebius in the 4th century. It's my understanding that no reputable Biblical scholar bothers to pretend that it is authentic anymore.

You will also search in vain in the historical record for things like the Bible's claim that the dead arose from their graves in Jerusalem, or for the census or slaughter of children supposedly ordered by Herod.

 

[PoorOldSpike]

..a blatant forgery inserted into the history text by one priest/scribe by the name of Eusebius in the 4th century..

Oh no not another conspiracy theory!

Let's sum up a few of them that are floating around out there-
Jesus never existed
Jesus was married with a wife and kids
Jesus was a black man
Jesus was gay
Nazareth never existed
All 66 books in the Bible are lies
etc etc..

 

[PoorOldSpike]

..You will also search in vain in the historical record for things like the Bible's claim that the dead arose from their graves in Jerusalem, or for the census or slaughter of children supposedly ordered by Herod.

SHREDDER
When christianity began snowballing in popularity after Jesus's execution, the snooty Jewish priests and the posturing Romans said - "Oops better not let on it was us who killed him, quick shred all the documents implicating us or we'll have a Jesusgate scandal on our hands. Let's airbrush him out of history and start hassling christians, and people will soon quickly forget about him"..
Nevertheless 27 books did slip through the net and get published as the New Testament..

And In the first century A.D. a Jewish priest by the name of Joseph ben Matthias (later given the Roman name Flavius Josephus) was commissioned by the Roman government to write a history of events in Judea. In his book, Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus makes reference to Jesus and his disciples -
"Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man. If it be lawful to call him a man, for He was a doer of wonderful works. He was the Christ. And the tribe of Christians so named from Him are not extinct to this day."

And In the Babylonian Talmud there are numerous references to the historical existence of Jesus. In the tractate Sanhedrin, 43A, there is a fascinating historical reference to Jesus -
"It has been taught on the eve of the Passover they hanged Yeshua (Jesus). And an announcer went out in front of him for forty days saying, 'He is going to be stoned because He practiced sorcery and enticed and led Israel astray. Anyone who knows anything in his favor, let him come and plead in his behalf.' But, not having found anything in his favor, they hanged him on the eve of the Passover."

And Dead Sea Scroll 4Q246 says "He shall be called the son of God, and they shall call him son of the Most High"

And even the Koran written some 600 years later dare not deny Jesus was something special:- "Allah.. exalted some messengers above others and gave miracles to Jesus the son of Mary and strengthened him with the holy spirit" (Koran 2:253)

 

[McIvan]

Oh no not another conspiracy theory!

Let's sum up a few of them that are floating around out there-
Jesus never existed
Jesus was married with a wife and kids
Jesus was a black man
Jesus was gay
Nazareth never existed
All 66 books in the Bible are lies
etc etc..

Very funny Mick

He most likely existed, whether mortal or not is the question. The early church was by no means certain he did, but eventually the bunch that thought he had existed won out and had the lot that thought he was all parables and allegory declared heretics. He may well have married....who is to say? Maybe it just wasn't deemed important enough to mention? He was probably a nice deep brown. I'd say there was about a 3% chance he was gay, AND, finally, Nazareth didn't exist, except possibly as a farming settlement so small it escaped all notice. It certainly didn't exist as a town or village at the time of Christ.

 

[PoorOldSpike]

...He may well have married....who is to say?...

JESUS-"I'm just nipping out dear"
WIFE- "Oh yeah, leave me on my own again while you go down the beach to hang out with your fisherman cronies! And don't do any more of that walking on water sh*t, the neighbours think you're nutty enough already!
Get back in the carpenter's shop and knock up a nice set of shelves if you're bored!
And spruce yourself up a bit, mother's coming over later and you know she's never liked you!
I rue the day I married you, I wish I'd married Rick Tannahill but Sue Stokes beat me to him and I ended up with you!
You know everybody takes the p*ss out of you don't you with all that arty-farty preaching, who do you think you are, Billy Graham?
And for heaven's sake don't keep on about the snooty priests, they still haven't forgiven you for calling 'em a bunch of tosspots!"

 

[PoorOldSpike]

...Nazareth didn't exist, except possibly as a farming settlement so small it escaped all notice. It certainly didn't exist as a town or village at the time of Christ.

Sure, Nazareth may have been small but so what?
Certainly, people thought it hilarious that the Son of God/ Superprophet/ Christ/Messiah should come from such a place-
"Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" (John 1:46)

"Archeology indicates that the Nazareth site has been occupied since the 7th century B.C.
There are a series of dry-farm terraces which originally ascended to the crest of the hill. Earlier construction of private homes, the recent construction of a road and the current construction of apartments has either covered or obliterated most of the terraces associated with this area. Three of the remaining terraces were investigated.
During the evening, the sounds of story-telling, music and singing could no doubt be heard.
On these terraces was the sound of the singing of families in the vineyard at the time of harvest. The sound of the flute echoed as the workers stomped the grapes at the winepress.
It was here that inquisitive children would play, including a boy named Jesus"

http://www.uhl.ac/NazarethVillage/nazareth.html

 

[McIvan]

What that bloke has found, if you look into it further, is a couple of family farms on the site which he presumes to be ancient Nazareth, from which he has extrapolated all the rest. As usual, he is working backwards from an end-point. There are a number of problems with his ideas...eg a tiny population scratching out subsistence farming is unlikely to support a synagogue (because it comes with a bunch of priests for Jesus to argue with who have to be supported); Jesus couldn't suddenly be a new wonder to people because they would already have known him well since he was born, and the site is in the wrong spot for the bit where people (who would have to be mostly his family relations if the settlement was as small as supposed) want to throw him off a cliff....none nearby. The references in the Bible are to City....while I don't know what qualified as a "city" in those days, there was nothing with any sort of urban centre carrying the name of Nazareth.

It seems to me far more likely than not that the references to Jesus of Nazareth should be to Jesus the Nazarene. The Nazarenes were an offshoot of the Essenes, one of the three principal Jewish sects of the time. It is thought they had a settlement around Mount Carmel.

Alternately, according to the Gnostics - one of the early Christian sects struggling to deterimine who's interpretation of scripture would become the dominant one (they considered Jesus to be a fictional character invented for the purpose of putting across the message of the New Testament in parable and allegory):

'The apostles that came before us called him Jesus Nazarene the Christ ..."Nazara" is the "Truth". Therefore 'Nazarene' is "The One of the Truth" ...' – Gospel of Philip, 47.

You won't find Phillip in the Bible because it was excluded by the winning Christian sect in the 5th century when the "official" books in the Bible were fixed at 66 and no more; Philip was obviously too "gnostic" for their tastes. You can, however, read a copy fairly easily with a google search or two, and some Catholic bibles used to include the additional books at the back for study.

The Old Testament talks about Jesus the Nazarene in the same manner, not of someone being from a city called Nazareth. It seems to me that some of the people writing the Gospels simply made a bit of a consistency error there.

 

[PoorOldSpike]

......The Old Testament talks about Jesus the Nazarene in the same manner, not of someone being from a city called Nazareth. It seems to me that some of the people writing the Gospels simply made a bit of a consistency error there.

Wait a minute! Atheists are always saying the bible was edited and tidied up to get rid of contradictions and make it look good, then in their next breath they say it's still full of contradictions, I wish they'd make up their minds..
The fact that there are inconsistencies in the bible speaks volumes for its integrity, proving it's come to us down the centuries without being prettied up by cosmetic surgery to make it look good.
Remember, the bible consists largely of sets of eyewitness accounts, and as we know, eyewitness testimony often varies in modern courts of law because people see the facts in different ways, but the underlying basic facts remain the same..