Evening everyone. For those of you who don't know, I am a former Christian who, like Dillahunty and others, was fascinated by apologetics. I wasn't a fan of any individual author, but rather by the points that I could take with me. I thoroughly enjoyed having an 'answer' to the question of evil, the weasel words you were supposed to use to respond to people marking out the contradictions, and the justification why my God was better than 'your' god (lower case fully intentional).
One of my favorites for the longest time was that, in response to the 'gays and shellfish' argument, the answer as to why so many backwards and objectively barbarous things happened in the Bible was that it was all in the Old Testament. I remember a scene from the show Moral Orel where a librarian is burning the Bible. When asked why a religiously observant librarian would do such a thing, her response was ..."only the Jewish half." I held no ill will towards Jews, mostly due to knowing nothing whatsoever about them, but I held the Old Testament in contempt. What rational person with an iota of compassion or reason couldn't?
Unfortunately, along with a lot of the old paint I had to scrape away from my mind when I started thinking rationally, I had to tear down the greatest excuse I had as a believer.
One of the oldest jokes we atheists have is that, unlike most Christians who 'live by the Bible', we've actually read the damned thing. Along with that, I came across something that both destroyed and reunited in equal measure. Matthew 5:18. This verse was what doomed my oldest and best apologetic because it fulfilled a few things:
1. The passage states in no uncertain terms that the laws written in the Old Testament are still valid and to be enforced.
2. Jesus said it.
For those of you who can't be bothered to Google it, allow me to paste the KJV:
'For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.'
I've heard people make the claim that, in dying, Jesus nulled all the old laws, ergo the 'till all be fulfilled' part, especially when you put that with the verse prior. The problem is that Jesus didn't 'fulfill' the necessary elements, at least according to Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Zachariah.
By Jesus' own metric, the Old Testament is still to be enforced by the truly observant, so I bring it up to you fine people: have you ever encountered this part of Matthew before? Have you ever had to rebut it? Now, if you'll excuse me while you formulate your response, I have a gay crawdad to throw really tiny rocks at.
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Tzeentch...
"By Jesus' own metric, the Old Testament is still to be enforced by the truly observant, "...
Not surprising really .... if you ask "who was this gospel written for?"
A cursory inspection of Matthew will give the answer that it was composed mainly for the benefit of the Jews.....who ,don't forget ,provided the bulk of the very early adherents to the new sect.
Look at Mats nativity.... travelling stars , perambulating wise men from "the East" ,innocent children slaughtered by a despotic ruler (a clear referencing of the tale of Moses birth) ,miraculous virgin birth ,(fulfilling prophecy) in small town with links to a past royalty (also fulfilling prophecy)......
All suitably grandiose themes to placate a special people ,a chosen people ...to reinforce the idea that the coming of a ,supposed ,messiah was foretold in the Jews holy books.....
All provably false.....
Just a point...this episode is part of the so called sermon on the mount..... an event of such importance to the early christians that it was totally ignored by the other three gospel writers ...... although Luke did come up with his sermon in the plain ,but the postulated content of Jesus' sermon is so different that they cannot be the same event.. (Luke ,of course , was composed for consumption by the lower class non Jewish converts favoured by the somewhat later expansionist christian leaders.)
links:
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/makeover1.html
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/luke.htm
I have seen it used by apologetics...but never had it "pulled" against myself.
Yea Mathew's author is probably a Jewish person with a pro-roman perspective.
The objective in Mathew is to integrate the Jews in the roman society so they become Romans while also pointing out their superiority.
This was not the first attempt at this.
Philo of Alexandria(another Jew) tried it too, he took Jewish ideas and combined them with Greek and Roman philosophy.
If you dive into the history of this era, you will see that the Jews were conquered people by the Romans(Pompeii).
The Jewish elite realized that their dream of becoming the strongest Nation won't ever happen and decided to copy what the Greeks did, They integrated into roman society and became Romans through their philosophy.
Not all Jews wanted that, the most religious ones did not and that is what provoked a war that divided the Jews in mainly two separate groups.
Mathew's author is in the group that sided with the Romans since he considered himself a roman at this point.
Not just any roman, a roman which followed stricter rules, a roman who had god on his side.
"Mathew", as the name is carried in the bible gospel bearing that name, was a fictitious character, as were most or all of the characters in that work. From the link provided below I quote the following:
"The Gospel of Matthew was certainly not written by the apostle Matthew. The character of Matthew is based on the historical person named Mattai who was a disciple of Yeishu ben Pandeira. (Yeishu, who lived in Hashmonean times, was one of several historical people upon whom the character Jesus is based.) The Gospel of Matthew was originally anonymous and was only assigned the name Matthew some time during the first half of the second century C.E. The earliest form was probably written at more or less the same time as the Gospel of Luke (c. 100 C.E.), since neither seems to know of the other. It was altered and edited until about 150 C.E. The first two chapters, dealing with the virgin birth, were not in the original version and the Christians in Israel of Jewish descent preferred this earlier version. For its sources it used Mark and a collection of teachings referred to as the Second Source (or the Q Document). The Second Source has not survived as a separate document, but its full contents are found in Matthew and Luke. All the teachings contained in it can be found in Judaism. The more reasonable teachings can be found in mainstream Judaism, while the less reasonable ones can be found in sectarian Judaism. There is nothing in it which would require us to suppose the existence of a real historical Jesus. Although Matthew and Luke attribute the teachings in it to Jesus, the Epistle of James attributes them to James. Thus Matthew provides no historical evidence for Jesus."
http://mama.indstate.edu/users/nizrael/jesusrefutation.html
You truly have to presuppose that there were real people bearing the names identified in the bible and the events they are writing about with some grain of truth. Don't do that. Nothing in the bible is a truth. At best it will be found to be embellishments by a simple people tilting their stories as grandiose things. All of the work of the bible is pseudepigrapha, meaning, written by persons who attribute such writing to the fictitious named characters with titles such as apostles, jesus, his parents, moses, the three kings bearing gifts, adam and eve (genesis), etc. None of those people (abraham as well) have any historicial proof of having existed. In the case of abraham, his story predates the written record so we'll simply have to accept that since all other characters are certainly pseudepigrapha incarnations, the same holds true for him.
There is actually a Pentacostal movement trying to return Christianity to its Jewish roots. Coined the "rejudafication" of Christianity. This guy makes serious money :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY-eoD4bA5k
https://www.youtube.com/user/LarryHuch
https://www.larryhuchministries.com/home
The amusing thing about this claim is that the Christian narrative is a three act play. The Jews disappear in the third act.
That is a good example for Christians who wish to divorce their religion from the atrocities of the Old Testament.
Of course, the best killings/atrocities of god are yet to come, if Revelation is to be believed.
But that being said, another verse I point to in this situation is:
58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58)
In this verse, Jesus identifies himself as both immortal and the literal Old Testament god. He takes the name for the OT deity that was given to Moses in the book of Exodus when he asked who he could tell the King sent him.
If Jesus is literally claiming to be the OT god, as the book of John also claims, then he cannot be divorced from the actions of the OT, since he is the one who carried them out.
They normally then seek to argue that he changed later through covenants, sacrifices bla bla bla. I typically just point to this verse from the anonymous Hebrews book:
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)