Not to get all religiony but why in the old testament God was all fire and brimstone and fatal consequences? But the new testament God is all about forgiveness and such??

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Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Patnou@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

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originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
its almost like the whole thing is an amalgam of thousands of texts edited and repurposed across thousands of years by human beings with various motivations.

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- bigfondue@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The religion of the Israelites wasn’t even monotheistic at first. Yahweh was one of many gods.
  
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  - SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    And Christianity isn’t technically monotheistic either, as it has the trinity of God, Christ, and the Spooky Spirit… errrm… I mean Holy Ghost.
    
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  - axexrx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Also, he was a war god.
    
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  - Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    source?
    
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- SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The book of Job is literally written in different parts in entirely different dialects that were spoken hundreds of years apart. The opening and ending is from the older dialect, and written much like a folktale. The middle is newer and written much more like an epic poem.
  
  Even the a single book of the Bible comes from numerous sources.
  
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  - GandalftheBlack@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Not just single books. Single chapters.
    
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- Ging@anarchist.nexus ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  And yet they persist, so it’s almost like it’s not quite that simple either, eh? Funny how the devil stays in the details, no matter which side you lean
  
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  - originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    absolutely correct. humans have been scamming humans since inception, and the best methods last the longest.
    
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- Maeve@kbin.earth ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  ♥️
  
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rikudou@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Because it’s all fake. Everyone who actually reads it finds way too many inconsistencies.

That’s because it underwent some serious transformations across the millennia. Yahweh started as a storm god (basically Thor of Canaanite religion). Back then each nation in the religion had their own patron god and guess which god did the Israelites happen to have? Good old storm god Yahweh.

Over centuries the religion evolved and among Israelites Yahweh slowly took on attributes of other gods, mostly El (the all-father and creator of the universe) and Baal. First the other gods were degraded and monotheism was required, even though other gods were known to exist (you might remember the whole “jealous of other gods shtick” even though the rest of the Bible says there’s only one god).

Then the other gods were slowly edited out of the Bible, though some remains persevere (the aforementioned jealousy of other gods, some gods are even mentioned by name). If the gods couldn’t be removed because the story wouldn’t make sense, they were mostly changed into angels or other mythical beings.

It’s pretty funny rereading the Bible with this knowledge, you can clearly recognise which parts were the original Yahweh-the-storm-god and which used to be El-the-actual-creator by how he behaves in the story. When he’s all jealous, rageful and angry, it’s mostly based on the original Yahweh.

Anyway, that’s basically what Old Testament is - a bunch of edits of much older religions. IIRC Yahweh precedes even the Canaanite religion, so it’s a really old and grumpy storm god.

Now, New Testament is something else entirely, that was basically just slapped onto Judaism to have some legitimate and widely recognised vessel. Unlike the other edits, it didn’t evolve naturally over time, it was just violently slapped onto the Old Testament.

Fun fact: try finding Satan anywhere in the old testament. You won’t. Satan has been retrofit on multiple characters, but neither is mentioned directly as Satan, devil or really anything. The most famous one, the snake in the garden? Just a snake (which checks out with older religions where animals had a lot of influence). Then some morons come and say “actually, that snake was the grand adversary.” The concept of a grand adversary wasn’t really common in older religions, there usually wasn’t a Satan-like figure. Compare for example with Greek, Roman or Norse gods.

So, in conclusion, the Bible is a horrible mess of edits that were made so the religion would serve the needs of the time they were introduced in. IIRC the Israelites were having some trouble with their neighbours back when Yahweh got the promotion, so having a strong sense of nationality would really help in keeping the nation together. New Testament is even more obvious because it didn’t even really try to fit with the rest. They just tried to retrofit a few things and called it a day.

Well, this got longer than I planned, but I really like the topic and I don’t think you can do it justice in two paragraphs. If anyone’s interested, do some research, it’s honestly fascinating! For example, what’s the connection between Dionysus and Yahweh? That would be a homework for ya!

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- I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  Fun fact: try finding Satan anywhere in the old testament. You won’t.
  
  What about the Book of Job? That was all done by a bet between God and Satan to make Job suffer. Like, I’m sure he was still an edited deity from another religion. But he’s straight up referred to as Satan, right there in the Old Testament, which seems to be the exact thing you’re claiming can’t be found.
  
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  - rikudou@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I meant the character, not the name, I perhaps worded it poorly. Satan in this context is meant in the “accuser” sense. As in it’s a role in a divine court, not an entity. Anyone could be the “satan” for the specific case, it’s not a person, but a role.
    
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  - BussyCat@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I could be wrong but isn’t Ha-Satan just the title for “the accuser” and not the biblical satan who is the fallen angel
    
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- Cassanderer@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  You just taught me as much bible as I have ever learned, last lesson being south park raining frogs.
  
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- Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Me when I listen to tiktok instead of doing actual research
  
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  - m0darn@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Could you be more constructive with your feedback?
    
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- BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  So like the Jorge Joestar novel ?
  
  jojowiki.com/JORGE_JOESTAR_(Novel)
  
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PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If you want an honest answer, only my own theory for it but supported by actually having read and learned academically about small chunks of the bible which I think is more than a lot of people who have opinions on this topic, your answer is:

The people who wrote the old testament lived in a world that was almost unfathomably dangerous and difficult compared to today’s first world. Death, disease, starvation, natural disasters, the collapse of whole towns and settlements, unexplained daily suffering for which there is not even an explanation let alone a cure, were constantly present. If you’re in that place, and you believe there’s a God who’s in charge of it all, there is absolutely no conclusion to come to other than he’s a real son of a bitch.

I definitely believe that Jesus had some kind of genuine religious inspiration, that a lot of what he was teaching was for-real insight about life. The stuff about forgiving your enemies, living for good works through action and how it really doesn’t matter what you say or what team you’re on, trying to build a better life by caring about people around you, taking care of the sick and injured, even if they are beggars or prostitutes or foreigners or otherwise “bad” people in your mind simply because of their circumstances, seems pretty spot on to me. It was 100% at odds with the religion of the day, pretty much as much as it is with modern religion. What Jesus actually said does obviously have “spiritual” and supernatural elements also, but it is also focused to a huge extent on what you as an individual can do, and a sort of alignment towards the greater good and a calling for humanity, as opposed to this wild half-Pagan mythology about a capricious and bad-tempered God who might kill you at any instant.
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- JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I like this reasoning a lot, however:
  
  #2. In terms of there being a real-life Y’shua, AFAIK it’s hard to know if such a person ever really existed in the first place, or if they were in fact more of an amalgamated ‘King Arthur’ / ‘Robin Hood’ type, very much inspired by earlier legends & mythology, and greatly elaborated upon in later years, via oral traditions, before finally being documented hither & tither by various writers scattered around the region.
  
  AFAIK there is no archeological evidence whatsoever for that exact person’s existence, and no contemporaneous writing from the time, describing his life.
  
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  - PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart D. Ehrman wrote, “He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees."[13] Richard A. Burridge states: “There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more."[14] Robert M. Price does not believe that Jesus existed but agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars.[15] James D. G. Dunn calls the theories of Jesus’s non-existence “a thoroughly dead thesis”.[16] Michael Grant (a classicist), “In recent years, ’no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus’ or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."[17] Robert E. Van Voorst states that biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted.[18] Writing on The Daily Beast, Candida Moss and Joel Baden state that, “there is nigh universal consensus among biblical scholars – the authentic ones, at least – that Jesus was, in fact, a real guy."[19]
    
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  - fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    One Theory I like is that the Jesus we know is an amalgamation of multiple Messiah figures that were walking around around that time, one of them was the basis for the religion and then other stories about those other Messiahs were folded in over the years
    
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- KneeTitts@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  a lot of what he was teaching was for-real insight about life
  
  yaaa cept for the fact that most if not all the things ‘jeebus’ supposedly said were said in older books already. So there is nothing new in the new testament, they stole all of it from older books like code of hammurabi and then invented a character to say the things.
  
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remon@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
They switched writers.

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neidu3@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I guess they did some market research between the two testaments

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- wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  “nobody shares my kinks”
  
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Redditmodstouchgrass@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
My take is that it’s a reflection of the Israelite people. It’s easy to be all fire and brimstone when you can back it up with military force. Suspiciously that all went away after they got conquered…

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- TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yahweh was originally a Levant god of war.
  
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Adderbox76@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Because they’re completely different gods. The old testament is only a part of christianity because in order to gain some legitimacy for their early church, they decided that their new god must be the same dude as the the god of the people that they were living among.

But in reality, they are very different books, written in very different times, by two very different religious cultures.

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- nekbardrun@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Also, the old testament god is not a single god.
  
  It started as a god among other equally powerful and important gods and was later turned (by the writers) into the most important god.
  
  Then it turned into god and satan as being similar in power.
  
  Nowadays, the majority of church people flip the switch whenever they want a bi-theism (god vs satan) or a monotheism (god is all powerful and even satan can’t act with god’s explicit orders).
  
  Similar thing with free will.
  
  You have free will until you don’t have and you have no free will until it is convenient to say you actually have.
  
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- ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yeah, they are “very different books” each individually comprised of “very different books,” and all of the other books that eventually got left out are a lot of the best parts.
  
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blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Because the people who wrote the old testament wanted to scare people into subservience

And those who wrote the new testament thought positive reinforcement was better

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- Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  IIRC that’s not actually positive reinforcement. Common mistake to make though
  
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MissJinx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Because god was pregnant with jesus so she was all crazy lol

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Zier@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Fiction usually has highs and lows. Unfortunately all the authors wrote under pseudonyms, and multiple editors went through the plagiarized stories, some books were left out, and the consistency is just a mess. Not to mention the terrible translations.
Your local Library most certainly has better Fiction books that are very well written and highly entertaining.

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daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Why Hulk can defeat Wolverine in one comic but in the next one gets obliterated by someone weaker?

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- MissJinx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I don’t see how hulk can defeat wolverine.
  
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  - C0untWintermute@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Hulk’s power level has no upper limit. Wolverine can heal, sure. But if Hulk smashes him down to atoms, and smashes those atoms together, it’s gonna be a long healing process.
    
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TheJesusaurus@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The old guys message wasn’t working anymore, the age of Pharos and godkings was done. You couldn’t just mass execute people anymore, everyone was really woke and PC.

The ruling class needed to revamp the religious arm of the machine that enslaves us all to get with the times or there were going to keep being problems.

You know how corporate media are, it’s easier to sell a sequel.

You know what, we’re going for a kind of apple vibe, we’re literally just going to call this thing “THE BOOK”.

Everyone will step into line after we nail a few to boards and stuff

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- KneeTitts@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  The old guys message wasn’t working anymore
  
  The new testament is just old testament fan fiction. By that reasoning all these newer religions like Mormonism are fan fiction based on other fan fiction… and Im sure I dont have to tell anyone how loony tunes Mormonism is.
  
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DreamAccountant@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It’s all fiction. Different fiction from different people at different points in history. It was even re-written at certain points in history, to conform with (then current) ideas and morality.

Why doesn’t it all make sense put together? It’s fiction written by many, very different types of people with completely different ideas.

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MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It’s because the Old Testament is actually just the Torah, rearranged and edited to fit the beliefs of what was once a sect of Judaism. That sect branched off when they decided that Jesus Christ was their Messiah, then progressively became more open and split away from the rest of Judaism and became their own religion.

That might be a bit oversimplified, but that’s really the gist of it. Jesus made a new covenant with god, which was meant to replace the old one, chronicled in the New Testament; but the old covenant was kept in as background, becoming the Old Testament.

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- ethaver@kbin.earth ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  the only "um akshually" I would even bother adding to this is that the Torah / Pentateuch is just the first five books of the Tanakh, which is the best / closest approximation of books that later became the Christian old testament. The Tanakh also includes the Prophets (Nevi'im), and the Writings (Ketuvim). There's also a few books in there that the council of Nicaea chose not to include. Also relevant is the Septuagint which was the first translation from Hebrew into a mainstream language (which at that was Koine Greek) which is relevant because that specific translation has had a profound effect on translations since, which really hammers in that concept of "a translation of a translation of a translation of-"
  
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  - MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yeahhhh… I took a class on the history of the Bible, but that was about a decade ago, so I’m spotty on some of the details. Thanks for fleshing it out, though - I knew my take was probably missing something!
    
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- shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I was reading a scholar’s book and one of her central themes was that there are clearly two gods in the Bible. It was really dry reading, couldn’t finish.
  
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  - dirigibles@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Some argue that there are even more! I’m definitely not an expert on this one, but I remember something about Yahweh being the god of some town or village that then somehow got absorbed into the old testament god when tribes and traditions consolidated, and then new testament god is just a completely different animal. I’m probably getting something wrong, so don’t quote me.
    
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zalgotext@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I feel like y’all are forgetting about all the heinous shit God does in the new testament. Just because he’s not all up front fire and brimstone about it doesn’t mean he isn’t still an evil bastard in the new book

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- kreskin@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Spoken like someone who mixes their fabrics and eats shellfish.
  
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  - zalgotext@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    🤘😈🤘
    
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- Tinidril@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Let’s not forget that prior to Jesus any punishments were over when you died. Permanent Hell was a new testament thing.
  
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- YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Could you link something cause when I Google any combination of “new testament god angry/vengeful” I’m not getting allot besides religious sites sane washing it.
  
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  - zalgotext@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I’m not gonna link a source, but here’s some chapters from the good book itself:
    
    Acts 5, God kills Ananias and Sapphira for withholding too much of their taxes. Seems like an overreaction for the new forgiving, loving, kind God.
    
    Acts 12, God strikes down King Herod for accepting praise or some shit, which is similar to the egotistical, vengeful, immature punishments the God of the old testament frequently handed out.
    
    Jesus (who is also God) throws some incredibly immature and irresponsible super-powered toddler tantrums, like in Mark 11 where he curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit when he was hungry, even though it was out of season, and in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus forces demons to possess a bunch (like, thousands) of pigs that just happen to be nearby, causing them all to cast themselves off a cliff and die. Jesus suggests/condones rape as a punishment in multiple instances, which is pretty fucked up, but is consistent with the whole “the sexual punishment fits the sexual “crime”” motif you see all throughout the New Testament. Jesus himself isn’t just the peace-loving, love-thy-neighbor hippie they try to portray him as - in Matthew 10 he says “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword”, basically acknowledging and condoning religious violence. Very like, un-kumbayah of him, man.
    
    Pick a page from Revelation, that whole book is basically just God bringing about the apocalyptic end times in increasingly violent and cruel ways, including killing people a second time by tossing them into a lake of fire for not being Christian enough to make it onto his nice list.
    
    The continued existence of hell is a big one for me as well. You’d think a truly loving, kind, and forgiving God would get rid of the eternal damnation spirit torture prison. He also doesn’t end other universally-accepted-as-immoral practices like slavery, but instead doubles down on it in Ephesians, Colossians, and probably a bunch of other places. All in all, the God of the new testament is just as much of a bastard as in the old, he’s just hiding behind his new son (who is also a bit of a bastard, but maybe a tad less so, so people accept it).
    
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  - m0darn@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Revelation
    
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shawn1122@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The old testament is essentially Judaism which is an ethnic religion. There is no marketing needed because it is a religion for a specific group of people from a theoretical single lineage. There is no need for God to be accepting or patient since the goal appears to be unify and keep people under control during times of great strife.

Christianity is a universal religion ie. it tries to create new followers. If you’re a religion that is trying to spread grow your following, you need to have a message of openness and acceptance.

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bitcrafter@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Keep in mind that most likely the historical Jesus was just one of many apocalyptic preachers going around telling people that, within the lifetime of some present, God was going to come down and vanquish evil once and for all, so one had better be prepared and be on God’s good side when this happened. (Incidentally, the Romans probably could not have cared less about this; it was when they got word that he was claiming to be an earthly king–which may have been how Judas actually betrayed him–that they got seriously pissed and executed him because they had a zero tolerance policy for that kind of thing.)

You can see imminent apocalypse theme in the epistles where John writes that there is no real point making big life changes like getting married since the world is going to end any day; amusingly, when this did not happen, they needed to start coming up with alternative policies, and so other letters start to set down rules which thematically contradict the earlier letters, but it turns out that there are other things about these letters that make them different too so I’m many cases they are considered to be forgeries. (Obviously this is an oversimplification of the academic research!)

(Also, it’s also worth noting that John and the apostles had really different notions of what Jesus was all about, and part of the whole point of Acts is to paper over these differences and make it seem like they had all been past of one team all along.)

Finally, it is worth pointing out that there were a lot of texts floating around in the same genre as Revelation, so it was not all that unique and it almost did not make it’s way into the Bible, but the Church Fathers thought incorrectly that the John who wrote it was the same as the author of the Gospel of John; if they had known that these were two different Johns, then the Left Behind series would never have been written (amount other consequences).

So in conclusion, be very wary of trying to read a lot of significance into the New Testament as a whole because it was not a unified document written with single purpose.

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homura1650@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Going well beyond my competencies to answer, but I think a lot of it comes down to monotheism changing the nature of god.

Judaism thinks of itself as starting monotheism; and that is largely true. However, the old testament is still littered with vestiges of it’s polytheistic origins.

If there are multiple God’s, then those God’s will come into conflict. That is simply the nature of human storytelling.

Looking at the old Testament, probably the most violent God has been was during exodus. In addition to freeing the Jews, he smite the Egyptians with 10 plagues, among which was the death of all firstborn sons.

For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD. (Exodus 12:12)

Note the polytheistic origins of this story. God is not merely intervening in the Earthly affairs of us lowly humans. The Jewish God is fighting with the Egyptian gods. He does not have the luxury of being nice and good. Even if he wins this fight without resorting to such drastic measures; he still needs to do so to act as a deterrent against other gods acting against him. That is not so much a specific tactical calculation in this case, but the way humans tend to imagine polytheistic gods working (reflective, of course, of the way human conflict tends to work).

By the time we get to the new testament, the situation is different. Beyond merely declaring that their god is the only God, the early Christians believed it, and had believed it for generations of storytelling. Their view of God had shed the vestiges of polytheism and morphed into what is truly possible under monotheism. God can be good because he lacks a peer rival. There is no narrative reason for God to be mean, because he can simply win any direct confrontation he faces.

We see similar dynamics play out in modern story telling. When we have vastly overpowered characters, the nature of the conflicts they get in us not fights. Perhaps they are trying to mediate between lesser parties. Perhaps they want to get something while respecting the rights and interests in weaker parties. A story where a vastly superior force wants something and just takes it is boring; so we don’t tell it.

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__siru__@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Not a particularly informed comment, but I always figured because people started getting scared of the Christian god, so they started turning towards other religions. As a consequence, the Christian church needed to figure out how to make Christianity a bit more approachable, so the new testament and forgiveness were created.

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- HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  There were no Christian before Christ. They were Jews, as was Jesus.
  
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CatpainTypo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The Old Testament is a bunch of books, letters, poems, historical and legal documents. That when read tell the story of the Jews and their relationship with God and the world over a couple of thousand years. They reflect the culture in which they were written. Many of the documents were written during wars where the writer is convinced God is on their side. There are many prophesies especially in Isaiah which point to Jesus. So when Jesus arrives and fulfills the prophesies some of the Jews follow Jesus but many powerful leaders are awaiting a different, more normal king figure and they are comfortable as they are so choose not to follow. The New Testament is written in a time of relative stability during the longtime invasion by the romans. The writers of those letters and books, some of whom are eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. (Almost unique in historical documents) take a different stance to who God is. But they don’t all agree. Basically Bible means library.

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- Rhaedas@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  A nitpick, none of the gospel writers were eyewitnesses, the documents were written long after Jesus was gone. They are interpretations of stories passed down, and all four gospels have different takes on events. So the phrase "gospel truth" is very ironic in its definition.
  
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  - Maeve@kbin.earth ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Not only that, Jesus doesn't fit the requirements for the prophesied Jewish Messiah, to the best of my understanding. He may well be the Christian Messiah, but no one else is under any obligation to accept or reject anyone else's religious beliefs.
    
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  - CatpainTypo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Matthew and John were written by eyewitnesses.
    
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- njm1314@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Relative stability? Buddy I don’t know where the hell you got that notion from. When was it stable exactly? During the Jewish revolt? That extremely bloody time?
  
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  - dontbelievethis@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    You know what relative means?
    
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ZMonster@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Wow, this comment section… Yikes. Without getting deep in the weeds, testament means covenant. It was god’s new agreement with man. In layman’s terms, matthew 1:1 starts out like, “here’s the deal man”.

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- KneeTitts@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  It was god’s new agreement with man
  
  Um, isnt ‘gawd’ the boss? Cant he just make rules and a system that works and boom it happens?
  
  Frankly instead of all this armchair biblical experts, its probably better to get answers from real experts like Justin from Deconstruction Zone.
  
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  - ZMonster@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    No argument here. Literally. I have no dog in any respective race. Figuratively.
    
    And I would imagine that the community “no stupid questions” is not intended to be a repository of questions exclusively for SME’s. As I understand it is an open forum to ask unspecified questions judgement free. I would presume that since the question is judgement free, the responses should be too. But this comment section is seething with judgements that add very little to the conversation regarding the basic query from OP. So, thanks for the suggestion on Justin. I assume they have a lot to say and I’m sure others will find it invaluable. This is not something I have a significant interest in myself so I’ll take your word for it. Thanks.
    
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  - zalgotext@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Oh dude I just saw Justin on The Line last night with Forrest Valkai, dude seems to know the Bible like the back of his hand
    
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Redacted@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Full disclosure Im an atheist. The answer ive been given before is something along the lines of ‘after jesus died and did his whole thing, part of the deal with jesus dying is now mankind and god enter into a “new testament” and now the new one supersedes the old one’, but thats a very rough paraphrasing.

How any of this makes any sense is beyond me. God killed himself for himself to have himself stop hating us…?

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- KneeTitts@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  How any of this makes any sense is beyond me
  
  In religions nothing makes sense and thats the entire point. All religions are a basically a gullibility test, and they only want the ones who Fail that test to be in their cult. Its been like this for thousands of years.
  
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  - Zink@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Jesus was the OG Nigerian Prince!
    
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- Zink@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  There’s a Jesus quote about specifically this. Here’s the first search result.
  
  “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17–18).
  
  That’s the convenient quote that conservatives can point to when they still want to enforce old testament shit. For instance, claiming to follow Leviticus when they’re being homophobic, rather than going with their homeboy’s forgiveness and loving the sinner.
  
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  - Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    So Jesus was a Jew, who didn’t want to change for things are done, so halal/Jewish food laws should still apply to Christians?
    
    Yo put the bacon down you heathens!
    
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NovaSel@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If I had to guess, it’s because they were written by different people at different times.

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SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Different guy

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- KneeTitts@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  Different guy
  
  Oh wait so now jeebus wasnt “god”? Wow nice post hoc rationalization you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it
  
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  - SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s like that Shaggy song, “It Wasn’t Me”
    
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RobotToaster@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This is one of the reasons Gnosticism exists. In the gnostic interpretation the God of the old testament was the demiurge, while the snake (which may actually be an eagle, translation is hard) is identified with God or Jesus.

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fredofredo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Maybe because JC was a great guy and a lot of people believed in what he had to say. So, in order to benefit from his fame and gain the trust of his past and potential future followers, there was a gathering a hundred or so years after his death where they chose suitable accounts of his life to include in the book called the new testament. Accounts like the ones later found in the Nag Hammadhi texts and “gnostic gospels” were excluded because they undermined the authoritiy of the church and the power of priests to be the only ones to interpret the will of God.

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Jhex@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
PR mandated rebranding

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ChetManly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The new testament is just as vile and filled with hate as the old one.

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- pcr3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  How so?
  
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  - bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Behold a bunch of unrelated out of context quotes from the New Testament chained together to play into @ChetManly@lemmy.world 's fictional narrative
    
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  - ChetManly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    How about eternal torture for something as petty as non belief? Sounds pretty manipulative, insecure, and evil to me.
    
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bizarroland@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
He’s very much not.

I mean, using Jesus to recontextualize the Old Testament God definitely misses the mark. Jesus was here on a mission of mercy to cross the boundary between the sinful ape and the rising angel, and to bring as many people along with him as he could.

But once you’re grafted into the tree of Judaism through Christianity, you still have to abide by the rules of Judaism (with the exception that foods are no longer verbotan or whatever).

Jesus was an incredibly stern man who was very rigid and inflexible on his views because he had the eternal viewpoint.

He refused to perform am exorcism for a Samaritan woman’s daughter who was half Jewish because she wasn’t full Jewish even though she was perfectly faithful until she made such a hue and cry that she publically shamed him into it.

He would snap at his own friends if they said the wrong thing or failed to understand something because he didn’t effectively communicate it to them so that they would understand at the same level he did.

And I don’t hold any of these actions against him, he was on what should be the most important mission in all of human history, right?

But the modern Christianity teachings of Christ where he’s like buddy Jesus and he’s just a happy-go-lucky, I love everyone peace, love, and harmony dude is absolutely not the way he’s actually represented in the Bible by his closest followers.

It was not out of the realm of normalcy for him to do things like beating the fuck out of a temple full of salespeople.

But once again, the sheer stress of his every moment, the fact that if he told a lie, if he felt lust, envy, greed, selfishness, anything that even approximated a sin, it would destroy all of humanity, and himself in the process, must have been so stressful, that in a way, I believe it was a mercy that he died so young.

If Jesus had had to stick it out into his 80s, I don’t know.

Maybe he would have fallen along the way.

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Ledivin@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The simple answer is that the gospel wasn’t working as well as it had been, so they had to change it up to continue attracting people. Cults are basically popularity contests, and you can’t win if you’re scaring everyone away.

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