That’s simply not true. God talks more about Hell in the New Testament than He does in the old testament. He also is forgiving in the old (Exodus 34:7, Psalm 103:12, Psalm 86:5)
There’s basically no change.
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??
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
m0darn@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
The book of Jonah revolves around Jonah not wanting his god to forgive Nineveh.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Another good example, and God forgiving them anyway
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
The old testament was all about acting a certain way and laws, laws, laws. The new testament says just try your best to love and respect each other. In theory anyways. Humans be humaning though and human nature trumps religion every time.
Ging@anarchist.nexus 2 weeks ago
There are more than a few disrespectful answers here, but if any of these ppl talked to someone who honestly believed, they’d be more inclined to tell you to investigate the new covenant
Ging@anarchist.nexus 2 weeks ago
Am a Christian atheist ftr–just feels bad to see so many accept convenient lies over the honest truths of a worthwhile series of stories (wether they factually happened is of little to no value in the pursuit of truth, no?)
Rhaedas@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
Just to clarify - so you don't believe in any of the supernatural stuff and are just about the better teachings of Jesus? Aka a Jefferson bible take?
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
God is not about forgiveness and such in the New Testament. That’s a retcon by later Christians to make it more palatable.
He preached violence:
Matthew 10:34: Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
He was just as happy to send people to hell:
Matthew 13:41-42: The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Every single horrible decree in the Old Testament still applies in the new (despite modern Christians trying to redefine what ‘fulfil’ means):
Matthew 5:17-18: Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 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.
That’s last one includes all the slavery, rape, genocide, etc. Jesus could have spoken out against those things, but instead he said all those judgements were just and should be continued.
Matthew 10:21: And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.
Pretty violent, and not very loving.
And let’s not forget the revelations, in which Jesus will doom billions of people to a horrific existence followed by eternal hellfire, not for doing wrong things, but merely for not being devoted to him. Even the devout and righteous of other religions, and even babies who haven’t had the chance to sin.
Remember, Jesus is the same god as in the Old Testament – if god is eternal and unchanging (which the Bible says he is), he is literally the same entity who committed atrocities before he decided to wear human skin and sacrifice himself to himself.
This is not a loving god.
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Because Yahweh was originally a lesser Canaanite deity of war and destructive storms, while his counterpart, Baal, was all about gentle restorative rains. Part of that population moved around, and took him to be their primary deity when they broke off. He eventually merged with El.
Then that shit for further rehashed a few millennia later to soften his image.
GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Because the God of the old testament is the demiurge…
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself
nekbardrun@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And Christ died in the cross to teach us (only those who have a fragment of the divine) how to ascend to perfection and get out of the Demiurge’s hand. Btw, those who don’t have a fragment of the divine are just NPC (just like myself who am also an NPC)
tazeycrazy@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
It depends where you read. There is fire and brimstone in the new testament. Revelation is a book that doesn’t hold back and we see a wrothful God of judgment. But then there stories of Josiph and his brothers, or the book of Daniel, shows that there is forgivness in the old testament as well.
ieGod@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Because it’s all fake and the authors changed.
maxxadrenaline@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Actually if you read the book of revelations jesus sends the whole planet to hell except 7 cities that he told people to go to. he really lays into the sinners.
vane@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Old Testament -> young people behavior.
New Testament -> old people behaviour.
( yeah I know there are exceptions )Bakedtaint@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
God a bitch
StrongHorseWeakNeigh@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
In the Coptic belief it is just two different gods.
boolean_sledgehammer@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not the same gods, not the same authors, written at completely different times, and written in the context of completely different cultures.
Alsjemenou@lemy.nl 2 weeks ago
My goodness, these comments make me feel we’re back in the edgy atheism days. Please.
The reason is because those texts are much older, and that was the style of religion practiced back then. Most God stories and stories about Gods in that period were like it. Most city states and tribal states had their own Gods that reflected them, and conflicts were gravely exaggerated. Also literally everything that happened in that state were an attribute or reflection of that particular God. With stories of how that attribute came to be, which reflected back in the people and in that way religion was a complex social interaction.
The people who wrote the stories we now know as the old Testament didnt write them as a part of a bible. These were stories of people who were taken out of their states and captured. Forced to live outside their land, but they took their God with them. Who became this omnipresent God that would lead people back to a promised land. Including all the complex social interaction people had with their mostly oral religious stories and traditions.
And it’s the continued tradition that lead to the formation of religious scholarship and the idea that Gods could be of the earth and not just of a state. Which brought about new thoughts, new traditions, new religious complexity written down in the New Testament. Which lead to the desire to make religious books encapsulating all of religious thought.
And only much later came literalism, the mistake to take everything in the Bible literal. which sparked the formation of atheism as we know it today.
Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
God became terrified of us after the tower of babel, so he told his minions to write the new testament in a more positive way, so we wouldn’t seek to invade his realm and take control over creation in revenge for the atrocities he did to us.
jbrains@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
It made sense to scare people into being reasonable. That was the Old Testament.
Once they acted less stupidly, it became safer to let people be as they are. That was the New Testament.