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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Have the Greeks got it right?
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Frankenstein
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# 16198
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Posted
The Orthodox see the Bible as part of the Christian Tradition and not as a stand alone authority.
I am finding this argument increasingly persuasive!
They also claim an unbroken succession from the apostle Paul.
They have the advantage of being able to use the Septuagint Greek un-translated.
I am not trying to convert anyone to the Greek Orthodox as I intend staying a Catholic.
However it just seems to me a more realistic approach to the Bible.
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It is better to travel in hope than to arrive?
Posts: 267 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2011
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
When you examine it, even the most bible based Prod arguments are ultimately dependent on the notion that the authority of scripture derives from the earliest Traditions. Although scripture has a self authenticating quality, it is authenticated from the earliest Fathers.
If I were Greek, I might attribute a particular status to the Septuagint, even though its Greek would probably be quite a long way from mine. It is also the version usually quoted in the New Testament. I am not a Greek speaker. So I do not know how intelligible the Septuagint, or for that matter the New Testament, are to the average Greek on the Piraeus omnibus.
However, it is a translation. For all other languages, my own view is that if we still have the Hebrew text, it is better to translate from that rather than from a translation from it, i.e. a one step translation rather than mediated through a two step one. For those books where we do not have the Hebrew text, then we should use the Septuagint.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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Brother Oscar
Apprentice
# 17227
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
The Orthodox see the Bible as part of the Christian Tradition and not as a stand alone authority...I am not trying to convert anyone to the Greek Orthodox as I intend staying a Catholic.
Your own church, the Catholic Church, does here agree with the Orthodox approach and your own inkling in seeing the Bible as a special part of the apostolic tradition and not a stand alone part of it.
The Second Vatican Council illustrated this in Dei Verbum I understand that the preparatory commission drafted a document outlining a two source theory of divine revelation. The council Fathers rightly threw this out. This is what the ancient fathers including Augustine taught. It is also confirmed by modern biblical scholarship which understands the New Testament writings as an expression of the nascent tradition of the apostolic churches; for example appreciating the role of the Pauline churches in preserving, collecting and distributing his writings.
quote:
They have the advantage of being able to use the Septuagint Greek un-translated.
This is an advantage and I regret that I have to work hard when I refer to the Greek text. However, whilst the Septuagint has a special significance for Christian tradition I think that we should not despise the place of the Vulgate and the Old Latin. They are also part of a nuanced reception history of the tradition. Whilst I don't much like him I would favour a radical Jerome-like approach and suggest that English translations and critical editions make use of all the available sources.
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Enoch
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# 14322
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Posted
One of the most interesting things about the Vulgate is that St Jerome made the translation at a time when both Koine and Latin were still spoken, vernacular languages.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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Frankenstein
Shipmate
# 16198
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Posted
Brother Oscar:
Your own church, the Catholic Church, does here agree with the Orthodox approach and your own inkling in seeing the Bible as a special part of the apostolic tradition and not a stand alone part of it.
Thank you. Yes I realise that now. I think I knew that but had not been prepared to admit it!
Until Vatican 2, the Jerome Latin Vulgate, was the Bible in Catholic circles.
Before the advent of printing, the clerical effort was expended on the Gospels (The Book of Kells, The Lindisfarme Gospels) and the Psalms (Latin Psalters), for use in the Divine Office.
To my mind, much of the Old Testament, is devoted to the Old Law, the History of the Jews and their Special Relationship with God. Editing Highlights for use of Christians would scale down the work considerably!
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It is better to travel in hope than to arrive?
Posts: 267 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2011
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
... To my mind, much of the Old Testament, is devoted to the Old Law, the History of the Jews and their Special Relationship with God. Editing Highlights for use of Christians would scale down the work considerably!
I'd really strongly disagree with that. There are parts of the Old Testament that are a bit puzzling, but even with those, I'd say the experience of grappling with them in valuable in itself.
I love the Old Testament. There is a profundity there that the more utilitarian parts of the New Testament, essential though they are, sometimes lack.
Never forget that the Old Testament was the only bible our first brothers and sisters had.
Besides, if one were going to gut the Old Testament for suitable snippets, who would do the gutting, and would you trust them?
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Cedd
Shipmate
# 8436
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Posted
It is always interesting to reflect that the bible did not arrive fully formed from heaven. Rather, for a long time, it was a collection of very different types of material that were available to different communities only to varying degrees - i.e. not all communities would have had all four gospels nor were all of Paul's letters sent everywhere at the same time. It was only over time that the Church collected together the material and, after much tussling, created the canon of scripture. Therefore the Church was created before the bible and it was the Church that put the bible together. It therefore seems very valid to describe the bible as arising from church tradition rather than in some way being wholly separate.
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Cedd
Churchmanship: This week I am mostly an evangelical, catholic, orthodox with both liberal and illiberal tendancies. Terms and conditions apply.
Posts: 377 | From: England | Registered: Sep 2004
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Frankenstein
Shipmate
# 16198
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cedd:
The Church was created before the bible and it was the Church that put the bible together. It therefore seems very valid to describe the bible as arising from church tradition rather than in some way being wholly separate. [/QB]
Very nicely put.
The Bible is part of the Christian Tradition.
PS I think I was playing devil’s advocate when speaking about the Old Testament. However the Jews seemed to have enjoyed a much more robust relationship to their Deity.
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It is better to travel in hope than to arrive?
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Circuit Rider
Ship's Itinerant
# 13088
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cedd:
It is always interesting to reflect that the bible did not arrive fully formed from heaven. Rather, for a long time, it was a collection of very different types of material that were available to different communities only to varying degrees - i.e. not all communities would have had all four gospels nor were all of Paul's letters sent everywhere at the same time. It was only over time that the Church collected together the material and, after much tussling, created the canon of scripture. Therefore the Church was created before the bible and it was the Church that put the bible together. It therefore seems very valid to describe the bible as arising from church tradition rather than in some way being wholly separate.
I said something along these lines to my Baptist "wannabe" congregation who object to the traditional liturgy of the church. These are the folks who refer to everything they can't see in the Bible as "man-made." When I said the same folks who wrote the creeds and established the liturgies of the church assembled and canonized the Bibles they hold they were amazed. I actually don't think they considered it before.
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I felt my heart strangely warmed ... and realised I had spilt hot coffee all over myself.
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Squirrel
Shipmate
# 3040
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Posted
Let us not forget the Anglican concept of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. We need all three for guidance.
The "fundamentalists" who say that we should rely upon the Bible alone are, indeed, forgetting that it was the Church- the community of believers- that assembled what we now know as the Scriptures.
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"The moral is to the physical as three is to one."
- Napoleon
"Five to one."
- George S. Patton
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gorpo
Shipmate
# 17025
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Posted
I don´t think any of the traditional protestant confessions puts the Bible outside of the christian tradition. They just don´t acept that tradition should prevail over the Bible when it contradicts it.
In most cases when churches advocate the Bible is not the final authority on a certain subject, they will advocate something that is not supported in tradition either. So that´s a non-issue. There´s always going to be some "rational" argument to prove anything.
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Squirrel:
Let us not forget the Anglican concept of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. We need all three for guidance.
That is the tradition and it is an excellent one. However, it is often misinterpreted as though these are three independent authorities, as though truth can be found by reason or tradition on their own, rather than that scripture is understood through them. This tradition certainly does not say, as some people since the 1920s have implied, that 'we only accept scripture when it complies with our reason'.
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Sergius-Melli
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# 17462
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
To my mind, much of the Old Testament, is devoted to the Old Law, the History of the Jews and their Special Relationship with God. Editing Highlights for use of Christians would scale down the work considerably!
...
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
PS I think I was playing devil’s advocate when speaking about the Old Testament.
I have long believed, though I'm not sure of the sources for my belief, I just have a vague memory of having read somewhere, that the Early Celtic Christian Monks did do this... If anyone can shed some light before I have to go rooting through my books to find the source I'd be grateful.
You make avalid point though, the Old Testament is just as you describe, connected to the Old Law and Covenant, it has a contextual relevance, allows us to see God working through the history of mankind and God's plan for humanity as a whole, however, it would be quite easy to cut out most of the tedious genealogies without doing much harm to the main message.
Continuing on in my thoughts on this, keep the creation account, the 10 Commandments, the direct prophesies to the coming of Christ, the Psalms and Proverbs, and probably that is about it in my view. Of course I'm not advocating that the Church forgets everything else, our Priests would have to learn it, understand it, but for the everyday man in the street, cutting it down would help in then convincing people to begin looking at the historical roots of our Covenant with God and from there expanding it out...
To answer your question Enoch, it would be for a truly Ecumenical Church Council to decide, but since I fear that is not going to happen anytime soon, I guess it will remain as it is.
(Edited to expand.)
[ 17. December 2012, 08:53: Message edited by: Sergius-Melli ]
Posts: 722 | From: Sneaking across Welsh hill and dale with a thurible in hand | Registered: Dec 2012
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Ender's Shadow
Shipmate
# 2272
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sergius-Melli:
Continuing on in my thoughts on this, keep the creation account, the 10 Commandments, the direct prophesies to the coming of Christ, the Psalms and Proverbs, and probably that is about it in my view. Of course I'm not advocating that the Church forgets everything else, our Priests would have to learn it, understand it, but for the everyday man in the street, cutting it down would help in then convincing people to begin looking at the historical roots of our Covenant with God and from there expanding it out...
But that would be leaving out all the bits that challenge our comfortable view of God as someone other than 'meek and mild' - though to do the job properly, you'd have to cut out Revelation as well.
There is a tradition of regarding Theology as a science, interpreting the data that we have about God in the same way as palaeontology is interpreting the data we have about prehistoric life. The OT is part of the data we have about God, so it is unwise to ignore part of the data set - we are almost certain to come to inaccurate conclusions.
Of course your suggestion is nothing new. Marcion suggested it in the 2nd century, and the common lectionary has a propensity to ignore bits it doesn't like: Isaiah 34 got chopped last week...
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Test everything. Hold on to the good.
Please don't refer to me as 'Ender' - the whole point of Ender's Shadow is that he isn't Ender.
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
I think that asking about who chose the canon and where scripture gets its authority buys into a view of scripture as something determinative, a settler of disputes and limiter of Christian thought. That's essentially still the same view of scripture as biblicist or fundamentalist Christians have. It imagines that the Bible says things to us that we have to accept or deal with in other ways.
I hear people talking about the Fathers and I want to ask about the place of women and the young in our discerning of God. Have powerful men really had the final say?
Another way of thinking about scripture is to emphasise its use rather than its origin. Who uses it? Who interprets it? Which bits do we go to first and use to interpret the rest?
With this starting point I think we can better balance men and women, young and old. The Bible belongs to the community, and a community that allows all to read and interpret scripture will be able to hear words from God that are not all serving the interests of powerful men.
We can acknowledge that no one reads all the Bible. We have our canons within the canon, and we have favoured starting points and know that it looks very different depending on where you start from. We can allow each other to help us discover new perspectives, and learn the often astonishingly different takes on the Bible that different communities have.
We can see the Bible not as the settler of disputes, but a book that gives everyone somewhere to stand, and offers a language with which we can communicate with each other.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
posted by Sergius:
quote:
I have long believed, though I'm not sure of the sources for my belief, I just have a vague memory of having read somewhere, that the Early Celtic Christian Monks did do this... If anyone can shed some light before I have to go rooting through my books to find the source I'd be grateful.
If you mean that the early Celtic monks* somehow edited or did a pick and choose routine on the Old Testament, I'm not sure you're right. In this part of the Celtic world they leaned heavily on the Old Testament, but especially on somewhat obscure references to Tobit and Baruch (Tobit in particular). The reason for the interest in Baruch can probably be explained with reference to passages that they understood in the context of the incarnation, but the obsession with Tobit is a little less clear.
When it comes to the Gospels they do something that we might feel a little uncomfortable with today. They essentially paint themselves into Christ, seeing everything in their lives and experience through the lens of Christ, so they adopt the stories in the Gospels to reflect their own lives. It's quite hard to explain until you read the stuff, but there is an immediacy about it that we wouldn't necessarily be comfortable with.
If on the other hand you mean that they saw everything through the lens of the incarnation and everything in the Old Testament as pointing to it, then you are right, but only to an extent. To say that this is how they understand the scriptures and that the Old Testament is somehow inferior to the New Testament would be a grave oversimplification of what they thought.
*By 'early' I'm talking about that period up to around 800AD, although their texts were in use up to the Medieval period. It seems that the arrival of the Augustinians en masse starts the beginning of the end of the use of their texts and Life's offices.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
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Sergius-Melli
Shipmate
# 17462
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
quote:
Of course your suggestion is nothing new. Marcion suggested it in the 2nd century, and the common lectionary has a propensity to ignore bits it doesn't like: Isaiah 34 got chopped last week...
I have to disagree with what you are saying I have said. What I am suggesting is not like Marcion's Canon, he did away with everything I'm suggesting as keeping in the Old Testament, and he severely changed the works of the New which I am not advocating either.
The Old is as important apart of the Tradition of the Church as the New, but since it is concerned with a Covenant which has been adapted by the New it is only of importance for the historical context. As a Church we have departed from the Old Covenant in our doing away with the purity laws etc., but we keep the text for the historical context it provides, the commentary of God's relationship with humanity through history, the Councils could have easily said 'right, we're going to cut it out and put in a note saying that it's been taken, but we must continue to pass it on in the unwritten tradition we have.' - I imagine (if it came up as a proposal at all) the Councils steared clear of this, or the Councils would still be ongoing trying to reach agreement on what could and could not be rightfully '[...]'ed out of the Canon.
Neither am I saying that the God of the Old is different from the God of the New Covenant, as Marcion did, nor am I trying to suggest redaction to write away the 'wrathful, vengeful God' that people see in the Old Testament as we would have to go on a major rewrite of the New Testament Canon as you rightly point out.
I agree that the designers of the lectionary have a lot to answer for, it's not often that you hear about the treatment of the concubine in Judges 19 amongst other bits, but that is selective editing for a different purpose to the one that I have laid out as being behind my own beliefs on the OT - it's more to do with secular approval than with the contemporary relevance to the Covenant we have with God.
Posts: 722 | From: Sneaking across Welsh hill and dale with a thurible in hand | Registered: Dec 2012
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Frankenstein
Shipmate
# 16198
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Posted
On a slightly different track,
We take, having the complete Bible very much for granted.
But, go back to the year 1000, or so.
An impossible question, I know, but, how many complete copies of the Bible existed, in total?
As each copy had to be hand written, and the state of literacy was depressingly low, it was left to a few scribes to make copies.
When the Iona community left their island, they took with them the Book of Kells, consisting of the Gospels. Would they not have taken the Bible with them if they had a copy?
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It is better to travel in hope than to arrive?
Posts: 267 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2011
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
Bibles may have been burnt. The Book of Kells was likely saved because of the amount of work that went into its production and its worth.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
Posts: 5235 | From: a prefecture | Registered: Jul 2008
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
The king of Northumbria asked the monks at Monkwearmouth to prepare seven copies of the bible. The cost? Well, the first thing he had to do was give the monks enough land to raise two thousand head of cattle.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
On a slightly different track,
We take, having the complete Bible very much for granted.
But, go back to the year 1000, or so.
An impossible question, I know, but, how many complete copies of the Bible existed, in total?
As each copy had to be hand written, and the state of literacy was depressingly low, it was left to a few scribes to make copies.
When the Iona community left their island, they took with them the Book of Kells, consisting of the Gospels. Would they not have taken the Bible with them if they had a copy?
They were not accustomed to single-volume bibles in the way which we are. The cost and effort of reproduction meant that most working copies were liturgical tools (psalter, gospels, epistolary, etc). They likely had with them books comprising a Bible, but the Book of Kells was memorable for its artistic quality and so gets mentioned frequently.
There is a bibliographic survey of early mediaeval bibles around which will answer your numbers question, but I wasn't able to find it after some searching.
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
... To my mind, much of the Old Testament, is devoted to the Old Law, the History of the Jews and their Special Relationship with God. Editing Highlights for use of Christians would scale down the work considerably!
I'd really strongly disagree with that. There are parts of the Old Testament that are a bit puzzling, but even with those, I'd say the experience of grappling with them in valuable in itself.
I love the Old Testament. There is a profundity there that the more utilitarian parts of the New Testament, essential though they are, sometimes lack.
Never forget that the Old Testament was the only bible our first brothers and sisters had.
Besides, if one were going to gut the Old Testament for suitable snippets, who would do the gutting, and would you trust them?
What Enoch said. 100%
Christianity is founded in the Jewish scriptures. They were the centre of the spiritual and intellectual life of Jesus and the Apostles and the first Christians. We need them, all of them.
If a church is not reading and preaching the Old Testament there is something wrong with it.
And if a church tries to make the Bible, or any part of it, a special secret thing that is only meant for the educated or ordained elite to read and learn from, then that church really is in a mess. That is the highway to the church of the personality cult, whether its the more Protestant megachurch "Egoboo Ministries (TM)" sort (not that I've ever actually encountered one of those in real life) or the more catholicky "Father knows best" kind (which seem not uncommon from where I'm sitting). Both are sins against the Spirit that gives gifts for the edification of the churches.
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
I don´t think any of the traditional protestant confessions puts the Bible outside of the christian tradition. They just don´t acept that tradition should prevail over the Bible when it contradicts it.
In most cases when churches advocate the Bible is not the final authority on a certain subject, they will advocate something that is not supported in tradition either. .
Also exactly right I think!
And its worth saying again that although the Bible is part of church tradition, it is also our most ancient witness to that tradition. It is our direct link to the teaching of the Apostles and through them our indirect link to the life and teaching of Jesus. So if the tradition of this that or the other modern-day church or preacher or bishop differs from the Bible its the Bible that is the original and real tradition, not the contemporary teacher.
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
[...]However, it is often misinterpreted as though these are three independent authorities, as though truth can be found by reason or tradition on their own, rather than that scripture is understood through them. This tradition certainly does not say, as some people since the 1920s have implied, that 'we only accept scripture when it complies with our reason'.
And this! (Agreement breaks out all over?)
Reason is the way we understand scripture and tradition - or anything else - not an alternative and independent source of information or authority. (If you wanted that you would add experience to the legs of your stool, as some people do) Without reason - that is rational thought, logic, understanding, clear thinking - we can't know anything at all. But when we study the Scriptures in church reason is a method we use to learn, not the thing we are trying to learn.
I love the traditional Anglican way of describing the authority of Scripture it in the 39 Articles:
quote:
Article 6. Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation.
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.
[...]
Article 7. Of the Old Testament.
The Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the Civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral.
Never seen it put better. There is no claim that all truth is in the Bible, so that nothing can be taught that is not in the Bible. Just that nothing can be required that is not in the Bible. Also NB that there is no actual list made distinguishing the ceremonial, civil, and moral commandments - so in practice which is which is left open for debate - another fine piece of Anglican fudge!
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
When the Iona community left their island, they took with them the Book of Kells, consisting of the Gospels. Would they not have taken the Bible with them if they had a copy?
We have no idea what books they had or took with them. Most books from that period were long ago lost, damaged, rotted, or reused for other writings. The Book of Kells and some of the other glorious old illuminated Gospels and Bibles and Psalters only survive by a mixture of good luck and special treatment, perhaps because because they are so beautiful and valuable they would have been a major treasure for anyone possessing them. Also we don't know for sure that the Book of Kells was ever at Iona - only that it is in the style of manuscripts from Iona - but so were other books from all over the British Isles and as far away as Italy and Austria.
We know that Irish and British Christians had the old Testament at that time because there are many surviving manuscripts containing Old Testament scriptures - mostly Psalms, but also many other books or parts of books. Few containing the whole Old Testament but that is hardly surprising, a complete Bible bound in one volume handwritten on vellum would be a HUGE book. And cost the equivalent of the annual income of a small town.
A large book such as a whole Bible would be a major project requiring many man-years of work from many skilled workers, and significant resources and money. Every single page would require the skin of a lamb or a calf. It might be the equivalent of erecting a whole new church or building a ship. So obviously many monasteries and churches and wealthy individuals could only in afford or obtain sections of Scripture - typically the Gospels and the Psalms (as you might find in a pocket prayerbook nowadays). And those famous illuminated manuscripts, like the Book of Kells, or Durrow, or the Lindisfarne Gospels would need the finest in pigments for the inks and paints, as well as gold and jewels for the binding, and the work of world-class artists to write and illustrate and bind it. Making one of those books might be more like the equivalent of building a royal palace or a cathedral!
Most books weren't as wonderful as those of course. But every single page of even a small pocket book would have required many hours, or even days, of work by skilled craftsmen just to prepare the skin, and the inks and pigments, before anyone put a goose quill anywhere near a page.
In those circumstances the very fact that they copied the Old Testament at all shows how much they valued it. Most of the best and completest old texts of the Bible we have in the West (including the oldest existing Latin Vulgate Gospels and Old Testaments) were copied by Irish monks, or else by other European monks who had been taught by the Irish. Its a fair bet that the Scriptures they had were pretty much the same as the ones we have now.
[very crossposted with fletcher christian, hatless, Augustine the Aleut - nice to see we're still agreeing so much!]
[ 17. December 2012, 12:42: Message edited by: ken ]
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Frankenstein
Shipmate
# 16198
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Posted
To my mind, most of Leviticus is quite repellent.
Deuteronomy is just as bad.
The God of the Old Testament doles out harsh punishment, Lot’s wife, Sodom and Gomorrah etc..
Not a nice God, at all, at all…
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It is better to travel in hope than to arrive?
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
To my mind, most of Leviticus is quite repellent.
Deuteronomy is just as bad.
The God of the Old Testament doles out harsh punishment, Lot’s wife, Sodom and Gomorrah etc..
Not a nice God, at all, at all…
Indeed. But be careful of saying "not nice", because you'll have people saying God isn't meant to be "nice", as if you're objecting to anything that isn't God as a fluffy kitten.
My problem isn't with God not being portrayed as nice. It's God being portrayed as a homicidal genocidal maniac with all the forbearance and mercy of a sociopathic fascist dictator.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Frankenstein
Shipmate
# 16198
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Posted
Not a nice God, at all, at all…
This is my euphemism for God is homicidal genocidal maniac with all the forbearance and mercy of a sociopathic fascist dictator.
Why was He so hard on the Jews?
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It is better to travel in hope than to arrive?
Posts: 267 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2011
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
To my mind, most of Leviticus is quite repellent.
Deuteronomy is just as bad.
The God of the Old Testament doles out harsh punishment, Lot’s wife, Sodom and Gomorrah etc..
Not a nice God, at all, at all…
That's fine as your own personal opinion. But its not at all the tradition of any major strand of Christian tradition or any large denomination, and certainly not the Orthodox. So if what you say about the Old Testament is true, then the answer to your opening question "Have the Greeks got it right?" would have to be "no".
(& as an aside, what exactly is so repellent about Leviticus and Deuteronomy that doesn't also apply to Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Joshua?)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Frankenstein
Shipmate
# 16198
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
To my mind, most of Leviticus is quite repellent.
Deuteronomy is just as bad.
The God of the Old Testament doles out harsh punishment, Lot’s wife, Sodom and Gomorrah etc..
Not a nice God, at all, at all…
That's fine as your own personal opinion. But its not at all the tradition of any major strand of Christian tradition or any large denomination, and certainly not the Orthodox. So if what you say about the Old Testament is true, then the answer to your opening question "Have the Greeks got it right?" would have to be "no".
(& as an aside, what exactly is so repellent about Leviticus and Deuteronomy that doesn't also apply to Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Joshua?)
Firstly I have prefaced my remarks with, to my mind…
Leviticus and Deuteronomy are very specifically “The Law” as prescribed to the Jews.
As Christ came to fulfil the Law, the Old Law does not apply to Christians, so no problem.
We no longer stone people to death!
Nor are there forbidden meats, nor do we circumcise ourselves,
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It is better to travel in hope than to arrive?
Posts: 267 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2011
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
To my mind, most of Leviticus is quite repellent.
Deuteronomy is just as bad.
The God of the Old Testament doles out harsh punishment, Lot’s wife, Sodom and Gomorrah etc..
Not a nice God, at all, at all…
That's fine as your own personal opinion. But its not at all the tradition of any major strand of Christian tradition or any large denomination, and certainly not the Orthodox. So if what you say about the Old Testament is true, then the answer to your opening question "Have the Greeks got it right?" would have to be "no".
(& as an aside, what exactly is so repellent about Leviticus and Deuteronomy that doesn't also apply to Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Joshua?)
Firstly I have prefaced my remarks with, to my mind…
Leviticus and Deuteronomy are very specifically “The Law” as prescribed to the Jews.
As Christ came to fulfil the Law, the Old Law does not apply to Christians, so no problem.
We no longer stone people to death!
Nor are there forbidden meats, nor do we circumcise ourselves,
I don't think many people circumcise themselves, though I did a few years ago see a link to a website that offered a gadget that was supposed to do that in a risk free manner. Even the thought brings tears to the eyes.
Leaving facetiousness aside, there are fundamental parts of the Christian message which would be virtually impossible to access or understand without Leviticus.
I am not Orthodox, and it would take some of the Orthodox shipmates to go into this more fully, but I also suspect the Greek worship tradition draws more subtly on correspondences in Leviticus than is usual in the west.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
To my mind, most of Leviticus is quite repellent.
Deuteronomy is just as bad.
The God of the Old Testament doles out harsh punishment, Lot’s wife, Sodom and Gomorrah etc..
Not a nice God, at all, at all…
Without Leviticus and Deuteronomy we wouldn't have all the laws about care for the orphan, widow and stranger, nor the jubilee debt cancellation.
As for the supposedly nasty God of the OT compared to that of the NT, there is more judgement and hellfire, if you count the references, in the NT than the OT.
Also, Jesus didn't abolish the Law, according to the Sermon on the mount. If anything, he extended its scope.
[ 17. December 2012, 14:36: Message edited by: leo ]
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Ender's Shadow
Shipmate
# 2272
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
Why was He so hard on the Jews?
No - He was nice to them compared to the total destruction that the Canaanites, Moabites etc suffered.
He was 'so hard' on them because they had chosen to accept His covenant, which had some rather unsubtle penalty clauses, which they duly triggered.
A significant 'take-away' from the Old Testament is that God does act in judgement in the world, that sin has consequences; the gospel is that there is a solution. My own view of the whole thing is beautifully summarised by this parable:
quote:
A 12 yo boy who grew up in a militantly secular family but had found God for himself was asked what difference God made to the world. He answered:
'We can use the example of my fish tank, my aquarium. My aquarium is supposed to be a perfectly balanced ecological system. The fish eat the plants and live on the oxygen that the plants give off. The plants live on the waste from the fish and the Carbon Dioxide they put into the water. There are snails in the tank to keep the sides clean, and they live off algae and the fish waste. So it is supposed to be a self-contained cycle, not requiring me to do anything". He continued But my aquarium is not perfect. Lots of time I have to something to restore the balance. If I didn't, my fish would die." And then he looked me squarely in the face and said "And we will never know how much god does every day to keep our world working as well as it does.'
James Fowler 'Becoming Adult Becoming Christian' (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 2000) p. 71
Judgement is when God decides that the mess that a particular person or nation has got to the point that He's no longer going to carry on removing the damage, presumably because of the damage that those persons or nations are doing in their sin.
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Test everything. Hold on to the good.
Please don't refer to me as 'Ender' - the whole point of Ender's Shadow is that he isn't Ender.
Posts: 5018 | From: Manchester, England | Registered: Feb 2002
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Can you not understand why some people might have questions about this when "judgement" means "genocide", which we tend not to ever consider justified?
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Frankenstein
Shipmate
# 16198
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Posted
Frankenstein:
nor do we circumcise ourselves,
An unfortunate turn of phrase even for Frankenstein!
Please read my comments more carefully, my saying, “Leviticus is quite repellent”, does not mean that I reject Leviticus. There is just so much which no longer applies. (Like most of it!)
Quite a lot of Leviticus is about animal sacrifice,
which meats are clean or unclean, circumcision, leprosy and basic hygiene, consanguinity
13 And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying,
14 “Bring forth him that hath cursed outside the camp; and let all who heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.
15 And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, ‘Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin.
16 And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him. As well the stranger as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.
17 And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.
18 And he that killeth a beast shall make it good, beast for beast.
19 And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbor, as he hath done, so shall it be done to him—
20 breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.
21 And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it; and he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death.
22 Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger as for one of your own country; for I am the Lord your God.’”
23 And Moses spoke to the children of Israel, that they should bring forth him that had cursed out of the camp and stone him with stones. And the children of Israel did as the Lord commanded Moses.
Primitive if not barbaric stuff!
<<
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It is better to travel in hope than to arrive?
Posts: 267 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2011
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Ender's Shadow
Shipmate
# 2272
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Can you not understand why some people might have questions about this when "judgement" means "genocide", which we tend not to ever consider justified?
That's because we don't take sin seriously and we've stopped believing that God is the creator - however He did the creating - and have bought into the idea that we have rights over against Him. Which doesn't mean that we should endorse such behaviour these days, but we need to understand why God allowed / commanded it to happen in the past.
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Test everything. Hold on to the good.
Please don't refer to me as 'Ender' - the whole point of Ender's Shadow is that he isn't Ender.
Posts: 5018 | From: Manchester, England | Registered: Feb 2002
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Can you not understand why some people might have questions about this when "judgement" means "genocide", which we tend not to ever consider justified?
That's because we don't take sin seriously and we've stopped believing that God is the creator - however He did the creating - and have bought into the idea that we have rights over against Him. Which doesn't mean that we should endorse such behaviour these days, but we need to understand why God allowed / commanded it to happen in the past.
Sin is so serious that having armed men march into houses and put babies to the sword is a justifiable response?
As it happens I do consider sin to be serious - and cold-blooded slaughter of infants is as good an example of a serious sin as I can imagine.
You might be surprised to find I consider that utterly abhorrent. Why would you imagine anyone would want to understand a monstrous God like that?
I really hope you're wrong, because faced with eternity in the presence of the genocidal God, or eternity in the pits of Hell I find myself between the devil and the deep blue sea.
[ 17. December 2012, 16:16: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Frankenstein:
Frankenstein:
nor do we circumcise ourselves,
An unfortunate turn of phrase even for Frankenstein!
Please read my comments more carefully, my saying, “Leviticus is quite repellent”, does not mean that I reject Leviticus. There is just so much which no longer applies. (Like most of it!)
Quite a lot of Leviticus is about animal sacrifice,
which meats are clean or unclean, circumcision, leprosy and basic hygiene, consanguinity
13 And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying,
14 “Bring forth him that hath cursed outside the camp; and let all who heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.
15 And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, ‘Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin.
16 And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him. As well the stranger as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.
17 And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.
18 And he that killeth a beast shall make it good, beast for beast.
19 And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbor, as he hath done, so shall it be done to him—
20 breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.
21 And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it; and he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death.
22 Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger as for one of your own country; for I am the Lord your God.’”
23 And Moses spoke to the children of Israel, that they should bring forth him that had cursed out of the camp and stone him with stones. And the children of Israel did as the Lord commanded Moses.
Primitive if not barbaric stuff!
<<
Point taken, but is 'primitive' a fair charge? Since that is supposed to have been written c 3,000 years ago, by the standards of many legal systems active today, of which North Korea is only a more extreme example, that's fairly benevolent.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
Without Dueteronomy you wouldn't have one of the most beautifully evocative sentence in all of scripture: 'My father was a wandering Aramean....'
I suspect it depends on how you read it and understand it, and in what context. Lots of what Jesus has to say in the Gospels is not very 'nice' either. Let the dead bury their own dead, being but one example of many, but its how you understand it context and how you read it.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
Posts: 5235 | From: a prefecture | Registered: Jul 2008
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