Momma Angel wrote:
Pauligirl,
Understood and thank you for being so honest. It's not that I am particularly trying to change your perception on God. It's more about I am trying to understand why it appears that the story of the New Testament and what it means is not considered when one considers the character of God.
I could very well see someone's point about God being rather nasty if there were only the Old Testament. I guess my question is to you and whoever else might want to answer it is why? Why stop there? Why does it seem (and I say seem because I don't really know the correct word here and don't want to put words in yours or anyone elses' mouth) you disregard the character of God in the New Testament? I really am trying to understand this. It seems to be a very big bone of contention when discussing the Bible. Perhaps if I understood a bit better why this is, then I could understand you and others better?
See, for me, just reading the OT and not taking into account the New Testament is like only reading the first half of a book. The opinions I make from that can't be complete opinions because I didn't avail myself to all the information.
Well, the way I read it, the New Testament was a way to water down the harsh god in the old testament.
This from a much longer article that is no longer available on the net:
U.S. News and World Report April 14, 2001
Days of the Martyrs
In the second and third centuries, politics and persecution forged a global faith
BY JEFFERY L. SHELER
IT STARTED SIMPLY enough, according to the Gospels, with the life of Jesus of Nazareth. During a brief career as an itinerant teacher, he attracted lively crowds in the fishing and farming villages of Roman-occupied Palestine where he preached the coming of God's kingdom and performed extraordinary deeds. Many who followed him believed he was God's "anointed one": the long-awaited messiah presaged in the Hebrew Scriptures.
After his brutal execution in Jerusalem, the belief that God had raised him from the dead energized his disciples to boldly proclaim him "both Lord and Christ." As they spread that message throughout the Mediterranean region, they converted gentiles and Jews alike. By the end of the first century, small communities of Christianoi, or "Christ's people," could be found in many of the commercial and cultural centers of the GrecoRoman world.
But as the movement expanded during the second and third centuries, it proved to be anything but simple. The nascent Christian church was torn by persecution and internal division as Christians struggled to understand and apply the meaning of Jesus's life, death, and Resurrection in the roiling religious caldron of the Roman Empire. Perhaps even more than the seminal events of the first century, those later conflicts and controversies would forge Christianity's future-shaping its creeds and canon and transforming a renegade Jewish sect into a powerful world religion.
Just how the events and decisions of that crucial period influenced Christianity's course is a matter of intense scholarly debate. The New Testament offers few insights into these formative years. Its accounts of church history stop at around A.D. 62, a mere three decades after the Crucifixion. The most thorough nonbiblical sources date from the fourth century-long after many of the doctrinal battles had been resolved. And since those accounts were written mainly by partisans on the winning side, some historians question their reliability.
Now, many scholars are looking elsewhere for answers. Their quest is more than an academic exercise. Today, the movement Jesus founded remains racked by historic divisions. Competing denominations offer widely contrasting views of what it means to be a true follower of Christ. But many scholars now suggest the church was no less diverse or divided in the beginning. Recently recovered ancient texts and other archaeological evidence, they say, point to an early Christianity far more unsettled than tradition might suggest.
Probably the most significant turning point for early Christianity, many scholars agree, came in A.D. 70, when the Roman Army crushed a violent Jewish uprising and destroyed the city of Jerusalem. When the bloody siege ended, Jerusalem's population was nearly wiped out and its temple, the epicenter of the Jewish religion, was reduced to rubble. (Only a western portion of the stone retaining wall supporting the temple platform was left standing and is revered today as the "Western Wall.")
In addition to violently disrupting the traditional practice of Judaism, the destruction of Jerusalem essentially eliminated one of the two principal bases of early Christianity. The Jerusalem church- home to the Apostles Peter and John and led by James, the brother of Jesus-had been the movement's pre-eminent congregation; its members retained strong ties to Jewish practice and traditions. But keeping those traditions had become an increasingly contentious issue as Christian missionaries began winning more and more gentile converts. According to the New Testament . Book of Acts, some Jerusalem Christians insisted that gentile converts be circumcised and compelled to observe Jewish laws-requiring, in effect, that to become a Christian one needed to first become a Jew. The issue became so divisive that the church in Antioch (modern Antakya, in Turkey, which was the second major Christian center of the time and the hub of proselytizing among gentiles) dispatched two of its key missionaries-the Apostle Paul and his collaborator, Barnabas-to meet with Peter and James to settle the matter. The Jerusalem leaders ultimately agreed that non-Jews had no obligation to obey the laws of Judaism, removing a major obstacle to the conversion of gentiles.
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end of quote
Circumcision, according to the Bible, was mandated by God. He told Abraham that starting with him and his offspring, the Jews would mark themselves separate from other peoples by circumcising themselves. (which is a rather odd way to mark yourself, I mean, how would be anybody know...) So, it was decided that to follow the Christian religion, it was no longer necessary to observe Jewish laws - kosher food, circumcision, thus making the religion palatable to the non-Jews. Now, why do you think they did that? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with "Jesus fulfilling the law," but with gaining converts.
P
