Mosaic Law

[steve_bank]

My chronic point to Christians is that the gospel Jesus did not create any hing new, he was preaching and referncing Moses and the Jewish prophets.

So, if you want to follow Jesus, follow the Law Of Moses, IOW the Jewish scripture. Jews are not hung up on Jesus and the gospels so they can and have modified the old codes. Modern Jewish Israel led the USA on legal rights for gay couple and marriage.

Law of Moses - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Law of Moses or Torah of Moses (Hebrew: תֹּורַת מֹשֶׁה‎, Torat Moshe, Septuagint Ancient Greek: νόμος Μωυσῆ, nómos Mōusē, or in some translations the "Teachings of Moses"[1]) is a biblical term first found in the Book of Joshua 8:31–32, where Joshua writes the Hebrew words of "Torat Moshe תֹּורַת מֹשֶׁה‎" on an altar of stones at Mount Ebal. The text continues:

And afterward he read all the words of the teachings, the blessings and cursings, according to all that is written in the book of the Torah.
— Joshua 8:34[2]

The "Law of Moses" in ancient Israel was different from other legal codes in the ancient Near East because transgressions were seen as offences against God rather than solely as offences against society (civil law).[6] This contrasts with the Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100–2050 BCE), and the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BCE, of which almost half concerns contract law).

However, the influence of the ancient Near Eastern legal tradition on the Law of ancient Israel is recognised and well documented,[7] for example, in principles such as lex talionis ("eye for an eye"), and in the content of the provisions. Some similarities are striking, such as in the provisions concerning a man-goring ox (Code of Hammurabi laws 250–252, Exodus 21:28–32). Some writers have posited direct influence: David P. Wright, for example, asserts that the Covenant Code is "directly, primarily, and throughout dependent upon the Laws of Hammurabi", "a creative rewriting of Mesopotamian sources ... to be viewed as an academic abstraction rather than a digest of laws".[8] Others posit indirect influence, such as via Aramaic or Phoenician intermediaries.[9] There is consensus that the similarities are a result of inheriting common oral traditions. Another example, the Israelite Sabbatical Year has antecedents in the Akkadian mesharum edicts granting periodic relief to the poor.[10] An important distinction, however, is that in ancient Near East legal codes, as in more recently unearthed Ugaritic texts, an important, and ultimate, role in the legal process was assigned to the king. Ancient Israel, before the monarchical period beginning with David, was set up as a theocracy, rather than a monarchy, although God is most commonly portrayed like a king.[11]

The 'Chines menu' pick and choose Christian morality.

Christian interpretation
Main article: Christian views on the Old Covenant

Orthodox Christians regard the Law of Moses as still fully in effect but transformed and fulfilled in a number of ways. Other Christians believe that only parts dealing with the moral law (as opposed to ceremonial law) are still applicable, others believe that none apply, dual-covenant theologians believe that the Old Covenant remains valid only for Jews, and a minority have the view that all parts still apply to believers in Jesus and in the New Covenant without any transformation in their character.

According to Matthew 5, Jesus says:

Do not presume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter shall pass from the Law, until all is accomplished! Therefore, whoever nullifies one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
— Matthew 5:17–19

The Gospel of John (John 1:16–17) states:

For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.

 

[Politesse]

Why would any rational ad mroal person follow a path other than "picking and choosing", as you say? Ours is not a world in which absolutist attitudes prosper over the long term; you have to keep your head about you.

I like Chinese food, too. But no, I wouldn't want to have to choose between ordering everything on the menu or ordering nothing on the menu. I wouldn't even want to do that at an In-And-Out. On account of that would be fucking stupid.

 

[steve_bank]

That is a debate on moral philosophy and what moral means.

Christians who do not all agree on what to follow in the bible all claim to the true Christian morality.

Conservative Christians claim their morality is absolute derived from god through the bible. As does the RCC.

They would accuse someone like me of moral relativism. With no absolute moral frame of right and wrong then anything goes. I make no claim to any absolute morality and I go by empathy,experience and what I have read over the years.

What was right and wring when I was born in the 50s is not what is right and wrong today.

With picking and choosing from alleged words of Jesus in the gospels one ignores who he would have been in the day, the context of the words, and what he was referring to as moral values. IOW Jewish OT moral laws.

If you call yourself a follower of Jesus and ignore that I'd say you are in moral error. If you argue Jesus' words somehow justify morality counter to biblical morality then Idd say you are in moral error, or maybe grasping at staws.

The problem with Chrtiaan pick and choose biblical morality is each person or sect claims andabsolute truth, leading to conflict and violence from the start of Christianity to today.

I found useful things in Bhudism, the bible, Confusious, and even Sung Tzu's Art Of War. Some Greek philosophers.

I would not claim to be a be a follower of Buddha or anyone else, I take what is useful and makes sense for me and drop the rest.

Westerners who adopted Buddhism starting in the 60s as part of a shift away from conventional Christian values have the same problem. If you read the basic Buddhist principles it is very socially conservative. No intoxicants, no fornication, moderation of speech and actions.

Buddhist have the same scriptural origins problem as Christians. Rhere are no contempraeous acoounts of Buddha. His story is largely anecdotal.

The first collectd writings about Buddha were written one or two centuries after he lived. No one can say what Buddha actually said.

 

[Politesse]

Conservative Christians claim their morality is absolute derived from god through the bible. As does the RCC.

I disagree with them, and so should you. When I "pick and choose" what I consider to be good moral teachings, I'm just being responsible. When they do it, they make liars and hypocrites of themselves.

 

[steve_bank]

I am not faulting you or saying your are wrong in your moral choices, I am saying it is inconsistent to call yourself Christian and a follower of Jesus and reject the biblical OT morality Jesus was calling his fellow Jews to follow.

I grew up in the RCC and was taught the RCC was the one and only true 'apostolic' Christian church, and that the pope was god's word on Earth on moral issuse. The RCC as an absolute moral authority under a god.

Evangelicals are biblical literalists who claim they follow god's absolute morality as laid out in the bible. I know this from personal experience. They would find a gay person calling him or her self Christian abhorrent.

Pete Buttigieg looks lie an interesting guy. Harvard and a Rhodes Scholar. Served in military intelligence. Clearly a rational reasoning person. He is Christian and a gay married man. I have listened to him speak and in interviews. Being married and gay aside he sounds like a conservative Christian at times. When he ran for president he probably drove Evangelicals crazy.

I have nothing against Pete Buttigeig but objecvely I dn't see how he can be a bible based Chrtitian.

Maybe you do not understand religion as well as you think you do.

 

[Politesse]

I am not faulting you or saying your are wrong in your moral choices, I am saying it is inconsistent to call yourself Christian and a follower of Jesus and reject the biblical OT morality Jesus was calling his fellow Jews to follow

I mean, I don't. But I also don't think your argument holds water anyway, many people belong to religious or philosophical traditions without necessarily holding themselves liable to agree with every single thing its founder may have believed. For traditions without a history of orthodoxic thinking, the entire notion would seem nonsensical. If a person has never espoused or endorsed a fundamentalist ideology, why should they be held to fundamentalist values? We all know what fundamentalists believe, but since when did anyone outside their movement accept their talking points as law, or why should they? Mayor Pete is an Episcopelian, not a fundy.

 

[steve_bank]

Prefacing with no one knows who actually said the words attributed to Jesus. Going by what the gospels we have say.

Jesus called Jews who preached the letter of the law but did not follow the letter of the law hypocrites. He said do as they say not as they do.

By his words if you claim to be Christian but do not follow biblical morality, are you not a hypocrite?

My view it is morality ambiguous to say you are Christian and do not follow biblical morality. There is no debate here for me.

Biblical literalists are morally ambiguous. They claim the OT is an absolute god mandated morality, but pick and choose from Leviticus. They all pick and choose in practice. Even the literalists. The OT and NT are morally ambiguous to begin with,

If someone's version of Jesus makes them happy and is not toxic to others, good for them. I just think objectively it is morally ambiguous.

As I like to say, if you want to follow Jesus eat kosher.

 

[DBT]

The rationale some use is that through the sacrifice of Jesus, Christians are no longer subject to Mosaic law. That Jesus fulfilled and abolished the law...in spite of saying that he had not come to abolish the law of the prophets.

 

[Politesse]

By his words if you claim to be Christian but do not follow biblical morality, are you not a hypocrite?

If you don't agree and never agreed in the first place that being a Christian means slavishly following nouveau-traditional interpretations of the Bible, why would it make you a hypocrite to... well, not do that? Why should they?

It's like saying it's hypocritical to be a member of the Democratic Party but disagree with the Party on immigration policy. Or hypocritical to be a citizen of France but not endorse every action of Louis XIV. Not everyone is a fundamentalist believer, a party line politician, or martinet patriot; if they have morality and a functioning brain stem instead, that isn't hypocritical, it's just sensible.

 

[steve_bank]

You are suding lie a theist. Oscervation not a cricism.

There was a thread on what is a Christian.

To be Jewish, Buddhist, or Muslim there are very clear requirements. Not so much for Christians.

A Christian I worked with tried to convert me. He asked if I had been batpized and I said I was. He said I could take that into any Christian church.

Derived form the baptism of Jesus, baptism is a hallmark of Christianity as the beginning and membership. The Jewish based ritual cleansing and purification with water. Washing away sins and being spiritually reborn into a new life.

A black Baptist friend from Mt Zion in Seattle told me his daughter chose to be baptized. They have a baptismal pool for full body immersion. They wait for when a group is ready, and then have a baptismal ceebration at the church.

As to slavish, anyone can identify as Christian, I have met them. I have met people who are self identified as Jewish. They don't conform to the morality and probably do not understand it.

If you claim to be a Christian then I ask what does that mean. When I asked you what Pagan-Christin meant you dd not answer so I will noy prss it.

If you claim to be a follower of Marx and say you reject parts of commons then you need to create a new category.

There was a Christian-Atheist on the forum.

In the case of Jesus I think it is intellectually dishonest to claim Jesus is moral truth but not follow his basic morality, which is the old tribal Jewish scripture.

I decided a long time ago I could never be religious. It inevitably involves moral ambiguity. The OT and NT are filled wih ambiguities.

As I saud watever floats your boat.

 

[Politesse]

To be Jewish, Buddhist, or Muslim there are very clear requirements. Not so much for Christians.

There are plenty of controversies about who is or is not Jewish, actually, and likewise Muslim.The orthopraxic nature of Buddhism makes it less likely that someone would try to gatekeep in that way, but they have other forms of disputation and disagreement. Social and political life is complicated, in all faiths, and there are those who keep their own mind about things in all faiths as well.

When I asked you what Pagan-Christin meant you dd not answer so I will noy prss it.

You sure like to repeat that. Yes, you asked me over and over, and I answered you over and over, and because my answer wasn't satisfying to you, you continue to ask. The answer was never complicated; I was part of both a Christian congregation and a Pagan circle at the time. 1+1=2, it really isn't that confusing.

If you claim to be a follower of Marx and say you reject parts of commons then you need to create a new category.

I've never met anyone who did describe themselves "follower of Marx", as such. Plenty of people describe themselves as Marxist, though, and they definitely don't assiduously "follow" every single line of Das Kapital. Indeed, I challenge you to find a single prominent Marxist who has never critiqued some element of Marxist theory. Mindless but neutral conformity is just not how philosophy works in real life, and Marxists are if anything known more for their contentiousness than their rigidity.

I decided a long time ago I could never be religious. It inevitably involves moral ambiguity.

Were you eleven at the time? Twelve? Because most adults are more than capable of handling a little bit of moral ambiguity, and life will certainly hand you some situations of moral ambiguity whether or not you feel ready to deal with them. Life is not black and white.

The OT and NT are filled wih ambiguities.

And yet you claim there is only one way to read them and anyone who disagrees with you is a hypocrite? If the meaning of a text is ambiguous, how can your conclusions about the text be unambiguous?

 

[steve_bank]

Your personal interpretation of Christianity is your personal bossiness. Interpretaions abound.

My point of the OP is that if you take the gospels as the words of a 2000 year old dead Jewish rabbi and actually consider all of what he said, he was a Jew preaching to fellow Jews to return to traditional Jewish values. The laws of the prophets and Moses.

n the context of the ties, if you were on the streets of Jerusalem there would be intense Jewish nationalism, militant rebellion, Roman occupation, and claimants to the Messiah prophesy.

That is the backdrop and context for Jesus and what he said. We have seen it in modern times. The Christian revival movement in which Billy Gram made his reputation. Return to traditional Christian values.

There are 613 dictates that can be pulled out of the OT and they are online.

Christians rationalize why they keep the Levpticus bias against gays but do not follow dietary laws. That ambiguity over the bible being truth but some truths are more true than others has been a major source of debate with theists for years on the forum.

So, if you really want to follow Jesus, follow his Jewish morality of his day.

If not make your own interpretation. Many do. Some get rich with it, mega TV churches. Books.

 

[Politesse]

Your personal interpretation of Christianity is your personal bossiness. Interpretaions abound.

You say you're fine with people having their own interpretations of things. But you also started a thread to complain about people whose interpretations differ from yours. There's a contradiction here.

And you are drastically oversimplifying history - the last thing any historian would call 1st century Judea is unified. Our sole history text of any length, from that period, is more or less a review of civil and foreign wars, many of them highly motivated by differing ideologies and interpretations of what the Jewish laws do or do not require. As today, some had a casual and metropolitan attitude. Others were zealots, who didn't necessarily agree with each other about what they should be zealous over. And the gospels themselves, though not intended as histories, certainly suggest a similarly tumultuous environment, in which Jesus' own life situation and intentions are not made very clear.

 

[steve_bank]

The OP is bassed on the alleged words of Jesus. He was preaching to fellow Jews to adheree to the law of the prophets and Moses, which is the OT and all that implies.

Agree or dsagree and say why.

 

[Politesse]

Depends on what you mean by "adhering to the law of the prophets and Moses". I certainly think the historical Jesus believed himself and his disciples to be keeping Torah as he defined it, and would want ethnic Jews of later generations to do likewise had he expected there to be any such later generations. He was not a "literalist", though, that much is clear considering the many teachings and stories of Jesus openly violating the letter of the law, and hid generally dismissive attitude toward the superficial piety (as he saw it) of the Sadducees and other religious authorities.

 

[No Robots]

The Bible shows a progression of development of the Jewish people from narrow tribalism and legalism to universalism and moral autonomy. The teaching of Jesus is the final stage in this development. It is the destiny of the whole of mankind to embrace universalism and moral autonomy.

 

[steve_bank]

Depends on what you mean by "adhering to the law of the prophets and Moses". I certainly think the historical Jesus believed himself and his disciples to be keeping Torah as he defined it, and would want ethnic Jews of later generations to do likewise had he expected there to be any such later generations. He was not a "literalist", though, that much is clear considering the many teachings and stories of Jesus openly violating the letter of the law, and hid generally dismissive attitude toward the superficial piety (as he saw it) of the Sadducees and other religious authorities.

I get that you do not wamt to answer. Neither here nor here for me.

In the text from Semon On the Mount I posted is Jesus telling Jews to follow the law of Moses and the prophets, with all that immplies?

Yes there are moral inconstencies in the gospels whuch indicates the quoes are not fone person. That is why us athesist on the forum question drawing any morality from the words of Jesus.

This is all a diversion from the question and the OP.

Amser directly or not.

 

[Politesse]

In the text from Semon On the Mount I posted is Jesus telling Jews to follow the law of Moses and the prophets, with all that immplies?

That depends on what you think "all that implies" is, and on what the author of Matthew meant. The latter is up for debate and ultimately unknowable, but the former is something you could clarify if you have a mind.

I have already answered directly. You just get angry whenever someone points out that the world is a complicated place often lacking in clear or unambiguous answers. Neither you nor I can eliminate every contradiction or mystery in every ancient text. That just isn't reality.

 

[steve_bank]

Hardly angry over anything on an anonymous forum where there are no consequences. I take it seriously enough to generally be fociued and engaged, this is just mental exercise.

You are doing the 'Christian two step'' dancing around issues and questions with the gospels. If you say you answered, fine. The last word is yours.

 

[Politesse]

Hardly angry over anything on an anonymous forum where there are no consequences. I take it seriously enough to generally be fociued and engaged, this is just mental exercise.

You are doing the 'Christian two step'' dancing around issues and questions with the gospels. If you say you answered, fine. The last word is yours.

Still agnostic, Steve...