Mosaic Law and Christianity

I read a black civil rights leader who said he always knew he was about to be attacked when someone on the under side started quoting “where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Even though, I didn’t agree with him, I could see the point he was making.

I feel the same way when someone starts quoting obscure examples of Mosaic Law or legal justfications from Post-Soloomonic Judah to make a point about Christians somehow being hypocritical or fanatics or something. The Old Testament is important for the historical background information and the examples of faith that are contained within it. But the true tenets of the Christian Faith are found in the New Testament. I don’t recall very many examples of Christ citing verses like those mentioned, and I somehow think there was a very good reason for that.

There are differences between the beliefs of Christians and Jews.

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I do not believe the "Biblical Marriage" citation says that Christians in general are hypocritical or fanatical.

I believe it makes the point that Scripture is frequently twisted by different factions to make different points suiting the agenda of the moment.

As I see it, it is directed not at Christians or Jews generally, but solely at those political activists who misquote the Bible to justify the extremely modern idea that marriage is a voluntary union of one man and one woman designed for the primary purpose of complementarity and procreation.

In Old Testament times, marriage was an arranged affair conducted under the grueling conditions of ancient daily life for purposes that included division of labor and the reinforcement of gender roles. The notion that spouses were co-equal, complementary sexual partners did not emerge, as I see it, until the 20th century.

I wholly agree that the OT is important for historical background. The OT traditions served Jews well, and (taken with a grain of salt) they do so today. I also agree that the tenets of the Christian faith are best found in the New Testament -- and in God's revelation to humankind (via the Holy Spirit) in the 2,000 years since NT days.

That is not the belief of the political religious right which, in my opinion, desires to revert all of us back to Old Testament law.

Finally, I agree with you that the Christian and Jewish faiths are drastically different. The "Judeo-Christian" tradition is largely a myth created by evangelicals to recruit Jews and to give untraditional, conservative Protestantism some of the tradition-rooted credibility that Judaism enjoys.

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Mosaic Law and Christianity

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