Does Christianity endorse the Old Testement?

All the time I am seeing people quote the old testement and pinning it on Christianity.

I hear christian preachers quoting from the old testement.

So is christianity all about a belief in the old testement?

Has christian belief been intentionally perverted into something else entirely?

reply to post by In nothing we trust


I grew up Christian (Sourthern Baptist) before abandoning that religion. All I *ever* heard outside of Easter and Chritsmas time were sermons from the Old Testement. When I asked about it, I was given the old line "The bible was written by men directed by the hand of God, so all of it is his true Word".

Anyway, I never understood it, but yeah, many sects of Christianity put a LOT of weight on the OT.

reply to post by In nothing we trust

Technically, yes they do, because it is a part of their Bible.
Traditionally it shows the lineage from an Orthodox or Catholic priest to St. Peter, to Jesus, to His bloodline to the creation. The narrative of Jesus is also believed to be foretold in the OT, and these highly disputed verses are supposed to give the New Testament credibility.

However, nowadays it is selectively abused, rather than used.
Practically all it's laws and traditions are ignored, except the verse on homosexuality in Leviticus, and the story of Sodom in Genesis 19 (although the incest part at the end is never mentioned).
Instead books like Daniel are used to supposedly decipher middle-East politics, and evangelists encourage people to give them money by misquoting verses on sacrifices to the (destroyed) Temple.

So except for financial reasons, homophobia, creationism and dodgy prophesy it is wholly ignored as a practical book.

I doubt all the time you hear this, in fact I wonder if you really spend all that much time thinking about things like this. Whats your real question here? For some reason I think you want to ask something else....

Originally posted by rogerstigers

Anyway, I never understood it, but yeah, many sects of Christianity put a LOT of weight on the OT.

Are there tax breaks or other incentives for pitching the Old Testement?

Originally posted by The Endtime Warrior

Whats your real question here? For some reason I think you want to ask something else...

No there is no other question that I intended to ask in this thread.

What prompted me to ask it was the africans burning witches thread which is going on right now.

There is some talk there about christians endorsing witch burning. It confused me, thats all.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

christianity " cherry picks " the old testiment

when it sauits them - they quote it and expecct totral obedience to thier selected quote

when it does not suit them they invoke the quote attributed to jesus ; " i bring a new law " and ignore the parts they feel questionable#

I love the Old Testament. Slavery, rape, pillaging, incest, then they released the new edition which added zombies!

All that was in the old testament was approved by God... groovy fellow that is.

reply to post by In nothing we trust


I understand..there are a lot of things that confuse me in life. People tend to say one thing, and do the other. Really matters not what label they identify themselves as. This is why I was asking if you really spend a whole lot of time noticing Christian ideology/behavior. You made it sound like you visit different kinds of churches or there are people you notice standing on corners preaching this stuff. I for one, never notice these things nor go to churches. To me you won't find it unless you are looking for it. If I paid attention more, perhaps I would notice more things, but that could be said for anything in life.

Originally posted by The Endtime Warrior

You made it sound like you visit different kinds of churches or there are people you notice standing on corners preaching this stuff.

In fact I have done quite a bit of comparitive analysis.

How could you not notice all of the churches or believers out there I wonder?

Hard to miss all of the window and bumper stickers, crosses hanging from rear view mirrors, churches on the street corners, people knocking on your door prophesying, radio broadcasting, TV programming and other various forms of marketing and advertising.

reply to post by In nothing we trust


How could I not? I simply don't focus on things like that....I am more into music, so I guess you could say I notice more things about music. Of course there are a lot of hypocritical elements found in music, such as the artists and what they truly believe, contrasted with the kind/type of music they produce or endorse. In my opinion, hypocrisy is found everywhere and to be focused on one group means you spend a lot of time thinking about it. So ya, I guess I spend a lot of time thinking about music. Ya there may be churches in town, and there may be people speaking their minds on a corner, but I am not forced to listen to it. If I feel their entire religion is fairy tales and make believe, it would not bother me in the least what they waste their time doing.

What is more confusing is that Jesus says he doesn't come to destroy the Laws of Moses.
On the other hand He clearly does so, most clearly the law in Exodus on divorce and the custom of polygamy.
But all we have are NT translations written from 70 to 380 years after Jesus's death and apparently decided by committee.
Much else was changed later, like the adoption of the pagan Sunday Sabbath, and the dropping of Biblical feasts in favor of Christianized pagan celebrations like Easter and Christmas.
It varies from church to church - some fundamentalists sects are re-adopting the Biblical Sabbath and other customs, but they are very much minorities.

Early Christianity demanded that gentiles be circumcised and follow dietary laws to convert fully.
Increasingly gentiles became "God fearers", or semi-converts, unwilling to undergo dangerous (and painful) adult penile mutilation. This was solved when one of the apostles had a dream which told him circumcision and dietary laws were unnecessary. Quite a flimsy excuse to make things more convenient for gentile converts, scoffers might argue.

I believe there is a time and place for old testament theology. Is it endorsed?
Well I endorse it for several reasons, but I will be summarily tagged as a hypocrite and an endorser of murder, pillaging, incest, stoning, genital mutilation ...oh gosh the list goes on. I doubt anyone would understand the reasons behind my endorsement, and strangely enough I don't really care.

Never the less, as a strong believer that Jesus Christ is the redeemer. I....do find myself plugged into both testaments without regret or concern.

reply to post by The Endtime Warrior

Interesting for those into music.
The first five books of the Old Testament can be sung, just like the Koran and the Bhagavad-Gita (song of the Lord).
I'm not sure anyone can sing the NT in its entirety.

reply to post by halfoldman


Really? never heard of that, are you talking in its original language or any translation?

Originally posted by halfoldman

Early Christianity demanded that gentiles be circumcised and follow dietary laws to convert fully.

Not sure I understand the Circumcision issue either.

Surely thier are athiests who endorse or reject circumcision. It's not really a choice that you get to make since it is made by your parents.

I wonder if the state endorses circumcision?

Will it be mandatory with state run healthcare I wonder?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), global estimates suggest that 30% of males are circumcised, of whom 68% are Muslim.

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by The Endtime Warrior

I believe the Torah (1st 5 books of the Tanakh, the Jewish OT, basically the same, just the church shuffled some chapters about to put the prophetic sounding stuff at the end) is sung in Hebrew.
The Koran is sung in Arabic, and the Bhagavad-Gita in a virtually dead Aryan language called Sanskrit.
As such we miss out on part of the experience. The poetry of the Koran in Arabic is apparently so powerful that just hearing it has made men fall to their knees in conversion.
The NT was written in a cultural melting pot of Greek, two kinds of Latin, Aramaic and Hebrew.

IMO most "Christians" in the United States are actually Jews (unbeknownst to them). Is it any surprise they support the insane doctrines of the Neo-Cons?

It is inconceivable to me that anyone following the teachings of Christ could support the teachings of the Old Testament, or the teachings of the current GOP.

reply to post by snowen20


So, on what basis do you reject the holy traditions of your religion, and why?

Originally posted by halfoldman

The poetry of the Koran in Arabic is apparently so powerful that just hearing it has made men fall to their knees in conversion.

Is there a verbal command to kneel embedded within the incantation perhaps?

Didn't Jesus say that every knee would bend?