Old testament v. new testament

[Minimalist]

I think, its safe to say, we will find the evidence. People have been skeptical about the Bible and pretty much always proven wrong.

Sol, you can kid yourself all you like but modern archaeology has trashed the OT.

There were no patriarchs. No Exodus. No Conquest. No "Glorious" United Kingdom. It's all an invention of later writers....and it does not hold up to modern scientific inquiry.

There was a (relatively ) wealthy northern kingdom. There was a painfully poor and useless southern kingdom. There were Philistines. There were Assyrians. There were Babylonians and Egyptians and Phoenicians all pretty much behaving as every other petty principality of the time.

What is singularly missing in the archaeological record is any indication of the deeds or existence of your precious Jews.

Find the evidence, you say? They are down to bedrock in places in Jerusalem which is not that big an area. They have found flint tools from paleolithic hunters. The only piece missing is the capitol of David's "empire" which no one else in the ancient world seems to know about, either. Why don't you strain your brain a bit and see if you can figure out why that is.

[chatpilot]

solja247 how about you stop trying to justify the cruelties of your god and accept them for what they are: murders and atrocities. Your O.T. god is a master at tyranny, scaring people into believing in him by force, not much free will involved in that. Serve me or die.

[solja247]

Sol, you can kid yourself all you like but modern archaeology has trashed the OT.

There were no patriarchs. No Exodus. No Conquest. No "Glorious" United Kingdom. It's all an invention of later writers....and it does not hold up to modern scientific inquiry.

There was a (relatively ) wealthy northern kingdom. There was a painfully poor and useless southern kingdom. There were Philistines. There were Assyrians. There were Babylonians and Egyptians and Phoenicians all pretty much behaving as every other petty principality of the time.

What is singularly missing in the archaeological record is any indication of the deeds or existence of your precious Jews.

Find the evidence, you say? They are down to bedrock in places in Jerusalem which is not that big an area. They have found flint tools from paleolithic hunters. The only piece missing is the capitol of David's "empire" which no one else in the ancient world seems to know about, either. Why don't you strain your brain a bit and see if you can figure out why that is.

Lack of evidence doesnt mean there isnt . We are still finding stuff mate. Just be patient.

solja247 how about you stop trying to justify the cruelties of your god and accept them for what they are: murders and atrocities. Your O.T. god is a master at tyranny, scaring people into believing in him by force, not much free will involved in that. Serve me or die.

I guess the only difference between an atheist and fundamentalist is.

That one actually believes it
The other uses straw men and proof texting to show why they dont believe it.

[Minimalist]

Lack of evidence doesnt mean there isnt Wink. We are still finding stuff mate. Just be patient.

Oh and I don't mind if you guys want to keep looking...just like those assholes who keep looking for Noah's fucking ark. With luck, maybe a few of them will die of frostbite and cause the IQ rating of the planet to tick up a notch.


Just so you understand that right now your bible has been dismissed as bullshit and you guys are up the creek without your holy paddle.


Oddly, the hottest argument is was it written in the late 7th century BC or was it written 4 to 5 centuries later. No one is even considering fundies bullshit anymore.

[everythingafter]

If you open your Bible to 1st and 2nd Kings. You will see the amount of 'good' kings being rather small compared to all the 'bad' kings. The OT is a beautiful picture to show how patient God is. He dealed with these people for a couple of years! Who would seriously have that patience? It shows that God also has that much patience for us and that God is slow to anger. Not rigged as such, but God knew He was going to get His hands dirty, really dirty, asociating with a bunch of uneducated slaves...

Or, it presents a picture of how whoever wrote the Hebrew Bible instilled patience into their god, but it says nothing about such a being had this push and pull relationship with Israel in this first place. Doctrinally, yes, the game is rigged. Why would God consciously choose to get his hands dirty with a creation that he knew full well before creating it that the creation would be very slow to believe and obey. He knew the whole vale of woe before it happened and yet chose to set it in motion. For what purpose? And then, when the promise of the Old Testament never materialized as he said it would, he went to the pains of sending his son to enact a new law and new covenant, as it were, this time, more personal, and presenting a more brutal fate for those who didn't accept the fatuous story. Why did he bother at all. The whole things seems unnecessarily complicated and forced for the omnipotent creator of the universe and of us.

[solja247]

Or, it presents a picture of how whoever wrote the Hebrew Bible instilled patience into their god, but it says nothing about such a being had this push and pull relationship with Israel in this first place. Doctrinally, yes, the game is rigged. Why would God consciously choose to get his hands dirty with a creation that he knew full well before creating it that the creation would be very slow to believe and obey. He knew the whole vale of woe before it happened and yet chose to set it in motion. For what purpose? And then, when the promise of the Old Testament never materialized as he said it would, he went to the pains of sending his son to enact a new law and new covenant, as it were, this time, more personal, and presenting a more brutal fate for those who didn't accept the fatuous story. Why did he bother at all. The whole things seems unnecessarily complicated and forced for the omnipotent creator of the universe and of us.

Interesting idea.

For some reason or other, God decided to set this universe in motion (some way or another). When you meet God, you can ask Him why you were created or anything for that matter. We have to work with what we know, we know that we are in existence because of God (assuming you take that position) so lets look at your theology.

Why do you consider the OT to be plan A? and God sacrificing His son plan B?
Please provide some verses.
However, read Romans, it is a brillant book! and explains a lot of your questions. Read it with an open mind and dont look at like a fundamentlist would and you will see the incredible plan of redemption.

Just so you understand that right now your bible has been dismissed as bullshit and you guys are up the creek without your holy paddle.

By who? Atheists? Biblical scholars?

Oddly, the hottest argument is was it written in the late 7th century BC or was it written 4 to 5 centuries later. No one is even considering fundies bullshit anymore.

what was written? The OT? You do know they have the torah dating back to 1000 BCE?

[Minimalist]

By who? Atheists? Biblical scholars?

Archaeologists. You know....people who actually know something as opposed to fundie morons.

[everythingafter]

Interesting idea.

For some reason or other, God decided to set this universe in motion (some way or another). When you meet God, you can ask Him why you were created or anything for that matter. We have to work with what we know, we know that we are in existence because of God (assuming you take that position) so lets look at your theology.

Why do you consider the OT to be plan A? and God sacrificing His son plan B?
Please provide some verses.
However, read Romans, it is a brillant book! and explains a lot of your questions. Read it with an open mind and dont look at like a fundamentlist would and you will see the incredible plan of redemption.

I'm saying that logically, the entire plot doesn't make sense, and I've just shown how it doesn't. And here, believers will say that God has his reasons or only God can answer "why." But one doesn't need to be omniscient to shoot holes through this one. We know only that we are in existence. We haven't a shred of evidence that God is behind it.

Yes, plan A and B might be a good way to put it. Here's tons of verses on the promise or covenant of God to Israel. The fulfillment didn't take place in OT times nor has it yet taken place, and while the Middle East continues to be a bloodbath, we can be quite certain it may never take place. While God did rescue Israel from Egypt, what about the Babylonian conquest and then Rome?

Yet in Psalms 105:7-13, 42-45, we have:

7 He is the LORD our God;
His judgments are in all the earth.
8 He remembers His covenant forever,
The word which He commanded, for a thousand generations,
9 The covenant which He made with Abraham,
And His oath to Isaac,
10 And confirmed it to Jacob for a statute,
To Israel as an everlasting covenant,
11 Saying, "To you I will give the land of Canaan
As the allotment of your inheritance,"
12 When they were few in number,
Indeed very few, and strangers in it.
13 When they went from one nation to another,
From one kingdom to another people,

42 For He remembered His holy promise,
And Abraham His servant.
43 He brought out His people with joy,
His chosen ones with gladness.
44 He gave them the lands of the Gentiles,
And they inherited the labor of the nations,
45 That they might observe His statutes
And keep His laws.
Praise the LORD!

Jews and Christians will always attempt right the problem by saying that the promise is conditional on Israel's obedience to God. But the original promise to Abraham contained no conditions, and in this passage, the psalm said "that they might observe His Statutes" not "if they observe His statutes." I know there's plenty of passages in which God isn't pleased with Israel's disobedience, but the original covenant in Genesis 12 contained to such conditions.

And so if the story of Christ was the only one that really mattered for Christians, why not just start with creation, the fall and then go straight to the manger? The plan A, plan B dichotomy makes sense on one level because in the OT we have Israel obtaining forgiveness by animal sacrifice in which the high priest, by a quite laborious process, would once per year offer a sacrifice for the sins of the entire nation. Whereas in the NT, a better, some would say, more civil and personal plan is delivered, that of personal savior to whom you pray for forgiveness, i.e. praying to God through Jesus Christ. Although in the new covenant, we do have the unfortunate introduction of eternal torment for not believing.

Some, like Jack Miles, take a literary approach and claim that the OT presents the story of a failed promise (Israel not being made a great nation), while the NT is an attempt by God, in the person of Christ, to make good on his promise to make a path toward salvation, this time, not in the form of physical conquests, but spiritual atonement. So there's at least two ways the NT is an attempt to improve on the old. I'm not making the case that it actually does improve on it, however. Just playing devil's advocate, ironically.

[DeistPaladin]

Lack of evidence doesnt mean there isnt Wink. We are still finding stuff mate. Just be patient.

Oh and I don't mind if you guys want to keep looking...

Am I right in thinking that the entire area of what was Judea has pretty much been combed over with virtually no stone left unturned? There's a lot of fame and fortune for any archeologist who can come up with something to validate the Bible's claims. I'm skeptical of Sol's claim that "we'll find the evidence someday" considering that there's not many places left for it to hide.

And who were these people who denied the Hittites existed that I keep hearing about?

[chatpilot]

The real difference between a Christian and an Atheist is that the former makes claims based on faith that they deem facts "because the bible tells me so" and then they try to validate what that fictitious book says, and the atheists looks for facts based on evidence and then make claims if they have the evidence to back them up. The N.T. is nothing more than an offshoot of the O.T. where its authors wanted to start their own religion and just built upon the foundation of the former beliefs. All religions steal and plagiarize from each other that is how they are developed and formed.