"The bible test" Answered.

[xpastor]

Drich, you are putting your ignorance of biblical scholarship on display. I was summarizing a theory held by some reputable OT scholars; it originated with the anthropologist

And you applied this closed minded arguement to what I said, dispite the details of my arguement. and then you attack your arguement as a way to invalidate mine. Still not star ship captian behaivor.

Drich, language is not one of your strong points. I did not attack my own argument, so what the hell do you mean?

Well, Drich, you have just proved my contention that you cannot read. YOUR Bible says that the rabbit "chews its cud"

Maybe the Jews back then did not know of the rules we would eventually apply (4000 years or so later) to the practice of "rumination." Maybe to them the simple chewing motion that rock rabbits make was enough for them to identify it as "gerah."

That was exactly the sense of my original remark, that I was not going to make a big fuss about this inaccuracy in the OT, but then YOU made a big issue about chewing the cud versus just eating grass. The fact remains, the Hebrew uses the same phrase (chew the cud) for both rabbit and "clean" animals, so the only distinction that sets the rabbit apart is that it does not have a cloven hoof. This is what makes it ritually unclean for the ancient Israelites.

"There are numerous diseases that humans may contract from endogenously infected meat, such as anthrax, bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis, salmonellosis, listeriosis, trichinosis or taeniasis."

was this true 4000 years ago?
in a word, no. we only have evidence of Anthrax from 300AD forward.
Bovine TB (cow cough ) orginated in England in the 20th century, brucellosis another 20th century plague. As far as the rest I did not look up their orgin dates, you can if you want. The reason I did not look these up is because salmonellosis, listeriosis, trichinosis, taeniasis cease to be a threat if the rest of the dietary laws concerning food prep and avoidance of certain parts is practiced.

These diseases were first identified in modern times, but it is very unlikely that they did not exist in some form in ancient times. You tried to claim H1N1 as a threat from pork which the dietary laws guarded against. There is no chance of transmission from the meat if it is properly cooked.

And to bring this list up to date we might also instance mad cow disease. And then there is "bird flu" which is contracted from bird types considered clean.

You do understand that both of these are 'new' diseases right? You also know these laws only applied to the Jews who live thousands of years ago right?

Avian influenza is just as new and just as old as swine flu. As a matter of fact, many strains of avian influenza are H1N1, though there is also H5N1. Wikipedia says that influenza has been with us throughout human history. Mad cow disease (BSE) has come to the fore in modern times, and probably spread because of the recent practice of putting animal parts into cattle feed. However, few diseases are totally new.

Two leading hypotheses suggest it may have jumped species from the disease scrapie in sheep, or that it evolved from a spontaneous form of "mad cow disease" that has been seen occasionally in cattle for many centuries. In the fifth century BC, Hippocrates described a similar illness in cattle and sheep, which he believed also occurred in man (Wikipedia)

So this disease has been present for centuries as scrapie in your ritually pure sheep. Gee, maybe you should take time to check your facts before you pose as the great expert.

I concede that I was wrong about pork having a shelf life as good as beef, which is more than you will ever do on any point, no matter how egregiously stupid it was. However, I note that you have not a word to say about the shelf life of poultry, which was accepted as clean.

How big were birds back then compared to pig or camels? How much self life does one need on a 1 lb chicken? verse how much self life is needed on a 100 lb pig or a 1400 lb camel?

And what about a 100 lb sheep or a 1500 lb beef carcass. Actually the whole thing about shelf life is a red herring and I am sorry I wasted time on it. I presume that a large animal like a beef would often be eaten by a large crowd of people, or it might be preserved by some method such as smoking or salting.

In any case, the biblical laws were NOT instituted for health reasons. Pork and camel and rabbit would be considered unclean even if they were thoroughly cooked immediately after slaughter.

So you have a recipe that calls for 1400 lbs of camel meat?

Same recipe as above for 1500 lb. of beef.

By the way, just to touch on your earlier report of people contracting bubonic plague from eating raw camel liver as reported by the Saudi government. Sounds fishy to me. Flea bites are virtually always the vector by which bubonic plague is spread. The Saudi government is not high on my list of reliable sources. They would lie very readily to avoid scaring the foreign workers on whom their economy relies.

The distinction between clean and unclean animals had no known health benefits, and give the Bible credit that it makes no such claims. It's just one of those weird ritual things found among superstitious ancient peoples, like the other prohibition against weaving cloth from two different types of fiber. The Israelites were not unique in having such strange ideas of what makes a person unclean. The Romans certainly matched them on that, and probably just about every other nation living ca 700 - 500 BCE when these biblical texts were assembled.

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The passage of the rich young man is one of my favourites in the Bible.

The answer in the quiz is completely wrong and out of context, and I shall prove it.

• Just then someone came up and asked Him, “Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?”
  
  “Why do you ask Me about what is good?” He said to him. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”

The answer is "keep the commandments", NOT "sell all of your possessions and give the money to the poor."

What Jesus says is this: “If you want to be perfect,” Jesus said to him, “go, sell your belongings and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.”

Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor and you will have: treasure in heaven (in addition to the already promised eternal life).

This is a perfect example of the new covenant promise vs the old. In order to enter live you had to "keep the commandments", described by Peter in Acts 15 as "a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear?"

Aractus, 30+ years ago I would have agreed with you entirely. In fact, I would probably have beaten you to the punch, because "the proper distinction between law and gospel" is at the heart of Lutheran theology. However, now, I have to disagree on a number of grounds.

Most importantly, you have misrepresented the passage by means of an omission. Here is the full text of Matthew 19:16-21.

16 Once a man came to Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what good thing must I do to receive eternal life?”

17 “Why do you ask me concerning what is good?” answered Jesus. “There is only One who is good. Keep the commandments if you want to enter life.”

18 “What commandments?” he asked.

Jesus answered, “Do not commit murder; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not accuse anyone falsely; 19 respect your father and your mother; and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

20 “I have obeyed all these commandments,” the young man replied. “What else do I need to do?”

21 Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven; then come and follow me.”

Jesus does not tell him anything resembling the gospel of forgiveness of sins. He tells the young man to obey the commandments as the way to receive eternal life. And when the young man says he has kept all these commandments (even the summary to love your neighbor as yourself) Jesus does not contradict him as Paul would have (There is none righteous, not one) he just gives him, as the Catholics would call it, a work of supererogation.

Obviously, we have to just agree to disagree about the New Testament. As I have said before, I do not think any of the gospels were put in written form earlier than 30 years after the crucifixion, after oral traditions had a long time to build up legends and change the story.

I believe the only authentic teaching of Jesus which is preserved in the synoptic gospels is comprised of the apocalyptic prophecies, the moral teaching (e.g. sermon on the mount) and the parables.

Jesus did not imagine that he was going to give his life as a ransom for the many; that was injected into his teaching later, but Jesus himself did not have the benefit of reading Paul's epistles.

He thought that the world was going to end within that generation. I personally do not think he even identified himself with the Son of Man who would come in judgment.

All his parables breathe urgency, the end is nigh, and all his moral teaching is extreme: "Sell all that you have and give it to the poor. Make yourself a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." (No thanks!) It is not practical for the long haul. Unfortunately, extremism of all types is very eye-catching. Most Christians thrill to it and then utterly ignore it in their lives. They can always fall back on Pauline theology to practice Christianity and the Art of RV Maintenance.