You all convinced me, I'm now an Atheist!!!

[Davka]

So those who claim to "follow the canonical teachings of Jesus", would reject the idea that the Old Testament is no longer required. And conversely, those who follow Paul's idea that Jesus fulfilled the law and now we don't have to pay attention to it would say... what? That they just find Paul's ideas more appealing? I would've thought that Jesus would have the final say on this kind of thing seeing as he is God.

what is so hard to understand here? I will break it all down in easy one or two sentence explainations. ask a question on the parts that confuse you.

The OT IS REQUIRED!!!

The OT didn't contain just the rules/a list of thou shalts and thou shalt nots...

The OT Also contained the Requirements for attoning of sin, as well as the consenquence for sin.

The OT shows us that the price of all Sin is Death.

In the OT for small sin the death of an animal would be good enough to keep the sinner for being stoned to death.

Meaning once the animal died the sinner was not longer responsible for that sin. The animal took the punishment for the sinner.

For large sin the blood of an animal was not enough to attone for those sins. This meant the sinner was to be put to death.

Again if one sins, someone/Something had to die as the penality for all sin is Death.

That's what the church tells you, but it's not what the OT says.

I once wrote an in-depth Bible Study on the 5 types of offerings outlined in Leviticus 1-6. These are (in order of appearance) the Burnt Offering; the Grain Offering; the Peace Offering; the Sin Offering; and the Guilt Offering. And yes, I got paid for writing the study (it was for a major Evangelical organization) and yes, it's copy-written, and no, I cannot legally reproduce it here. But I can give a synopsis.

The first 3 offerings have nothing to do with sin. They are required simply because God says so. This leaves the Sin Offering and the Guilt Offering as the only 2 which have any bearing on this discussion.

The Sin Offering covers the breaking of the 613 Laws (tor'ot) in the Pentateuch (torah). However - and this is important - you could only offer an animal in sacrifice for accidentally breaking the Law. Anyone who purposely sinned against God was stoned to death. Touch the unclean thing on purpose? Death. Gather firewood on Shabbat? Death. There was no difference between "big" and "small" sins against God.

Kinda makes you wonder about the character of YHWH - but I digress.

The Guilt Offering could get you off the hook only for sinning against your fellow Jew. If you ripped someone off, or damaged their property, you could make restitution and kill an animal, and you were off the hook.

Human sacrifice is the biggest no-no in the Tanach. It's what Ba'al (lit. "Lord") required, and YHWH didn't like Ba'al back in those polytheistic days. So the idea that a human could be sacrificed for our sins against YHWH simply does not compute.

What's more, Christianity claims that Jesus takes the place of all the required sacrifices. No more burnt offering, no more grain offering, no more peace offering. Even though Jesus said that he had NOT, repeat NOT, come to abolish the Torah, that's precisely what Christianity has done. You can knowingly break every single one of the 613 commandments as a Christian, and be totally OK with YHWH, even though YHWH specifically said (and repeated many times) that His commandments were forever.

Most Christians never bother to study the OT. And no wonder - YHWH is a real prick.

Good thing he's fictional.