Old Testament vs. New Testament

Old Testament had way better stories.

haven't actually read all of the old testament but the best stuff there (genesis, job) beats the best stuff in the new testament.

God's more of a motherfucker in the OT

New has the book of Revelation, which invented metal

my initial impulse is that "be excellent to each other" beats out "don't fuck with Yahweh" but let's see the cases first

challenging opinion here, but i think New has the most interesting story of all (the life and times of Jesus) but the way the tale is told falls flat. they even have 4 different writers take a stab at it! no one really nails it.

The New Testament doesn't devote 50 pages to the description of a stupid tent, which doesn't even remain in the narrative for that long. So that one.

was always disappointed that they skip over jesus's childhood so fast, i always wanted more stories about him outsmarting teachers and pwning bullies.

it is interesting to me how basic messages about loving, forgiving and the rich being assholes have been explained away by unforgiving, loveless rich assholes for the last 2000 years

was always disappointed that they skip over jesus's childhood so fast, i always wanted more stories about him outsmarting teachers and pwning bullies.

i feel like the gospels are due for a modern day "origins" treatment where we learn more about those kinds of things.

"Smallville: Nazareth," this fall on the WB

Which testament is more influential?

i voted

I like the early stuff, much more raw and powerful. The later stuff is overwritten and way too sentimental. Also has his cop-out happy ending.

but also wailing and gnashing of teeth

morbs otm

also one inspired one of the worst John Huston films, the other the best Monty Python

yeah, the end of Revelation is not happy at all! it's the chosen few dancing on top of the burned corpses of their former neighbors! it is DARK!

OT is so much weirder and mysterious and varied and interesting. I remember the first time I read the gospels in the NT and I was like "wtf this is the same story told 4 different times?! gtfo"

if someone wrote the OT or NT today, would it be picked up by a publisher and successfully released? i'm guessing it would be a small press specialty item kind of thing.

voting old because I'm currently reading it for the first time. haven't read the new, doesn't look as interesting.

One of the greatest gifts my grandmother and great-grandmother bought me one Easter was this massive children's coffee table book of Bible stories. It didn't stint on the violence. The images were vividly drawn and the prose at a seventh grade level.

Prefer Legacy era but their last two albums are dynamite

for some reason one of my favorites was always david spying on bathsheba on the rooftop, and then sending her husband to the front lines of a battle to eliminate him from the equation. similar to alfred, i had a illustrated children's bible. the drawing showed her husband being pierced by several arrows, writhing in agony, with the evil archers visible atop the castle wall. it was a nice visual complement to the illustration on the opposite page, showing david looking down on a bathing bathsheba (censored, of course) - these different versions of evil and violence manifesting themselves from above - one political/white collar kind of crime, the other pure violence through an arrow.

lol Mordy

wd like to state for the record i am considering this purely from the texts' agencement as Christian testaments btw

These are both good but make no real sense (beyond "mythical" for atheists or "literal history" for evangelicals) wo some kind of Quabbalah-derrived symbolist interpretation.

"new testament" -- written in greek and is a lot more ethically advanced/"hellenistic"

Job = Ecclesiastes >> J > E > Psalms > social justic prophets like Amos, Micah > D > Proverbs > apocalyptic prophets >> P > Paul > NT hangars-on

i want to like song of solomon so much more than i do

i feel like the gospels are due for a modern day "origins" treatment where we learn more about those kinds of things.

2 1 And the son of Annas the scribe had come with Joseph. And taking a willow twig, he destroyed the pools and drained out the water which Jesus had gathered together. And he dried up their gatherings.
2 And Jesus, seeing what had happened, said to him, “Your fruit (shall be) without root and your shoot shall be dried up like a branch scorched by a strong wind.”
3 And instantly that child withered.

3 1 While he was going from there with his father Joseph, a child running tore into his shoulder. And Jesus said to him, “You shall no longer go our way.” And instantly he died. At once the people, seeing that he was dead, cried out and said, “Where was this boy born that his word becomes a deed?”

bit harsh.

If the Bible is fiction, OT.
If the Bible is not, NT.

i like the new testament's message, jesus stories were always kinda cool to me as a kid ...but man the old testament is VIVID

but lots of fucked up shit goes down the in the OT

I'm kinda torn

Actually, as a fan of lists, I'm going OT.

Compared to flowery language of the Vedas, the OT is about as vivid as a newspaper.

awesome

It also uses the inverted pyramid structure.

Favorites:

- Noah's daughters getting him hammered and fucking him.
- Gideon's trumpet
- God "taking" Enoch
- Elijah and the still, small voice
- Ezekiel and the spaceship of doom

Lot's daughters do that, not Noah's.

You sure Noah Lot about the Bible!

^ gets it

jesus h. christ

it's kind of interesting to me that jesus has been softened up by so many ppl into this guy who was all about peace and love and forgiving everyone and sort of generic hippie sentiments, because he kind of is that and yet at the same time the guy in the gospels is also this kind of bewildering force of nature, performing scary miracles at random and speaking in off-the-cuff zen master riddles. and yet he's also this very human, non-god-like character who gets pissed off at his disciples and sighs at the denseness of most of the people he encounters and seems to give up and despair right at the end. and of course the four texts all give you slightly different takes on him -- mark's jesus is the angriest, iirc.

Jesus' writing things in the sand – an act unexplained but rich in implication – is a marvelous things.

best negative-punk Jesus

http://biblehub.com/matthew/10-34.htm

jesus's first miracle, turning water into wine, is intended to set a tone iirc

completely different: epic savage history vs spooky revolutionary character study. hard to choose but some of the parables in the NT are so elegant and mysterious and as alfred says rich in implication that i lean that way, plus altho the OT is full of vivid people, sarah laughing, etc., the NT's rashomon thing makes jesus into a bottomless character, like hamlet: contradictions and confusions orbiting this shining core. plus i am a sucker for the setting: edge of empire, cusp of ages. and then yeah you get revelations as a batshit unsettling appendix.

huge lol @ "rashomon thing"

man imagine the infighting and jockeying (concealed/sublimated obv.) that musta gone on among the authors of all the pre-canonization scripture to grab as much audience mindshare as possible

he "walked with the Lord, so the Lord took him" has always sounded like he and the Lord courted before having some slow, serious, affectionate buttsex.

Aimless, the verse I cited is directly from the OT (Exodus 34:7), in a book where He redeems an entire nation from bondage in slavery and performs incredible miracles for them. I'm not saying there isn't also violence and vengeance but there's a big difference between seeing it as a complex work about a G-d who expresses a variety of manifestations of His will (where flooding the world is followed by His creating a rainbow as a eternal promise that he would never destroy the world again) and seeing it in this simplistic 100% Christian invented dichotomy where Jesus is love and the OT G-d is cold justice.

the Esau-Jacob story impressed the hell out of me as a child -- the Lord respects cunning, even at the expense of his beloved Abraham's Isaac! Presaged Ayn Rand politics too.

I hate pinto beans though.

OT God is more often than not a tribal God - he's prone to show more mercy and kindness to the Chosen People (whom he still expects to obey and love him etc. and woe betide he who doesn't), other people can mostly gtfo, they're all a bunch of idolotrous savages

xp

there's supposed to be a symmetry between that story and the sale of joseph that because jacob deceived his father he was in turn deceived by his children (and told that joseph died) xp

Makes sense, for Jacob and Joseph blur.

He redeems an entire nation from bondage in slavery and performs incredible miracles for them.

Miracles like producing a plague of frogs and killing all the firstborn children of the Egyptians. And drowning Pharoah's army.

that's awesome!

tbf they were asking for it

Also miracles like splitting the sea and feeding the Jews in the desert from divine manna.

Aimless, standing up for slaveowners

won't someone think of the poor slaveowners

I don't think it was down to owning or not owning slaves. If it were then the OT jews were as guilty as anyone else. What do you think that maidservant and manservant in the commandments refer to?

old school Talmudic Jewish laws on slavery include punishment for slave owners that mistreat their slaves

fwiw

hey look at this thing I looked up on wikipedia for you:

Ancient Israelite society allowed slavery; however, total domination of one human being by another (as the Israelites suffered under Egyptian rule) was not permitted.[16][17] Rather, slavery in antiquity among the Israelites was closer to what would later be called indentured servitude.

also afaik there's no reason to believe that the jewish slaves in egypt owned slaves - laws pertaining to that only became relevant after conquering the land of Israel (and they make specific references to that context)

aimless not so hot on nuance or search functions, apparently

Οὖτις, standing up for slave owners, but only the are the good slave owners

i mean i don't think this idea should be controversial. the OT wasn't written with the NT in mind so it doesn't make sense to read it within the context of the NT (vis-a-vis whether one is about X and the other is about Y) - the schemata is obv a paratextual phenomenon and i think its relationship to supersessionism is obvious; who doesn't prefer love to wrath? this dichotomy really makes the most sense in the context of not the actual OT text but rather Jesus' critique of the Pharisees esp as it relates to their loyalty to the letter of the law v the spirit (and not incidentally the abnegation of OT commandments by some of the apostles). it's clear that to the original readers of the OT the Exodus narrative, even with the killing of the first born, would be seen as a tremendous act of love for the Jewish people. only later if you were writing the Jewish people out of the text (symbolically not literally) does it even become possible to start reading it as an act of wrath.

And, if we take a moment to draw breath, it is well to recall Mordy's characterization of the OT god as "compassionate and gracious God slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin" and measuring this description against various OT activities of this same god.

man yr thick

jeez aimless and in the NT jesus says "I came not to bring peace, but to bring a sword" u know these are complex texts.

nope they mean exactly what Aimless assumes they mean, no more and no less

yr thick

perhaps you should read exactly what was said in the posts so far, starting with my first post and stop congratulating yourself on your superior perceptivity because you have interpreted those words to mean just what you like rather than what they say

Jesus threatens people who harm children so harshly that he tells them that having a rock tied around their neck and drowning them would be the nicer option.

xp

read slowly, noticing the qualifiers

u know what is a really interesting phenomenon? these dual covenant [Zionist?] pseudo Jewish practicing evangelical types. sometimes i see them on fb news threads (like from haaretz or whatever) quoting genesis 12:3 "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." - i have very little background in christian theological history but i'm pretty sure this kind of engagement w/ both the OT and the Jews is a very novel discourse

is that related to Jews for Jesus?

I can go back and read yr posts aimless but why should I bother really, yr willfully obtuse ie, you take for granted that statements like "what is clearly described in the OT" as descriptive of something everyone would agree on, when I would argue that nothing is clearly described in the OT and context (and commentary and historical analysis etc.) is everything

i don't think so but tbh i'm not 100% sure. they don't self-identify as jews though so i think that would be a pretty major difference. they identify as christians they just believe that the jewish people still have a covenant and that i guess some of the OT [more than is traditionally so] is still relevant. my friend tells me that christianity has had some non-mainstream elements historically that are concerned w/ getting back to the OT, which i guess shouldn't be a surprise, but i imagine supersessionism was such a dominant paradigm that even that didn't quite resemble this phenomenon.

yeah that seems a little different from Jews for Jesus, who I always suspected as being some sort of stealth-conversion-to-Xtianity operation

I can go back and read yr posts aimless but why should I bother really, yr willfully obtuse ie, you take for granted that statements like "what is clearly described in the OT" as descriptive of something everyone would agree on, when I would argue that nothing is clearly described in the OT and context (and commentary and historical analysis etc.) is everything

ok. go on and argue that "nothing is clearly described". I would counter-argue that much is clearly described, but much of what is clearly described is contradicts other things equally clearly described and it is impossible to reconcile these contradictions without a tremendous exertion of casuistry.

My original statement was that in my view the OT is "dominated by a vengeful and jealous god". One certainly does not need to use a search function to find evidence of that vengeful and jealous god and I have cited many instances of his vengeance. His jealousy is also in there, but hasn't yet played any role in this discussion.

I would not deny and have not denied that the OT contains stories where god is not vengeful or jealous. I have only pointed to several of a myriad of instances where the OT God acted violently and vengefully. It would be pointless to deny this aspect of the OT god, because that aspect is perfectly clear, despite your quibbling that "nothing is clearly described".

Nor did I ever claim that the NT was exclusively sweetness and light. I specifically said (as you would not consent to go back to confirm):

"...it isn't like the NT can be held entirely harmless. Still, I'd go with the NT, if only for the sake of its handful of marvelous bits about love and mercy being greater than the law." (emphasis added so perhaps you'd notice what I said)

I perfectly well agree with your statement that the OT god was a tribal god and his love and protection extends largely to his chosen people. The Psalms beautifully express David's gratitude for that love and protection. But it would be ahistorical to read them as a hymn to a god whose love and protection are universal and impartial. Enemies play a big role in them, too. Enemies God was only too happy to smite.

And you call me obtuse. wtf. I'm not making any absolutist arguments, but what I have said is pretty damn defensible.

lol you are def making an ahistorical and simplistic argument

lol back at ya, big fella

obviously now we're really getting somewhere!

I mean any discussion of what is "clearly described in the OT" automatically goes back to issues of translation and interpretation imo, which are tied up in historical, political, social contexts etc etc why am I bothering

take ascribing vengeance and jealousy to God as motivations for example - but God's motivations in the OT are consistently mysterious, opaque, contradictory, or even altogether absent. If God says he's angry about something and smites someone, why is he angry, and over what? How can we even tell? What reasons would there be for that anger? Is the author perhaps using God's anger to address a contemporary conflict or make a certain political point? I get that you're comfortable glossing over this stuff, but it's not like the OT is written as God's internal monologue, you can't wish these interpretive complexities away by saying "I read it, the Bible says it right there it's plain as day". It's not plain as day.

If God says he's angry about something and smites someone, why is he angry, and over what?

Maybe he is angry for the reasons he said he was angry. It's at least worth considering.

aimless, i wouldn't dream of denigrating yr experience of the NT as a text primarily about love. not least bc despite numerous passages that i think complicate that reading i do believe it's a very real + pervasive trope. i'm merely suggesting that this rubric under which the NT means the G-d of love and the OT means the G-d of wrath might shade differently depending on who is doing the reading. this is particularly so for non-Christians (namely but not exclusively jews) for whom not only does the OT mean the G-d of love but that for whom the very schemata that distinguishes these two texts is formulated in such a way as to discount their own religious text. not merely theologically (where without a doubt the NT is coming at some level to supersede and critique the Jewish OT) but historically as well where their experience of "Christian love" is not just not attuned to the NT but particularly perverse. acknowledging this reading vis-a-vis the NT shouldn't compromise your own feelings whatsoever - it is just to acknowledge that the meaning of a text changes depending on where you're standing.

Lol like God spends a lot of time in the NT explaining himself.

Xxp

this idea that salvation only comes through belief in christ and not through the performance of deeds and that this ultimate symbol of love that occurs in the forgiving of that which cannot be forgiven - this is not just incidentally related to judaism. this is a direct discourse w/ it. xp

xp

If you were to read a fable about a fox that said he was angry at a hummingbird for buzzing around his head and the fox then acted angry at the hummingbird and grabbed it and ate it, you would have no trouble accepting that the fox was angry for the reasons he said, and his actions would tend to back up the idea that his anger was real, and that he showed no qualms in killing and eating the bird.

But if the Bible contains a fable just as straightforward about god, but later it has another fable where God speaks out of the whirlwind to Job and is mysterious, then you may consider that this second mysterious God proves that the first fable's simplicity must be regarded as equally mysterious and nothing in it may be taken at face value.

My position would be that each fable serves a separate purpose and the first may be taken as faithful to that purpose within itself and may be interpreted simply. Your position seems to be that the two are "consistently" mysterious, rather than one mysterious and the other simple. How can we decide between these two positions, other than calling me names?

A lifetime of study is the usual approach

So beautifully simple, and yet so inapplicable.

Boiling down the OT and NT to one "fable" each is self-evidently simplistic

Clearly it is open to interpretation, I prefer the more nuanced approach. There is compassion if you care to see it.

Shakey - if you're as interested in evangelical Christian Judaism as I am, I found this article in Tablet on the subject:

Many of the thousand-plus people who attended Revive 2013, a religious conference held at the Dallas Sheraton last June, wear tzitzit. Many keep kosher and observe the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Some of the men have beards and peyos. Some have even undergone adult circumcision and/or have circumcised their children. They learn Hebrew, Chumash, even Talmud, and travel whenever they can to Israel. All of them truly, deeply love Hashem.

Yet I’m fairly certain I was the only Jewish person there.

Some more material on the phenomenon here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/12religion.html

and here: http://www.fpcbirmingham.org/christian-mezuzah-project.html

so weird