The contrast between Old and New Testaments

[URAVIP2ME]

What epistemology do you use to decide what is literal and what is not?
Ciao
- viole

For one thing, according to Scripture, ALL of Jesus' parables or illustrations are Not literal happenings . Please note Matthew 13:34-36 and Mark 4:34
Context and setting also helps us see what is literal and what is not.

Revelation, which is written in very-vivid world pictures, has corresponding verses in Daniel's writings. That helps us learn that the ' beasts ' are political in nature.
Revelation 13:1-3; Daniel 7:1-7; Daniel 8:3-8; Daniel 8:20-25

Often the many corresponding or parallel cross-reference verses or passages among the Bible writers can help us discern the literal from what is not.

 

[outhouse]

Please note Matthew 13:34-36 and Mark 4:34
Context and setting also helps us see what is literal and what is not.

That is NOT how any credible context is obtained as to what is literal and what is not literal.

For one thing, according to Scripture

The last thing we look at for determining how to interpret text.

Revelation, which is written in very-vivid world pictures, has corresponding verses in Daniel's writings.

Which are simple well known plagiarisms

 

[outhouse]

Often the many corresponding or parallel cross-reference verses or passages among the Bible writers can help us discern the literal from what is not.

That really does not fly. It does not account for the literal prose the text were written in, nor the mythology, fiction and plagiarisms.

 

[sojourner]

I believe "form, literary, historic and cultural criticism" is the correct answer to the question.

 

[Akivah]

Hi,

For a while, more and more disturbs me the contrasts I find between the concept of God of the two testaments.

Probably i am not the only one.
I would like to meet here some of those who has the same problem, and some of those who can try to explain it.

It is a simple fact. They are two different books that each support a completely different religion. What is disturbing about that? You might as well get disturbed that the Book of Mormon and the Quran are different.

 

[roger1440]

But what is the true meaning?

What is the true meaning of ordering the killing the people of Kanaan inkluding the children?
What is the true meaning, of that, when Moses comes down from the hill with the commandments, among them "thou shalt not kill" then the next minutes he orders to kill thousands of jews ?
Interesting twist in the story, that when the people asking Aaron, what shall they do, himself Aaron, suggests to make of the Golden Calf... Then him is the most active in killing.

The true meaning is that our attention should focus on the offence and not on the penalty. These offences should not be taken lightly. If the focal point was the penalty more detail would have been given to the punishment and its agonizing effects. The author could have written something like, “As the sword was thrust into the victim, blood spewed from him and spattered all over the wall. His entrails would then fall from his body, immediately the victim would collapse and he would drown in his own internal organs.”

 

[1AOA1]

Hi,

For a while, more and more disturbs me the contrasts I find between the concept of God of the two testaments.

Probably i am not the only one.
I would like to meet here some of those who has the same problem, and some of those who can try to explain it.

For the start here is a sentence from Psalms 137 :

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones Against the rock.

Try defining God as the holy life as it is also a part of God, and is God.

 

[pozitÍv visszacsatolás]

Unfortunately, it wasn't, because the Israelites disobeyed and married women of these nations and learned their ways.

Hmmm... So these people after al was not THAT evil..... They did not established their cannibal customs and their habits of eaing children...
Therefore killing all of them was not necessary after all...