DiscussMormonism.com

There is no getting around the fact that the Old Testament and New Testament have commonalities and differences and the teachings of Jesus represent the difference. Don't think the Prince of Peace role would have played very well in stories talking about Jericho, Jabesh-gilead or the rape of the Midianite women.


So what's up with Jesus being the God of the Old Testament?

It seems like that is a question that Jesus did have to face during His mortal life. If He weren't a Jew and Christianity did not evolve from Judaism, He could have simply said the Old Testament was in error. So religion says, "They lived a lower law and He later gave them a higher law." That still leaves me asking why would God give a different set of commandments to His children based on when they lived. But I suppose that is the best answer religion can provide. The skeptical response would just be to state the obvious, Jesus was trying to improve the Jewish law, which was in fact developed by different people.

I also think it odd that the ancient Hebrews needed to have their hands held. My SS teacher said those people were stiff-necked and easily fell into error and that is why they needed everything spelled out.

Then you look at the laws of nature and realize consistency is pretty important. In fact, consistency is vital.

I think we are over simplyfying this.

Christianity differnences between Judaism didn't arrise over night, or even over 30 or 40 years. We get christianity even before we get the gospels. The original and earliest stories of Jesus are completly different than we would read in the gospel of John. Modern Christianity and the Jesus we now understand from the four gospels is mostly thanks to the marceonites becoming popular enough then stepping asside when Christianity became instiutionalized and the four gospels were selected with dozens to chose from that all had different variations of the Jesus we find in St. Mark.

I am glad they picked John and Luke but honestly wish they had left out Matthew, there are much better (in my opinion) versions of the Jesus naritive in some of the other non canonized gospels.