I started reading the New Testament today and noticed a few things I wanted to ask about.
I noticed that Hell or being thrown into metaphorical flames in farming analogies is used a lot. I remember seeing an old argument that Jesus “tried to scare people into following him.” Does this have merit?
I also noticed that when the Devil went to tempt Jesus, he brought him to the top of a mountain to see the whole world, which we now know is a sphere. Meaning, you cannot simply see the entire planet from a single mountain. Again, someone posited that this is incriminating evidence that “the entire Bible is just a flat Earth document,” trying to poke holes in any evidence possible. How do you interpret these conflicting facts? Would the presence of poetry in the New Testament alongside fact retelling bring some important events (I.e. the Resurrection and the Divinity of Christ) into question?
In his sermon on the mount, Jesus said to not move any of the old law (since he came to fulfill it). I was wondering what he meant by this. Did he mean to maintain the laws of the Israelites from the Torah? Was there a law that only applied to that part of the Roman Empire? When we normalize modern societal norms such as gay marriage, are we technically breaking the law, or is Jesus more focused on repentance than law following?
Just a few questions I had. Thanks for the help so far!
Each of these should be in their own thread if you really want to get an answer.
For #2, from a high mountain all of the known world could be see. Which is probably what was meant. If you notice in the Bible nothing is mentioned outside of the Middle East, as far west as Rome and not very far east at all. The Bible maps of the places in the Bible all fit nicely on one page.
The authors and initial audience all believed the Earth was flat. The Greeks established the earth was a sphere in the 3rd century BC but this was well after the writing of the OT.
Rare mentions of a real danger is not even close to trying to scare people into doing something.
Have some Christians tried such a tactic? DEFINITELY. But the misuse of things does not change those making good and useful things responsible for those misuses.
I could say you are liar because the universe is not a sphere. There is no evidence whatsoever that the word used is referring to the planet Earth. What you are doing is changing what the word refers to in order to concoct a contradiction with what you use a word for (and it is not even the same language).
Considering how the religious leaders of the time constantly accused Him of breaking those laws and his replies to those accusations, this is clearly ridiculous. Jesus constantly challenged literal understanding of these laws – not just just challenging the harsh misuse of them but even in the other direction to suggest even more extreme versions of them. Ultimately, He made the love of God and love of others the ultimate interpreter of their meaning.
For #3, I think it’s the Ten Commandments Is the Law From Our Father, Jesus meant. All the laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are the Old Testament laws of Man. Don’t eat pig meat, Catholics used to only want You to eat Fish on Friday. The country laws to you live in laws should be followed unless they are flawed. Jesus said you are love Your Enemies as the Old Testament said to Hate them.
Jesus tried to bring about the way of Sustaining Love by Forgiveness. As a Child We said “No Hard Feelings” to friends to keep Our Friendship.
This is Why in You other topic of War is what Jesus tried to Eliminate, “Put Down the Sword” meaning Have Faith in “Our Father” to deal with Your situation.
My apologies. I was referring to the planet Earth. I wasn’t trying to make these contradictions, I just remember an old account I dealt with posited that this part of the New Testament has suggested a flat Earth, and through their atheist lens, questions the accuracy of those claims because of this “outdated” idea.
I wasn’t trying to do anything malicious with these claims. I was just looking for answers for previous claims I had encountered.
Alright, thank you for the clarification. Again, not trying to be malicious or trying to force these opinions myself. These were just small questions that popped into my head while reading my Bible.
Sorry… my use of the word “liar” might have been a bit extreme, but I did say this was something I COULD say not that I was saying this. My point was that the words “world” and “earth” in the Bible do not mean the same thing as what we mean by those words any more than your use of the word “world” meant the entire universe. And instead of the flat portrayal of the world in the Bible meaning the Bible claimed the planet is flat, what it really shows is that the meaning of these words “world” and “earth” in the Bible is something considerably smaller than the planet. Our awareness of the universe has been expanding in size for a long time. Why should the words in the Bible refer to anything beyond the awareness of the people using them?
LOL
More silliness from people who don’t read much and so don’t understand literature. Do they take the story of the Tar Baby to mean that the author believed in animate petroleum?
FWIW, “up a high mountain” is a bit of ANE theo-mythology: mountains were where gods lived, or at least where they came to talk to humans, and on such mountains ordinary rules didn’t apply. A “high mountain” would fall into that category, so the fact that the narrative seems to suggest that the entire planet was visible from it is the sort of thing that would be expected.
And claiming it supports a flat earth just shows severe ignorance of science: even if the earth were flat it wouldn’t be humanly possible to see the whole thing from a single location in the first place due to atmospheric effects. In general, any time someone argues for a flat earth that should be a signal that you’re in the realm of deep ignorance.
Again, only to the illiterate. People who make such claims are like those who know how checkers move on a checker board but have no clue about how multiple moves can weaken or strengthen each other – and I use checkers for an illustration rather than chess on purpose.
He was doing something the prophets did: taking specifics of the Torah and wrenching principles from it.
A Lutheran pastor/priest when I was in grad school made the point one day in chapel that Jesus broke the Law repeatedly, not by falling below it but by rising above it. The prophets make clear that it wasn’t about rules in the first place, it was about learning to be merciful and generous to one’s neighbors (a debate still alive in Jesus’ day as evidence by the question "Who is my neighbor? – Jesus’ answer to which shows that the line-item approach to Torah is invalid by turning the question on its head; He wasn’t just doing a rhetorical trick, He was pointing to what Torah is at base). Over and over again, seen in their historical-cultural context, the commands of the Torah are about nudging Israel towards greater compassion and hospitality, towards being better than they were.
And don’t be distracted by the “jot and tittle” bit about the details: again Jesus isn’t talking about Torah as an instruction manual, He’s talking about it sort of as a garment, which is made up of individual threads – the point isn’t the threads, it’s the garment.
Hardly, given how He rather blatantly asserted His authority to change those – always appealing to principles, not to specifics, e.g. when He endorsed David’s and Ahimelech’s breach of Tabernacle rules.
I could write a (short) book . . . .
But I will cut to Acts 15, which reduces the Law to four items of advice: that makes plain that “law following” is tabled.
Well, yes and no: “κόσμου” (COHZ-moo), from “kosmos”, especially when connected with the term “kingdoms”, refers to the realm of organized, ‘civilized’ human society. So while it doesn’t directly refer to the planet, that’s the geographical parameter in play – all the kingdoms are on the planet.
That’s a tricky one, here; societally people were aware that there were realms beyond the borders of the empires and kingdoms neighboring Rome. But it is something that should be kept in mind: trying to pour in more meaning for a word than the writer would have understood by it is just a form of mistranslation.
Does symbolic narrative automatically imply cosmological ignorance? If it does, do the words “sunrise” and “sunset” endorse geocentrism? And if not, why assume that a visionary temptation narrative involving “seeing all the kingdoms of the world” must mean the Gospel writers believed in a literally flat Earth?
Well, they were trying so say the opposite; they posited that since the Bible seems to have this “clearly ignorant” view about something we clearly know isn’t true (they saw the mountain claim as suggesting that the writers say the world as flat), then we should question their views. This particular feller, like many militant atheist accounts online, demand that if the Bible claims to be a true revelation on life and the truth of the universe, then it needs to perfectly match reality; “oh, you say the Bible is true? Then why is Jesus being described in a manner that seems to support a flat Earth narrative? Why wouldn’t Jesus tell them about the round Earth? Seems like this is just an event being twisted with their human perception rather than a Divine revelation! Ha! Got you! (Other ‘assumes the debate is over’ gloats)”
“Seems” – comes frequently with the fact that people are talking out of their navels, having never studied the thing they’re pontificating about.
Why should we trust that his definition of “truth” is any more valid than that of the ANE? What he’s doing is demanding that literature written from within a vary alien worldview has to fit his worldview – which if nothing else shows severe intellectual laziness.
Why would He? When something like this is put forth, ask for the evidence that Jesus meant to teach geology or geography.
That’s just me putting the argument kindly. This came from that darned X account that bothered me prior; they didn’t say it seemed to show a Flat Earth, that said that the Bible was a flat Earth document, therefore it is fake.
Any one of these questions would do for an entire post of its own,not just three tossed into one. And who argued that Jesus was “trying to scare people into following Him.” No it has no merit. Judaism of that era was already expecting that one day soon a Jewish man who would be both Messiah and God would arrive…they were figuring the timing based on their reading of the book of Daniel. Jesus made numerous claims, throughout the gospels, that He was that Messiah. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.” Whether there are real flames is a subject for discussion–but again, big topic. After all, isn’t hell also described as “being cast into outer darkness”? Pretty tough to have a place filled with flames and also black as pitch. We can imagine all we like. But Hell is described in the text as a place originally designed for the devil and his rebellious angels….so if you or I want to spend eternity with THAT lot ….!! It’s not scaring people if you know that such a place exists, which Jesus evidently did. So why would He not warn us about it?
That was the short version. With number 2, I think most in those days also knew that the world was round. The account in Matthew simply says that the devil took Jesus to “a very high mountain” and “showed him all the kingdoms of the wor;d and their splendor”……The world was not all that well populated in those days, for one thing. And the point of the parable is that the devil evidently knows that he is in control of the kingdoms of the world. If Jesus would just bow down and worship the devil, then Jesus could have all these kingdoms. Jesus refused…..some day He (Jesus) WILL have control of all those kingdoms. But He would not do it by worshipping the Satan. This is not a flat-earth discussion. It is about the need for a Savior to redeem mankind so that one day HE, Jesus, not the Satan, will have control of the earth—plus the universe, of course. Don’t forget that one!
Did Jesus really say “not to move any of the law”? Again this (like the other two questions here) is a massive discussion. Impossible to do it justice here. There is more to be concerned about than gay marriage –which is something the Israelis of that era would hardly have entertained anyway.
OK…sorry to be brusque…but big topics !!
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SkovandOfMitaze
(Intellectually Atheist Emotionally Christian )
17
No. From everything I’ve read the belief of hell as a place of eternal conscious torment was not around in the first century but was a belief that developed later. So in their culture and in their language they would not have read into it the same way modern hellfire preachers do.
That argument only stems from the belief that the Bible should be read through concordism demanding a literal interpretation with scientific meaning. I imagine the story just means took him up to a high place and to overlook all the land there. Probably specifically the Roman Empire which may have been the top empire there at the time. At least in relationship to where they were. It would be like showing someone the White House and saying I will give you the power of the world since we are a dominating force. If you were in Mexico they would show you a different power.
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