[Please read Revisited: “Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?” 1 before reading this post for this to make sense.; first posted 2012, reposted April 2014. Always worth the revisit.—Admin1]
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I don’t intend to feature the whole book here but I do want to share with our ‘FWH’ (frequent website habitues) the statements that should catch our attention; after all, we are dealing with similar thinking in our Christian connections.
So back to the introductory post #1 where complete endorsements by Christian pastors were featured and the highlighted text, hereunder are my reactions to each comment:
- Peggy Corbett: “On what Scriptures did he base his interpretations? None other than the Old Testament, the only Scriptures available at the time. . . the gracious God Paul discovered following his life-changing experience on the road to Damascus.”
If there is one person who should be rightly called the founder of Christianity, it would not be Jesus . . . it would be Paul; in fact some Christian scholars have so credited him.
If I were to choose 3 books in the New Testament canon that together, succinctly condenses its theology, it would be:
- The Gospel of John,
- Romans by Paul,
- Hebrews (which is still thought to be Paul hiding in anonymous authorship).
- The first not only echoes the opening line of Genesis to make sure we don’t miss the point of Jesus’ place in the OT as Creator-God Himself;
- the second propounds Replacement Theology,
- and the third not only connects the two “testaments” but cleverly presents the “old” as incomplete, a mere prequel to the fulfillment in the “new.”
Indeed, WHO is the God who appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus? Is it really YHWH?
- If so, what is the effect on Paul, meeting this God he has been reading about in his TNK, who leaves him blind but opens his eyes to “new” truths?
- And what did he immediately do after he regained his sight?
- Did he review the TNK, the ONLY SCRIPTURES he as a “pharisee of pharisees” knew and studied which is why he was at first supposedly persecuting the followers of Jesus?
Image from www.catholicvideo.com
“For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it; and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. ”
[Galatians 1:13-14/NASB]
- Did he even go to Jerusalem at the first opportunity to meet with the apostles who could have taught him everything they were taught in the 3-years they were with Jesus to find out if Jesus really taught what Paul eventually wrote in his epistles?
“Instead I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood , nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus. Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.” [Galatians 1:16-18/NASB]
What did he do according to his own admission in Galatians? Please reread Acts to save me from having to spell it out here.
Paul did not backtrack to the God of Israel, the God of the Old Testament; instead he established “churches” and wrote epistles that—
- redefined YHWH,
- that did away with the Torah,
- that made Israel appear like a clueless chosen people who misread the divine plan foretold in their own sacred scriptures
- and yet, Paul admits their blinding was God’s plan so that the full number of the gentiles could come in.
If you reread his epistles more carefully, he reinvents the Jewish Jesus of history into the cosmic Christ of Christianity.
A diaspora Jew with dual citizenship who claimed to be a pharisee who learned from Gamaliel . . . what happened?
“For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” [Galatians 1:11-12]
Here are more comments by critics of the book:
Tito Correa: “a God who works in context and yet who is at the same time just, loving and kind.”
Andrei Bogoslovsky: “I’ve appreciated how this book deals openly and frankly with those situations and stories which, to our “New Testament mind,” appear most objectionable. Especially helpful were the discussions of how God meets people at the level of their barbaric customs, but always in order to lead them to higher ground.”
God effectively works at any point in history, in any culture, and overcome any language difficulty; the problem is not with God, but with man. God meets us where we are and uses the tools that get our attention, IF we are paying attention.
If there are those with no access to His Sinai Revelation, He is nevertheless known through His created order, His natural revelation. We have written about this in Revelation in a Nutshell, please review.
American Peace Corps volunteers and missionaries adjust their whole orientation when they work in strange cultures where they are introduced to newer ways of dealing socially and communally with one another. We do the same with our children; they are not up to our level of understanding, so we do condescend to go down to their level in an effort to lift them up in due time.
Approach the Hebrew Scriptures with the same open-mindedness and endeavor to differentiate between what is time-bound and culturally-different and what is timeless and which transcends all differences in culture and meet that awesome God Whose words have been recorded from antiquity but are still relevant 6 millennia later.
Pedrito U. Maynard-Reid:
“It is well known that many Christians never or seldom read the Old Testament.”
Amen! To our regret, we wasted decades avoiding the foundational scriptures in our Christian bible. But think about it, is the “Old” Testament really “foundational” to the “New”? I know, I know, our posts on this website often appear like we’re attacking and bashing Christians and Christianity. This is the point: if the book on which Christianity bases its whole system of belief on is simply the New Testament, that is totally acceptable, no problem with any new religion that makes claims for itself. The problem is, Christianity claims to trace its roots to a previous belief system and yet it not only drastically departs from its roots but it dares to supersede and make claims for itself, totally divesting its so-called roots of its God-endowed entitlements.
There are ‘NT-ONLY’ bibles on the market and perhaps that is as it should be, a stand-alone bible and a new religion with no claims but its unique teachings . . . except that as the decision-makers of the NT canon themselves concluded, the NT cannot stand alone; much of it would not make sense since it is presented as ‘fulfillment’ to which there must be answer to ‘of what?’ Fulfillment of what?
We used to think there is so much to read and figure out in the NT alone, if the OT is only pointing to the NT, what need is there to read it? In fact, we could barely get through figuring out 4 gospels, Pauls 13 epistles, several other general epistles, and the most puzzling of all, the book of Revelation.
Who has time left to read 39 more books we can’t relate to and which have no importance to our new belief in a different God? Indeed, leave the Old Testament to the Jews, except they don’t read OT, surprised? What they read is their TNK/Hebrew Scriptures. Is there a difference? We have posts explaining the difference, please refer to those. Here’s one: Sinaite Notes – The Christian ‘Old’ Testament – 3
More comments:
- “God appeared to me as a primitive Viking god, like the mythical Tor and Odin, . . . And to make matters worse, this Jesus claimed to be the god of the Old Testament.”
- “Could the atheists be right when they say that if you want to prevent people from becoming Christians, just give them the Old Testament and let them read it alone? . . . But I would then suddenly confront him as a blood-thirsty, avenging being a God to fear for the wrong reasons, as one fears a psychopath. . . .mercilessly cruel. “
This would be amusing if it weren’t so frustrating. My agnostic brother who is more respectful of religionists (than I am) has teased us with this joke:
“You know who the biggest terrorist is of all time?
The God of the Old Testament.”
Don’t think all agnostics and atheists are where they are because they have not read the Bible; there are many books written by them justifying why they don’t believe in God and in their apologetics of sorts, they point to the Bible.
Bart Ehrman, New Testament scholar is one such, he has published book after book exposing the questionable authorship of NT scriptures. John Shelby Spong in The Sins of Scriptures includes the OT, except he does claim to expose the “Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love.”
Another comment:
John McLarty:
“Why is the Old Testament God so different from the God revealed in Jesus Christ? Thompson shows that God has never changed — and that’s why he goes to such lengths to reach people who do.”
Whoa . . . let us reverse that last one:
“If God has never changed,
why is the Old Testament God so different
from the God revealed in Jesus Christ?”
And of course our answer would be simple and logical:
—because they are not one and the same.
Repeat: BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT ONE AND THE SAME!
Here are two posts among many that might put that wrong thinking in perspective:
In every book, authors add a dedication, so here’s Thompson’s:
“To my gentle wife, WANDA,
Who still does not enjoy reading the Old Testament —
in spite of all my urgings and explanations.”
Hmmmm . . . if this writer has not even managed to convince his own wife to take a more serious interest in studying the Hebrew Scriptures, how many Christians out there will his book convince?
Does it really take a book like this to convince anyone to take up the TNK and read it? Or, as we previously thought in our Christian orientation, ‘just pray and leave it to God, let God do it for you!’ Pray He will change somebody’s mind, change someone’s action, make someone love Him . . . like we used to think and therefore intently prayed, then wondered why such prayers are not answered and people remain unchanged?
We forget that if there is one BEING in this universe who respects self-will, self-choice, SELF-ABOVE-ALL-ELSE-INCLUDING-GOD-HIMSELF, it is the Creator who made man in His image—
- with free will to make life-choices every step of the way,
- and choose between 2 directions at every fork of the road,
- choose to follow or ignore divinely-arranged signs because he didn’t even realize Who put them there (like this whole magnificent universe, a tribute to the Creator!),
- refuse to hear, listen and heed divine screams in personal tragedies, natural calamities, earthshaking experiences.
And yet, with or without those signs from YHWH, some do make it out of the bondage and ignorant teachings of man-made religions to venture back into the path leading toward the Sinai revelation.
What does it take? Something very simple right within each individual. Personal choice.
Image from amazon.com
Just look at the book cover . . . scary darkness . . . scary lightning . . .the intention was to project scary GOD. Think of yourself in such a situation, lost in unfamiliar territory and it’s pitch dark so that you can barely see where your foot is, you grope in the dark, you have eyes that can see but it sees only total darkness. Then lightning streaks flash repeatedly which give you a few seconds to figure out where you are. Wouldn’t you welcome that flashing light and wish you could have enough of it for a while to help you get your bearings?
Let us not miss those signals that sometimes come in the guise of frightful experiences; we learn the hard way and may not ever understand why we each react differently to the signposts YHWH has placed on our life-path.
Some heed, others do not. . . again, it’s all a matter of personal choice. . . . and might we add, an open mind . . . and might we add . . .a zeal to learn from God Himself, and not from men. He has left the map leading to knowledge of Him: the TORAH, in the Scriptures of Israel.
Continued in sequel “Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?” 3
where finally!!!, you get to read excerpts from the book.
NSB@S6K
