Old and New testament? Not true?

[Pogonotrophist]

Hello to the Thinking Atheist community, I'm a long time listener but it's my first time posting in the forums.
I have a question regarding the different between the old and new testaments;
I was listening a while back to the Atheist Experience, as I'm sure many of you do too, and to one caller they breifley mentioned that the divide between the old and new testament isn't actually real and was fabricated at a later point, Or something along those lines. I haven't heard this mentioned again, which was strange to me as I thought if it were true it would be a commonly used arguement to use against biblical arguements, especially those concerning morals, and things that were mentioned in the 'Old testament' that christians now say are 'dated' or 'old'. I was wondering if anyone would have any conformation of this, true or false, and what the evidence is for it.
Thanks guys, Can't wait for the responses.
- Joe

[Erxomai]

Welcome, Joe. We hope you enjoy your time here.


I'm not aware of any artificial divide. Other than the whole composition of the Bible was done artificially to support various agenda.

But the Old Testament came first and it is the Jewish Bible, so there's not really an arbitrary division between old and new. Those documents date back to at least a couple of centuries before Jebus.

[Bucky Ball]

I suspect you are referring to the fact that Christians often say they are free from, (or Jesus freed them from) the ritual / legal obligations of the Old Testament. Generally they point to various quotations in the letters, ("Epistles") of St. Paul, (Saul of Tarsus), to justify this notion. In fact Paul was not consistent on the matter, and still required the "old" (Jewish) rules be maintained when they were convenient for his purposes.

Is that what you are referring to ?

[Pogonotrophist]

(01-12-2012 12:24 PM)Bucky Ball Wrote:  I suspect you are referring to the fact that Christians often say they are free from, (or Jesus freed them from) the ritual / legal obligations of the Old Testament. Generally they point to various quotations in the letters, ("Epistles") of St. Paul, (Saul of Tarsus), to justify this notion. In fact Paul was not consistent on the matter, and still required the "old" (Jewish) rules be maintained when they were convenient for his purposes.

Is that what you are referring to ?

I think that -may- be what I'm thinking of, I'll have to find exactly what episode it is and link it in this thread so I can get the context exactly right, meanwhile, thanks for the quick response guys.

[Vlad]

The "Old Testament", the Tanakh, was sealed (as in, they collected the known books of the OT and stopped editing it) several centuries before Jesus was born. The NT obviously didn't exist at the time and people wrote it decades after his supposed death, so yeah... it was separate.

[Starcrash]

The titles are fabricated. Before the publication of the King James Bible, it was all just considered "the bible". But it makes sense to divide it into a pre-Jesus section and a post-Jesus section, because Jews don't believe the post-Jesus section... so it's like saying the "Old Testament" is more or less the "Jewish Testament".

My father, a Christian, also defends the words of the Old Testament by saying that Jesus didn't create such a divide or say that the Old Testament was to be ignored... but like all Christians, stuff that he doesn't disagree with is all "part of the old covenant", which is another way of hypocritically saying you can disregard it because it's Old Testament.

[cturner2020]

(01-12-2012 08:59 PM)Starcrash Wrote:  The titles are fabricated. Before the publication of the King James Bible, it was all just considered "the bible". But it makes sense to divide it into a pre-Jesus section and a post-Jesus section, because Jews don't believe the post-Jesus section... so it's like saying the "Old Testament" is more or less the "Jewish Testament".

My father, a Christian, also defends the words of the Old Testament by saying that Jesus didn't create such a divide or say that the Old Testament was to be ignored... but like all Christians, stuff that he doesn't disagree with is all "part of the old covenant", which is another way of hypocritically saying you can disregard it because it's Old Testament.

It must be awesome to be an all knowing god, and yet, still make mistakes! When flooding the world doesn't work as well as ctrl-alt-delete, just rewrite the rules and come up with a new agreement.

I give up. I'm going to eat some shrimp while wearing a poly-cotton shirt.

[Janus]

(01-12-2012 10:34 PM)cturner2020 Wrote:  It must be awesome to be an all knowing god, and yet, still make mistakes! When flooding the world doesn't work as well as ctrl-alt-delete, just rewrite the rules and come up with a new agreement.

That is breach of contract, plain and simple. I.o.w. He changed the rules during the match. He moved the goal posts.

Anyone who does that is a fraud, a traitor, a sadistic dictator, and a genocidal murderer.

So Xtians worship a fraud, a traitor, a sadistic dictator, and a genocidal murderer.