quote:
if we take a full bible teaching (including christ's) - which you are eager to avoid, then we can see that it is a moral teaching
Sorry Mike, I have to disagree. With any other book or series of books (LOTR, Dune) I would completely agree to not judge the quality (I am using quality as proxy for morality) until one has taken in the whole. BUT the "Bible" survived for a very long time in forms unrecognizable by todays standard. It has been far too many years since my Bible history class, but as I recall the OT is in three distinct parts that were really meant to be separate or at the very least each represented stand-alone compilations. The Law was the original 5 books ascribed to Moses The Prophets is the next segment and is the 'historical' portion. The Writings were not included until well after the death of Christ.
My point is that if you need the whole Bible (the three OT compilations and the NT) to understand Bible morality, then for a significant amount of the history of Judaism understanding morality has been impossible. Let's say Moses wrote the Law (I don't think for a second that he did) in like the 13th century BC. This means that for about 1000 years the Hebrew people had an incomplete morality including stabbing 'race-mixers' with spears. This would mean that when the books of the prophets were compiled they had 1/2 morality (or none still, if its the whole Bible or nothing), etc. It makes very little sense. Actually it makes less sense than presented here, for as I understand it the majority of literate Jews has access at any given time only to small portions of any of the books currently in the OT. These were extensively studied with the idea that the OT represents some kind of ideological fractal wherein any portion can be expounded into the whole. And it wasn't just Jewish people, until the NT was compiled disperse Christian sects had different portions of the NT books they shared and studied for several centuries (at least).
And the argument that we should ONLY consider the validty (or at least the morality) of the NT is negated by the fact that the NT writers repeatedly stress the sameness of the Law, the fulfillment of prophesy etc. It's their words that claim that the Law is not broken but fulfilled.
So an omniscient God gave his people an incomplete (or at the very least dated) moral code, changed it multiple times over several millenia before sending Jesus (more importantly Paul) to clear it up. Wait, can we serve Caeser and God? Or can a slave not serve two masters? Should we destroy fruit trees tha refuse to give us fruit out of season? To pick an old wound, was Lot righteous as Paul claimed? Are Canaanites dogs and unworthy of Gods blessing? And don't get me started on money changers.
And about the 10 commandments; it's true than "Thou shall not kill" can be interpreted as a moral statement. However, what if it means (in context) "Thou shalt not kill righteous Jewish males"? Substitute "Jewish" for "White Christian" and you are approaching the abhorrent Codes of Morality such as used by the Christian Identity movement. By saying not to kill one group you allow the killing of others. I am not saying that this is the correct interpretation, but "Thou shalt not kill" is not a cut-and-dried moral statement as you presented. Other portions of the commandments are definately contextual. "Honor thy father and thy mother". What does this mean? Does it mean the same to a Baptist in the US as it would mean to a Rabbi living in the Sinai wilderness 3000 years ago? I suspect not. The fact is that killing and stealing have been a good part of everyone's moral code as long as there have been humans (same rules, only applies to your good people). And perjury has been in written law as long as there has been written law. I would have to ask, do you consider religious art to be sinfull? Have you ever wanted something someone else had? These, along with killing and stealing, are presented as the TOP 10 things God said not to do. Anyway, it just furthers my point that Bible morality is applicable (and not necessariry very nice) to the people living in that area at the time that particular portion was written. Not 100 miles away nor 100 years later necessarily.
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