Wow. Sure is scary listening to Christians make theological arguments about how they have the right to judge people. Jesus must be rolling over in his grave. Oh…wait…
I can easily believe that there were any number of self-righteous Pharisees who would have gladly stood there and said “I have no sin give me that rock!” We have at least two examples in the Gospels. One is in the parable of the two men praying where one says “Hey God! Ain’t I great! And I am not like that tax collector over there.” The other example is the rich young ruler who says that he has obeyed the whole law from his youth.
However, if they are illegally bringing this young woman to be stoned in violation of the law, then they are currently guilty of that one sin. I am sorry I do not remember the passage in Leviticus that shows the necessary conditions.
However, it would be really interesting if they had followed the letter of the Law, since then Jesus has no out. Strange that this verse is not used by Christians against capital punishment.
KeithB-
Do you really think that a legal technicality is the reason Jesus intervened to stop the stoning? What would be the point of putting such a story in the Gospel? Jesus as The Great Bureaucrat? Not an appealing image.
I’ll be back later–just checking in on Sunday morning to be sure this thread is still here. It is–sort of.
A voice behind me in the dining room suggests, “You should post that this thread has been sabotaged by homosexuals opposed to the Bible.”
Very funny. No, actually, this thread HAS been jumbled by the vB changeover. For the record:
My big post giving the Biblical injunctions against homosexuality originally came directly after Sqweel’s “Don’t you see, people…” and Tinker’s comment, “Good to see you, Polycarp!” makes no sense because according to the remixed thread, Polycarp hasn’t appeared yet.
Golly.
I really hope it doesn’t keep doing this.
I’ll be back. With Ah-nold. Gunnin’ for bugs.
The voice in the dining room says I’m really being anal about this. My big post that I sent on Friday at about lunchtime (4/28) is now timestamped 4/29 12:20 a.m. and Tinker’s comment comes right after that. I presume that’s when they started getting GD up to speed on the new software.
Doesn’t really change the substance of the discussion, I know, but it makes the form of the talk look rather strange. Like one of those modern plays, where people make nonsensical remarks.
It’s ironic that liberal Christians should be so hostile to St. Paul, because without PAul, those goons wouldn’t have a leg to stand on!
“Goons”? Did I say goons? Indeed I did, because to scorn Paul as a homophobic meanie, while championing Jesus as a warm, loving, welcoming, non-judgmental dude, is to turn reality on its head! Don’t believe me? Read the New Testament, Gospels and epistles alike.
If liberals like Jesus and don’t like Paul, it’s for one reason only: Jesus rarely talked about sex (and never about homosexuality), whereas Paul did. As is so often the case (tragically), Christians (liberal AND conservative) make sex the most important of issues. Anyway, since JEsus rarely talked about sex, and never said anything about homosexuality, there are those who’d like to believe that Jesus was an “anything goes” kind of guy.
But bear in mind, it was JESUS who said that not the smallest letter of the Law (Mosaic law, that is) would be done away with. And bear in mind, that whenever Jesus revised Mosaic law, he made the rules TOUGHER!!! Jesus made divorce a lot HARDER, not easier! Jesus spoke of Hell as a real place, often- a LOT more often than Paul.
TEll me, liberal Christian- do you follow the kosher laws? If not, why not? Jesus followed them, and never once suggested that they should be done away with! Tell me, liberal CHristian- is your family descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? No? Well now, you’re in a bind… because Jesus NEVER preached to non-Jews in his life! He never left Palestine, and preached only to Jews.
So, since JESUS never said you were free to abandon Mosaic law… and JESUS never preached his message to us non-JEws… how do you suppose Mosaic law was done away with, and how did we Goys ever hear the Gospels?
Answer: It was PAUL, stupid!!! Paul was the one who said that faith in Jesus superceded Mosaic law, not Jesus! PAUL was the one who spread the Gospel to non-Jews, not Jesus!
If you still want to believe in nice Jesus and, while rejectin bad ol’ Paul, take this test: I’ll give you some pairs of quotes, and you tell me who’s speaking, Jesus or Paul:
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“It is not right to take food from the children (Jews) and give it to the dogs (Gentiles).”
“In Christ there is no Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free.”
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“If your eye offends thee, pluck it out- better to enter the Kingdom of Heaven with one eye, than to go with two eyes into Gehenna (Hell).”
“Love is patient, love is kind.”
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“Any man who will not forsake father and mother, sisters and brothers, wife and children, for my sake, is not worthy to be my disciple.”
“If I speak with the tongue of angels, and have not love, I am only an empty vessel, a clanging gong.”
SO, if you want to embrace “nice” jesus, you’d better be prepared to embrace Mosaic law (as Jesus did), to follow the kosher laws, to stone blasphemers and homosexuals, to circumcise all your male children… if not, then thank your lucky stars for St. Paul.
A couple of random thoughts.
First - speaking as a woman, I can tell you that menstruation can be an absolutely dreadful experience. It’s not so bad since the birth of my daughter, but I used to have excruciating cramps and water rentention and if my husband so much as touched my erogenous zones it made me want to scream. Remember, back in Old Testament days they didn’t have so much as aspirin. And a woman probably would not have been able to refuse her husband. I would imagine that the ban on having sex with a woman on her period would have been a very great blessing for those women.
Also, much is made of Paul telling people not to marry if they could help it. During some of this time, in some places, Christians were being tortured and killed if they professed their faith. If you had a family, you might have to choose between denying Christ and watching your toddlers being ripped apart by wild animals. In those circumstances I’m sure I would choose not to have children too. They didn’t have birth control back then either, so the only way not to have children was not to have sex.
Interesting little detour we have here. 
It may have been a blessing for those like you, but the majority of women can gain relief from menstrual cramps by having sex (even without orgasm) during their period. I suspect it was simply the age-old taboo about menstrual blood and not concern for the health and happiness of the menstruating women.
astorian wrote:
That may be your take, but go back and read my posts. I haven’t said a word about sexuality. (Hmmm. Somebody seems to be obsessed with sexuality, and I don’t think it’s the liberals…)
For the record, I am neither homosexual (not that there’s anything wrong with that), or even Christian for that matter. I am merely looking at this as an academic issue.
The difference that I see between Paul and Jesus has nothing to do with sexuality. It has everything to do with the way the two men approach the topic of sin generally. Jesus says repeatedly that we should not judge others; it is not our place. Jesus condemns sin, not the sinners. (Indeed, he earned the scorn of many for associating openly with “publicans and sinners.”)
Paul, on the other hand, is judgmental in the extreme. His writings are full of passages where he rails against the sinners as opposed to condemning the sinful acts. Unlike Jesus, Paul apparently refused even to associate with those he viewed as “sinful.” The differences really jump out at you. If Paul had given the Sermon on the Mount, my guess is that in place of the litany of “Blessed are the _________” passages, we would have “Cursed are the ___________.”
There is a real tension, in my view, between the teachings of Jesus and the way in which Paul approaches Christianity.
Just out of curiosity, do you believe the writings of Paul to be inerrant, astorian? Are his writings binding on you?
A majority of women find relief from cramps by having sex? I’m going to respectfully disagree here. Maybe some do. Whatever. I promise that when I was having to take codeine for 2 days (which they didn’t have in OT times) and throwing up from the pain, (which my doctor said was normal dysmenhorrea by the way,) sex was the last thing on my mind. If I’d had to submit then I’d probably have killed him.
But this is way off-topic.
RE: Christians being called on to follow the OT Law, see Matt 5:18 again"…one jot & one tittle shall inno wise pass from the Law, until all be fufilled" Most Christain Biblical Scholars, not to mention the Vatican, have said the “All” ‘that will be fufilled’ is Christ’s Crucifixion & Resurrection. In other words, until Jesus dies for our sins, we must carry out the Law. And for those “Christians” who think that they can pick & choose amoung Old Testament law, and decide what still applies or doesn’t–either it ALL applies, or none. There is nothing in any of the NT that indicates Christians get to pick & choose what they want to follow amoung the OT. This is not to say the OT is meaning less for Christians, it is just that instaed of getting to heaven by following a rigid code of Laws, we get there by believing. Also note that Matthew was writing to convince Jews that Jesus was the Messiah, there is little talk about the Law in the other Gospel, as they are meant more for Gentiles. Gentiles, of course, did not come under the Covenant to start with.
SOUTHERN: Paul is telling people not to marry & have children, NOT because of persucution, but because he believes the world will end before the Kids grow up (1Cor7:29) Not only was the man a sexist prude, but he was a pisspoor prophet.
In a religion thread, too!
Damn!
Now that I finally get around to GD, and read the whole verdammt scrambled thread all the way through, preparatory to a reply, I discover that it cut off half my “homosexual verses” post. So here’s the last half of the post. (This is why we compose things in WordPad and Save them, boys and girls!)
Also, this post doesn’t show up in the “Scroll down to look at the thread while you’re in the reply window” mode.
Okay, that’s quite a rant, huh? “Take it to the Pit, Paul.” Did you notice that woman are mentioned, too, as “having left natural relations”? Okay, we know Paul had some old-fashioned ideas about women, but we can’t just throw out one or two statements here and there, because it all does hang together. According to the Bible, the only proper sexual relationship is between a man and his wife.
Anything else is “perversion”, in the Merriam-Webster sense of “to overturn, corrupt, to cause to turn aside or away from what is good or true or morally right, to cause to turn aside or away from what is generally done or accepted, to divert to a wrong end or purpose, to twist the meaning or sense of.” And here’s the reason for it:
Here’s Paul again:
Here’s the book of Hebrews:
And lest anyone accuse God of pussyfooting around when it comes to punishment:
Okay, enough of generalities. On to one more specific thing. This is Paul talking, first to the church at Corinth, and then to young Timothy (at this point I will mention that my QuickVerse program is the New International Version):
Wycliffe’s Bible Encyclopedia says that the Greek word translated in I Timothy as “perverts” and in I Corinthians as “homosexual” is the Greek word arsenokoitai , and that it means “male bed partners”.
The Walter Bauer Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature is even more explicit. According to Walter, the Greek word arsenokoitus (notice the suffix “-coitus”) means “a male who practices homosexuality; pederast; sodomite.” A sodomite, in general conversational usage, means a man who has anal sex, presumably either as a top or a bottom, but as we saw above, it can mean other things, too. A pederast is, again according to Merriam-Webster, “one that practices anal intercourse especially with a boy.”
I don’t see how you can say that there are no Biblical injunctions against homosexuality.
Should I leave the books out on the dining room table, or can I put them away now? 
OK, y’all keep turning the discussion back to homosexuality, without addressing the central thesis of the OP.
Leaving homosexuality aside for a moment, did Paul really practice Christianity the way Jesus taught it?
I say he did not (for the reasons cited in my last post). Can we debate that point for a moment without going off onto the homosexuality tangent?
Two tiny quibbles with Daniel~ and then, children, we’ll have Vocabulary Builder time!
In the OP, Daniel~, you said,
Just now, you said:
Does this mean that you found my “ladder” helpful?
Next quibble: I wish you wouldn’t characterize Paul as “a pisspoor prophet” because he thought the world would end “any day now.” Plenty of other well-educated, sophisticated people–Jews, Gentiles, Christians, and pagans–believed that the end of the world was near. “Mankind can’t keep up,” they told themselves. “Events are outpacing the human race’s ability to keep up.” Signs and portents were seen everywhere. It’s quite fascinating, really. They sound just like us.
Okay, time for Vocabulary Builder. To paraphrase somebody’s sig, “You say ‘zealot’ like it’s a bad thing.” “Zeal” means passion, a zealot is someone who is passionate. I don’t see anything wrong with Paul being passionate about things. Yes, he could come across as arbitrary and unkind, but hey, that kind of goes with the “zealot” territory. Passionate preachers who are on a mission from God to save the world from everlasting damnation don’t have time to stop and think whether they’ve hurt somebody’s feelings.
Paul was zealous, but not “without knowledge.” He wasn’t some hick Bible-pounder who knew a few verses and had had a “close encounter” on the road to Damascus. He was educated, well-spoken, and could take care of himself.
He wrapped himself in a cloak of zealousness and went to war for God. His heart ached especially for his brother Jews, whom he saw as needing the Gospel more desperately than most, because they were so close…so near, and yet so far.
And, finally, he presents his resume. “Yes,” he admits, “I have been legalistic and righteous, even faultlessly righteous.” (I detect a certain ironic tone there.)
“But,” he says, “anything I may have accomplished in the past through legalism I now consider a complete loss. The only thing that matters now,” he says, “is Christ’s righteousness, not mine.”
And he means it, too. One thing nobody ever accused Paul of doing was saying one thing and meaning another.
Note to Spoke: just saw your post while I’m finishing up with the reply window–that’s one thing at least that the new software does right, updates the thread while you wait!
Anyway, I would of course have to answer “yes” to your question. Can you give me some specific instances of what you mean by Paul “not practicing Christianity” the way Jesus preached it? Do you mean that Paul thundered against sin while Jesus tended to take a more moderate approach? What?
I think it’s clear that the Bible is meant to be a sort of synthesis, or conglomeration, of ideas. The books of the Bible complement each other the way the elements of a gourmet meal complement each other. You would never serve a green salad with oil and vinegar dressing with a fine red wine, because the vinegar would fight with the wine. I don’t see where any of the books of the Bible could be considered to be “fighting” with each other. I think they mesh together very well to form one cohesive body of ideas, one complete, well-balanced 66-course meal.
Notthemama, you are my hero. I hope I’m just like you when I grow up. You rock with all the research and references and points and facts. =)
Spoke, you seem to have an EXTREMELY inflated opinion of your own importance in this debate. I mentioned homsexuality because it was clearly an important issue to the fellow (Daniel) who created this post!
Moreover, whenever people claim to love Jesus while hating St. Paul, I’ve found that sex is sually at the bottom of things
NOTTHE: I agreed there were some prohibitions re homosexuality, at least in Pauls work. But when he rants about gay sex, he also rants about drunkards, fornicators, masturbators,covetous, railers (ie those that “rail on about things”, ie Paul and almost everyone here)boasters, prideful,and DEBATERS. So, IF we believe Paul, and we believe Paul has the authority to override the Mercy of Jesus (NO!on both counts, IMHO), yes, those who practice homosexual sex, or ANY kind of sex outside of “normal” sex during marriage, PLUS all those others are condemned. I really do not believe Zion, or Pepper, or Jenkins, or YOU, don’t fit in one of the categories of sinners/condemned that are just as bad as Gays.
According to Paul, I’m going to Hell, but if so, I’ll have some DAMN fine company…
notthemama wrote:
Well, I’ll try again. Your own earlier post contained an example of what I mean:
but
Jesus condemns the sins. Paul, on the other hand, condemns the sinners. Where Jesus condemns “theft” for example, Paul condemns “thieves.” By doing so, Paul in effect gives a license to Christians, if they can identify someone as a thief, to condemn that person, rather than condemning the wrong he has committed.
Time and again, Jesus preaches that we should not judge others. A stream of examples come to mind: “Judge not lest ye be judged;” “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone;” the lesson about removing the “beam” from one’s own eye instead of pointing out the “mote” in a brother’s eye. Paul seems to completely ignore this teaching. He has no hesitation in judging others.
Also unlike Jesus, who was criticized for associating with “publicans and sinners,”, Paul’s approach seems to be to cut off all fellowship with someone if they are sinful. Where Jesus approaches sinners with love and compassion (“Go and sin no more”), Paul rails against them. Two entirely different approaches.
By the way, something else has always bugged me. How did Paul get to be an “Apostle”? Did anyone check his credentials? Seems to me like he came in with this story about his conversion on the road to Damascus, and everyone just took it at face value. Sure, he was “blinded by the light,” or so he said, but how would you confirm whether he really was blinded? That always seemed kind of shaky to me. The other apostles seemed to accept him, though, so I guess they had their reasons, but the stories in Acts don’t seem to lend that much support to his position. Why didn’t Jesus prophesize the coming of Paul (a good point raised by Daniel, I believe)?
Astorian: “A soft answer turneth away wrath.”
You made the claim that the only reason anyone could have for criticizing Paul was a homosexual agenda. I simply pointed out that this is not so. Here I am, a heterosexual with no “gay agenda,” showing you why I believe there is some tension between the writings of Paul and the words of Jesus.
notthemama, I can’t speak for the other posters, but when I use the word “zealot,” I am using it to refer to someone who is zealous to the point of intolerance.
Actually the text says to remove the beam first so one could see better to deal with the mote in your friends.
Major difference between Jesus and Paul, Jesus could forgive sins, Jesus could see a person’s heart. Paul could not. Paul, by his own confession was the ‘cheif of sinners’, but had turned from His sin, and taught the gospel.
Peace.
navigator wrote:
Oh, OK. So once you have somehow made yourself “sin-free,” then it’s OK to judge others? Do you really think this is the point Jesus was making? A how-to lesson for those who want to condemn their neighbors? How exactly do you know when you’ve reached that state of perfection that allows you to judge everyone else’s sins?
Taken in context with Jesus’s other sayings, it’s pretty clear (to me anyway) that Jesus wanted his followers to work on overcoming their own sins, and to leave the business of judging others to God.