First off, good review, I appreciate it. You are one of the reasons I come back to the site after periods of absence. Your reviews and your thoughts enrichen my understanding of various texts in a way I wouldn't experience otherwise (since I can't read a lick of Greek).
View original postAfter finishing the Septuagint, I decided that the logical next step would be to read the entire Greek New Testament to get a better sense of the way that the Septuagint was quoted and drawn on. I had read several of the books in the GNT before, but I had never read all of them in Greek, and several I had never even read in English, so over the last few days I corrected that situation.
View original postI am very glad that I did read the GNT immediately after the Septuagint. Certain words and phrases that are used in the GNT took on new meaning because they were the exact same words that were used in a slightly different context in the Septuagint. Some of the terms that took on new meaning are controversial ones, like the word “justification”. When Paul talks about “justification”, he uses the term the same way it is used in the Septuagint, where it is always brought up as a metaphor: just as gold is justified (purified) by heating it, so faith is justified (purified) when it is tested. The concept, which has set Catholic and Orthodox Christians at odds with Protestants, takes on a different texture when we see its origins in metallurgy.
I often wonder where this sense of justification leaves people like me (if others like me even exist). I am an agnostic, I have no idea whether God exists or not and I frankly don't think it is possible to prove or disprove, in other words it is unknowable. I also have no idea whether Jesus is God or not.
Now, to many who call themselves Christians, I am not a Christian. Yet, I find their "Christianity" utterly empty and void of any meaning. None of them can tell me how to forgive, none of them can pass to me any sense of inner awareness and peace in this amazingly vast universe of existence.
Instead I find myself asking, no cliche intended, what would this man Jesus have done/do? How do I forgive my ex-sister-in-law and her family for turning my brother's kids against us, an act that is so hurtful and so destructive that the only word I can think of to describe the damage done to us and to them is "evil"? What can I do for the next door neighbor, the 5 year old, who is such a sweet kid on one hand, but so angry and in such turmoil on the other because he was most likely sexually abused, has a father in prison and a low functioning, possibly mentally ill mother? My mother who is poor and a burden to everybody, whom I know is just waiting to die any day from her congestive heart failure, waiting to die because she is heartbroken that she knows she is a burden and can't do anything about it? My nephew, who is being verbally abused by his grandfather because he refuses to discard his father like his sisters did and would rather live with him than his mother? Seeing a dear friend suffering grief over the death of his father and knowing his torn inside because he wishes he could have one more conversation with him to say what wasn't ever said?
The burdens I bare on a daily basis aren't my own alone, but those of the people around me as well. I empathize and by empathizing I hurt like they hurt. And I know that I alone have no answers for these pains, I cannot ease them by myself, and so I look to this man Jesus, because supposedly this man knew what to do, what to say, how to act, how to express the presence of God.
I know this all personal, but this is my struggle with faith. I have no place with the Catholics or Orthodox as I care not about Eucharists or other Sacraments. I have no place with Protestants as I care not about attending church services, "praise & worship" or church league softball. All of those things are hollow to me, they are empty.
Yet, even though I can't honestly profess to be a Christian in any traditional sense it sounds like I have a faith being tried and purified. Isn't this what you are saying justification means?
View original postHowever, even simpler words and phrases acquired new context, and the end result was that the New Testament seemed to be a continuation of the Old in a way that it hadn’t even when I had read the Septuagint. Whatever one’s opinion of Christianity may be, the authors of the New Testament books knew their Judaism and they used the Old Testament to their full advantage to prove that Jesus was the promised Messiah. As I said when reviewing the Septuagint, it is clear that the Jewish community abandoned the Greek translation of their texts after Christianity arose, because the Greek of the Old Testament is clearly and unambiguously in favor of the Christians. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians almost certainly sowed massive dissent in the Jewish community. I found it far more pointed and convincing than the Epistle to the Hebrews, which made a far more attenuated argument for Jewish conversion in more obtuse terms.
View original postAs with the Septuagint, the style and tone of the Greek used varied wildly. Matthew reads very much like the Septuagint books of the Torah, with Hebrew-style syntax, while some of the letters are written in full high classical style, much like the later books of the Maccabees were in the Septuagint. Ultimately, I enjoyed the style of the books supposedly authored by John the best – the Gospel of John, the letters ascribed to John and the Apocalypse of John, also known as the Book of Revelation.
View original postFrom the standpoint of quality, the Gospel of John was far and away the best book in the New Testament and, in my opinion, in the entire Bible. I also enjoyed the other gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, even though the latter book was a bit uneven. Paul’s Letter to the Romans was magisterial and probably deserves to be considered a fifth gospel of sorts. I also found that 1 Corinthians and Galatians were wonderful. Other books, like the letters to the Thessalonians, the letters of Peter and the so-called Pastoral Letters, were incredibly tedious. I am also at a loss as to what value the very shortest of the letters actually bring to the Bible, such as Titus, Philemon, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and a few others.
View original postIt is interesting that the New Testament places a different emphasis on faith and proper conduct than the Old Testament does. The notions of charity remain, but there is a real fear that comes through, particularly in the Pauline letters, that the newly minted Christian communities are susceptible to reverting to pagan ways, especially considering that the Early Church’s formulation of the “New Covenant”, promised in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and elsewhere, involves a suspension of many of the Jewish purity laws, including the dietary prohibitions (also supported by the gospels, as Christ says that it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person, not what goes in) and circumcision. Paul goes to great lengths to emphasize that Christians can eat anything as long as they don’t know that it was dedicated to a pagan god. He even recommends that Christians not ask pagan friends, because only if they ask and learn that food was dedicated are they prohibited from eating it.
View original postIt seems that many of the statements that cause the most consternation, such as the anti-homosexual statements found in Romans, 1 Corinthians and Jude, are the product of this concern. They are almost always mentioned in a list of activities that show “reversion” to pagan ways and apostasy, along with idolatry. At the same time, many of the earlier writings betray the expectation that many seemed to have that the Second Coming would happen within a few years of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, and there was an effort to encourage total chastity as a means of ensuring that baptized Christians didn’t sin carnally in what was thought to be a brief period of waiting for the End Times. The proto-communist nature of many Christian communities reflects this consensus – after all, if the end is coming soon, does it matter if one gives away all one has to the community? Who needs to worry about the future at all? It is unclear how much this general feeling contributed to statements about submission to authority, the permissiveness with respect to slavery and other statements that cause problems in the modern world.
I'm not sure how to word this, but something struck me concerning this. You seem to be saying that the real concern with many of these contentious parts of scriptures are not so much as individual issue but rather a larger concern about reversion to paganism in general, a kind of slippery slope if you will.
You would probably know better than I whether this is more myth or reality, but wasn't there a fair amount (maybe a lot?) of orgies that occurred in some of the pagan mystery cults? Could it be that the real concern about homosexuality is more in line with the orgy-atmosphere of some of the pagan cults rather than two individuals who lives together in some fishing village somewhere? Just curious as to your thoughts on that?
View original postSome of the later letters address this point and reiterate the gospels’ injunctions that no man can know when the Second Coming will occur. However, when these points were made no further authoritative statements were made regarding sexual relations, private property or power dynamics. As a result, religious communities have come up with widely divergent views on many contentious issues, and the Bible has been used on both sides to support radically opposed opinions.
View original postIt seems to me that all of these arguments are really beside the point. Taking the key themes of books like the Gospel of John and Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the fundamental points of Christianity are encompassed in the notion of loving one’s neighbor and even one’s enemy, and the idea that faith removes sin. Because I am not a Protestant, I would add the admonition from the Letter of James that faith without works is dead faith.
In continuing with what I wrote above, even though I attend no church, do not partake in any Sacraments (or church softball league) and am not even sure if God exists, yet I try to be kind, forgiving, empathize with others' misfortunes and burdens, try to be available to help others, am trying to forgive my enemies and am trying to figure out how to emulate Jesus the man, am I not a Christian?
By the way, I know this is not something you can answer and it is in a sense a rhetorical question, but I would offer the opportunity for you or others to comment if you or others would like.
View original postIt was a fast read – a little over a week, in contrast with three months for the Septuagint, but the New Testament is much shorter than the Old, and the Old Testament of the Septuagint is longer than the Protestant Old Testament that most people are familiar with. All I can do now is quote Christ from John 19:30: Τετελεσται. It is finished.
Thanks for reading my meandering thoughts and about my questions of faith. 
But wine was the great assassin of both tradition and propriety...
-Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
