Chuzzlewit, you occasionally use the term "Christians" in a way that makes me slightly uneasy. Irreligious (or non-religious) as you are, I get the impression that you may nevertheless been bamboozled by the conservative Christians into believing that they -- and they only -- represent the "Christian" point of view. My concern is sparked by passages like this:
Those "words" form the basis of the Pentateuch, and so far as I know are considered to be authentic by Christian believers.
Whoa, there. What Christian believers? There are almost as many Christian beliefs as there are Christian believers.
I am an ex-Christian myself. But there are plenty of people whose views are not far from my own who still call themselves Christians:
people who do not believe in the divinity of Christ, who do not believe that Christ "died for men's sins", who do not believe in original sin, etc., etc. For many of them, Jesus is primarily a great moral teacher, and nothing more (should there be more?).
Good grief, we have been talking about the "Jesus Seminar" here, many of whose participants see the historical Jesus as a sort of wandering stoic sage, preaching a new morality (but no eschatology). These guys are Christian theologians, remember...
BTW, you might take a look at post #34449, to get an idea of what, in my opinion, the Jesus of the Gospels (forget the Historical Jesus, for the nonce) probably thought about Leviticus & such like...
Joan |
