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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (34548)	4/12/1999 5:18:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Little things like this are why I think it's a world of pain trying to take the Bible 100% literally. The only real choice is to get figurative to some degree. And then it's a slippery slope. One person's Revealed Ironclad Truth is somebody else's Incredibly Bad Idea. Afore'n y'all know it, there's angry tracts nailed to church doors.

To: Ilaine who wrote (34548)	4/12/1999 5:49:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

Opened at random, Deuteronomy 13, 12: If you hear it said about one of the towns the the Lord your God is giving you to live in, that scoundrels from among you have gone out and led the inhabitants of the town astray, saying, "Let us go and worship other gods," whom you have not known, then you shall inquire and make a thorough investigation. If the charge is established that such an abhorrent thing has been done among you, you shall put the inhabitants of that town to the sword, utterly destroying it and everything in it-- even putting its livestock to the sword. All of its spoil you shall gather into the public square; then burn the town and all its spoil with fire, as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It shall remain a perpetual ruin, never to be rebuilt. About the eye for an eye business in the New Testament... I wonder if it was taken any more seriously as a practical injunction than the requirement contained in the same part of Matthew (5,29) that you should pluck out your right eye if you see something naughty with it. In a sequence (NT) about the horrors of adultery, Jesus commands, If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away... The extreme counsels (like turn the other cheek) given in the Sermon on the Mount are understood by most contemporary scholars as hyperbolic invitations to live perfectly. They attempt to bring human action to the borders of perfection for the purpose of igniting divine attention directed to ending the present world and replacing it with a new one. These commandments, and particularly Matthew 5, 38-42, are technically described by most scholars as "case parodies," defined as "the comic exaggeration of a law where certain features are overstated for effect." They represent an urgent, almost hysterical, set of requirements, and are intended to so vastly improve communal conduct that God will intervene. In the Sermon on the Mount, just after the Beatitudes, we have, (in case you might think that this emergency appeal to God implied a 'repudiation' by Jesus of the Law [Matthew 5, 17]): Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished... That presumably includes Deuteronomy 13, 12 and other instructions to kill.