Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Comparisons between the Bible and the Koran

I thought I'd start a new thread where I'll compare the Bible and the Koran. First of all, I'll say something about my reasons for reading the Bible and the Koran.

I read the Bible because it seemed to me that Evangelical Christians, or at least some of them, were using the Bible to oppress women. An article in Time or Newsweek from the early 1980s claimed that Evangelicals were very serious about their demands that women must obey their husbands, because the Bible says they must. Also, according to this same article, Evangelicals discouraged married women from having a career outside their homes, and they very strongly discouraged women from divorcing their husbands. It seemed to me that Evangelicals were using the Bible to demand that women give their lives to fulfilling their husbands' needs while constantly denying their own, and that we were talking about very serious oppression of women in the name of God.

And I felt that I just had to know what the Bible actually said about women. So, in the summer of 1985, I sat down to read it.

Then in the late eighties I read someplace that the Koran claims that women haven't got souls. Women are like animals in that respect, unlike men who have souls and are true human beings. Could it possibly be true that the Koran said that women lacked souls? If it was true, then Islam was indeed an unspeakably horrible religion. I just had to read the Koran to find out what it said about women.

Reading the Bible and the Koran

Reading the Bible proved to be easy, because I was already so well acquainted with the larger picture and the overall story of the Old and the New Testament. Wherever I was in the Bible, I knew what came next, so to speak. It was like walking through a neighbourhood that my parents had driven me through, admittedly while breaking the speed limit, so many times. I just had to go much more slowly and discover so many more details when I walked, or rather read, on my own. Also, my own Bible has little summaries printed ahead of every chapter in it. Therefore, after reading the summaries I was able to skip certain chapters and still feel that I wasn't missing much – so, for example, was I able to skip chapters which primarily consisted of long lists of names and genealogies. I also decided against reading Psalms, and I paid very scant attention to Acts. The thing is that I always felt that I knew what it was I was skipping, and why.

By comparison, reading the Koran was very hard and very boring. I didn't know the overall story. I couldn't foresee where the narrative was taking me. I got lost in the details, in the repetitions and in all the solemn invocations. I couldn't remember what I had read the week before. Eventually I was bored out of my skull, and I gave up when I had read about two thirds of the pages. The next summer I tried again, with the same result. I read from the beginning and gave up when I had read two thirds of the pages.

I contacted a Professor at the theological institution of the University of Lund, close to Malmö, and asked him if I had missed something important about the Koran's view of women. He told me that I had read most of the important stuff.


General similarities and differences between the Bible and the Koran

I was extremely surprised that the Koran “sounded” and felt” so much like the Bible. I recognized the solemn kind of language from the Bible, for example. Of course I read it in Swedish, and I have no idea what it would have sounded like in its original ancient Arabic. (Muslims often claim that the Koran must not be translated, because only in its original language can its full meaning be understood.)

An intriguing difference between the Bible and the Koran is that the Bible is like a cacophony of voices. In the Old Testament, for example, there are at least sixteen different books describing the prophecies by sixteen different prophets from Isaiah to Malacchi, and most likely these sixteen books were written by sixteen different people, too. And then I haven't even counted Ecclesiastes, whose book is written from the first person perspective, so that Ecclesiastes speaks to us as “I”. And then there is Song of Solomon… and Psalms… and Job… and Esther… and Proverbs… and…

And in the New Testament, there are four Gospels, giving four different accounts of the life of Jesus, written by four different people. There are several letters from Paul, but there are also letters from Peter, James and John.

In the Koran, however, there is one voice speaking to us, monotonously, for 114 Suras (chapters) and, in my copy of the Koran, 485 pages. That is Muhammed's voice.

Interestingly, the Koran is absolutely chock full of stories about characters that we recognize from the Bible – Abraham, Joseph, Jesus and Mary, for example. On the other hand, all the stories that are told about these familiar characters are different from the stories that are told in the Bible. The story that I can remember about Jesus in the Koran is that Jesus was a prophet who started prophesying already when he, Jesus, was a little baby in his crib. Interestingly, the Koran says that Mary was in fact a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, but that doesn't mean that Jesus was the Son of God. Mary's virgin birth was just another miracle, no different from other miracles wrought by God. The Koran claims that Jesus was not the Son of God, “only” a prophet.

The Bible, both the Old and the New Testament, is a story about waiting for the Messiah. According to the New Testament Jesus has already arrived, but he needs to come once more so that the Kingdom of God can be fully realized. The Old Testament says that the Messiah will come when the Jews have become righteous, so that they deserve the Messiah. And then when the Messiah comes, he will build a righteous nation that will be the Kingdom of God on Earth, and that Kingdom will then extend to other nations as well. At least that is how I understand it.

The point is that both the Christians and the Jews are waiting for something. The world they live in is not perfect, and they are waiting for the Messiah to bring them that perfection.

The Muslims, however, don't seem to be waiting for a radical makeover of their society brought to them by God. No Messiah is expected. Perfection on Earth is something that the Muslims must create themselves, by making sure that everybody in their society lives according to the rules and laws of the Koran. However, even obeying the Koran is not enough, according to most Muslims traditions. That is because it is said that Muhammed made a lot of “oral prophecies” that he never wrote down, and in order to achieve societal perfection, everybody has to obey all those other rules as well. These other rules, thousands of them, were written down by other people and collected in other holy books. It is in these other holy books that you find highly controversial rules, such as the rule that girl children must be circumcised, i.e., sexually mutilated. Probably you also find the rule that women must cover their faces, not just their hair, in those other holy books that Muhammed definitely did not write down himself.

Is the Koran warlike? I didn't particularly ask myself that question as I read the Koran, because at that time Islam hadn't become widely associated with political violence and terrorism. Nevertheless, the way I remember it, the Koran often talks about the right of Muslims to take arms to defend themselves against those who threaten them. It never says that Muslims should attack other people who don't bother them.

We should perhaps remember that the Old Testament is very warlike and cruel in places, and the books of Judges and Joshua contain passages that can actually be described as small-scale genocide. There is nothing like that on the first two thirds of the pages of the Koran.

On the other hand, in the New Testament there is really nothing that truly justifies going to war at all.

Does the Koran say that women lack souls?

No!!! Absolutely not. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the Koran that suggests that women would be unworthy of going to Heaven, for example. On the contrary, the Koran is more eloquent than the Bible when it comes to making it clear that women have the same right as men to go to Heaven. For example, it says in the fourth Sura, verse 123 (I'm sorry I have to translate it into English myself from my own copy of the Koran):

Whoever does good deeds, whether they are men or women, and is of the true faith, they will go into Paradise and never suffer any injustice.

There are other verses too, which make it even clearer that paradise is open to women as well as to men. (But please don't ask me to find those verses.)

Are there female heroines in the Bible and in the Koran?

To me this question is particularly interesting, because I think this is one of the important differences between Christianity and Judaism on one hand and Islam on the other. Because there really are female heroines in the Bible. Of course, it depends on how you define the word “heroine”. There are several women in the Bible who are important because they bear important sons, but does that make them heroines? In my opinion it is impossible to build a non-sexist society around the notion that the only way a woman can be a heroine is by giving birth to one or more sons. Therefore I'm not going to say that Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth or even Mary were heroines, in spite of their important sons. If giving birth to sons is what it takes for women to be heroines, then I guess we can start offering women mass abortions of female fetuses right away and offer every woman the chance to be a heroine by giving birth to sons.

No, but there are other heroines in the Bible. There most certainly aren't many of them, but there are at least three: Deborah, Jael and Ruth. Deborah and Jael play extremely important roles when it comes to defeating the army of an enemy of the children of Israel in chapter four of the book of Judges. Ruth is another sort of woman. She is brave, warm-hearted and unconventional. She loves her mother-in-law, Naomi, and leaves her own country to follow Naomi back to Israel, when both these women have become widows. Then in Israel, she gains protection and security for both Naomi and herself by getting herself the husband that she and Naomi prefer. Ruth takes Naomi's advice and gets into her chosen man's bed to make him interested! I love it. I also love what Boaz, Ruth's chosen man, said when he first saw Ruth: "Whose young woman is this?" (Ruth 2:5) Well, surprise, Boaz! Ruth belonged to herself and made her own choices.

So as far as I can see, there are three women in the Bible (and all of them in the Old Testament) who make their own choices and who do the right thing by doing so. Three heroines are not a lot, but three is better than nothing. And there are no heroines like Deborah, Jael and Ruth either in the New Testament or in the Koran. As for Mary, all she really does is say yes to a decision that has apparently already been made by others.

I believe it is crucially important that there are heroines in the Bible, even though they are so few. Thanks to Deborah, Jael and Ruth, Christian and Jewish women can use the holy book of their religions to ask for the right to try to be heroines themselves, and to ask for the right to make their own decisions.

Is there obvious misogyny in the Bible and in the Koran?

There is definitely misogyny in the Bible, mostly in the Old Testament. There are some horrible passages in Ezekiel and Isaiah that describe, in sadistic detail, the punishments that will befall sinful women. Ecclesiastes says that woman is more bitter than death (Ecclesiastes 7:26). And Exodus 22:18 demands that witches must be put to death. In view of that, I think it is no coincidence that the Christian world has seen witch hunts, where women were singled out as instruments of the Devil and were burnt at the stake. The Islamic world has not seen anything like that. And indeed, when I read the Koran, I found no obvious misogyny in it. There were no descriptions of the horrible evil of women, no gleeful descriptions of ghastly punishments of women, and no mention of witches.

There is not a lot of misogyny in the New Testament, but there is some, at least in the Book of Revelation, where the City of Rome is described in detail as a sinful, lustful woman.

What rights does the husband have over his wife, according to the Bible and the Koran?

This is another interesting point. The New Testament repeats four or five times that women must obey their husbands. On the other hand, nothing is said about what a husband is allowed to do to force his wife to obey.

The Koran says something rather scary in the fourth Sura, verse 38. Would you believe that when I was looking for a translation into English of this verse, I found a site that would translate almost the entire fourth Sura but not verse 38, apparently because it is seen as controversial? So I will try to translate it myself:

Men shall be the heads of their wives because of the priority that God has given to some people rather than to others, and because of the costs that men have to meet; therefore righteous women shall be submissive and careful of what is hidden, because God respects them. And as for those, from whom you fear obstinacy, warn them, send them away from your bed, and physically punish them, but if they then obey you, don't seek to punish them further.

As you can see, the Koran appears to say that a man has the right to beat up his wife if she doesn't obey him. This is an important difference between the Bible and the Koran, because the Bible never gives a husband the right to use violence against his wife.

Another verse from the Koran that this Internet site would not translate fully was 4:19, so again I will translate it:

If a woman of yours commits a nefarious deed, then you shall call four witnesses against her; if they witness against her you shall keep her locked inside, until death takes her or until God provides her with some other means.

As horrible as this sounds, it should be remembered that there are rules in the Old Testament that sentences women to death for certain crimes. Death penalty for women is not peculiar to the Koran.

What does the Bible and the Koran say about polygamy?

The Koran makes it very clear that polygamy is allowed. It says in Sura 4:3 that a man may have two, three or four wives.

The Old Testament does not discuss polygamy as such, but on the other hand there are so many heroic Old Testament characters who have more than one wife: Abraham, Jacob, Moses and David, to name a few. Only Solomon is criticized for having too many wives:

He had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. And the only thing the Bible criticizes him for is that all those hundreds of wives and concubines made him worship other gods.

Well, at least the New Testament forbids polygamy, right?

Wrong. It doesn't. Nowhere in the Bible is there a ban against polygamy. The absolutely only restrictions against polygamy that you can find in the Bible are these two passages:

1 Timothy 3:2
Titus 1:6

And elder or an overseer (or a bishop) of a congregation is not allowed to have more than one wife. This restriction does not seem to apply to any other men, though.

Therefore, if it was possible to convert a group of polygamous Muslims to Christianity, it doesn't automatically follow that they would give up their polygamous ways. If they took the time to really read the Bible and look for restrictions against polygamy, all they would find is that they would not be allowed to be bishops or elders of a congregation if they had more than one wife.

However, even if the Bible doesn't forbid polygamy, this form of marriage has nevertheless always been anathema in Christian communities. It is and has always been impossible to practice polygamy and ask mainstream Christians to respect you for it. Interestingly, for the longest time polygamy has always been impossible among Jews, even though there is certainly nothing in the Old Testament that says that it is wrong. The reason why Jews shun polygamy is probably that polygamy was so severely frowned upon in Christian Europe, where the Jews spent so many centuries of their Diaspora.


The way I see it, polygamy is nothing short of disastrous if you want to create a society that respects the idea of equality between the sexes. How can you possibly have equality if a man can have many wives, but a woman may have to share her only husband with other women?

And as long as polygamy is accepted in Muslim societies, I don't think equality between the sexes is possible there.

Comparisons between Jesus, Paul and Muhammed

I'm going to start by comparing Paul and Muhammed, because I really think that they have a lot in common. Both are the principal founders of their religions. Obviously Muhammed is the founder of Islam, but in my opinion, it is Paul rather than Jesus who is the founder of Christianity. Paul tirelessly travelled around the Middle East of his time, arguing and canvassing for Christianity. Muhammed also travelled a lot, whereas Jesus never left his home province of Palestine. Both Paul and Muhammed also wrote down their revelations and thoughts about their religion, expounding in writing on what is the will of God. Jesus, by contrast, never wrote anything down.

Of course, an incredibly major difference between Paul and Muhammed is that Muhammed was a soldier and a general, who brought his religion to others by force and by war. Paul had absolutely no army and never tried to use any sort of force or threat to bring his religion to others. Instead he cajoled, occasionally flattered, and reassured the leaders of the mighty Roman Empire that he wasn't criticizing or questioning the Empire or its leaders.

Paul and Muhammed are both patriarchal in their outlook on women, but they are not misogynists. They don't hate women. They don't want to make life harder for women than it already is. Indeed, they both want men to look kindly, if a bit condescendingly, on their wives. On the other hand, both Paul and Muhammed want women to know their place in society and to be obedient and submissive. Both Paul and Muhammed think that women should obey certain laws that apply only to women.

In my opinion, it is impossible to have equality between the sexes if men and women have to obey different laws.

Jesus, on the other hand, never once said that women should obey any laws that applied to them only! He never said that men and women should obey different laws. Never once did he say or do anything that is incompatible with the idea that men and women should be treated equally by the law.

Also, Jesus repeatedly defended precisely the kind of women that his society despised the most: the “fallen” women, the “sinful” women, the whores, the adulteresses. Interestingly, Christianity has continued to despise and punish precisely the kind of women that Jesus himself defended: the “fallen” women, the whores, the adulteresses. When it comes to its view of women, Christian congregations have often been exceedingly bad at listening to what Jesus said on this subject.


The separation between church and state: A comparison between the Bible and the Koran

Islam was founded by a man who was a soldier and a general. He spread his religion by war and by force. In Muslim countries, Islam became the law of the land right from the start. Breaking the rules of the religion was equal to committing treason against the state. In many cases, disobeying the tenets of Islam carried the death penalty.

Jesus lived in the province of Palestine, which was occupied by the mighty Roman Empire. Jesus had no army with which he could overthrow the forces of Rome and found his own state where he could make his own laws. Similarly, when Paul travelled around the Middle East in his efforts to spread Christianity to as many people as possible, he took pains not to alienate Rome. In his letter to the Romans, 13:1-7, Paul says this about the submission to (worldly) authorities:
By saying this, Paul ensured that Christianity from the start was a matter of private lifestyle and private conscience; it was a private matter, purely and simply. It had nothing to do with the state and the law. From the start, there was this very clear separation between church and state in the Christian religion.

And because there was this separation between church and state in the Christian religion, it was impossible for Paul and the other “founding fathers” of Christianity to ask for harsh punishments for those who disobeyed the Christian rules. It was impossible to say that a Christian woman who disobeyed her husband should be executed for this, for example, because executions could only be carried out by the state. In Christianity, therefore, breaking religious rules never carried the death penalty.

Later on, when Christianity became dominant, church and state merged in Europe. So many people were executed for religious crimes. So many women were executed for adultery, and a few were executed for practicing witchcraft. And the law did not apply equally to men and women.

To me, it is crucially important that the church and state remain separate in Western civilization. I think that this separation between church and state is the key to such things as democracy and equality between the sexes. To me, the main reason for why we in the west have democracy and gender equality, whereas they don't have any of that in Arabic and Muslim societies, is that they don't have any, or much, separation between church and state (or in their case, between mosque and state).

So please, let's keep church and state separate!!!!!

Ann

Ann, I always love all of your thread topics. This one is I can't wait to comment on but I may get distracted cause I'm at work but here it goes...


You may already know this because you've read both books but the reason the Koran is very similar to the Bible is because the Muslim people are descended from Ishmael, Abraham's first son (before he had Isaac). God had promised Abraham a son with his wife Sarah and when they became aged and still had not had a son, Sarah told Abraham to sleep with their servent Hagar (not an uncommon practice for this time). Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. Of course after this Sarah did actually give birth to a son, Isaac. So the Muslim's believe much of the beginning of the Bible but they believe Ishmael was the son that Abraham took onto the mountain and almost sacrificed, not Isaac. And that Ishmael was the son that was promised to Abraham that would enable him to become the 'father of many nations.' There is a movie that I watched one time called More Than Dreams where Muslims have dreams where Jesus (called Isa in the Koran) appears to them and they become Christians. They are very moving stories. One of the stories (my favorite) is about an Egyptian terrorist who was asked to read the Bible by his terrorist cell leader and to write a book on why the Koran is the word of God and the Bible is not. In the end, after reading and studying the bible, the man became a Christian because he saw that much of what the Koran says actually supports the Bible. All of the stories are in subtitles for their native language and very well re-enacted. They moved me to tears. Anyways, maybe you should check out that video because he does talk about some of the similarities he found in the Bible & Koran and he was a Koran scholar so you might find it interesting.

You are right about the Jews still waiting for the Messiah. The difference between Judaism & Christianity is that people who practice Judaism (I don't say Jews because I know Jews who are Christian - they call themselves Messianic Jews or Complete Jews) believe their Messiah is still coming whereas Christians believe Jesus is the messiah and he has already come. I agree whole-heartedly with your last statement in that quote. Christians and Jews are both waiting for the Messiah - only Christians are waiting for their Messiah to return , whereas the people who practice Judaism are waiting for the Messiah to come for the first time.


Right, the Muslims don't believe in a Messiah. One of the main reason Muslims hate Christians is because they feel we worship more than one God because Christians say God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To me, this makes perfect sense. Just as water can be gas, liquid or solid and still water. Or that an apple has a core, seeds and the part you eat and yet it is still one apple. As far as my knowledge goes, pretty much the same as yours, Muslims believe in Allah and only Allah. They should serve him in everyway that Muhammed has said. That's it. They do look forward to their Paradise however, so in a way they are waiting for something too.

That's interesting to me because I had always heard (but never read for myself) that the Koran does teach many horrible things about women and other horrible acts. Perhaps those are in the other teachings you referred to earlier...??

I wouldn't really consider these women Heroines either. I do consider them important women in the Bible. Partly because the authors of the books chose to focus on them for a specific reason and partly because I do think that many of them did do important things. Mary for one I think was definitely a heroine. I know that she was chosen to bear Christ but her attitude in accepting it proved why God had chosen her. She knew that not being married and suddenly becoming pregnant would be looked down upon greatly. So much so that no one would want to marry her ever. In fact, Joseph was going to break it off with her (in a very quiet manner) until the Angels spoke to him and let him know what was going on. I think Mary was a very brave woman. There are a couple other women that you left out that I consider heroines. There is Esther who became Queen during Persia's rule and risked her life to save her people. Then there's Rahab (a prostitute) who hid Caleb (I think Caleb...), & the other men who were checking out Jericho before attacking it. Rahab risked her life when she lied and said she hadn't seen these men. In the end, they spared her when they took Jericho. And Mirium, Moses' sister, was a phrophetess and highly respected as well. There's a really awesome book I read called Women of the Bible that goes through almost every women
mentioned in the Bible and depicts their lives and what they did in a very real and moving way.

Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes and it is meant to be a book of Lament. Many of the things he speaks about in that book are depressing. Solomon was saying "woman is more bitter than death" because he was upset and probably a little bitter with one of his many wives/concubines. I don't take offense to that because of the whole theme I see in the book. It's been awhile since I read it but here is a passage from the first chapter

2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."

3 What does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?

4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.

5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.

6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.

7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.

8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.

9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

10 Is there anything of which one can say,
"Look! This is something new"?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.

11 There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow.

As you can see, he is very depressed and many of the things he says are not true of the Bible. The Bible does not teach that life is meaningless, etc. In many books of the Bible, you have to know the context from which they are spoken, etc. My Bible, which unfortunately I don't have with me at the moment, has an explanation at the beginning of the Book on why the book is in the Bible and what we can learn from it. I'll look that up and post it later. In reference to the quote you said earlier about witches being put to death, that is true. The Bible did say to do that but not only about the witches. The Bible commanded for all mediums which includes warlocks, etc. to be put to death so I don't feel this really focuses on women specifically.

You are right. The Bible says over and over again that women must obey their husbands. But it commands that men must love their wives.

22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

and

25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."[c] 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Now a part of me used to flare up when I read this. I HATE the word submit. But I've learned over the years that it doesn't mean I am less than my husband. I've learned that my opinions matter as much as his do. The Bible is not trying to show otherwise. What is saying is that we need to respect our husbands. Men are inherently different than woman. They have something called an Ego that surprislingly is very fragile and respect is a must for them. I don't think it means a woman should be like, "yes master, whatever you say master." Or that the husband should expect it. I think if the husband loves his wife like Christ loves the church then he will never make her feel less than him.


God has always looked down on Polygamy. I need to get my Bible later and find my references because I'd asked myself those same questions time and again when I read through the old testament. But I do agree here with the Bible looking down on Solomon's choice of wives. Because they led him astray and he was the leader of the entire nation, he led the nation away from God.


Crap! I have to leave work now and I don't have the Internet at home. I really want to finish commenting on everything though. I'll finish up tomorrow and bring some of my references with me.

Thanks for the thread Ann! I really do love talking about all this stuff!

Kay I'm back! I'm at my parents house using their Internet so yay. I think I was talking about polygamy. I don't think God planned for man to have more than one wife. Here is an example of what I mean:

God gives us only two other circumstances where a man can marry another woman:
1) If his wife dies [see Romans 7:2-3]
2) If his wife commits adultery [see Matthew 19:8-9]

I found this website very useful: Polygamy - What the Bible Says

I know there are numerous other websites encouraging it as a Christian belief/attitude but that is just wrong. I've read through the Bible and feel I have a good understanding of most of it (Revelation is still a little over my head though). I know this may sound silly but I know in my heart that it is wrong. God gave us the ability to know good & evil and no matter how people twist the Bible around to encourage Polygamy... it is just plain wrong!

I couldn't agree more!


I have to disagree with you here Ann because Christianity in itself is the following of Christ. There was not Christianity until Jesus The Christ came to this earth and had followers. Before then, everyone practiced Judaism. There's something to keep in mind when analyzing the Bible, The scripture is God Breathed, meaning the writings are by Humans inspired by God. Paul wrote most of the New Testament but nothing he wrote came from himself. He wrote what God wanted him to write. The fact that God used Paul, formerly Saul, a murderer of Christians, to fulfill his purpose is amazing. It shows me that no one is beyond saving. There is no one that is too far past God's grace. You really should read the book of Acts because that is where it talks about Paul's conversion and how he was before he was saved. And even if Jesus never left his home area of Palestine, his teachings were still around even when Paul started teaching (which was much after Jesus' death & resurrection). Paul was directed by God to preach to all the Gentiles (non-Jews) and Peter was directed to preach to all the Jews. Jesus told them to go and make disciples of many nations Matthew 28:19. In writing those Books, they have done just that.

The whole idea of Christianity can be summarized with one word: Grace. The fact is that Jesus Christ died for all of us while we were still sinners (me paraphrasing this passage)

“Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:7–8)

Something I heard at my church once, which has always stuck with me is that Justice is getting what we deserve, Mercy is not getting what we deserve, and Grace is getting what we DON'T deserve. That is what fills me with joy and love for Christ is that I'm getting eternal life when I have done absolutley nothing to deserve it. Before I was a Christian, I was into hard drugs, partied all the time, slept around, you name it. When I became a Christian, my entire outlook on life changed. I wish I was more like Jesus in his attitude toward the "fallen woman" (or man). I find myself judgemental too often. I love that Jesus is the perfect example in the Bible of how we should all be. Sadly, it is true that Christians have looked down on the "sinners" Jesus spoke about in the quote you referenced. We are not called to love the sin but we are called to love the sinners. I'd have to say as a whole, Christians fale miserably at that.


I love that passage that you quoted from Romans.

Paul is saying that everyone will struggle in different areas and that everyone should work on their own shortcomings.

I personally love that America was founded on Christian principals. I love that we say "One Nation, Under God" in our pledge of allegiance. There have been far too many moral issues for my taste brought up in the USA over separation of Church & state. I don't want the government to control everything. Something that makes this country different from many countries is our Freedom. I don't want to shove Christianity down people's throats. However, I can't be okay with taking God out of everything this Nation does. I'm kind of torn on this whole issue of separation of church and state because I want people to follow Christian principals because they love Jesus not because they have to because they're Americans; but at the same time I hate to see our Nation disregarding all of these Christian values because some people complain about it. Did you know that it's taboo now to say Merry Christmas to someone in America. It's always Happy Holidays so as not to offend anyone. Christmas trees are called Holiday trees. No more community christmas lights with nativity scenes, it could possibly offend someone else. So I'm a little bitter about the church being separated from state so much but ... again I'm torn on the whole forcing it people issue.

I know I really didn't talk about Islam very much but that's because I don't know very much about it. You've done far more reasearch than I have. You should definitly check out at that video I told you about in my previous post. It was awesome! I actually know one of the people in that video (through one other person). Some of our long time family friends are missionaries in Africa. They preach to the Filani (sp?). Most Muslim's in Filani tribes never hear about Christ because they're nomadic. But some Filani become Christians through their dreams and when I saw that video it had a Filani on there who had become a Christian. So I asked my missionary friends about that video and they were amazed. They were like, "Oh my gosh, that's one of our good Christian friends among the Filani." It really is a small world.

I don't have time to get into details, but polygamy is one of those issues that comes with a baggage of historical context/misinterpretation.

At least those are some of the arguments of Islamic feminists who condemn the practice as unnecessary and harmful to modern day society and are fiercely working to change it.
Full article here (but not all about polygamy) This is the most relevant quote:

Then there is also this article, whose basis I'm a bit more iffy (I don't know on which authority it stands even though on the 'net that's never a guarantee, but it's someone practicing as far as I can tell), but which has a pretty in depth interpretation that works with the current translation (for better or worse). Here is the article , below is its conclusion.

Wikipedia's page and several other more legit websites have comprehensive background on this subject as well. I just don't have the time to link to them all.

I guess my mini point is that this is one of those issues (of many) that is hotly debated within the community. And that it's good to know that these conversations are taking place.

Going by what I've read and heard on the subject, the political situation in a lot of these countries has placed fundamentalists in a position where they have had the power to intervene and coopt Islam to better serve them. What we are seeing through the incendiary eye of the media is then a twisted version of this religion, which is at base no better or worse than any other. It's a repetitive thing to say, but it's important to keep in mind all the same.

The issue of interpretation is also important to keep in mind, considering the sheer diversity within any given group religious or otherwise.

alcyone

Alcyone, I agree with you that traditions and historical coincidences are all-important when it comes to determining what kind of societies that different religions will give rise to. However, when it comes to polygamy, it is true that the Koran permits men to have up to four wives, at least under certain circumstances. It is also true that there is nothing in the New Testament that actually supports polygamy. That makes it more likely that Muslim societies will accept polygamy than that Christian societies will do so.

But as I said in the thread that was started by Pam, if you could turn back time and let the last two thousand years unfold all over again, it is almost certain that you would have ended up with other societies than the ones we now take for granted. There is nothing predetermined about either Christian or Muslim societies, so that they have to look like the Christian or Muslim societies that we know today. And speaking about the Bible and the Koran, there are indeed a lot of similarities between them.

Stepnachia, thanks for your kind and appreciative words! I will comment on a few things that you said. I think that separation between church and state is all-important, because if it isn't there, then the breaking of religious tenets becomes a crime against the state, and needs to be punished by the state (or the federation). For example, in the 1980s I read about a man in the United States who sued his wife for having been unfaithful to him, and if I remember it correctly, he demanded that she should be jailed for it. The man argued that because his wife had promised before God that she would be faithful to him, the American legal system ought to punish her for breaking that promise to him. This is exactly the kind of thing that I don't want to see in our Western societies, and it is exactly the kind of thing that you see in many Muslim countries. Men accuse women of adultery, and the legal systems of those countries punish the women. And in some Muslim countries, it may not be enough to jail a woman for committing adultery; she may, indeed, be executed for it.

That sort of thing happened all the time in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Sexual "crimes" led to the execution of women. It was seen as particularly serious if a woman was unfaithful to her husband, more serious than if a man was unfaithful to hiw wife, and the woman's adultery was also easier to prove. It was enough that she had become pregnant when her husband was away on a journey. (And if an unmarried woman became pregnant, her pregnancy in itself was enough to prove that she had committed a serious crime against her religion, and she was sure to be punished by the legal system of her country for it.) What if she had become raped? Well, if she couldn't prove that she had been raped, the religious courts may well rule that she had just been adulterous, and then they might easily sentence her to death. That sort of thing happened often in 16th and 17th century Europe, and it happens in Muslim countries today.

We should perhaps remember that in the Old Testament, a woman was her husband's property, but he was not her property at all. He owned her, but she didn't own him. That is why he was allowed to marry more than one woman, and that is also why he was allowed to divorce any wife that he didn't like. So what, then, did "adultery" mean? Obviously it had to mean that a man was robbed of his right to own his wife. So if a woman was unfaithful to her husband, she was "stealing herself away" from him, and she had to be put to death for it. And if a man had sex with a woman who was already married, then he was stealing that woman away from her rightful owner, her husband, and if he could be caught he deserved to be put to death for stealing from the other man. Similarly, if a man had sex with a young woman who was still living with her father, her father could demand that the man should be put to death for stealing away the father's right to control the life of his daughter. But if a man had sex with a prostitute or a widow or an orphan, then he wasn't stealing that woman from any other man, and he wasn't committing adultery and couldn't be punished for it. And it didn't matter one bit if he was married to a woman, because he wasn't obliged to be faithful to her. At least that is the way it is in the Old Testament. Jesus spoke sharply against that kind of male behaviour, and he demanded that men must be faithful to their wives, which was a new concept to most Jews of his time.

Anyway, the Bible consists of both the Old and the New Testament, and Christianity has often been a sort of compromise between the two. Therefore, in the case of adultery, a woman's unfaithfulness was always seen as more serious than a man's in 16th and 17th century Europe, and it was punished more severely.

My point is that if we don't keep church and state separate, we may end up like many Muslim countries, where the law requires that women be put to death for sexual "crimes". According to a Professor at the Institution of Theology at the University of Lund that I spoke to, Islam regards a woman's unfaithfulness to her husband as a crime against God himself and therefore unforgivable, whereas a murder, for example, is a crime against another person and therefore forgivable, if the murdered person's relatives are willing to forgive. That is why honor killings of women so often go unpunished in Muslim societies: the murderers are the dead woman's own family - indeed, they themselves are the murderers - and they forgive themselves, of course.

We have traditionally never had that sort of honor killings at least in northern Europe, but we have certainly had the kind of cruelly fundamentalist society that uses the Bible to justify sentencing women to death for sexual crimes. I know for sure that I want no such religiously motivated executions of women in the society where I live.

I'll come back later and say something more about how I look at Jesus and Paul.

Ann

I don't think I was speaking to this when I posted--at all, actually. My impulse was to give a more well rounded view of some ways progressive Muslims are dealing with the matter, because let's face it, most of us recoil instantly from things like that (and the issue of how violence is being protested against has, I think, been talked about). Or not to speak for anyone, but reading that gives me the heebs reflexively.

Given that, it's good to know that stuff like polygamy is not swallowed by everyone unquestioningly, that it has been pointed out as problematic and at the same time, that there was some historical basis for its origins way back (kind of like a lot of what was said in some of the Old Testament books about living practices). That polygamy didn't come about because having many wives just rocked. And it's good to know this precisely because of that (or to be specific, my) gut reaction of ugh. It's kind of hard not to get bogged down by the negative.

alcyone

WOW! Steph, I seriously need to applaud your post! It was awesomely informative and even a bit convicting if I can admit that here. So many times I wish I could piece together all the stuff in my brain as succinctly as you have. It's an awesome testimony of your dedication to the knowledge of the Bible and your summary was informatively uplifting. When I first read this thread I wanted to hop in and discuss, but there's no way I can even add to your very detailed answer except that I want you know it was greatly appreciated. Rock on Steph!

TEEEEEEEJ

Don't have time to say much, but I did want to mention one more heroine that is found in the New Testament, in the book of Acts, when it tells about Peter healing her, and that is Dorcas, from which one gets "Dorcas Societies".

Just spotted this thread in a brief glance at the boards (woody, what are you doing on these mbs right now? You don't have time for anything but homework, seriously!). Sisterly admonishing aside, I had a few things to say on the issue of treatment of men towards women and vice versa.

You'll notice the twin injunctions in the NT (one of the four books after 1st & 2nd Corinthians, I forget which right now) where Paul writes that a woman must obey her husband, and a man must love his wife. One thing I've read in various places that seems to clarify this for us who look at it with modern eyes and recoil at the word "obey", is that they meant respect (I think it was Elisabeth higher up in this thread mentions this). Men and women are different creatures, innately, in a complementary sort of way, neither one being *better* than the other, but each fulfilling the other. This said, we approach life (and relationships) differently. Men are driven more by respect, and women more by love. When someone did a survey of men and asked them whether they'd prefer to be respected or loved, if they could only have one of the two, they overwhelmingly responded that they would rather be respected. This obviously doesn't mean unquestioning obedience, but a sort of respect for their skills and talents that negates running roughshod over them or ignoring their advice or preferences. I've found this to be very true with my boyfriend--he doesn't like it if I want him to decide everything, but it lights him up when I compliment or otherwise show my respect for his technical skills and knowledge (especially asking his advice on something).

The command for men to love their wives is because women, being creatures who run on love, need to be loved by their husbands. Men might think they, by providing for their families and being responsible heads, have done enough to satisfy their wives, but they need that reminder that they are to give their wives love, not just respect. Hence the twin commands are to elicit that which is not second nature from each of us.

A touch on polygamy and other such things in the Bible (such as the Mosaic writing on men divorcing wives): God started with people who came out of pure paganism. The pagan civilizations in those days did things we would be shocked at. Incest, religious prostitution and human sacrifice, lack of human rights (slavery and other abuses), etc. If you take a look at the background for what was happening at the time the command was given, you'll find they actually *limited* such practices. Through rules regarding being able to support wives properly and divorce them with certificates, wanton polygamy and the treating of women as goods to be traded off at the highest bidder were both restricted, and men couldn't mistreat women and cheat on them while holding onto them as their wives. Being forced to divorce their wife properly limited some of the fooling around they could do without social repercussions. This sort of thing happens over and over. It was a gradual process, transforming the Israelites. You'll notice in the New Testament there still are no actual prohibitions against ordinary men having more than one wife, but the elders, the leaders and examples of the church, were not allowed to have more than one. And now today it's a banned practice in nearly all Christian churches.

Thanks for the uplifting words Teej. Sometimes after giving my spiel, I feel like I went a little overboard but your words were very encouraging. Thanks!

Thank you Doranwen! That was exactly what I was trying to say and could not say it as eloquently as you.

Another thing I had rolling around in my brain that I could not articulate. That is so true. Thanks for making that point.

Doranwen, you said this in your post:

Where in the Old Testament do you find rules restricting men's right to practice wanton polygamy, treating women as goods to be traded off at the highest bidder and mistreating and cheating on women while holding on to them as their wives? As I read the Old Testament, I could actually find no such restrictions, apart from the criticism I referred to earlier against Solomon for having a thousand wives and concubines. If you bear in mind that the Koran allows men to have four wives, you have to admit that having a thousand of them seems a bit extreme by any standard.

Another man who had many wives, though not a thousand of them, was David. The Bible criticizes David for committing adultery against Uriah, the husband and owner of the beautiful Bathsheba, but David is certainly not criticized for being unfaithful to his own wives. Where in the Old Testament does it say that a man must not be unfaithful to his wife?

There is another story about David, told in bits and pieces in the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings and/or the Books of Chronicles. It is the story of how David has to flee from his son Absalom. (The reason why Absalom hates David is that David has not taken action against his oldest son, Amnon, after Amnon had brutally raped Absalom's favorite sister, Tamar.) Because David fails to punish Amnon, even though he knows what has happened, Absalom slays Amnon himself and then threatens his father. David flees. But he leaves about ten of his concubines behind to "guard his house" - at least that is what it says in my Bible. Absalom comes to David's house and rapes the concubines, apparently in retaliation for what Amnon, David's favorite, did to Tamar. Later, when Absalom is defeated and killed, David returns home. He locks his defiled concubines in their special little house, where they have to sit, as if in their own private jail, until they die.

That is from 2 Samuel 20:3. I guess we should be grateful that David didn't execute his concubines, and that he actually fed them.

This passage from Exodus 21:7 shows that it was certainly okay for a man to sell his daughter as a slave. And if she had been sold, she didn't have the right that the male slaves did to be set free after seven years:

It is clear from the verses that follow that some girls were sold in order to become wives. We are certainly talking about buying and selling wives. I can't remember that the Old Testament makes any general restrictions about how and under what conditions women could be sold. It does say, admittedly, that if a man has bought a woman as a slave in order to marry her, he is not allowed to sell her to a foreign people if she doesn't please him. (But maybe he can sell her to another Hebrew.) It also says that if the woman he bought doesn't please him, he shall either let her go or else go on feeding her. I guess that explains why David didn't starve his raped concubines to death.

Look what happens if a man takes a wife (probably after buying her) and hates her:

Okay, the man married a woman, had sex with her, and disliked her. Maybe he thought that she was not a virgin, or maybe he just wanted to accuse her of something. Then what should the woman's parents do?

The parents have to find the wedding sheet that the couple spent their wedding night on, and show it to the elders of the city. So what happens if there is blood on that sheet?

Well, the groom will be forced to pay a fine to the woman's father, and the groom will not ever be allowed to divorce his bride (which he might apparently otherwise have done).

Okay, so what if there really was no blood on that wedding sheet?

Well, in that case all the men in the city shall help stone the accused woman to death in front of her father's house!

Then there is the story about Judah and his daughter-in-law, Tamar. Tamar was married to Judah's eldest son Er (Judah had probably bought Tamar for his son). However, Er died before he had given Tamar any children, and according to the law at the time, a woman who had been left a childless widow had the right to marry her dead husband's younger brother, if he had one. And Er had a younger brother, Onan. So Onan had to marry Tamar, but he didn't like it, and he deliberately spilled his seed on the ground instead of making Tamar pregnant. This made God so angry that he killed Onan.

Now Tamar had been left a childless widow again, and so she had the right to marry Judah's youngest son, Shelah. But Judah refused to give her Shelah. At the same time, Judah refused to let Tamar go, so that she could marry into another family.

Because Tamar wanted children, and because she had the right by law to have a child by Judah's family, she dressed herself as a prostitute and covered her face. Then she went to the road that Judah used to travel and waited for her father-in-law. When Judah saw a prostitute by the roadside, he was immediately "up" for a bit of extramarital sex, and Tamar became pregnant from their encounter. Guess what happened?

Well, Tamar could produce evidence that it was Judah who had made her pregnant - he had given the prostitute his signet ring as payment - and Judah had to acknowledge that Tamar had the legal right to ask for a child from Judah's family. So he didn't execute her. But he had no qualms about holding Tamar a "prisoner" with him and then sentencing her to death for becoming pregnant, while he gave himself the right to go to prostitutes as he liked.

In a previous post, I have descibed what happened in the three last chapters in the book of Judges. What happened there can be described as a splatterfest, with the wholesale rape, dismembering and mass murder of women. Interestingly, the story is not followed by a general sharp warning to treat women better than that. It is clear that the Bible does not approve of what happens in these chapters of Judges, but the only comment it makes is that this happened before the children of Israel had a king. Anyway, the people who committed these atrocities were not pagans, because it is clear that they believed in God, and they actually communicated with God during parts of the atrocities, too.

There really is a passage in the Old Testament where a father admonishes his son-in-law to treat his daughters well and not take himself other wives as well. That is Laban, who makes a covenant with Jacob on these terms:

But this is an individual case, not a general rule applying to all women of Israel.

Can the Mosaic laws about the treatment of women really be seen as improvements? Can we assume that the pagan societies that existed earlier treated their women even worse? Can we reasonably assume that those other societies gave men the right to rape, sell and kill women everywhere as they pleased and with no punishment at all? I don't think it is possible that a society can survive if it allows its women to be killed, raped or sold with no restrictions whatsoever.

Muslims often say that the rules of the Koran meant an enormous improvement for Arab women at the time, because women were treated so horribly in pre-Muslim Arabia. Yes, maybe that was the case. However, few of us are all that impressed with the laws and rules that the Koran makes about women, because we think, and rightly, and these rules do not grant women equal rights with men. Why should we be so impressed with the very harsh and sometimes horrible rules and stories of the Old Testament?

Ann

Okay, I'm being repetitive, but I said I would post a comparison between Jesus and Paul, and I will.

Steph, you said:

Of course there can be no Christianity without Christ! I don't mean to imply that Christianity could exist without Jesus, believe me.

You are right, the story about Jesus was being preached by other apostles and disciples before Paul became an apostle. It was being spread to other people by others than Paul. And it was Paul's job to stop the work of those apostles and the spreading of that "heretical religon", and that, incidentally, was what he was busy doing when he had his amazing revelation on his way to Damascus: he was on his way to arrest those who spread the teachings of Jesus.

So it was not as if Paul just invented Christianity and made up a story that no one else had heard before. Of course not! But I still maintain that Paul was crucially important when it came to making the teachings and story of Jesus legitimate in the Roman Empire, which was the military and economic superpower of its time. To "travestize" that song about making it New York (New York, New York, what a wonderful place! If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere...) - yes, I think it was crucially important for Christianity to "make it" in the Roman Empire, because that, I think, is what made it possible for Christianity to eventually become the biggest and most powerful religion of the world. Christianity was given an enormous boost when it became the state religion of the Roman Empire around 325 B.C., and about a hundred years later it was the only permitted religion in the Roman Empire. All other religions were outlawed. When Rome fell, the (Catholic) church survived, and it remained in many ways the most powerful force in Europe for at the next ten centuries.

It was Paul who made Christianity's success possible, in my opinion. And that was no mean feat, because any teachings about Jesus were sure to be highly controversial in Rome. How so?

Well, the Romans were well aware that Jesus had been called the Messiah. They also knew that the Jews were waiting for a Messiah who would literally be the King of the Jews here on the Earth. The Jews waited for a Messiah who would defeat his enemies on this Earth and recreate King David's mighty kingdom here on Earth. And who were the enemies of the Jews here on Earth, then? Who were the people that the Messiah was supposed to defeat? Well, how about the Romans? The Romans had occupied what was once the Kingdom of David, turning it into the Roman province of Palestine. If a Jewish Messiah wanted to recreate David's kingdom, he would have to turn against the occupying Roman forces and try to oust them. In other words, if the Jews thought that Jesus was the Messiah, then they also expected him to lead a revolt against the Roman forces in Palestine. When the Romans saw that Jews called Jesus the Messiah, they thought that Jesus was a potential rebel leader and a sworn enemy of Rome.

Those of you who are Christians will object that Jesus was nothing like that. You can point to various passages in the Gospels where Jesus says that his kingdom is not of this Earth, and that his mission is to help people find salvation in heaven, not build a mighty kingdom on the Earth. But the Romans wouldn't have known or understood this. Remember that when Jesus was crucified, Pilate put a sign at the top of his cross which read I.N.R.I. That stands for, approximately, Iesus Nazareth Rex Iudea (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews). Clearly this was a way of mocking the Jews and telling them that their Messiah had been executed.

But wasn't it the Jews themselves that wanted Jesus to be killed? Well, the Gospels say so, but I don't believe it. I can see no reason for a majority of the Jews to turn against Jesus. What had he done to offend them? He was not a powerful man, and he didn't have an army. There is no way that he can have oppressed, let alone tortured or killed, a lot of Jews. Why would the Jews hate him so? More to the point, why would they like the occupying forces, the Romans, so much better than their own compatriot that they would ask the Romans to kill Jesus for them?

I don't believe those parts of the Gospels which claim that Pilate had to kill Jesus because he was scared of defying the bloodthirsty Jews. I think those parts of the Gospels have been added later as a way of appeasing the Romans and to make it possible to bring the story of Jesus to Rome. After all, how could you possibly tell the Romans that Jesus was the Son of God and it was the Romans' fault that he had been executed?

Jesus was a confrontational sort of person. He often attacked figures of authority in the Jewish society, the Pharisees, the scribes, the High Priests. He rudely cleansed the Temple of the money-changers and those who sold pigeons in there. He was provocative. And he often, repeatedly, defended those who lived at the very bottom of society: the poor, the sick, the despised, the tax collectors, the women and the children.

You usually don't get very many brownie points from those at the top of your society by sticking up for the people at the bottom of it.

The Jesus who always defended the poor and the sick made this demand of those who wanted to go to Heaven:

I think that this was, by and large, a Messiah that you just couldn't sell to the Roman Empire. A Messiah who could be suspected of wanting to attack the Roman Empire, and an impolite rebel who spoke ill of authority and defended those that most powerful people had little interest in.

So in order to be presentable to the Romans, Jesus had to be given a rather radical make-over, and Paul was up to the task of giving him one. And the most important thing that Paul did to make Jesus look, well, much more "well-groomed" and "civilized", was not to quote anything that Jesus had said at all! Okay, I'm exaggerating - a little. I once looked for passages in Paul's letters where he quoted anything that Jesus had said while he lived here on the Earth, and the only thing I could find was that Paul quoted what Jesus had said at the Last Supper about the wine being his blood and the bread being his body. Apart from that, though, Paul never quoted anything that Jesus had said! All his teachings where he defended the poor and the sick, and all the times when he defended women in general and fallen women in particular: Paul never quoted any of it. In Paul's letters, nothing is left of Jesus the rebel, the man who defends the small and the powerless and those that are scorned by the rest of society.

Instead, Paul defended authority. His main message, I think, is that people gain salvation by believing that God has sacrificed his only Son for them, and that they will be let into Heaven if they believe that Jesus has overcome death for them. But in order to gain salvation people must also behave themselves correctly while they live here on the Earth, which means obeying authority.

So even though Jesus never issued a general rule that people should obey authority, and even though he certainly never said that women should obey their husbands, Paul repeatedly said that women must submit themselves to their husbands!

Was Paul a bared-faced liar? Did he deliberately distort the message of Jesus? No, I'm certain that Paul himself believed absolutely in what he was telling people. If he hadn't believed in his own message, how could he have persevered for so many years, overcoming so many terrible difficulties, so that he could keep telling it?

No, Paul wasn't a liar in any way, but I think that the revelation that he had on his way to Damascus was so strong that it made him lose interest in the Jesus who had lived on the Earth and spoken to people around him. Paul's Jesus was the blinding light and the booming voice from the heaven and the divine majesty it had revealed to him. That was the Jesus that Paul wanted to speak about to people around him, and that was the Jesus that he wanted to bring to the Roman Empire.

Paul was also a scholar, who knew the Old Testament quite well. I think Paul was a lot more interested in reconciling his vision of the majestic Jesus of Heaven with the teachings of the important prophets in the Old Testament than with reconciling it with the teachings of the Jesus who had walked the Earth like an ordinary man like the rest of us.

Anyway, to me the differences between Jesus of the Gospels and Paul are huge. Admittedly one of the Gospels, John, is closer to the teachings of Paul than the other ones. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Gospel of John is the Gospel that I personally like the least.

Ann

Ann, I have to ask: are your issues with the Bible's commands taken in light of the time? The things you're complaining about appear to be treated wholly separate from culture. And believe me, not all cultures are equal, despite what the multiculturalists of today might claim (a good read of Politically Correct Bedtime Stories makes that point very humorously). The culture the Israelites came from back then treated human beings as commodities, women as 2nd class citizens (if they counted as citizens at all), and generally didn't have any of the sort of equality and freedom we enjoy today. I would also ask that you take a look at how long it took to change culture so women these days have the freedom to vote, own land, etc.--and how there are *still* many people who don't believe women are as good as men. I believe you are aware of this. These changes occurred in a modern democratic/republic society where people have much more say, and dissent is tolerated (if not outright approved). Now let's go to a culture like the pagan past, where government and religion are intricately linked, where the concept of people having a say in the government is just about unheard of, and where the mindset of *everyone* is that women are inferior and belong having babies, etc. Trying to change people's minds overnight is impossible unless you literally brainwash them. Considering God is all about free will and letting *us* choose, that wasn't an option for him. Any change that happened would have to be very slow. God made laws, people obeyed those laws, and gradually as they followed them, their minds and hearts began to change, and the culture changed.

Let's take a look at a few of those laws in the light of the culture of the time:

Exodus 21 - God gives rules about treating Hebrew servants (since they're bought, we could call them slaves) fairly. Before, a man might sell himself to pay a debt, and be forever a slave, with no rights. With this rule, he could still pay off the debt, and after six years he would be free again to go on with life.
Selling a daughter as a servant--prior she could be sold and become someone's personal prostitute, or something just as bad. With the new laws, she had to be given rights as a daughter (if to be the wife of the son of her new master), or to be redeemed back to her family (and there were specific rules on how that worked). She also had to be provided food, clothing, and marital rights if the master married her and then chose to marry another wife also. Here you see how polygamy was limited--a man could only have as many wives as he could really take care of. And most men back then weren't "millionaires" to be able to afford multiple wives. The provisions for proper treatment of each wife limited polygamy and helped guide the culture towards seeing what marriage was *really* supposed to be.
The personal injuries laws restrict the revenge mindset that was common in the day--someone loses an arm, so the offended family kills someone on the other side, and the violence escalates. If properly followed, these laws would prevent the sort of family feuds that are often seen in honor-based societies such as those in the Middle East.

Those are just a few of the examples in the Bible. I would also ask you to not take the most shocking stories and hold them up and go "Oh my, look at that, how awful they treated women here!" without examining all the historical context and background. That sort of discussion is sensationalist and reactionary and does not engender thoughtful examination of things.

Anyway, as you can see, there are a lot of examples of where the Israelite laws restricted some of the excesses of their culture and set them on the path towards loving treatment of fellow humans. Was the culture still flawed? You bet; they were still human, and humans don't change overnight, even when they *want* to (and you can be sure many of the Israelites were perfectly happy exploiting others, with little conscience left). Were those laws helpful? Yes, even though a casual glance might not look like it. It's easy to see something that to our eyes would be abhorrent and automatically treat that law or story as if it were in our culture, our time. We have to be careful when we look at historical texts such as the Bible that we put on "glasses" to see as someone from that culture and time period might look at things.

I can't help it, guys--this is my usual rant. I'm sorry, but I can't help myself. Feel free to ignore, since I'm just venting here.

It never fails to crawl under my skin how the vast majority of people I've encountered can claim this without interrogating all the implications that are inherent in positing certain cultures above others (which is the ugly reality behind the "not all cultures are equal" claim).

It's easy to look to the past and chuckle at how deluded people were back then and how much better we are now. But unfortunately the rhetoric of "not all cultures are equal" has been a powerful tool for the further erosion of "human rights" in many parts of the world (and continues to be so which is the more chilling aspect). It's the basis for the argument that certain groups can't govern themselves, we need to teach (aka govern for ) them and while we're at it take a nice helping of their resources, y'know, 'coz nothing is free and they wouldn't know what to do with it anyway.

Furthermore, on what basis are cultures not equal? On whether human rights are present or not (which seems to be the hot issues nowadays)? Human rights are a relatively recent phenomenon and I'm led to think their presence now partly obscures the collosal lack of human rights that has framed much of Western history (making it no different from history anywhere else, if we're framing it in those terms). But of course it's convinient to forget all the atrocities committed in so-called first world countries (especially ones that happen outside the aforementioned first world countries--the ones that the Enlightenment championed particularly). That way, we can point the finger and it can be some other culture that is less. Poor them, they don't know any better. Perhaps we should govern for them? That turned out well.

I have no problem condemning unjust actions, but I do think it's responsible and ethical to educate oneself about them first because there are logics at work that can't be undone until we know the root cause. More importantly than that, I feel that to be an ethical person especially in today's diverse world, it is necessary to let go of this "not all cultures are the same" ("some cultures are better than others," let's be real here) rhetoric which laid the foundation for a great deal of the conflicts in the world today and repeats itself like a self fulfilling profecy. It's useless and harmful.

How can we ever communicate with others when we're approaching them with an inherent sense of superiority?


alcyone

Well, the reason why I have indeed pointed out some of the most shocking stories in the Bible is precisely that I feel such a strong need to keep the church and state separate. I do believe that if we allow the church and state to merge, and if we start believing that everything we find in the Bible is good, and if we take the Mosaic laws and make them our own laws, then we are going to end up with the same kind of barbaric society and the same kind of shocking ill-treatment of women as we can read about in the Old Testament.

But I have never tried to suggest that everything about the Bible is bad. Far from it. I think many things and many people in the Bible are inspiring, and Jesus is my personal favorite, hands down. But I like many things in the Old Testament, too. The story of Ruth is my favorite, but I love Song of Solomon too, and in spite of its occasional awful sexism I can nevertheless enjoy the world-weary poetry of Ecclesiastes and the practical wisdom of Proverbs. I, too, am moved by the sufferings of Job. And yes, I like parts of Genesis and Exodus and even of Judges. I've never said that these stories are not inspiring and in many cases uplifting!

What I am saying, and here I'm not backing down a millimeter, is that if people claim that everything in the Bible is good, and if they say that we should have no separation between church and state, and if they say that the Bible should be made the law of our own modern western societies, then I'm going to keep repeating all the worst stories from the Bible. Because I don't want a religiously motivated society that gives itself the right in the name of God and the Bible to treat women atrociously.

Ann

Who's saying that though? Is there really a mainstream Christian group out there saying we should go back to Old Testament ways? For real? I can understand doctrine that says that we should try to live by the example of Jesus Christ, and be proud if we have a government based on that example because everything Jesus upheld(two of the most important laws, love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself) because that seems to be the fairest and most logical way to live. But as with the Hebrews of Moses' day, there were "if's" and "buts" thrown in by people, human beings, flawed creatures, more detailed and expounded on than the basic Ten that God initially gave them, and no Christian group I've heard of anywhere(at least today) is suggesting that we live or govern ourselves this way.

There is a group, a radical extremist zealot group out there, demanding that everybody turn to their prehistoric and religious thinking, but I don't believe it's based in Christianity.

TEEEEEEEEJ

and this seems a very odd and useless waste of energy, because with all the jumping up and down and pointing out of ancient fallacies of Christianity, the stuff that's actually going on today, right now, present time; mutilation and assassination of women/girls, journalist and contractors being beheaded, riots and killings because of a freaking cartoon, is being pretty much glossed over. You want to know the difference between the Koran and the Bible? All you really need to do is look at what's happening right now, today and see who's following what and be honest about which one seems the most extreme.

TEEEEEEEJ

TEEJ wrote:

Ah, TEEJ, once again I think you must live in a really great place, because Christians who want to go back to Judaic law live right in my backyard (literally--they're across the street). And these are not cult members either. They LOVE the Old Testament and seem completely oblivious to the whole point that Christ came to fulfill prophecy and therefore, do away with a lot of Mosaic law. They're hellbent on bringing back the old ways. And I think you're right that they totally missed the point of what Christianity was supposed to be. But there are a LOT of them.

What I would say to you, Anne, is that I don't think you can look at modern day Christianity as a function of the Old Testament. That is the HISTORY of the church, but not the direction laid out in the New Testament. The time that passed in the Old Testament was plenty of time for man to screw everything up (and I do mean man . All issues with Paul aside (and trust me, I have issues with him), I do think Christ is supposed to be the focal point of the book. He wasn't there when they chose the books of the New Testament, and Paul was interpreting what he saw in the life of Christ, not necessarily doing so correctly (or at least that's how I read it--which I realise is horribly radical and probably makes my grandparents writhe in their graves).

Look at me, talking about religion. This is so bizarre.

And Alcyone said:

I don't think pointing out the flaws in other cultures is necessarily demonstrating a cultural bias that inherently says "my culture is superior to yours." I certainly wouldn't claim that, historically, Western society was more advanced in a lot of areas than the rest of the world. I WOULD claim that we've made a lot of strides, especially in the area of human rights, and on that basis I claim that CURRENT Western culture is a darn good place to be. I don't think we can necessarily make one culture superior to another, but I do think we can point to elements WITHIN a culture that are inferior. For example, I am a huge fan of some of the ideas of the matriarchal tribes in Africa. I am not, however, such a big fan of their religious practices. I am not a fan of Western society's preocupation with consumption, but I am a big fan of freedom of speech. Does that mean I think my culture is superior? It depends on your point of view. I certainly don't think it is superior because it exists, but I do think we have things to offer that aren't being offered currently in a lot of other cultures.

I think you misread me, Capes.

I'm specifically arguing against the idea that: "Not all cultures are equal." I see it come up again and again and it certainly holds the implicit view that the whole culture being spoken about is somehow less.

It's a statement that condemns an entire culture based on its flaws. Which is all I've said.

I have, however, never said that we shouldn't point out flaws. But that's all they are flaws. And the moment that we start taking flaws as an indicator of an entire culture's value (as it is implied when we say that not all cultures are equal), we are heading down a slippery slope to dangerous waters.


alcyone

Okay, alcyone. I think we're in agreement, then!