I would say LXX and Hebrew versions share a common theological vision. None of the examples mentioned in this article convince me otherwise.
Example: bringing the Law to the nations and bringing fear of the Lord to the nations refers to the exact same future, because fearing the Lord is a positive thing in Scripture. Israel itself was to be a spiritual sign of mankind fearing the Lord. And that future came to pass. God is bringing fear to the nations. Not the trembling fear for a dangerous oppressive army, but wholehearted conversion. By the time Messiah arrived, Jerusalem was already visited by eager "phoboumenoi": pagan "God-fearers" who had understood that the creator God of Israel was not like any of the pagan "gods".
An example of a translation truly deviating is for instance that made by Jehovah's Witnesses. An example: they translate ruach as "active force", not as a one-off choice because some human translator on some particular day in his own cultural context thought it just sounded better, but because JWs reject trinitarianism. You will not find a single actual Christian (or Jew!) accepting this as a (systematic) translation choice.
In fact, it's a testament to the divine inspiration of Scripture that Christians and Jews have never relied on an absolutely letter-for-letter standardized text to know the voice of their Shepherd.
I'm not sure if you've looked around recently, but neither the Law nor fear of the Lord are exactly dominant features of 21st Century global civilization.
I'm not speaking against the concept. But you could make a strong case that the groups most bound to that vision of the future are the extremists from the three Abrahamic religions, to whom life is to some greater or lesser extent disposable in service of "wholehearted conversion".
One brought Law, one brought Salvation, and one brought Submission. The notion of monotheism was to destroy the old pagan gods and the wickedness that came wrapped in "superstition". We're back in the superstitious era. And in a superstitious era, conversion takes on the form conquest and in many cases murder and dehumanization. One has to be a zealot to believe that there is a God who wants humanity to follow certain mandates and rituals. The question you leave open is whether zealotry is justified, and I don't think you sufficiently answered that.
As a non extremist believer, in the sense of believing extremely but not passionate about influencing others’ decisions, life is not disposable in service, “in service” is an available disposition for life. Take what you want of my statement, as I did of yours.
I get that. I'm Jewish. While I'm not an extreme believer, I believe in the framework for human life and dignity that the Torah creates. That Law isn't simply reducible to a "fear of God"; it's a living thing and a toolkit that teaches one generation after another methods to take wisdom and grounding from it and to seek something more, including the paths of rebels like Jesus and agnostics like Einstein.
We don't try to convert people, or even get them to understand. What other people think isn't our responsibility. It's generally not "you must use these tools this way or you're wrong". It's "here's what we got from this".
However, there is a fluctuating source of zealotry and revivalism in our own community that has parallels in Islam and in Christianity. The idea is a very ancient Israelite one, a desert religion tribal idea: There's one God and He's on Your Side. Everyone else is apostate, pagan. This took root way before there were Christian or Muslim concepts of Hell or Heaven. You don't even need those things to condemn other people. There is judgment in Judaism, it's just not generally on the level of converting or killing people who disagree with the beliefs.
I'd submit that more people should be bothered by it if they have the idea that their belief is the only right one.
Zealots will zealot. That is less of a religion issue and more a societal one. People will find something to be fanatical about and religion is the perfect candidate for that, the distance between belief and fanaticism is the easiest to cross. While it’s worth the while to fight extremism, this is more of a maintenance than a completion exercise. With the challenges of our times, as different as we may perceive them, this may be a tough exercise and not necessarily one where focusing on “fixing”religion is the most promising path. The happy times of prosperity and atheism were also the best times to be in a religion. I think the most promising path is to help people not need a God that saves them from the challenges of their day to day lives.
Sure, but what's nice about it is that you don't have to take it all literally. You can take the metaphors, and some of the prescriptions as to how to behave or to best deal with some situations.
That's sort of what a lot of other religions are missing. The idea that it's not literal.
>One has to be a zealot to believe that there is a God who wants humanity to follow certain mandates and rituals.
There's a selection bias: the religions that survive today are the ones that had a reproductive advantage relative to other cultures. Natural selection applies to culture just like it does to genes. The same will hold in future as currently only the zealots have birthrates above replacement; the more secular people are, the fewer children they have, so the future belongs to the ones who believe God mandates they marry and multiply.
You're right, but the religious retort to that would be that secular people are miserable and therefore less likely to marry and reproduce. Whereas I'm not sure why that should be true. Sure, secular people don't have a command to reproduce, so maybe taking away the command structure just reduces the likelihood; and I guess that's the selection bias you're talking about. But prior to organized religion, people were reproducing like rabbits, so there's got to be something else.
In many countries now, "over the replacement rate" or "under the replacement rate" is indeed a binary that closely tracks with religious observance. I would rather not out where I am, but here a couple having even a second child will cause some observers to at least ask if the family is part of a sect.
Didn't most religions allow slavery? Islam, Christians, Jews, Hindus... All had rules on how to treat your slave but never printed slavery should be abolished. Funny how no major religion allows slavery any more isn't it
Christianity has no rules on how to treat slaves other than one or two sentences in the epistles of Paul telling people to be kind, and another encouraging freeing slaves.
This is far form endorsing slavery. it was regarded as a necessity for society to function at the time. It is rather like how Christians now often accept the accumulation of wealth that is inevitable in a capitalist society as better than the alternatives. St Paul also said slaves (and women, and people of different races) were equal before God ( Galatians 3:28 ).
The Bible has rules about how to treat slaves, but from a Christian point of view these did not apply - they are Jewish law similar to not eating pork or requiring circumcision etc.
Christianity was the main motivation behind abolishing slavery and we have written records of Christians calling for slavery to be abolished going back to the 4th century.
> But you could make a strong case that the groups most bound to that vision of the future are the extremists from the three Abrahamic religions, to whom life is to some greater or lesser extent disposable in service of "wholehearted conversion".
I'm not a religious person but your message is very misleading and unfair to christians. Seriously: in the last 100 years how many terror attacks have been committed in the name of the christian god?
Even if, in the past, we've had stuff like the crusades and the dark ages it's hard to deny that Jesus brings a message of peace and forgiveness.
Save from a very few incidents with rare extremist christians fighting against abortion, the worst we've seen from christians are basically "people praying in their head in front of abortion clinics" (and the UK arrested christians for doing so btw: you're not free to "pray in your head" in front of an abortion clinic in the UK anymore).
While we could talk about tens of thousands of deaths in terror attacks from religious cracknuts who love to kill as many non-believers as possible.
"extremists from the three Abrahamic religions" doesn't hold up to scrutiny when christianity today has something like 0.01% of extremists while another religion, according to the latest published World FactBook from the CIA, has as many as 30% of its followers worldwide approving sharia laws.
> Even if, in the past, we've had stuff like the crusades and the dark ages i
It is interesting that both those examples (which are the "obvious" ones people pick") was really anything like what people imagine then to be like. The "dark ages" were dark in terms of a lack of records in western Europe as the Roman Empire collapsed and the imperial systems disappeared. Many historians argue that life mostly improved for ordinary people, the status of women improved, slavery was replaced by serfdom etc. The crusades started in response to a call for help from people who were being invaded, and were at least partly defensive: at the time they started the Arab Empires had occupied most Spain, most Mediterranean islands, parts of southern Italy, had invaded France etc. While they were not entirely virtuous they were not without reason either.
> While we could talk about tens of thousands of deaths in terror attacks from religious cracknuts who love to kill as many non-believers as possible.
A pretty small proportion of Muslims support religious violence. The extremists exist and are powerful or widely supported in some countries, but its no usual.
> while another religion, according to the latest published World FactBook from the CIA, has as many as 30% of its followers worldwide approving sharia laws.
What do they mean by that? It varies. Survey wording can mean it can even include following rules of personal conduct. It often means religious rulings over religious matters - not very different from Catholic marriage tribunals. Even where people want it to have the force of law, they may want that only for Muslims. While the extremists exist, they are far fewer than 30%. Most of that 30% is concentrated in a few countries, although the fact that some of those countries are very wealthy has meant they can fund the spread of those ideas.
The War on Iraq may not fit the definition of terrorism, being government actions, but it killed a shit load of people and was driven by religious convictions with flimsy or non-existent evidence:
"in the last 100 years how many terror attacks have been committed in the name of the christian god?"
Depends how you count, the war on terror, that in reality mostly just brought terror to blow up weddings etc. was and is justified as a crusade by certain christian politicians. And quite some other wars had those elements as well, even the Nazis claimed they officially fought in the name of god against the atheist communists (and many did believe that, viewed Hitler as doing god's will).
Apart from that, check out The Lord's Resistance Army
> the Nazis claimed they officially fought in the name of god against the atheist communists.
Not the Christian God. The aim of the Nazis was to replace the Christian ethos. Himmler said they aimed to get rid of the 10 commandments. They invented two religions (neo-paganism and Positive Christianity) as replacements for Christianity. They regarded Christianity as Jewish plot that overthrew the Roman Empire. Their ideal was to return to a pre-Christian European society, and Hitler said Sparta was the historical society closest to Nazi ideals.
> and is justified as a crusade by certain christian politicians
While they might be influential politicians, they are almost all also at odds with mainstream Christianity. There are similar problems with the wikipedia page about Christian terrorists. Most were anti-Catholic (so their enemies included most Christians). Others are "cultural Christians" rather than believers.
Be honest, please; the arrests were not for "praying in your head" they were for repeatedly breaching a buffer zone and actively refusing a request to move on.
You have not covered anything like all cases these, and the article makes it clear "breaching a buffer zone" was standing silently while praying.
> Poole Magistrates' Court heard the former serviceman had his head bowed and hands clasped outside the British Pregnancy Advisory Service in Ophir Road.
> The court was told he had been praying for his unborn son, who he said died from abortion 22 years ago.
Why focus only on big, showy acts of violence? Christian-influenced violence happens countless of times everyday, such as a gay kid getting beat up because some other kids hear their pastor maligning him every week. Christian violence happens every day.
Most Christians from before the early-20th century, would consider your interpretation of Christianity as mostly heretical. They very willingly forced Christianity into anyone who wasn't, as well as into anyone who wasn't of their particular branch.
The text is the same, as is, presumably, the Jesus, so either they had understood it all wrong and current Christians understand it correctly, or the other way around. Which is it?
IMHO, those are two distinct religions. Actual Christianity is the old one. The modern one isn't Christianity, but European Enlightenment in Christian clothing. And yes, the later is much better than the original.
EE also provides Judaism clothing, Buddhist clothing, and other such clothings, which is why it works so well. In fact, it also has a relatively recently developed Islamic clothing, though adoption is still limited. Hopefully it'll expand over time.
Once the EE got going and separated church from state, it also provided the emancipation of Jews[0], on the thesis that individuals transcend groups and have inalienable rights.
From the perspective of a 17th Century Jew or Christian, that project worked to reform and soften both Christianity and Judaism in Europe because both people were prepared to reject extremist beliefs in favor of economic, worldly, material wellbeing. Protestantism and Judaism in particular share certain traits in prioritizing work, science, individualism and success in the corporeal life.
It might be an unpopular idea, but the softening of Christianity was in some way its reunion with Judaism, from being a religion adapted by the Romans to war to a realignment with the more temperate biblical Judaism that Christ was actually teaching. But Christian scripture did have a gentle interpretation inherent to it.
Every European movement which sought to destroy the Enlightenment tried first to roll Jewish emancipation back and then to destroy the Churches, to supplant enlightened Christianity with extremist state religion.
> Most Christians from before the early-20th century, would consider your interpretation of Christianity as mostly heretical.
No they would not. Mainstream Christian belief has not changed in a very long time.
Tell me of any belief the Catholic Church (which more than half of all Christians belong to) currently holds that would have been considered heretical a thousand years ago?
Well, I am pretty sure they would not have made such a statement 1000 years or even 100 years ago
"The Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes that all homosexual individuals must "be accepted and treated with respect, compassion, and sensitivity," and that all forms of unjust discrimination should be discouraged and avoided at all cost"
> it's a testament to the divine inspiration of Scripture that Christians and Jews have never relied on an absolutely letter-for-letter standardized text to know the voice of their Shepherd.
LOL.
your argument is that two cults using a common religious reference is evidence that it's valid?
We possess hand-copied manuscripts originating from a wide range of ages and cultures and languages and, while being far from word-for-word copies, they remain fundamentally sound to the ears of modern day devout Jews and Christians.
My claim is that both cults have successfully, over the course of many millennia, sniffed out loose but sound translations (even if they don't like the style or certain choices) from deliberately deviant translations.
This is clearly written from a western Christian view. It should be noted for completeness that the Eastern Orthodox Church still uses the Septuagint (in Greek speaking churches in the original, in others with suitable translations thereof; in English I like https://www.amazon.co.uk/Orthodox-Study-Bible-OE-Some-NKJV/d...).
I’d be curious to know if this difference in scriptural base also contributed to the great schism?
I think the schism happened for several reasons, none of which I can personally account. If people really want to dig in, the subreddit r/academicbiblical is full of well, academics and people who know their stuff.
The Septuagint was only the Torah (five Books of Moses). It wasn’t until much later that Greek translations of the rest of the Hebrew Bible were done. These are often referred to as the Septuagint but that is not accurate, these later translations were not done by some official group of 70 Rabbis.
The Bologna scroll is found seventy(ish) times in greek and hebrew (and other languages) in the Qumran caves, along with a bunch of other stuff. Each of those times is a greek-literate persons' "bible". And they're all a little different. And they have their own notes in them too. They were probably paid to do it. At least some of them said they were rabbis.
Biblical scholars don't consider "The Septuagint" (Egyptian) to be any single translation and why they use the term "Majority Text" and stuff like that, to justify grouping all that stuff into "their" New Testaments'.
If it were possibly so simple as that, there probably wouldn't be so many forms of christianity.
By Hebrew Bible I mean the texts that would later comprise the settled canon of Tanakh. I don’t mean that they had a JPS Tanakh from Barnes and Noble in hand.
>We do well to remember that “scripture” and “canon” are different things, and of course we should never make the mistake of thinking that early Christians had Bibles like our own.
Example: bringing the Law to the nations and bringing fear of the Lord to the nations refers to the exact same future, because fearing the Lord is a positive thing in Scripture. Israel itself was to be a spiritual sign of mankind fearing the Lord. And that future came to pass. God is bringing fear to the nations. Not the trembling fear for a dangerous oppressive army, but wholehearted conversion. By the time Messiah arrived, Jerusalem was already visited by eager "phoboumenoi": pagan "God-fearers" who had understood that the creator God of Israel was not like any of the pagan "gods".
An example of a translation truly deviating is for instance that made by Jehovah's Witnesses. An example: they translate ruach as "active force", not as a one-off choice because some human translator on some particular day in his own cultural context thought it just sounded better, but because JWs reject trinitarianism. You will not find a single actual Christian (or Jew!) accepting this as a (systematic) translation choice.
In fact, it's a testament to the divine inspiration of Scripture that Christians and Jews have never relied on an absolutely letter-for-letter standardized text to know the voice of their Shepherd.
I'm not sure if you've looked around recently, but neither the Law nor fear of the Lord are exactly dominant features of 21st Century global civilization.
I'm not speaking against the concept. But you could make a strong case that the groups most bound to that vision of the future are the extremists from the three Abrahamic religions, to whom life is to some greater or lesser extent disposable in service of "wholehearted conversion".
One brought Law, one brought Salvation, and one brought Submission. The notion of monotheism was to destroy the old pagan gods and the wickedness that came wrapped in "superstition". We're back in the superstitious era. And in a superstitious era, conversion takes on the form conquest and in many cases murder and dehumanization. One has to be a zealot to believe that there is a God who wants humanity to follow certain mandates and rituals. The question you leave open is whether zealotry is justified, and I don't think you sufficiently answered that.
We don't try to convert people, or even get them to understand. What other people think isn't our responsibility. It's generally not "you must use these tools this way or you're wrong". It's "here's what we got from this".
However, there is a fluctuating source of zealotry and revivalism in our own community that has parallels in Islam and in Christianity. The idea is a very ancient Israelite one, a desert religion tribal idea: There's one God and He's on Your Side. Everyone else is apostate, pagan. This took root way before there were Christian or Muslim concepts of Hell or Heaven. You don't even need those things to condemn other people. There is judgment in Judaism, it's just not generally on the level of converting or killing people who disagree with the beliefs.
I'd submit that more people should be bothered by it if they have the idea that their belief is the only right one.
Its full of superstition from a couple thousand years ago.
That's sort of what a lot of other religions are missing. The idea that it's not literal.
There's a selection bias: the religions that survive today are the ones that had a reproductive advantage relative to other cultures. Natural selection applies to culture just like it does to genes. The same will hold in future as currently only the zealots have birthrates above replacement; the more secular people are, the fewer children they have, so the future belongs to the ones who believe God mandates they marry and multiply.
_A_ religious retort. Also it’s not a binary “lots of kids or no kids” spectrum.
Didn't most religions allow slavery? Islam, Christians, Jews, Hindus... All had rules on how to treat your slave but never printed slavery should be abolished. Funny how no major religion allows slavery any more isn't it
This is far form endorsing slavery. it was regarded as a necessity for society to function at the time. It is rather like how Christians now often accept the accumulation of wealth that is inevitable in a capitalist society as better than the alternatives. St Paul also said slaves (and women, and people of different races) were equal before God ( Galatians 3:28 ).
The Bible has rules about how to treat slaves, but from a Christian point of view these did not apply - they are Jewish law similar to not eating pork or requiring circumcision etc.
Christianity was the main motivation behind abolishing slavery and we have written records of Christians calling for slavery to be abolished going back to the 4th century.
I'm not a religious person but your message is very misleading and unfair to christians. Seriously: in the last 100 years how many terror attacks have been committed in the name of the christian god?
Even if, in the past, we've had stuff like the crusades and the dark ages it's hard to deny that Jesus brings a message of peace and forgiveness.
Save from a very few incidents with rare extremist christians fighting against abortion, the worst we've seen from christians are basically "people praying in their head in front of abortion clinics" (and the UK arrested christians for doing so btw: you're not free to "pray in your head" in front of an abortion clinic in the UK anymore).
While we could talk about tens of thousands of deaths in terror attacks from religious cracknuts who love to kill as many non-believers as possible.
"extremists from the three Abrahamic religions" doesn't hold up to scrutiny when christianity today has something like 0.01% of extremists while another religion, according to the latest published World FactBook from the CIA, has as many as 30% of its followers worldwide approving sharia laws.
It is interesting that both those examples (which are the "obvious" ones people pick") was really anything like what people imagine then to be like. The "dark ages" were dark in terms of a lack of records in western Europe as the Roman Empire collapsed and the imperial systems disappeared. Many historians argue that life mostly improved for ordinary people, the status of women improved, slavery was replaced by serfdom etc. The crusades started in response to a call for help from people who were being invaded, and were at least partly defensive: at the time they started the Arab Empires had occupied most Spain, most Mediterranean islands, parts of southern Italy, had invaded France etc. While they were not entirely virtuous they were not without reason either.
> While we could talk about tens of thousands of deaths in terror attacks from religious cracknuts who love to kill as many non-believers as possible.
A pretty small proportion of Muslims support religious violence. The extremists exist and are powerful or widely supported in some countries, but its no usual.
> while another religion, according to the latest published World FactBook from the CIA, has as many as 30% of its followers worldwide approving sharia laws.
What do they mean by that? It varies. Survey wording can mean it can even include following rules of personal conduct. It often means religious rulings over religious matters - not very different from Catholic marriage tribunals. Even where people want it to have the force of law, they may want that only for Muslims. While the extremists exist, they are far fewer than 30%. Most of that 30% is concentrated in a few countries, although the fact that some of those countries are very wealthy has meant they can fund the spread of those ideas.
https://san.com/cc/george-w-bush-saw-iraq-war-as-crusade-dec...
https://www.thirteen.org/worldfocus/blog/2009/05/27/religiou...
Depends how you count, the war on terror, that in reality mostly just brought terror to blow up weddings etc. was and is justified as a crusade by certain christian politicians. And quite some other wars had those elements as well, even the Nazis claimed they officially fought in the name of god against the atheist communists (and many did believe that, viewed Hitler as doing god's will).
Apart from that, check out The Lord's Resistance Army
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army
Or just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism
Not the Christian God. The aim of the Nazis was to replace the Christian ethos. Himmler said they aimed to get rid of the 10 commandments. They invented two religions (neo-paganism and Positive Christianity) as replacements for Christianity. They regarded Christianity as Jewish plot that overthrew the Roman Empire. Their ideal was to return to a pre-Christian European society, and Hitler said Sparta was the historical society closest to Nazi ideals.
> and is justified as a crusade by certain christian politicians
While they might be influential politicians, they are almost all also at odds with mainstream Christianity. There are similar problems with the wikipedia page about Christian terrorists. Most were anti-Catholic (so their enemies included most Christians). Others are "cultural Christians" rather than believers.
eg: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo (and one or two others)
> Poole Magistrates' Court heard the former serviceman had his head bowed and hands clasped outside the British Pregnancy Advisory Service in Ophir Road.
> The court was told he had been praying for his unborn son, who he said died from abortion 22 years ago.
I'm aware of where most of the zealotry comes from at the moment.
I'm not trying to be unfair to Christians or to Christianity, which in large part has renounced violence as a means of converting people.
The text is the same, as is, presumably, the Jesus, so either they had understood it all wrong and current Christians understand it correctly, or the other way around. Which is it?
IMHO, those are two distinct religions. Actual Christianity is the old one. The modern one isn't Christianity, but European Enlightenment in Christian clothing. And yes, the later is much better than the original.
EE also provides Judaism clothing, Buddhist clothing, and other such clothings, which is why it works so well. In fact, it also has a relatively recently developed Islamic clothing, though adoption is still limited. Hopefully it'll expand over time.
Once the EE got going and separated church from state, it also provided the emancipation of Jews[0], on the thesis that individuals transcend groups and have inalienable rights.
From the perspective of a 17th Century Jew or Christian, that project worked to reform and soften both Christianity and Judaism in Europe because both people were prepared to reject extremist beliefs in favor of economic, worldly, material wellbeing. Protestantism and Judaism in particular share certain traits in prioritizing work, science, individualism and success in the corporeal life.
It might be an unpopular idea, but the softening of Christianity was in some way its reunion with Judaism, from being a religion adapted by the Romans to war to a realignment with the more temperate biblical Judaism that Christ was actually teaching. But Christian scripture did have a gentle interpretation inherent to it.
Every European movement which sought to destroy the Enlightenment tried first to roll Jewish emancipation back and then to destroy the Churches, to supplant enlightened Christianity with extremist state religion.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_emancipation
No they would not. Mainstream Christian belief has not changed in a very long time.
Tell me of any belief the Catholic Church (which more than half of all Christians belong to) currently holds that would have been considered heretical a thousand years ago?
"The Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes that all homosexual individuals must "be accepted and treated with respect, compassion, and sensitivity," and that all forms of unjust discrimination should be discouraged and avoided at all cost"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_homosexual...
LOL.
your argument is that two cults using a common religious reference is evidence that it's valid?
That is not logical.
My claim is that both cults have successfully, over the course of many millennia, sniffed out loose but sound translations (even if they don't like the style or certain choices) from deliberately deviant translations.
I’d be curious to know if this difference in scriptural base also contributed to the great schism?
There were zero Hebrew Bibles at that time.
The Bologna scroll is found seventy(ish) times in greek and hebrew (and other languages) in the Qumran caves, along with a bunch of other stuff. Each of those times is a greek-literate persons' "bible". And they're all a little different. And they have their own notes in them too. They were probably paid to do it. At least some of them said they were rabbis.
Biblical scholars don't consider "The Septuagint" (Egyptian) to be any single translation and why they use the term "Majority Text" and stuff like that, to justify grouping all that stuff into "their" New Testaments'.
If it were possibly so simple as that, there probably wouldn't be so many forms of christianity.
Sankrit,
Avestan ,
Classical Mandaic,
Hebrew,
the Arabic in the Hijazi dialect of 6th century Arabia,
Punjabi
or Ardhamagadhi.
>We do well to remember that “scripture” and “canon” are different things, and of course we should never make the mistake of thinking that early Christians had Bibles like our own.
Reading any of this ancient text is like tourism.
You may enjoy the "map" on page two:
https://web.archive.org/web/20081031050603/http://www.tniv.c...