Posted: Apr 23, 2017 10:19 am
Alan B wrote:Agrippina wrote:Still to answer the question, yes, Christianity does cherry-pick what parts of the Old Testament are relevant, but the basic belief system is based more on the Epistles and what the writers dictated in those, and less on the laws of the Old Testament, while devout Christians believe the history of the Jews is contained in the "history" of the Old Testament, and fundamentalist Christians believe the creation story in Genesis 1 & 2 are the "truth" about where humans came from.
And all this because this Jesus fellow said (Matt. 5:18 REB) "Truly I tell you: so long as heaven and earth endure, not a letter, not a dot, shall disappear from the law until all that must happen has happened." in order to placate the synagogue Elders who were getting upset at the support he was getting from the local populace.
I suspect that if he had not said that or that it wasn't 'reported' in the NT, Christians would not have included the Torah as part of their holy book. The whole of the Christian world (as we know it) would perhaps now not exist...
I suspect that the Jewish scriptures would still be included, because the letter writers constantly referred to them and the stories in them as doctrinal supports.