new testament mondoweiss

Chu- The topic of the post you cited was Islamic opposition to free press, which automatically raised the topic of the Danish cartoon controversy, which focused on Mohammed, the author of the Koran. So I commented on the Koran and then was asked, "Isn't Tanach worse?" So I answered regarding a comparison of Tanach and Koran. The New Testament was not relevant to the question.

But since you raise the New Testament I will comment. Jesus is an inspirational figure, but to view him as infallible or the son of God is really a step backwards from the fallible very human figures in the Hebrew Bible or Tanach. I believe that prophecy exists and if Jesus foresaw his death, then it is explainable that a person who foresees his life being cut short might view the world in a bitter manner. (Nietzsche says that if Jesus would have lived longer he would have had a more mature view on certain topics.) The animus against the Jews or the Pharisees that is expressed in certain of the gospels is certainly something that I hold against the New Testament. Unlike the Quran which was a guide to making war (parts of Tanach also were guides to making war, in a far crueler manner than the war that the Quran advocates) it is actually surprising the the New Testament could be used as a pretext and an inspiration for crusades and murders and warfare. But there you have it, humans are naturally makers of war (or should I say groups of humans are naturally makers of wars) and they can use anything to help justify their warmaking. When Jesus cursed the fig tree for not being ready to give him its fruit, this betrayed an impatience unbecoming to a man of God. (But as a man who died young and knew that he was about to die young, one is not surprised to find impatience.) When he said, I came to bring a sword and not to bring peace, maybe this is a verse that gave humans permission to use his personality to inspire them to kill.

When we come to the personality of Paul, we are dealing with a great orator and a very angry combative man. He made the Church into what it became and that is both an argument for him and against him. He wore his animus against Jews on his sleeve and compromise seems to have been foreign to his personality. He possessedwisdom, but his angry personality can be blamed for many of the evil developments of Christianity including its perverse attitude towards sex and its animus towards Jews. Revelations is a weird book, on the same low rung or even a little lower than Daniel.

Someone once commented about the New Testament, how is it that God spoke such a fine Hebrew and such a mediocre Greek. Yet the Sermon on the mount is rather important, and many of the parables are quite good and although much hatred for the Jews was spread by those who put on the passion plays, the story of the crucifixion is good literature. Yet I think the story of Joseph and his brothers is actually a deeper story than the story of the crucifixion in terms of teaching us about human behavior. And the deification of Jesus was a step away from monotheism and allowed for much pagan input in the new religion that Paul created and spread. Jesus's favorite book quite obviously was the Hebrew Bible and he seems to have favored the book of Isaiah.

The Hebrew Bible or Tanach, which includes many stories and many prophets and a much larger span of history, plus the Psalms, plus a great book like Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) is a far richer set of books than the New Testament.

Christianity's universal tendencies are "superior" to Judaism's particularist tendencies, yet the loss of the Sabbath, with its rich traditions and the loss of so many of Torah and the rabbis' rituals created a religion that was poorer for the traditions that it tossed away.

One can view the celibacy of the priests as something unrelated to the New Testament, but its roots are in that book as is the root that forbids divorce, both of which are negative developments. Maybe utopian or maybe not, but in the end by disregarding human nature they are negative developments.