| Trunkin said: ... The OT still has to be used as a guideline of sorts, but Christians toss out the parts that Jesus stood against. The story of the adulterous woman is a good example in this case, as he told her to "go and sin no more." He wasn't saying that adultery was okay, only that he would not condemn her for it. Although I do agree that it isn't "Christlike" to treat gays the way many Christians today do. Now, I'm unfamiliar with any drastic changes made to the NT texts over the years, but, even if you're right, the commonly used King James Bible was written over 400 years ago, so my statement still stands: These teachings didn't just come around recently. Hence, not cherry picking. ... |
Interestingly enough, the portion you just cited - Jesus stopping the stoning of the adulterous woman - is widely considered by paleographers and other scholars of biblical textual analysis to be a very late addition to John. The oldest copy dates to the 4th century, and it does not appear in greek versions of John dating back to the second century. Also, linguistic analysis of the greek text seem to indicate a different hand from the main author(s) of John. John itself being the latest gospel (written around the end of the first century) it was already the one that tried most to distantiate christianity from the judaic beliefs and to build christology, which might explain why latter additions were done in that sense.
It makes little difference in this discussion, as the theology of tolerance it professes is central to what became christianity as we know it today in contrast to OT, whatever reason the 3rd century biblical writers and editors had to include it; I just found it interesting seeing it mentioned together with changes to the NT in the very next paragraph :)
