Is the Old Testament Relevant to Christians? Part 4 of 4

I encourage you to research the individual propositions within this entry yourself. In your research, please be aware of the bias of your source material (e.g. religious sites versus sceptic's sites versus material meant for pure scientific/philosophical knowledge).

I still have a few minor questions, but after a little research, these I were mostly able to answer. Mostly. Sort of. For example:

How do we know that the ceremonial laws and civil laws were part of any covenant between God and the Israelites only?

God and covenants are like Pinocchio and lies – you can't tell a story about one without the other strewn throughout it. The covenants God made were between himself and several people – individuals, individuals and their families, individuals and all future offspring, the entire people of the world. In addition to covering a specified person or group of people, covenants also cover specified promises and requests/demands. Among the multitudinous covenants that God made, there were specifically a Mosaic covenant and a covenant with Israel. So go research those.

Did Jesus ever really delineate between the different body of laws to make it clear which ones related to all and which ones were no longer applicable?

It doesn't really seem that he did. It seems, instead, that to come to a conclusion on which group of laws he found relevant, one needs to research, to an extent, what Jesus said about specific things and draw the principles he seemed to be espousing from that. This, I believe, harks back to my issue with the subjectivity of the New Testament.

How can we be sure that the 10 commandments are really all moral laws and therefore remain applicable when they seemed to be so certainly part of the covenant between God and the Israelites?

Is keeping the Sabbath holy really a moral duty? How could not working for a day be moral in any way? It seems to suggest such a thing is to assign any arbitrary meaning to the word “moral” - i.e. “moral” is whatever action a religious philosophy describes as such. Others who say that keeping the Sabbath holy is a metaphor for keeping our bodies holy do not seem to read the full verse of the commandment which specifically disallows labour on the seventh day. Also – while I can understand why many could consider disrespecting God in any way (i.e. saying his name in vain, etc) could be immoral, I find it a bit silly. God on an ego-trip, perhaps. But that's slightly beside the point.

In any case, I don't intend to pay too much mind to these points in the interest of wrapping up with one final concern. And this concern cycles back to the original purpose of this entry, which was to understand how I am really supposed to react to Christians disavowing sections of the Old Testament when some of the sick shit in it was brought up.

What I have discussed so far I think helps me to avoid making particular arguments that perhaps might have spoken to an accused hypocrisy on the part of the Christian. For example, when Christians abide by certain tenets seen in the Old Testament (considering homosexuality an abomination) yet blatantly disregard others (eating pork with relish), and I am tempted to point such out. Now I understand that while many laws lumped together in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are still applicable because they are moral laws, others are defunct, and I know why. This research will help me to avoid such straw-men arguments in future.

Still, because of the relationship between the civil laws and the moral code, certain laws, though no longer applicable, are still fair game. For example, the law that requires a rapist to marry his victim and never divorce her (Deuteronomy 22: 28-29), or the laws about the treatment of slaves (Exodus 21), though meant to protect rape victims and slaves, are very telling about the overall moral fabric of the society in which these persons live (and which God allows). I am not going to get into the how and why of what I just said as this demands entries unto themselves. Trust me though – these entries are soon to come.

Also events still remain fair game. Such as the Israelites commonly carrying out genocide and infanticide on God's command – entering cities and killing everyone including men, women, and children, saving only the virgins. The explanations I have heard for these appear, on the face of them, to be severely wanting. Some of the explanations speak to a distinction between the people of the Old Testament and the people of the New Testament or the rewards and punishments available at that time. It is these explanations I think are extremely relevant to a discussion such as this, but ones, I think, are better framed in the context of specific biblical verses with their own theme (e.g. “God-sanctioned Genocide”). I will follow this entry therefore with such a discussion, and then later by my pet topic of old - “God-sanctioned Slavery”.

But for now, I shall wrap this up saying that I have most definitely learnt quite a bit in this research, and feel much more knowledgeable having made it. I think even that this four-part entry may be useful to the theist and non-theist alike. That being said, I am quite excited to finally start an entry on the meat of the Bible and look forward to my next entries all the more.