Most of you understand that I have recently had a change in my life, a few years ago is recent, meaning that I am no longer a Christian but have came to a realization that my personna. . . my constant rebellious personna, my essence, my body and very understanding does now and always has belonged to mother earth and the spirits within. In other words I am now, after more than thirty years of constant Bible study what people call a pagan and I only feel at home with my bare feet in the soil.

Be that as it may I am still a conformist in my home church acting a a Junior class bible school teacher and Trustee. The church understands that I have taken a different path and they acccept it just so they have my word that I will teach the ways of the bible while in service to the Church. I am not breaking any sacred laws - Conformists have operated within the church since it's inception. I give my time to my home church because I see the good that it does the community and it would break the hearts and souls of my family to abandon them.

But there is a deeper side to every story isn't there. This article is a joke written by a fruitcake wanting the publicity! Both books of the Bible were written for the Jews, about the Jews, by the Jews. Even the original manuscripts and scrolls, at the Council of Nicea, were written in Hebrew which is to this very day the language of the Jews.

I can give you my opinion as to what the terrible part of the bible is and then you can respond like the debasement of women, "purification" of the nonbelievers (witchhunts), discluding the gentiles from certain rites (white folks), etc.
As a person that has read the bible once-over every-year for ~twenty-years I can probably come up with something that offends just about everyone on this board but offending Jews? The Old Testament(The Torah) is a factual history of the Jewish people. I mean it is like a history book in itself.

PDM -

My courses this time period are on race & ethnicity, sociology, and psychology and all three are covering race at the exact same time so I'm sort of overdosed in race and racial issues at the moment

Certainly one side is that interaction with a group that seems "threatening" can make a group that was previously passive become more anti. If a group of villagers never had issues with let's say Chinese, but suddenly a large group of Chinese move into the area and start "taking jobs" and "changing all the signs" the locals could increase their prejudice levels. So that does happen.

I think that happens less - in an overall sense - than situations were smaller groups move in and are not seen as threatening. So people who have never met a Japanese person now get to meet one and realize they are like all other people. A person who's never met a lesbian gets to meet one and realizes they are nice. So I think proportionally that happens more than the harmful interaction happens.

I think we see that with each new generation that modern kids are more likely to interracially date than their grandparents were. Studies they do about levels of distances between races seem to indicate that say in the 1930s people would "never" consider marrying a very differently raced person and in modern times most do not have that same strong reaction. So it does seem things are getting better. We have more and better role models on TV and movies and in real life.

Even when you look at what we "consider" to be different - in the 1920s Italians and Irish were considered nasty minorities in the US. Signs would say "no Irish wanted" in stores. Nowadays they're merely considered "white" - they aren't considered different at all. They've been absorbed.

Dear Mongrel -

I think we can agree that the Old Testament is about Jewish topics and that Jewish people wrote it and believe in what it says.

I'm curious why you feel the New Testament was written by Jews, and not by Christians.

Early 'Christianity' was Jewish, anyway, so there is likely to have been a cross-over ~ part Jewish, part gentile Christian, I would imagine.

Paul supposedly wrote most of the NT and he was a Jew, who apparently became a follower of the deceased Jesus.

Saint Paul is said to have taken the 'good news' to the gentiles. Did any of these gentiles write any of 'his' letters, I wonder, or were they all written by Jewish 'Christians'?

Acts and the Gospel of Luke appear to have been written by a gentile Christian, who is traditionally accepted as a colleague of Paul, but it is believed to have been based on the Gospel of 'Mark', which was earlier, and might even have been based, in turn, on the memories of St Peter ~ who was Jewish.

So I would say that it could be reasonable to conclude that the New Testament was ultimately Jewish. After all, Jesus was Jewish, himself, as were his companions and most of his followers.

Well yes in the sense that there was no way to be Christian until Christ actually arrived and went through his path, then they were Jewish, but the fact that they believed in Christ "changed" them into Christians. I think it's fair to call the Apostles Christian once they began following Jesus, and not calling them Jews any more.

Lisa, I suppose it depends on how you define a Jew. The People in Israel want to be defined ethnically as a Jew where we in the west only see a Jew as in Judaism. If you ask a dark colored Jewish Individual whether he is pakistani, afghani or what he will respond with the answer "I am of Jewish Blood". For these folks it is not a question of what religion their sons and daughters will be when they grow up because it is understood that they will follow the path of the Jew. This is a question that has been passed down through the ages.

Jesus was the proclaimed "King of the Jews" born of a Jewish mother and raised by a Jewish father. Each and every one of the disciples where Jewish by birth and still jewish in death. This is probably more of a post for the "Davinici Code" thread however the ritualism set forth which made Jesus a saviour in the first place was written during the Council of Nicea"

I don't think that the apostles would have considered themselves Christian ~ and I wouldn't, either. They were Jews, who may well have believed that they were following a (rather unorthodox) Jewish Messiah/ Christ.