How the Old Testament dishonours the Prophets - Joshua Evans 4/4

Frequently Asked Questions

1.What is the God of the Old Testament like?

The God of the Old Testament is a jealous, bloodthirsty, vicious God that mercilessly commanded horrific attrocities like, for example:

Killing every human on the planet except the handful that went with Noah.

Moses commanding his people to shed each others blood as atonement for creating and worshiping the golden calf

The genocide of the people in the promised land when the Hebrews finally ended their 40-year stay in the dessert. Under the command of God, they wiped out whole cities, killing every man, woman and child.

2.Is the Old Testament historically authentic?

The sheer number of Old Testament authors who tell the same story, plus all the revisions carried out on the text of certain books from the pre-Christian era, constitute as many reasons for inaccuracy and contradiction

3.Did Jesus abolish the Old Testament Law?

Jesus said I have come to fulfil the Law (i.e. observe and uphold it)

4.What did James say of the Old Testament Law?

James advocated strict adherence to the Old Testament Law including the Ten Commandments, and if a part of it was broken or ignored, the entire law has been violated

5.What is the punishment for apostasy in the Bible (Old Testament)?

According to the Bible (Old Testament), the punishment for apostasy (turning away from Gods religion) is death

6.What was the foundation of the Old Testament?

It is known the foundation of the Old Testament was, 'Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD' (Deuteronomy 6:4), and the Jews fiercely defended that faith against polytheism of all kinds.

7.Does the Old Testament teach the Christian Trinity?

The Old Testament does not teach the Trinity, or even set forth the Messiah would be God. There is no evidence of anyone knowing about, or believing in, the Trinity in all the Jewish literature before Christ, including the Old Testament, the Jewish targums and commentaries, the Apocrypha or other apocryphal literature, or the Dead Sea Scrolls.

8.What do Christian 'Trinity' scholars say about the Old Testament?

The distinguished Trinitarian scholar Bertrand de Margerie in his book The Christian Trinity in History (p.3) writes:

"…contemporary exegetes [Bible teachers] affirm unanimously that the Old Testament did not bring to the Jewish people a clear and distinct Revelation of the existence of a plurality of persons in God. In this they agree with the clear and frequent affirmation of Fathers such as Irenaeus, Hilary, and Gregory of Nazianzus: that the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed only in the New Testament."

So any person who lived before Jesus' ministry did not have to believe in the Trinity to be saved because the Trinity is not mentioned in the Old Testament.

9.Many Christians believe that Jesus abolished the Old Testament dietary laws

Many Christians believe that Jesus abolished the Old Testament dietary laws. The dietary interpretation of Jesus' words (i.e. swine pig consumption) does not exist in the Textus Receptus Bible, the authoritative Greek New Testament text that was accepted by the Christian Church until about 100 years ago.

This parenthetic interpretation of Jesus words was obviously a comment that some Bible scribe wrote in the margin of the text. Later scribes accidentally or deliberately incorporated the marginal comment into the text itself, so the statement appears only in corrupted texts.

But the statement does not appear in the Textus Receptus, so the KJV says nothing about Jesus "declaring all foods clean."

God had clearly prohibited pig, swine and pork in the Old Testament. This verse was over whether or not 'unwashed hands' caused clean food to become unclean.

10.How did Early Christians view the Old Testament?

The superior authority of Christ meant that while the authors of the NT embraced the OT as 'God-breathed' and thus would never feel free to reject any portion of it, they were equally convinced that the ultimate God-intended meaning of any given passage, and of the OT as a whole, was only found when seen in relation to Christ.

For example, for one or more of the Gospel authors, Jesus's birth fulfills Israel's longing for a messiah, his exodus out of Egypt fulfills Israel's exodus out of Egypt, his temptations in the desert fulfills Israel's trials in the desert, his twelve disciples fulfill the mission of the twelve tribes of Israel, his five sets of teachings in Matthew fulfill Moses’s Pentateuch, his sufferings fulfill the call of Israel to be a suffering servant, and his resurrection is the fulfillment of Israel's calling and longing for restoration.