Yes, sorry, I just noticed that I had indeed accidentally deleted your post. I clicked "Edit" instead of "Reply". However I think the essence of your post was in the passages I quoted.

The problem with your approach is that you have a very fixed image of god that is incompatible to the bible. Of course, for any bible quote you're posting one could post 10 quotes that just tell the opposite. Out of context bible quotes won't gain much. If you want to understand the bible, you need to read what's happening and not just pick some quotes.

Read the dialogs between God and Moses. Moses often manages to change God's intentions:

And the LORD said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they.

And Moses said unto the LORD, Then the Egyptians shall hear it , And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: (...) if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, Because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness. (...)

God refrains from killing Israel after hearing Moses' arguments. Notice that Moses did not ask for mercy. He simply threatened god with bad reputation.

In the further events of the bible we'll see the Hebrew god changing from his initially aggressive and criminal character to the forgiving, merciful character that the New Testament propagates. God is tamed step by step, until he finally sacrificed himself to the humans. If you really want an immutable, unrepenting god, consider converting to Islam.

I disagree that this shows the mutability of religion, JudeoChristianity in particular.

Consider: when Jesus came along, some people believed he was the messiah; others didn't. Those that did founded Christianism; those that didn't went right on believing what the Tora says. To whit, Judaism did not change as a religion when Jesus came, it merely spawned a new one.

Consider: further down the road, when certain books came in contention with modern ideas, the Protestants spawned from Roman Catholisms. Note that once again, the parent religion, Roman Catholism, did not change but merely created a child religion.

Thus IMO the authors contention that all relgions are in fact immutable. That after their creation events, there might be small adjustments to interpretation and small details, but the big dogma, no matter what it is at the time of that religions creation, remains inviolate. Furthermore, this is in sharp counterdistinction to science in which very little of the ideas set forth at any fields creation event are unchanged over time.

Examples of this include: Newton and Einstein; Darwin vs. Modern Synthesis; Bohr and DeBroglie. In each case the former was a creation event for a scientific principle and the latter is a mutation of this creation event. Note as well that in changing, each did not spawn a child science like religion spawns child religions. We don't consider Newton or Darwin to be an "alternative" to Einstein and the Modern Synthesis as one might say that Judaism or Protestantism are viable alternatives to Christianity.

Your point is taken in that even within a religious text we see evidence of a mutable god but it's not god we are talking, he/she/it can change all he/she/it wants... once. But once a religion sets it's roots, it rarely if ever move. It sways, and it may grow, but more often will bifurcate instead of actually change.

though, Roman Catholicism does change all the time. 60 years ago there was no salvation outside the RC Church, but since Vatican II every other religion is supposedly RC in essence, they just don't know it, and are still saved if they follow their own hearts' morals, but will be subject to a long Purgatory (Purgatory itself being something Roman Catholics decreed between 1400 and 1500 after Jesus human-life and ministry).

but i agree that jcl's quotes do not show mutability of Judeo-Christianity.

Protestantism is trying to go back to the roots of what Christianity was before Roman Catholics changed it to be tradition-dependant and conforming to Pagan ideas (if any RCs are here, don't take that offensively -- it's just the general Protestant view of it, and you guys think we're heretics anyway ).

many Christian and Jewish teachers/scholars/rabbis/what-have-you would say that where God is "persuaded" in the Bible, He is just testing those who "persuade" Him. moses "persuaded" God to keep His promise, but God has always kept His promises whether there was someone to remind Him or not.

sending Jesus down was prophesied way back all over the place in the Old Testament, so i don't think much "taming" was done. in the end, His judgement will be just as harsh and unforgiving to those who haven't personally accepted the gift of His Son as it was back in the old days.

julz

Yes, my quote does not prove the mutability of Judeo-Christianity. You can not prove anything with a single quote from the bible. The bible was written by authors of very different opinion and background, and for almost any quote you can find a counter-quote.

Nevertheless I object to the idea that religions don't change but only spawn. Almost all fractions of Christianity, even the most fundamentalist section of our friend Nitro_2008, have remarkably changed since their beginning.

The Hebrew religion of the year 60 AC, the time when Paulus founded Christianity, was very different to the Hebrew religion of Moses' time 1300 years before. The changes are reflected in the Bible. There were many changes in religious laws, in the character of god, and in god's covenant with Israel. At the beginning, it was a physical covenant, with god's duty to protect Israel by killing all its enemies. In the end, the covenant was spiritual only. Although Israel fulfilled their part after their return from the Babylonian exile, god never protected them against the Romans, and allowed full extinction in 130 AC. The character of the covenant and the character of their god had changed to Israel's misfortune.

You can even see the change statistically by just comparing god's kill rate. The bible often mentions the numbers of the people killed by god. The kill rate, from an average of several 10,000 per year at Moses' time, goes constantly down to a few per century. The last person ever killed by god, before his suicide in the Jesus incarnation, was king Herod.

Religions do change. This usually shows in struggles between the progressive and the conservative fractions - that's exactly what you're seeing today with the conservative fundamentalists in the US. In an attempt to maintain the identity of their particular religion, they have developed that strange counter-science that you can find on their websites.

as a side-note, many Christian's believe this was God's punishment to them when they failed to see the end of their Old Covenant and the beginning of their New Covenant.

julz

If you take a look at Christianity there have been many many small adjustments through time, those combined together make it a pretty different thing from the first 'set religion'. Whatever that was, because the separate authors of the Bible alone didn't create the Bible in one day, let alone the selection of texts that happened on various occasions through time, together with some editing to make sure it stays (more) coherent.

There has been as much 'evolution of content' going on when it comes to religious ideas, as there has been an evolution of psychology in the way the text are written.

The Bible in itself is already prove for this, as it shows a changing God.

I think that you have a limited understanding of the covenants involved in the Bible and that perhaps this is leading you to underestimate the unchanging nature of God. Thats ok though, thankfully I am here to inform you

If there is any constant which we can trace throughout the Bible it is the covenental framework. Covenants were initiated by God to:

Adam
(before sin)Gen 1:2
(after sin)Gen 3
Noah Gen 6-9
Abraham Gen 12-22
Moses Genesis 19:40/ Gal 3:14
The Nation of Israel(Palestine at the time) Deut 27-33
David (2 Sam 7; Psalm 89; Psalm 132)
The two houses of Israel and Judah (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
And finnally the everlasting covenant

All of the covenants have the same basic elements:
1)Words (including promises, terms, and an oath)
2)Blood (including a sacrifice, mediator, and sanctuary)
3)Seal (various signs, tokens, and seals)

All of the covenants had different durations, some were everlasting and some were temporal. This duration was linked to the fact that some covenants were revocable and some were irrevocable.

Revocable covenants are those in which God obligates Himself to fulfill the promises of those covenants based upon man's obedience to the attached conditions. I think that this was the case in your previous misunderstanding of the Mosaic covenant.

So in conclusion if you are to study the Bible closely you will indeed notice that God Himself, neither His framework with dealing with man through the covenants never changes throughout the entire Bible. He always uses this same framework of covenants, and each covenant has the same basic elements.

After the Bible is where people, institutions, councils, and religions start making all sorts of individual changes to religion.

But you are mixing a general statement with a specific example.
I still maintain that these conservative fundamentalists represent a SPLINTER group off of mainstream religion and in now way represent a changing of or evolution of the parent religion.

Jesus is still resurrected after 3 days despite the scientific impossibility of said event... the holy trinity is still alive and kicking in all it's "three as one" paradox... Allah still demands daily prayers... and the Buddha still maintains that suffering is the root of all discontent.

Yes, there have been micro-changes to interpretation, but I believe that the doctrine have been inviolate.

(PS: As I write this, I find myself in an odd reversal of position. Much as I lambast people for incorrectly using theory, models and Facts, so too do I lambast myself for (IMO) not using doctrine, scripture, dogma, and conon correctly. So please correct my usage of these as the posts go on)

I understand why you believe this, but it's a lot less black and white in my humble opinion. If your idea is that God can be whoever he pleases to be and that it's right either way when it comes to consistent behavior and that any change doesn't matter, then that's fine with me. Still, you really can't claim God doesn't change throughout the Bible, even from a contextual point of view with the various covenants in place....

But I think it has to do with your belief that in God's eyes, not every one is equal?