The New Testament

OK, everything I said about the Old Testament doesn’t go for the New. I’ve read Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts and I am most impressed. I had read one of the accounts before, but i don’t remember which one, probably Mark. Here are some random thoughts I’ve had so far:

Jesus totally kicks ass. He is the first one in the entire Bible that speaks with any authority. Everyone else (Moses, Abraham, Jacob, David, et. al.) would probably shrug their shoulders and say “That’s what God said,” if anyone questioned them. Jesus is the only one that knows which way is up. Perhaps my frustration from the Old Testament makes Jesus’ teachings seem even more authoritative.

My favorite Jesus moment. Someone asked about the truth of the resurrection, after all Moses and everyone else didn’t seem to mention it. Jesus pointed out that David and other prophets referred to “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” God is the God of the living, not of the dead so those people mentioned are alive. That blows my mind…

Matthew starts with the heritage of Jesus as traced through Joseph. What does Joseph have to do with anything? I thought God was Jesus’ father, so why trace through Joseph? Jesus wasn’t a descendant of David, there is none of David’s (or Joseph’s) blood in Him. I can understand if they did it through Mary (they don’t of course), but I see nothing that would change my notion of Joseph as the supportive step (or foster) father…

I begrudgingly admit that my reading of the Old Testament helps understand the New. I still stand by my thoughts that most of the Old Testament isn’t very useful and that most of the “prophecies” about the Messiah are incredibly vague. Why not a little more clarity? Perhaps I’m missing some stuff, but I don’t recall any prophecies about the Christian era other than the end of days. It sounds like people were expecting a literal descendant of David to rule on the throne forever, none of this dying and living in heaven stuff.

It’s shocking how dense the Apostles were. Jesus told some parables that I thought were pretty straightforward, but they stumped the Apostles. it makes me worry what else they missed of His teachings…

What, exactly, did Thaddeus and Bartholomew do? Maybe they come in later, but so far I don’t think they were credited with doing anything.

Judas is portrayed in a much more narrow way than I was anticipating. According to what I have read, there wasn’t any deliberation or even any thoughts as to what he was going through, he was just evil. I’ve always found this to be odd, he was one of Jesus’ disciples and he was instrumental in the events that lead to the salvation of all mankind, so where’s the love for Judas?

Jesus admitted that Moses had “put in” that whole thing about divorce to make people (men) happy. Was there anything else he put in there?

Since Gentiles weren’t expected to follow Mosaic or Levitical law, what is it that we nonJews are supposed to do? Jesus mentions a handful of commandments, but it sounds like the whole of Mosaic and Levitical law are not applicable to us. That raises interesting questions about a variety of “sins.”

There is a tremendous amount of duplication of the description of what Jesus did. On one hand, this makes it seem that these were the most important things that He did. Of course, if He was God, then it would seem like everything He did would be important. Even “Pass the salt,” would have some sort of importance if God said it. This is my biggest frustration with the New Testament, we get relatively little Jesus. Not only are huge parts of His life missing, but huge parts of His days of preaching. He did that for what, three years? And we get a couple hundred pages worth of description and several thousand of His words. Very disappointing… The other thing that the duplication does is it makes you winder about the provenance of the books. It really sounds like they were copied from a common source with minor embellishments…

More thoughts to come as I think of them…