Yes, I am probably on a wider path of reading in my own life, beyond the forum itself. The way which I see any ideas which I draw upon from any other disciplines here is with a view to drawing out the relevance of those ideas to the philosophical discussion of The Bible.

Also, you must bear in mind, that what happens in the thread is partly in relation to the way others pursue those ideas as well. Having initiated the discussion, I see my own role as stearing the flow to some extent, but it is not as if I control the thread. I think that what is most important is for various people who are engaged in it to be able to engage in a way which enables them to think about the topic. Also, I do wish the thread to work in such a way that anyone who looks at it can find some discussion worth reading, hopefully.

Anyway, going back to the idea of the bus, the one funny aspect of this is that on several occasions I have been busy writing replies on this site on busses and have missed my stop...

However, we could say that there has been an different trend, towards an emphasis in social justice in more recent thinking, especially in the trend of liberation theology, which focuses on the alleviation of suffering — Jack Cummins

Yes, I think social justice is very important. But if we are to construct a consistent moral philosophy based on NT teachings, we need to find a definition for it, look at what place it has or should have within Christian ethics, how it relates to the two great commandments and to the Decalogue, etc.

Incidentally, regarding the Decalogue, there is this interesting passage in Matthew:

1“And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: 2And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying ….

17Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

18For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. 19Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Mat 5:17 – 20) https://biblehub.com/kjv/matthew/5.htm

It is tempting to think that by "the Law", Jesus meant the Jewish Law in general. However, the Jewish Law (Halakhah) was much more than the Decalogue. There are 613 basic laws and further rabbinic laws that together constitute Jewish Law. A lot of these are not applicable to non-Jews, for example, the prohibition against eating pork which would have been unacceptable to other cultures like the Greek and Roman ones.

As the Son of God and the founder of a new world religion, Jesus could not have referred to the Jewish Law, but to the Eternal Law of God that has existed from the beginning of the world and that is applicable to the whole human race.

Incidentally, the Decalogue consists of laws that were in force among another nations, not only the Jews. Even the first law or commandment, "you shall have no other gods before me" may be interpreted to mean that we should not put any other god first or above the Supreme God or Deity, i.e., that we should have and worship one God above all other divine or spiritual beings such as gods, angels, etc.

This would be consistent with Greek and Roman religion which had one supreme deity (Zeus, Jupiter) over others and even with Ancient Canaanite and Hebrew religion which had one main god (El, Elyon, Yahweh). In Ancient Greece, Socrates was accused of impiety toward the gods of Athens and of introducing new deities. So, such prohibitions were not an exclusive feature of monotheistic religion.

Therefore, it may be said that the core of this Eternal and Universal Law of God, according to Christianity, would be the two commandments given by Jesus, followed by the Decalogue. We have seen more or less what the two commandments are. But what about the Decalogue, how are we to interpret and apply it in a Christian sense?

1. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven, on earth, or in the water; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain
4. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. You shall remember it and keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery
8. You shall not steal
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.”

As can be seen, the first four refer to God and relate to Jesus’ first commandment (“love God”) and the following six refer to man and his neighbors and relate to Jesus’ second commandment (“love thy neighbour”).

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Ten Commandments

In particular, how should we define, interpret, and evaluate liberation theology?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology

I do wish to keep the discussion on the philosophical. — Jack Cummins

Definitions in Philosophy, as per:
http://www.biblicalworldview21.org/Glossary/Glossary.asp

According to the author: Franklin E. (Ed) Payne
http://www.biblicalworldview21.org/Title%20Explanations/About_Author.asp

This is a Glossary which acts as a 'mini-overview' of a Biblical and Christian worldview.

Of special importance are these words:
emotions, ethic, ethics, evangelical, heart, law, justice, philosophy (and all its synonyms), regeneration, righteousness, salvation, and truth.
2) The glossary is a mini-overview of a Biblical and Christian worldview. To know these definitions and many of their nuances is to have a basic understanding of worldview! 3) This glossary is concerned with establishing definitions that are consistent throughout this website... — biblical worldview - Glossary

Justice: the application of Biblical law in the appropriate situation or each person getting his just due, both reward and punishment, by the same criteria. Why designate the appropriate situation? God's justice has the range of application from the individual's conscience in society (social justice), to the laws of church government that require correction (discipline) of its members, and to the taking of a life in capital punishment after due process of state law. Properly applied, justice is always merciful, even to its ultimate application on earth in capital punishment. Final and perfect justice will be executed in the Last Judgment.

Welfare: "financial assistance paid by taxpayers (and administered by state agencies) to people who are unable to support themselves" (Wikipedia definition, modified by Ed). Under Biblical principles and law, there is no justification for this concept of Welfare. See law and force and the not-so-great welfare state.
— biblical worldview - Glossary

However, we could say that there has been an different trend, towards an emphasis in social justice in more recent thinking, especially in the trend of liberation theology, which focuses on the alleviation of suffering... — Jack Cummins

So, a different viewpoint from the way 'Justice' and 'Welfare' are defined in the Glossary ?
Can you provide sources from both theology and philosophy of religion ?

I wonder how, from a philosophy point of view we may approach and understand this book, or collection of books .On one hand, there is theology, and, on the other, there is the philosophy of religion. — Jack Cummins

One way is to look at Philosophical Reviews of the Bible in the 'Philosophy Now' magazine.
I found this response to a review:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/101/Philosophical_Reviews_of_The_Bible

It might seem odd to include a book review of the Bible within a magazine devoted to philosophy, but one appears in Philosophy Now Issue 99. On reflection, I hold that there is a case for such a review, and not only on the grounds that that edition centred on God. Both the nature and the status of sacred texts raise a number of issues in philosophy concerning for example, the relation of philosophy to literature (to which at least one major journal is devoted), the relation of philosophy to mythology and poetry (a discussion that goes back at least to Plato), and the nature and justification of various forms of ‘authority’, to name just three. However, I found the particular review by Les Reid very deficient, and in what follows I propose to provide a more adequate one...

...any adequate review of the Bible has to begin with the many kinds of material found in it, which, taken as a whole, forms a kind of saga of a people covering many centuries. Parts are certainly mythology, but other parts have as much claim to being historical documents as many other ancient sources. This does not make them ‘literally’ accurate – but Reid’s implication that a Biblical text is either literally true or nonsense presents a bogus dichotomy. Things are more complex than that.

[ There follows a review of 6 major genres in the Bible: mythology, poetry, laws, moral/theological reflection, historical sources, and wisdom literature.]

....What worries me most about Reid’s review is the kind of certainty that pervades it, which seems to me to be inconsistent with the whole philosophical enterprise, from before the time of Socrates. To put my cards on the table, I am seriously agnostic about many theological claims, but I have made the existential commitment to be a disciple of Jesus – which involves saying, and meaning, “Jesus is Lord.” This is perfectly compatible with many kinds of doubt. Take Reid’s wholesale rejection of the possibility of a personal afterlife. Like many contemporary Christians I am not sure what will happen when I die, and my commitment to the way of Jesus in no way depends on a future life – but at the same time I find Reid’s certainty unwarranted.
— Michael Langford

Unfortunately, I can't access Issue 99 - 'The God Issue' - having used up all of my free 4 articles per month allowance. Perhaps someone else can... if interested.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/99

There are 613 basic laws and further rabbinic laws that together constitute Jewish Law. A lot of these are not applicable to non-Jews, for example, the prohibition against eating pork which would have been unacceptable to other cultures like the Greek and Roman ones. — Apollodorus

Jesus does not say this, Paul does. What is acceptable to other cultures is not thereby acceptable to those who, like Jesus, follow the Law given to God's chosen people; who are to be a light to other nations. (Isaiah)

I think you are confused. Christians are not Jews and Christianity is not Judaism.

Mark 7 says very clearly:

"5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:

“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
7 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’

8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions ....

14 Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.”

17 After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18 “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? 19 For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+7&version=NIV

Quite possibly, some Jewish followers of Jesus continued to adhere to Jewish dietary and other customs, but others obviously did not. St Paul, who was a Jew, was one of them. And as an increasing number of non-Jews joined the movement, Jewish laws were no longer required nor adhered to.

I understand that. I was just pointing it out in order to show one of the many changes thst have been adopted in western culture . that's one of the problems when adopting a religion from a different time and language is that so much is lost and what's not lost is subject to the opinion of the translator because when translating a language the translator often times has to just pick a word that he thinks makes the most since because there might not be a word in English for whatever the word may be is said original tongue and worst of all most of the scriptures are in either dead Hebrew or dead Greek meaning we don't 100% know how to translate it we're only guessing because it's not used anymore so we might be unaware of how to take certain words and what their meanings and values were/are so it's a shot in the dark at best.

I remember this video I watched this guy was explaining difficulties of translating different languages and gave an example this time he was over in Asia I can't remember exactly where but it was a community where they mainly relied on boats for everything and he was talking to the translator in front of people and said a Passage in the particular book that they were discussing and he said the person was on the fence about a situation (in the book)

And the interpreter stopped and looked at him and kind of paused and then turn back to the audience and said a word and the audience laughed so he asked the interpreter "why did they laugh? It's a serious situation and he can't decide what to do next an interpreter told him that they don't have a word for fence because there are people that live in and on the water so the closest thing to "being on the fence" was something like "so he stood with his legs in separate boats wishing they were together"

What you can imagine would be an awkward silly situation to be standing one foot in one boat the other foot in the other and as you're starting to do the Jean-Claude Van Damme splits you're complaining that they're not one boat

so I can imagine you would completely missed the entire point of that scenario because you'd be envisioning some goofy situation where John Claude Van Damme is doing the splits across two boats lol.

and in the bible it seems as if names are important god supposedly emphasizes on it as well as Moses asks specifically for his name and the reader kinda gets the impression that you can't just nickname god or his son/mini me/self Because names are important

And yet here we are calling gods son by a name that didn't exist at the time that he supposedly was on earth and to make the situation even more awkward and confusing this name that we call him by that he new nothing about at the time isn't even the English translation of the Hebrew
Because supposedly his name was Yeshua which is best translated as salvation which sounds nothing like Jesus to me , but that could just be me and there of course was his other name which was more of a title than anything and that was The Christ The Anointed One
Which comes from Christo's so in English hos name and title/ spiritual job/ position was " Anointed Oil Of Salvation"
And it seems kinda funny to name a baby something like Salvation

but it makes more sense when you read the stories under the context of The Story characters are merely place holders and that the real meaning hidden within the story it's different than the story itself.

I'm not attacking you or challenging your Viewpoint just having conversation that's all.

I think you are confused. Christians are not Jews and Christianity is not Judaism. — Apollodorus

We could go round and round as you are so fond of doing. If you take the Sermon on the Mount as the words of Jesus andwhat he says about keeping to the letter of the Law, it is clear that it is addressed to everyone:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.(Matthew 5:17-20)

Using a gospel that is influenced by Paul is question begging.

Well, maybe you should try reading other people's posts before commenting? I already quoted your quote and explained why "the Law" only referred to what was universally applicable to all believers, not just to Jews.

17Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil ..... — Apollodorus

If Jesus had intended for his teachings to be just for Jews, he would have made sure that only Jews became followers and there would have been a Gospel for Jews in Hebrew or Aramaic, not in Greek.

Jesus preached to all who would follow the Law. Paul knew that the gentiles would not, and yet he felt compelled to "save them".

IMHO that's rather irrelevant as you have no evidence for your claim. In the final analysis, all we have got is the NT text and the teachings of the Church Fathers. This is what the OP is about, not fanciful and unsubstantiated speculations.

IMHO that's rather irrelevant as you have no evidence for your claim. — Apollodorus

On the contrary. There is the Sermon and what Paul himself says.

I've just told you:

Mark 7 says very clearly:

"5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?” — Apollodorus

Jesus' disciples did not live according to Jewish tradition. Mark says so.

Using a gospel that is influenced by Paul is question begging. — Fooloso4

Well, I'm afraid that's the only NT we've got. You are at liberty to write your own if you so wish. Maybe in 1st-century Hebrew or Aramaic ....

Fear not. Paul tells you everything you need to know. He invents a new religion in which Jesus' admonition to follow the Law does not hold.

Well, as I said, you are at liberty to invent your own religion. Either that, or you could always convert to Judaism. Who is stopping you?

Thanks for your link to 'Philosophy Now' magazine. I do read it sometimes, in paper form, but have not read the particular issue on God, I think that it was a little while before I discovered the magazine. I think that some of the content is coming up on my phone, so I will try to use some of the ideas as a basis for some further discussion. Hopefully some others will be able to access the links because I am not really able to make links on my phone. Sometimes, I can't access some people's links on the site but your ones seem to show up, and it is probably due to signals and transmissions.

With some sources such as these the thread may turn into a miniature encyclopedia. I do also plan to refer to some books which I have in my room, because I do a certain amount of reading online but I do read paper books still. I have been out all day, so I will look at the thread tomorrow, and follow it through by adding some further ideas. Once again, thank you for your input because I am wishing to keep the topic focused within philosophy.

Spot on. :100:

The Jesus Cult (Nazarenes) was clearly Jewish whereas The Pauline Church (Christians) was Gentile. The latter survived to become the victor and, as you know (& others deny), self-servingly "canonized" (the) anti-Judaic not-history. Biblical archaeology has corrected many of the 'NT & patristic falsifications' in the last century or so.

The Jesus Cult — 180 Proof

One of my favorite bands! Unfortunately, recording quality back then was very poor, practically non-existent.

:lol: :victory:

The Pauline Church (Christians) was Gentile. The latter survived to become the victor — 180 Proof

Well, such is life. Jews kept their religion and Christians founded their own. Isn't that what the Jews did before? I can see nothing wrong with that. It's called religious freedom.

The question "How Do We Think About the Bible From a Philosophical Point of View?" is really too broad to begin a detailed and constructive discussion. The Bible certainly discusses philosophical problems of humanity (i.e. origin of life, our role in the world, the origin of evil, etc.). You will need to take a philosophical stance the Bible proposes and then form your hypothesis or question from that.

The Bible does not prove the belief in God or defend it, it presumes it.

:roll:

I just logged in to the site before going to bed, and I noticed you have written your first post, so welcome to the forum. I realise that the thread question which I have written is extremely broad and, of course, I am not expecting it to be fully answered. I really chose the idea of thinking about The Bible as an approach to the philosophy of religion with a slightly different focus rather than the typical atheist vs theist dichotomy.

If you are interested in the discussion at all you may find links in the thread which may be useful. I can assure you that I am interested in many aspects of philosophy, and my thread is not intended to make any set of assumptions. The aim is to look at The Bible as a text, and I do welcome your ideas.

The Bible does not prove the belief in God or defend it, it presumes it. — neoshaman2012

:100: , amen.

I have never come across the band, The Jesus Cult, but I am familiar with The Jesus and Mary Chain. My favourite Biblically inspired track is one by U2, called '40' and it is based on the 40th psalm.

It is true that the authors of The Bible presume a belief in God but this does not mean that everyone who reads it has to come from that angle. People can approach it from all kinds of philosophical perspectives.

I have never come across the band — Jack Cummins

It's old school. Real old school. Back before your time, back like when the other guys in the battle of the bands were saying it was the end times.

Judaism might hold that Jesus was the Antichrist and got his power from Satan. Maybe Satan even gave Jesus his soul back in order to rise. Ancient miracle claims should be doubted though, and anyway we can't know where a miracle comes from