Can the God of Moses be reconciled with Jesus of Nazareth?

[Danmark]

If God is Eternal and changeless, can the God of Moses and Abraham be reconciled with the divinity of Jesus and his union with that God as declared in the doctrine of the trinity?
The 'Old Testament' God is clearly a tribal God. He is the God of the Hebrews. He punishes Pharaoh and his people and leads his people out of Egypt, destroying tribes along the way so his chosen people can take their land.
Yet Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan and rewards the Canaanite woman's faith.*
How can the universal love preached by Jesus be reconciled with the tribal God of Moses and Abraham?

_______________________________
* The woman came and knelt before Him. Lord, help me! she said. He replied, It is not right to take the childrens bread and toss it to their dogs. Yes, Lord, she said, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters table.
Then Jesus answered, Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted. And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
Despite initially showing the prejudice of his tribe, Jesus recognizes we are all one people.

[Divine Insight]

How can the universal love preached by Jesus be reconciled with the tribal God of Moses and Abraham?

It has been my conclusion that the Jesus of the New Testament cannot be reconciled with the tribal God of Moses and Abraham, or the OT in general.

This is why I have rejected Christianity as being a clearly false religion. There is also absolutely no way to make Jesus into a "brand new or independent God" in his own right. So that approach is also non sequitur.

There is simply no way to make Christianity work as it is written in the context of the entire Biblical canon. And I also see no way of making it work via any attempt to sever the theological links between Jesus and the OT.

So this is ultimately why I am no longer a Christian.

It might be worthy for readers to note that my original intent was to make this religion work at all cost. I originally believed that it could be made to work, but it soon became apparent that it cannot be made to work as a coherent whole. Strangely I didn't even give up there and I continued on looking at every possible way to "salvage Jesus" even if the OT had to be abandoned altogether. And this is not an unusual approach. There are many Christian theists who have also gone down this path. Some even claiming to have succeeded and claim that Jesus is actually the son of the "real God" rather than the God described in the OT. But I personally find those claims to be extremely faulty. There are simply too many links in the NT that link Jesus back to the God of the OT. Any attempt to claim that Jesus was the son of some other God who was trying to actually show that the OT picture of God was false can never be made to work, IMHO. That's just not even remotely viable.

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 1 by Danmark]

Perhaps some clear evidence of contradiction or incompatibility would be appropriate? The first dozen-odd chapters of the Tanakh clearly and unambiguously establish Yahweh as a universal deity, up to and including endorsement of a priesthood hundreds of years before Moses was even born (Genesis 14:18ff). Throughout the rest of the Tanakh there are plenty of endorsements of people of any nationality who worship the 'one true God' instead of crafted idols (eg. Naaman the Syrian in 2 Kings 5, the fictitious story of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4, and especially the Persian king Cyrus, a Zoroastrian, described as a 'shepherd' and 'anointed' of God in Isaiah 44-45), as well as hopes/prophecies that one day the whole world would do the likewise.

Of course the Hebrew scriptures focus primarily on the Hebrew people. Condemnations of Hebrew idolatry and injustices make up probably more than half the book, dozens if not hundreds of times moreso than censures of foreigners or foreign religions.

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 1 by Danmark]

Perhaps some clear evidence of contradiction or incompatibility would be appropriate? The first dozen-odd chapters of the Tanakh clearly and unambiguously establish Yahweh as a universal deity....

I see absolutely no evidence of your claim. Certainly there are attempts all thru the Tanakh to try to make THEIR god a universal god. All religions do this. They try to make THEIR god THE God. But overall the stories in the Tanakh are all tribalist; they occasionally make an effort to explain why other tribes should believe in the god of their tribe, all the while justifying genocide and the inferiority of other gods. Even Jesus is fairly weak on this point. His efforts show that his was a new idea as even he displayed the prejudice of his time by calling those other tribes 'dogs.'

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 1 by Danmark]

Perhaps some clear evidence of contradiction or incompatibility would be appropriate? The first dozen-odd chapters of the Tanakh clearly and unambiguously establish Yahweh as a universal deity....

I see absolutely no evidence of your claim. Certainly there are attempts all thru the Tanakh to try to make THEIR god a universal god. All religions do this. They try to make THEIR god THE God. But overall the stories in the Tanakh are all tribalist; they occasionally make an effort to explain why other tribes should believe in the god of their tribe, all the while justifying genocide and the inferiority of other gods. Even Jesus is fairly weak on this point. His efforts show that his was a new idea as even he displayed the prejudice of his time by calling those other tribes 'dogs.'

Again, in Genesis Melchizedek is called a priest of God most high despite not being Hebrew and hundreds of years before the name Yahweh was given to Moses. In Isaiah Cyrus the Great is praised as a "shepherd" and "anointed" of God despite being a Zoroastrian who called his 'one true God' by the name Ahura-Mazda. You can deny or ignore these facts all you want, but the clear message here is that while the Tanakh is uncompromising when it comes to worshiping crafted idols, the one true God who created all races and peoples is evidently pleased with those who acknowledge him under any name. After they'd slaughtered their way into possession of 'their' land the Israelite prophets showed relatively little interest in foreigners' religions except to the extent that they influenced and led astray Israel itself, and in fact actively praised a king devoted to the only other monotheistic faith they encountered (actually leading to some interchange of religious ideas over the following centuries).

Jesus for his part was just as insistent that Yahweh was the one true God as any of the earlier prophets, so trying to create some kind of difference there is a weak effort at best. Jesus didn't even preach much (if at all) outside his own Jewish homeland. It was his disciples and Paul who took the message abroad to "make an effort to explain why other tribes should believe in the god of their tribe," as you put it. But there too it's shown that on occasions when foreigners had come close to the 'truth' it was recognized and lauded, such as in Paul's address at the Areopagus (Acts 17).

Neither the 'universality' of Jesus nor the exclusive 'tribalism' of the Tanakh seem to bear up under scrutiny; they both fall somewhere in the middle.

[JehovahsWitness]

If God is Eternal and changeless, can the God of Moses and Abraham be reconciled with the divinity of Jesus and his union with that God as declared in the doctrine of the trinity?.

The Trinity is an unbibilcal teaching that stems neither from the Hebrew or the Christian bible but rather from the apostate church and pagan theology. Serious bible students dismiss it as such.

RELATED POSTS

Do the gospels give the impression that Jesus thought he was Almighty God?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 140#858140

Debunking the Trinity: Scriptures
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 572#751572

Further reading: Is Jesus Almighty God?
https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/q ... -almighty/

The 'Old Testament' God is clearly a tribal God. He is the God of the Hebrews. [...] Yet Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan and rewards the Canaanite woman's faith. How can the universal love preached by Jesus be reconciled with the tribal God of Moses and Abraham?

By understanding that the God of the Hebrews, who is in fact the Creator and supreme ruler of the universe, had plans by which thought the promised Jewish Messiah (Jesus) he would extend his mercies to people of all nations.


JW

[1213]

How can the universal love preached by Jesus be reconciled with the tribal God of Moses and Abraham?

Jesus is the one who is mediator with this New Covenant that was predicted in OT:

Yahweh your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your seed, to love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, that you may live. Yahweh your God will put all these curses on your enemies, and on those who hate you, who persecuted you. You shall return and obey the voice of Yahweh, and do all his commandments which I command you this day. Yahweh your God will make you plenteous in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your body, and in the fruit of your cattle, and in the fruit of your ground, for good: for Yahweh will again rejoice over you for good, as he rejoiced over your fathers;
Deuteronomy 30:6-9

For finding fault with them, he said, "Behold, the days come," says the Lord, "That I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, In the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; For they didn't continue in my covenant, And I disregarded them," says the Lord. "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days," says the Lord; "I will put my laws into their mind, I will also write them on their heart. I will be to them a God, And they will be to me a people. They will not teach every man his fellow citizen, Every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' For all will know me, From the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. I will remember their sins and lawless deeds no more."
Hebrews 8:8-12 (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

Jesus came to declare the message that can cause that change in persons heart. And there is no limit to that promise, it can happen to people in all nations.

For the kingdom is Yahweh's. He is the ruler over the nations. All the rich ones of the earth shall eat and worship. All those who go down to the dust shall bow before him, Even he who can't keep his soul alive. Posterity shall serve him. Future generations shall be told about the Lord.
Psalm 22:28-30

God reigns over the nations.
Psalm 47:8

That your way may be known on earth, And your salvation among all nations, Let the peoples praise you, God. Let all the peoples praise you. Oh let the nations be glad and sing for joy, For you will judge the peoples with equity, And govern the nations on earth. Selah. Let the peoples praise you, God. Let all the peoples praise you. The earth has yielded its increase. God, even our own God, will bless us.
Psalm 67:2-6

That is the reason why the OT God is not just a tribal God. Or should King David be ignored?

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 7 by 1213]

I see NOTHING in these Old Testament passages that are not consistent with the tribal God of Moses, Abraham, and David, who was a leader smiting the tribes that got in Israel's way. Paul and other NT writers wrote to the OT passages, contriving to make their stories fit both their perspective and the ancient texts. This is nothing more than painting a bullseye around an arrow that has already lodged in the broad side of a barn.

[Danmark]

[quote="JehovahsWitness"]
The Trinity is an unbibilcal teaching that stems neither from the Hebrew or the Christian bible but rather from the apostate church and pagan theology. Serious bible students dismiss it as such.
[quote] I completely agree, and yet it not only does not follow, but as the OP argues, the Tanakh and Jewish tradition is completely inconsistent with the idea that "... the promised Jewish Messiah (Jesus) ... would extend his mercies to people of all nations."

[JehovahsWitness]

... Jewish tradition is completely inconsistent with the idea that "... the promised Jewish Messiah (Jesus) ... would extend his mercies to people of all nations."

I don't care about "Jewish Tradition", the Jews systamatically apostacized from their own scripture which eventually lead to them rejecting their own Messiah. Jesus had a lot to say about the "Jewish traditions of his day" none of which was favorable. I reject and disregard entirely any Jewish traditions that stand in opposition to the word of God.

The Tanakh is completely inconsistent with the idea that "... the promised Jewish Messiah (Jesus) ... would extend his mercies to people of all nations."

If the Tanakah (Hebrew bible) is "completely" inconsistent with this idea there would be zero scriptures that indicate otherwise. However, 1213 (see above) has already presented several passages from the Hebrew bible that support the view that Jehovah (YHWH) the God of the Hebrews, expressed his intention for a universal message.



JW