Question about New Testament (with OT)

[naamagatus]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "annemehr" <annemehr at y...> 
wrote:
 
> What do you think of this?  Suppose the whole truth about God can 
be 
> imagined as all the sand on a very wide beach.  Each religion has a 
> little pail in which they try to hold as much of the truth as they 
> can.  In many ways they agree, and in some ways they disagree.  >

This view of religions mostly agreeing is a bit naive, IMO. I think 
that it is engendered by limiting the point of view to the recent 
occidental religions. But Judaism, Christianity and Islam have a 
common cultural background*, so it is no wonder that they are similar 
in many ways. 
In fact, when you widen your view and look at other religions, you 
find extremely diverse beliefs and customs. For instance, did you 
know that in Zoroastrianism (the ancient Iranian religion) incest was 
a *virtue*? Or, think of the horrific Thugs -the Kali cult whose form 
of worship was a drawn out murder. Or, think of Borneo, where head 
hunting is still practised (I think). Think of the Celts and human 
sacrifice. Think of fertility rites and cultic orgies (including 
forms of cannibalism) in ancient Greek. 


>Some 
> have more sand (truth) in their pails than others.  Each one also 
> has some stuff in their pail that is not sand -- shells, litter, 
> seaweed, what have you, which represents errors in their belief 
> system.
> 
> People who are serious about their religion think that their pail 
> has the most sand and least of the other stuff.

Well, when the pail comes with an engraved notice on it: Here be the 
one and only complete and final Word of God (as do Judaism, 
Christianity and Islam), the people holding this pail are obligated 
to disregard the content of other pails. Built-in intolerance, you 
know. 

<snip>


* Let's be frank here. Islam and Christianity both begun as Jewish 
heresies. The root to the Jew hatred in both can be found in the 
peevish sense of insult that the Jews as a whole refused to adopt the 
new extension. 


Naama