Why does everyone presume that this is the goal in the scriptures, particularly the OT?

Or more to the point, why presume that Anna Karenina doesn't resonate just because it has characters firmly planted in 1800's russia, who have brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, etc.? Would it be a stronger book if they were all disembodied archetypes? Could you really reduce it to a 'universal message' without a plot and characters concretely framed in relationships and culture, without losing the bulk of the book?

Why should the testaments be any different? Why should they be some abstract message about love, peace and humanity that is the 'real point' of the whole thing, the rest of which is basically disposable?

Actually the old and new testaments, the torah, quoran, and all of the other known religions are a great source for psychiatrists to delve into the minds of aboriginal thought and rationalization of how we are here without yet possessing the scientific knowledge to explain it all. Humans have gone through great lengths, even war more than once to stand on and prove that they are gods righteous. Of course all of their rationalizations are preposterous at this point in time and hardly debatable. Science is making discoveries far more complex and exotic that even the religous could not concieve of.

The real question isn't "why was the old testament written that way"....the real question is why did the Synod of Hippo decide to cannonize those odd books in AD 393. They CLEARLY WERE trying to create a focused bible with a message yet they included alot of nonsensicle social customs of a premodern civilization.

That is indeed a trenchant observation. To put more of a point on it: Christianity had broken away from Judaism pretty clearly. It had grown and grown, while in AD 70 or so, Judaism had witnessed a slaughter, and in AD 120, things didn't go much better... the Jews were no longer a threat, or much of an asset, to the Christians, in terms of a people group. The Christians weren't meeting in the synagogues anymore, the Jerusalem church had followed the decline of Jerusalem in importance.

So why didn't they go with the various voices that called the OT a relic and dispensed with it? Why did almost every church around the entire known world preserve and revere it while simultaneously dispensing with the vast majority of its ordinances? Realizing the huge clash in the gospel texts, where Jesus says 'your identity shouldn't be in the OT purity laws any longer' why did they choose to keep record of those purity laws so assiduously?

Very good question, indeed.

I guess it's my assumption that Christians are trying to make an ancient text relevant to modern life. It's difficult given that the bible was written thousands of years ago - much of it is either irrelevant or anathematic to 21st century life. Those bits are discarded piece by piece until only a much more vague ‘meaning' remains.

Anna K, I think, does lose some of its punch as women gain rights and privileges in society... no one legally has to endure a loveless marriage anymore and the stigma of divorce is far less today than 200 yrs ago. That part of the book plays less well than the enduring themes of the cuckold and the cuckolded. It's Tolstoy's psychological genius that keeps the characters alive and relevant 200 years later.

By borrowing from ancient mythology, the bible has a powerful literary resonance, but it seems to me that as its prescriptive parts become less relevant, so does the bible. That's why people feel the need to assign a more ‘universal message'.

Are you suggesting that the bible doesn't need to be relevant?

BenK:

So why didn't they go with the various voices that called the OT a relic and dispensed with it?

Because it's the 'word of god'. I'm sure they felt the same pressures that modern christians do... they don't believe half of what's in the bible, and maybe a tenth of that is morally repulsive, but... it's the word of god.

I honestly don't know why it doesn't cause more christians to lose their faith.

"Because it's the 'word of god'"

Nonsense. The entire point of the councils was to parse through all the books and determine which should be part of the cannon. All the books were presented as possibly being the "word of God" but only some were included in the Bible.

TJA:

"Because it's the 'word of god'"

Nonsense. The entire point of the councils was to parse through all the books and determine which should be part of the cannon. All the books were presented as possibly being the "word of God" but only some were included in the Bible.

Ah, fair point.

TJA:

"Because it's the 'word of god'"

Nonsense. The entire point of the councils was to parse through all the books and determine which should be part of the cannon. All the books were presented as possibly being the "word of God" but only some were included in the Bible.

Take a minute to imagine what would have happened during the council, this would have been a highly contested and very passionate set of debates as to what to include and what to remove. Since the OT is a prehistory to the NT the only option which would have allowed the council to acheive it's goal in one mans lifetime would have been to either accept in toto or reject in toto. Since it is the foundation and referance point it would be easy for the majority to accept in toto before getting on the the real drama of deciding which books of this "new testament" where contradictory and which of the contradictory versions was truly inspired as opposed to delusionally inspired.

I'm not saying this is what happened only that i have been in meetings before where there was passion about specifics on both sides and in those cases it was logical to accept all the stuff that was agreed on and then work through the disagreements.

These councils and rewrites are one of my biggest issues with unswerving literal belief in the Bible. I have seen too many who passionatly believe make claims of devine inspiration that where clearly delusional (40 ft jesus anyone?)

I'm suggesting that so much as it is relevant, it isn't independent of the particulars of the stories; including all those genealogies - that an attempt to find the essence, the nugget, the timeless truth around which all the rest is a husk, is probably not a helpful strategy for approaching it, though it is the strategy that has been pursued since the enlightenment; you don't get a baby playing with the bubbles if you throw out either the baby or the bathwater, as it were. Now, there are reasons that many people believe the whole thing to be worthless; but that's a different scale of argument.

but as it turned out, the council forming the canon didn't have a particularly hard job. They pretty much did it by acclamation. the battle over the inclusion of the OT was long gone and Thomas, Barnabus, the Shepherd, etc were not really considered.

Well, sure but that council was held 1,500 years after the death of Christ. There were an awful lot of bitter disputes about what should be included before then...many of them not so peaceful.

Keeping the Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament") was not a no-brainer--there were controversies about what the Christian Bible would be. Marcion (2nd century) advocated dumping it, on the ground that the OT misrepresented God. He also wanted to dump three of the four Gospels (he wanted to keep Luke). He was declared a heretic and orthodox Christianity went the other way.

TJA:

Well, sure but that council was held 1,500 years after the death of Christ. There were an awful lot of bitter disputes about what should be included before then...many of them not so peaceful.

1,500 years? What? Try less than 400.

There is a lot more misinformation than just the dates flying around here. The question of whether or not to include the OT in the canon was never even debated. There was no doubt as to what was considered inspired - they just took the Jewish version and ran with it.

The NT was also relatively easy. It was a simple question of which books had been in use and accepted as authoritative by the churches for an extended period and which weren't. Obvious frauds like the gospel of Judas were not even considered for the simple reason that nobody considered it to be real.

The only books currently included that were not accepted unanimously were James and Revelation. The only book with any support at all that did not get included was the Epistle of Barnabas. Other than that, there was complete agreement.

"1,500 years? What? Try less than 400."

I was referring to the Council of Trent. I assume you are referring to the first council of Nicea? Sorry I wasn't more specific.