Nazi-Germany and Hitler were very much the last of the European ‘Pagan’ cultures to resist assimilation into Abrahamic / Christian / Jewish political power. Much of World War II was premised on defeating European Paganism once and for all. That was also a primary, driving motivation that worldwide Jewry declared ‘War on Germany’.
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/811me/judea_declares_war_on_germany_pic/
It was Hitler trying to eradicate the Jews, ya know. Not like they picked a fight.
The bugs bunny irony of gaslighting Jews as if self-defense is genocide… after repeated, unprovoked attacks from Iran & its proxies… is unsurprising in bizarro world.
The Old Testament and the New Testament are interrelated, both from a historiographical and theological perspective.
There is the development of modern criticism of the biblical canon to separate the Old Testament and New Testament texts as separate units.
This approach often overlooks the narrative coherence intended by the authors of the Scriptures. This separation risks diminishing our understanding of the progressive and integrated story of salvation in the Bible.
Dunn (1998) and Johnson (2005) state that it is only through the interaction between the OT and NT that one can grasp the depth and completeness of God’s purpose in salvation history.
“This approach often overlooks the narrative coherence intended by the authors of the Scriptures.”
There was no intended narrative coherence. A writer of a gospel or some scripture has no clue what any of the other writers are gonna write, much less what they intend. The guy who wrote genesis has absolutely nothing to do with the guy who wrote matthew. Their stuff merely ended up in the same cobbled together storybook.
“This separation risks diminishing our understanding”
It’s too late. Your understanding was always and will always be diminished. That’s what a Bible does to people.
“God-breathed” (theopneustos):
This term indicates that scripture originates directly from God, not from human intellect alone.
A somewhat more slippery road is when we come to the point of
denying that God said it at all or saying that perhaps it was a scribal error or even a deliberate insertion. After all, if one would wish to pervert Scripture, then deliberate changes to the Word of God would seem an obvious way to go. Where, however, does this leave the believer who wishes to place his trust in the Word of God? Faith in the
Word of God necessarily also implies faith in the preservation of the Word, because one without the other is a foundation built on sand.
Why do Catholics still include the Old Testament though? Catholics deleted some books of the Bible (the dead sea scrolls) but decided to keep the Old Testament. And the 2024 Chicago Council survey said that 34% of Catholics support Israel’s attacks on Gaza, which indicate that the inclusion of the Old Testament does have serious effects.
Correct. Old testament says to be a barbarian with long hair. New testament says men must grow their hair short, a man’s short hair is natural and long hair a disgrace. Old testament said the long hair is literally the source of a man’s divine powers.
The holocaust is unforgivable, just as Jews genocide of Gaza is also unforgiveable.
However, there is more to Hitler than just his murderousness.
Hitler was probably the only chance humanity had to achieve real utopia, and salvation away from Abrahamic insanity. He was the first politician to be vegetarian and promote animal-rights, and one of the first (or only) governments to outlaw war-profiteering capitalism. After Americans won the war, a US General lamented the West because he started seeing how corrupt it all was.
Nowadays, the utopianists are all “woke” and demand we accept all religions into our society, which allows all religions to freely dominate society and opens the possibility of a new dark ages.
This shows how malleable you are. Earlier this year, you denounced Israel’s attacks on Gaza, and now you relapse again, most likely to all the brainwashing you receive from social media or your pastor.
It was Israel that attacked Iran nuclear facilities unprovoked, but you don’t wish to see the facts because you are an American Imperialist.
Any sane country would see the hypocrisy. For example, if we took a sane region of space, lets say Europe. And a European country was building a nuclear power plant. But then an insane country, such as Israel, says “But maybe they are using the nuclear power plant to secretly build nukes!” And then bombs the nuclear power plant facility with fighter jets. The whole world would say that’s insane, and wtf. But if it happens in the middle east, and has America’s approval, then the world just shrugs and looks the other way.
Even before that happened, America was the one in the 1950s that invaded Iranian government, destabilized their government, kicked out their democracy and put radical muslims in charge of their government.
show me that, futureone
Historonics.
It’s important to know the history of the Scriptures. The OT and NT are basically the ‘Zeitgeist’ of Western Civilization. The Pagans (Hellenic-Greeks) are outliers, especially after Constantinople and the Greek Empire fell.
I think you don’t really mean “ the authors of the Scriptures” . “I think you mean the editors of the Scriptures.
It is indeed important to connect the OT with the NT. Jesus does so explicitly.Jesus explicitly links the Old Testament to the New Testament in several key moments:
Triumphal Entry (Matt 21:4–5; John 12:14–15) – Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey to fulfill Zechariah 9:9, presenting Himself as the promised king.
Nazareth Synagogue (Luke 4:16–21) – He reads Isaiah 61 and declares, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled,” directly identifying His mission with OT prophecy.
Testimony of Scripture (John 5:39, 46) – Jesus claims that the Law and Moses “wrote about me,” asserting continuity between Himself and the Torah.
Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:25–27, 44–45) – After the resurrection, He interprets “Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms” as pointing to Him—effectively the whole Hebrew Bible.
The Law Fulfilled (Matt 5:17) – He states He came not to abolish the Law and Prophets but to fulfill them.
Typological Connections
Jonah → His resurrection (Matt 12:40)
Bronze serpent → His crucifixion (John 3:14–15)
New Covenant (Luke 22:20) – At the Last Supper He links His death to the Passover and to Jeremiah 31’s promised new covenant.
In short: Jesus consistently presents His life and mission as the fulfillment and continuation of the Hebrew Scriptures, framing the NT not as a break from the OT but as its culmination.
Yes, I think that one function of The Bible is as a story of God’s past—-how the one-God evolved from polytheism. Thence to how the one-God became a deity for all men —-not only a deity who pertained to one nomadic tribe.
I like your idea of calling ideologies “Pagan” that compete with the universal wellbeing of all. Political power is indeed always about the locus of authority.
In your view, would it be true to say that authoritarian regimes are pagan regimes?
Hello Belinda, welcome to ILP, seems an Exodus from Philosophy Now is transcribing?
Yes, for the most part, Political Authoritarian regimes are Pagan. The exception would be Roman Catholicism that competes directly against Jewish Kabbalism for political power and control. Most political ‘States’ appeal directly to their ethnic / racial compositions. As implied, Abrahamism, specifically Christianity, is a thoroughly Universalist proposition. American Protestants are the extension of that ideology.
Thank you for your welcome RealUn. Yes I am glad to have found this online community. Philosophy Now has a recent technical problem that affects me and some others there.
It is the universalism of Christianity that I like, and have enjoyed in many shapes and forms since I was an infant. One result is that |I can see universalism in Islam and other ‘faiths’ that are often presumed to be authoritarian.
Would you say that tribalism is the opposite of universalism—and that tribalism is the enduring home of Paganism?
Yes. Paganism is intrinsically opposed to Universalism because of its dependency upon Idols / Symbols of Nature, which denote a Tribe’s metaphysical identity. British Druids, and many other European pagans worshipped trees, for example. Some worshipped wolves, bears, and other creatures, before the advent of more creative Deism (Sky Gods).
There is also the matter of Conversion / Perversion. Catholicism, for example, has ‘taken’ many of their ideologies, symbols / idols, concepts, rituals, from the Pagans they either conquered along the way, or their own pagan origins to begin with. Same with Judaism and its Exodus from the Pharaoh. Every human culture has a unique Origin / Genesis.
I am just wondering if Roman Catholicism today depends upon idolatry. May we examine the nature of idolatry.
For instance is Jesus idolised. If not how not? I understand the Koran forbids idolatry yet Muhammad seems to be idolised —-how otherwise could the Hadith be so respected?
It’s not that Idolatry-in-itself is bad / wrong / Sin – rather it’s the case that another’s foreign god and idols are bad / wrong / Sin.
In Abrahamism, there is a veneration of God’s Messengers and Representatives. So there’s a lot of integration of these figures into Idolism. I don’t think it’s possible for the Old Testament Abrahamics to fully destroy or disintegrate attachment to the ‘Physical’. And that’s what it’s about ultimately, attachment to the Body. Abrahamism exalts the Mental / Mind of God, the non-physical and metaphysical.
To the point, I believe Anti-Idolatry was mostly pointed at destroying Pagan symbols by the Abrahamics. It marked an Evolutionary period in Human History where Hominids went from worshipping Items … to worshipping Words / Text / Scrolls (Semitism).
Is not the Arc of the Covenant an idol of the Old Testament?
I believe the Arc of the Covenant was an idol. However did its worshippers idolise it as a symbol , or as a thing?
Similarly is it idolatry to worship as if worshipping a thing, but psychologically one knows one is worshipping what the thing represents.
Islamic doctrine does not give worshippers the choice—– all images of living things are haram not so? This does not work well in practice, because Muslims do sort of worship a paper book the Koran and get tremendously het up if a paper copy for whatever reason is mishandled.
for this and other reasons my claim is we all need to revisit what idolatry is all about. I submit that the demerit of idolatry is not in the idol itself but is in how it is worshipped, and that my focus of worship should not be any physical body or thing but the idea that the physical body symbolises.