Thread: A question on Christian Scripture.

Originally Posted by kevint

The question arises from the metaphor of the following King James scripture: 1Corinthians 3:1
¹And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. ²I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.
³For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?

[snip]

I might further suggest to guide your thoughts consider this, which sounds to be a direct command* requiring a well balanced meal of solid food :John 18:11

Jesus was a Jew. He was born a Jew, lived his entire life as a Jew, and died a Jew. Everything he said and did was within the context of being a Jew. If he spoke about "milk and meat", it probably had to do with the laws of Kashrut (כשרות); specifically, על תבשל גדי בחלב אמו (don't cook a kid in its mother's milk). Hence, no combining meat and dairy at the same meal... no "cheeseburger in Paradise".

Can "meat and milk" be used as parable? Certainly. Just as milk (dairy) is more easily digested than meat (and the laws of Kashrut state that meat can be eaten after dairy, but not the opposite), so to one should begin with simpler ideas, before moving to "meatier" ones, etc.

Jesus, however, was first a Torah-abiding Jew, and only second a theosophist.

Originally Posted by nun2sharp

If you look at the 10 commandments you will notice that they are divided into two categories, the first category concerns your relationship to God, the second concerns your relationship with your neighbor (mankind). Someone once asked Jesus which of the commandments were the most important and Jesus told him that if he "loved the Lord his God with all his heart and with all his soul and loved his neighbor as he loved himself" that he had fulfilled all of the commandments of Moses as well as those of the prophets." If you can do these two seemingly simple things you "will go and sin no more."

There are 613 commandments in the Torah; some are positive (do this), and some are negative (don't do that); some are בין אדם למקום (between man and God), and some are בין אדם לחברו (between man and his fellow man); some are to be done daily (prayer), some weekly (Sabbath), some seasonally (holidays), some only once (circumcise your son), and some never (agricultural laws applying only in Israel). All of them are of equal importance.

If someone asked Jesus "which of the commandments were the most important", Jesus would have realized that either this person was "trolling", or a simpleton. In either case, the answer attributed to him is, quite simply, the concatenation of two verses from the Torah (verses which a Jew, in daily prayers, repeats several times each day): ואהבת את ה' אלהיך בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך ובכל מאדך ([a positive commandment to] love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might) and ואהבת לרעך כמוך ([a positive commandment to] love your neighbor as yourself).

Although the Torah specifically states that there are seven commandments given to all of Mankind, the two aforementioned commandments certainly form the most minimal and all-encompassing moral framework for living one's life.

Jesus, however, was not a "minimalist".