Just a thought: If Christian Testament needs a second book (does not),
replace Jew Bible with Quran.

A couple of old fruitcakes out for a ramble if you ask me. Mr. Pidcock says he believes Ron Wyatt, that’s a bad sign for sure. I picture him in a fez and spectacles poring over ancient texts thinking they contain knowledge. Nevertheless a pleasant and interesting discussion.

Why would Christians accept the book of the people who viciously reject Jesus’s status as Messiah, while rejecting the book of the people who embrace Jesus as their Messiah?

I thought you’re well versed in the subject. I understand your sentiments but such statement is troublesome:
**Jesus never explicitly said he was the Messiah/Mashiach though seems he didn’t rebuke it not to discourage his ‘disciples’
**Judai was in turmoil, like a Saudi arabia but without the oil, the vassal king Herod was said to be immoral and the jewish nationalists wanted revolution.They saw potential in Jesus and promoted Jesus as a figurehead or rallied behind him.
**Messiah/Mashiach was the title of the jewish king. Calling Jesus the Messiah/Mashiach or Son of God amounted to sedition or blasphemy. Stoning was the usual punishment for blasphemers but Jesus’s crowd was too big for the Pharisees to dare. That’s the main reason the jewish elite sent Jesus to the Roman governor to be crucified(so that they could wash their hands clean or blame the crucification on the Romans. Crucification was the punishment for the enemy of Rome which Jesus was not. Pontius Pilate understood the problem well but he needed to placate the Pharisees and Herod)

Why would Christians accept the book of the people who viciously reject Jesus’s status as Messiah, while rejecting the book of the people who embrace Jesus as their Messiah?”

That’s why the Christian book is called the New Testament. The standard Christian Biblical exegesis posits various dispensations from God over time since the Creation 6000 years ago (or whenever) leading up to Jesus Christ the Messiah. (I think Christ or Christos generally means Messiah, thus the literal meaning of the word Christianity is ‘The Messianic Religion’) Although Christians assumed Jews were bad because they rejected their Messiah, that doesn’t mean they were stupid enough to throw out all the stuff that we know as the Old Testament. After all, it purported to be both a literal and a moral history of the world at a time when there weren’t really many alternatives, and none that fitted the Christian story. I’m sure there were various Christian heresies which rejected the Old Testament but the subject of the history of theology etc, especially Christian theology is extremely tedious so I cannot give details.

Clearly a huge blunder was made somewhere since the kingdom of heaven, presumably a world wide supernatural event or state of being, did not arrive with Jesus. I’m sure that Jesus himself knew that he was not the Messiah for this reason. But let us not argue with history. For a Christian Jesus has since become a god and the replacement for Yahweh, and an excellent replacement he is too.

Dear Kevin,
I love your work, but Muslim apologists simply don’t get it. Apostolic Orthodox Christianity (not the heresies you get in the West, gnostic heresies, Arianism, etc.) is not a religion of “the book.” True Orthodox Christianity, not the heresies of American protestantism, is the sacramental faith of the church with a sacramental priesthood established on the blood of martyrs and the testimony of the apostles and ultimately the physical resurrection of Christ. I can understand why many Westerners turn to the highly structured system of Islam with its strict prayer rule, superior civilization to boring atheistic Western Europe, Sufi poetry, Rumi, Hafiz, sensual beauty, Lucknow, Timbuktu, etc. But Saint Paul was not a “dajjal” or anti-Christ. To say this is manifest ignorance on the part of Pidcock. Read the Acts of the Apostles written by Saint Luke. First chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians:

1:1 Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead,

1:2 And all the brethren who are with me, to the churches of Galatia.

1:3 Grace be to you, and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ,

1:4 Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present wicked world, according to the will of God and our Father:

1:5 To whom is glory for ever and ever. Amen.

1:6 I wonder that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel.

1:7 Which is not another, only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.

1:8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.

1:9 As we said before, so now I say again: If any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema.

So, Mr. Pidcock, Paul warns about the coming “dajjals” or perverters of the Gospel who would distort the Gospel of Yesu’a al-Masih as he is known by Christian Arabs, an Arab rendering of the original Hebrew/ Aramaic Yeshua, meaning “He saves.” (The name ‘Issa makes no sense in this regard. Yeshua is the name used by Syriac Jacobite and Nestorian Christians of Iran and Iraq. It’s similar to the Arabic names Yazan or Yazid. A typical Semitic verbal name.) Also, Saint John the Theologian Son of Zebedee Saint John the Theologian, John son of Zebedee, Mor Yohanan ben Zavdi in Hebrew, warns in his Second Epistle about dajjal:

1:7 For many seducers are gone out into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh: this is a seducer and an antichrist.

In the “flesh” not an apparition as the gnostics claimed, meaning also that He suffered and died in the flesh and was raised on the third day. Marcion was one of these second century “dajjals” who sought to pervert the Gospel. When Marcion met Saint Polycarp bishop of Smyrna (Izmir), he asked him: “Do you recognize me?” Saint Polycarp said: “Yes Marcion, thou art the firstborn of satan.” Many other dajjals came: false prophet Mani, Julian the Apostate, Elchasai, Arius, etc. Please do not slander Saint Paul, who saw the risen Masih, al-masih al-qaim al-hayy, on the road to Damascus, not a pretended “angel” like Mani or Elchasai, but Christ who rose from the dead and thereby raised the dead from jahim and destroyed the power of satan. It’s poor form to slander Saint Paul. Best wishes, Orthodox person who believes in the Seven Ecumenical Councils inspired by the Holy Spirit and the seamless robe of Christ

p.s. Don’t let Western heresies or Monophysitism confuse your understanding of Christianity. Protestantism is a barren wasteland. Catholicism is also mainly dead. Filioque, Thomas Aquinas. Western “rationalism” which they got from Muslim Spain and the Talmudists which Saint Gregory Palamas roundly condemns in his defense of hesychasm. Western Europe (Catholic and Orthodox) is a spiritual desert. Only the Orthodox in Russia, Greece and elsewhere kept the true faith of the apostolic church. That’s how we understand it and why we are uncomfortable when people mischaracterize Saint Paul. Visit Mount Athos or the Chalcedonian Orthodox monasteries in Syria and Lebanon and you’ll understand. Get baptized in the Orthodox church, and you’ll understand even more so.

p.p.s. Laurent Guyenot’s neo-gnostic hatred of “Yahwism” also gets it totally wrong. The Israelites were a stubborn people surrounded by horrible pagan religions around them. Human sacrifice, orgies, child sacrifice. YHWH is the first deity who condemns infanticide which was common among the Phoenicians. Look at what they were doing in Carthage, burning children to Moloch. The “genocidal” texts of the Old Testament are more hyperbole than anything else. Read ancient texts. Read Balkan epic poetry which is full of celebratory lauds to genocide. Read the Lay of Prince Igor’s campaign in which the Russians slaughter the Pechenegs. Read the Illiad. Read what the Aryans did to the indigenous Indian Dravidians in the Rig Veda. Study the caste system of India in which Brahmins would kill Dalits for even daring to enter a temple. The “genocidal” hyperbole of the Old Testament is Israelite “propaganda” so to say, a way to make ancient Israel feel strong and powerful, nothing special. And it is sublimated in the Gospel. When Christ calls the Canaanite woman a “dog,” he is speaking figuratively, and remember, He ends up healing her daughter, and He healed gentiles as well as Jews. “Dog” in the sense perhaps that being a pagan and worshipping Ba’al or whoever else is not a nice thing. He reveals Himself as Christ to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well, not to a Jewish woman. He tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Jews hated the Samaritan. Rabbi Akiba in the Talmud says that “one who eats Samaritan bread is as if he has eaten pork.” Israel was and is part of the economy of salvation, but not in the perverse way the Talmudic Jews imagine, most of whom are not even genetically Jewish but descendants of Khazar, Slavic, Berber, Yemenite, Ethiopic and other post-Second Temple converts to the Talmudic heresy. From the Orthodox perspective, it’s Christ or nothing. Not Catholicism, protestantism, Bahai, Islam, Talmud, etc. Sounds extreme, but that’s how we see it. And there was a universal strand in the Old Testament. I advise Guyenot to read the Book of Ruth and the Book of Jonah. Prophet Jonah goes to the goyim of Nineveh to preach repentance and they repent immediately and Allah saves the city. The point is that the goyim of Nineveh were less stubborn than the Jews who received many prophets and then their messiah but never repented and still wander in the darkness of their deluded fantasies which will culminate in the arrival of the “Jewish” antichrist of the tribe of Dan who will be born of a Jewish prostitute and rule the world from the Third Temple in Jerusalem which isn’t even where the real Second Temple stood since it was in the Valley of Gihon, modern Silwan. I end with a prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the Living God, have mercy on us who sin because of our weak flesh and evil inclinations. May Your mercy enlighten the heretics, apostates and unbelievers and those who hate and persecute the true Catholic Apostolic Orthodox Church which You established, and may we all enter the ark of salvation. Amen”

As for dogs, this is how the Prophet Isaiah speaks of the Israelite rulers in the Isaiah 56:

10His watchmen are all blind, they are all ignorant: dumb dogs not able to bark, seeing vain things, sleeping and loving dreams.

11And most impudent dogs, they never had enough: the shepherds themselves knew no understanding: all have turned aside into their own way, every one after his own gain, from the first even to the last.

Go ask any jew who’s educated in the religion; Messiah/Mashiach means the ‘anointed’ or chosen one, NOT SAVIOUR.
Jesus once said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”; simply put he is the only bridge (then) available between Yahweh and man or in the manners of islam, he is a messenger of God. Of course the latter depends on one’s lexicals.
……….
Q:Who’s Jesus ?
A:Jesus is a sublime moral giant and probably the first ever Judaic reformer.
Christianity as a religion was established by his disciples. Jesus asked his disciples not to preach his message to gentiles. ‘Apostol’ Paul’s vision was either a metaphor or rhetorics to justify his endeavor or ambition. The bible hinted at that there was a certain amount of schism between Paul and Peter
Q:Who’s Yahweh?
A:Yahweh is the Father in Heaven, so technically He is a very powerful extra-terrestrial entity. I’ve no intention of painting him as a green skin creature popped out from a flying saucer but however he really is an extra-terrestrial being. Why ‘Father’? Because early human were patriarchal.
Q:What does ‘Son of God’ mean?
A; A few possibilities
–Jesus’s disciples were under influence of pagan Greco-Roman religion which has deities who procreated with mortals to give birth to ‘demi-gods’.
–Jesus was the outcome of a genetic experiment to add the genetic materials of Yahweh the super E.T. alien to those of human. Virgin Mary was a victim of alien abduction.
–Its a metaphor, like Washington was a ‘Founding Father of America’ but it doesn’t mean every American is his biological descendant.

You’re raising a valid question: Why would Christians accept the book of the people who viciously reject Jesus’s status as Messiah, while rejecting the book of the people who embrace Jesus as their Messiah?

That’s not how any of this works. Higher ranking Islamic, Christian, and Jews alike (and, of course, Masons) would label such questions to be “profane” in nature.

Anyone asking why the Old Testament is accepted doesn’t know the first thing about any of these religions. There is no Christianity without the Old Testament because Christ is a commentary on the Old Testament, full stop. Without the Old Testament the Christ figure is devoid of his significance.

The question that you should be asking is:

what primary significance of Christ has the Jews hate him?

Your first and only clue is that its not primarily his claim to be their Messiah, although it is certainly also that because it is impossible to separate out any of this from the rest.

Until you can provide the single answer to this question, you shouldn’t be making reformation suggestions for these religions.

Marcion and most early Christians did not want
a single Judaizing word in the Christian Bible.

There is no Christianity without the Old Testament because Christ is a commentary on the Old Testament, full stop. Without the Old Testament the Christ figure is devoid of his significance.

Christ was sent to save mankind from evil.

The sorry fact is that Orthodox Christianity has very little appeal for our fallen Antichrist-headed world. Even the Orthodox are lukewarm in their faith. I almost converted to Islam. Our world wants to appeal to the senses. Read the works of Orthodox apologist Jay Dyer and Father Seraphim Rose and perhaps the truth will dawn on you. I knew instinctively that Latin Christianity was false and that the Orthodox were right though I was born a Catholic. Islam and Judaism are two religions that will attract many converts, especially Islam, as we lurch into the End Times because it appeals to the intellect and senses. Orthodox Christianity is anti-rational in the good sense because rationalism is also a temptation to sin and pride. “Do not throw pearls before swine” the New Testament warns. I sinned for dreaming that I could “convert” people like some preacher on the subway. But there is a seamless connection between Old and New Testament. Even the Latins believe this. Melchizedek in Genesis, the Book of Malachi. The covenant with Israel was preparation for the advent of Christ. Unfortunately, the Jews rejected their messiah and the gentiles accepted him in accordance with the ancient prophecies. I leave you with a section of the Book of Malachi. Come to your senses people. Leave the heresies. Get baptized. Who am I to say this, being a habitual sinner? Come on E. Michael Jones? Are you reading? Catechize Kevin even if privately. Think of the evils that Islam did to Christians. What of the Martyrdom of Tbilisi Georgia when all the icons were destroyed? The Khwarizmids forced the Christians to walk over the icons that they put on the bridge in Tbilisi. Whoever refused to desecrate the icons was killed. What of the Battle of Lepanto? What of the martyrs of Cordoba??? I know this is stuff people can’t stand to hear. “You can’t handle the truth” says Gene Hackman in “A Few Good Men.” Forgive me for sounding like a subway preacher.

2:17 You have wearied the Lord with your words, and you said: Wherein have we wearied him? In that you say: Every one that doth evil, is good in the sight of the Lord, and such please him: or surely where is the God of judgment?

3:1 Behold I send my angel, and he shall prepare the way before my face. And presently the Lord, whom you seek, and the angel of the testament, whom you desire, shall come to his temple. Behold he cometh, saith the Lord of hosts.

3:2 And who shall be able to think of the day of his coming? and who shall stand to see him? for he is like a refining fire, and like the fuller’s herb:

3:3 And he shall sit refining and cleansing the silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and shall refine them as gold, and as silver, and they shall offer sacrifices to the Lord in justice.

3:4 And the sacrifice of Juda and of Jerusalem shall please the Lord, as in the days of old, and in the ancient years.

3:5 And I will come to you in judgment, and will be a speedy witness against sorcerers, and adulterers, and false swearers, and them that oppress the hireling in his wages; the widows, and the fatherless: and oppress the stranger, and have not feared me, saith the Lord of hosts.

3:6 For I am the Lord, and I change not: and you the sons of Jacob are not consumed.

Jesus clarified the Old Testament and also abolished some of the stupider parts, such as mandatory circumcision, focus on elaborate rituals. Another example is reiterating the ban on divorce, which Jews were ignoring by the time Jesus came around.
The Old Testament is interesting and beautiful, but Jesus’ words are Supreme. It’s not so much that we “follow” the Old Testament. Also the Old Testament has some interesting prophecies on Jesus, in Isiah and Psalm 22.