Putting the pun in punishment

Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, c. 1545-1550

The painting illustrates the biblical passage in which a woman accused of adultery—an offense punishable by death in Mosaic law—is brought before Christ. He responds to her accusers with the words written across the top of the painting: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her"

It does cheapen it, but that's cause it's a retroactive interpretation. If I'm not mistaken, "original sin" as a theological doctrine was put forth first in the 2nd century, and has always been a distinctly christian thing. Jews have a concept of 'sinning' related to the christian understanding, but it's not entirely the same thing. Jesus probably did not mean "you're all sinners by default, because Adam" but the more human implication of "no one here is any less fallible than she is".

He calls them hypocrites, in that section, for not following God's commandment about honoring your father and mother. He's not calling them hypocrites for not killing their children, but for trying to change the meaning of "honor your father and mother" to that which suits them. Also Matthew 5:18 is Jesus telling his people that he is not there to rule them or overrule the prophets, but to fulfill their prophecies. He says that none of the law changes until everything is accomplished, meaning when he dies and resurrects, the law itself doesn't change, but the meaning of guilt changes. In sacrificing himself for our sins, Jesus bears the guilt of your sin on himself, and is subject to the punishment for everyone's sin. So, as he goes on to describe later in the passage, what counts as sin does not change, but who the blame and punishment falls on changes. This also marks the change in the definition of unclean. Right after the section in Matthew 15, Jesus talks about how what goes into the body does not make one unclean, it is what comes out of one's mouth. To be unclean was to be covered in sin, but one cannot be covered in sin if Jesus has died to forgive them. This, along with several other passages (like acts 10), shows how the Old Testament laws regarding clean and unclean food no longer applied to Christians for the Lord said to Peter "Do not call anything I have made unclean".

This isn't about atheism vs belief or something. What you said was wrong and got corrected. There were no "mental gymnastics" and the comment responding to yours wasn't defending the Bible, it was clarifying the content.

I myself am not a Christian. My comment was clarifying your misrepresentation of what the Bible says. Feel free to refute my correction of your position, but please refrain from attempting to trivialize the accepted doctrine of about a billion people by using unwarranted insults. I understand your position, but stop being an asshole.

"The accepted doctrine of a billion people" is still open to criticism, whether or not they like it, at least from where I'm sitting.

These are not unwarranted insults, it's criticism. It's not like I came into a christian subreddit to start insulting people; this was a sneaky way of getting some Jesus into a neutral thread.

Throughout the day, I have to deal with evangelical types, so I do have little patience for it. Christians are used to being politely ignored for the most part, but to say it's wrong to criticize them is wrong.

As a fellow atheist, I think you should let this one drop. The top comment wasn't trying to sneak Jesus into anything as far as I can tell; they simply described the art being presented and its context, as is the norm on this sub. You made a comment criticizing Christianity in response to a comment that took no stance on the matter, and you were promptly corrected by someone else.

To be clear, I'm not saying there's nothing to criticize in the dogma; I'm saying that in this instance you injected your views where it wasn't really warranted, and your criticism was an out-of-context couple of quotes that you used to mock or discredit wrongly.

There's no need for it, though. The sub is about the comical captions, not the translation of the text on the painting. So it went a step too far IMO.

If we had Greek god lobbyists and preachers on every corner, and a bunch of Greek god fanatics in my family, and Greek myths being taught as science in the schools...........yes I'd have a bone to pick with a Greek-god equivalent!

Matthew 22:37 - 40 "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[c] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

So the law may not change, but none of it is valid if you don't have a "love of God" and "love your neighbor as you love yourself" above all else.

Christians just interpret the laws as they see fit anyway. What they're practicing is subjective morality, while pretending it's objective. Other religions do this as well, it's why there are so many variations of sects/ denominations etc.

This question is useless without further clarification. Burden of proof and all that. You're clearly not an open minded person so I'll respond once. Here it goes.

If you're talking about contradictions with Old Testament stuff, then you may as well forget it. Biblically, Jesus represented a revolution in Christianity, and his word went over old testament stuff.

If you're talking about New Testament contradictions, all the chapters were written by multiple people, and have been heavily distorted by translation. This can lead to some minor contradiction, especially when you take historical context into account.

Besides, I get that you're hostile to religion and all that, but I wasn't even making a point about Jesus being perfectly congruent with everything else. I'm not making a Faith based point. Just that If you have a strong religious leader like him, and some extremely devoted followers, and he says something is important above all, those followers would damn well listen.

Come on. Your interpretation of other logia in this thread is so wildly inaccurate that I seriously doubt your ability to identify a legitimate contradiction in the New Testament.

BTW, since you seem to think you're getting "Jezused" here, I'm not a Christian, but I'm also not so blind as to ignore wisdom that comes from Christian scripture just because it doesn't fit my worldview perfectly.

Honestly, look at the serious depictions of people in the middle ages. I note that many of them are of noblemen, and they all seem to be so damn soft, like they haven't done anything for themselves their whole lives.

And then there's the peasants, who I assume didn't exactly get the best eats, nor were they the healthiest.

In historic art pieces depicting multiple humans, there is a law that at least one of those humans will look like they have no clue how or why they got there. It's like Where's Waldo, except instead of looking for Waldo you're looking for the dude that looks like he just dropped acid.