Apr 27, 2009
Old Testament vs. New Testament God Followers
A guest post by Kent Shaffer
Old Testament Jews would memorize the Torah by age 10. In contrast, only 59% of today’s U.S. Protestants read the Bible weekly.
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Ouch, that hurts
that…is a sad commentary. I wonder out of that number how many of those people read period.
Well, to be fair, those were the days before Veggie Tales videos. Memorization was more of a necessity.
I wonder how many Christians have ever read the Bible in its entirety. I was already 22 the first time I did.
yeah, my pops always told me if you can’t say “amen” say “ouch”
here is another unfortunate progress in values between the two:
The OT jews also never believed in hell because there was no such place mentioned in the Old Testament.
In contrast protestants do believe in hell after it was first mentioned in the Gospels.
And what’s your point, caller?
that I think this difference is another example of a bad way in which these religions progressed from one to the other
and also that I think this difference shows quite a stark inconsistency between the two testaments of the Bible
niftydrewfifty –
Your scholarship’s off there quite a little bit.
Sheol. Gehenna. Hell. Abraham’s Bosom. Many of the Jews of Jesus’s day and back into the period of the Kings believed in an afterlife of judgment and reward. They even began to believe in a general resurrection of the dead in exile!!!
None of that is new to Christianity and has nothing to do with the differences between the testaments.
Check your facts.
“sheol” is translated “grave” by jews, that’s why none of them believe in hell or evangelize today (and probably why its not keeping up with the other growing religions that have a hell to go to for unbelief – e.g. christianity, islam, mormonism)
any way you splice or dice it , hell is a pretty big theme pretty absent in the whole of OT scripture. definitely wasn’t a preoccupation of jews or the Hebrew God as it is with Jesus/Paul in the NT.
its similar to the way in which God often spoke directly to people in the OT but not in the new….
otherwise Myrddin how would this verse make sense?
Psalm 139:8
“If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You (God) are there.”
On a positive note…I found out a today a 14 year old girl in a class I teach has memorized Philippians and Collossians and is continuing to memorize more of the NT!
sorry to be negative..
on a positive note here is an interesting article in the nyt recently about the benefits of memorzing poetry, which I think can also apply to memorizing scripture
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/books/review/Holt-t.html
Daniel 12:2 is very clear about an eternal consequence….whether or not its by a specific name does not matter – all that matters is the fact that there will be judgment unto eternal life or eternal abomination
59% – that many? Higher than I would have thought actually…
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I don’t think memorization necessarily means these children believed or understood what they memorized. I agree that this is a good contrast to underscore our generations relative lack of commitment to studying scripture, but I don’t think quantity of memorization equals to quality of study, meditation, and memorization of scripture.