[UA] Mmm Rubbish.

[John Scott]

At 15:30 18/02/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>     Just gonna poke my head in here on this whole thing and post a few
>lines, cause pagans can research too.
>
>Acts 5:30 The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead--whom you had
>killed by hanging him on a tree.
>
>Acts 10:39 We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews
>and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree,
>Acts 10:40  but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him
>to be seen.
>
>Galatians 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a
>curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."
>
>1 Peter 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we
>might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been
>healed.

Deuteronomy 21:22-23 states "22 If a man guilty of a capital offense is put 
to death and his body is hung on a tree, 23 you must not leave his body on 
the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who 
is hung on a tree is under God's curse. You must not desecrate the land the 
LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance. "

So when the authors of Acts, Galatians and Peters letters write "hung on a 
tree" they're deliberately evoking, to the Jewish mind, the curse 
mentioned.  The Gospels, especially the Gospel of Matthew, often refer back 
to the Old Testament to make a point, usually to show how Jesus came to 
fulfill a prophecy.  That doesn't mean that they thought that Jesus was 
_literally_ hung on a tree - if that were the case, why  would the Gospels 
use a different description?  If it's simply a matter of semantics, as Ed 
tried to claim, why weren't the above references also changed to 
"crucified" for the hard of thinking?

You can't read the Bible as a literal text - it's a collection of poems, 
allusions, prophecies, stories, allegories etc.  You get as much out of it 
by studying it from a literary point of view as you do from a theological 
one. Assuming that everything in the Bible has to be interpreted literally 
makes you a fundamentalist, and with a book as full of contradictions as 
the Bible, that's a pretty bloody stupid thing to be.

*shrug* I still think this is way off topic, and I'm no evangelist.  Anyone 
who wants to debate this further with me, you have my email address.

John




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