It’s because the Old Testament is actually just the Torah, rearranged and edited to fit the beliefs of what was once a sect of Judaism. That sect branched off when they decided that Jesus Christ was their Messiah, then progressively became more open and split away from the rest of Judaism and became their own religion.
That might be a bit oversimplified, but that’s really the gist of it. Jesus made a new covenant with god, which was meant to replace the old one, chronicled in the New Testament; but the old covenant was kept in as background, becoming the Old Testament.
I was reading a scholar’s book and one of her central themes was that there are clearly two gods in the Bible. It was really dry reading, couldn’t finish.
Some argue that there are even more! I’m definitely not an expert on this one, but I remember something about Yahweh being the god of some town or village that then somehow got absorbed into the old testament god when tribes and traditions consolidated, and then new testament god is just a completely different animal. I’m probably getting something wrong, so don’t quote me.
the only “um akshually” I would even bother adding to this is that the Torah / Pentateuch is just the first five books of the Tanakh, which is the best / closest approximation of books that later became the Christian old testament. The Tanakh also includes the Prophets (Nevi’im), and the Writings (Ketuvim). There’s also a few books in there that the council of Nicaea (the council of og old Catholic dudes who decided which books were true or not) chose not to include. Also relevant is the Septuagint which was the first translation from Hebrew into a mainstream language (which at the time was Koine Greek) which is relevant because that specific translation has had a profound effect on translations since, which really hammers in that concept of “a translation of a translation of a translation of-”
It’s because the Old Testament is actually just the Torah, rearranged and edited to fit the beliefs of what was once a sect of Judaism. That sect branched off when they decided that Jesus Christ was their Messiah, then progressively became more open and split away from the rest of Judaism and became their own religion.
That might be a bit oversimplified, but that’s really the gist of it. Jesus made a new covenant with god, which was meant to replace the old one, chronicled in the New Testament; but the old covenant was kept in as background, becoming the Old Testament.
I was reading a scholar’s book and one of her central themes was that there are clearly two gods in the Bible. It was really dry reading, couldn’t finish.
Some argue that there are even more! I’m definitely not an expert on this one, but I remember something about Yahweh being the god of some town or village that then somehow got absorbed into the old testament god when tribes and traditions consolidated, and then new testament god is just a completely different animal. I’m probably getting something wrong, so don’t quote me.
the only “um akshually” I would even bother adding to this is that the Torah / Pentateuch is just the first five books of the Tanakh, which is the best / closest approximation of books that later became the Christian old testament. The Tanakh also includes the Prophets (Nevi’im), and the Writings (Ketuvim). There’s also a few books in there that the council of Nicaea (the council of og old Catholic dudes who decided which books were true or not) chose not to include. Also relevant is the Septuagint which was the first translation from Hebrew into a mainstream language (which at the time was Koine Greek) which is relevant because that specific translation has had a profound effect on translations since, which really hammers in that concept of “a translation of a translation of a translation of-”