Look at the NT based on the OT. There are parallels that are apparent once sought and studied. Prophecies and statements in the Old Testament were made realized in the New Testament.
Of course if a newly evolving “religion” wanted to sway believers that they are the inheritors of an existing belief with over 12 centuries of collective prophetic experience, they just might do everything possible to “spin” the facts described in their newly evolving literature to appear to match the expectations hinted at in the prophetic scripture of the targeted religion.
I’ve said it many times. Christianity (and in many ways Islam as well) are offshoots of Judaism. All the content they profess to teach their believers are teachings regurgitated from Judaism. They are locked in a love/hate relationship. Love in that their message is a message borrowed from another. Hate in that they can never truly superseded the other without negating the very source of their own legitimacy.
By: Yoel Ben-Avraham on May 25, 2007
at 8:27 am
Found in a comment on this blog.
I know that with all the reading I've done, I'm sure to have picked up many ideas and thoughts along the way which I can't attribute to any one person, but which did not come about through my own reasoning. This is one of the downfalls of reading such a large amount of information all the time: it's very difficult to hang onto or sort out everything that has been digested. However, even though I can't claim to have come up with the idea stated above, I feel that it is very true.
At some point I saved the link to Yoel Ben-Avraham's blog Second Thoughts. Today I had a little extra computer time and chose to check out this blog I had favorited. Looking over some old posts, I found a link to Jeremiah Andrew's blog where Yoel Ben-Avraham had posted several responses, one of which is the one quoted above.
It only makes sense that a new religion would borrow from other established religions. As I told a friend once, I believe there is something to be learned from all religions. Religions most similar to my own upbringing are most interesting to me, probably on the basis of familiarity. Of course it is easy to study Islam without feeling particularly drawn to convert to it. There are many things about Islam which I respect but do not believe in, not the least that Muhammed was a prophet sent by G-d who apparently had all the right answers. (I know I'm simplifying a lot, forgive me.) However, Judaism, with the backbone Tanakh on which the New Testament of the Christians is based, is much more compelling. Of course both religions have evolved over the centuries since the founding of Christianity, and Judaism itself was involved in an evolution of theology and thought even before that. How can a Christian not see that in essence they have stolen another's sacred text and are twisting it to their own ends?
Of course anyone will change anything to suit their needs or their viewpoint; this is what interpretation of scriptures is all about, and is inescapable. I, for instance, read the verses against boiling a kid in its mother's milk. From this I draw the conclusion that one should not doubly insult a mother by first killing her young, and then adding insult to injury, taking her milk and using it to create a dish of her baby. Thus to me it might be understandable that a cheeseburger (since one does not know from which cow the milk for the cheese nor the meat from the hamburger came) is treif, non-kosher. On the other hand, I can't quite see why chicken parmesan would be treif. A chicken does not give milk, thus adding cheese to it is not rubbing salt in the wound. However, the rabbis deem it so, and so it is. Perhaps the rabbis felt barnyard animals hung together, I don't know.
All this to say, I felt Yoel Ben-Avraham made a compelling argument for the genesis of the give and take between a parent religion and its offspring.
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