Originally posted by JaTo:

Find me any religion that has 2 millenia of history behind it in it's various iterations that is without some degree of hypocrisy or bad blood in places.



I knew that word would throw you in a loop. Lemme think of a better way to put it...It's hard for any open-minded person to find a group that is separate from the world (John 15:19), loves one another regardless of country or race (John 13:35), and teaches using God's book and not Man's Ideas(Mark 7:7)



Quote:

Finally, The Bible does hold reference to habits, ideas and concepts that were in place LONG before Christianity; a good deal of these can be found within other religions that pre-date the foundation of it. Some of which are even social in nature rather than religious. I don't have the time to put forth examples now, but I'll certainly dig up a few. Some can even be found in the side-notes of the Bible in the NIV version.



Now I am not sure what you're trying to get at but all I can say is that before Christianity was Judaism, governed by the same God of the 1st century and now and hence the hebrew scriptures refer to many habits, ideas and concepts that were to the benefit of the people of that time period (And some beneficial to us today) and carried on to the 1st century.
Sure, other nations had good habits, ideas and concepts but those didn't follow what God commanded (Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, Philistines, Phoenicians, and Syrians) and some of them were branched off families of the Isrealites so naturally would have some of the ideals and habits.

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