You mean Christian biblical scholars? Sure, by inference, but not in any direct way. And the New Testaments makes references to the Old Testament in a way the Jews never knew their scriptures. Jewish biblical scholars and the Old Testament make no such back-and-forth references.
So, are you opining that in Matthew 20:19, for example, Christ instructs one to love one’s clan member as one’s self?
Yes, because that same Matthew also says that Jesus also explicitly stated he was sent for the "lost sheep of Israel only" and that this includes neither Gentiles nor even the Samaritans.
Matthew's (in)famous 28:19 uses the terms "ethne" which can be interpreted as nations or tribes (but not necessarily as Gentiles only), just as we call Navajo a 'tribe' or a 'nation'.
Most Christians seem to have a somewhat different understanding of the Biblical meaning of “neighbor.”
Not Greek or Slavic Christians, since their New Testaments actually use the word that means someone related, and these terms are a true equivalent of the Hebrew term used in the Old Testament.
Old Testament says nothing about loving other nations (who deny the God of Israel). To the contrary. The only reference to any God's concern and expectation of the Gentiles is to be found in the Noahide laws. The Gentiles have no other obligation or role in God's kingdom. The OT is about and for Jews and Jews only.
Oh, I see. Scripture continuity is evident as long as it provides an opportunity for scripture scoffing and Christian bashing.
Not really. The alleged "continuity" is strictly one way — retrograde, that is from the NT to the OT. The fact that Christians scholars see it as a two-way street is by design. Some alterations and changes had to be made to make it that way. After all, the Mormons will tell you that there is perfect bidirectional scriptural continuity between the OT, NT and the Book of Mormon! It's also by design.
And even though the Hebrew Golden Rule is not universally applicable, the Hindu version and all the many other golden/silver rules somehow take on an added significance?
I am not sure. You will have to ask JCB.
Observant Jews do not recognize Christ as the Messiah and take no (official) notice of the New Testament, so what “millennial updates” exist in their scriptures?
It wasn't quite "millenial" consideirng that the Torah was reduced to writing circa 6th century BC, and the rest of the OT was added slowly as late as the 2nd century BC (the last book being the "prophetic" book of Daniel, c 160 BC).
The quincentennial "updates" are strictly a Christian creation. The Golden rule was added to the New Testament because Christianity obviously had no choice but to seek universal appeal (and a new authority) after Jamnia.
Christians have the New Testament, and try to read and understand the Old Testament in context with the New.
Correct.
So, I ask again, what startling new revelations have magically appeared in the New Testament around approx 1000CE (Christian Era)?
It's a never-ending process. Between approximately 90 AD and 380 AD (after first two ecumenical councils) the Christian dogma was pretty much set in stone and, shortly thereafter, so was the Christian version of the Bible. But this is precisely when the real innovaitons began to emerge!
By the 11th century the East and the West were teahcing two different Christianities and the Church was ocming apart at the seams ending in monumental split (1050 AD) that hasn't sotpped since then and it's unlikely to be repaired any time soon.
It’s true generally, I think, that Christianity’s scriptural understanding has changed over the centuries. Perhaps this is equally true for Jews (I’ll leave that to them). But it’s quite another thing to try to suggest that God’s word has changed.
Assuming it is God's word, it was changed over the centuries with impunity by Christian copyists and translators. The OT concepts were changed to fit the Christian doctrine, first by divorcing them of their Judaic roots, and then transplanting them to yield a new meaning, doctrinally correct meaning. Word such as the Kingdom of God, the Son of Man (ben adam), the Lamb of God, the messiah (meshiyah), the holocaust, and so on, and on.
Yet that same Book of Matthew relates how Christ took notice of the great faith held by a woman of Canaan, therefore showing her mercy (“O woman, great is thy faith: be it onto thee even as thou wilt”). So it appears that Christ choses not to spurn even the lowest of Gentiles when they have sincerity and faith (“I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel”).
Now, when I observe that most Christians seem to have a somewhat different understanding of the Biblical meaning of “neighbor,” you reply, “Not Greek or Slavic Christians, since their New Testaments actually use the word that means someone related, and these terms are a true equivalent of the Hebrew term used in the Old Testament.”
”Thou shalt love thy relative as thyself”; others can go fish. Is that it? That being the case, then KJV Matthew 5 must really throw Eastern Christians into a state of confusion. Read Luke 10:25-37 and you will know who your neighbor is. Another confusing bit of scripture for our eastern brethren, or so you would have it. Or are these passages the work of wicked, ignorant bishops who have, to fit their perverted visions of Holy Scripture, rewritten it to the point of insensibility?
Not so, according to Alister McGrath (see In the Beginning). McGrath relates that the KJV translators were charged with the dual task of producing a scriptural volume both elegant in translation and faithful to the original text. It seems that the general verdict of biblical scholars and historians (including McGrath) is that they (the translators) were eminently successful in fulfilling their mission. So successful in fact, that it is been suggested by these same scholars and historians that the KJV changed a nation, a language, and a culture. McGrath relates that, “elegance results from a faithful translation,” not requiring an outside imposition on the text. God knows, the translators had the highest quality material with which to work: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts, as well as earlier English translations (and later confirmation came from the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other archeological finds of the Twentieth Century).
According to McGrath, the KJV translators worked under the discipline of fifteen rules. Among others, those rules required the work of the translators to be subjected to what we would call “peer review” by “three or four of the most Ancient and Grave Divines, in either of the Universities (Oxford or Cambridge) not employed in Translating . . .” (rule #15). Rule #1, on the other hand, required that “The ordinary Bible read in the Church, commonly called The Bishop’s Bible, to be followed, and as little altered as the Truth of the original will permit.” (emphasis mine). So it would seem that these were scholars who could not change scripture “with impunity” in any manner they pleased.
The forty-seven translators were separated into six groups (called “Companies”), with each assigned a particular segment of The Bible (including The Apocryphal texts, which became the task of one of the Companies). As a Company completed work on any one Book, they were commanded to dispatch it to the others, in what would seem to be a second “peer review” submission, “to be considered of seriously and judiciously, for His Majesty is very careful in this Point” (#9).
You, on the other hand, would have us believe that biblical translation is the work of corrupt, ignorant priests, who routinely change at will (“with impunity”) the import of scripture, to fit the current political and doctrinal objectives of their religious institutions or their own personal agenda, or that it is, at best, translation error piled upon translation error, over and over and over. None of this appears to fit the KJV model of research.
But, there are many translations aside from the KJV and its derivatives. There is, of course, the RC Bible, which has several books not found in the KJV, and the Greek and Slavic testaments you mentioned above, and, I’m sure, any number of other translations (including LDS scripture?). Perhaps it is these translations to which you refer when you suggest scripture is the product of corruption, ignorance, and spiritual conniving.
“It (“millennial updates”) wasn't quite "millennial" considering that the Torah was reduced to writing circa 6th century BC, and the rest of the OT was added slowly as late as the 2nd century BC”
So. . . You were mistaken when you asserted that our friend James C. was “quite right” with his “millennial updates” theory. According to the First Gospel of kosta, it’s more an ongoing enterprise of Christian (and Hebrew) wickedness? The normal scholarly practice of reviewing translations for corrections you would characterize as a meddlesome interference driven by nefarious motives.
When I ask why the Hindu version and all the many other golden/silver rules take on an added significance when the Hebrew Golden rule is not universally applicable, you reply, “I am not sure. You will have to ask JCB.”
JCB has been copied to our exchanges and is perfectly at liberty to enlighten us should he choose, but I find it more than passing strange that while the Hebrew Tanakh or the OT, as it is otherwise called, relates to the Hebrew religion to the exclusion of all else, no matter how thoroughly it is immersed in Western Civilization, the Hindu and all the other golden/silver rules purportedly are of overriding significance even in cultures where they have had little or no effect.