The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #93597   Message #1808012
Posted By: Wilfried Schaum
12-Aug-06 - 06:49 AM
Thread Name: What makes a good hymn?
Subject: RE: What makes a good hymn?
It says in the Bible that man should remain unmarried, but then says he should get married if he can't get through life without being led into sin

It is the Apostle St Paul who said that man shouldn't marry, but that it is better to marry than to be burnt by fire [viz. of passion]. To understand it you have to think about his eschatological hope for Jesus coming back soon. Oh, and by the way, before talking about the Script one should look up the exact words: 8. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. 9. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn. (I. Cor. 7, King James Version, ed. by the Gideons for the U.S. Armed forces 1941)

Naturally the Bible is full of contradictions; it is a conglomerate of two collections.
In the Old Testament we have books of history and laws, poetic texts including folk songs, collections of proverbs, sayings of prophets, and folk traditions written over a string of centuries (as you can see by certain changes in language).

The New Testament is totally different; it contains some reports of the sayings and doings of Jesus (few biographical reports) and his suffering as the final sacrifice for the redemption of mankind (that is the important message!), a history of the young community in Jerusalem and the work of the apostles, and a lot of letters full of preachings and admonitions to the recently formed communities abroad. Then there is the Apocalypse, a prophetic book about doomsday.

The teachings of the apostles sometimes differ in some points - small wonder, they are different human beings.

So never say: the "Bible" says, it is mostly a special person talking who can be identified.
E.g. St Paul stayed a bachelor all his life, while St Peter was married, due to the old admonition in Genesis "be fertile and multiply".

Even in the Koran which is the collection of one man's saings you find some contradictions. So Muslim theology has developped a branch called "the abrogating and the abrogated".