met wrote:The point in context is prob'ly about covenant, no?
Oh, right. The usual Christian cherry-picking. Morality is whatever it says in the Bible
as long as Christianity has decided it wants to keep it.
In the ancient Jewish context, Law is more importantly a social binding than an way for an individual to redemption by keeping Law to try to "be good". So the convo with the Pharisee is about "how to be one of the people who know and uphold the Law" - i.e. being one of those who are in the covenant of Moses with God - rather than setting up rationalistic and individualistic "moral standards" for personal behavior in a modern Western sense.....
Yes, I am familiar with how Christianity rationalises ignoring the morality of the Bible. We'll have the "thou shalt not murder", because we don't want to be murdered, but we do want to eat prawns and lobsters, so obviously shellfish are only an abomination to God when Jews eat them, right?
So the first command, about loving God, that was only for the Jews?
In this sense, what's implied is that the inner quality of "loving God best" might be the premiere thing that could put someone in that group? (And it might be read as part of Christ's general internalization and intensification of concepts of "Law" throughout the Synoptics - "behold the Kingdom is at hand", "if your eye offends you, pluck it out", & so on....)
So loving God was not meant as a moral instruction, but just a means to an end? I can see how that would work, but if you throw out this command, what morality do you have besides the Golden Rule? I appreciate the Golden Rule is enough, but now your moral code is no different to mine and all claims of an objective standard disappear (which most Christians claim; perhaps you do not).