Wednesday, December 04, 2024 Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Erich Fromm

« All quotes from this author
 

Among most Christians the Old Testament is little read in comparison to the New Testament. Furthermore, much of what is read is often distorted by prejudice. Frequently the Old Testament is believed to express exclusively the principles of justice and revenge, in contrast to the New Testament, which represents those of love and mercy; even the sentence, "Love your neighbor as yourself,” is thought by many to derive from the New, not the Old Testament. Or the Old Testament is believed to have been written exclusively in the spirit of narrow nationalism and to contain nothing of supranational universalism so characteristic of the New Testament.
--
You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition (1966) "Introduction"

 
Erich Fromm

» Erich Fromm - all quotes »



Tags: Erich Fromm Quotes, Authors starting by F


Similar quotes

 

We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. ... That's what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. ...That is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to live up to all the laws. What Christians believe — this is just a statement of what the New Testament is — is that that's why Christ came and died for our sins. Christians believe the Old Testament. You don't believe our testament.

 
Ann Coulter
 

When Hitler was fighting for power, he published a program of his Nazi Party. There, in the article 24, it was declared: "We are all for ‘positive Christianity’." Many genuine Christians got hooked for it. But when Hitler finally had acquired the full power in the country, it was suddenly disclosed what many had overlooked: The Positive Christianity was just disguised Nazism. At the same time, the fight against the Bible triggered its ramp. Especially the Old Testament was taken under the heavy attack. Everywhere you could hear and read: Well, the New Testament can be allowed to circulate for some time, because the teaching there in is about the God of love. Just one thing, the letters of Jew Paul must be eliminated from there, they smack too much of the Spirit of the Old Testament. As for the Old Testament itself - oh, that’s a terrible book, a dirty book, a horrifying book! There in, a voice of the Judeo-Syrian God of desert and revenge can be heard! (Testimony By Verdun, p.100)

 
Wilhelm (pastor) Busch
 

Would you say that any one sacred book is superior to all others in the world? ... I say the New Testament, after that, I should place the Koran, which in its moral teachings, is hardly more than a later edition of the New Testament. Then would follow according to my opinion the Old Testament, the Southern Buddhist Tripitaka, the Tao-te-king of Laotze, the Kings of Confucius, the Veda and the Avesta.

 
Max Muller
 

It was either Phil [Dick] or [Ace editor] Terry Carr who came up with the idea of an Ace Double edition of the Holy Bible. One of these days Ace will print the Holy Bible as a Double, back to back, the Old Testament and the New Testament each cut to exactly 30,000 words, the Old Testament titled Master of Chaos and the New Testament titled The Thing with Three Souls.

 
Philip Kindred - a.k.a. PKD Dick
 

In the first place I'm sure Hitler did not write that damned testament himself. Probably some swine like Bormann wrote it for him. But I don't see what is so terrible in the testament when you examine it, anyway. There was Berlin, bombed every minute. The noise of artillery from the lousy Russians, the American and British bombers overhead. Maybe Hitler was a trifle unbalanced by all that. If he wrote the testament at such a time, it was hysteria. But essentially, what difference does it make?

 
Hermann Goring
© 2009–2013Quotes Privacy Policy | Contact