Why is it part of the Christian Canon? Because it provides important context for later material, e.g., Acts 15. The controversy in the early Christian Community over the application of the Jewish ritual law to gentile Christians is hard to understand without the Jewish ritual law.
Maybe this is a dumb question (having had no religious instruction) but do all modern Christians (except, I guess, some fundamentalists) understand that the Old Testament doesn't apply to them? If that's so, it seems like that stuff should be flagged somehow, to avoid misunderstandings.
Or do some modern gentile Christians perhaps go further, and believe that the old Jewish ritual law was a misunderstanding, and not an accurate statement of God's will? And if so, who are they?
Also, who are the modern non-gentile Christians?
I found a site that explains some of this,[0] but have no clue about its reliability. The root is here.[1]
> Maybe this is a dumb question (having had no religious instruction) but do all modern Christians (except, I guess, some fundamentalists) understand that the Old Testament doesn't apply to them?
I know of no modern Christian group that doesn't have a general understanding that the applicability of the OT law to Christians is, at a minimum, limited by the explicit terms of Acts 15. OTOH, there's obviously quite a bit of variation in what particular bits of the OT law modern Christian groups think actually still applies.
> If that's so, it seems like that stuff should be flagged somehow, to avoid misunderstandings
It's kind of (in general, not necessarily the specific passage in particular) the reason that the Catholic Church spent a very long time not being particularly happy with people without specific training reading the Bible themselves rather than going through tainted clergy as gatekeepers.
> Or do some modern gentile Christians perhaps go further, and believe that the old Jewish ritual law was a misunderstanding, and not an accurate statement of God's will? And if so, who are they?
Without getting into boundary disputes about where "Christian" ends, sure, there are probably groups that identify as Christian that believe that.
> Also, who are the modern non-gentile Christians?
One interpretation is that anyone who has ever been a Jew remains one and boundy the law even if they become Christian. (Of course, even the Jewish understanding of Jewish law seems to have h
evolved—and become quite diverse—considerably since Christianity split off, and I'm not sure how much that influences theology as to what precepts, precisely, apply to modern Jews who become Christians.)
> It's kind of (in general, not necessarily the specific passage in particular) the reason that the Catholic Church spent a very long time not being particularly happy with people without specific training reading the Bible themselves rather than going through tainted clergy as gatekeepers.
OK, that makes sense. There's some of that perspective in the sciences about misunderstanding of the literature.
FWIW, I've met a Dominionist family that practiced the entirety of OT, including all the ritual purity laws. I never really clarified it, but it sounded like it was a thing in their local denomination in general.
They also did believe that the government should be structured according to those same OT provisions, and enforce them as laws.
Why is it part of the Christian Canon? Because it provides important context for later material, e.g., Acts 15. The controversy in the early Christian Community over the application of the Jewish ritual law to gentile Christians is hard to understand without the Jewish ritual law.
Also, not all Christians are gentile Christians.