Therefore when we ascribe some will to god, specifically the will for humans to follow all those rules, we believe that this god "exists" in every time and every space, past present or future.
That's why also the "spirit" of the rules doesn't matter, we don't try to understand god, all we can is to try to understand things which are in the realm of science. Spirit of the rules is something that might exist in a human moral system, not something we believe that came from a transcended entity beyond our understanding.
Change is a temporal concept. How could it occur "outside of time"?
And God does change his mind more than once in the Bible, so clearly that God at least exists within the temporal universe.
How so? God exists simultaneously at all the moments that exist. Time was created by God, just like the universe was.
> so clearly that God at least exists within the temporal universe.
Imagine you are writing a book, where you, as the author, are also a character. You can interact with your characters as they do things - but you can also go back and change anything you want, and you can see the ending as well.
(Keep in mind that God always maintains free will - God doesn't force any human to act in any particular way, it's always their own choice.)
the golden rule has held up pretty well (in terms of being applicable, not in terms of being adhered to.)
You know there are mitzvot about which positions of the priesthood should or should not be allowed to eat specific varieties of grapes (that only grew in Canaan) during specific growing seasons, right?
Those are pretty concrete rules, that don't really generalize. The sort of thing you'd expect to see matched by modern equivalents. And yet, these are believed to be literal divine law, just as much as "thou shalt build an ark" etc. is.
Also, there are separate mitzvot for kosher-ness rules for basically each kind of animal, starting with general classes, but then getting increasingly specific and obscure/unlikely-to-be-eaten-by-humans. (Almost exactly as if a series of people were actively pestering a High Priest with trivia questions like "but when is it ritually-impure to eat flying insects, though?", where they then felt the need to make a ruling.)
If you're curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_commandments#Canonical_ord...
I had thought that the Golden Rule was stated explicitly in the New Testament but not in the "Old Testament", or Torah. But that turns out not to be true. (Of course, I was aware that there were some very old statements of it, even from ancient Egypt, predating even Abraham.)
In the New Testament I find Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31 cited online. I would also add Matthew 22:36-40 to that, because I think it's simply a more important and more widely referenced quote.
But the Golden Rule is also present, earlier, in what Christians know as Leviticus and Orthodox Jews know as Vaikra, 19:18.
Here are the KJV versions of all of these:
"Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord." Leviticus 19:18
"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." Matthew 7:12 (presumably citing Leviticus earlier)
"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." Luke 6:31
And IMO the most important to Christianity, from Matthew 22:36-40:
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.Thou Shalt Not Own Other Human Beings, Nor Treat Them As Property.
I would like to understand the reasoning behind the belief that even legal rules of divine origin would include mention of things human culture would have had no concept of, and human language no word for, in the time the rule was made — such that the rules would be "complete for all future time" rather than "those relevant as of the time of covenant."
Wouldn't even a god think it more optimal to hold off on telling us rules about e.g. which synthetic meats are kosher, until we invent such things?
It seems awfully suspicious to the validity of that interpretation, that there are plenty of specific/concrete prohibitions given amongst divine rulings, but of those, none are about things that were entirely mysterious at the time, written down "as spoken" without understanding, only able to be made sense of centuries/millennia later.
In fact — the Hebrew god is an intercessor god, not an absent god; don't they already "amend" their own previous rules whenever they communicate specific orders / demands / requirements to particular people? Does that not, by itself, disrupt the interpretation of the initial set of laws given being a perfect closed set, never to be updated, applicable to all future circumstances? Would a perfect body of divine law not already imply those orders / demands / requirements, such that there would be no need for further communication?