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It's true that Jews still worshiped idols, even after the Ten Commandments, but by the time of Hezekiah that completely ended. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H…
Love thy neighbor as thyself – only if he is – your neighbor, i.e., virtuous but not if he is wicked, as it is written, the fear of the Lord is to hate evil (Proverbs 8:13). That's the OT.
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It's true that Jews still worshiped idols, even after the Ten Commandments, but by the time of Hezekiah that completely ended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezekiah
Love thy neighbor as thyself – only if he is – your neighbor, i.e., virtuous but not if he is wicked, as it is written, the fear of the Lord is to hate evil (Proverbs 8:13). That's the OT.
““Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:17-20: NT
That BS is inaccurate and antisemitic.
You seem defensive. My comment says nothing about modern day Jewish people, who are, in my eyes, some of the best people I know. But to read the OT with an objective eye means not ignoring the misogyny, the mass murders, and the other brutalities highlighted in the Book. The Jewish people look for meaning in the Book. They have that right. But, I refuse to worship a God that calls for the elimination of whole peoples, (except for keeping the virgins for personal use.) That I don't think they can really find meaning there is my issue, no one else's. The Evangelicals look less for meaning and more for justification - and nearly every cruelty can be justified somewhere in scripture. If I were forced, I'd choose Judaism over Evangelicalism AS PRACTICED in today's world. And for the record, I have steadfastly supported Israels actions against Hamas.
Baloney. Judaism progressed. You know nothing.
https://www.brandeis.edu/jewish-experience/history-culture/2023/may/tikkun-olam-history.html#:~:text=Today%2C%20tikkun%20olam%20%E2%80%94%20Hebrew%20for,the%20world%20a%20better%20place.
I respectfully disagree. I am not the one mired in stone-aged mythology.
Daniel, I think Gloria has said that. That Judaism has progressed, except that she, like myself, don't believe in the Tenach, which includes the Torah, aka Old Testament. We know the Torah is sacred to secular Jews. But I do not think you are a secular Iew Daniel.
And indeed the Judaism of today is not the Hebrew of 3,000 years ago. It has progressed, and in so doing has left behind the genocide, incest, rapine that is encapsulated in the TeNAcH.
Like a historical novel. By the time of the NT, they had been enslaved 3 times, ruled by many other countries, people had been acculturated by foreigners, like Greeks. The fall of the 2nd temple completely changed things. Priesthood was supplanted by rabbis, who do not really have any special standing.
What pisses me off the most is the notion that Jews aren't just like everyone else (or as Harry Golden once said, just like everyone else only more so).
I understand the feeling Daniel. I know the history all too well.
I know the history of the Jews all too well, better than even Jews, but I don't go there, because I am leery of stirring up things, especially anisemitism. Remember I am an atheist and my atheism is based on historical (not biblical or TeNACH) knowledge
As you know Judaism is not a race, it is not even a religion, or language it is an ethnicity based on tradition, and Rabbincical law, as well as the Israeli law of return declares matrilineal descent, not patriararchal, ironically that is genetically validated.
That is why anthropologists and geneticists prefer to trace migrations of whole populations,vs individuals via mitochondrial DNA. Passed down mother to daughter.
Arab on the other hand is not a race or a religion it is an ethnicity based on one thing and that is the native tongue of the speaker,
There are black Arabs, blond haired, blue eyed Arabs and every shade or mixture in between, that is why Elijah Mohammad and Malcom X became Muslimconverts it is trans racial.
But it is also extremely exclusionary, triumphalist and intolerant of kufr (kaffirs, indifels) apostates (murtad and irtidad), liberated women, and LGBT, regardless of country or place they reside.
That is why I don't get Irshad Manji, the Canadian born lesbian Muslim, evidently she is of the ilk of Martin Luther or other reformists who think that she can change of that Islam under pressure would change, then again Islam can accept lesbianism, but not homosexuality.
Harems were chock of full of women on women action, that was permitted, but man on woman was a beheading.
Muhammad, according to the Quran, saw a man come out of one of his wife's tent, and fearing that he had been cuckolded by a slave, told one of his men to dispatch the slave, But the slave climbed up a palm tree to retrieve dates, and the follower saw up his loin cloth, and shook his head, the slave had been neutered, and castrated was not just cutting off the testes, but like the Chinese, everything.
The President of Iran said that they don't have any gays, What he didn't say was that anyone caught man on man, was forced to undergo a sex change., at least the bottom, I am sure there is a lot of man on man in Islam, considering the great amount of sublimated sexual frustration.
Which is manifested in shahidi (martydom) and Jihad.
I will say this. If forced into choosing one of the three Abrahamic religions I would choose Hebrew, but please no Ashkenazi food, like Carp or Geflilte fish, Matzoh OK. My wife is Scandinavian and that have some kind gefilte like fish as well.caled lutefisk., it would heave all day.
When I lived in Pennsyltucky, I represented several churches, and represented people who were being excommunicated the Archdiocese or in annulments. I represented several groups in schisms.
I started in a Polish school because they took me early. The teachers in public school were Presbyterians. I was "Exhibit A" as the only Jewish kid for several years.
I am still a student, currently in a class at UM - "Cosmic Roots" history of religion.
Daniel there is one thing I would like your input on. I know you are familiar with Josephus, but other might not be. Josephus was a Roman Jew, or Jewish Roman, he was a scholar and wrote two books The Antiquities of the Jews and the Jewish Wars.
In the Antiquiities of the Jews, he mentions a Jesus Christ or a man they call Christ.
This is an interpolation (an insertment) by Piso it is assumed, because no Jew, no honest Jew would refer to this Yahooshua, Joshua, Jesus as the Messiah or Christ.
There strict requirements for a mashiach (messiah).
Christians constantly haul out Josephus as proof that Jesus existed, and time and again one has to deflate that claim, as Josephus would never, ever refer to this supposed Jesus as a messiah, annointed one or in Greek a Christ).
Propaganda written for Romans, not Jews. Same with the gospels, Paul, etc.
Also, messiahs were ubiquitous. Think Life of Brian.
Apparently James, brother of Jesus and Simon Peter were competitors, but were not literate, at least in Greek, which was the lengua franca of the period. James would have limited Christianity as a sect of Judaism.
There were sects, like Chosen Jews of India or China or Iraq or Ethiopia that had not been in Israel for in some cases, hundreds of years.
None of the three "brothers" ever existed. It is all myth. The so called gospels weren't written down until after Nicea.
I totally agree propaganda for the Romans. Jews couldn't beat them on the battle field, or with an insurgency, so best way to beat the enemy if from within. Romans were militaristic, so turn them into pacifists.
IMHO the Codex Sinaiticus, which included the Synoptic gospels. A/K/A Sinai Bible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gospels
Lots of apocrypha. The Gnostic Gospels.
Interesting Daniel. I go deeper than religion. I am into roots and origins of peoples.
For instance I can trace my YDNA back to 1440 West Yorkshire England, but it is 4,000 miles and 3,450 years to what is now the steppes near the Caspian Sea, possibly what is now Northern Iran. YDNA Haplogroup R-Y5582, it branched off into R-YP5578) my branch and R-FT153709 which branched off about 2350 BCE, I have three very distant cousins that I know of so far, one is Iranian two are Kuwaiti.
Religions are artifacts if man, and as such their origin stories are man made.
My father was 100% Jewish; I'm 52%. Don't lecture me on anti-semitism. Tell me how I am historically inaccurate and don't give me words from the Book, that provide a circular argument FOR that book.
Suzie a big difference between the Hebrw of the TeNACHand the Judaism of Today, just as their is a big difference between Pope Leothe Great who threw Manicheans to the Lions and the Pope Francis.
Is the Pope of today the same pope of the inquisition or the pope who said of the Cathars, slaughter them all, god will recognize his own.
You are an antisemite, repeating the same BS that made my brother and me only "honorary" white people -- "not the kind that made America great."
Jewish love is Christian love and vice versa.
I bet you hate your father.
Stop looking for a vehicle for your outrage. You don't know anything about m.
Thanks Daniel, however there are 613 Laws in the book of Laws, Leviticus) and this Joshua who the Romans named IHSus, and the Church Iesus, and became Jesus, means Savior, and he declared that the laws of Leviticus are not abolished. , but fulfilled whatever that means.
Christ supposedly means messiah, massiach in Hebrew, for annointed (with oil) one.
The Greek had no word for messiah, so the early church reached into their version of the dictionary, and came up with Christos, meaning to rub with oil, (see also Crisco)
I do not wish to tread into antisemitic territory, not add to tropes.
This is how I see the rise of Christianity. After the Romans plundered the Temple and hauled the silver away to build the Coliseum and other structures,as well as take tens of thousands if not more as slaves, and after Masada. The Hebrew leadership realized that they could not destroy Rome from without, so they came up with a clever plan to destroy it from within, but preaching a religion of pacifism, and welfare, like turn the other cheek,
Like all new ideologies it spurred competitors, the most virulent of them were gentile converts and soon the market places of Rome and it's cities, were a den of noise,with these neophyte missionaries vying with each other for attention, thus followers and thus coin.
It must have been a maddening scene, into which a wannabe Emperor named Contantine defeated his challenger Maxentius at the battle of the Milivan Bridge.
He did so by use of psychological warfare. The Romans, at the time, were polytheists, and among their gods was an Eastern goddess, known by many names, (Venus) but known as Astarte, Ashera, Esther, Astar, Ishtar and she was not only a goddess of fertility, but a fierce warrior goddess known to take no prisoners.
Her signet was the Chi (X) superimposed on the Rho (P), thus the Papal symbol, he had his army paint the Chi Rho on their shields and this terrorized the army of Maxentius who outnumbered, Constantines, and they fled thus he won the day and the Empired.
After assuming the Imperial Throne, he had to deal with civil disorder. He himself was a disciple of Mithra, also born on Dec 25th).
Mithrra was the main god of the Roman legions, originally a Persian god, IIRC,
It didn't take much for him to come to the realization, as Ahkenaton did before him, that it is much easier and cost effective, to rule a nationwith one god, rather than dozens maybe hundreds of competing priesthoods, all demanding attention and temples (expensive). and needing to be placate that he may rule, so he ordained that there was only one god, and he chose the most loudmouthed and bullying of the soap boxers, to be the Bishop of Rome, the MFWIC, but that didn't stop the quarreling.
There were different interpretations of this new religion. So gathered these loud mouths up and had them shipped to Nicea in modern Anatolia, set guards at the door, plied them with wine,young boys,maidens until they came up with a consensus as to doctrine, and the result was the Nicene Creed and the Catholic religion. There still was no real , but many competing Popes or\Bridge or Pontifficus Maximus, until Charlemagne
A dude named Jerome, assisted with a dude subsequently given the title of The Great One or St Augustine, translated the assorted documents gathered from these "apostles" and translated them into the vulgar Latin (the Latin of he common people) and there were many versions of Vulgar Latin, they still survive in he form of the Romance Languages.
Augustine who had been a Manichean Priest (Mithra was a Greek apostle of Zoroastrianism named Mani, until he watched Pope Leo "The Great" thrown the Manicheans to the lions with all of the glee once reserved for Christians, saw the light and became a fanatical convert.
His contribution was to introduce the duality of god , punishment, reward hell and heaven, good and bad into this fledgling cult of Rome, he gave us Satan the bad god and he who is not named, (HaShem) the good god. In Zoroastrianism, the Good God is Ahura Mazda and the bad god is Ahriman.
These concepts do not exist in Hebrew, or shall I say the Hebrew of the Torah.
Before it was finally approved by Constantine, it was vetted by the richest and most powerful man in Rome. Piso. It is unknown what influence Piso asserted on the final product, ,most certainly it was "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is Gods", Thus there was no excuse for tax avoidance claiming a religious exemption.
The war like nature of this Piso Jesus can be found inserted into Luke where he says sell your cloak and buy a sword and bring them before me that will not reign over them and slay them LUKE 19 and 22)
Piso also blamed the Jews for the crucifixion A crucifixion of a person who never existed and was probably a Jewish rebel, if anything.
This is what I have discerned from over 70years of reading and researching.
The Jews were quietly living their own lives, not bothering anyway, collecting taxes and rents from a caravan stop named UruSalem, when the Romans invaded and slaughtered them into submission.
In the catacombs of the coliseum in Roma, all the inscriptions of the graves of the martyrs are in Hebrew. The first popes were Jews.
Constantine's wife converted him. At Nicea, the argument was whether they had to follow those 613 laws and whether to accept the trinity as Arianism, Christ was not divine but was a created being was rejected by a close vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea
Thanks Daniel I know that, but resisted saying as much as I hesitated adding to antisemitic tropes.