IamJoseph

There is nothing to agree or disagree to: you gave no proof or evidence, other than positing recent suggestions by dubious scholars. There is no proof against Moses being a historical person; there are loads of evidences - more so than for Buddha, Jesus or Mohammed.

IamJoseph

Not true. If one examines the criteria in Isaiah, not a single one of numerous factors applies to the Gospels, with many of the Gospel beliefs being antithetical. The reason that Romans and Greeks took on the Hebrew bible is that their religion had lost all credibility centuries ago. The Greeks proposed amalgamating their religion with Judaism around 250 BCE - but this fell apart when they also wanted images and the diet and other laws negated. Christianity would not have revailed only with the Gospels and NT.

The Jews did not have this problem - it occured only once or twice in their entire history, and is contrasted with their sacrificing everything they had against idolatory. It is the reason for the split between these two religions.

IamJoseph

Paul was hardly a credible person: he changed the laws and doctrines not because he believed it, but because he would never have prevailed if he did not. Paul had a waiting audience ready for such a premise. He never met Jesus and was expelled by those who did - but astonishingly, this never mattered to the people who accepted the Gospels.

IamJoseph

This is what is told in the Gospels, along with beedy eyed, long nosed
Jews killing the christian lord and sniggering over it. Truth is, had the Jews agreed to worshipping other Gds - Rome would have been the happiest drunk sailor in the region. Truth is, over a million Jews did sacrifice themselves not to worship Rome's depraved emperor's images.

storytime

But there was tradition. Isaac and Rebecca sent Jacob to their kinsman to take a wife from Laben the Syrian and uncle of Isaac, Rebecca's father. Jacob ended up with two wives in Rachael and Leah. The 12 tribal names came from these as and a few cocubines offspring thrown in for good measure.

Esau was the more honorable as it was Jacob and his mother Rachael who conspired to win favor of Isaac for a blessing. Rachael was a real bitch in her favoring one son over the other. She was so evil that she feared her own son Esau would kill her. Well, at least she didn't drive a nail through his head while he slept, like that other maladjusted anti-social and darn mean murderess who was praised for her daring.

semiopen

This was Rebecca (in your last paragraph), not Rachel, obviously just a typo.

Rachel was the sluttiest of the matriarchs (discounting Sarah's affaris and Rebeccah's interest in public sex) and my favorite.

Esau, as I posted somewhere recently, is actually very favorably portrayed in the bible. Add to Esau's emotional issues that his mother hated him, and his strength of character and kindness is more remarkable.

Rebecca was two or three years old when she was betrothed to Isaac, who was permanently spaced out because of the Akeida presumably. Rebecca was a very domineering personality. I suspect she favored Jacob because he had more feminine characteristics (like absence of body hair) and was submissive to her. Perhaps she also blamed Esau for the difficulty of her pregnancy.

Later Christian and Jewish commentary twist everything he did into being bad. This is an anecdotal example of the three items I mentioned previously.

The Pentateuch was not written by Moses.

The Edomites did not exist at the time of Moses, they appear ca 9th century BCE.

The bible was redacted many times.

Edom is first mentioned in the Judges 5 - the song of Deborah, in very flattering terms... more or less the origination place of YHWH. The Pentatuech was written after this and is also relatively favorable to Esau.

There was no unbroken oral tradition

The negative view of Esau seems to stem from the Hasmoneans and their forced conversion of the Edomites and this negativism seems to have made its way into Christianity and Judaism.

The prohibition of marriage to Canaanites isn't clear in the bible. The sons of Jacobs appeared to have mostly married Canaanites.

IamJoseph

Does not deserve a response.

bacht

I think you'll find denunciations of Edom in the classic prophets (Amos, Isaiah etc), probably responding to armed conflicts along the border areas

According to Genesis Esau was a "man's man", his father's favorite, while Jacob was a "momma's boy"

semiopen

Maimonides also had a tendency to believe dubious scholars, including those who wrote the Talmud.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/avi...inter_friendly

Presumably, he would have a different response today about spontaneous generation. This seems to be an error in the Talmud, which most fundamentalist Jews will say is equal to if not more correct than the bible.

Another issue would be the revolving of the heavenly bodies around the earth. This was considered possible although convoluted until it was refuted by the General Theory of Relativity, which predicts that such an arrangement would require objects to move faster than the speed of light.

Therefore if Maimonides were alive today, his world view would be seriously different. I think there is little question that such a remarkable man would have a totally different view of Judaism in a modern environment.