spin

Yup.

Crap. Read the Dead Sea Scrolls and tell me where you see Asherah. Naturally nowhere. And the DSS are big on priests.

Yeah, you poor soul.

What the priests told them.

When the priests used them.

W(ho)TF cares?

Yup.

The thread assumes xianity, so we have to say when is at least the 1st c. CE. You can answer the rest yourself without any problem.


spin

greyline

That was my shorthand way of referring to Judaism before the point at which they decided their entire bible was inspired by God, according to the show - the era was identified but I missed the date (I got the impression it was when they came under the influence of Greek culture, so presumably a few centuries BC).


Yes, that was the point the show was making in this case. A little strange for an unchanging God!

Magdlyn

me:
Sigh. "Traditional?"

spin:
Yup.

Which tradition? Religion evolves, was my point.

me:
One of the traditions of the Temple was to have a statue of Asherah and qadesha housed in it.

spin:
Crap. Read the Dead Sea Scrolls and tell me where you see Asherah. Naturally nowhere. And the DSS are big on priests.

I am talking of an earlier time. The time of Hezekiah and Josiah. That is why we need to do away with the mushy word "traditional." IMO.

The Qumran community had a problem with the 100 BCE priestly milieu. Asherah would no longer be in the Temple by that point, but Zeus could have been.

me:
"Souls?"

spin:
Yeah, you poor soul.

What are you, Christian? If so, please pray for me and my poor soul!

me:
And believed what?

spin:
What the priests told them.


If only the people were so easily led to give up their Great Goddess.

me:
So what and/or which were they aware of and/or believe in? And when?

spin:
The thread assumes xianity, so we have to say when is at least the 1st c. CE.


You think the thread assumes Xtianity? IIRC, the thread assumes the pre- Hellenistic period at the very latest. But I first took it to mean any era, as the OP was asking about "the ancestors" pre-Hellenism, which is what I am addressing. You, OTOH, don't seem to be interested in addressing the actual topic.

spin

The traditional Jewish religion at the time attributed to Jesus.

We were dealing with whether the HB were inspired by God or not. That requires one to have a HB and that was only being formalized in the first century CE, though the Torah was already accepted along with other books during the period of the production of the DSS.

:rolling:

In English we often use the word "soul" not in a religious sense.

Perhaps you have evidence for the great goddess at the time of the formalization of the HB which is the era we are dealing with.

I'm very happy to accept that Asherah was popular even in Persian post-exilic times.

You may be right about the OP. I worked from the notions of "modern Judaism" and the "OT" to go back as far as possible under these conditions to the roots of modern Judaism and the formatuion of the HB.


spin

Magdlyn

Of course. We do not need to look at the start of the Christian era for first evidence of accepted Jewish scripture. Note to OP, I say accepted scripture-accepted as legitimate teaching, not that every word was considered the direct word of YHWH.


Diana at Ephesus?

Do you mean evidence the Jews were still worshiping a goddess ca 1st cent CE? If they were (and some were, as the region Jesus was said to spring from was known as the Galilee of the Gentiles), it was unorthodox by that point.

But I have not studied the Hellenistic period enough to know, region by region, what Jewish belief/worship was like outside of Jerusalem. Perhaps goddess worship by that time was seen as a symbol of the oppressors, the Greeks and the Romans?


I think the OP was assuming a monolithic Judaism (identical to modern Judaism) going back +/- 1000 yrs BCE. He was basing his ideas on one half-watched TV show. He seems to be unaware of Talmud and other CE writings which inform modern Judaism.

muidiri

Did a concensus ever get reached here? I got pretty lost along the way.

So do modern jews think that their scriptures are directly inspired by god - thus making them the direct words of god?
If they do... then has this always been the case?
If it has not always been the case, then roughly when did this practice become popular?

I thought it was an interesting question... but I'm having trouble finding an answer here.

Magdlyn

I treid to help by posting a link to "What Jews Believe" from an orthodox website.

I kind of resent spin going off on the OP for daring to call Tanakh the OT. Major thread derailment. I think it was an interesting original question and deserves a serious answer.

Toto

My apologies for not catching the derailment and making it a separate thread. I've been too busy splitting Willowtree threads. But I guess it is never too late.

Split off here

rlogan

"He" is a "she".

Magdlyn - your point about what is "traditional" is taken, but to be fair spin was being more precise in speaking to the temple-based tradition.

Sorry to see you guys arguing.

It is true that the OP spoke to "Jewish Scriptures", and who knows what the documentary meant by that.

Since it refers to the Kingdom of David one has to wonder what their take was on what the "Kingdom of David" actually was too. That preceded the Pentateuch in any case.

heh - could be a non-issue in that (for example) the pentateuch was not accepted as the written word of God in 1000 BCE because it wasn't even written until centuries later. When it was written it wasn't history anyway.

I better clam up because I didn't see the show...

Magdlyn

Oh, thanks for the correction. Sorry, greyline!

But even that tradition evolved from century to century. (Refer to Josiah "finding" Torah [probably the newly written Deutoronomy] in the Temple when housecleaning!) Assuming it didn't leads to the kind of confusion greyline seemed to be experiencing.

Not arguing, debating. Why feel sorry for an exchange of viewpoints? That is why I come here. If we all agreed, there would be no point to conversation.