Joan of Bark

Of course they are not historical, but they tell us a lot about the beliefs and mindsets of those that wrote them.

Clouseau

If you guys could make up your minds....

Magdlyn

Actually, Jews are well aware of "Leviticus," altho they do not call it that. Jews over the centuries have found the odd laws (or "blessings", mitzvot) of Leviticus so hard and confusing, they have written down centuries worth of rabbinical argument about how to interpret and apply them. This is called the Talmud. Orthodox Jews (imo, naively) believe the Talmud is an "Oral Torah" which was given to Moses by YHWH at Sinai along with the written one, to help his people follow his laws and receive his blessings.

All of our 21st century, Christian, or atheist, non-Jewish meanderings here are totally irrelevant to current Jewish thought.

Most of the mitzvot have been irrelevant anyway, since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE.

Magdlyn

I see you have never spoken to a Jew on this subject. Jews do not acknowledge any "demands of Christ." To an Orthodox Jew, Jesus was a minor rabbi, and not the mosiach. To a Reform or secular Jew, Jesus may not have existed (as many atheists here also suspect) so is even more irrelevant.

OTOH, "Leviticus," as part of Torah, is quite important, as a cultural artifact at the very least, to the Jewish people as a whole. Many Jews think that it is extremely odd that Gentiles have appropriated the Jewish Holy Scripture and added to it and misinterpreted it so very badly.

Now feel free to ignore all this and post a silly non-sequiter, as is your wont.

Magdlyn

I'll address this, since Clouseau obviously can't.

Jesus spoke as a rabbi and as a Hillelian Pharisee, at that. The mitzvot of Leviticus are obviously confusing and seemed harsh, in the 1st Century CE, as today.

Jesus the proto-rabbi seemed to think life-saving benefit overruled Torah. He also cited precedent, from centuries earlier, when David and his men ate bread offered to YHWH in the Temple, surely a much greater offense than scraping off a few grains of wheat from a field, as Jesus's men were accused of.

Jesus said: "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath." (It is my understanding that when the Judean elite were exiled to Babylon and could not perform animal sacrifice at the Temple[s], they needed another way to worship and remain cohesive ethnically. The "laws", including dietary and sabbatical ones, were written for this purpose. Since they were enslaved, telling their captors an "ancient myth" that showed their powerful god didn't allow them to work one day a week was a pretty good scam, apparently.)

Jews today, following the interpretations of Talmud, are allowed to save a life or limb on the Sabbath. If someone needed to go to the hospital, Jews, even the Orthodox, are allowed, even commanded, to hop in a car and drive the injured party there.

Not just a human life. If your donkey falls in a well on shabbat, you may pull him out as well.

In a related note, sick babies may not be circumcised on the 8th day. Only healthy babies may be circed on the 8th day.

The Talmud provides all sorts of wiggle room.

Riverwind

Of course, it was evolution that yielded all the wiggle room the Talmud, the "final product", provided. The Mishnah, which came first, didn't provide quite as much of that wiggle room. The traditions found in the Mishnah were likely very similar to the "traditions of men" to which Jesus referred and rejected. It is, IMHO, that the Tosefta and Talmuds opened up more wiggle room because of the rational influence and interpretation that Jesus had first given.

Quite correct in your overall analysis, though, except that if you are really tying Jesus to Hillel there is no evidence for such a claim.

Clouseau

Perhaps there is significance in the fact that I have. The reaction of the world and the worldly to the message of Christ was one of fear and hatred, as Jesus' message indeed prophesied. Here was a man who demanded his control of one's whole life, one's inner life, secret motives being exposed to his searching eyes, through his church. Here was a man who said that keeping the commandments was not enough; few Jews committed murder or fornication, but hatred was all-inclusive, as was looking at the opposite sex in the wrong way; and they too were enough to send to hell. This was simply too much to bear, for Jew and Gentile alike.

Much of the known world, dominated by the corrupt, troubled Roman Empire, reacted with determination that this man's teaching was not going to get a hold on society; following Christ was made illegal for centuries, until it finally dawned on the Romans that 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'. So citizens of the empire thereafter enjoyed a sort of immunity from the demands of the gospel- they were already Christians because they had been baptised, because their own ruler said they were, and nobody was going to argue, who wanted to live long. The Arabs, who had no suitable connexion with the early church, eventually followed suit, with their own umbrella religion to keep bad consciences from all, with no exceptions.

What of the Jews? They were soon deprived of Temple, sacrificial system, and even Promised Land. There can have been very few of them who did not wonder if God had abandoned them because they had rejected Jesus as their Messiah. Those who did not must have wondered whether Judaism had ever been any more than a myth. But, like Europeans and Arabs, many Jews needed an umbrella to shield them from the gaze of God, so they carried on as best they could, as they still do.

But for the fantasy, or the fact, of Christ, as one decides, there would have been no 'Catholic Church' and no Islam, and, due to disillusionment and apparent rejection, Judaism would quite probably by now have simply died away into a long-forgotten historical religion.

Magdlyn

Then why does none of your following preaching reflect that? I'm guessing you talked to one misinformed Jew.

Wrong. The "world" (whatever you mean by that...) remained mostly ignorant of Jesus and his followers who claimed to follow him as a king, god, teacher or something in between. Roman emperors were mixed in their attitudes towards the Xians, and mostly reluctantly punished them for sedition/treason.

Jesus was not alone in this. Contrary to "the gospels," the Pharisees, including Hillel and Shammai, and the Essenes as well in Qumran, were also involved in "building a hedge around Torah", or purifying it. There were quite a few competing Jewish sects at the time, reacting to Hellenization (culturally) and Romanization (politically). "Jesus" (if he existed) was just one more street corner apocalyptic preacher warning The End is Near, Get Ready. In a rough Galillean accent. And of course, he was wrong anyway.

Surely you know Jews have a yearly Day of Atonement, after speaking to your Jewish friend.


Interesting spin on history, but flabby and incorrect, marred by bias. Sorry. Too far off topic to be addressed here.

Clouseau

Too far unbelievable to need any reply.

Magdlyn

"Too far unbelievable" that you have not studied even a little bit about Judaism, 1st cent CE or current? Are not familiar with Hillel and have not heard of Yom Kippur? Are not, indeed, at all familiar with the history of your own religion, outside of predigested whitewashed pap?

Quite.

Try another thread for your sermons, Falwell lite.