TedM

Why do the Jewish people so strongly believe that they were chosen by God, and that their laws came from God, and why have THEY survived while other countries that also may have felt 'chosen' have not?

Have requested mod action to correct spelling in title. Sorry.

outhouse

Survived? but how well have they survived as many different cultures, beaten and oppressed and tortured, and even had a turn at the wrong end of Genocide.

Islam has built a temple on their most prozed real estate, and gods house still lay in ruins.


Your talking about concepts that evolved over thousands of years.

steve_bnk

I have only seen it broached in the media and on religion shows once or twice, If Jews are the chosen what did they do wrong for god to allow them to be treated as they have been.

Biblically, the origin is with an eccentric man called Moses who thought a god talked to him via a burning bush that was nit really burning..

Persians, Egyptians, Buddhism, Russians, Hinduism, China, Greece, Syria, Japan,. All have very long cultural continuities.

Jews survived as disparate groups with different cultures. Not very special at all. Quite the opposite. Israel today is under continuous threats.

Toto

I do not know of any national or ethnic group that has not had some sort of myth about being chosen by god or the fates.

steve_bnk

USA and conservative Christians.

outhouse

What started Judaism?


Displaced Canaanites who narrowed down the pantheon of polytheistic deities to a smaller family of deities.

Who later took on Mesopotamian mythology after they were exiled, and started compiling collections of literature and creating a new history for these multi cultural people.


Who switched to monotheism after 622 BC, and then redacted their earlier collections to reflect the monotheistic traditions the king had imposed on all the people which took hundreds of years to fully sink in, to the one god concept you ask about.

TedM

It's a matter of degree. It appears to me that Jews feel much more ethnocentric about their relationship with God than nearly every other country. They were scattered 2000 years ago. Yet, somehow that identity remained enough to re-unite in their homeland to form their own country. IF that is not unique or surprising, then I am ignorant, and would like to be corrected.

Jaybees

Some early goat-herding nomads in the general area of current Palestine/Israel were worshipping trees, the sun, pigs, mountains and various other real and imaginary features of the universe. One day, just before staging a raid on neighboring sheep-herders, and at some bearded leader's suggestion, they made sacrifices to one of the more imaginary features of that universe. It so happens, they won the battle, killed most of the males who hadn't run away, got lots of young girls and sheep to rape and ended with a big celebration and more sacrifices to that mythical being.

The success went to their heads, so they kept practicing the old techniques, addressed to the same god. Won some, lost some. What they won, they ascribed to that great god. What they lost, they blamed themselves for not doing the rituals right.

And so it went, with more wins than losses, lots of myth and writing borrowed from neighbors, scrubby shacks being replaced by a few stone structures, more ascribing of the new found wealth to mollifying that powerful god, followed by being overwhelmed several times by more powerful neighbors. They were finally left with nothing but the firm belief that their god would triumph, and that these goat-herders would win the final battle against everyone else.

-30-

steve_bnk

In reality Jews never left Palestine. Palestinian Jews armed themselves when it looked like the proposed two state solution by the UN was faltering and the Brits were pulling out.

Toto

What ethnic groups are you familiar with?

White Protestant Americans invaded North America and decided that this was their land by Divine Providence. When the Native Americans started dying off from the microbes that they brought with them, they decided that god was clearing the land for them, and this was proof.

As far as their identity remaining enough to reunite them . . . check out the history of nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. People who had mixed ethic backgrounds adopted national and ethnic identities that were manufactured from legends and tribal mythology. Then they went to war over them. Look at the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The modern nation of Israel was created ultimately out of the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, aided by Christians who thought that when the Jews returned to their homeland, the end times would be here.