J-D

My personal beliefs? I believe that kindness is to be preferred to cruelty. Did you have a more specific question?

J-D

The way I see it, 'Judaism' is the name of a religion. Do you see it differently?

semiopen

I guess the key word-s here is well-documented.

Judaism seems to be an exception to this.

The theological rap is that the Israelite religion was revealed to the entire people by God at Sinai. This makes it superior to all other religions. Of course there are technical problems with this, such as an actual revelation at Sinai being questionable, etc.

Judaism is an outgrowth of this. However there doesn't seem to be an overriding message, maybe the Golden_Rule

I'm not so sure about this being the cardinal principle, God supposedly said the 10 commandments at Sinai... but whatever, if you're going to be martyred it might as well be for something that is non controversial.

However to reiterate, Judaism (at least in sermons) is unique because there is no fallible guy that gave the message, it came from God.

Also Judaism is basically a collection of laws that should be followed.

Grog

No. Thanks for that. I agree with you, too.

outhouse

A homogenous religion to be specific, within multi cultural people's.


The problem many have is understanding the foundation of this religion existed before its people ever did exist.


And like all ancient religions it evolved heavily in time.



So there is no one man ever followed who started anything at its core or foundation. All one can do is pick a part at a specific time and describe how different individuals had changed it from previous views.

Davka

Absolutely. The roots of what evolved into Judaism pre-date monotheism, and certainly pre-date "the Jews."

Seems likely, but there's really no way to be certain. There may have been a Moses figure, just as there may have been a Jesus figure at the heart of Christianity. I doubt that we will ever know if either religion was started by an individual, or was more of a "crowd-sourced" faith. Nobody was taking notes at the time.

steve_bnk

We can point to known founders.

Scientology, Hubbard.
Thelma and Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley.
Mormonism, Smith.
Bahá'í. Bahá'u'lláh

and others.

The thing to observe is none of these who can be historically identified as the principal founders invented anything new. They modified and picked from existing traditions.

Figures like Buddha, Moses, Mohamed, abd Jesus go back too far for there to be any way of knowing who they actually were.


Inventing something entirely new from scratch even today is difficult.

Starting in the 60s variations in Indian traditions sprang up in the USA under transplanted myscics and gurus. Many groups still around today.

One of the most well known Transcendental Meditation.

I read somewhere in Rome for a time Judaism was actually a fad religion, the Romans liked the strong patriarchal family.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%27%C3%AD_Faith

'...In the Bahá'í Faith, religious history is seen to have unfolded through a series of divine messengers, each of whom established a religion that was suited to the needs of the time and the capacity of the people. These messengers have included Abrahamic figures as well as Dharmic ones - Krishna, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and others. For Bahá'ís, the most recent messengers are the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh. In Bahá'í belief, each consecutive messenger prophesied of messengers to follow, and Bahá'u'lláh's life and teachings fulfilled the end-time promises of previous scriptures. Humanity is understood to be in a process of collective evolution, and the need of the present time is for the gradual establishment of peace, justice and unity on a global scale.[7]..'

I don't see how the process of how Judaism likely came to be can be mystifying.

As we all are today ancient Jews existed in a larger civilization and would absorb ideas thorough a cultural osmosis. It would have been inescapable. They could not have existed in a cultural vacuum. The need for trade would preclude that.

outhouse

I would run with a single figure similar to the Moses character, if they were not multi cultural and holding different beliefs. Were talking about a culture, that was monotheistic, polytheistic, henotheistic and monolatry all at the same time.

Hard to point to just one figure that rounded everything up. We could look at Ezras contributions to monotheism, but even then, it doesnt reflect the communities as a whole.

outhouse

Problem there is Jesus was being written about decades after his death, and those circumstance match the cultural anthropology to a T for the time.


Moses is surrounded in 100% mythology in a ahistorical fabricated history, written about 700 ish years after his supposed time.


I cant see Moses as anything but fictional from a possible refrated memory

Davka

Oral histories and traditions are notoriously difficult to trace. The entire Exodus story is weird as hell. Where did that come from? Previous Egyptian occupation of Canaan? Possibly, but then why the whole "40 years in the desert" bit?

There may have been an individual who introduced (or popularized) the idea of a single god giving the law to the people - that would have been enough of a foundation. Or the whole thing could have been nothing more than stories told around the fire for generations, until they took on a life of their own.