Dharma

I was surprised to learn about the Jewish caste system and the fact that NO regular religious text book or comparative religion text book cares to talk about the Jewish organizational system, but loves to talk about the Hindu caste system, which I consider an act of western scholarly bias or ignorance. Ofcourse, the Jewish caste system isn't as well defined since they were scattered as a people, whereas Hindus were never scattered and thus the caste system lives on and Hinduism also has a longer history...

http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abs...en-levite.html
http://www.haruth.com/LembaAfricansJewishAncestry.html

The Jewish castes are organized along tribal lines:

1)Cohanim priests are from the Levi Tribe of Moses from Aaron
2)Levi protect the temple and make sure no Israelite enters the temple
3)Warrior tribes seem to be from the tribe of Judah, the tribe of King David from whom the next messiah, King of Israel is supposed to come.
4)Israelites are everyone else and are forbidden to enter the temple
5) untouchables are the Gentiles or non-jews with whom Jews refused to eat with since they were considered unclean, I will post evidence from the New testament if someone wishes..

1,2 and 4 caste system was developed by Moses...with King David altering that a bit...

Interestingly enough Jesus never opposed the caste system since he claimed to come to "fulfill the law" not oppose it.
and the Quran praises Moses as one of the greats...

in other words, Christianity and Islam both indirectly praise this system...

Anat

I have serious suspicions about any historical basis for the supposed warrior caste, since historical evidence for a unified kingdom lead by Judah is lacking. There were 2 kingdoms, one of which was mostly the tribe of Judah with some additional elements. This is the one that survived longer and its decendants got to write history, so there you have it.

The 3-part 'caste' system of Kohanim, Leviim and Israel was definitely active in second temple times (it is thought that the laws pertaining to the priesthood were probably compiled during or after the Babylonian exile, very unclear what of it was in place in earlier times), and remnants of it are still active today (for example a Kohen male cannot marry a divorcee).

Dharma

I asked a Jewish scholar and she told me that the story of King David is after the original 5 books of Moses, if we remember Moses never made it to Israel or ruled over it ...so the Tribe of Judah in the line of King David is accorded a new covenant which exceeds the Mosaic covenant, in which the next Jewish messiah (king) will come who will unite all the 12 Tribes of Israel once again and bring back Israel under Mosaic law...

So although the Tribe of Judah by itself is not OFFICIALLY accorded a 'warrior" tribe status (perhaps I might be wrong since there is a saying "the lion of Judah")
however, the next messiah or King of Israel can only be descended from this tribe in the line of David...so, indirectly King David and Solomon made this tribe a "warrior clan"...

Toto

I can't see how gentiles can be considered comparable to the Untouchables, since 1) gentiles have always been able to convert to Judaism 2) gentiles are not confined to cleaning toilets.

Dharma

ah, again lack of knowledge clearly leads to a biased sense of history,

That is due to your ignorance of what an untouchable is...you can become an untouchable by ...
1)outcaste, in other words you were kicked out of your caste,
some were criminals who were forced to live at the margins of
society, forced to clean toilets, some of course returned and
became kings and sages and were reconverted...
2)foreigners and outsiders who were considered ritually unclean,
and you were not to eat with them.
3)those who lost in wars...
4) Yogi heretics, who are outcastes by choice...


I am not aware ofwhat Jews did to those Jews who broke their laws, I think according to Mosaic laws, those who break religious laws or are criminals were killed and you were allowed to lord over slaves who would clean your toilets...

However, here we have an instance in the New Testament of gentiles considered unclean :

Gal 2:11-14 11But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to
the face, because he was to be blamed. 12For before that certain came
from James, HE DID EAT with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he
withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the
circumcision. 13And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him;
insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.

This is an exerpt from a site I can't find anymore:

However, it was exceedingly difficult for Jews to go to Gentiles with
the gospel. They were taught from their birth that Gentiles were
unclean and were to be avoided. This was so engrained into their
culture that most Jews considered Gentiles little higher on the
hierarchy of importance than DOGS. Their traditional law forbade
eating with Gentiles, and contact with them made one unclean.

http://www.realtime.net/~wdoud/topics/jewsheathen.html

The first section is a quotation from from Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.

"And then, as the proud Roman passed on the Sabbath through the streets, Judaism would obtrude itself upon his notice, by the shops that were shut, and by the strange figures that idly moved about in holiday attire. They were strangers in a strange land, not only without sympathy with what passed around, but with marked contempt and abhorrence of it, while there was that about their whole bearing, which expressed the unspoken feeling, that the time of Rome's fall, and of their own supremacy, was at hand.

"To put the general feeling in the words of Tacitus, the Jews kept close together, and were ever most liberal to one another; but they were filled with bitter hatred of all others. They would neither eat nor sleep with strangers; and the first thing which they taught their proselytes was to despise the gods, to renounce their own country, and to rend the bonds which had bound them to parents, children or kindred...",

"To begin with, every Gentile child, so soon as born, was to be regarded as unclean. Those [Gentiles] who actually worshipped mountains, hills, bushes, etc, idolaters, should be cut down with the sword. But as it was impossible to exterminate heathenism, Rabbinic legislation kept certain definite objects in view, which may be summarized:

* To prevent Jews from being inadvertently led into idolatry
* To avoid all participation in idolatry
* Not to do anything which might aid the heathen in their worship; and, beyond all this...
* Not to give pleasure, or even help, to heathens. The latter involved a most dangerous principle, capable of almost indefinite application by fanaticism."

From the Talmudic Tractate Abhodah Zarah, on the subject of idolatry, paraphrased - Even the Mishnah goes so far as to forbid aid to a mother in the hour of her need, or nourishment to her babe, in order not to bring up a child for idolatry. But this is not all. Heathens were, indeed, not to be forced into danger, but yet not to be delivered from it. "The best among the Gentiles, Kill; the best among serpents, crush its head."

Anat

The story of the Davidic empire all over the supposed promised land is a legend created by later generations for ideological reasons. By the time that happened most of the northern tribes had lost their identity - partially through exile and partially by intermingling with other populations, some of which were brought as exiles from their own home countries. Thus the story of Judah's primacy and God's covenant with David is an after-the-fact explanation of Judah's longer survival and propaganda intended to justify Judahite rule on the northern part of the land. Divisions between individual Israelite tribes, as opposed to between kingdoms, weren't emphasized much since the formation of the monarchies. And although one of the leaders of the returning from exile was a descendant of the House of David (and Jesus claimed Davidian descent) the lineage is merely symbolic beyond the 6th century BCE.

Also, if you are into Messianism, Messiah-ben-David is to be preceeded by Messiah-ben-Joseph. (And the lion symbolized other tribes as well. There is an instance where it symbolizes Dan.)

Diogenes the Cynic

If there is any historical truth to some aspects of Jesus' ministry such as common dining, ritual healing of lepers and the sentiments expressed in some of his sayings (all the stuff about "the least among you," "Blessed are the poor," and "the last shall be first,") then Jesus was challenging the class system.

See Crossan's writings about open commensality amd what he calls "radical egalitarianism" for details.

Dharma

I'm not sure as to the dating of David's story in the Bible that we currently read, however there was some semitic king named Sargon around 2300 bce and we find mention of such names as "daud" and "abarama" and "esaum", so one can say that these figures were there from an ancient time, but not sure if the 5 books of Moses came later or during this time...

so David seems more than some character dreamed up by later Jews...

Dharma

I'm not sure if Jesus came to contradict Mosaic law, which forbade non-Levitical or Cohanim priests,i.e.Israelites or gentiles, to enter the temple. Even Jesus came to "fulfill" the covenant and the law, not break it.

He also stated a couple of times "I have only come for the children of Isreal" and "only go on to the children of Israel" and once did insultingly refer to a canaanite and her child as "dogs"...

so whatever Jesus said, there seems to be an "antiJesus" contradiction in all of his statements, atleast from what we find in the New testament as it is translated.

Clivedurdle

This is probably a reasonably correct statement, but it touches on thousands of shibboleths!

One of the main ways of peoples around the world to organise themselves has been in tribal and caste systems - probably universal.

We in the West have a major struggle with this because it is about moving to a modernist perspective - see the thread about Newton.

For various reasons, the monotheistic religions have pretended to be more enlightened than the heathen polytheists, when the reality is there is not much if any difference. The monotheists are probably hiding in the coat tails of modernism - they propagandise how they abolished slavery and wife burning for example - but it is interesting they did not do this before enlightenment ideas were around.

It is not easy to say that Judaism, Christianity and Islam have huge elements of tribal, caste shamanistic and other superstitious thinking in them - but that is how it is!