steve_bnk

This is derail, carry it over to the new thread.

mbczion

Link?

steve_bnk

post 179

semiopen

I'm sure I haven't misled the masses or built my career on destroying values so there is still hope.

Of course the destroyers aren't that bad either.

I've been checking to see if I'm related to Rabbi Yitzchok of Volozhin.

From Chabad

I've had guys at Shul go on about how nasty the Misnagdim were.

But the groups got together to oppose Haskala- enlightenment.

Probably I'm not related to him, my family was very religious but nobody I'm aware of ever became a Rabbi.

Anyway the point is, who were the good guys and who were the bad guys?

J-D

You acknowledge an 'inception' and a 'starting point', so we're in agreement as far as that goes.

Apart from that, your explanation is clearly incorrect in at least one respect, the reference to 'the most important deities they needed for day-to-day life', since nobody needs any deities for day-to-day life.

Your reference to 'the Canaanite government' is also dubious; there is no reason to think there was such a thing.

outhouse

Your somewhat correct for my use of "Government" but there were civilizations with certain people in charge that would have kept their religion alive. Point noted



Im sorry but if you follow these primitive peoples culture, you would understand how important deities were to these people. They used deities for war, fertility, famine, storms, ect ect ect



Here is some more information fresh off the press lol this shows in Israel in Jerusalem at 1000 BC the oldest alphabet and writing is factually Canaanite.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/inscr...say-6C10593636

J-D

You're not sorry, so don't say you are.

You are confusing deities with people's beliefs about deities. It is true to say that people's beliefs about deities are important to them, but it is not true to say that they need deities.

Lack of clarity in the way you express yourself to one side, it seems that your explanation for the origin of Judaism appears to boil down to this: some people who had previously worshipped multiple gods stopped worshipping all but one of them.

Problems with this explanation include the following: you have given no explanation of why they originally, in the first place, whenever that was, started worshipping the one god who became the god of Judaism; you have given no explanation of why they later stopped worshipping all the others; and no evidence has been produced to support your story.

outhouse

False. Deities were needed to these primitive people.

When there were little medical treatments and little understanding of the natural world around them.

Asherah was used as a fertility Godess by many accounts, in a world where one in five died before the age of 5 and some 25% [I believe, im close] died within 48 hours.

In reality no one needs a deity as it is mythology, but these people viewed these as real in their daily lives and needed them from fertility of domesticated animals to health care.


Only if you have reading issues.

I have explained this quite clearly already, and not once does anything I wrote sound like your version at all.

I stated displaced Canaanites started worshipping unknown amounts of many previous Canaanite deities. Staring at 1200 BC. By 1000 BC they used 4 of the previous Canaanite deities and possibly a 5th a sun god, by 800 BC we see Els attributes give to Yahweh including his wife Ssherah. Asherah soon turned into a cult status and Baal also no longer worshipped. Until 622 BC the people were both Polytheistic, henotheistic and monotheistic and multi cultural. In 622 king Josiah instituted monotheism to Yahweh by his political power. this loyalty to Yahweh was not widely accepted for hundreds of years

You that sounds just like what you wrote above :constern02:


Stop your errors right there.

I told you when Yahweh was redacted in the bible under a strict Yahwist King Josiah after 622 BC multiple times. But that is part of the evolution of Judaism, not its beginning. Monotheism was not widely accepted for hundreds of years.

Yahweh factually evolved within these cultures.


Boloney, do I have to go back and pull up the exact explanation and links.?

I also posted Karen Armstrongs view of how the religion evolved into Monotheism.


You have other issues here that have nothing to do with Judaism or Israelites.

I told you that some early tribes started giving all Els attributes to Yahweh known around 800 BC that does not reflect all of the people but certain geographic locations. We know by biblical text that after monotheism was instituted after 622 BC that not all the people were on board.

Quote:
Israelite monotheism evolved gradually out of pre-existing beliefs and practices of the ancient world.[71] The religion of the Israelites of Iron Age I, like the Canaanite faith from which it evolved[72] and other ancient Near Eastern religions, was based on a cult of ancestors and worship of family gods (the "gods of the fathers").[73] Its major deities were not numerous – El, Asherah, and Yahweh, with Baal as a fourth god, and perhaps Shamash (the sun) in the early period.[74] By the time of the early Hebrew kings, El and Yahweh had become fused and Asherah did not continue as a separate state cult,[74] although she continued to be popular at a community level until Persian times.[75] Yahweh, later the national god of both Israel and Judah, seems to have originated in Edom and Midian in southern Canaan and may have been brought north to Israel by the Kenites and Midianites at an early stage.[76] After the monarchy emerged at the beginning of Iron Age II, kings promoted their family god, Yahweh, as the god of the kingdom, but beyond the royal court, religion continued to be both polytheistic and family-centered as it was also for other societies in the ancient Near East.[77]

outhouse

Judaism is not just religion, it is philosophy and a way of life to these Israelites

This is important for you to understand


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism

Judaism does not fit easily into conventional Western categories, such as religion, ethnicity, or culture. Boyarin suggests that this in part reflects the fact that much of [BJudaism's more than 3,000-year history][/B] predates the rise of Western culture and occurred outside the West (that is, Europe, particularly medieval and modern Europe). During this time, Jews have experienced slavery, anarchic and theocratic self-government, conquest, occupation, and exile; in the Diasporas, they have been in contact with and have been influenced by ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenic cultures, as well as modern movements such as the Enlightenment (see Haskalah) and the rise of nationalism, which would bear fruit in the form of a Jewish state in the Levant. They also saw an elite convert to Judaism (the Khazars), only to disappear as the centers of power in the lands once occupied by that elite fell to the people of Rus and then the Mongols. Thus, Boyarin has argued that "Jewishness disrupts the very categories of identity, because it is not national, not genealogical, not religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension."[68]


This states history beyond monotheism.

DCHindley

Yes you do. What appears to you to be as plain as day, the truth of which only an idiot cannot see, is not as obvious as you think it is. We don't know what you have read, or whether we have read the same things as you have. We all also interpret what we read based on the sum total of all the information we have individually been exposed to. No two persons will ever hold exactly the same understanding of things.

That is argumentation by authority, not argumentation by facts. If you want to agree with the opinions of others who you consider authorities, then go ahead, but cite their work (or their web pages) and restate what you think their points were.

At this point in the discussion, I'm going to recommend Morton Smith's Palestinian Parties & Politics that Shaped the Old Testament (1971).

CONTENTS

I

The Old Testament and Its Interpretation i

II

Religious Parties among the Israelites before 587 i j

III

“Hellenization” 57

IV

The Survival of the Syncretistic Cult of Yahweh 82

V

From Nebuchadnezzar to Nehemiah 99

VI

Nehemiah 126

VII

From Nehemiah to Antiochus Epiphanes 148

FWIW, this is the only one of Smith's monographs that Rabbi Jacob Neusner thinks is worthy of notice. Neusner, who once was a student under Smith and edited a festschrift dedicated to him full of his praises, in time came to despise him.

DCH