Regardless of how a non-adherent interprets the "plain text" of holy writings, he/she need acknowledge that such an interpretation is irrrelevant where it contradicts the interpretation held by adherents.
It would be wrong to state "this is what their Scripture says"--when it does not, per its adherenets.
That would be a misrepresentation of their beliefs.
I would do mostly as you have done: share your concerns and questions and ask how Believers understand and interpret their Scripture. Then you can understand (even if you don't believe) and can truthfully inform others (if asked)what a Scripture says and teaches as understood by its adherents.
I certainly don't go about misrepresenting Jews' beliefs to others, if someone asked me about Jews' beliefs offline or online, I'd probably say the stuff you said about them-that they interpret it as changeable
Of course, I realise that saying Jews interpret their texts literally is a misrepresentation of their
beliefs, but saying that the text writes so-& so isn't a
misrepresentation of their text.
Thus claiming that the text says working on the Sabbath merits the death penalty isn't at all saying that Jews executed those working on Sabbath day, its just saying that a text says this.
All believers in modernity have managed to reinterpret their texts to make room for changes, even Wahhabis accepted that slavery is unacceptable in modernity but if an outsider reads the text-that isn't quite the message which comes across.
Also, I must mention here that when I say I'm not a fan of so & so theology-it meant what I read in the book rather than the way adherents have explained it to themselves & lead their lives in the modern world. The book of Deuteronomy still says stone right?
I really like the way Jews practice their faith currently.
Are you shore it is "many"?
What percent of Jews would you state share this belief?
Again, when you quote scholars and statistics, please provide the original source. Thank you.
The Bris millah has nothing to do with either lessening of sexual pleasure (i.e. the inference of a benefit against premature ejaculation), nor with masturbation, nor even with lessoning of penile disease (despite the first and the last being potential benefits). The single reason for circumcision in Judaism is it is commanded by G-d as the covenant between Him and the Jewish people for eternity (Beresheis 17:1-14).
Umm, that site did provide Maimondes' words, I've given Maimondes words from another site in my next post.
I am fully aware that the reason for circumcision wasn't about masturbation or sexual pleasure but an integral part of the Covenant, what Maimondes was speaking of was the additional benefits of circumcision, quite apart from the covenant with God, in these additional benefits he mentioned that it would curb masturbation & reduce sexual pleasure. Also, I'm sure that the Jews in this link don't want it outlawed as its barbaric, although barbaric is a matter of perspective-they see a lot of pain in the ritual & not much use-thats'
their perspective, not my comments.
This is true of people without faith as well (atheists, agnostics, humanists, etc.).
Well, atheism simply means-there is no God-so even if people are attached to that belief, they don't have reason to say that their No God wanted apostates killed once, or non virgins stoned once but now with their deeper understanding of the world-that has changed.
No God doesn't mean anything more than plain disbelief, there is nothing morally super about atheism, nor morally troubling-its plain disbelief. Yes, atheists can be racist, sexist, fooliosh & vile & often have been-but the simple statement of No God does not have the additional burden of outdated values. Nor for that matter does plain theism-theist means that there is a god\s-this does not burden believers with any Divine text with anachronistic values which have to be rationalized away creatively, it simply means that God exists.
For followers of God as stated in Divine texts, however, there is the difficulty of accepting a God who says sexist, unscientific or inappropriate stuff & still believing.
Understanding does not mean "explain away." A personal moral judgment today (I submit derived for most of the world population from ethical teachings of scripture) need be recognized as a moment in time with inherent bias. Understanding is gained by acknowledging the context contemporary with the event, the relationship with related events and Teachings in Scripture, and the growth in understanding that has occurred down to the present day, In other words, to have a worldview that is not solely founded on one's self as the determinant of truth but on being open to the whole to gain the Truth and make it relevant for one's self.
It's that "The beginning of all wisdom is ..." adage I am sure you know well.
Or that as religious people cannot really abandon their faith as man made, they will still accept parts of the text as containing universal wishdom, & the anachronistic parts as being only relevant to a particular time.
Many ancient texts, or accepted codes of behavior of primitive folks will contain Universal Knowledge-most folks would have laws against theft, adultery, murder & so forth which can always be of great value.
Yet ancient folks will often also have unpleasant practices-stoning adulteresses, sexual double standards, religious bigotry etc. People will retain the good, dump the bad & say that God\s said such stuff for a different era, rather than accepting that it wasn't God but people of a particular time period who said such stuff.
Anne Lammott said, "You can safely say that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that He hates the very same people as you do."
Primitive people would hate homosexuals-so does God. Virginity is something men like & would like even more in a primitive society without DNA texts-God proclaims a strict punishment for non virgins as well. Primitive people would believe that its always a woman who's infertile, never the man or at least always try to blame the woman, the Bible has plenty of barren women but never an infertile man.Sexual double standards are something many ancient societies would have, God has sexual double standards for men & women too-men can have more than one wife, but a married woman can't commit adultery or take a second husband. All this seems to show that the text was written down by primitive people who included some universally applicable pearls of wishdom in it no doubt-yet who also had sexist, religiously intolerant natures & limited knowledge of our world.
Would it not be more factual to state that the more noble ideas are present in Scripture (e.g. also in regard to slavery), the US Constitution, the Magna Carta, etc.--but Man needed to mature into them? Recall human beings are not perfect, but we do have admireable ideals and the perseverance despite our selfish nature to achieve them. This is even stated at the very beginning of Torah:
הֲלוֹא אִם-תֵּיטִיב, שְׂאֵת, וְאִם לֹא תֵיטִיב, לַפֶּתַח חַטָּאת רֹבֵץ; וְאֵלֶיךָ, תְּשׁוּקָתוֹ, וְאַתָּה, תִּמְשָׁל-בּוֹ.
If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up? and if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door; and unto thee is its desire, but thou mayest rule over it.' --Beresheis 4:7
Sure, that is a correct interpretation as well, except that the U.S. Constitution was accepted as a man made document & there is no Divine origin accorded to it, thus if it says that blacks don't have the same rights as whites in the 18th century but amends it later, I can easily accept that it human made & fallible-yet if God's name was attached to it, it would seem strange that God seems to endorse black slavery. Religious or ethical texts more often than not contain stuff which are universally applicable as well as stuff like racism, sexism, tribalism which are not universally applicable.
If the text does not claim to come from God, its easy to explain its flaws, if it claims to come from God, its far more difficult. Claiming imperfect human beings at a particular point of time framed laws & rules, some of which have universal applicability & some of which are not applicable today, is easy, claiming that God gave such laws to people is more difficult to accept. Then God seems like the way some people have managed to codify their sexual prejudices & intolerances into laws rather than a
Real God.
Prhaps not. There is another Talmudic parable (itself 2000 years old):
When Moses ascended on high he found the Holy One engaged in affixing coronets to the letters. Said Moses, "Lord of the Universe, who do you thus?" He answered, "There will arise a man, many generations from now, Akiva ben Joseph by name, who will extract from every tittle heaps and heaps of laws." Said Moses, "Lord of the Universe, permit me to see him." He replied, "Turn around." Moses went and sat down behind eight rows [of R. Akiva's students] and listened to the discourses on the law. Unable to fully follow their arguments, he was ill at ease; but when, coming to a certain subject, the students said to the master, "How do you know this?" And the latter replied, "It is a law given to Moses at Sinai." Moses smiled and was pleased.--Talmud, Menachot 29
Well, Judaism is around a 3000 year old faith, so by 2000 years ago, Jews had already been around for a millennia, they had come under Roman rule, been exposed to different laws & different faiths, similar to Western Muslims today who've been exposed to different lifestyles, ideas & ideals. Multicultural Europe & multicultural ancient Rome are quite different from the Prophets' time & worldview, but that is a lovely parable anyway.
As blanket statements go (and I tend to abhor them), one could say that there is nothng in Hebrew Scripture that can solely be interpreted literally.
Except these Teachings predate Roman occupation of Judea and the Diaspora when Israel had self-rule. Thus, later "subjugation" seems not to be the determinant for why apostates where not killed evven when Israel was an independent nation in ancient times.
The determinant was the Jewish interpretation of the Law.
Israel wasn't ever as big & flourishing a civilization as say Egypt, Mesopotemia or Rome, so that many texts can't be found-& as far as stories go, there are stuff like Jephtha's daughter too which I'm not sure are historical. Anyway, I really liked Jews ability to interpret their texts in this way, as I've said before-but if I read God's word where He starts off by saying, "What I am now telling you, you must keep & observe, adding nothing to it, taking nothing away," & then commands to stone & show no pity-it isn't a very ambiguous statement by God.
The other two Abrahamic faiths, heavily influenced by Judaism, Islam & Christianity kept the capital punishment for apostasy for millennia, thats' well documented-Islam still retains capital punishment for apostasy in many countries-its a great credit to Jews that they haven't done so, if they desisted from doing so when they had such opportunity.
There is no physical evidence of any events described in Scripture prior to Omri, Similarly, there is no physical evidence of Buddha, Jesus, even Mohammed and he was fairly recent.
I know David, and his point is: it does not matter. It does not matter if there is no physical evidence of the Exodus, of Moses, of the receipt of Torah at Mount Sinai, etc. What matters are the lessons and Teachings that formed a Belief, a human understanding of the purpose of the universe and our place within it, and how we should live well and righteously in the short span we all have.
Sure, it doesn't matter to believers whether the Exodus occured, nor to me but in the absence of any Exodus,the excuse that the law of "stone your wife\kids\friends etc for apostasy" does not hold water either. That is the reason given for the intolerant verse right? So no Exodus, that verse seems just religiously intolerant, intolerant in a way that the Papyrus of Ani isn't & there was no justification for that intolerance either if it wasn't made by persecuted ex slaves-many, if not most, other people of the time didn't have such religious intolerant scriptures.
This intolerance later became enshrined into Christianity & Islam, when they ruthlessly persecuted millions for following different god\s or different sects of the same god, millions died as aresult of Islamic jihads. Monotheistic Jews lived absolutely free from anti Semitism in polytheistic India, rather than in the lands of fellow Abrahamic faiths. They also seemed to have lived free from persecution in pre Islamic Mecca, from Islamic Scriptures themselves, we learn of people like Kaab ibn al Ashraf, whose father was a pagan, mother a Jew & according to halacha he was raised as a Jew, he even became leader of a Jewish tribe-later he was slaughtered by monotheistic Muhammad, Muhammad's monotheistic Islam also cleansed out all other faiths from the region known as Saudi today.
"Jains do, however, believe in a "perfect universal presence," as well as multiple deities who dwell in the heavens. As mentioned above, the realm of the gods consists of higher and lower gods. "
--Jains do, however, believe in a "perfect universal presence," as well as multiple deities who dwell in the heavens. As mentioned above, the realm of the gods consists of higher and lower gods.
"Jain Gods are innumerable and their number is continuously increasing as more living beings attain liberation"
--http://www.jainuniversity.org/jainism_god.aspx
"While adherents are taught to adhere to the call upon self-restraint and self-reliance, they have, nevertheless, recourse for help from a large number of gods and goddesses who are evoked to help assist in worldly matters. "
--http://www.xploreheartlinks.com/jainism.htm
Well, Jains do call upon god\s because there's an acceptance that humans can't do without them, its founder Mahavira was a non believer in god & gods don't punish people for seeking a better life. Jainism like Buddhism preaches universal human equality.
This was what separated Jewish Law from earlier legal codes. And this has been carried through to today, in Western contries, where there will be people of different socioeconomic status, but the Law is the same for all.
Did the ancient Jews manage to become a universally equal faith with absolute gender equality, equality of polytheists, equality of gays & democracy in the ancient world? Nope, they didn't.
There was a hereditary King, only his son could become King-
not his daughter &
not a commoner. That King often did as he pleased, like David if he lusted for a subject's wife, he could send that subject to die in battle-God would kill their first son(what did the baby do?) but accept David's repentance & let the second boy live.The soldier was not King because monarchy passed from father to son. Of course, there was gross inequality of women, homosexuals, polytheists & so forth.
Western nations were also feudal(with definite advantages for the rulers' & nobility's kids), sexist & religiously intolerant for millennia, Islamic nations still are. The Westerners also had the benefit of having acquired & accepted the Graeco Roman heritage. Thus they had a religious law & a secular law. From the very beginning-scholars like St Aquinas had tried to fuse Greaco Roman thought with their theology. Rome was also a multicultural, multi faith society, which gave Europe the principles of different faiths cohabiting & the idea of Caesar & God being separate. Other Charters of Human Rights have been issued in the past,
like King Cyrus's Charter, yet that had full freedom of religion & even outlawed slavery, millennia before monotheistic U.S.A. outlawed the slavery of
Ham's descendents.
When real changes came to Europe for the first time, the people turned to Aristotle's reason, Greek philosophy & Cicero's writings. The French Revolutionaries & Enlightenment philosophers were greatly influenced by Graeco Roman thought & were sometimes anti religion Deists(declaring oneself atheist at the time would have dangerous consequences). Democracty in the West too spread by this process-due to Graeco Roman influence. Greek reason & philosophies & Roman emphasis on changeable, man made laws & a multi faith society with religious freedom greatly separated Europe from the first Christian country Ethiopia(which also had substantial numbers of Islam & Judaism),individually Jewish monotheism & Graeco Roman thought didn't bring about the comprehensive equality that we see today, collectively they influenced the West.
Stuff like slavery due to Ham's curse(theological grounds) was responsible for centuries of slavery & second class treatment of people of African origin in the monotheistic West & mid East
I'm sure the
millions of black slaves who were forcibly abducted from their homelands by monotheistic Muslims & Christians because they were Ham's descendents & so destined for slavery will find claims of monotheistic human equality a rude joke. Segregation was ended in U.S.A. in the 1960's, Apartheid continued in South Africa upto the 1990-& inequality was often justified on theological grounds, even India, Japan & such polytheistic places gaves legal equality earlier.
South Africa's Apartheid Constitution defined it as a Christian nation, its post Apartheid Constitution defines it as a secular nation.
Mormonism, another Abrahamic faith,
was grossly racist on theological grounds till recent decades, no universal equality was present among them.
In fact, while both Islam & Christianity were influenced by Judaism-in Islam's case, they never fully managed to accept Greaco Roman philosophy & it was rejected in favor of plain theology. Islamic nations remained feudal & were unable to become democratic. While many nations which didn't have a Jewish-Greaco-Roman heritage have become successful democracies-the Mid east seems incapable of abandoning absolute rulers, sexist laws, religious intolerance & tribalism.
The three faiths of Christianity, Islam & Judaism are even present in African Ethiopia & have been present there for millennia, has it become a beacon of scientific advancement, rational thought & human rights?
Nope, Ethiopia has as much equality as
Iroquois, rather less than the Iroquois, Iroquois had far more gender equality-while believing in many spirits.
Topic: Solomon, Talking Ants & Hoopies!