Posted on 05/23/2006 10:32:19 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator
And this tradition dates from when they had that authority (though I maintain they still do).
They are as certain as that the universe is fifteen billion years old and there was no Flood, I'll grant you that. But all of those assertions are wrong.
Your attempts to date mythological people is a harmless pastime, but bald assertions that "the secularists are wrong" about true and verifiable history can serve only to persuade people that the Jews are idiots, which is not an attitude I would like to see in this forum.
These are not "my" attempts. They are from authentic Jewish Tradition as explained in my sources. Even my "bald assertion" that the secularists are wrong is an indirect quote from one of my sources.
One reason I've been posting these things the past couple weeks is to shatter the "Jewish mystique" of hyper-secular, uebersophisticated skeptics and to remind the world who the original "rednecks" really were. In fact, I maintain that reclaiming this original "primitive" Theocratic mindset is essential to prepare the world for Mashiach and Malkhut HaShamayim. Yet the Jewish image of secularized intellectual is so ingrained on the modern sensibility that even many Jews believe it, so much so that Jewish outreach has to tread extremely gently in spreading the Torah message. Personally, I am not only hurt by ridicule of my own "redneck" people for teachings they did not invent but rather inherited from Judaism, but also by the radical difference between the modern Jewish image and what one sees when one reads, say, the Book of Joshua or the Scroll of Ruth.
In other words, what I am trying to say is that you really are saying that "Jews are idiots" because the teachings you are attacking are the authentic Jewish Tradition. It's about time it was disassociated with non-Jews and re-associated with its true possessors.
I wish to make one final suggestion. I have never pinged you to any of these threads yet you have long made a habit of attacking and disputing anything I post with regard to Jewish Tradition (you once disputed that Ro'sh HaShanah was the oldest human holiday, eg). I understand from both your screen name and your posts that you are an enthusiast of the "eighteenth century" enlightenment. I am not. I am a Theocrat. So basically what I post has nothing to do with you unless and untill Mashiach comes and compels you to live by the Seven Noahide Laws. Therefore, since both of our worldviews are set in stone and neither of us is going to give, may I suggest you avoid reading these threads that so offend you? I don't hunt down your posts to argue with. I think that would be the best and most "rational" course, don't you? Live and let live!
>> And this tradition dates from when they had that authority (though I maintain they still do). <<
And on what basis do you make that assertion that the tradition is that old? Asserting through appeal to Tradition what Tradition held in the past requires that the authority to discern Tradition be held in the present.
1. The only appeal to assert the pre-Christian antiquity to the Masoretic text is Tradition itself. Historical techniques seem to contradict it, although, again, I would not allow those techniques to invalidate religious convictions.
2. The Septuagint is where the Catholic Church holds that the authority of discerning scriptual authority is held. It contradicts the dates of the Masoretic text. You would at least be in somewhat firmer ground asserting merely 144-hour creationism, than the entire dating system derived from the Masoretic text.
3. These questions are not rhetorical: What is the delimiter of Tradition, according to you? Are you asserting the year 0/ Year 1/ year 2 stuff is part of Tradition, or just a corrollary to reconcile tradition with history? How about the Kaballah? That group (sorry, I forget their names) that believe the Messiah is the 130-year-old dead guy from Brooklyn?
I'm not making light; obviously there are as many embarrassing splinter groups in the Catholic/Christian churches, if not more. My point, though, is that there is an understood repository of Tradition within the Catholic Faith. Where is the repository that holds that your dating system? Am I wrong in supposing it cannot be the Talmud? (I suppose that, despite not having read the entire Talmud, or even an entire abridgment of it, but because other Talmudic Jews don't seem to agree with you.)
Correction: that's Leviticus 25, not Leviticus 23. My apologies for the error.
The authentic text of the Torah is not to be found by the "historical critical" method which excavates ancient pointed texts from archaeological digs. It is rather to be found in the authentic kosher Torah Scroll, which is present in the 'aron of every synagogue in the world. The very rules and regulations for writing a Torah Scroll are part of the Oral Torah rather than the Written, and a Scroll must be written strictly in accordance to these rules. One rule is that an already-written Torah Scroll be kept before the scribe as he writes the new one. Another is that he must keep his mind purely focused on his task. To miscopy a single letter, or even to write something while thinking of something else, invalidates the entire thing and it has to be buried and the task begun again. Interestingly, the text of the Seifer Torah are identical throughout the world in both 'Ashkenazi and Sefaradi worlds (only the Teimanim [Yemenites], who lived for so many centuries out of contact with the rest of the Jewish world, have a few difference in the letters of the Torah and these never change the meaning of a word). Since every Torah scroll must be written on organic material, decay inevitably sets in and it must be reverently buried in a Jewish cemetary. Thus it is not the age of any Scroll that guarantees its accuracy but rather the writing process itself.
Incidentally, the text of the Torah Scroll contains only consonants. There are no vowels or punctuation. These (for which the Masoretes created symbols of their own) are actually a part of the Oral Torah even though they appear in all printed Rabbinic Bibles. Unlike Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, Orthodox Judaism has this perfect justification for its Oral Tradition!
I'm not making light; obviously there are as many embarrassing splinter groups in the Catholic/Christian churches, if not more. My point, though, is that there is an understood repository of Tradition within the Catholic Faith. Where is the repository that holds that your dating system? Am I wrong in supposing it cannot be the Talmud? (I suppose that, despite not having read the entire Talmud, or even an entire abridgment of it, but because other Talmudic Jews don't seem to agree with you.)
The translation of the Hebrew Bible into a foreign language, which removed it from its true context and made all today's false interpretations possible, is actually mourned as a tragedy (on the fast day of `Asarah BeTevet). For the Catholic Church to vouch only for the Septuagint is really not much different from cultural Protestants who insist that only the King James Version is the "true Bible."
Now, as to your claim that "other Talmudic Jews don't seem to agree" with me. First, I'm not Jewish. Second, what do you mean by "Talmudic Jews?" Do you mean actual Orthodox Jews? There are secular and non-Orthodox Jews who study the Talmud academically; these of course would not agree with the traditional chronology. It is also true that there are some Jews who call themselves "orthodox" or "traditional" but who have accepted such foreign concepts as the documentary hypothesis and who basically fit in perfectly with American secular academic culture. However (and forgive me for putting this so bluntly), this is blatant heresy. Other than this group ALL Orthodox Jews accept this chronology--even the ones who accept evolution! Did you know that one of the foremost Orthodox Jewish Theistic evolutionists, Dr. Gerald Schroeder, becomes a literalist once the text arrives at the Sixth Day and even accepts such things as a real Adam and Eve who lived precisely as Torah and Tradition teach. He even accepts the Tradition that Adam divorced Eve after Cain killed Abel and that they remained apart for 130 years until Adam presided at the divorce of Cain's descendant Lamekh, after which he went back to her and fathered Shet. And this is a man of science!!! So again, which "Talmudic Jews" disagree with "me?"
If on the other hand you are asking why don't Orthodox Jews ever talk about this stuff, I'll tell you--
I don't know! (With apologies to Tevye!)
If you are assuming that the Orthodox Jews on this forum don't agree with the chronology I summarized, then that is merely an assumption. Do they? I don't know. Perhaps they do and never talk about it outside the shul. Perhaps there are some here who really do reject it (though again, it isn't "me" they're disagreeing with). I can only say that the mystery you have highlighted, why Orthodox Jews don't make this known to the outside world is one that has plagued and befuddled me for my entire life. You can go into any Orthodox synagogue in America, ask the name of Noah's wife, and be told (as I was), yet when these same Orthodox Jews speak to the outside world it is always about prejudice, the Holocaust, or Israel, with the actual contents of Jewish teaching assumed by the outside world to be the invention of the Southern Baptist Convention. Perhaps, as I have specualated, the image of the "sophisticated secular skeptical Jewish intellectual" is so powerful that Orthodox spokesmen literally have to tiptoe to avoid offending potential returnees to Jewish practice. But ask yourself this: isn't the entire Jewish religion a mystery to most people? Everyone knows it's there but most of those people know very little about it. Do they know what a lulav cluster or a hosha`'na' bundle or seider hazkarat neshamot are? Do they know that before reading the Megillah (the Book of Esther) on Purim they recite a blessing thanking G-d for actually doing the things related in it, which would be a terrible sin (called a birkat shav') if they didn't actually happen? Unfortunately Judaism is known to the outside world almost entirely as an ethnoculture.
Once again, I assure you that whoever does or does not agree with the chronology I gave in the lead post to this thread, it is not my creation. It is entirely indirect quotations from my sources. If you go to the original post you will see a link to an online Jewish chronology. Have you clicked on it to check it out? I urge you to do so if you believe I'm making this stuff up. Some of my information came from books which I own. Rabbi Rotenberg's (zt"l) work on `Am `Olam is being translated into English and being made available. Volume I is the main source of everything I said and Rabbi Rotenberg insists over and over that this chronology is absolutely certain and sure and "we cannot do without it." He also critiques the flimsy grounds on which our "common era" count is based. This book as well as Bible Basics are available from Feldheim. Look over their inventory if you are interested in purchasing copies. I also own books published by ArtScroll. Interestingly, one of my books from this source (The Wisdom of the Hebrew Alphabet by Rabbi Michael L. Munk) has material on an issue no one has yet raised: the problem of a Phoenician-drived "palaeo-Hebrew" script as a forerunner of today's Hebrew script.
If you don't want to invest in purchasing these books then visit any Orthodox Jewish acquaintance who may have one or more of these books in his personal library. Perhaps he will allow you to borrow them. Or if it doesn't violate your conscience, attend an Orthodox shul some time and look at the books available in the library. If they have a Stone TaNa"KH be sure to look at the chronological tables in the back. Ask any member of the congregation the name of Moses' wife, or if Methuselah really did live 969 years, or how `Og Melekh HaBashan (a giant from before the Flood who was killed by Moses) survived the Flood without actually being inside the ark. Go ahead, ask. Or find an Orthodox rabbi online and ask him. I did!
With regard to your questions about the nature and authority of Jewish Tradition and in whom it is vested, I direct you to the Shavu`ot page at Aish.com. It has all sorts of material on the transmission and accuracy of the text and transmission of the Written and Oral Torah.
Finally, while you and I have sparred a bit recently, I appreciate the fact that this post of yours was respectful. I hope that, however much you disagree with me, you find this response to be equally respectful.
As for the first two paragraphs you wrote: The counter-claim is that this fantastic meticulousness which you describe originated as a response to exile. How should a non-believer know that this has always been the case, especially given the multiple variants?
>> The translation of the Hebrew Bible into a foreign language, which removed it from its true context and made all today's false interpretations possible, is actually mourned as a tragedy (on the fast day of `Asarah BeTevet). For the Catholic Church to vouch only for the Septuagint is really not much different from cultural Protestants who insist that only the King James Version is the "true Bible." <<
Actually, there is one sense in which this statement quite hits the nail on the head, but also important distinctions. And I certainly can see where the Hebrew people would mourn such a day; since the Septuagint became the basis for another religion.
The Protestants cannot claim the King James predates the Vulgate; and the Vulgate provided precisely the needed uniformity. Contrariwise, the Catholic position is that the Septuagint established a canon at a time when there was no agreement as to a Hebrew canon (The Pharisees v. The Saducees v. The Essenes v. the Diaspora), and a relative conformity of word usage at a time before the Masoretic text existed. (Obviously, you, most Jews, and even, ironically, the Vulgate's translator, believed otherwise; I also must note that such a conformity is lost to history. Nonetheless, it seems obvious to have existed at one time, since the Septuagint represents a single translation project.); contrariwise, the Council of Jamnia conceded the prevalence of the Septuagint's canon and usage among world Jewry.
The English do not, and never have, represented the bulk of Christianity, whereas Greek and Latin have each been the dominant language of Christendom.
Actually, as I consider it, the conflict between the Vulgate and the Septuagint/Greek bible would be a much better example, except the Catholic church concedes the superiority of the Greek bible.
Btw, I shall have to look up Dr. Gerald Schroeder; any degree to which literalism and science can be reconciled makes easier my purpose of shrinking the divide between Christianity and science. And, astonishingly, mitrochondrial DNA (which is genetic inheritance which does not get "reshuffled" [recombined] each generation) actually attests to the existence of a single woman who is mother to all humans whose estimated time of life was less than an order of magnitude different from the literal Eve. ("Time of life?" why does that sound like a euphemism for menopause?)
>> Second, what do you mean by "Talmudic Jews?" <<
It *is* my understanding that nearly all modern Jews are Talmudic, except for certain Messianic Jews who are Christian, and long-isolated sects of Jews. My memory is a little off; I would've guessed that they were some among the Ethiopian Jews, not Yemeni. However, historically, the Talmudic Jews were a conciliation between the two largest sects that excluded Hellenic, Essene, Christianized-but-still-Jewish, and Zealotic Jews. Most of these other Jews either died out or assimilated into mainstream Christianity or Talmudic Judaism.
I would consider most of whom you call "heretics" among modern Jews to still be Jews, as I would consider Protestants to still be Christians. However, when saying that all Jews are creationist, it creates circular reason to anathematize (OK, that's a Christian term, but at least it beats "excommunicated" :^D) all Jews who aren't creationist.
>> If you are assuming that the Orthodox Jews on this forum don't agree with the chronology I summarized, then that is merely an assumption. <<
It is my understanding that there is some disagreement among Orthodox Jews about the Chronology, but it's also my vague understanding that even the concept of "Orthodox" presumes a fairly literalist belief system. However, if I were brought up Orthodox, yet came to my conclusions about Creationism, I would like to think I wouldn't be regarded as a heretic.
>> yet when these same Orthodox Jews speak to the outside world it is always about prejudice, the Holocaust, or Israel, with the actual contents of Jewish teaching assumed by the outside world to be the invention of the Southern Baptist Convention. <<
Sadly, I think you may be answering your own question about why Jews are reluctant to promote hyper-literalism among Christians. As you know, There are many not-nice things said about Jews in the New Testament. In context, these things cannot mean all Jews, but rather refer strictly the leadership of the non-Christianized and non-Hellenic Jews, and were written when there were some fresh wounds among Christians, such as the expulsion of Christians from the synagogues which left them vulnerable to the draft and the encompanying mandatory pagan rituals. The founders of Christianity were Jewish however, so anti-semitism as a racial issue is absurd; and the days when the only non-professing-Christians a Christian typically ever met was Jewish are long past, and Jews must be seen as allies in todays geopolitical struggles, so religious-based hatred of Jews is absurd.
Nonetheless, anti-semites can still abuse selected quotes of New Testament scripture; and these bases for tolerance (and even love) of Jews are not in the scripture. For this reason, I think sola scriptura, and Christian hyper-literalism both kinda give many Jews the willies. (I certainly do NOT mean to make Christian anti-semitism to be a Protestant phenomenon!) I also think any rigid ideology, especially one wherein God seems OK with destroying billions of people (a la Left Behind) probably would freak me out if I were Jewish.
>> I hope that, however much you disagree with me, you find this response to be equally respectful. <<
Certainly, I did have to struggle to not be defensive from your initial posts (and I don't know how successful that would seem from an outsider's point of view, but this post has been extremely informative, and will spur much research on my part.
If I might ask, if you are not Jewish, what religion (or lack thereof*) are you? And how did you become so knowledgeable about Judaism, even to the point of being so protective of it?
(* You certainly seem to be a religious person, but I also would have presumed you to be, specifically, a Jewish religious person.)
An article that concedes your points, but calls for a different response:
http://www.jewishmediaresources.com/article/658/
No to interfaith dialogue
by Jonathan Rosenblum
Baltimore Jewish Times
December 5, 2003
The issue of interfaith dialogue is one of those hardy perennials. A recent conference sponsored by Boston College’s Center for Christian-Jewish Learning discussed the continued applicability of the ban posed on such dialogue by Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, the towering figure of Modern Orthodoxy.
Atarah Twersky, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s daughter, insisted that her father’s views never changed despite the changes in the attitudes of the Catholic Church in the nearly thirty years between the Church encyclical Nostra Aetate and the Rav’s death. While her testimony may be dispositive as to the Rav’s views, it is nevertheless worthwhile revisiting the issue, if only to understand how little such dialogue offers and the dangers it poses.
INTERFAITH DIALOGUE IS POINTLESS because it can change nothing. Halachah, or Jewish law, is the province of those with a full command of the vast halachic literature. There is no more place in the halachic process for the opinions of those lacking such a grounding, be they Jew or gentile, than there is for polling synagogue members to determine halachic practice.
Admittedly, it would be a great boon if Islamic imans could be convinced to stop issuing fatwas condoning suicide bombing. But only the most naïve would expect theological dialogue with rabbis to be the means of persuasion.
True, Catholic doctrine concerning the traditional charge of deicide against Jews has changed greatly in recent decades. (Unlike rabbis, the Pope has the power to enunciate new doctrine.) Yet here too it is doubtful that Catholic doctrine changed because of theological arguments raised by rabbis, whose area of expertise is presumably not the Christian Gospels. Rather it changed because of the Church’s guilt over its complicity in Hitler’s Final Solution and the legacy of Jew hatred based on millennia of Church teachings.
INTERFAITH DIALOGUE IS DANGEROUS because such dialogue inevitably leads to the blurring of Judaism's own message. The nature of dialogue is that one elicits concessions and compromises from the other side only by making one’s own concessions. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ comparison of interfaith dialogue to marriage counseling is highly germane, for in marital counseling both sides will be urged to make concessions.
The controversy surrounding Rabbi Sacks’ The Dignity of Difference provides an object lesson in the dangers inherent in interfaith theological dialogue. Certainly interfaith dialogue has few more enthusiastic proponents than Rabbi Sacks, who boasts of having met secretly with a leading Iranian iman and has expressed his desire to meet with Shiekh Abu Hamzu, of the Finsbury Park mosque, a Taliban sympathizer who admits to sharing the views of Osama bin Laden.
The quest for interfaith dialogue led Rabbi Sacks to attempt to construct a general theory of religion in The Dignity of Difference. The result, however, severely distorted central Jewish beliefs, and forced the Rabbi Sacks to rewrite the book after not a single British rabbi across the Orthodox spectrum could be found to defend it.
In the process of constructing his general theory, Rabbi Sacks was forced to deny the absolute uniqueness of the Revelation at Sinai. "G-d has spoken to mankind in many languages: through Judaism to Jews, Christianity to Christians, through Islam to Muslims," he wrote. The price of such ecumenicism was to ignore the Kuzari’s classic distinction between Judaism and any of the other monotheistic faiths: Judaism alone of the monotheistic faiths is based on a revelation to an entire people, not on the claims of a solitary figure. Nor did Rabbi Sacks specify where, when, or how, G-d is supposed to have spoken to Christians or Moslems.
Rabbi Sacks again failed to emphasize Sinai as a unique event in human history when he blithely asserted that no faith is complete and each has some share of the truth. One wonders what a rabbi will tell a young Jew who defends his decision to marry out on the basis of Rabbi Sacks’ book: "What’s the problem? Each of our faiths has only part of the truth. Together we will possess more truth."
"The God of the Hebrew Bible lov[es] each of his children for what they are: Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Israel and the nations . . ." is a lovely, politically correct thought. But it is also hard to reconcile Rabbi Sacks’ words with last week’s Haftorah reading -- "Yet I loved Yaakov; but Esau I hated . . . ‘’(Malachi 1:3) or the Torah’s description of Ishmael as a wild man, "his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him."
"Yitz" Greenberg, another long time enthusiast for interfaith dialogue, went much further towards heresy and blurring the distinctions between Judaism and Christianity. (Rabbi Sacks did eventually release a revised edition absent the offending passages.) According to Greenberg, Jesus was a "failed Messiah," just as Abraham and Moses were also "failures." Both Jews and Christians err in advancing exclusive claims of chosenness, according to Greenberg, because there is enough love in G-d "to choose again and again and again."
FINALLY, INTERFAITH DIALOGUE IS UNNECESSARY because its absence in no way prevents the development of pleasant, fruitful relations between people of different faiths. Religious people do in fact usually find large areas of commonality between them. Orthodox Jews, for instance, experience a much higher comfort level with evangelical Christians than do secular Jews, despite their eschewal of theological dialogue.
The late Cardinal O’Connor would effusively hug Rabbi Moshe Sherer, the long-time head of Agudath Israel of America, whenever they met. Under Rabbi Sherer’s leadership, Catholics and Orthodox Jews worked together productively on a host of issues concerning non-public schooling and public morality, without ever engaging in theological discussions. Indeed avoiding discussion of the chasm of belief between them fostered the ability to maintain a close alliance.
Pointless, dangerous, and unnecessary – those should be enough reasons for avoiding interfaith dialogue.
Unfortunately, there are Orthodox Jews (even rabbis) engaging in such things. I suppose it's "a sign of the times."
I would consider most of whom you call "heretics" among modern Jews to still be Jews, as I would consider Protestants to still be Christians. However, when saying that all Jews are creationist, it creates circular reason to anathematize (OK, that's a Christian term, but at least it beats "excommunicated" :^D) all Jews who aren't creationist.
We seem to be having difficulty communicating due to a difference in how we define our terms. A "Jew" is anyone born to a Jewish mother (regardless of belief or lack thereof) or anyone who converts Halakhically to Judaism. If an atheist, a Qara'ite, a "Hebrew chr*stian," a self-hating renegade, ad nauseum, was born to a Jewish mother he is a Jew. Period.
However, not all Jews practice Talmudic Judaism. Only "Orthodox Judaism" is actually Talmudic Judaism. "Reform-," "Conservative-," and "Reconstructionist Judaism" are not Judaism at all. Their members, provided they were born to Jewish mothers, are all Jews but they are not "Talmudic Jews" (ie, practitioners of Talmudic Judaism). And how could anything else be the case? "Reform Judaism" began as a rejection of the Talmud and a retention only of the Written Torah (a heresy known as "Qara'ism"). Now they have rejected the Written and Oral Torahs even though they study the Talmud academically. They may be Jews (which depends on the Jewishness of their mothers), but they are not "Talmudic" or "Rabbinic Jews" because they do not practice genuine "Talmudic" or "Rabbinic Judaism." A Jew who rejects even a single word of the Holy Torah as being from Heaven remains a Jew, but he is a heretic. Unfortunately, Catholicism has so bought into the modernist academic mindset that they do not recognize that such beliefs are heresy for Judaism. Besides . . . do you really think any group that ordains women "rabbis" is "Talmudic???"
I hope this clarifies your questions on the point of the difference between Jewish identity and Jewish religion.
It is my understanding that there is some disagreement among Orthodox Jews about the Chronology, but it's also my vague understanding that even the concept of "Orthodox" presumes a fairly literalist belief system. However, if I were brought up Orthodox, yet came to my conclusions about Creationism, I would like to think I wouldn't be regarded as a heretic.
For some reason I am having difficulty making myself understood. My initial post was not about the Six Days of Creation at all but about the Jewish chronology of history which doesn't even begin until the Sixth Day! The arguments we have been having back and forth on this thread have not been about creation vs. evolution but whether or not this 5766-year chronology is true history or (G-d forbid!) mythology. I explicitly stated that Dr. Schroeder is an evolutionist (and there are Orthodox Jews, including Orthodox rabbis, who hold the same position). However (as I keep trying to point out) this is not really scientific evolutionism at all, since true scientific evolutionism rejects Noah's Flood and dismisses the entire first eleven chapters of Genesis as absolute mythology. Thus Orthodox Jewish evolutionists have a consistency problem shared by no other Theistic evolutionists on earth: they listen to science for only the first five days of creation and then stop doing so for purely dogmatic reasons. Now people like myself are consistently literal and consistently reject the words of "science" on the issue of how the universe and everything in it first came into existence. Scientific evolutionists (whether atheists or chr*stians) consistently accept the words of "science" on all these issues (the chr*stians merely reducing the disputed stories to didactic parables). Both these latter two positions are consistent. But there is something maddenlingly inconsistent about being open-minded for only one chapter and then switching to "fundamentalist dogmatist," which is what Orthodox Jewish evolutionists have to do in order to avoid heresy. The only reason I even brought up the issue of Darwin was as a qal vachomer argument: if we are going to stop our ears to science when it tells us the first twenty generations of the world are mythology and that there was no Flood, then what is the point of listening to science for a brief period then suddenly stopping?
I don't know if I finally got my point over, but I sure tried. I don't know what more I can say.
Now, if you want to agree with Dr. Schroeder, fine and dandy, but to agree with him you will have to become a literalist the moment Adam is created in the text, and you will certainly have to accept Noah's Flood!
I will briefly touch on two other issues you raised. With regard to the claim of Biblical criticism that the Torah was only formalized at a much later date I must once again urge you to read the approppriate article at Aish. However, this question also impinges on the question of "palaeo-Hebrew" (Ketav `Ivrit) vs. the supposedly Aramaic-derived alphabet used now (Ketav 'Ashurit). This latter issue is too complicated for me to explicate here. I suggest you either correspond with an Orthodox rabbi on this subject or else read the material in the back of Rabbi Munk's book The Wisdom of the Hebrew Alphabet, available at ArtScroll and perhaps from an Orthodox Jewish acquaintance.
As to my identity, I am a Ben Noach, as are you. HaShem has divided the human race into two groups: Benei Yisra'el (those born to Jewish mothers or who have converted Halakhically to Judaism) and Benei Noach (everyone else). Benei Yisra'el are mankind's priesthood ('Eretz Yisra'el being the "sacristy") and are bound by the entire Torah. Everyone else make up mankind's "laity" and are bound by the Seven Laws of the Sons of Noah. This is the one true religion for all non-Jews. However, be aware of one thing: to be a truly observant Noahide one must accept the Seven Commandments not on account of their rationality but explicitly on the authority of HaShem and the Torah He gave Israel at Sinai. Absent this belief one is not truly an observant Noachide. This point is important in our day because it is becoming fashionable for rationalist types like deists and eighteenth century style unitarians to call themselves "Noachides." They are only Noachides Halakhically because they are non-Jews but they are giving the world a terribly distorted picture of Noachism by conflating it with a purely rationalist "monotheistic" ethical system divorced from the Revelation at Sinai (which is often coupled with the "revelations" claimed by other religions).
I've done my dangdest these things, dangus. I apologize if I have not succeeded.
>> However, not all Jews practice Talmudic Judaism. Only Orthodox are...<<
Apparently I've accidentally hit on a term when all I meant was an adjective... By it, I meant those Jews who define their religious identity, regardless how observant or literalist they are, by the Talmud, as opposed to those who would say, "Huh? Talmud? What's that?" But, yes, I think I understand you crystal clear...
...I knew the issue was the counting of the year, but in some uses I wanted to include those who don't count the years the same to still be regarded as strict literalists... In other words, given that you don't consider Judaism to include non-literalists, I still was meaning to include observant Jews, regardless of how they count the years.
>> if we are going to stop our ears to science when it tells us the first twenty generations of the world are mythology and that there was no Flood, then what is the point of listening to science for a brief period then suddenly stopping? <<
Well, those Christians, whom I rather agree with in this broad sense, who view the first 11 chapters of Genesis as being in a different literary sense than most of the rest of the Pentateuch/Torah, draw a distinction based on, of course, writing style, and a supposition of what seems to be likely the work of a witness. Any chance there is some other line, slightly earlier in the bible that I cannot discern? Maybe, for instance, the establishment of the Hebrew language? (I am aware some believe the Hebrew language to be the tongue of angels, but at least Saul of Tarsis, seems to think that there exists other angelic tongues.) (Disregard if the link addresses this; I will read it.)
I don't think you've been ambiguous or confusing... I may be flat out incorrect about your meaning, but I am not puzzled, even if I should be :^).
Besides being Ben Noach, can you tell me a little about what faith it is you have? (Feel free to FReep me, if you'd like to keep it private for whatever reason.) You certainly have aroused my curiosity. I certainly will never leave the graces of the sacraments in the Catholic church, but I've always felt that Christians can never understand their own faith until they understand Judaism, and I am curious how you came to your seemingly very first-person beliefs about Judaism without being Jewish yourself.
I shall quote it in full:
Sorry, but that is pure wishful thinking. The three dates in question - 586 BC for the Babylonian conquest, 538 for the Persian release of the Jews, and 331 for the arrival of Alexander - are just about as certain as any dates in the Ancient Near East. They are attested by multiple chronologies from multiple peoples.
Your attempts to date mythological people is a harmless pastime, but bald assertions that "the secularists are wrong" about true and verifiable history can serve only to persuade people that the Jews are idiots, which is not an attitude I would like to see in this forum.
If I recall correctly, none of the Orthodox Jews on this forum responded to this insult.
This is another one of those issues where ancient Torah Sages have explored the controversy in far greater honesty, depth and sophistication than their naieve Jew-hating Christian counterparts.
If religious Jews refuted every single Christian falsehood, insult and misunderstanding, no time would remain for Torah.
Ping for your interest (and anyone else who might be interested).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.