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!
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.