Posted on 07/28/2003 11:21:43 AM PDT by Nachum
In recent years the Bnei Noach, or Noahide movement, has seen an extraordinary increase in numbers and activity around the world. Its adherents are non-Jews who embrace the truth of the Torah and therefore accept the seven ‘Laws of Noah’ – those laws which are incumbent upon gentiles as well as Jews.
Israel National Radio’s Tamar Yonah recently interviewed Jacob Sharf, a ‘Ben Noach,’ son of Noah, who explains that he espouses “The Orthodox stream of Judaism for non-Jews, which consists of observance of the seven laws given by God to Noah after the flood which are obligatory for all of humanity.” Sharf explains that “this is not a new concept, it is in fact the religious observance of Job, Adam and Abraham before God formed the unique covenant with the Jewish people.”
The seven laws are to refrain from idolatry, to refrain from sexual immorality, to refrain from blasphemy, to refrain from murder, to refrain from theft, to refrain from eating the limb of a living animal and to establish courts of law. Sharf was raised “a nominal Christian” and began studying the New Testament on his own, slowly discarding belief after belief through study of the Old Testament until he and his study partners found themselves with an identical belief system to Orthodox Judaism. He then pursued conversion to Judaism until he “realized that God had made [him] a non-Jew for a reason” and decided that there was much work to be done spreading monotheism’s belief in the One God of Abraham among the non-Jews of the world.
Sharf described the difficulty of maintaining a Noahide life and finding a support structure. “Often one finds oneself the only Ben Noach in a city,” he laments. However, with the advent of the Internet, thousands of Bnei Noach have been able to form online communities and several physical communities have formed as well. Places such as Dallas, Texas are host to hundreds of Bnei Noach and Wendell Jones (the famed archaeologist on whom the Indiana Jones movies were loosely based) even led his church to become Bnei Noach “removing the cross and the New Testament from the house of worship.”
Sharf runs an educational web site called HaMayim.org and started a Bnei Noach dating web site as well in an attempt to allow single Bnei Noach to meet one another. HaMayim means “the water” and is a reference to the verse in Isaiah (11:9) which prophesies that as the redemption of the world draws near “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of God, as the waters cover the sea.”
The rest of the interview can be heard on Israel National Radio at
http://www.israelnn.com/metafiles/asx/shows/tamar.asx
He actually spells his first name "Vendyl."
He's an amateur archaeologist, whose efforts are of questionable value.
And he is not the basis for the Indiana Jones character as George Lucas has pointed out.
Jacob Neusner, the well-known Orthodox scholar and writer accurately calls his theories "crackpot."
This is not to disparage B'nei Noach as a religious view - it has much more intelligent and able defenders than Jones. Every religion has its embarassing members.
Thanks for posting.
Meaning an entire Christian congregation was "led" to essentially give up Christianity?
Must be some kinda persuasive individual, or else an easily "led" flock of followers (or both).
Now that's asking too much. No wonder the religion hasn't caught on.
This is apparently just the beginning of the Noachide awakening so of course we are now extremely disorganized and have all sorts of loopy followers. This will be straightened out as time goes by and as Torah Law becomes clearer and more objective, be`ezrat HaShem. For right now I actually prefer to "go it alone" because of the idiosyncricies in Noachism at present.
BTW, I plan, G-d willing, to eventually write and post an essay to my web site explaining why I do not accept any theory of evolution.
Thanks for the ping.
So I guess in religious terms that makes you a lot like the Reform Party. And it appears that you've already got your Buchanans, Perots, and Venturas....
Who said Noachides don't believe in the Messiah? We believe in his coming just as surely as to Orthodox Jews. What kind of idiotic statement is this implying that one has to accept chr*stianity to look forward to the coming of the promised messiah???
Chr*stianity can be true only in one of two ways: either 1) the Nazarene fulfilled all the messianic prophecies "symbolically" rather than literally, or 2) he fulfilled only some of the prophecies and will finish the job at the "second coming." This second school of thought insists that it is everyone's duty to accept him as messiah even though he is only halfway through his job. Duh.
Only one religion in all history was not founded by a human being: Judaism. Even its chr*stian opponents admit it was founded by G-d and that it was the true religion at one time. Every other religion under the sun was founded by a human being (even if you insist one of those human beings was "gxd," has vechalilah). In all of world history only Judaism was publicly established by the Omnipresent G-d speaking to an entire people without any human mediation whatsoever.
PS: Don't tell me to read the nt. I've read it. I used to be a chr*stian.
::Sigh:: It's amazing how much hostility Noachism is provoking here. I thought everyone knew about it. Two points:
1) Every religion, including chr*stianity and Judaism, had to deal with various rebels and heretics in its early history.
2) Noachism is not a new religion. It is the religion G-d gave to Adam, Noach, and Abraham, and which has always bound all non-Jewish humanity. It is not well-known because false religions not only interfered with the Jewish mission to spread this concept to the world but imposed themselves in its stead.
If I were a chr*stian I wouldn't be shooting my mouth off about "new" religions, seeing as how chr*stianity is a new religion based on a new covenant and which therefore cannot defeat a new world order. I also wouldn't be accusing other religions of being founded by men.
Sheesh, what is it about us that bothers you? I don't believe in J*sus but I believe in HaShem and in the inerrancy of the TaNa"KH (and need I remind you that most chr*stians are liberals who believe the Bible is mythology?). If you put loyalty to a man who lived two thousand years ago ahead of loyalty to G-d and an uncompromising belief in the Bible then your priorities are really twisted.
If he doesn't know that the covenant was formed with the Israelite people, of which Judah was only one tribe, or of which the House of Judah was only Judah + parts, only those being called "Jews", what else doesn't he know and what credibility does ignorance have? 
Chr*stianity can be true only in one of two ways: either 1) the Nazarene fulfilled all the messianic prophecies "symbolically" rather than literally, or 2) he fulfilled only some of the prophecies and will finish the job at the "second coming." This second school of thought insists that it is everyone's duty to accept him as messiah even though he is only halfway through his job. Duh.
Only one religion in all history was not founded by a human being: Judaism. Even its chr*stian opponents admit it was founded by G-d and that it was the true religion at one time. Every other religion under the sun was founded by a human being (even if you insist one of those human beings was "gxd," has vechalilah). In all of world history only Judaism was publicly established by the Omnipresent G-d speaking to an entire people without any human mediation whatsoever.
PS: Don't tell me to read the nt. I've read it. I used to be a chr*stian.
You apparently didn't read the NT very carefully. The testimony of the angels at Christ's birth, the testimony of the Father at His baptism, and the testimony of the mass of eyewitnesses to His resurrection speak clearly to His divinity. If He alone was the witness to His own divinity, that might be worth questioning; but the very voice of God is a little more difficult to deny.
And, for what it is worth, over 300 specific prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus during His lifetime. And the Old Testament is clear that there were others to be fulfilled later.
So - go back and read the New Testament again. You obviously missed quite a bit of it.
BTW - I notice you have adopted the Jewish affectation of not spelling out the word God...since that is not His proper name (cf Exodus 3:15-16), you are not in danger of breaking the Commandments by spelling it out. What puzzles me, however, is why you use "chr*stian" since you deny the divinity of Christ.
You evidently don't understand that in order to accept these assertions in the "new testament" you have to already believe in its authority. Since I do not accept its authority I am no more impressed by these alleged miracles than I am by those of islam or b*ddhism.
And, for what it is worth, over 300 specific prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus during His lifetime. And the Old Testament is clear that there were others to be fulfilled later.
How do you prove that he fulfilled those prophecies? By invoking the "new testament" again? You are committing the fallacy of assuming what you are attempting to prove (which is called "affirmation of the consequent"). By which I mean you are "proving" that J*sus fulfilled these prophecies by invoking the "new testament's" claims that he was fulfilling these prophecies. How do you first prove that the "new testament" is valid? Because until you do you are being irrational invoking its authority to "prove" that J*sus fulfilled any prophecies.
And by the way, I'm sorry, but chr*stianity has always held that J*sus fulfilled all the messianic prophecies. Only radical Fundamentalist Protestants insist that the "royal" prophecies are literal and will be fulfilled at the "second coming." If chr*stianity is to be accepted it has to be in its authentic historical form (Catholic, Orthodox, etc.). If you are going to reinterpret the Bible you might as well be a Noachide yourself.
So - go back and read the New Testament again. You obviously missed quite a bit of it.
Sorry. I didn't miss a word. To accept the "new testament" you have to believe that G-d didn't mean what He said in the "old" one. He said over and over that the convenant with Israel was eternal and there was never the slightest intimation that it was to be replaced at sometime in the future by another religion. Yet if you assume right off the bat that chr*stianity is true you will naturally have to explain this away. May I suggest that you consider the possibility that the "new testament" is not the Word of G-d and that He meant what He said the first time? And by the way, the chr*stian concept of "progressive revelation" which holds that G-d's Word was at first obscure and later became more and more clear (ie, that the Prophets have greater authority than the Torah) is the source of all religious liberalism.
BTW - I notice you have adopted the Jewish affectation of not spelling out the word God...since that is not His proper name (cf Exodus 3:15-16), you are not in danger of breaking the Commandments by spelling it out. What puzzles me, however, is why you use "chr*stian" since you deny the divinity of Christ.
It is forbidden to use the name of G-d "in vain." For this reason it is customary to avoid spelling out G-d's various names and titles in full. It is also traditional to avoid spelling in full the names of false "gxds."
I suggest that your interpretation of Exodus 3:15-16 is not necessarily correct. Why do you assume that the people who received the Torah and who alone possess the rules and the method for faithfully copying it so that every Torah Scroll is an exact copy of the First Torah Scroll do not know how to interpret it? And before you answer something about "traditions of men" I must remind you that chr*stianity has its own "oral tradition" for interpreting the Bible (and the "new testament"). All chr*stianity ever did (until Luther) was replace one set of unwritten traditions with another. Since Protestantism is a recent innovation I am faced with the choice between chr*stian tradition and Jewish tradition. I'll take the latter, thank you very much.
And exactly the same is true of the Old Testament. There is no independent evidence whatsoever for your preposterous assertion that Judaism was founded by a god speaking on the top of a mountain - you just believe in a book because you believe in it, which is circular reasoning.
I was responding to someone who already believes in the authority of the Hebrew Bible. My argument was based on "if, then." IF, as my opponent believes, the "old testament" is from G-d, does it then authorize the "new?" I assert that it does not. I regard chr*stians who declaim against the qur'an, the Book of Mormon, etc., on the grounds that "if it's new it ain't true" while waving their "new testaments" in the air as hypocrites. What is the difference between the "new testament" and all these other "successors" to the Hebrew Bible other than the amount of time they have been around? None.
My argument was thus not aimed at someone who rejects the authority of the TaNa"KH. For my dialogue partner and myself belief in the authority of the TaNa"KH is the "antecedent." This being the case neither of us can deny it in debate ("denial of the antecedent" being a fallacy just as is "affirmation of the consequent").
As for someone who does not accept the TaNa"KH (such as yourself), your claim that belief in it is completely groundless is not as good as you might think. Unfortunately, most non-Jews know so little about the Torah (even though they flatter themselves that they do) that they know next to nothing about the safeguards built into it precisely to provide assurance that it is indeed from Heaven. These include complex codes at equidistant letter spaces which could not have been the creation of a human author (the key word here being "complex," as "beyond the range of mere coincidence") as well as the system of laws governing the writing of a kosher Torah Scroll. These laws include the requirement that each new scroll be copied from an already completed Torah Scroll. Why would this be so if, as you and your "rationalist" comrades assert, the Torah is a splice of various oral traditions dating back to the Second Temple era? The whole idea is that there was always an already complete Torah Scroll from which to copy a new one, going all the way back to the first scroll written by Moses at HaShem's dictation.
Furthermore, the Torah constantly insists it can be corroborated by simply asking one's parents. In other words, one's parents received their knowledge of the Torah from their parents, and so on down the generations from the Revelation at Sinai. If there was no such Revelation this was surely a foolish claim to make. Why would the Torah, if it were not given at Sinai, encourage the doubter to ask his own parents what they themselves had received? Eventually one would come to a generation to which these things had been artificially introduced and the claim of Sinaitic antiquity would be refuted. In fact, as the website of 'Aish HaTorah points out (see thispage for an overview), the very nature of a public and national revelation (as opposed to a private one communicated to a single individual) is that it can never be denied or counterfeited. It is rooted in the national memory going back to the event itself and this serves as an assurance that it is not a fraud introduced at a later date. And on top of all this, the Torah actually goes out on a limb to claim that this sort of national revelation will never happen again. Why would a man-made religion go out on a limb like this when it could so easily be disproven by a similar revelation?
I am afraid that your "18th Century" skepticism is nothing more than a charming museum piece, a relic of an earlier and extremely naive age. Perhaps you should actually learn a little about the Torah (from the people who actually know what they're talking about) before you make such broad assumptions and claims based on my argument with someone whose beliefs rest on a different set of assumptions than yours.
One of which are the traditions which have been handed down over the millenia to remember such as "Passover" which relates the story in a specific way to support its rememberance.
Also, there are later writings in Hebrew which talk of the same events which were written closer to the time of the events supposed occurance. These writings are called the "Mishna", a terse collective of law that explained basic meanings of the "OT" only hundreds of years after the supposed date of the writing of the 5 books. Just because a history is old, does not necessarily make it false (or true). There is a great deal of written material from these times. Combined with traditions and events, it becomes a great deal less easy to deny events that were described. It is indeed a question, but not necessarily one with a defintive conclusive answer.
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