We have no idea what Spinoza did to warrant the level of vitriol in his excommunication, but I’ve never been able to read it as much more than excessively dramatic pearl-clutching.
I find it hard to imagine, given the hate that drips from the page, they would’ve been shy about explicitly damning him to hell if they thought it was on the table.
As a sidebar (relevant to this topic, I think): where would a late medieval Jewish community have derived the authority - even in its own mind - to declare anybody “expelled from the people of Israel” except as an allegory for being booted from the community itself?
Spinoza died 21 years later, most likely from inhaling fine glass dust from his occupation as a lens grinder. Not exactly Old Testament level punishment.
I guess I wasn’t clear enough in my previous post. They didn’t use the words that you might have expected, but in the context of the times, what they wrote DID damn him to hell.
No mention of Paradise? Judaism is full of mythology about this destination after death. The details are rarely mentioned though, just a generic belief that after death people will dwell in Paradise, and that sounds pretty good right? Here’s a bit in a wiki about Heaven in Judaism.
It is important to note the lack of consensus on the contents, existence, or substance of what is known in English as “heaven” in Judaism. Many hold references to what would be called “heaven” as allegorical, detailing a story or proposition rather than concrete conclusion or absolute. As such, Jewish thought holds equal or greater value towards other eschatologies such as reincarnation[2][3][4] and more. Rabbinic Judaism generally holds greater value on doing mitzvot during life, rather than focusing on that which comes after, when one cannot do mitzvot. Nevertheless, Judaism has many opinions on what happens in the afterlife, and the existence of a “heaven” can be one of them, however debated as to its contents or manifest
Speaking as someone who was raised Jewish, and has lots of Jewish friends representing a fairly wide swath of Jewish belief, I’ve never heard anyone talk about “paradise” after death, or heaven for that matter. My rabbi said, “we don’t know”. Orthodox friends sometimes talk about reincarnation after the coming of the messiah. There are no doubt some Jews who believe in some sort of heaven, but I’m going to say they are a tiny minority.
I hope that the following will clarify things, but there’s a good chance that it just make it murkier.
Everything that I’ve learned about Judaism points to God being extremely fair, giving everyone exactly what they deserve. Granted that sources for this are hard to find, but in my opinion it is a logical conclusion if one accepts the starting point that God is good. Thus, there MUST be something more than this life, if only to resolve the inequity of why bad things happen to good people and vice versa.
However, the nature of this after-stuff is impossible to know or describe. I really think that Spock explained it best in Star Trek 4, after he had been brought back to life:
McCOY: Come on Spock, it’s me, McCoy! You really have gone where no man has gone before. Can’t you tell me what it felt like?
SPOCK: It would be impossible to discuss the subject without a common frame of reference.
The best we can hope for is some kind of allegory or metaphor. And, being mere humans, each writer or speaker will come up with their own attempt at describing the impossible.
My grandmother and her generation talked about this. I never heard any details about it. I think there was a reference to Paradise in some Isaac Bashevis Singer tales, maybe something else. That’s about it for my experience, can’t say how widespread it might be known or considered by modern Jews. Jewish mythology must be a tough issue for Rabbis to deal with, they know it exists, but would avoid appearing to consider it at the same level as those matters with a biblical source.
I honestly don’t know what you’re referring to when you say “Jewish mythology.” The body of work we call midrashim is highly regarded, and there’s no particular difficulty with it.
Otherwise I can’t think of anything that could be reasonably called ‘Jewish mythology’ that’s distinct from the oral and written traditions we already extensively study and comment on.
It should also be noted that the concept of eternal damnation is not part of Jewish doctrine, although there is the idea that the souls of the extremely wicked will be obliterated after death. From what I’ve read the general teaching is there is at most 12 months of purgatory, but with a weekly respite on the Sabbath.
I’m not criticizing your faith or anything, but your posts in this thread are a real outlier compared to the rest. From your posting history, I had always assumed you were Christian of some sort, and your posts here have a certain Christian tinge to them.
I can’t say, I’m as far from a religious scholar as can be. I just haven’t heard rabbis elevating stories like Paradise and Adam’s first wife Lilith to the same level as biblical stories. I’m not sure why you think there is no Jewish mythology, the link I used speaks of ‘legends’ if you think there’s some important distinction there.
The distinction would be that mythologies are core cultural touchstones. When you say “Jewish mythology must be a tough issue for rabbis to deal with,” you’re suggesting that there’s an important body of work that they’re ignoring for the sake of enforcing religious coherence or elevating one set of traditions over another. That’s simply not the case.
Certainly, over many thousands of years of tradition, there have been stories about everything under the sun. But there’s nothing to ‘deal with’ in the way you suggest.
The point was, based on a few pieces of information, you were able to identify Brendan’s ethnicity (which, yes, would presumably be Irish). I also gave you the equivalent pieces of information for David. If that’s enough information to identify ethnicity, then what’s David’s ethnicity? Is there any answer possible other than “Jewish”? Even if David isn’t religiously Jewish, his ethnicity is still Jewish. It’s both a religion and an ethnicity.
FWIW, Jesus talked about an afterlife in his parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19-31) – and if his audience said “What the hell are you talking about?” the evangelist didn’t record it.
I still don’t understand how this has anything to do with Pascal’s Wager. The point of that is that the potential penalty for believing incorrectly is so much less than that of not believing incorrectly (eternal damnation) that believing was the only rational choice. Avoidance of bad things happening in this life doesn’t cut it, since even in the Bible bad kings die in bed at a ripe old age and their virtuous sons die horribly in battle still young.
Most importantly, we’d be immoral if we thought that lack of belief led to a horrible conclusion. (Not being reincarnated doesn’t count as horrible.) Lack of evangelism is pretty universal.
Remember that from anything other than a Christian believer perspective the stories of the Gospels were written quite a bit after the historical figure lived and reflect perspectives not present in the people of Christ’s actual time and place. Luke is in this perspective not a reliable narrator.
Rabbis tell stories all the time. I’ve heard stories about a very holy man ascending a ladder to heaven (which was framed as “where God lives”, not as “where dead people go”) but the rungs were built by the good acts of his congregation. I’ve heard stories of the writers of the Talmud all hanging out together in the afterlife, happily arguing fine points of Torah around a big table. I’ve heard stories of golems. I’ve heard stories that add extra-biblical details to the sacrifice of Isaac, or other important vignettes. I’ve heard any number of stories set in “the real world” which are obviously meant metaphorically, and not literally, too.
I don’t think there’s any problem with rabbis telling stories or sharing folk tales. I just think that Jewish story tellers tend to be interested in different themes than Christian story tellers, with “what happens after death” being a theme that’s just MUCH more important to Christians than to Jews.
Pascal was a Christian. Please forgive the oversimplification, but (in my experience) Christians tend to put a lot of emphasis on proper/improper beliefs, while Jews tend to put a lot of emphasis on proper/improper actions. Now reread what you wrote, but substitute “acting” for “believing”, and I hope you’ll see that I chose to do the Jewish things in order to avoid punishment and get reward.
Emphasis was mine. Isn’t Pascal’s wager about the next life? Maybe I’m misunderstanding what Pascal’s wager was all about?
There’s also, to my read at least, a significant difference between stories and folk tales and parables, and myths. Myths imply the story (be of fiction or fact) is key to how the culture perceived itself. The story of Moses and Exodus from bondage is a key myth of Jewish culture for example.