Nicodemus2004 - Part of the confusion arising in this thread comes from the fact that Judaism has split into a number of different branches. Over half of all the Jews in the United States belong to the Reform Judaism movement which started in Germany in the late 18th century. Reform Judaism is much more liberal and assimilated than other movements. For instance, Reform Jews do not keep kosher, and many Reform synagogues allow female rabbis and allow interfaith marriages, etc. Many Reform synagogues teach that there is no afterlife, and it is generally not an important part of Reform Jewish belief.
Here is the summary of Reform Jewish beliefs about the afterlife from Belief.net:
Joel Fleishman was clearly a Reform Jew (he did not keep kosher, observe the Sabbath, wear a skullcap, etc.), and accurately represented Reform Jewish beliefs about heaven and hell.
Scott_plaid - Your answer was correct with regard to Reform Judaism, which does regard the issue of the afterlife as an also-ran. You can believe in it if you want to, but it is not necessary to the practice of the religion. Most Reform Jews would give similar answers to yours when asked about heaven and hell, etc., which is why the idea that Jews do not believe in them has become so prevalent. Incidentally, the Conservative Judaism movement, which represents about 40% of the Jews in the U.S., also takes no official position on the afterlife.
It’s not so ofen that I get called right so often in the same thread. You seem to know a lot, and further more, seem intent on show the diffrences between reform judaism, and orthodoxy. I seem to recall some vague details about the more observant brances of judaism, under which “heaven” and hell" (easier for me to spell) are not physicaly far apart, but in the same building, as far as mystic imagery goes. Would anyone care to expand upon these?
While your email answers the OP’s question fairly well, I thought that I would help provide info on this.
The easy secular answer is obviously society that has changed over the courses of thousands of years and primitive customs don’t need to be followed. No matter what their origin, society develops socially and intellectually to a point that such practices become what is considered taboo or just obvious supersistition. Using your food issue as an example, it is believed among many that the origins of the jewish tradition involving unclean foods was a the observance of sickness when consuming or preparing some foods certain ways. Forbidding foods such as pork and shellfish was basically a safety measure to prevent sickness as this foods would commonly cause food poisining due to being under cooked or bad preparation in primitive times. In their minds this may also have been interpreted as a message from God, that this food was not meant to be eaten. These particular foods do generally have higher risks of disease than other foods especially in primitive times. Having formal methods of food preparation and a unclean list may have helped reduce food based illness.
As for christianity’s exemption from these rules, they also justify this in other ways. Modern christians claim to be exempt from these old testament tenets for a variety of reasons, the belief by some that Jesus may have ate unclean foods, as well as his general treatment of it in the new testament, such as
or
and
As well as citing various new testament verses they believe states that they are absolved following from what is sometimes referred to as “old testament ceromonies” which they believe includes foods.
An example of such a verse is
And that the blood of Jesus absolves them from these OT ceremonies, by “creating a new covenant” (also referred to above as “the new order”)[hebrews 9:11-15]
The general christian belief is that Jesus formed a new set of rules (which does include the 10 commandments btw) with his new covenant, abolishing the old ones.
There is also the vision of peter which is commonly interpreted as god telling them to go eat foods that were previously considered unclean. Acts 11:4-10
These are the arguments commonly used to explain the cessation of many OT rituals and particularly the eating of pork and shellfish. That said, there are bibilical inconsistancies, and food is an issue that is still debated by bibilical scholars, with much fire coming from jewish and islamic groups. There are also groups of christians that do believe that pork and shellfish is evil or forbidden by god, and chose to abstain.
One must also understand that the beliefs and practices of christians today are based off of doctrine, some of which is believed to be divinely inspired, that has been passed down through modern history. It is not simply based off the raw words of the bible.
Well technically, Gehenna is orginally an ancient garbage dump outside of Jerusalem that was particularly nasty where fires burned almost constantly with trash, not to mention carcasses of animals and dead criminals.
This word is derived from Late Latin, from Greek Geenna, from Hebrew gê’ hinnm, short for gê’ ben hinnm or gai ben hinnom, valley of the son of Hinnom, a valley south of Jerusalem.
In ancient times they used this both figurtively and literally to describe a really bad place.
Yep I know there are contradictions, but these are the explanations commonly used by christians today, and they have backed it up with a millenia of doctrine, which often is considered for practical purposes to be infallible, into their faiths. There are also some christians today that have determined that they are NOT allowed to eat those items.
Do you mind a bit of constructive criticism? I hope not, because here it is. Above, you expanded on the definition of gehenna. That is a good thing. However, it just somehow rubs me the wrong way that you didn’t acknowledge posts earlier in this thread which said pretty much what you said, and instead quoted Nicodemus2004’s post. If you wanted to expand, I suppose one way would be to quote a recent mention of gehenna, such as post 7, 11, 13 and 19 and say "To expand on this further.”
Oh and as for your post about doctrine, yeah, I can see,” It’s tradition" as an explanation. No problem there.
Scott, just to clarify the “Christian” position (as if there were just one) on this verse in particular, you have to look back to verse 17 which says:
So, Christian doctrine, at least those to which I subscribe, say that Jesus came to fulfill the law in our stead. Once he was crucified and rose then the “all be fulfilled” part kicked in - the new covenant.
There are verses in the New Testament that relate directly to food laws as well, but this ain’t the forum to discuss them.