I hold that each generation of Jews is entitled and obligated to interpret the Torah in the light of their own historical situation. Arguing that it’s OK to eat pork because the dietary laws no longer serve the purpose they once did and distract us from the central message of ethical monotheism is, well, totally kosher.
Arguing that it’s OK to eat pork because “The synagogue is a brothel, a den of scoundrels, the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults, a criminal assembly of Jews, a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ, a house of ill fame, a dwelling of iniquity, a gulf and abyss of perdition” is not.
“2000 years of Christian theologians” are fucking idiots with the blood of millions of murdered Jews on their hands.
You can’t abolish the law and then claim that you were actually fulfilling it, that’s just transparently bullshit, as 2000 years of Jewish theologians have clearly seen.
True. The thing that makes Christianity unique isn’t its theological embrace of bullshit, but its extensive history of genocide and oppression. I also happen to find it particularly offensive that they justify their atrocities by twisting and distorting the scriptures of my religion.
Thank you for biting my head off on this. I have no skin in this game; I’m basically a non-denominational deist, though I’m nominally a Methodist. This topic is a trigger for you, and I don’t care to engage on this further.
Probably a good idea. I will note that, while looking up your quote from Deuteronomy 18 (which actually just refers to Joshua), I was amused to discover Muslims also use it as a proof text predicting the coming of Mohammad!
No it doesn’t. Faith defines itself by it’s refusal to provide proof. I’m wondering if Faith and Logic may be the yin and yang that I heard of way back in the day, opposites complementing each other.
I would agree that miracles, even if they are true don’t really prove very much. Jesus could walk on water but you can’t. I can solve Rubik’s cube but you probably can’t. Neither one really provides an extensive logical proof.
While there were probably a few people who “welcomed Jesus as the Messiah” (and yes, Messiah just means the anointed king, like David and all of the kings after him.) it was hardly “the city of Jerusalem” . Jesus left very little contemporary historical footprint; he was not particularly famous in his lifetime.
Also, ancient Israel was crawling with wanna-be messiahs, and the Romans executed all of them, as insurgents. Well, all the ones they caught. But Israel was not happy about Roman rule, and was looking for a leader to throw off the Roman yoke, as the Maccabees had thrown off the Alexandrian yoke. And a whole lot of people stepped forward to attempt to be that leader. There were a few revolts that attracted serious support from the Jews.
Simon bar Kokhba was the one with the most support as the Messiah. Sadly for his followers, his revolt only held away for the years, and then the Romans defeated him, and depopulated the whole area. But he’s a Messiah who left a contemporary historical footprint, unlike Jesus, who was probably just a fringe miracle-worker in his lifetime.
He’s also probably the reason the early Christians were so concerned about blaming the Jews and not the Romans for an execution that was obviously done by the Romans for standard Roman reasons. Because they desperately didn’t want the Romans to exterminate them. “No, no, we don’t blame you. Really! Honest! Look at that scapegoat over there! Please!”
Nor did Pontius Pilate, the Governo-, in fact until 1961, some though he was mythical. No period ancient documents bear his name, and only Josephus and a couple other Jewish writers mentions him- except of course the Gospels.
It is true the Romans executed Jesus, but as you mention, he wasnt well known so it took the Sanhedrin to bring Jesus to Pilates attention. So yes that particular faction of Jewish politicians have some blame, but it was Pilates decision.
The point I was making is that if you’re a Christian believer trying to convince a non-believer that Christianity is the true religion, whether because you’re a missionary or a poster on a message board, you can’t cite your faith (or the faith of other people) as proof. Convincing non-believers requires a non-faith based argument.
I don’t know if there’s a name for it - but I’ve known a number of people who told me they weren’t getting baptized until they got all their sinning out of the way , although the sins they were referring to were drinking, dancing and gambling not murder and stealing.
Whether or not the Sanhedrin brought Jesus to the attention of the Romans, they were executing all insurgents and terrorists. And that’s what “Messiah” meant to his contemporaries. If his followers were calling him “messiah”, they were saying he was an insurgent leader. Maybe his followers were mistaken. But that’s who gave him that label. Rome executed a whole lot of messiahs in Israel. There was a lot of political unrest, and the region was crawling with messiahs.
OK, so anti-Semites quote sections of Scripture that explicitly reject anti-Semitism. That’s hardly a surprise. All that that proves is that anti-Semites are idiots, which I didn’t think was a controversial position.
Of course, it’s not the only possible interpretation. It could be that, after God created Adam and Eve, he also created other humans, and that the children of Adam and Eve married those other humans. Or, of course (and this is by far the most common interpretation, throughout history and around the world), you could say that the tale of Adam and Eve is entirely metaphorical to begin with, and that hence questions like “Who did their children marry” are meaningless and irrelevant.