Well you just brought me back to square one. You are willing to use the term “ethnic Jew” for a former Jew turned Christian while at the same time telling us that this guy is not a Jew.
The topic is only about what is religiously compatable, so ethnicity isn’t especially relevant. It’s impossible to worship Jesus and be religiously Jewish. Why is that so hard for some people to accept?
I am simply interested in the qualification to be called a Jew.
I thought it has been established that the term “Christian Jew” was an oxymoron.
All existing Christian sects, AFAIK, accept the virgin birth, the resurrection, and that Jesus’ execution was a deliberate sacrifice which atones for mankind’s sins. The atonement, I’d have to guess, is the defining doctrine for all Christianity, including Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses (well, not Christian Science, but they don’t believe in mankind’s sins, either). All proclaim that Jesus was more than a man, but not all accept literal divinity. For most of those who do believe that Jesus is God, the Trinity is an integral part of that belief, but I regard it as a fine point among Christians and not something non-Christians need to worry about.
Now, there is much of what Jesus taught that would not trouble Orthodox Jews; and I think that nothing he taught requires that a believer stop being Jewish, though there would be doctrinal differences with other Jews. What’s taught about Jesus is another matter. The virgin birth and the resurrection aren’t impossible, though it’s hard to explain why some rabbi who didn’t restore the kingdom of Israel would be worth the fuss; the atonement is thought by some to be a post hoc explanation for why he didn’t. In any case, it’s that central doctrine that seems to stretch Judaism to its breaking point; even if there were a justification for believing that sacrificing a man could atone for sins, what would be the point? The law is the law, and the moshiach had not come. Nonetheless, I can see why someone who was born Jewish, kept the mitvot, and yet believed in this “ultimate (or penultimate) Yom Kippur” would still call himself a Jew.
However, as I understand it, the real Messianic Jews who live outside of my head mostly believe that Jesus is God, and that’s Just Not Jewish.
The word has two different meanings. It has an ethnic meaning and it has a religious meaning. The ethnic meaning has no relevance to this thread.
Religiously speaking, that is correct. The respective theologies are irreconcilably incompatable. What part of the religious incompatibility do you not understand?
My point was about this post:
The Jewish God is one, indivisible–the most sacred, most central to everything Jewish prayer goes “…the Lord our God, the Lord is One (God)”–it’s a…the key concept–the central point of our belief in the Creator that He cannot be more than one being–he can’t simultaneously be God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit from a Jewish point of view. The Christian God is a Trinity. [sic] These are incompatible.
The poster chose to take the word “one” literally — or more precisely, numerically — to convey that God cannot consist of anything other than one thing. I therefore
[quoted from Genesis]
(http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11305770&postcount=69):
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24) Does Judaism hold that a man and his wife are literally one flesh?
On what basis is one one a metaphor, while the other one is a cardinality? And even one as a cardinality is not necessarily always indivisible. There can be one congregation. One orchestra. One grove. And so on.
(Bold color was added to emphasize parallel expressions.)
Lib here is something that you’ll just to take my post as my cite*: We do love our poetic metaphors and again Torah is chock full of 'em but God’s oneness is not a metaphor in Judaism; it is the central concept and the central prayer. It’s the closest we got to a creed and by some accounts is one.
*Ach, I could find dozens of supporting documents if you want, but honestly, just trust me on this.
This is just getting silly.
Word-parsing games may have some sort of use in a certain type of debating style, but you’re grasping at shadows of straws here.
The Shema has been called the Watchword of Judaism, it’s a tremendously important prayer and, yes, it affirms that God is One and not triune, didn’t and doesn’t have an avatar, etc…
That’s what it means. If you’d like to comb the Torah and try to find other metaphors that you think don’t mesh with it, you’re welcome to it. Just don’t get confused and think you’re proving anything. For example:
This is a non sequitor.
It’s like saying “My pastor quoted some of Paul’s words to us, so I went and quoted Dairy Queen’s menu to him.” Whether or not there’s a similar (and I’ll get to that in a minute as it’s not at all similar) linguistic structure to some phrase or another somewhere in the Torah, it does not, at all, effect how Jews conceive of God.
Cuz we say so.
You’ll also note that this is about a man and a woman, not God. Attempting to use a metaphor about how a husband and wife create a new family unit that’s distinct from the houses of their parents… in order to prove that the entire Jewish theology on the unity of God is contradictory? It’s… weird.
You’re not going to make any headway here because it’s silly.
You’re essentially arguing “Yeah, you Jews believe that the Shema says something very specific about the nature of God, and it’s something that pretty much your entire religion in all of its sects holds to when discussing theological matters. But! What if you look at your theology once I’ve rephrased it? Oh oh oh! And look at what would happen if we take some of the metaphors from your holy book, and then take them literally, too?”
It’s just not going to work, Lib. On one hand we have actual Jews practicing the actual Jewish religion telling you what things mean, in context. On the other hand you’re trying to go for ‘gotchas’.
Aint happenin.
Liberal, are you seriously arguing that the Jewish religion allows for a Trinity?
No. If you check the post above yours, you will see that I am presently arguing nothing.
Yah, that totally innocent argument that obviously wasn’t leading up to anything. There was probably also no reason that you juxtaposed Judaism’s view on the Unity of God with the mistaken interpretation of a passage about how a husband and wife become one. Surely, there was no potential and less intention to later equivocate on the use of the concept of ‘becoming one’.
Bah.
If you’re going to set this sort of stuff up, you might as well come out with what you were getting at rather than simply saying that, at present you’re not willing to show your cards.
Fine. One can be a Jew ethnically and a Christian religously.
Its my thread and whether or not Jews recognize Jews on the basis of ethnicity is exactly what I’m trying to get a handle on.
Several days ago Fenris called Liberal a liar because Lib said a Jew couldn’t be an anti semite, because a Jew is a Jew. Fenris claims that Christianity is by its very nature anti Judaism and therefore anti semitic. Never mind the term “semitic” is based on language, but its usage most often by far refers to Jews and if what Fenris says holds, a Christian ethnic Jew is an anti semite.
All this is very confusing to me. Emotions run high when you start calling people liars.
I just accepted that a Christian cannot be a Jew or otherwise and now I’m wondering what happened to the progeny of the Hebrews addressed in Priscilla’s epistle. Are they the Arab Christians of the middle east today? did the ethnic Jews default to being Arabs ?
So, what’s the point? It sure sounded to me as though you thought you’d found a loophole in regards to the meaning of the word “one.”. Curiously, a loophole that the Rabbis have apparently missed for the last 6000 years. :dubious:
Common sense. This is not a tough one.
Reread what I wrote, please:
(emphasis added).
You may be confused because I said I was uncomfortable with religious tests. I am, but as the next sentence showed, I think this is a case where a religious test is appropriate. However, for precisely the same reason a religious test is appropriate in these circumstances, an ethnic test is appropriate. Allowing one but not the other undermines the raison d’etre of the nation, IMO.
I never said the guy isn’t a Jew. AFAIAC, the former-Jew-turned-Christian is, if he grew up in a Jewish household and went to Hebrew school and ate matzoh and was circumcised and had a bar mitzvah, ethnically Jewish and religiously Christian. Just like if he grew up in an Irish household and learned to fiddle and ate colcannon and had a last name beginning with O’, and then he converted to Judaism, I’d say he’s ethnically Irish and religiously Jewish.
If I were president of Israel, I’d allow both guys to move in.
I already “showed my cards”. But then, DSeid asked me to take him at his word that my argument was mistaken. DSeid has always approached me with the greatest respect, and never misses when I show my cards. If he says I can take his word, then I can take his word. If he says my argument is indefensible with respect to something I am not familiar with in the first place, then I am satisfied that my argument is indefensible. I respect him and his opinions. He doesn’t give me smarmy. He doesn’t give me smartass. He doesn’t give me bullshit. He gives me the straight dope. Why should I not believe him?
The audience addressed in Hebrews was Christian. Despite the title, they were not Hebrews. At best, some of them might have been Hellenistic Jewish converts. If that was the case, then they would have been considered to have “left the tribe,” and no longer been considered Jews of any sort, regardless of genetic ethnicity. These days, Jewish converts to Christianity would mostly still be thought of as ethically Jewish, but, as i understand it, the Orthodox poistion wuld still be that, as apostates, they have put themselves outside the tribe.
While not a lie, it is a very, very silly statement.
Imagine, if you will, that we find out tomorrow that Hitler was really Jewish, or even that he was raised in a Jewish household. Would we, then, be wrong for saying that he was an anti-semite since, gee, a Jew is a Jew?
There are plenty of self-hating Jews. Think of them as Kapos, if you prefer.
No, I think most of us recognize that as a setup for further points, rather than the entirety of the point. If you want to maintain that you were going on, for several posts quite insistently, about your view that Judaism really did contain a notion of two beings becoming one, for no particular reason, okay.
You mean, the argument that you’re now saying you weren’t making and whose ‘end game’ you won’t identify? If you were simply asking questions of him, then it wasn’t an argument. If you were making an argument, then it seems that Sarahfeena was spot on.
And what, exactly, was that argument if not that as revealed by your reading, that you were contending that there was no real reason why “one [is] a metaphor, while the other one is a cardinality” And that, even were there a reason, that " a cardinality is not necessarily always indivisible. There can be one congregation. One orchestra. One grove. And so on."
You weren’t getting at anything, there?
Yes, I was. But — again — DSeid said that I was mistaken. So I stopped arguing.