What's the origin of anti-Semitism?

Great Debates
61

Alessan:

Izzy said:

You replied:

You know what, Alessan?

Calm down.

There is nothing partisan about Izzy’s post. If you don’t believe me, go back and read it again. As a matter of fact, he didn’t say anything to identify his point of view with one sect of Judaism as opposed to another.

Reread the thread, babe… you’re the one who made this personal… not Izzy.

Now that we have ironed out what he didn’t say, let’s take a look at what he did:

**

Izzy has attempted to differentiate between two very different reasons why people do what amounts to the same shitty things to other people. Sometimes people do it because they are bigots and other times they do it because they they are so deeply, personally offended by another’s actions that they overreact and respond in an inappropriate manner.

Sound familiar? :rolleyes:

Izzy didn’t say anything about “his” group having special rights to anything. Nor did he speak about whether or not people that don’t share his opinions are Jewish… He didn’t discuss ownership of the Kotel (Western Wall) or any of the other “issues” you rant about in your reply.

All he did was offer his opinion as to a possibly more understandable motive for what we all agree is reproachable behavior.

When you get a chance, check out the Mishna in Pirkei Avos (Ethics of Our Fathers), 1:4. Better yet, let me tell you what it says. The last line reads, “Judge all others favorably” (paraphrased).

That is exactly what Izzy was trying to do… he was trying to put himself in another person’s shoes and see if he couldn’t try to understand why they behave the way they do. He wasn’t defending or condoning ("This is not to say that I approve of stonethrowing "). He was simply trying to see if he couldn’t figure out why other people might think their behavior was acceptable.

Give it a try sometime… it’s enlightening.
[Edited by TubaDiva on 08-10-2000 at 07:17 PM]

62

No problem - happens to the best of us.It’s the burden of the brilliance we all share. :smiley:

Wow.

You not only know much more about this than I do, you know more about it than I ever want to!

You, my friend, are the best kind of poster; you know quite a bit, enjoy sharing it, and are not afraid to apoligize when you’ve offended. Thank you, both for answering my questions and for simply being here for me to learn from.

I’m with you here. Any serious student of Divinity would have to agree that most modern Christian customs were hijacked by the Church from Pagans in order to make the Christianity more appealing.

I might agree with you here… it depends on what you mean when you say, “The Bible.”

Did you know that observant Jews read from the Torah (Traditional Hebrew version of the Old Testament) at least three times a week, in communal services? That means that a synagogue-going Jew never goes more than three days without hearing the Torah read.

During these readings, most of the congregants follow along in a Chumash (Hebrew Bible). WOUld you believe that if the reader pronounces a word differently than is expected, the congregants correct him? This means that, day to day, the Torah is kept current; we have ensured that every letter in every single Torah currently in use is accurate to the best of the Jewish Community’s ability.

This process has continued since the beginning.

I heard a lecturer once exlain that, since most Torahs last at least 2 generations (150 years or so), the ones currently in use (the “copies of copies of copies”) are only about 200 generations away from Sinai.

And, when researchers compared modern Torahs from communities on opposite sides of the globe, they found only 9 differences between the two, none of which were significant enough to change the meaning of even a single word.

So, when you say that the Bible might have, “been re-written by past rulers to promote one point of law or another,” I agree, as long as we’re talking about the Christian Bible. I mean, there are obvious, extreme differences between the versions in my local Barnes and Noble!

But as far as the Torah is concerned, I don’t think your theory is accurate. I mean, the Jews are the People of the Book… we take pretty good care of The Book, you know? ;j

**

Glad to see we’re in agreement!

[Edited by TubaDiva on 08-10-2000 at 07:19 PM]

63

Careful, now, tomndeb. The “Protestants” are not a monolithic group. The term “Protestant” includes any number of individual denominations. While some groups of protestants may have carried out inquisition-like activities (the Salem witch trials spring to mind), other groups of protestants did not. I wouldn’t want to tar all protestant religions with the same brush.

At least that’s one atheist’s opinion.

64

Whoa. Let me re-read Izzy’s post.

[pause]

Hmm… Ok, I might have taken things out of context. That one sentence just touched a very raw nerve - my wife was at the Wall last Shavuot and found the experience ver enlightning. That, and political upthrowals of late made me rage before I thought. Not an excuse, I know, but perhaps a mitigating factor?

Oh, and Sdimbert - I’ll take your sig as a warning.

65

:snif:

I think the :wally would have liked it that way.

66

Oy vavoi. Anachnu am echad, baruch haShem.

In response to the question on my harrassment, I was at the egal minyan at the Kotel on Shavuot in last year. I don’t think I have ever been more frightened for my life at any other time. It was such a horrible experience, my hands are shaking as I type this, just remembering. That night, though, I had dinner with an ultra-orthodox family (American olim) and it was lovely. It’s hard to reconcile this contrast in my mind, except to remember that all people are different, no matter what they wear and what they believe.

67

Actually, we have quite a bit of physical evidence for both the Old Testament and the New Testament that go back a lot farther than 1,200 years.

For the NT, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus are dated to the fourth century and there are fragments (that are consistent with those texts) dating as far back as the second century. Since those texts include copies of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, with some known glosses) and the Septuagint lines up very well with the Hebrew scriptures*, we can be pretty sure that the scripture we have today is very close to what had been written, originally. (There are also variants of scripture in the Syriac and other ancient languages. In order to have re-written the scriptures in any meaningful way, the speculated ruler would have had to get hold of all the copies (among several warring sects) and had them all changed.)

For the OT, in addition to the cross-reference provided by the Septuagint, we have the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the middle ages a group of Jews, who came to be called the Masoretes, undertook the task of identifying any imperfections in the Hebrew bible and correcting them. When the Dead Sea Scrolls turned up, a thousand years older, the texts in the Scrolls were extremely close to the texts “restored” by the Masoretes, (establishing both the care and the quality of scholarship of those medieval scholars).

The theory is not lame or too wild, but there is a lot of factual information to shoot it down.

  • The Septuagint has a number of significant divergences from the Hebrew Tanakh, but the differences have all been identified and most of them have been explained–and they are rather rare, in any event.
68

On changes in the bible. I’m reffering only too the new testement here. So no Jews go getting your undies in bunches.

There’s quite a bit of evidence that the New Testement was changed around alot. What you see is very conflicting stories among the different eye-witness account of who saw Jesus. Are these just different memories. No. What they are is a concerted effort to make Christianity more appealing to non jews and to the rich. As Christianity became less of a sect and more mainstream it was nessecary to soften many of the messages. I’ve got some cites, and I’ll see if I can dig em up and post them by monday. They are in storage though so it might be a while.

69

Nor would I. Of course, at the point of the initial Reformation, there were far fewer groups, dominated by the two led by Luther and Calvin and both of those major groups did, indeed, engage in executions and torture. It is also true, of course, that there were groups within Catholicism who did not consider the Inquisition to be the best response to “heresy” (literally “to choose” another belief).

70

I’d be very curious to see what evidence this is. That each letter and each gospel was written with a specific audience in mind, often with a specific version of “the” message is obvious. That some some of the ideas put forth were stated with the intent to make the message more palatable to Gentiles is quite probable.

I have never seen anything to indicate that a Gospel or Epistle, once written, was re-written to change the message. I would be really curious to know how this information was discerned, since we don’t have any earlier copies or drafts of the documents against which we could compare them. (I hope that the citations are not to the Jesus Seminar, which, while interesting and provocative, is hardly reliable.)

71

Hey Tomndebb, I’ll see what I can pull up. From what I remember, it wasn’t changed after it was writen down but before hand. I can’t completely remember. The information is from a book called “The origins of christianity” by Karl Kautsky. It contains numerous referenes to other works. It’s really quite a good book. The man is an atheist, and writes about both Christianity and Judaism from relatively unbiased standpoints.

72

IzzY, I am sorry if i gave the impression that “ultra-orthodox” Jews are more bigoted than any other religous group, EXCEPT that the “ultra” in any Religion tends to be more intolerant. Perhaps some of the actions I read and ascribed to “ultra-religous” or “right-wing” or “reactionary” were actually done by “ultra-zionists”. I have read about rocks being thrown at those dressed 'improperly" at the wall, for example. There is certainly a lot of intolerance aginst the Palistinians, of which a portion is likely justified.

Sdim, there are minor but significant differences between the Septuagint OT, and the later Hebrew translation done in about 90AD, in Jamnia. For instance, in Isaiah 7:14, the Septuagint version translated the word as “parthenos” which distictly means “virgin” and the Hebrew used “almah” which indicates a young unmarried woman (who certainly could be a virgin, and would be likely & expected to be). There was reason for the translators not to use "“bethulah” as, altho it certainly means “virgin”, it has an improper connotation in that book. Both versions are considered authoritive. Note, that this is probably the most substantial difference in the various versions. However, since about 400BC, or when Chronicles was likely written, the OT has certainly undergone no massive changes. The copiers made very minor errors, and these can be “ironed out” by comparing versions.

Niceguy: well, as to absorbing “pagan” traditions, my Church not only has done this, but this is one of the basis for the Celtic Christian Church, in fact we ‘absorbed’ the Celtic goddess Bridget & made her a Saint. However, our Church feels that no “good” religion is “wrong”, and that something can be learned from them all, so there is nothing hypocritical about our practice.

73

Daniel, where I come from, the OT was originally written in Hebrew, not translated to Hebrew. :confused:

74

Sdim: very funny, you know what I meant, ie the Jamnia version was IN Hebrew. And, of course you know some of the last books were not written in Hebrew 1st, at least as far as we know. Of course those are all in “the Writings”, not in the Torah, and some are not generally accepted. In any case, some early Hebrew versions were miscopied, so that the Septuagint was the 1st known attempt to iron out those minor errors by comparing versions. Same thing was done at Jamnia. Apparently, for some of the later books, they found the Septuagint version to be the most accurate, and translated it back to the Hebrew, from the Greek (or used that as the basis they worked from). And of course, they decided that the most recent books would not be included at all, such as Manasseh.

75

Regarding the Bible as script:

And don’t forget we can thank St. Jerome for his editing and excisions of the Bible. There’s quite a few books that were not accepted and some have been collected in a 10 volume series called “The Anti-Nicene Fathers”. It includes “The Gospel of Peter” and “The Apocalypse of the Virgin” among others.

St. Jerome wrote a letter in 384 to the Pope, (who had given him the assignment of deciding which of the hundreds of books were “inspired”), and complained that many of his friends were going to be angry with him for throwing out some of their favorite passages.

So we’re somewhat at the mercy of the editors.

76

**
Actually, no, I don’t know what you meant and I wasn’t trying to be funny. As I have said many times elsewhere on the board, you know lots more about this stuff than I do.
[/quote]

What the hell is a “Jamnia?” :ducking:

**
This is an interesting idea - one with which I am unfamiliar. As far as I know, the books that are listed in the table of contents of my Tanach are exactly as they were originally written, in Hebrew.
[/quote]

A few comments:
[ul]
[li]The Septuagint was written by 70 scholars. According to the story I was taught, each scholar wrote his Greek translation of the original Hebrew individually, without being allowed to consult the others. Nontheless, all 70 versions were identical. Does this jibe with the story you know?[/li][li]I am uncomforable with your assertion that the modern Tanach was translated “back to Hebrew” from the Septuagint. This flies in the face of the tradition of Sinaitic Continuity I mentioned above.[/li][li]I am totally unfamiliar with the book of Manasseh.[/li][/ul]

[Edited by TubaDiva on 08-10-2000 at 07:21 PM]

77

Jamnia (or Jabne) was a small coastal town where Johanan ben Zakkai persuaded Vespasian to allow a small school to be established after the fall of Jerusalem in 70. Sometime around 90 or 100, a synod of Jewish scholars assembled there to discuss the direction that Judaism was to take after the destruction of the Temple. Among other tasks, they officially closed the Jewish canon.

(cmkeller has asserted that the canon was closed around 350 BCE at a different meeting of Jewish elders, however, I have two texts and 30-year old class notes that point to Jamnia and I have not been able to find any information on the council he alluded to. I have no idea whether the idea of the closing the canon at Jamnia is simply a later interpolation by Christian historians or whether there is some other explanation of the discrepancies between my “historical facts” and Chaim’s.)

Danielinthewolvesden makes a more sweeping statement regarding material borrowed from the Septuagint than I am prepared to assert. One of the guidelines for a book to have been accepted as scripture at Jamnia was that it had to have lasted for 500 years (since 400 BCE). However, there are works that no modern scholar accepts as having been that old. Specifically, the earliest copies of Daniel are written partly in Hebrew and partly in Aramaic. The Hebrew dialect that gave rise to Aramaic was not a literary language at the time of the Babylonian Exile. In order for the book of Daniel to be maintained in Hebrew, the Aramaic sections had to have been translated back. One position on this is that the original was all in Hebrew and that sections were lost with Aramaic copies being used to “fill in” until the Hebrew portions could be either found or reconstructed. I do not know of any books or portions that were back-translated from Greek. (In fact, the RCC accepts as canonical two sections of Daniel that do appear only in the Greek Septuagint–the story of Susanna and the Elders and the story of Bel and the Dragon–that are omitted from the Jewish and Protestant canons.)

(Modern scholars date Daniel to the mid 2d century BCE, but that, of course, flies in the face of tradition.)

When trying to elucidate unclear passages, the Septuagint has been used to provide a view of what ancient authorities thought the passages meant in Hebrew. I am just not aware of any actual back-translation.

As to the “Seventy Scholars” tradition of the creation of the Septuagint, particularly the aspect of the simultaneous perfect translations, I’m afraid that that tradition is not given much weight among scripture scholars.

78

Sdim, the vast majority of the Jewish OT was “edited” at Jamnia, straight from the Hebrew. In some cases the “editors” apparently used the Sepuagint as a “base line” to compare various slight variations in the Hebrew text. The Septuagint had the advantage of being backed by an incredibly wealthy King, and they had some sources from the Library at Alexandria that were later lost. This does not mean they “translated back”, just that the Septuagint was used a a resource. However, some later books were likely originally written in aramaic, like Tomndeb said. Thus there was no “original hebrew”*. It is possibly that some might have been written in Greek, originally, but this is unclear ( actually, it appears some were, but these were rejected as being too modern, nad are not found in the Jewish Bible.

What, exactly does the word “Tanach” mean, I know it refers to the Bible, but as a whole, or just one of the major divisions? (See, SDim, your Hebrew is MUCH better than MINE,
:D)

If you remember your Chronicles(33) they talk about the “prayers of Manasseh”, and specifically mention that they were part of the canon. Later, a book entitled “The Prayer of Manasseh” surfaced. The original appeared to have been written in Greek, and seemed to be way after the ‘cut off date’ (prob actually 150BC), and so it was not included in the Jewish OT (the Jamnia version), even the “Writings”. It also does not appear in the KJV (which is pretty close to the Jewish OT), but it does appear in the RSV, and the Vulgate, (in the “Apocrypha”).

  • altho I have been told that a good Hebrew scholar can figure out Aramaic quickly, given a few hours instruction on the differences, as Aramaic is a Hebrew dialect
79

Kyla:

In effect then, you were harrassed by the ultra-orthodox when participating in a cremony that they found offensive, not simply for not being like them.

I think the statement “Although I have met wonderful ultra-orthodox people, it’s just the hateful ones who get the press, and spring into my mind first” says alot as well, about the role (and bias) of the press in formenting hatred between peoples.

80

Daniel,

Tanach is actually an acronym for:

Torah (Pentatuch)
Nev’im (The Prophets --Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jerimiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve)
Ketuvim (The Writings – the remainder of the Jewish bible).
Sorry if I stepped on your toes SDimbert.

Zev Steinhardt