by I_love_Jeff 47 Replies latest watchtower bible
History shows that the Hebrew nation ( Israel, Judea) evolved from out the Canaanite established nation, from a polytheistic culture to one mostly monotheistic. So one could say then that the Hebrew's god Yahweh came out of pagan practices and traditions
Let face it some ones writings mean different things to different perceptions or from different back rounds and cultures which means misunderstanding arise rather frequently oh if we could only communicate exactly what we got going on in our head while writing if we could do that perhaps we are on the road to world peace or some such utopian dream where everybody gets along perfectly.
Finkle,
I think they were displaced nomads that took over some cities to have a more permanent residence. The coming out of Egypt scenario an attempt make a good story telling device that that satisfied those that held the power and the priesthood that makes a living out of telling these stories. Like Yahwey would really care if someone picked up sticks on a Saturday and have Moses tell the people to execute the violator of a god decreed rest day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomad
The first nomadic pastoral society developed in the period from 8,500–6,500 BC in the area of the southern Levant.[citation needed] There, during a period of increasing aridity, Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) cultures in the Sinai were replaced by a nomadic, pastoral pottery-using culture, which seems to have been a cultural fusion between a newly arrived Mesolithic people from Egypt (the Harifian culture), adopting their nomadic hunting lifestyle to the raising of stock.[8]
This lifestyle quickly developed into what Jaris Yurins has called the circum-Arabian nomadic pastoral techno-complex and is possibly associated with the appearance of Semitic languages in the region of the Ancient Near East. The rapid spread of such nomadic pastoralism was typical of such later developments as of the Yamnaya culture of the horse and cattle nomads of the Eurasian steppe, or of the Mongol spread of the later Middle Ages.[8]
The great thing about forums is that "experts" abound in the virtual world on every thread. But in reality their opinions couldn't earn them a penny.
Enjoy your repetitive attempts to disprove one another. It won't change Judaism or Jews or really anybody else. The world at large doesn't really know or care about this site. So what do the comments we make here matter? All that is going on is proving that some people are still and always will be the same stubborn person they were as when the were JWs: they will think that they are always right and that they know more than real specialists and experts in the field.
Till we meet again, shalom and laila tov.
Judaism is not a religion of beliefs. It is one of practice.
Pffft.... this is bullshit, it's playing semantics really. No need to speak Hebrew to recognise this as rubbish.
David_Jay,
How do you interpret Exodus 24?
9 Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up 10 and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. 11 But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.
You wrote quite the contradiction here:
But the Jews aren't taking credit for these elements
and then in the next sentence
since the Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures) was written by the Jews, the Jews have a clear claim to its meaning.
If you agree that the original elements weren't from the Jews how can the Jews have claim to its meaning. You draw the comparison with Star Wars quite apt since they are both works of fiction, but then yours and other religions after claim they are the unerring word of a deity on which we should rely for daily guidance on either spiritual, moral or practical matters.
Yeah Lucas ripped off elements of Dune but he didn't outright plagiarize them as the Tanakh or the Bible does nor does he claim they are any good for guidance on how to live in a galaxy far far away.
Anony Mous,
...yours and other religions after claim they are the unerring word of a deity on which we should rely for daily guidance on either spiritual, moral or practical matters.
Jews don't claim that the Scriptures "are the unerring word of a deity." Christians do, so you might just be projecting their claim on to Jews. Jews don't teach that.
But the Jews aren't taking credit for these elements
and then in the next sentence......since the Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures) was written by the Jews, the Jews have a clear claim to its meaning.
We can only claim the meaning behind Jewish compositions like the Tanakh, which is what I said. The Tanakh was written millennia after the Jews took elements from their Semitic world and made them their own. We don't claim we invented the Semitic world of Mesopotamia.
The first sentence was about not claiming we invented certain practices and customs, such as Passover, Purim, or sacrificing animals at a shrine or temple. We got these basic elements from our pagan/heathen past. We infused the practices with new meanings, much like Christians have with Christmas traditions that come from pagan/heathen origins. The basis for the cultural practices of the Jews was the Mesopotamian world, but these were altered over time and during the exile to Babylon were infused with even further meanings for the Jews. The new meanings we invented and wrote into the Tanakh are ours, but not the basis for practices of the ancient Eastern that evolved into these Jewish practices.
The second sentence is when I was discussing the Tanakh itself. The practices the Jews adapted from the Mesopotamian paradigm of which they were a part of had already become fixtures in Jewish life for centuries before the Tanakh was developed during the Babylonian exile. Most of the practices had already been altered and given new meanings over time as Israel grew under its first monarchy. So when the Babylonian exile began, the exiled sages and scribes began altering our history via legendary license, infusing our customs with even more meaning by claiming they were gifts from Heaven.
The resulting composition, the Hebrew Scriptures or Tanakh, is the work of Jewish sages and scribes. It is not the basis of our religion or practices but was a new tool for the synagogue system in which the stories were designed to be proclaimed. It was designed to keep our culture alive through Babylon so we would not assimilate and lose our national identity.
So Jews, being the people who wrote the book, have a claim to its meaning. But the Tanakh is not the origin of the culture or of the religion of the Jews. It was written by Jews to help preserve what had evolved over millennia, a culture like others that had become unique though it had common roots with its Mesopotamian neighbors.
Can you tell us where you got the mistaken idea that Jews view the Scriptures as "the unerring word of a deity" ?
Also, aren't you aware that the Scriptures of the Jews were written after Solomon's Temple was destroyed, after the Jews were forced to leave their land, countless generations after their religious system had evolved from the world from which they came? Where did you get your ideas?
Didn't you go to college after you left the Witnesses and at least take some courses in history to help erase the nonsense they taught? Please don't tell me you just left without at least investing time and money in yourself to at least know what the rest of society outside the Watchtower knows. What I am writing here is basic college history, and even found on Jewish education sites on the web. You mean, you never bothered to check with sources like My Jewish Learning or Aish or Chabad or the Reform Judaism site?
You don't have to live in darkness after the Watchtower. And no bogeyman is gonna get you just because you go to a Jewish source to get your questions about Judaism answered. Stop asking me and start learning from the source yourself. Or take a night course in college or something. If you want to challenge the answers, challenge your local rabbis. Get of your butt and away from a computer screen, come out into the real world and to talk and argue with real people face to face.
Stop challenging me and challenge yourself with an education that will answer all your questions and more, and leave the darkness of the Watchtower behind forever.
I do have some knowledge about history and I did study major religions' origins, your viewpoints and sources are at best revisionist and have been disproven by modern archeology. My field of study is more in the hard sciences, I do work at a University, no ad hominem necessary in that area.
I know the Jews don't see scriptures as unerring unlike other religions yet they still base moral teachings, some Jews use the law for their schedule and garb and you even attested for its historical veracity and the 'correct' Jewish interpretation (although you didn't specify which Jewish interpretation is correct, there are many contradicting ones).
My claim is that even your interpretations are based on flawed understanding of how the scriptures came about, their historical origins and original interpretation. This is the same things you accuse Christians of, appropriating and interpreting Jewish writings.
Anony Mous,
These are not my personal opinions and some of the things I wrote are not even views of Judaism I share. You argument is not with me but with Judaism.
Anyone can claim they work for a university. But I will take your word for it. Why not use your education and university credentials and debate those I told you to. If you keep arguing with me it won't do any good for as I told you, these are not my personal views or convictions. For all you know I may have the exact same feelings about these matters that you do.
If you work for a university than I am certain you have the courage to openly tell Jews out in the world, wherever and whenever you meet them, what you dislike of disagree with about their own take on their own cultural and theological views.
But if you just keep on arguing with me, I will believe you are nothing more than a troll, lying about your university connections, and lacking the courage to do anymore than be a slave to that insatiable drive within you to prove your point on an insignificant thread on the Internet.
I'm done with conversing with you since I am not here to defend Judaism, its teachings, or my personal convictions (which I actually share very rarely). Therefore I am not the one you need to be speaking with about your views.
