Posts by David

32

Jesus Christ was no Moses

by smiddy in

moses has a history of what 80+ years as a servant of jehovah ?

in one form or another .. moses wrote / penned the first five books of the bible and went through many trials and tribulations in serving his god jehovah in his long lifetime.interacting with god at times.. jesus was born and nothing is recorded of him until he is a young adolescent child ?

and very little about him.. then we are introduced to him when he is 30 years old and gets baptised ,and only then does he start his preaching .. does he start preaching to the world ?

David_Jay

I just want to reiterate that Smiddy has raised a good issue. I don't want what I am saying to be seen as necessarily disagreeing with Smiddy's basic argument. My additional points are merely food for thought as sometimes we can lose the effectiveness of an argument but not trying to get holes poked in it. An argument is only good after its been in a wind tunnel and withstood testing. Sometimes seeing what gets blown over during the test can only help improve the final product.

32

Jesus Christ was no Moses

by smiddy in

moses has a history of what 80+ years as a servant of jehovah ?

in one form or another .. moses wrote / penned the first five books of the bible and went through many trials and tribulations in serving his god jehovah in his long lifetime.interacting with god at times.. jesus was born and nothing is recorded of him until he is a young adolescent child ?

and very little about him.. then we are introduced to him when he is 30 years old and gets baptised ,and only then does he start his preaching .. does he start preaching to the world ?

David_Jay

Smiddy,

Again as a Jew I really appreciate where you are coming from. But arguments to support Moses might need to be approached differently to be effective and, most importantly honest.

For instance, as a Jewish man I can clearly attest that we are not all convinced that Moses literally wrote the words one reads in the Torah. The only thing we know about Torah authorship is that Moses is responsible for what is written therein or played a major part in our receiving Torah. Maybe he did write every single word you read there, but there is a lot of evidence to argue against it. Regardless of what Moses literally wrote with his hand or not, you won't find many Jews describing the type of inspiration process as you will find supported by Fundamentalist Christianity.

So the argument that 'Moses wrote things but Jesus didn't', except for sounding good at first blush, is not efficacious. Neither is the 'number of Jews' argument much good as there is nothing in Torah which states that the more Jews that follow a prophet the more truthful he is. Often we Jews ignored our prophets, even persecuting the ones that told us truths we didn't want to hear.

However this does not mean you are on the wrong track. The basic premise is good, especially if you are a Jew trying to defend your stand as to why you don't personally accept that Jesus is the promised Prophet like Moses.

To do that effectively and honestly you need to concentrate not on arguments that those exposed to Christianity use, but find the views that shape Jewish thought on the matter. My reason for offering counter arguments as a Jew on your points is to illustrate the it is not effective to approach this argument without learning the Jewish stance.

There are significant reasons Jesus is not accepted by Jews as the so-called "Greater Moses." Some are:

1. Jews don't see a promise in Scripture for a "Great Moses." The "prophet" following him is viewed as Joshua and all prophets to Israel that followed.

2. The Messiah concept is not centrally important to Judaism and as such not definitively formed enough to make such a comparison as you present important. In Judaism it is good to debate, but a diatribe for diatribe sake can be a waste of effort better spent living out Torah than arguing it.

3. The Messiah is not supposed to be greater than or a replacement for Moses in Jewish thought, so making a comparison like this doesn't prove or disprove anything from a Jewish view. The issue itself is superfluous in Judaism, so when you have to discuss it you need to show that the final conclusion either way effects very little in Jewish thought.

4. Claiming Moses was greater by what he supposedly wrote, how many Jews he influenced, how long his teachings have been around, etc., is the wrong approach. Moses is great because he received the Torah. Thus the Torah makes him great, not the other way around.

5. Jesus brought Torah to the Gentiles, or so his ministry is seen by many Jews. As such many Jews today, as the Rabbinical Statement on Christianity explains, view what Jesus did as part of God's plan to reach the world. Jews don't see Jesus or his ministry as an accident. Making such a comparison as you are doing therefore would be like comparing Moses to Isaiah, thus making Isaiah look as if he was unnecessary compared to Moses. This is not a right way to look at things in Judaism. One looks at what one accomplishes in line with their particular purpose from Heaven, and as such Jesus' role shouldn't be diminished just because Jesus was not Moses.

32

Jesus Christ was no Moses

by smiddy in

moses has a history of what 80+ years as a servant of jehovah ?

in one form or another .. moses wrote / penned the first five books of the bible and went through many trials and tribulations in serving his god jehovah in his long lifetime.interacting with god at times.. jesus was born and nothing is recorded of him until he is a young adolescent child ?

and very little about him.. then we are introduced to him when he is 30 years old and gets baptised ,and only then does he start his preaching .. does he start preaching to the world ?

David_Jay

Smiddy has made some good points. As a Jew I greatly appreciate them, and I think they need to be heard and considered with some more study by those who often try to convince Jews that they are lost and doomed to burn forever in hell for not accepting Jesus as Messiah.

However, as a Jew myself, I think it only fair to point out a few things about Jesus that we should all take into account:

Jesus preached from one to three years (depending on the way you read the Scriptures). For a person to be raised to "God-hood" after such a short time is quite impressive. Moses was around much longer, millions more followed him during Moses' lifetime than followed Jesus during Jesus' lifetime, and Moses was never raised to "God-status" like Jesus has been. Moses, by this test, isn't as impressive as Jesus.
Details about Jesus were not only preserved and spread by his followers. Because the ministry of Jesus had so much impact, contemporary Jews had to engage in quite of bit polemic efforts to counter the claims about him. Whether or not the stories about Jesus were just that, stories, the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth started something that even disbelievers had to deal with on a notable level.
The idea that Jesus has been King since 1914 is limited to Jehovah's Witnesses, and then only the Jehovah's Witnesses who have been associated with the Watchtower since somewhere around the 1940s. The original date for this "invisible installment" is 1874. The rest of Christianity saw him as king from the time of his birth, which the feast of Epiphany (January 6 on the Christian calendar) annually marks (the visit of the Magi). The idea is that Jesus introduced the nations (Gentiles) to the teachings of God in a way nobody before him ever has, and in some ways this is true. By means of getting a large portion of the world to follow his teachings, one could say his "rule" has been an effective one on some level for the past 2000. More people follow his teachings than Moses (that is to say there are more Christians than Jews).

How did someone who preached only a few years to a few people get so famous and end up having so much control through his teachings in so little time? Moses has been preached in synagogues scattered via the Diaspora since Babylon fell, and few have been attracted to worship the God of Abraham over the generations that followed. Here comes one Jew who preaches for a short time and BLAM, suddenly every Gentile wants to worship the God of Abraham--and they want to do it the Jesus-way, not the Moses-way. How does that happen and why?

There is a movement within Judaism that has recently reclaimed Jesus as one of the great Jewish Sages. As the recent Orthodox Rabbinic Statement on Christianity and works by Jewish scholars such as Amy-Jill Levine demonstrate, the reason many Jews did not accept Jesus as Messiah have had less to do with Jesus as it has to do with Gentile Christians demanding the erasure of Jewish culture in the process. So over the years Jews have often equated the name "Jesus" with attempts to destroy all things Jewish. The various pogroms, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Holocaust did a lot to solidify this view unfortunately.

And while Jews are not running in hoards to claim they have found the Messiah in Jesus, it is also not true that Jesus remains on the wayside as much as he did in the past in Jewry. Excluding the Messianic Jews (which is an Fundamentalist Christian movement), there are many Jewish Christians. Groups like the Association of Hebrew Catholics exist that contain official members of Christian denominations that preserve their culture while claiming Jesus as Messiah. Countless interfaith families exist in which a Jewish-Christianity has formed (and celebrations such as "Chrismukkah" have arisen), and research has shown that most Jews, especially members of the post-denominational movement, believe one can believe in Jesus as Messiah and still remain fully Jewish. Thus hatred for Jesus is slowly on the wane in the Jewish world, the same as hatred for the Jews as people who won't accept Jesus as Messiah is diminishing in the Christian world.

@LoveUNiHateExams--One also needs to consider that the battles spoken of the Hebrew Scriptures may never have taken place. Even Jews understand these narratives to be legendary retellings of our history and not our literal history. For instance, when we celebrate Passover using the official Seder text, the Haggadah, Moses is not even mentioned once. However, it is well established that Jesus' followers have killed, and massacred men, women, and children (especially Jews) in the name of Christ. Jesus may not have killed for his religion, but the past 2000 years of Christianity shows that Jesus' followers have. Sometimes you can only judge the teacher by the way the pupils act.

@nonjwspouse--It is not taught, even in the New Testament, that the Mosaic Law was ever believed to be a rule to be followed as a means of salvation. That idea came after the Reformation, when arguments between Catholics and Luther became simplified into polemic attacks between the two Christian parties. Catholics were stereotyped as being "Pharisees" who promoted a religion of "works equal salvation." From this the epistles received a hermeneutic approach which implied that Paul was claiming that the Jews followed the Mosaic Law as a means for salvation.

And Jesus' teaching that "love" is to be followed is actually based on Mosaic Law, and Jewish religion or so Jesus himself said. (Matthew 22:36-40) By teaching "love" Jesus was teaching Torah, not something new.--Matthew 5:17-19.

47

Have you ever known a holocaust denier? How did you feel about them?

by Esse quam videri in

i sometimes did work for a lovely old couple who at times needed repairs done around their home.

my wife and myself spent time with them, having tea and crackers from time to time.

one day the husband and myself got into a conversation and he clearly showed himself to be a holocaust denier.

David_Jay

It's odd for me to meet or even hear of such people.

The language my family speaks around the house, our native tongue, is called Ladino. For those of you who don't know, Ladino was once the mostly widely-spoken Jewish language in the world during the 20th century...until the Shoah (the word we Jews use for the "Holocaust").

Once the Shoah ended, almost 100% of European speakers of Ladino were gone. The language of Sephardic Jews from the Spanish Inquisition era, it was a mixture of Spanish, Aramaic, and Hebrew. Hitler did away with all the European Sephardic Communities during the Shoah, and with it the speakers of Ladino. Being that most Sephardic Jews are darker skinned that Ashkenazi Jews (and the Ashkenazi's had Germanic blood), this may have been a reason why the Sephardic Jews of Europe went first.

I grew up in an area surrounded by Latinos, thinking I was one of them as a child. But I do remember being teased for my "weird Spanish" and even scolded by adults like teachers who would tell me that using my language with its unique words "was a sign of your bad breeding, so you need to stop using them and change your ways." It was not until I was an adult that a language specialist uncovered that my family and I spoke Ladino. Our family had come to the Americas after the Spanish Inquisition, and we brought our language with us and have been speaking it ever since.

The point is, the language is not all we discovered from these experts in Jewish humanities. We learned that we were once related to millions of people who once lived in Europe until the Shoah. Aunts, uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, countless cousins, all gone in about the period of a decade. I am directly related by Sephardic lines to over half of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. In most cases all I have are photographs of people I will never meet, most of these photos hanging in museums.

If the Holocaust has not happened, my language would not be rare. Today it is estimated that around 100,000 native Ladino speakers remain, and despite recently efforts the language is dying and may soon be extinct. The communities where my European relatives once lived, many in Budapest, were emptied of Sephardic Jews. There are visible traces left, but little more.

The Holocaust is real. It did happen. Today I am somewhat isolated because of it. Most Jews you see in the Western world are Ashkenazi, and the customs and language (Yiddish) are theirs. Except in Israel, I am for the most part on my own when it comes to being a Sephardic Jew.

This is all due to something that Holocaust deniers have to lie to themselves about. The idea that I could claim 3,000,000 plus people as relatives, all who disappeared with their communities and language in about ten years is a horrible thought. Some can't face it. Some won't.

12

Why was corruption of scriptures not prevented?

by anointed1 in

many bracketed portions in the scriptures, influence of foreign myths and unscientific teachings … etc show that scriptures have been corrupted.

even when they are not corrupted, religious teachings have often no effect even on direct disciples (when jesus was teaching, his immediate disciples were thinking about who was going to be first in the organization—something that happened in all religions which led into their infighting and divisions).

at the same time there are many good people among materialists, why?

David_Jay

Part of the reason the whole "corruptions of Scriptures" argument doesn't always work is that for the "corruption" to mean anything, the Scriptures have to be "the" ultimate form of revelation and religious enlightenment for those who use them.

A common mistake we often make upon leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses is never to update our understanding of what those in the religious world outside of the Watchtower actually believe. The idea that the Scriptures have been shaped by outside "corrupting" influences is not news to the majority of those who use them religiously. It only causes a problem for those who have a mindset like the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Jehovah's Witnesses view the Scriptures as the "ultimate authority" on religion and theology. For them everything has to be based on what the Bible says. But for Christians like Catholics, the Orthodox, and most of mainstream Protestantism, the Bible takes second place to Jesus, the apostolic college, and in many cases the teaching experience of the Church body as a whole.

And as for Judaism, the Scriptures are a product of their religion. The religion of the Hebrews functioned for millennia without the Jewish Bible, and in fact it was not until the end of the Babylonian exile that any of its books became finalized into the forms we now have them in. It would not be until the time of the Masoretes (between the 6th and 8th century CE) that anything resembling a formal "canon" of Jewish texts would be settled.

But for Jehovah's Witnesses, the Bible is like the Book of Mormon is to Latter-day Saints. They treat it as if it was the only link to "salvific knowledge" from Heaven. As such it is taught to be the ultimate source of revelation from God, a source greater than the Christian Church that wrote it, the apostolic college that taught its truths before these were placed on parchment, even a greater witness of God than Jesus Christ (for Christians). Unless it is written in its pages in a translation approved by the Witnesses, there is no greater source of authority and truth anywhere else.

So for them the Bible has to be without interpolation from outside sources. When a person who has been a Witness discovers this for the first time they often mistakenly project this "new discovery" upon all religious people who use Scripture, thinking that all other religious traditions view the Bible as the ultimate form of revelation and basis for all "true" religion.

The opposite is true. Jews have known since they developed the Scriptures that many of the ideas they assembled into it required updating. The "Document Theory" (adopted by most in Judaism and Christianity) suggests that the Torah or Pentateuch was written by a series of writers over many centuries. This methodological analysis identifies countless areas where one can easyily see redactions made as the books came into final form over different eras. There are anachronisms in much of the redactions that some interpolations were added to some sections, such as in much of the "P" or priestly material which suggests redaction during the time of the Temple. The Document Theory is totally rejected by the Jehovah's Witnesses because it makes their view of the Bible impossible.

In the end, it is like Half Banana explains: the religious world outside the Watchtower is very much aware that the Bible evolved over time to become the book they canonized. When a religion like, Catholicism for instance, says that the Bible was "inspired," they include the redaction or editorial/interpolation process by various writers and scribes as part of the inspiration process. Since unlike the Witness, Jews and Christians see the Bible as only the "written" part of revelation from God, it's words don't have to be exact truth or pure since the written part of revelation is a product of the experience of revelation that, in most cases, was also an evolutionary process. One doesn't have to accept the Bible as it is, but one shouldn't reject the Bible just on the misrepresentation made by groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses. They aren't right about most things, but that's no reason to dismiss most things.

183

The Great Crowd!

by A Believer in

notice the 144000 can be counted and they all come from israel.. 9 after this i saw, and look!

a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,*+ standing before the throne and before the lamb, dressed in white robes;+ and there were palm branches in their hands.+ .

this great crowd, no man was able to number, and they come from every nation!

David_Jay

Somebody else take over if you want. He's either being mean by playing stupid, or he has a real problem.

Either way, Shabbat has begun where I live and I have to go. Shabbat Shalom!

183

The Great Crowd!

by A Believer in

notice the 144000 can be counted and they all come from israel.. 9 after this i saw, and look!

a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,*+ standing before the throne and before the lamb, dressed in white robes;+ and there were palm branches in their hands.+ .

this great crowd, no man was able to number, and they come from every nation!

David_Jay

Read my comments thoroughly. If you are asking this then it shows you are dishonest. True JWs are not disonest. Honest people would have read the entire comment I wrote.

183

The Great Crowd!

by A Believer in

notice the 144000 can be counted and they all come from israel.. 9 after this i saw, and look!

a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,*+ standing before the throne and before the lamb, dressed in white robes;+ and there were palm branches in their hands.+ .

this great crowd, no man was able to number, and they come from every nation!

David_Jay

If you read my comments you would have seen that I said several times that I am Jewish.

You last comments prove you never read a thing I wrote.

183

The Great Crowd!

by A Believer in

notice the 144000 can be counted and they all come from israel.. 9 after this i saw, and look!

a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,*+ standing before the throne and before the lamb, dressed in white robes;+ and there were palm branches in their hands.+ .

this great crowd, no man was able to number, and they come from every nation!

David_Jay

I did. I ADDED more information. You have to counter the ADDED information to prove your point.

You have to quote from sources that do not come from your religion like I did. I am Jewish. I used non-Jewish sources to prove my objectivity. You have to do the same.

Can you say with all honesty before Jehovah that you read every part of my last argument and researched every point and proved each point I raised as wrong, demonstrating to all here how I was incorrect? That is what you need to do.

183

The Great Crowd!

by A Believer in

notice the 144000 can be counted and they all come from israel.. 9 after this i saw, and look!

a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,*+ standing before the throne and before the lamb, dressed in white robes;+ and there were palm branches in their hands.+ .

this great crowd, no man was able to number, and they come from every nation!

David_Jay

Again, how does what you just said disprove the points I raised. Goo back, read what I wrote, and see how what I raised makes what you just quoted from the Watchtower impossible.

And you cannot prove your point by merely quoting things that support your view, you only prove your point when you DISPROVE the other arguments. Until you do that, you prove nothing. You lose.

David_Jay

Posts by David_Jay