Posts by David

18

A quick Biblical question....

by dubstepped in

my wife and i were talking about how religions claim to be directed by god, yet god never seemed to let any of them know about the danger of sexual predatora to children.

the it hit me, does the bible say anything on the subject?

is there a thou shalt not diddle kids scripture?

David_Jay

Since there is scripture stating that children who dishonor their parents should be put to death, it would leave the impression that children had little if any human rights in the ancient Hebrew civilization...

There was no such thing as "human rights" in ancient civilizations.

I note that those from a Christian background, including perhaps even some of those who leave it behind, seem to demand that our Jewish works be read through a lens compatible with modern views on justice and with Christian definitions on God and perfection. That's not the fault of the Bible as much as it is the fault of non-Jewish readers not remembering that they are reading an account of a people who allegedly lived some 3,500 years ago.

Notions like "human rights," a "perfect God that is like the loving Jesus," etc. are expectations that you wouldn't expect to find in other religious writings of other cultures of the same period. Jews aren't saying that their religious mythos demonstrates axioms of perfect behavior or that the personality of the God of the ancient Hebrews is supposed to match with the words of the children's song: "Yes, Jesus Loves Me"!

Sometimes the demands made upon the Hebrew text by others sounds to me like that scene from the musical, The Book of Mormon where white American boys from Utah find the dark realities of Uganda shocking. They don't understand why their stories about Jews building boats and sailing to America to grow into tribes that war with each other wherein eventually some get cursed with black skin in the process for being bad don't ring true with the people of Africa. Part of the comedy in the show is that they've been seeing the world through rose-colored glasses that they thought the rest of the world had money enough to afford. The reality is that even if each person had the money to purchase glasses like that, most aren't interested in them.

As a Jewish man I will be the first to tell you that my people had some pretty screwed up ideas some 3,500 years ago. But guess what, so did your ancestors! Just compare your people's histories to mine and see for yourself that they were just as stupid as mine. That was 3,500 years ago! Is it always logical then what's being demanded by some of the Bible?

Also, it's not the fault of our Scriptures that someone who wasn't Jewish told you lies about our stories. Don't blame us or our book! If we can read the same pages and claim that the stuff inside is at times downright horrible and ugly and that our God in its pages often didn't do what we think should have been obvious to an Almighty Being--and we still come out seeing some value in it--all I can say is that I'm sorry that you can't make the "Square Peg of our Ancient Bible" fit in your Modern Christian-based Society circle of a hole. I think you should be mad at the teachers who taught you that the mythology of ancient Jews was journalist history and stop complaining that the square won't go in where you think it should go.

Now I know that is NOT what many of you are actually saying, even here. But I do want people reading this to note that some of you Gentiles wouldn't be so happy if I messed around with your legends either. What about Americans and their legend about George Washington, how when he was a boy he was allowed to go about wielding an axe and chopping down other people's trees? So what if he told the truth about it when asked? Would his refusal to lie about what he had done still be as heroic if instead of chopping down a cherry tree he had gone next door and chopped to death his neighbor's dog? So what if you admit you did something wrong? "I cannot tell a lie. I was the one who chopped Rover to death and kept chopping till he was in bite-sized chunks." Telling the truth that you did something bad doesn't make you honorable if what you're being honest about is a crime.

See what I mean? If you look closely at anyone's cherished legends, you can find fault if you look at it in the way it was not intended to be viewed. Jews aren't the one's saying their Bible or God is perfect. If you got a bone to pick, it's not with us.

A good rule of thumb to remember is if you can't read the legend in the original language, always keep in mind that something may get lost in your translation--so be careful how you interpret it.

18

A quick Biblical question....

by dubstepped in

my wife and i were talking about how religions claim to be directed by god, yet god never seemed to let any of them know about the danger of sexual predatora to children.

the it hit me, does the bible say anything on the subject?

is there a thou shalt not diddle kids scripture?

David_Jay

I am an adult survivor of child abuse. While I cannot argue against some who might be disturbed by terms employed in the OP, I can declare that I was not. I have read much from dubstepped and, based on that experience didn't read any intent at malice or disrespect in the choice of words.

This is not to say that it isn't a good idea to watch what one says, but since we each tend to speak with a particular vernacular and may have rightly grown comfortable with one another, I give most posters here the same benefit of the doubt I give my friends in my vicinity. I count most posters here as friends, so I try to remind myself of that when someone says something I might take offense to.

But we should never say a particular reaction by a victim is improper. The oddest things might bring back very uncomfortable feelings for me at times too, things that to the average person might never be connected with abuse. I know that others can't predict what these things might be in order to avoid them since I surely can't always do the same. So I hope those of us who might find something that is written here offensive might remember that most here would never purposefully do anything to perpetuate the suffering we had to endure in our pasts. I truly believe questions like this from posters like this come about only because they are on our side, the side of survivors.

18

A quick Biblical question....

by dubstepped in

my wife and i were talking about how religions claim to be directed by god, yet god never seemed to let any of them know about the danger of sexual predatora to children.

the it hit me, does the bible say anything on the subject?

is there a thou shalt not diddle kids scripture?

David_Jay

You will find no references to pedophilia in the Hebrew Scriptures because the Torah defines sexual intercourse as an activity both exclusive to marriage and defining of marriage.

Halakhah extended the cultural understanding of the Mosaic Law on sexuality into kosher standards, but even these tend to lean in the direction of what is allowed, not what is forbidden. Halakhah by nature instructs the Jews how to live, so there aren't lengthy discussions on all the situations that break kosher (no instructions on how NOT to live). One of the reasons this might not be covered is that marriages were often pre-arranged contracts made when a prospective bride and groom were still children. Most understood that the actual sexual union could not proceed until such a time as both were adult members of society. Until World War I most marriages in Jewry were arranged by parents or decided between families.

The moment of a marriage could happen at different ages during various different times through the history of the Jewish people. Depending on whether we ran our own communities or were under the control of a foreign power or even of the Diaspora, what constituted sex with a child and the act that consummated a contractual union could vary greatly. Under some situations in some ancient cultures martial relations were initiated among citizens as early as puberty. Therefore the defining standards of pedophilia today didn't always exist in the ancient past.

The Didache is one of the earliest documents reflecting Jewish standards about under-age sex in the first century, albeit a Jewish Christian composition. However the prohibition against "pederasty" at Didache 2:2 is actually a reference to Hellenistic homosexual unions between tutors and their disciples (women were neither tutors or disciples in this type of Greek practice). The expression however may be less a prohibition against pedophilia and more a euphemism prohibiting all types of homosexual unions according to some scholars.

82

the-question (607 BCE explained and proved)

by pleaseresearch in

so a user named "the-question" said the jw's were right about 607 bce.. this is your chance brother to prove us all wrong.. we all can't wait to hear from you :).

David_Jay

We Jews don't have an exact date for when a lot of these "sure dates" Jehovah's Witnesses claim. In fact, if you note their materials they almost always ignore Jewish history and go straight to saying something like "secular historians claim..." In all honesty, the secular numbers don't always match up with our numbers, but they are far closer.

To illustrate: Some traditional rabbinical sources date the completion of the first Second Temple edifice as early as of 3408 A.M. (350 B.C.E.) but the best Jewish history and critical estimates have the Temple completed around 3574 A.M. or about 515 B.C.E. on the Gregorian calendar.

Even within the 166-year discrepancy, the Jehovah's Witnesses' 607 chronology has us not even returning to Jerusalem until 3596 A.M. (537 B.C.E.), more than 20 years AFTER the latest date for the Second Temple's dedication date. This makes the Watchtower calculations impossible.

I'll bet almost none of you knew the A.M. dates, right? Why not?

Because all that JWs are ever exposed to in Watchtower publications is the JW calculations and the secular data they choose. Ever hear of a "straw man ruse"? This is when a debator invents or fabricates a problem in order to trick people into believing he has the solution. Since he made up the original problem, he can also easily tackle it since it is fabricated to begin with. Like a man made out of straw, a fabricated controversy is easily solved by the liar who makes it up.

This is the whole 607 B.C.E. debate in a nutshell--a cheap trick. All one had to do was check the Jewish date that the Second Temple's pre-Herodian edifice was completed, either the traditional date or the secular one or any in between--and count backward from there. May not get precisely matching dates, but close enough to agree with secular experts for the fall of Jerusalem.

But the Witnesses don't mention the A.M. dates because then they cannot control the parameters of the argument...

...And that's what you want when you present a straw man as your argument.

210

Morality Without Deity

by cofty in

one of the most persistent arguments for belief in god centres on the necessity of an ultimate law-giver and epitome of goodness.. a softer version is seen in the genuine concern that a loss of faith will result in a corresponding loss of a moral compass - a more strident argument links the existence of good and evil with proof of the reality of god.

it is often asserted that without god, moral decisions degenerate to nothing more than personal preferences and the victory of "might is right".. i want to succinctly lay out my response as an atheist, and show that a supreme being is not required for objective morality.. it is helpful to distinguish between absolute morality, objective morality and subjective morality.

christian apologists frequently conflate the first two, and secular debaters often fail to point out the difference.. theists who disagree on everything else, are unanimous that god is perfectly good.

David_Jay

@John_Mann,

There is a Jewish proverb (not in Scripture) that teaches us: "Pray as if everything depends upon God, but act as if everything depends upon you."

God is not present unless you, John_Mann, make God present. While in lesser religious concepts that might mean to make an idol so others can see your god or even to preach before others on a street corner while handing out tracts so others can read about your concept of god, the Jewish concept is that if you pray for justice, for food, for life, then you are responsible to become God for yourself and others to make sure everyone has justice, food, and life.

In other words, "killing God" so to speak cannot in turn 'kill us.' Having no belief in God isn't what is making the world less and less religious. What is making the world less religious is the promotion of the idea that morality is about belief and not about action. The view of Cofty and others similar aren't as destructive a force in the world as the promotion of the idea that morality is determined by the God you BELIEVE in and not the justice you perform.

Even Jesus stated that it is not the amount of people you convert that will save you, but the type of service to the needy that you perform that will decide your eternal fate. (Matthew 25:31-46) Does not the New Testament ask: "If the uncircumcised keeps the requirements of the Law, will not this uncircumcision be overlooked?" (Romams 2:26) If then the unbeliever brings about more redemption into the world, more justice, more provision for the wanting than the believer, why would God reward the believer over the doer?

Do not condemn the man who does not believe in God but nevertheless brings justice into the world. Condemn, rather the man who prays to God and then remains motionless in his belief and does not bother to bring about that for which he prays. How much or how little you believe was not the issue regarding the hungry, the naked, the thirsty, the stranger, the ill or imprisoned that Jesus spoke about.--Matthew 25:44-46.

37

I will only believe in demons if...

by deegee in

jws are known to have an obsession and preoccupation with demons.. this obsession and preoccupation is not without merit given that jesus, his disciples/apostles, and the general public of 1st century ce judea and galilee are reported as believing in the existence of demonic spirits and in the possibility of demon possession of an individual.. exorcism formed a large part of jesus' ministry on earth.

the gospels and the book of acts describe many exorcisms where jesus and his disciples release people from demonic possession.. ___ .

but how do demons get inside a person's brain or body?

David_Jay

And that comment of Tepidpoultry is the basic issue I was getting at by my offering information on that case.

There has not been critical research done to the extent of proving that possession is real, to prove that all cases have a particular common source or explanation, or to prove that only religious people get "possessed."

Without a definitive study people are just shouting rhetoric here, be it to promote their opinion on religion that religion is a good or bad thing or something else.

37

I will only believe in demons if...

by deegee in

jws are known to have an obsession and preoccupation with demons.. this obsession and preoccupation is not without merit given that jesus, his disciples/apostles, and the general public of 1st century ce judea and galilee are reported as believing in the existence of demonic spirits and in the possibility of demon possession of an individual.. exorcism formed a large part of jesus' ministry on earth.

the gospels and the book of acts describe many exorcisms where jesus and his disciples release people from demonic possession.. ___ .

but how do demons get inside a person's brain or body?

David_Jay

That statement was in reply to the comment that atheists don't get possessed.

I replied as I did to demonstrate that the family was not actually religious. From discussions with the Catholic exorcist, his implication was that religious people are generally not subjects for possession either. The cases tend to involve people in between both worlds, not necessarily religious but also not secular enough to avoid an interest in spiritualism or the occult. I was not, however, indicating that I think this case is a valid example of anything in particular. My apologies for the lack of clarity.

3

Questions

by Bugbear in

jw
friends

did the aztecs carve out the beating hart out of their enemy’s breast?.

did the jews “killed all their enemies, men, woman and children - but not the virgin girls”.

did the jews slaughtered cattle, birds and other animals and burned it in the temple of jerusalem.

David_Jay

I can offer some possible answers to some of these questions. They are not the last word or even everyone's answer to the questions raised, but they might help you find answers if you are willing to look beyond your present views and ideas.

Why did the Jews “kill all their enemies, men, woman and children - but not the virgin girls”?

The stories you read in Scripture are propagandized, meant to read a certain way to ancient minds using ancient narrative devices. To claim in the Bible that "all the enemy was killed" and that the best of spoil was carried off, whether it be gold or livestock or virgins, was a way of attributing glory to God in ancient terms. Note how this is also done when describing God sending plagues upon Egypt: the 5th plague kills ALL of Egypt's livestock (Exodus 9:1-7), but then God kills the same animals again with a hail storm and fire (Exodus 9:13-35), and if that is not enough, though ALL the animals have been killed at least twice, the firstborn of all the animals die in the 10th and final plague (Exodus 11:1-12:36). And somehow, after all this, there are still dogs left to be silenced by God as the Hebrews leave Egypt, and horses for the enormous army of Egypt to draw their chariots in pursuit of the escaping Hebrews! All this after the Bible claims the Hebrews stripped the Egyptians of all their precious goods--which would have included things like chariots as these could have been used to help transport all the spoils of Egypt. (Exodus 11:7; 12:36; 14:9) No, this type of language is not literal. It is just an ancient way of describing how powerful God is against Israel's enemies, even if the actual events didn't happen just this way.

Why [did] the Jews slaughtered cattle, birds and other animals and burned it in the temple of Jerusalem?

While many Christians might have you believe this was a unique system designed to provide a means to appease God with the blood of sacrifice, it was really the way all ancient communities butchered their meat. The process of the ancients went like this: animals could be eaten as long as the gods of the people were thanked for the food; if the community had priests, the animal was slaughtered and the blood offered to the gods in the butchering process; some meat was given as a gratuity to the priests for their butchering skill. The Mosaic Law allowed the Jews to have a similar system, only that in their case God allowed for liturgical ritual butchering to also be means of asking forgiveness for sins. It was not the only way sins could be forgiven, mind you, but it was also available for you when you went to get your meat butchered. This explains why the early Christians had issues about eating meat purchased from pagan markets as the pagans butchered their animals in similar rituals as an offering to their own particular gods.

Why did the people of God actually accept and encourage the habit of taking slaves?

Slavery was a facet of all ancient Mesopotamian cultures, a norm, and the ancient civilization of the past unfortunately created a world that depended upon it. The Mosaic Law did not introduce slavery, mind you, but it did regulate it. It also encouraged the releasing of slaves whenever possible. It curbed the way slavery could be carried out among the Hebrews as to avoid the inhumane treatment carried out by Gentiles upon slaves.

Why did the Christian God have to torture and kill his son to be able to forgive his other creations?

Christianity does not teach that God required the sacrifice of his Son to forgive humanity. What it teaches is that God came to humanity in order to offer his life as a sacrifice for the world. God does not need blood or the life of other people. The Christian teaching, though it differs greatly with the Jews, is not entirely illogical. As Jewish sacrifices were not merely ways to gain forgiveness but to obtain food for everyday life, the sacrifice of Jesus is supposed to be the ultimate sacrifice that offers not merely forgiveness but the "food" that grants "eternal life" for the humans that 'eat of it.'--See John 6:27-35.

Why did a loving caring Father and God, let almost all of his children drown In a flood?

He didn't. The Noachian Deluge is a Mesopotamian cosmological paradigm that was one ancient explanation of the origin of the universe. The ancient Mesopotamians believed that there was no vacuum of space, only a vast eternal sea. The majority believed that life sprang from the sea, and some believed the current world came from a previous world that was erased by the waters due to humanity being "wicked." The Hebrews merely adapted and employed this paradigm in the story of Noah, as one of three cosmological origin myths that appear in Genesis (the other two appear in chapters 1 and 2). Noah may have been a historical figure who survived one of the many Mesopotamian deluges that often wiped whole villages away on a regular basis, but the story was altered to fit the cosmological origin narrative. It is not a historical report.

Why do Priests, Monks and Popes, let female creatures burn up in fire because they think they are obsessed by the devil?

While some Catholics have done horrible things to people (including my own, being that I am Jewish), it had less to do with them being Catholics as it had to do with them being unfaithful Catholics. Some atheists have been just as horrible at times. When the concentration camps of the Holocaust were liberated by the Soviet armies, at night the Soviet soldiers (who were atheists) would rape many of the women prisoners even though they were starving, ill, and near death. Many of my aunts and grandparents suffered like this before the Allies came to free them. But this does not mean all atheists are evil. On the contrary, most atheists are very good people and I have a blessed life by having many as friends. The same go for Catholics and people of other faiths.

People do not require religion, a belief in God, or the Scriptures in order to act objectively moral. The opposite is also true: immoral, unjust acts are not the exclusive acts of the religious. The non-religious carry them out as well.

37

I will only believe in demons if...

by deegee in

jws are known to have an obsession and preoccupation with demons.. this obsession and preoccupation is not without merit given that jesus, his disciples/apostles, and the general public of 1st century ce judea and galilee are reported as believing in the existence of demonic spirits and in the possibility of demon possession of an individual.. exorcism formed a large part of jesus' ministry on earth.

the gospels and the book of acts describe many exorcisms where jesus and his disciples release people from demonic possession.. ___ .

but how do demons get inside a person's brain or body?

David_Jay

@Smiddy

While there are Jews who have a concept of demons similar to Christianity, like everything else in our crazy Jewish world, there is no definitive theology or dogma regarding them. Still you will find a ritual about exorcism in the Midrash. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered a collection of “four songs for the charming of demons with music.” (11Q5) There is some further information about the practice in rabbinical literature, and even Josephus mentioned a Jewish exorcism in his writings. (Antiquities of the Jews, viii. 2, § 5) Also The Book of Tobit (found in the Catholic deuterocanonicals) is a Jewish tale centered on an exorcism.

So you are correct in that the definition of what a demon is in Judaism can be quite different than in Christianity, and this may account for the varied approaches (and lack thereof in some instances) among Jews throughout history. It should be of interest too that both Judaism and Catholicism perform exorcisms according to a liturgical formula.

@deegee

Thank you for that information, but I hope I didn't give you the impression that I was unaware of what a seance is. What I meant is I had no information on exactly what happened in the case I was referring to regarding the aunt's seance practices.

But I did some re-checking and discovered that the "seance" activity may have been limited only to the use of a talking board as a parlor game between the woman and her nephew. Roland was an only child, and the adults in his family were his primary friends according to reports. He was notably close to his aunt, a spiritualist. A news article in the Daily Mail states that Roland was given a talking board by his aunt as a gift and then died after the boy's 13th birthday. That account adds that it was after this loss that the alleged events took place.

I cannot offer much more information on the case, however.

16

A Perfect Life Isn't Worth Living?

by Sorry in

think of your favorite tv shows.

what do they all have in common?

the answer is they revolve around some type of problem or conflict.

David_Jay

There's a Jewish parable about a woman who is blessed with entry into Olam HaBa, the World to Come.

It is paradisaic in that trees everywhere are alive with blossoms and fruits, animals are at peace with humanity, family and friends are enjoying each other's company in warm gatherings, etc.

Then she comes upon a building that looks like an old synagogue. She walks inside to discover it is filled with rabbis sitting at desks, arguing, debating, and throwing books.

"Why are these men not in paradise?" she asks God. "Are they being punished?"

"No," God replies. "The men are not in paradise. Paradise is in these men."

True paradise is not achieved by living in a perfect world, only by living in one that makes you perfectly happy.

David_Jay

Posts by David_Jay