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Posts: 20703
Mon, 26-Aug-13 08:07:23
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While there is clearly no lack of miracles in Jewish tradition, Judaism rejects the notion that our belief is based on these miracles. The theological bedrock of our religion is, as Martin Buber notes, a claim unparalleled in history: that God spoke in a national revelation to the entire Jewish people at Mt. Sinai. The foundation of Judaism is built upon a verifiable historical event, not an account of miraculous acts.
Over the centuries, many religious adherents have tried to prove that they possess the "true" religion by performing miracles. However, Maimonides states: When one is willing to give credence to a religion because of reports of miracles, that is entering into dangerous territory - for one never knows whether the "miracles" may in fact be optical illusion or sleight of hand. . .
Posts: 5945
Mon, 26-Aug-13 09:23:38
Mon, 26-Aug-13 09:27:47
Mon, 26-Aug-13 09:30:18
Now the belief in a national revelation at Sinai has been held by the whole of the Jewish nation for thousands of years. We need to ask: Why did they believe this? Where did this belief come from? What we have seen so far enables us to rule out one answer to these questions. They were not deceived into believing it by later persuasion.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time but YOU CANNOT FOOL ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME.
Posts: 2285
Mon, 26-Aug-13 09:35:11
Mon, 26-Aug-13 09:36:56
Mon, 26-Aug-13 09:38:01
Mon, 26-Aug-13 09:45:04
Proteus wrote:I happen to have no confidence in the resurrection appearance stories.
Mon, 26-Aug-13 09:47:27
Zvi wrote:The difference is that Sinai is part of OUR historical experience as the Jewish nation. It was not a personal experience and the proof did not rest upon trusting a limited number of witnesses.
“And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. Matthew 27:51
A legend is an unverified story. By their very nature legends are unverifiable because they have very few eyewitnesses.
"Hey, Ezekah -- I was in Paris last night and the Eiffel Tower came to life (just like those Zombies in Matthew) and stomped a few people to death, and then went back in place. Hey, don't believe me? There were 10,000 eye witnesses!"
"Do not remove this memory from your heart all the days of your life. Teach your children and your children’s children about the day that you stood before HaShem your G-d at Horev [Mount Sinai]... G-d spoke to you from the midst of the fire, you were hearing the sound of words, but you were not seeing a form, only a sound. He told you of His covenant, instructing you to keep the Ten Commandments, and He inscribed them on two stone tablets.’ (Deavrim / Deut.4:9-13)
G-d spoke to you from the midst of the fire, you were hearing the sound of words, but you were not seeing a form, only a sound. He told you of His covenant, instructing you to keep the Ten Commandments, and He inscribed them on two stone tablets.’ (Deavrim / Deut.4:9-13)
Mon, 26-Aug-13 10:12:05
Zvi wrote:The Torah assumes that its audience (the Children of Israel) is familiar with and accepts the claim that the entire nation received the revelation at Sinai and that future generations could verify that claim by asking their ancestors.
"Do not remove this memory from your heart all the days of your life. Teach your children and your children’s children about the day that you stood before HaShem your G-d at Horev [Mount Sinai]... G-d spoke to you from the midst of the fire, you were hearing the sound of words, but you were not seeing a form, only a sound. He told you of His covenant, instructing you to keep the Ten Commandments, and He inscribed them on two stone tablets.’ (D'varim / Deut.4:9-13)
G-d spoke to you from the midst of the fire, you were hearing the sound of words, but you were not seeing a form, only a sound. He told you of His covenant, instructing you to keep the Ten Commandments, and He inscribed them on two stone tablets.’ (D'varim / Deut.4:9-13)
Mon, 26-Aug-13 10:17:15
Mon, 26-Aug-13 10:18:37
Mon, 26-Aug-13 10:32:41
Mon, 26-Aug-13 10:34:39
Zvi wrote:I was thinking of Deut. 32:7: Remember the days of old; reflect upon the years of [other] generations. Ask your father, and he will tell you; your elders, and they will inform you.
Quote: We will work backwards in time. Let's first prove that the Bible is two thousand years old, and work backwards from there. 1,800 Years Ago The Chrstians I think there is little question that 1,800 years ago the Torah already existed. The Chrstians have been using their confused mistranslations of the Tanach at least since the second century C. E., and even trying to prove their mistaken beliefs from the Torah. So the Torah is certainly already in existence for about 1,800 years. 2,000 Years Ago Josephus and Philo But it certainly existed before then as well. Josephus lived almost two thousand years ago, around the first century C.E., and wrote his works probably around 75 C.E. Josephus mentions the Torah numerous times, and clearly refers to it as something that had been around a long time. In his work called Contra Apion, he writes: For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, as the Greeks have, but only twenty-four books, which contain the records of all things past; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. (Book 1, Chapter 1, Number There you have a clear reference to the Books of the Bible, and explicit mention of the Five Books of Moses. This is just one reference of many. Josephus mentions the Torah throughout many of his works. (See, for example, Antiquities of the Jews 4:8:3 and 2:16:5.) Josephus is very clear that by his time there already existed a book of Laws written by Moses, and that it tells of the stories that Josephus himself tells in his Antiquities. But was Josephus speaking of something new, or something that was already very old? Josephus was speaking of something that was already considered very old in his time. How do I know? Because he says so. In Contra Apion, Josephus writes that our Sacred Books are very old, and he asserts that no one has ever added to them or changed them in all the years since they were created. ...and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add any thing to them, to take any thing from them, or to make any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews immediately, and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be willing to die for them. It is no new thing for our captives, many of them in number, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds upon the theaters, that they may not be obliged to say one word against our laws and the records that contain them; whereas there are none at all among the Greeks who would undergo the least harm on that account [i.e., for their own books].... (1:1: So it is quite clear that the Jews had these books, and believed in them, long before Josephus, who lived almost two thousand years ago. The Jews of his time, almost 2,000 years ago, already had all the Written Torah we have today, and believed them to be the originals, just as we believe today. Let's go back a little further. Philo (around 20 B.C.E. to around 50 C.E.) also talks about the Books of the Torah, in his work The Life of Moses (II:288-91). He also says that the books of the Torah are very old. The writings of Josephus and Philo both prove that the Written Torah was already composed by the first century of the Common Era. 2,200 Years Ago The Septuagint, Sadducees, and Ben Sira Let's go back a little more. The Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Torah first written by Rabbis and later changed dozens of times by numerous people), is claimed by the Gentiles to date back to 275 B.C.E. (Our Tradition dates it a bit later, at 245 B.C.E., according to Rabbi Fendel, in Legacy of Sinai, page 136.) So the Written Torah already existed at that time. Also around that time, the emergence of the Sadducee and Boethusian sects took place. The Sadducees took as their platform the statement that they believed only in the Written Torah, and rejected the Oral Torah. Evidently, at that time both the Written Law and the Oral Law already existed. So now we know that the Torah already existed by around 275 or so B.C.E. That's 2,275 years ago, as I write this. Let's go back a little more. Ben Sira (circa 400 B.C.E.) also mentions the Books of Torah, in the same number and names that we have them today. So the Tanach existed then as well, around 2,400 years ago. 2,500 Years Ago The Samaritans, and the Ten Tribes We can go yet further back. The Samaritans learned the Torah from the Ten Tribes sometime around 550 B.C.E. So, by then the Chumash and Joshua were already written. Some of the Kohanim of the Ten Tribes taught it to them. Any time after that, the Samaritans would not have accepted the Torah from the people of Judah, because of the Samaritans' hatred for them. So, since both the Jews and the Samaritans have the Chumash, we know that the Chumash had to have been written some time before 550 B.C.E., before the two groups stopped having contact with each other. This also proves that the Torah could not have been written during the time of the two kingdoms. Since the Ten Tribes taught the Chumash to the Samaritans, that means the Ten Tribes had to have had the Chumash before they split off from the other two Tribes. During all the time that they were split, neither kingdom would never have taken Torah from the other. Yet the later Books, written by Prophets among the two Tribes in Judah show numerous examples of how the Ten Tribes kept the Laws of the Torah (with occasional lapses), and that they had the Torah (see, for example, I Kings 21:13; II Kings 4:23, 7:3; Hosea 4:6; 8:1, 8:12; Amos 8:5, et. al.). So, during the time of King Solomon, before the breakup of the nation into two kingdoms, the Chumash must have already existed. But they must have already existed earlier, or the Ten Tribes would never have accepted them. They took them because before they broke off these Books had already been fully accepted by all Israel. 2,800 Years Ago King David Could the Torah have been written during the time of King Solomon, or during the reign of his father, King David? Definitely not. Consider what the Torah says about the nations of Moab. The Torah (Deut. 23:4-7) says that a man from the nation of Moab may never marry a Jewish woman, even if he converts to Judaism. Even the descendant of a convert from Moab may never marry a Jewish woman. This was because of the way they treated us when we passed near their land on the way to the Land of Israel. They did not come forward to offer us bread and water, as was their custom. The women of Moab, however, after conversion to Judaism, are not forbidden to marry a Jewish man, because it was not the custom of the Moabite women to meet travelers with bread and water, and also because they had no connection with the attempt to curse Israel. Now, you may remember that King David was a descendent from Ruth, a Moabite woman who converted to Judaism. You can imagine the trouble that must have caused. As a matter of fact, the Rabbis tells us that King David's enemies certainly tried to get a lot of mileage out of that, and tried to claim, falsely, that a converted Moabite woman was also forbidden to marry a Jew. Now, wouldn't it simply have been easier for King David, if he wrote the Torah, to leave out that Law? It does not seem at all logical that King David would have written this in the Torah, or that any of the people of his time would have done that. Therefore, that dates the Torah to at least before the time of King David, who was born in 836 B.C.E. That's already 2836 years ago. (By the way, King David and King Solomon are both mentioned in the history of the Phoenicians and the Tyrenes, according to Josephus. Both the Phoenicians and the Tyrenes did business with the Israelites during those eras.) 2,900 Years Ago The Judges Perhaps the Torah was written just before King David was born, during the era of the Judges? That, too, cannot be. The Torah says that it is forbidden to wage war against the nations of Moab and Ammon (Deuteronomy 2:19). Yet the Judges all the way from after Joshua to King David (inclusive) fought with those nations! Ammon invaded Israel during the time of Yiftach the Judge (around 970 B.C.E.), and Moab oppressed them during the time of Ehud the Judge (around 1160 B.C.E.). They had to fight with them out of self-defense, so they would never have included such a Law in the Torah had they composed it! The Israelites spent a great deal of time and energy, and lost many good people defending themselves against those nations. Would the Prophets or Judges or anyone of that time have written a Law stating that it was forbidden to attack Moab or Amon if they were inventing the Torah? So the Torah could not have been written during the time of the Judges either. Therefore the Torah predates the Judges, and come from the time of Moses and Joshua! That means that we have had the Torah for 3,313 years. And therefore, the Torah tells us that Moses told the Children of Israel: Only take heed and watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not forget the things that your eyes saw. Do not let this memory leave your hearts, all the days of your lives. Teach your children, and your children's children about the day you stood before Hashem your G-d at Horeb (Deut. 4:9-10). (Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai.) Moses wrote the Torah according to the instructions given him by Hashem. Hashem dictated the Torah to Moses, letter by letter. Moses then taught it to the Children of Israel. And we have studied the Torah ever since, for 3,313 or so years. Of course, the Torah itself is much older than that. Our Tradition tells us that Hashem created the Torah, both the Written and the Oral, 2,000 years before He created the universe. Hashem used it as a blueprint when He created the universe. And Hashem then kept it until it was time for us to receive it. (The approach of this article, as well as some of the proofs, I took primarily from the works of Rabbi Avigdor Miller, especially Sing You Righteous, paragraphs 102-121.)
Posts: 1507
Mon, 26-Aug-13 10:45:24
Mon, 26-Aug-13 10:48:46
Proteus wrote:This is not Jewish teaching.Most of my theological reflection in recent months has been nearly, if not, atheistic.First, we have the conclusion to the "Totally Simple" thread, here. If I understand that correctly, G-d is not in any way personal, nor a person, nor a personality at all.Then we have my notion of G-d as All. Not quite in any way, shape or form the G-d most people think of. A G-d who created existence must transcend it, and IOW both be and not be. Exist and not exist.Similar enough is my notion of G-d as What Is. I need not detail.Yet a recurring feature of recent worship services at my church has been my sense of what I'm powerless to call anything other than Spirit, both filling the entire worship space and permeating my own being.First, it tells me for certain (as certain as I can be) that there is more to the universe than time, space and matter.Second, it does NOT tell me that Christianity has any monopoly on truth. Rather, it tells me that altruism is a transpersonal force largely independent of anyone's belief system.I expressed much the same conclusion in Reply #45.
Mon, 26-Aug-13 10:51:41
Mon, 26-Aug-13 11:18:03
Arikm7 wrote:I can't believe some want us to discount the record for our ancestors (real or in my case "adoptive") as to the National Revelation at Sinai, but incredibly want us to accept the reports of seven independent and disenfranchised writers (the writers of the gospel plus Paul and the author of "Revelation") without question. All the while ignoring all the inconsistencies of their accounts, the inaccuracies in their retelling, their seemingly willingness to outright lie about the "enemies" of their narrative (the Jews) and their polemical weaving of paganism into what their duped children tout as "original Jewish movement" and ignoring the refutation of this "home-spun" myth by actual historical events/historians. Yet they claim the National Revelation didn't happen. Or worse, try to elevate their pagan-induced faux accounts to the level of the National Revelation at Sinai; purposing to make Jeesus into some "new Moses". The lengths some will go to grasp the last of those straws.
Romans 3:7(KJV) – For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?1 Corinthians 9:19-23(KJV) – (19) For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. (20) And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; (21) To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. (22) To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. (23) And this I do for the gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you.2 Corinthians 12:16(KJV) – But be it so, I did not burden you: nevertheless, being crafty, I caught you with guile.
The modern day's terminology for the message in the passage from Romans 3 is "divine deception", i.e., it is OK to lie for God. Is it really OK?The image that pops into my mind when I read the passage from 1 Corinthians 9 is a chameleon, a creature that changes its color depending on its surrounding environment. Also, if you listen to many of today's politicians, they seem to try to be "made all things to all men"...LOLAnd, finally, the passage from 2 Corinthians 12 speaks for itself - Paul characterizes himself as a crafty guy who catches people with guile (look up "guile" in any dictionary and you'll see that it means things such as 'deceit', 'treachery', 'cunning', 'trickery')So, would you buy a used car or an insurance policy from a man who has such a profile?UriYosef
Posts: 970
Mon, 26-Aug-13 12:40:34
Proteus wrote: This is not Jewish teaching.What's to prevent the emergence of a legend?I think I've made my point.Time for me to move on.Most of my theological reflection in recent months has been nearly, if not, atheistic.First, we have the conclusion to the "Totally Simple" thread. If I understand that correctly, G-d is not in any way personal, nor a person, nor a personality at all.Then we have my notion of G-d as All. Not quite in any way, shape or form the G-d most people think of. A G-d who created existence must transcend it, and IOW both be and not be. Exist and not exist.Similar enough is my notion of G-d as What Is. I need not detail.Yet a recurring feature of recent worship services at my church has been my sense of what I'm powerless to call anything other than Spirit, both filling the entire worship space and permeating my own being.First, it tells me for certain (as certain as I can be) that there is more to the universe than time, space and matter.Second, it does NOT tell me that Christianity has any monopoly on truth. Rather, it tells me that altruism is a transpersonal force largely independent of anyone's belief system.
Mon, 26-Aug-13 12:44:14
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