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Amra
02-03-2006, 10:10 AM
I wanted to ask if someone can explain the fundamental beliefs of Jews, and how they differ from Christianity. Also, is there a Torah(in english) available somewhere online? I haven't been able to find it anywhere. Thank you. :nod:

Unspar
02-03-2006, 12:02 PM
The Torah is the first five books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Numbers, and Leviticus), so you could go to an English translation of the Bible and find it.

Amra
02-03-2006, 12:22 PM
I didn't know it was the exact same Old Testament as the one in the Bible. Interesting. :nod: So, basically, the difference is that Jews do not accept Jesus a.s as a Prophet? They follow the law of Moses, and reject the teachings of Jesus a.s altogether?

Unspar
02-03-2006, 12:25 PM
I'm not Jewish and don't understand the practice too well, but from what I know that's the primary difference, yes. I've heard some Jewish people say that they respect Jesus as a man, but they deny that He was the Messiah. There's probably more intricate differences than that, but for that territory I hand this off to someone who knows Judaism better.

falling*moon
02-14-2006, 06:01 PM
hello,

did not the Jews kill Jesus ??

Xamonas Chegwe
02-14-2006, 06:35 PM
hello,

did not the Jews kill Jesus ??

Sure (with a little help from the Romans). But that was what he wanted allegedly. Christianity would have fallen a little flat if they'd let him off with a caution now, wouldn't it?

falling*moon
02-14-2006, 06:40 PM
why did they do it , if i may ask ??
he was their leader

Xamonas Chegwe
02-14-2006, 07:02 PM
errrrm. Not exactly their leader. He was the leader of an obscure religious cult, that was rapidly gaining in popularity, that the ruling classes found to be a threat to their authority. Or so the bible would have it.

Nowadays, we just print scare stories about brainwashed teenagers in the newspapers to deal with such as he - it kills the cult before it can get a grip - martyrs are so tricky to deal with!

Theshizznigg
02-14-2006, 09:24 PM
The difference between judaism and Christianity, is very simple.
While Christians believe that Christ is the saviour of mankind, promised in the old testament to be the one to lead the kingdom of Zion, and the saviour of all mankind, the Jews who do not believe in Chrisitainity or Christ being the messiah of promise believe that Christ was merely another prophet and that the true messiah is yet to come.
The torrah is in no way different really from the old testament, of the bible, the only difference is that the bible has on the new testament which are the rules Christ laid down for his future followers the Christians.
Thus Jews keep the faith of Israel and follow the rules in old testament, laid down by Moses.
Christians however are free from blood covering for sins, since they believe that Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice and sin offering, atoning for all past/future sin a person would commit.

As for XGMs comment that Christianity is a cult. I appreciate your views, but to call Jesus nothing more than a liar who gave people false information and hope for salvation, I find extremely insulting to my faith to make such an accusation without any tangible facts to disprove Christs divinity.

I hope this has been helpful to you.
Shizz

Xamonas Chegwe
02-15-2006, 02:02 PM
As for XGMs comment that Christianity is a cult. I appreciate your views, but to call Jesus nothing more than a liar who gave people false information and hope for salvation, I find extremely insulting to my faith to make such an accusation without any tangible facts to disprove Christs divinity.

Please tell me where I used those words?

I have no problem with your disagreeing with me SHZNG, but don't put words in my mouth again, or you and I will have a falling out. :rage:

Unspar
02-15-2006, 02:50 PM
errrrm. Not exactly their leader. He was the leader of an obscure religious cult, that was rapidly gaining in popularity, that the ruling classes found to be a threat to their authority. Or so the bible would have it.

I think this needs a little more elucidation. First of all, the whole "leader" thing. Jesus claimed to be the King of the Jews, as He was promised to them. Some people believed, some people didn't.

Also, the Pharisees didn't kill Jesus because they felt threatened as much as they thought he was a terrible blasphemer who did damage to their religion. The threat to authority hinged on what they considered blasphemy more than popularity.

The overall picture of the conflict and execution is that there were two sides of Judaism when Jesus came that took different interpretations of the Old Testament. You've got the Pharisees side, which is all about executing the strict letter of the Law and keeping tradition, and you've got the Jesus side, which (if you believe what Paul says in the New Testament) is about fulfillment of the Law more than execution. To be a little too reductive, it's a standard old vs. new generational kind of conflict. So the old killed the new because it offended their conservative sensibilities.

falling*moon
02-19-2006, 12:45 PM
so the Jews killed Jesus coz he came with other religion..!

airman
02-27-2006, 06:12 PM
I wanted to ask if someone can explain the fundamental beliefs of Jews, and how they differ from Christianity. Also, is there a Torah(in english) available somewhere online? I haven't been able to find it anywhere. Thank you. :nod:Look at The Hebrew Scriptures (http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/scripture.html) for a description of the torah and at Judaism 101 (http://jewfaq.org) for information about judaism in general.

Xamonas Chegwe
02-27-2006, 06:35 PM
Here (http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm) is an excellent resource for all manner of religious writings. I stumbled across it looking up the baha'i beliefs.

Charles Darnay
02-27-2006, 06:37 PM
so the Jews killed Jesus coz he came with other religion..!

You really should try and get this whole "Mel Gibson - Passion of the Christ" image out of your head. The killing of Jesus was in a sense, a survival tactic. Jesus was threatening the ways of the Roman autocracy, and since he claimed to be representing the jews, they, but not only they, the Romans had a big part in it, felt that he needed to die or else they would all be held responsible for his radical actions.

Mililalil XXIV
02-28-2006, 03:52 PM
I didn't know it was the exact same Old Testament as the one in the Bible. Interesting. :nod: So, basically, the difference is that Jews do not accept Jesus a.s as a Prophet? They follow the law of Moses, and reject the teachings of Jesus a.s altogether?
That is why the idea of some that the Scriptures as given have not remained to the present is an impossibility. GOD, in HIS perfect Wisdom used even the division between the non-Christian Jews and Christians (whether Jewish or not in blood) to accomplish this good thing:
that, the two groups being entirely without collaboration for centuries, should independantly preserve the same Hebrew Scriptures, even though at complete odds with one another doctrinally.
Thus, when muslims and mormons say those particular Scriptures were lost sometime after Mohammad, or sometime after the LORD's Incarnation, they make an impossible charge. Both have preserved what Christians call the Old Testament. While trying to contradict the TRINITY, the rabbis have nonetheless preserved all that Christians use from the Hebrew Scriptures to prove the Christian case. A third group that preserved the Torah in all repspects (except for a few words to support their sect's claim to primacy) is the Samaritan community, that have been at odds with Jews since the split of Solomon's kingdom into the Jewish kingdom (loyal to David's line, out of which JESUS descended humanly speaking), and the kingdom of the dissident 10 tribes.
Besides these, heathens aquired early Greek translations of those and other Hebrew Books, known as the Septuagint.
All the different groups that until recently considered themselves to have had irreconcilable differences, all independantly preserveing the same Books, while in absolute sectarian conflict with one another, make the empty assertion that the quran and the book of mormon have outlasted the earlier Scriptures an obvious slander of no account. Thus any one that believes that Jews and Christians ever possessed reliable Books can know for certain that we still do.

Mililalil XXIV
02-28-2006, 04:05 PM
errrrm. Not exactly their leader. He was the leader of an obscure religious cult, that was rapidly gaining in popularity, that the ruling classes found to be a threat to their authority. Or so the bible would have it.

Nowadays, we just print scare stories about brainwashed teenagers in the newspapers to deal with such as he - it kills the cult before it can get a grip - martyrs are so tricky to deal with!
Not so. He was the legitimate King of the Jews. Even rabbis after HIS generation acknowledged this, while giving excuses for not recieving HIM as such. By Blood HE inherited the Throne, and for HIS lineage, even the men next of kin to HIM were rounded up by the Romans to be executed, to prevent a Messianic Kingdom from errupting in material form from Israel.
Regardless of HIS Religion, or lack of the same, HE simply was in line to the Throne of Israel, which is no small thing. HE had more right to it than the House of Windsor has to anything in Britain.
Those that have conducted ethnological surveys of the subjects of the Roman empire of those days and of centuries immediately following, have noted that up to 10 % of the subjects of the empire appaer to have been Jewish in blood, while only a small per centage of these were outside of the growing Christian Religion.
Generally it is accepted that Josephus (whether he spoke of JESUS on HIS own or not)did in fact attribute the destruction of Jerusalem to the murder of James, the LORD's brother. What he says of James accords well with all of the earlist Legends about his influence in Jerusalem over great numbers of Jews, and about his Martyrdom.
The fact of the Roman arch with the picture of their carrying away things from the destroyed Temple reflects the truer picture than some are willing to concede: that Israel was very central to Roman consideration.
The earliest Christian coinage reflects growth of an earlier period: for, if you were not the Roman capital, but only a sub-autonomous state, it could take generations to establish new coinage, since it involved international recognition, so that it would be taken for money in trade.

Mililalil XXIV
02-28-2006, 04:09 PM
hello,

did not the Jews kill Jesus ??
Some Jews killed the greatest of Jews, and many Jews didn't feel like living any more when they beheld HIS suffering. Then, days later, these depressed Jews were suddenly full of joy and willing to suffer anything at the hands of those that killed HIM, just so long as they might give these same persecutors the Hope they now possessed!
The persecutors and the persecuted were of one ethnicity alike.

Mililalil XXIV
02-28-2006, 04:26 PM
so the Jews killed Jesus coz he came with other religion..!
Actually, HE pointed out that the things they would rather romanticize about for the future was now suddenly among them. HIS Religion was what HE had given Moses foreknowledge of. In the Torah, GOD says HE speaks Face to face to Moses as a man speaks with his friend, then says that some are mere Prophets, recieving obscure Oracles - while HE speaks plainly to HIS dear friend.
Like Cain, who slew his brother Abel, it was a matter of a hard heart. Because Cain could not strike GOD in his anger at HIM, he took it all out on one who merely typified HIM. When the ONE Abel had typified now was present in flesh as a MAN, those among the Pharisees that were like Cain finally took out their anger on GOD HIMSELF. Cain didn't dare admit he had wanted to kill GOD, but he had had that impulse. The Pharisees were divided over JESUS - some were HIS Disciples. The opponents among them spoke abusively of HIM, but CHRIST recognized that they had not been willing to acknowledge HIM as more than a man, so HE warned them not to blaspheme the SPIRIT, in order to save them from peril. HE constantly called them hypocrites and this infuriated them against HIM. This was like GOD telling Cain that if he did what was right he would be blessed like Abel. As long as GOD was invisible to them, they could ignore HIS SPIRIT - but, incarnate, HE was inescapably in their face.
Christianity was full of Pharisaic beliefs. Interestingly, the Pharisaic beliefs that many have tried to make out to have created Christianity, because their hope's object was clear to see in the JESUS rejected, gradually fell out of rabbinical appreciation. By still focusing on the same prior focuses, they could not make JESUS appear as anything but the GOAL of the Religion of their fathers.
Christianity is a legitmate branch of the Judaism of that day by all lines of thorough inquiry.

Theshizznigg
03-04-2006, 03:01 PM
All of this had a purpose, it was fate.

Mililalil XXIV
03-14-2006, 05:59 PM
In the Hebrew Prophets were indications that a New Covenant was on the way, and there are indications in the Torah that only the stiff-neckedness of Moshe's generation prevented them from being able to enter at once into the New and Everlasting Covenant.

In the Torah itself, no less, Moshe is said to have been spoken to in a more open manner than the nation of Yisra`el at large were addressed with the giving of the Torah. That means that that great Prophet was alone privy, in those days, to a deeper Understanding of the things typified in the Torah.

In the Epistle of Barnabas, it is written:
CHAPTER 10:1 Now, in that Moses said, "Ye shall not eat swine, nor an eagle, nor a hawk, nor a crow, nor any fish which has no scales on itself," he included three doctrines in his understanding.

2 Moreover he says to them in Deuteronomy, "And I will make a covenant of my ordinances with this people." So then the ordinance of GOD is not abstinence from eating, but Moses spoke in the SPIRIT.

3 He mentioned the swine for this reason: you shall not consort, he means, with men who are like swine, that is to say, when they have plenty they forget the LORD, but when they are in want they recognise the LORD, just as the swine when it eats does not know its master, but when it is hungry it cries out, and after receiving food is again silent.

4 "Neither shalt thou eat the eagle nor the hawk nor the kite nor the crow." Thou shalt not, he means, join thyself or make thyself like to such men, as do not know how to gain their food by their labour and sweat, but plunder other people's property in their iniquity, and lay wait for it, though they seem to walk in innocence, and look round to see whom they may plunder in their covetousness, just as these birds alone provide no food for themselves, but sit idle, and seek how they may devour the flesh of others, and become pestilent in their iniquity.

5 "Thou shalt not eat," he says, "the lamprey nor the polypus nor the cuttlefish." Thou shalt not, he means, consort with or become like such men who are utterly ungodly and who are already condemned to death, just as these fish alone are accursed, and float in the deep water, not swimming like the others but living on the ground at the bottom of the sea.

6 Sed nec "leporem manducabis." Non eris, inquit, corruptor puerorum nec similabis talibus. Quia lepus singulis annis facit ad adsellandum singula foramina; et quotquot annis vivit, totidem foramina facit.

7 Sed "nec beluam, inquit, manducabis"; hoc est non eris moecus aut adulter, nec corruptor, nec similabis talibus. Quia haec bestia alternis annis mutat naturam et fit modo masculus, modo femina.

8 Sed et quod dicit mustelam odibis. Non eris, inquit, talis, qui audit iniquitatem et loquitur immunditiam. Non inquit adhaerebis immundis qui iniquitatem faciunt ore suo.

9 Moses received three doctrines concerning food and thus spoke of them in the SPIRIT; but they received them as really referring to food, owing to the lust of their flesh.

10 But David received knowledge concerning the same three doctrines, and says: "Blessed is the man who has not gone in the counsel of the ungodly" as the fishes go in darkness in the deep waters, "and has not stood in the way of sinners" like those who seem to fear the Lord, but sin like the swine, "and has not sat in the seat of the scorners" like the birds who sit and wait for their prey. Grasp fully the doctrines concerning food.

11 Moses says again, "Eat of every animal that is cloven hoofed and ruminant." What does he mean? That he who receives food knows him who feeds him, and rests on him and seems to rejoice. Well did he speak with regard to the commandment. What then does he mean? Consort with those who fear the LORD, with those who meditate in their heart on the meaning of the word which they have received, with those who speak of and observe the ordinances of the LORD, with those who know that meditation is a work of gladness, and who ruminate on the word of the LORD. But what does "the cloven hoofed" mean? That the righteous both walks in this world and looks forward to the holy age. See how well Moses legislated.

12 But how was it possible for them to understand or comprehend these things? But we having a righteous understanding of them announce the commandments as the LORD wished. For this cause he circumcised our hearing and our hearts that we should comprehend these things.

The above translation I guess is still in process of translation from Latin to English. I can't type everything myself and save time all at once.

In verse 9, in the original tongue, it does not mean that the physical food law did not get rightly involved, but the point stressed is this:
that it never was a mere food guide, but had a much more important spiritual instruction in it. This Moshe knew. Already we see that his giving of the Law did not straightaway accomplish all that its giving was a necessary step towards.

Stanislaw
03-15-2006, 11:09 AM
All of this had a purpose, it was fate.

essentially. He was fulfilling the torah.

And I don't believe that he proclaimed himself to be King of the Jews, but he did speak of his Kingdom, God's Kingdom.

Mililalil XXIV
03-15-2006, 09:55 PM
essentially. He was fulfilling the torah.

And I don't believe that he proclaimed himself to be King of the Jews, but he did speak of his Kingdom, God's Kingdom.
You correctly see that HE came with a Universal Vision. At the same time, though, HE began with Israel, as ONE with the Birthright to rule that nation in his blood, and, as Paul the Apostle explains, out of the Olive Tree that is Israel, while some branches - but neither all, nor even most - fell off until some future time, the gentiles were grafted in, causing that Tree to grow to universal proportions.