ancient and modern judaism

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_Mitzvot

In this case, the ‘idolater’ is a person of another religion in general.

If the jews are a nomadic racist destroyer of civilizations, that is the reason for hitler hating them and trying to wipe them out.
He basically called them that, in mein kampf. I didn’t finish the book, but I remember a few little things about it.

The bible talks about genocide, but it says the guys that got killed off were nothing but evil scum.
Now, is that true? Or were they just different people?

As the story goes, God gave The Promised Land to the Jews. There was only one hitch. They had to “take it.” It wasn’t really “given.” They had to kill those on the promised land … and sometimes, even the livestock, and “everything that takes breath.”

Back in Old Testament days it was right to commit genocide … cuz God told them to do it … and God can do no wrong.

And it’s still going on today. Israel is after ALL the land God gave them in their Torah. And this Syria thing, if we attack them, will be opportunity for them to take more of that sacred land back. The international community holds them back, but there’s nothing wrong with killing to take the promised land back. It’s in their holy scriptures. God demands it … cuz He gave them a gift.

The Jews would have been way better off as atheists.

Yeah, lookin at their track record who would ever want to be one of God’s chosen?

Christians come to the consideration of Judaism with prejudices that must be made explicit before they can be overcome. But first, here’s a general statement about our relationship to sacred texts and violence that I think is relevant for consideration:

Where are you able to cut and paste this quote? Kindle?

I don’t understand the comparison implied in the title of the thread when I read the OP, but I get the gist of the inquiry.

If the concern is over provocatively violent tonality in the Tanakh, specifically the Torah, then I don’t think there’s very much provocative about it when looking at the anthropological context.
It would have been remarkable and very odd in nature for the Hebrew peoples to not have been of the same nature as those in the 1400-800 (somewhat lesser pressed onward from here) BCE in the Middle Eastern region.

Every religious metanarative around was divisional; this was a time where the Middle East was forming its comprehension of City-State formations in a third major wave of change. It was a sort of miniature globalization event where many prior history civilization takes on City-State and Empire formation had underwent, and now there was a new group rising up and scrapping with each other all over the place in the absence of regular contests between such grand forms as the Hittites and Egyptians (there were more, but that is an example).
This is somewhat similar to what happened in the European regions in the aftermath of the fall of Rome; factional warfare of small and exclusive groups of people representing shared, but distinct cultures, each vying for the superior position in the region in the absence of an obvious force.

I would have been far more thrilled to find the Hebrew culture absent of this tangent as that would surely provoke quite the anthropological anomaly, but they are “par for the course” in their absolute solidarity (or, the philosophy and impression of it; they were far more mixed than many of their politics would probably have wished to admit).

Anyway, I don’t have much to offer; just that they were violent because everything around them was violent. There was no assumption granted that the world was suddenly just unique and different in nature of hardship, brutality, and the lack of altruistic forgiveness.

I’m not very shocked, then, to see that their understanding of the nature of their divine realm reflects these same inevitable natures of their existences.

So Jay, why do some want to live as if today were 1400 B.C.E.? You don’t think Israel today is living out the Torah’s Promised Land?

For the same reasons people want to live like it’s the 1950’s or any other time being idealized: it’s a time period where their ideals were the leading ideals; earnest or presentational.
In israel’s case, the time period should be ignored as the tie is, as always, only because it is convenient.
The reason for todays arrangements by Israel are simple: political ambition.
The citations are simply rationalized excuses, and nothing more.

I am not sure this is exactly what the OP was introducing, but anyway, maybe it’s interesting to some :
“Ancient and Modern” angle on Sukkot.
Now is the time of year to celebrate Sukkot. The Jewish festival that remembers the Israelites 40 years wandering around in the wilderness, the Exodus from Egypt. During that time they lived in temporary dwellings - Sukka -, like huts, thrown together from whatever could be used - straw, wood, branches, palm fronds etc.
According to the bible, God told Moses how to build the huts, and from which materials. He also instructed that all future generations of Israel should observe this ceremony to remember the flight of the Israelites.
Nowadays the ways of observing are of differing degrees. The very religious will build their Sukka according to specific dates, and with specific materials. The roof should be branches of some sort but letting the sky be seen through it. A sukka can be built of any size but is usually big enough for a family dining table and chairs. The bigger the family the bigger the Sukka. Some have room for beds or mattresses. Special prayers are read. Meals are eaten only in the Sukka. Some families sleep only in their Sukka during this week.
The Sukka are decorated with all kinds of things - paper-chains, baubles, fairy lights (Christmas decorations!) etc. Most importantly are the 4 Species - Etrog(citron), Lulav(closed date frond), Hadass(myrtle leaves) and Arava(willow branches). These are bound together in a special way and waved around while reciting a prayer. This is a must for every Sukka.
The non-observant/non-religious may or may not build a Sukka. Some just have the 4 Species on the dining table in the house during the holiday feast. Some don’t do anything at all, just enjoy a few days holiday!
Lots of bars and restaurants build a Sukka outside in their yards or on the street next to them so that customers can eat and drink in the holiday way.
Traditionally families will invite one another to come eat or drink a coffee in each others Sukka. The entrance of the Sukka should be left open to symbolise the offering of a welcome to guests.
This year, for the first time in 15 years, I didn’t build a Sukka. I moved house to an apartment on the 2nd floor - no back yard and religious neighbours have claimed the territory outside our block! I usually build only for the fun of it and the kids like the “camping” aspect of it.

This is indeed the basis of the larger problem. The blanket sanctioning of anything written in scripture as having [u]absolute[/u] authority today is one of the main reasons that the religion-critical wave of books have been written – and rightly so. However, it also masks the fact that there is wisdom to be found, albeit dependent upon a critical approach to scripture – and to ourselves as the readers. Other people are in the first reading not subject of these texts, but they cause me to critically evaluate my own situation. Therefore, violence is not an option – except against myself, but whether that is wise I’ll leave to you to decide.

The present and future are in danger because of the idealism, fanaticism and fundamentalism of the modern age – and curiously, they are parts of an eternal vicious circle which is a kind of doomsday weapon for our species. Sometimes I ask myself whether what we call “violence”, rough or injurious physical force, action or treatment, is part of an evolutionary development but how do we explain the evolution of higher skills on the basis of blunt and futile aggression. Is it the fact that we live dual lives of troughs and peaks, needing the “downs” to recognise the “ups” and are otherwise indifferent to all experience?

When a “god” (whatever that may be for people) condones or even orders violence in the interest of his or her dominion over humanity, we are removed to archaic times of incredible suffering which my generation intended to end – so we said. But I have the feeling that we are also in the sense dual, that our ideals have peaks and troughs, and when it suits us, they are adaptable. Consequently, we are a contradictory species – no wonder our gods are like us.

This is something which we see among radicals who see their violence as witness to their god in the same way as compassionate people see their love as witness to their god. What an odd bunch we are! In our present state, I wonder whether we can collectively reach a status of what we ourselves would deem as “good”, or whether it will remain the task of individuals to shine and become saints, so that there is at least some hope for humanity.

PS: Since many Jews have become atheists, one asks whether modern Judaism only uses Scripture as an excuse for their actions.

Not on Kindle. It’s just something that I came across while surfing the internet that I agreed with. I didn’t bookmark it. Sorry.

There’s not much defense of the OT, but it is the OT for Christians and the OT has been used by non-Jews to justify racist destruction of civilizations. It’s part of the holy book of Christians, non-Jewish Germans were primarily Christian, and hence any decisions to destroy whole peoples based on the OT should have applied to Christians also. And Hitler pretty much believed that his people were the chosen people who should rule over others. So he was the same as what the Jews might have been like, but were not, if they had followed that particular portion of what the Christians call the OT. IOW it seems like a he saw nothing wrong with the idea, just who the top race should be. So, for example, a huge number of farmers with no military training or interest were rounded up in a lot of countries and killed because they were Jewish. If this was his logic, it wasn’t a very good one.

If you read through, there are numerous commands which are obviously problems for Jews as well. I find the 613 disturbing, especially commands like: To burn a city that has turned to idol worship — Deut. 13:17.

Who decides what idol worship is and when it begins?

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August
1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)

Yah, Jesus fought the Jews?!? If only Hitler had fought the same way.

There’s an interesting cultural instance to study in the European region in regards to Christianity sandwiched between pre-world wars and post-“dark ages”.
C.S. Lewis was somewhat a part of the same cultural pattern in this regard (not in regards to the violence, et. al., just in the pattern of inquiry and interest).

The previous history to this era was the Holy Wars era, and there was a lot of mixing in of local mythological concepts into the Christian practices by sects of scribes. These weren’t alterations into the Bible, but commentaries on the side that were being developed and understood in pretty fascinating manners.
There was a pretty regular zeitgeist of chasing the secret pattern or formula, and even in ways modern Christians would be very unlikely to recognize, many ritual and theological concepts were mixed in on the side that were at times very bizarre and at times bloody.

Hitler was coming into his theories from within this same culture, and that definitely had an impact.
Let’s not lose sight that most of Europe was rather distant in mind from their appreciation of the Jewish populations in Europe, mostly as a residue of the previous Holy War eras where such division was created and fueled to justify raiding Jerusalem and the Middle East for any monetary gain possible (though this eventually failed to produce more income than loss in the end).

This doesn’t excuse Hitler, but instead highlights that there was far more going on than just Hitler; there was an entire cultural movement of division built up over hundreds of years of social propaganda, and there were equally propagated mystical secret cultures mixed in with Christianity during these same time periods and onward into C.S. Lewis’ and Hitler’s time.

In a sense, Hitler’s atrocious (and somewhat inevitable) errant conclusions were what finally, and violently, snapped the greater part of European culture out of this era of secretive mysticism and racial division; specifically Semitic racism.

And if we trace it back, then the hate of the Jews really got started back in the Crusades where they were justified as deserving killing off in mass by blaming them for killing Jesus; the Jews were converted into a form of fallen children who were now vial unto God, while the new Christians were the righteous being called upon by their God to rescue the Holy Lands from the treacherous Jews and restore the holy sacredness of the land.

But what it all had to do with was money and power. The Crusades weren’t about religion; Christianity at the time was more like a localized UN, and the theological justifications were more like a neat legal loophole that had been worked out to get permission to violently attack the Holy Lands and rape it of its wealth (any that could be obtained).

While it may have all started as a result of the Muslim controlling empires denying access for foreigners into Jerusalem, Europe didn’t make much of a distinction when it came to who was going to die; Jews and Muslims ended up fighting on the same side by default, rather than Jews siding with Europeans for a fight to regain Jewish control of Jerusalem.

As Wiki elegantly, but probably a bit too simply, puts it in one line:
“The First Crusade ignited a long tradition of organized violence against Jews in European culture.”

Good post Jay. Thanks. But didn’t Christian antisemitism begin with the gospels?

No, I wouldn’t say that.
Early Christianity wasn’t a unified culture, but mixed all over the place; even during the creation of the texts (not just the Gospels).

Even when Christianity began its orthodoxy era, Jews weren’t really part of the focus. At that time the focus was more on rival factions of other Christians as the theology hadn’t yet been refined into even what each faction held, let alone who would be the central authority (which was only up for grabs because the Church of Jerusalem had fallen apart during the destruction of the second Temple, thereby leaving Paul’s claim to authority unchecked from thereon, which in itself was short-lived thereafter the Temple destruction).

The proto-orthodox Christian communities weren’t really concerned with Jews, as mentioned, either.
They were a bit too busy focusing on these new theologies and various texts each community held as special and valuable, and which texts were valued was not a clean line, but instead scattered and heavily diverse in both text and theology.

Keep in mind that we’re talking about a spread of small groupings spanning from the Levant region to Turkey (today), Asia Minor, the Balkan and Italian peninsulas, and the Egyptian northern coastline with no real focal point of central authority or collective theology.

The closest thing you can get in this era is when the Jews within the Mediterranean (mostly) had their issues with the new Christians (not called that then) in regards to trust; there was early debate whether these new interests were interested in the Law earnestly, or were going to take the Jewish academic help and twist it into something else (clearly the something else route is what happened).
Aside from that, if you squint your eyes and put on some special glasses, then you can read Galatians to be antisemitic, but it wasn’t.
It wasn’t antisemitic, but instead, Paul being angry over losing unilateral authority to Jews coming into the region Paul had already been granted “authority” over due to the region being Gentiles (well…more like, Paul took it as authority whether James intended that or not is somewhat of a debate; it could be argued that James more or less grew tired of Paul and told him to do whatever he wants with Gentiles, but that may not have implied direct grant of authority in James’ mind).

So really; the real strong Christian antisemitic culture did begin roughly with the Crusade culture.

Keep in mind, too, that the Crusade culture was a culture developed in Europe following the fall of Rome; when suddenly there was this huge gap for default ruling power and a bunch of scattered cultures in Europe were attempting to unify (unify each separate culture unto itself; not with each other) and build up to become the next big empire, or at least more than they had been.
With Rome gone, all bets were off on which culture could attack which culture, as there was no “United States” world police called Rome.

This is when the “Holy Roman Empire” really got into the shape we are more familiar with, but this is also how it became the central agency in a sort of “UN” of Europe; they had power, and could side with various groups as became an advantage, and would grant the holy blessings, which were more like UN sanctions than any theological decree, though they used theological arguments; such arguments were the legal tender of the time…I think that is often overlooked by many looking back over history.

This is why you have schisms later on; because others wanted their own council to agree with them when they found their culture at the bottom end of the political stick with the Holy Roman politics regarding the nations of Europe.

This is where the Crusades come in; they come in after a small boom that was followed by a lull…think of it like the Dark Age’s Iraq war.
It’s a very common practice that we see repeated in history; when the economy falters, pick a scapegoat, target them, demonize them out of their humanity, and then go to war citing liberation and solidarity of some kind; even though almost no one else around at any of these instance’s times would agree with the “liberation” portion.

If all goes well, boom, economic boost; or at least that’s the myth…looking over history, we can see this rarely ends up resulting in the actual economic stability in the long run. It just usually gives a minor temporal boost for a select demographic of the society with no real effective gainful difference to the mass majority of the culture’s population.

In a way, this is where Hitler was a bit different; Hitler took this same theory and ran with it and did accomplish a gainful difference to the mass majority, but that enjoyed difference came at a heavy cost of intellectual freedom and that heavily impacted their academic culture’s flexible articulation; ergo why there was such an exodus even before the Jewish oppression began to really get going.
Not only did it come at a heavy cost, but it also showed that even when there is an improvement to the mass majority, such improvement from such war activity and scapegoating only sustains for a limited amount of time; that eventually, even without the Jewish genocide and losing the war (let’s imagine those two things didn’t happen for a moment), the economy really begins to buckle and fall.

In a sense, such political behavior is a form of temporary stimulus in which the aftermath of the expenses seems to always catch up and nearly bankrupt the given culture in each case (Egypt, China, Japan, Germany, U.S., etc…).

Mat 27:24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.
Mat 27:25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.