I’m a Modern Orthodox Jew from Manhattan. Feel free to ask me anything if you want to have a legitimate religious discussion. Christians spouting hatred and cursing others to Hell will be ignored.
>ManhattanWhy do you live in the Great Satan and not in the land of Israel?
>>18654166Jews belong in hell because none come to the Father except in Christ.
>>18654172I have no legitimate excuse. Just that it is “hard” because my career is here and I am accustomed to life here. But it is one of my faults and I hope to build the courage to move there one day.
>>18654166What is the name of your God whom you worship?
>>18654184America is a satanic country and a work of the devil.By living in it you are serving Satan and therefore will burn in excrement and sulphur in hell
>>18654166When will you become Hasidic?
>>18654203He has a few names which refer to specific attributes with which he created and governs the universe (ie justice, mercy, etc.). In day to day I refer to him has Hashem. But I understand the intent of your question, so to answer it is the God with the name which is often referred to with the 4 letter/tetragram. The name is often written in threads on this board but I cannot use it in vain.
>>18654166Cool. I have tons of questions.Might as well say this here, I want to convert to Orthodox Judaism but I’m nervous because it seems like a lot of constant vigilance pressure and community self-monitoring. Very related to that, I’m also nervous about pressure to start a family and people rushing to set me up with someone since I’m pretty much a loner, very fussy and don’t know if I can meet someone. Any advice on these points? I assume you’re born in it, but how do you figure you stand in that fire and keep your cool?Separate question: what do you think of Hindus who worship x,y,z avatar as an expression of God, or whatever, but are essentially monotheist? Do you think moshiach will reveal the holiness outside of Israel and the holiness of every wisdom tradition, in addition to Jewish redemption?What does yichud mean to you in the mystical sense?Thanks for your time.
>>18654223*all Hes and Hims should be capitalized. I’m typing on my phone so forgive any misspellings
>>18654206>>18654223>>18654227Don’t ignore this warning. You will burn in Hell if you keep serving Satan by living in America.
>>18654223Aren't Jews supposed to teach gentiles how to swear by the Name? As surely as Yahweh lives? How can that be done without pronouncing it?
Where do you store all of the stolen foreskins? Is there like a secret bank vault somewhere?
hey op i too live in nyc wanna hang some time?i always wanted a jewish friend
>>18654225Why do you want to convert?I’ll answer your questions but I don’t think the answers will be very satisfying.To your first point, I’m not sure I have any advice. The community can be a pain in the ass sometimes. I’m more on the anti-social side and have had my problems with others in the community. There will be a lot of pressure and monitoring especially with regards to marriage. There really isn’t anything you can do except understand that while they are being pains in the ass, it is coming from a good place. Don’t be afraid to be fussy and tell people no, though. I’ve worked with Hindus in my professional career and have had discussions with them. To be honest, I’m not familiar with the concept of Hindus as monotheists as I’ve never seen a Hindu self describe themselves as Monotheist. I also don’t believe in the concept of avatars still working in a monotheistic framework, I can kind of understand where the argument is coming from a little bit, but I don’t really agree with it. So again, I don’t have much to say there as I still see them as polytheists.The Moshiach is just bringing Jewish redemption, to use your phrasing. Everyone will know that there is one God which is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. While I am sure that non-Jews lead wise and spiritually fulfilling lives, they do not have any access to any wisdom that cannot be found in the Torah, so ultimately there is nothing to gain from them. Re Yichud what are you referring to specifically? The laws regarding married men and women or the spiritual/unity framework? I’m not very mystical.Sorry for delay.
>>18654166How often do members of your community interact with people outside your community? I always see orthodox jews walking around when we visit my in-laws in Brooklyn but I never see them eating out at restaurants or hanging out with non-jews in general.
>>18654251You’re misunderstanding that verse. To answer shortly and bluntly we aren’t supposed to teach the gentiles anything other than essentially acting as role models. And it has nothing to do with teaching the name in a literal sense, that’s silly new age Christian type thinking that they are projecting onto Judaism.
What are your thoughts on Kabbalah? Have you read the Sefer haBashir and/or the Zohar?Also, what are your thoughts on Biblical textual criticism? Do you think it's misguided, or illuminating, or neither/both?
>>18654310Seems pretty clear:Jeremiah 12:16-17Then if they will really learn the ways of My people, to swear by My name, ‘As Yahweh lives,’ even as they taught My people to swear by Baal, they will be built up in the midst of My people. But if they will not listen, then I will uproot that nation, uproot and make it perish,” declares Yahweh.
>>18654308For 95%, literally never accept through work/business. So very minimal and only superficially. No such thing as having a non-Jewish friend, for example. For 4%, never at all. Like, only a handful of times in life.For 1%, more involved in the secular world because of extenuating circumstances (working in politics in a gentile nation, being a successful and busy businessman that has no choice due to their success, etc.)
>>18654317Seems clear every nation that does not walk in the ways of Moses will be destroyed.
>>18654317My answer still stands. Nothing in the verse you’ve quoted contradicts anything of what I’ve said. Both re going out of way to teach/prostylze to non-Jews and using the name in literal sense.
>>18654295Conversion pull: Jews being the only other people who remember Sinai and teach Ein Od Milvado, so there is strong recognition/religious affinity/family resemblance.Thanks for your answers. Yes they are satisfying. That’s ok if you’re not mystical, but I did mean mystically (so idk what it makes you think of to use or hear the word). Re: Hindus your answer is clean, I agree Torah is complete. But it could be that chochmas haTorah is refracted elsewhere and could harmonize/be revealed as such in the world to come, when His Name is One among all nations. (Speedily!!)
>>18654319So what is the general perception of gentiles? Disdain, distrust, or indifference? Are reformed/non-practicing jews viewed differently than gentiles?
>>18654328How can the nations learn the ways of God's people if God's people do not teach them?
>>18654166How do Orthodox Jews interpret the historicity of ancient biblical events (the primeval world, Exodus, Conquest, United Monarchy, etc)? As I understand it, there is a very large breadth in opinion in Judaism as a whole between full historicity as stated and purely fictional mythologies, so what’s your sect’s opinion?
>>18654340Look at how Jews have already taught the world so much in the last 2,000 years of moral progress without “teaching” in the sense you mean, the way it more works is history bending towards Jewish recognition.
>>18654166Why is it that Jews still Fallow the SamAryan CalendarAnd Date The Orgin Of LifeBack to 3760BCWhen The SamAryans Landed in Ur amongst other places
>>18654351Israelites will teach the world the ways of God's people.
>>18654166I always see these videos on this site and youtube and twitter of crazy rabbis talking about goys and making absurd anti-semetism claims.Do Jews ever talk about their terrible PR or maybe people don't appreciate the anti-white, pro-immigrant subaltern position that a lot of liberal Jews seem to have? How many of these seemingly "radical" rabbis are there, and are they taken seriously? Also, do Jews ever think that maybe there will be a day when people realize that 90% of people in positions of institution power in the US are Jewish and people might become critical of this?I am driving myself crazy over trying to understand Jews and their seeming lack of self-awareness/cognitive dissonance, but I don't know if I'm only paying attention to an influential/vocal minority or if this is indemic to the community.
>>18654340That’s a genuinely good question. Basically it’s supposed to be teaching in the role model sense. For example, you have access to history and to the Torah. You are supposed to see that whenever the Jews are doing Gods will, they are blessed, and whenever they don’t, they are cursed. So it’s true that their God exists and has power. So you better follow Him too if you want to be blessed. >>18654334Generally speaking, indifference and sometimes distrust. Disdain for those that want to keep us out of Israel.
>>18654349100% historically accurate.
>>18654308>>18654319Does this insular social network breed success? I remember a statistic where a dollar in a black community stays there for an hour, and in Chinese communities, for weeks, but a dollar spent in Jewish communities remains in circulation there for up to a year or two.There might be a lesson in there about patronizing community businesses and helping your fellow neighbor as opposed to buying Amazon, but I don't know if this sounds familiar to your actual lifestyle.
>>18654373do you mean people who want US policy to break away from Israel, or people who want to keep Orthodox jews out of Israel? I'm guessing the formeralso, i thought a lot of orthodox jews were critical of the conception of israel. am i confusing orthodox with another group?
>>18654334Oh also, reform Jews are considered worse.
>>18654295>they do not have any access to any wisdom that cannot be found in the TorahSeems a little hubristic to assume other cultures/philosophies have no additional insight to offer if you haven’t actually studied them all in depth to verify. You never know what you don’t know.
>>18654166Do kids consider the name “Joshke” to be like Voldemort in Torah school? Is he associated with bipolar and schizoaffective nutcases among adults? How unrighteous is he considered at the end of the day given Christianity’s treatment of Jews over the course of history? Is he viewed as a betrayer of the people? Thanks
>>18654394its all the same shit if oyu dig deep enough In Mesopotamian myth, Enlil is the god of the air child of Anki who separates the primordial unity of heaven and earth.named An (sky) and Ki (earth) respectively. This act of separating An and Ki created the universe 2900bcThis is Saturn castrating his father Uranus separating Uranus Heaven from his wife Gaia Earth so that he as Saturn may rule. This act also births Venus from Uranus's Nuts. 700bcBorn embracing each other, the air god Shu had to forcefully separate his children, the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut, to create space for the world and its inhabitants. Their close forbidden relationship continued even after the separation, leading to Geb and Nut having five children Osiris, Isis, Set, Horus, and Nephthys - Heliopolitan Ennead 2500bcOf old in the beginning, there was the great chaos, without form and dark. The five elements [planets] had not begun to revolve, nor the sun and moon to shine. You, O Spiritual Sovereign, first divided the grosser parts from the purer. You made heaven. You made earth. You made man. All things with their reproducing power got their being’ -Chinese Book of History (Shu Ching) 1000bcIn the beginning, Rangi (Sky Father) and Papa (Earth Mother) were locked in a tight embrace, their children trapped in darkness between them. Their son Tāne Mahuta forced them apart, pushing sky and earth away from each other, allowing light and space to enter the world. Creation required the painful separation of unity. (Māori) – pre-colonial oral traditionThe person, who presided over them, was a woman named>OMOROCA
>>18654402>OMOROCA;which in the Chaldean language is THALATTH; in Greek THALASSA, The Sea; but which might equally be interpreted the Moon. All things being in this situation, Belus came, and cut the woman asunder: and of one half of her he formed the earth, and of the other half the heavens; and at the same time destroyed the animals within her. All this (he says) was an allegorical description of nature. -Berossus around 280bcBefore creation, the earth was a vast, water-filled void inhabited by the chaotic crocodile-like monster, Tlaltéotl (or Cipactli) Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, children of the creator couple Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, arrived to create order. They took the form of giant serpents and tore Tlaltéotl in half. One half was elevated to form the heavens, while the other remained to form the earth. The earth became a living, wounded entity that demanded nourishment via death and sacrifice. -5 Sun Saga 1011ac>This is also the division of Ymir from Norse mythology; from which The Earth was formed from his body and The Sky from his head -1220ac (recorded from oral tradition)Theres also this funny one which relates where reality is basically an accidental shartIn a phoenician philosophical creation myth, Sanchuniathon refers to a great wind that merged with its parents, and that connection was called 'Desire' (πόθος):From its connection, Mot death was produced, which some say is mud, and others a putrescence of watery compound; and out of this came every germ of creation and the generation of the universe. So there were certain animals which had no sensation, and out of them grew intelligent animals, and were called "Zophasemin", that is "observers of heaven"; and they were formed like the shape of an egg. Also Mot burst forth into light, and sun, and moon, and stars, and the great constellations.This is what happens when certain people become rapidly more advanced then others and have cedar ships that can withstand the ocean
>>18654389That’s kind of what I assumed. I’m particularly perplexed by all the atheist “jews” who seem to be infatuated with the idea of judaism and self-identify as “jews” despite leading completely secular lives. It’s like the “Irish”-Americans whose only understanding of Irish culture comes from caricatures because they’re so far removed from it.
>>18654400It’s like Voldemort because Christian’s are man worshipping idolaters and that is so abhorrent and evil to us that we don’t even want to get close to even the idea of idol worship, so we really just avoid talking about him. And in day to day life like he’s irrelevant for us as it has nothing to do with our religion. There have been many false messiahs that have come and gone, he is just the most successful one. Generally speaking Christian’s are much more obsessed with us than we are about Christians.>>18654384There are chasidic sects against Israel. They have some valid points but def a minority. Not modern orthodox tho. Also the state of Israel does not necessarily equal the land of Israel right now, everyone knows that we need to be in the land of Israel, no matter who controls it.>>18654394It’s just following the logical framework that the Torah is directly from God, and is perfect. Perfection means it is complete. Like I said, non Jews can be very wise and spiritually fulfilled but we don’t need their wisdom to complete ours. >>18654365This is complicated I will answer this later when I have more free time. Basically a lot of your foundation with respect to your question is based on anti-Semitic beliefs which is ironic considering you are calling Jews racist. Of course some Jews are racist. It’s human nature.
>>18654295>To be honest, I’m not familiar with the concept of Hindus as monotheistsIt’s like the oral tradition There are those who know the holyplace/inner temple and those who don’t
>>18654377I find this idea to be exaggerated, and I don’t know the answer/don’t know why a Jewish dollar stays in the community longer. I shop on Amazon, I get non-dairy black coffee from Starbucks (at locations that are certified by a Rabbi), etc.
>>18654359>Why is it that Jews still Fallow the SamAryan Calendar>And Date The Orgin Of Life>Back to 3760BC>When The SamAryans Landed in Ur amongst other places>>18654415you can just say you dont know and that you havent looked into this if thats the caseand if it is you should its pretty interesting especially if you're jewish
>>18654426I’ll look into it. Where do I start? I haven’t fully read your responses in depth yet because I’m balancing this thread and work, lol.
>>18654415>It’s just following the logical framework that the Torah is directly from God, and is perfect.Since multiple authors contributed to the Torah over the course of several centuries, how can we be certain that it was all divinely dictated? Humans are flawed and capable of misinterpreting God, or even falsifying revelations to serve self interest.That’s not a rhetorical or loaded question, genuinely asking.
>>18654415Thanks for sharing.> Christian’s are man worshipping idolaters and that is so abhorrent and evil to usAbhorrent I understand, but why does that get called “evil” rather than just very silly or something less polemical and more tepid? Maybe Joshke was like the Rebbe and that’s why the cult took on a life like that—not unexpected if people feel sufficient elokus around someone—and it doesn’t print “evil” all on its own. From what I understand, Joshke wasn’t against other Jews. So all it would take would be a tiny bit of Jewish charitability to recognize that Joshke’s religion could have bent the rules mystically that way like the Rebbe did in some cases. In the end, could be a misreading.
>>18654429all good there's not much to read if you are already enriched in the oral traditions just do research on the history of spelling its etymology and money how those two things have evolved as the backbone of civilization As We Know Itwhich began in Ur aka Mesopotamia with the SAM(שאם)Aryan's who introduced there own languageSAMskrta (sanskrit) as rulers Akkadian being the native low tongue
>>18654436Can you share the sources that gave you the notion that there are multiple authors over centuries? Also. Who are these multiple authors? What are their names? Also not a loaded or rhetorical question, genuinely asking.
>>18654439Valid point. Maybe the word evil was unnecessary. There’s a lot of extremism in the Christian community with regards to anti-Semitic undercurrents taking hold (ie tucker Carlson) so it’s easy to get carried away.
>>18654452>anti-Semitic undercurrentsAnd there it is.
>>18654452shkoyach
>>18654452Dont you find it odd that Tucker Carlson wears a red string on his left hand in honor of his father who was in the CIA
>>18654443The general view posited by scholars today is that there are four main sources for the Torah, named E, J, P, and D (Elohist, Jahwist, Priestly, and Deutoronomist, respectively), and it's not entirely clear which verses belong to which sources, but for the most part people have a fairly good idea of which groups wrote what, especially since there are layers of redaction on top of that to bring the disparate texts together. (There are a few other possible sources as well, especially some of the chapters towards the middle of Exodus like the Song of the Sea.) Evidence for this split of sources comes from the various contradictions in the text, both of plot points and outlook. The most commonly-cited example is that there are actually two creation stories, one immediately following the other. There's a lot that we still don't know about who wrote the Torah, but archeological and scholastic evidence point to either a fragmentary or supplemental composition that took place from around 950BC to around 350BC.
>>18654472> The general view posited by scholars today is that …And zero authoritative rabbis say that.Rabbis, the real scholars of Torah, have greater authority than irreligious “scholars” who have an active interest in undermining a faith they don’t share.
>>18654479>authoritative rabbisNot archeologists? Not linguists? Not historians? Not scientific methodoligists? Only a literal appeal to authority? Sounds limited.
>>18654479You don’t think rabbis might be a little biased when it comes to studying the history of the Torah?
>>18654493Yes, if authority is understood correctly. The thing is, a religious rabbi has an explicit commitment: Torah is Torah min haShamayim. A secular historical critic may have an equally consequential methodological commitment: explanations must be framed entirely through ordinary human historical processes. Neither standpoint is presupposition-free, however, it must be understood that methodological naturalism already excludes certain religious explanations from consideration. Methodological exclusion of revelation is not itself evidence against revelation.I will add to that, no one has ever actually discovered a discrete document or identifiable author called J. These source boundaries are reconstructed, not directly observed.
>>18654505sounds a bit idolatrous if you ask me
>>18654513>if authority is understood correctlyThis man you appeal to is not God, the only authority. Start there. Short of that, best you be looking beyond that man, if you seek answers.
>>18654166>devil worshipers on my board
>>18654513>a religious rabbi has an explicit commitment: Torah is Torah min haShamayimThat just leads to an uncritical examination of the literal text without consideration for historical context or human motive. Faith is faith and people can believe whatever they want but if your study of the Torah begins with the assumption that the document itself is infallible then your bias is precluding objectivity.
>>18654550Torah scholarship is not “protect this conclusion at all costs.” Truth-seeking is itself commanded. Falsehood, dishonest interpretation, and knowingly distorting Torah would violate the very covenantal commitment supposedly producing the “bias.” Not that rabbis psychologically would be bias-free, but your equation of faith = “less concern for truth” is again smuggling in the naturalist conclusion to the argument.
>>18654166>Feel free to ask me anythingwhen are you relocating to israel ??
>>18654479>Rabbis, the real scholars of Torah, have greater authority than irreligious “scholars”Classic Jew cope. You don't have to be a rabbi to test the validity of Semitic scripture. Rabbis lie all the time.
>>18654561Jews are the most duplicitous and manipulative con artists the world has ever known.
>>18654561>Truth-seekingClosing the door on the scientific method is not that.
>>18654493Religious zealots always think those evil nerds in academia are actively trying to “disprove” their religion whenever they uncover something that might contradict their beliefs.
>>18654585A religious person has no religious reason to reject empirical methods merely because they are scientific. The boundary appears when someone quietly builds methodological naturalism into the conclusion.
>>18654609>A religious person has no religious reason to reject empirical methodsYes they do. They reject empirical methods so that the scripture they have faith in as "true" can not be tested by those methods. It's the whole reason why apologetics exists, to argue rhetoric in order to make their religious belief sound appealing, while entirely avoiding empirical methods. Seems like you're doing that right now, because you understand the historicity of Jewish scripture is empirically debunked. Rabbis lie
>>18654609Perhaps your chosen authority, this man, might be the one making conclusions. He likely can't, as he's not God, and if he does reject investigation, he can't theorize even. Quite a dilemma, if we're setting this man up as our authority.
>>18654479>And zero authoritative rabbis say that.My mom’s pastor is also pretty sure the Gospel is the literal word of God but I’m not gonna take his word for it just because he’s read it cover to cover. Clergy are theological experts, not historians or scientists.
>>18654622> the historicity of Jewish scripture is empirically debunkedThat’s far too broad. Sounds like you seriously don’t want the Torah to be covenantally binding though, thanks for being an example that proves the point.
>>18654640>That’s far too broadOkay here's something very specific: Jewish exodus of slaves from Egypt never happened. That's been debunked. No evidence for the historical existence of Noah, or Abraham, or Moses outside of rabbis circle-jerking over their own Semitic cult fiction. The historicity of your scripture fails the most basic empirical tests into its claims.
>>18654647I’m not going to argue because you’re being polemical and obviously trying to drive home an finally anti-Jewish agenda, which is the furthest thing from objective. But it shows why people should listen to authoritative sources rather than just anybody.
>>18654166Do Jews generally consider themselves superior?
>>18654653>But it shows why people should listen to authoritative sources rather than just anybody.Which is why nobody takes a rabbi at their word. Just like you don't take a priest at his word, or an imam, or a shaman. You have an emotional bias and you will reject any serious examination into the historicity of your own beliefs. Then you'll accuse people of "anti jewish agenda" for not agreeing with your assumption that rabbis are "superior authority and never ever lie" lmao it's such an impotent cope. You're not convincing anybody here
>>18654655Yes. Only they're allowed to be superior. It's racist if anybody else thinks that way. Sorry, god chose them and not you.
>>18654671> Which is why nobody takes a rabbi at their wordUm a whole nation of people take rabbis at their word it’s called Judaism. So you are just attacking Judaism as I said, so it’s pointless and worthless. There is a smart way to engage why Torah and modern scholarship are non-contradictory, but you are too hateful to ever approach the actual topic you claim to be discussing.
>my hebrew scribe said so, so it MUST be true>oi vey you hate jewish people if you disagree!Why are they like this
>>18654689>There is a smart way to engage why TorahYeah by denouncing and rejecting it. Same with the bible and Quran. Belief in Semitic cult fiction is not worth the brain cells it requires as a sacrifice to maintain. You are exhibit A little snowflake.
>>18654691Infinite stakes
>>18654698Real. Culturally inherited main-character-syndrome. Plenty of Christians who stroke Jews ego too>muh biblical hebrew scribes say that jews are gods chosen people! It MUST be true! You HATE CHRIST + you're antisemitic if you disagree! Semitic programming is tragic.
>>18654653NTA but is there actual historical evidence of exodus?
>>18654705A real group of Semitic people lived in Egypt, experienced servitude or forced labor, escaped or migrated out under an Egyptian-context leader, carried a powerful liberation tradition associated with God, and later joined populations already living in Canaan. Their story then became the national origin-story of Israel as the groups fused.
>>18654717What's the historical evidence for this?
>>18654717>A real group of Semitic people lived in EgyptTorah claims a specific number. You're being intentionally vague to not engage with the historicity. I wonder why!>experienced servitude or forced laborEgyptians held records of their slaves. There were millions accounted for in records such as the transfer of property. Funny, not a single historical record in Egyptian history reflect the loss of half a million Jewish slaves, as described in the exodus in your previous Torah! Nothing even remotely close to the figure described in Torah, and mysteriously no mention of Jews at all in fact. >escaped or migrated out under an Egyptian-context leader, carried a powerful liberation tradition associated with God, and later joined populations already living in CanaanBefore that, they took a 40 year long detour through the desert. Miraculously left not a single shred of archeological evidence to show for it. How many slaves does the Torah say were led by Moses during the Exodus? It's more than 600,000 at least (not counting the women). >>18654729>What's the historical evidence for this?Oi vey such an antisemitic question! Why do you hate jews so much? Where is this hatred coming from!
>>18654729West Semitic peoples definitely lived in Egypt, some served as slaves or state laborers, Egyptian sources place Apiru laborers at Pi-Ramesses, several early Israelite/Levite names—including Moses—are Egyptian, and the Merneptah Stele independently establishes Israel in Canaan by about 1208 BCE. None proves the Exodus, but neither is Exodus debunked. Taken cumulatively, an Egyptian-origin component within early Israel is extremely historically plausible.
>>18654754A mass exodus of slaves would have been significant enough to be recorded, but egyptians never mentioned anything
>>18654760Egyptian royal records were propaganda, not neutral chronicles: defeats and internal crises could be omitted or rewritten to glorify Pharaoh. More importantly, the Nile Delta—including Pi-Ramesses, precisely where relevant administrative records would be most useful—has preserved almost no papyri from this context.
>>18654754>None proves the Exodus, but neither is Exodus debunkedFacts independent of rabbi / hebrew scribe sources contradict the Exodus narrative. >>18654764>Egyptian royal records were propagandaSo is the Torah.
>>18654754>but neither is Exodus debunkedwhat WOULD be a hypothetical piece of evidence that would debunk Exodus?
>>18654166I was reading about Rabbi Maimonides (1138 CE). He seemed to vehemently oppose the idea of lying or misleading (due to personal vendettas) about muslims having idol practices, or worshipping a God other than Hashem. Despite his own suffering at the hands of muslims.>do not let hatred of a people (or others) lead you away from justice, but adhere to justice, for that is closer to awareness of God (5:8 quran)The same sentiment about moral integrity is expressed in the hebrew Bible. Yet, some of today's jews sometimes join hands with christians in espousing their dogmas. Maybe this is advantageous geopolitically, but my question is simply, what is your view regarding Maimonides in this specific regard?Is it a rejected idea in your community, like Vatican ii?
>>18654166Do you know anyon who speaks Yiddish?
I think this jew ran back to the Manhattan sewer he crawled out of
>>18654903Not every Jew wants to roll around in pig mud with antisemites
>>18654909>muh antisemitism Grow up.
>>18654235Denounce the Torah
>what WOULD be a hypothetical piece of evidence that would debunk Exodus?Im not the anon who asked this, but I'm still waiting for the Jew to answer this reasonable question.
>>18654932Nta, but hypothetically a small tribal incursion into the land of canaan wouldn't be significant enough to be recorded or archeologically recovered.
Shame op doesnt care about his SAMaryan rootstheyre why our time is divided into12months7day-weeks24hrs60minutes 60 seconds 360 degrees
>>18654936>hypothetically a small tribal incursion into the land of canaan wouldn't be significant enough to be recorded or archeologically recovered.That's fair. At the same time that also contradicts the account as it is written in the Torah & bible. >small tribal incursionThey describe it as an epic "Exodus", of a massive population of people moving out of Egypt. It's impossible that Egyptians failed to record half a million of its major-city's population being displaced so suddenly, if such a thing were to ever happen. They recorded EVERYTHING from trivial accounts like storage of property, ritual instructions, current prices of grain etc. The movement of slaves got recorded, yet there are no historical records which exist to compliment biblical Exodus. All facts point to "its bullshit" as the most likely conclusion.
>>18654953>SAMaryan rootsSpiritually I feel all culture has roots there.
>>18654961The exodus records that Pharaoh was humiliated by God, so why would they record it the same way if they were all Pharaoh’s effective slaves?
>>18654968>The exodus records that Pharaoh was humiliated by GodThat's not a historical account, anon. There are no empirical facts in Semitic cult fiction. Otherwise there wouldn't be any debate about it or room for misinterpretation. >so why would they record it the same way if they were all Pharaoh’s effective slaves?They would record the loss in property. That's what a slave is- property. There would be records of their loss in property, which we know, because we have such recordings in hundreds of other examples & instances. The objective facts of archeology do not compliment or support the story of biblical Exodus. This is not merely an opinion either.
>>18654963well that was around the time all of this began >>18654359>>18654402>>18654404
>>18654990Sorry, I don’t trust Pharaoh’s Egypt to have honestly chronicled the exodus. Everything in me tells me they would have swept it under the rug and pretended it never happened.
>>18655004>Pharaoh’s Egyptnever died it only rebranded
>>18655004>Sorry, I don’t trust Pharaoh’s Egypt to have honestly chronicled the exodus. Everything in me tells me they would have swept it under the rug and pretended it never happened.That's your own bias, but sure. I wont argue against that Pharoahs in Egypt embellished accounts. However that aside, there were populations of tribes already living in Canaan before, during and after the time period of the biblical Exodus. There is no archeology to show for a military tribal conquest commanded by god, in which the followers of Yaweh emerged victorious over their defeated and slaughtered foes across the region, as described in biblical Exodus. No empirical evidence for any of that, on top of there being no empirical evidence for the Exodus which rabbi scribes claim happened just before the conquest. Do you begin to see the problem here? No evidence in favor of this grand Semitic mythology, because it's just mythology not 'history'. People believing in that mythology for a very long time can be 'history', but that doesn't mean the mythology itself is a historical account.
>>18655004Except we don’t just rely on propaganda steles as Ancient Egypt left behind vast quantities of everyday administrative records, legal papyri, letters, and domestic receipts. Exodus describes the sudden death of all firstborn sons, the total collapse of the agrarian workforce, the loss of an entire chariot army, and the devastation of the economy via the Ten Plagues. If the Exodus did happen, the catastrophic fallout would inevitably ripple into day-to-day administrative paperwork, grain supplies, and military rosters. No such disruptions exist in the records around the time period the Exodus supposedly took place.Plus we don’t just have a lack of evidence for the Exodus, we have contradictory evidence as according to traditional biblical chronology, the Exodus happened during the later half of the New Kingdom period and archaeology shows this exact era was the absolute peak of Egyptian imperial power, economic power, and aggressive military expansion. The country shows no signs of a society recovering from total infrastructural collapse. If the Exodus really happened, it should leave behind a lot of physical evidence beyond records, but no such thing exists. The traditional dating of the Exodus is 1446 BC, but Egypt shows no sign of decline or collapse during this time and they even continued to militarily occupy the Levant for a few more centuries.The lack of evidence also extends into the Sinai which the Hebrew Bible claims 2 million Israelites wandered in for 40 years. An apologist might claim nomadic groups do not leave behind archaeological traces, but the Sinai peninsula has been surveyed extensively and they have found pottery shards, fire pits, and remnants from tiny, temporary campsites of nomads thousands of years before exodus would have happened. If archaeologists can find the trash of a few dozen ancient nomads, the total lack of any physical footprint for a population of over two million people is problematic.(Cont)
>>18654166You began your post at Christians, but Christians are what the Bible calls them, those who believe in Jesus Christ of the New Testament. He is the only way to Heaven, to God, there is no other way, truth, and the life but by Jesus Christ. No man cometh to the Father but by him. Did you know Jesus Christ shed his own blood on the cross for your sins so you could go to heaven? Did you know he was born of a Virgin Mary and that he IS the King of the Jews from King David’s legal bloodline? Did you know he was the only Son of God and higher than a Nazarite? That he fulfilled the scriptures by being despised from Nazareth, riding on a colt instead of as a magnificent emperor born in a palace temple like Alexander the Great or King Saul? You can’t ignore it, but if you remain a Jew then your goal is to point people to that as the only way to heaven and even then we see Jews are following the Talmud, Christians are following the Catechism of the pope, and Arabs are following Mohammed and the Koran instead of Ishmael and their blessings in the OT given to Ishmael’s great kingdom. A Talmud Jew is basically someone who wears that thing on his forehead you posted and it is an interpretation of the scriptures that is evil because it says you as a Jew can bypass the sin against God to lie and try to get back the OT covenant even though the veil was split into two and faded away, replaced by the NT because Jesus was a Jew, and you need to read about him, and stop following traditions of Jews and follow the traditions of God (reading the KJV Bible).Did you know that you will go to hell because you were condemned already by God THE I AM THAT I AM of Adam, Abel and family, Noah, Moses,Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Solomon, Samuel, Elijah and Elisha, David, … Jesus Christ the second Adam? Following Jewish law whether OT or Talmud won’t save your soul from being condemned. It doesn’t matter how strictly you follow the law, you can’t go to heaven without Jesus blood.
>>18654166Enjoy Hell.
>>18655029>>18655041You’ve given evidence against a maximalist reading of the conquest, not evidence that no historical events underlie the Exodus tradition. Those are different hypotheses. The jump from “that conquest model lacks archaeological support” to “therefore the whole thing is just mythology” in particular doesn’t follow. The claim is that Torah is divine teaching expressed through sacred narrative, not a modern forensic report. A historical-critical reconstruction only becomes incompatible when it entails that Sinai, Yetziat Mitzrayim, Moshe, and divine revelation are simply human inventions with no revelatory reality behind them.
>>18654780If the true ark or ten commandments with the tetragrammaton were found and it was different from the claims of contemporary judaism or had a different account than that of contemporary judaism.This would refute the current stories which come to us from judaism and Christianity via the Torah.
>>18655029That's just not true, the conquest of Canaan is a fact attested to by the archeological record. The only deviation is that it seems to have happened over time a much longer time than the timeline given but this could just be a misreading of the archeology and the Torah does state in Deuteronomy and in Joshua that the Israelites did not in fact annihilate everyone in Canaan and for example the Jebusites "dwell in Jerusalem to this day" alongside the Israelites.
>>18655084>The jump from “that conquest model lacks archaeological support” to “therefore the whole thing is just mythology”There was never any evidence, outside of what rabbi scribes wrote (it's what uneducated peasants were taught to believe in, but never to question the validity to) that the god of Jewish faith exists to begin with. Are you okay? You're working backwards from so many assumptions and lack of evidence
1.So do Jews believe that god is all powerful? or is that something that evolved later with Christianity?2. How do you reconcile that the god of Judaism/OT is kind of a psycho3. Opinion on Gnosticism and has there been any historical links to it and Judaism? I remember hearing that Jews can be more critical of yahweh or yashua or whatever the fuck it is called than Christians are.
>>18654166What are your honest opinions on goys and why? More specifically, what are your opinions on a) non-Jewish whites and b) Palestinians and Middle Eastern peoples more generally
Why did the nations of the world excite and speak emptinessThe kings of the land will appear, the lords created together, on god and his messiah.Let us cut off our strains and remove the leather contraptions.He who sits in the sky will laugh, my lord will ridicule them.Then he will speak with his anger/longitude, and with his wrath they will be scared.And I, will crown my king, on Zion and my holy mount. I'll tell of the law, and my god will say to me "you are my son, I today birthed you"Ask from me and the land and rights/blessings of the nations I shall give you, and your estate to the end of the world.Shake the nation of steel, as a tool you will shatter them.And now the kings will turn wise. The rulers of the lands shall give up.Worship the lord in weariness and be happy in frightening.Kiss the messiah, so he shall not anger and destroy you, for his anger will flame his nose, blessed be all who give in to himremove the leather accept the son
Why do you need all these trinkets to worship your God? Genuine question
>>18655126god blesses those who swaggeth out
>>18655126Do you know what a memory palace is anon?
>>18655155>Do you know what a memory palace is anon?i dont and neither do i care. I am a simple man who believes praying to God in need is enough for him to answer if he is real. Doesnt matter if you are Billionaire or a wagie or a homeless man, an earnest prayer will elicit a response from him is what i learnt.Once again, why do jews need all these trinkets to "talk" to their God?
>>18655209That was allot of unrequested infoThe “trinkets” are apart of a memory palace the whole religion and it’s rules are
>>18655224>The “trinkets” are apart of a memory palace the whole religion and it’s rules areagain why does you religion need all these trinkets to communicate to your "God", why cant you answer a simple question i have
>>18654166Do you know where I can find a copy of the Babylonian Talmud?
>>18654166>I’m a Modern Orthodox JewStopped reading right there. Kill yourself, kike.
>>18654909>Not every Jew wants to roll around in pig mud with antisemites>that's why I, a Jew, post on 4chan.orglol
>>18655232https://www.sefaria.org/texts/TalmudUnfortunately, for the Jerusalem Talmud that affirms the truth of Christ you'll have to travel to Moscow, Russia and find the Oldest Vault where they have all the icons proving everyone in the Bible was Black. That's the only copy left.
>>18654166How do jews view people from other religions who are chill with jews, like buddhist, hindus, pagans, news age and the other abrahamic religions? I know in the old testament that the other gods are described as demonic and enemies of Israel but does that carry over to modern religions who dont hate jews?
Guys what if the freemasons/true elite are actually gnostic extremists trying to bring about the destruction of jews and muslims? What if beebee nutinyahoo is really in on it and explains why israel wants to get rid of him so badly but he stays around. Aren't non christian abrahamic religions basically demiurge worshippers? Wouldn't that bring about apocalypse if you destroyed the demiurge.
>>18655258It doesn’t carry over.Tanakh condemns Israel’s worship of other gods and sometimes associates foreign cults with shedim, but it does not simply state that every non-Israelite spiritual disclosure, wisdom, or claimed deity is literally a demon. Think also of Melchizedek, Balaam’s genuine encounters with God, and the wisdom traditions surrounding figures like Job.The sharp biblical prohibition is fundamentally about avodah—Israel giving worship/allegiance elsewhere—not a claim that Hashem cannot disclose truth outside Israel.
>>18655281>Freemasons>True eliteIf there is a true super secret hidden elite they aren't freemasons. Freemasons are public as hell and also essentially deists.>Aren't non christian abrahamic religions basically demiurge worshippers? Christianity is also demiurge worship (Jesus is the creator of the world, God). It just half digested some gnostic elements instead of outright expelling them like the others.>Wouldn't that bring about apocalypse if you destroyed the demiurge.You can't destroy the demiurge dumbass.
>>18654166Where are the lines drawn between Modern Orthodox Judaism and just Orthodox Judaism, as well as Haredi/Ultra-Orthodox Judaism?
>>18655251I'm asking for a copy of the Talmud that was published before 1939, dingus.
>>18654166Hello anon, how and when did you become a mouth farting two-year-old baby faggot?
>>18655462Why does it have to published before that date. Jews didn't edit their book during WW2.
>>18655517Also, it's in internet archive if you dig enough. A tag that mkight be of use on your Daf Yomi Journey is Rodkinson, Michael Levi 1845-1904. There are english editions of the Talmud in there. Idk if they have all twenty volumes.
>>18654166this nigga has a cut dick lmao
>>18654166What prompted you to start this thread?What's the orthodox understanding of exactly why you should keep the law? I get the impression that keeping the covenant going is some kind of mutual interest affair where by keeping the law you are getting into God's good graces and the nation of Israel is avoiding disasters as a result, partially because the law is just good for society but also because of divine intervention. If my understanding is right, do you think your keeping of the law ebencigs all of the United States, gentile or not, or just Jews? And does it benefit all of "israel" (the Jewish nation) or just your orthodox community, since there's a lot of Jews that might as well not be.If they banned circumcision before 18, how much of a freak out would that cause and what are your thoughts on the matter?
>>18654166How do you rationalize the fact that events in Talmud/Old testament and other Abrahamic "scriptures" were never confirmed by outside sources?As far as as actual history is concerned, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David and other Biblical characters never actually existed.
>>18654166>I’m a Modern Orthodox Jew from ManhattanEw
>>18654166Why do you call yourself modox?You sound extremely based, quite frum.Except how it seems your stance is on Israel (the state).
>>18654580>Presents a well-worded, eloquent argument calling out logical manipulation.>NO YOURE MANIPULATIVEbruh
Not op>>18655126They are called mitzvot. Things God commanded us to do by which we can gain merit for our reward, not being embarrassed receiving the reward for free.>>18655112Absolutely indifferent; I don’t care.Whites are cool. Arabs make me nervous I’m about to be stabbed. Specifically 14 to 28 years old.>>186551071. Yes2. He’s not. A human psychoanalyzing God would be like a schizo psychoanalyzing you.3. Don’t know.>>18655258Same as other goyim.>>18655334Well they ‘are’ different.I think you’re question was a little deeper than that and I don’t really know.
>18656851>>18655687See above.Jews will continue circumcising their sons even at risk of death.Not necessarily a freak out.>>18656392I do not care.Yes, they did.My father told me so. His told him.There is nothing stronger than an oral tradition; especially from father to son.I will not tolerate any argument which presupposes my tradition.
>>18655090so if all that was bullshit, there's no way at all to debunk it
>>18656853>There is nothing stronger than an oral traditionThat's what rabbi say after they wipe circumcision blood from their lips
>>18654166To what extent is ethnicity important in internal Jewish dealings? Are certain people excluded from full participation in the community on account of having a recent non-jewish ancestor? How does this apply to cases of adoption? Are there seperate communities of Jews that do not recognize each other as ethnically Jewish if ethnicity is considered important; e.g polish Jews having a hostility towards Italian Jews (theoretical).
>>18654351Do you consider that without the Catholic Church, which accepts the Jewish Canon as the word of God and went to great efforts to spread that message, Judaism would have been viewed as an insular cult and would not have had any meaningful impact in the world?
>>18656934Judaism became insular due to the Catholic Church.
>>18656957What has Judaism in its own right done to lead people to God? It seems to me that without the missionary efforts of Christianity, Judaism would be viewed by the world as something like Zoroastrianism.
>>18654166do you think there was literally a guy named Noah who built an ark and then put two of every animal on it and saved them all from a global flood?
>>18654166>Christians spouting hatred and cursing others to Hell will be ignoredAre muslims allowed to spout hatred at you and curse you to hell?Actually don't answer that, I already know the answer. For some reason you people hate christians much more than muslims even when muslims keep chucking missiles at israel nonstop while christians send billions in aid every year.
>>18656999It is impossible to pretend to know the fate of Judaism without the tampering of its offshoots, but I really doubt the religion would have become region locked and stale. Unlike with Zoastrianism, which seems to have genuinely been allergic to ever spreading itself beyond it's Achaemenid maximum (which is before it even had a proper orthodoxy) there is no shortage of (indirect) evidence for Jewish proselytism.
>>18657131For examples of late antiquity: Adiabene in the central ME became Jewish, by the second century there were enough Jews to destroy several Roman legions and start massive revolts around the middle east in the diaspora revolts. Later on the Kingdom of Yemen would be converted to Judaism.And as ar as the Christian sources go there is some evidence the Jews were considered a threat/rival religion.
>>18656934Ok
>>18657099Because Christians are idolaters (avodah zarah) who worship a human being as G-d, while Muslims are not.
>>18654166Do Jews also deny among themselves that Jews killed Jesus? There is an incredible amount of squirming and finger-pointing from various Jewish groups and publications and scholars (at least in English sources) when the circumstances seem pretty straightforward - Jesus, a Jew, was sentenced to death by the Jewish religious authorities for various offenses like blasphemy, sorcery, etc. and the Roman authorities carried out the sentence as they did for other persons sentenced to death. I have read so many articles and blurbs that can be summed up as "ACHKSHUALLY it was all the Romans and the Jewish religious authorities dindu nuffin". I'd also be interested in the orthodox perspective, if there is one, on the "his blood be on us, and on our children" statement in Matthew 27, as that also sounds fairly reasonable to me: the Roman authorities were lukewarm on executing someone involved in what was essentially an internal spat and the Jewish authorities agreed to openly accept responsibility as they were the ones who wanted him dead in the first place.Lest you think I'm trying to provoke, I have no dog in this fight and am merely curious. I am not a Christian (or a muslim or a Jew) and in fact despite the fact that I would describe myself as an anti-semite I feel like the Jewish accounts of Jesus are probably as reliable as Christian ones if not more so.
>>18658035I doubt Jews think about Jesus much outside the context of their relationship with Christianity. It's not really a topic of conversation whether they killed Jesus, because Jesus was not an inherently important person (to Jews). As far as I know, there was/is no major disagreement that Jesus was executed by the Sanhedrin for heresy, as one ought to do. But the idea that Jews have inherited a collective ethnic guilt over the killing of Jesus is not Jewish, it is Christian; Jews obviously have always thought this is nonsense. The collective guilt is what Matthew 27 has translated to in real life, as the Sanhedrin has not existed since the 5th century, and even before that no Christian took it to mean that guilt was on the Jewish authorities, but on the Jews.The denial has to do with the extreme amount of baggage carried by 'The Jews killed Jesus', which has been used justify a lot of bad things happening to them.
>>18654227You're still going to jew hell. HE does not forgive clumsiness or phone posting.
>>18656853>There is nothing stronger than an oral tradition;Wrong. Forever so.
>>18654166Why does hashem need forskins?
>>18658035By the way, Jewish accounts of Jesus are pretty unreliable. He only really became important enough to be remarked upon a few centuries after his death. I'm not even sure most of the mentions of Jesus in the Talmud are actually about Jesus Christ (after all, to presume they are just because he is the most famous person named Joshua to be from Nazaret would be absurd), and when they are they heavily polemical in nature (and if the ones I am unsure about are about JC then that goes for them too). Some, like the claim he was the bastard son of Pantera the legionary, seem to be a fair bit older.The guy just wasn't that important before his worshippers started getting some serious traction.
>>18656853Why didn't you answer the middle question >>18655687 ?? If orthodox Jews are so religious in general, how come only SOME know biblical Hebrew? Shouldn't that be a priority?
>>18654166Why are you so much more based than both goys and musrats?
>>18656853>There is nothing stronger than an oral traditionIt's like the weakest form of information storage which is why we invented books.This thread is depressing like every abrahamitic religion.
>>18654166>I’m a Modern Orthodox Jew from Manhattan.Why even bother making this thread and engaging here with the "gentiles" you're not meant anyhow to treat as human. Seriously, it's everything your """culture""" and theology is about. Sure there is a loophole where a goyim can convert to orthodox judaism but I doubt it's your purpose here. Then again, barring all talmud and whatever scriptures, moses' book of law in torah tells you not to treat anyone outside your ethinicity as human and undermine us at any possible occasion. If you're capable of honesty I am curious of your answer.
>>18658361>The denial has to do with the extreme amount of baggage carried by 'The Jews killed Jesus', which has been used justify a lot of bad things happening to them.Rather this is a christcuck deflection when host populace is so tired of jewish shit they want to cast out christianity as a whole so amidst oppressing the populace back into servile dogmatic compliance, jews become the scapegoat for "judaism 2.0: goycattle slaves edition" that christianity is.
>>18659428This is the type of retarded shit the young (36 y/o) Hitlerites of today are being taught by Instagram reels.
Call me antisemetic, I don't care, because I'm not, but I just really dislike how insular the Jewish community is. Not that they want to keep to themselves, that's fine, but just how time and time again the wagon are circled and the guns come out to defend the lowest lowlife just because he's part of the little hat tribe. And then the contortions of the Rabbinical class to justify it. I mean, we're talking about a group of people who hung wires in NYC just so they could violate God's law about being outside on Saturdays.I mean shit, a completely disconnected culture like Chinese for example, do you revere the Emperor's mandate of Heaven? Of course not. So why ask the goyim cattle to trust those that bend and twist their own God's word just because of your own traditions.Like, fine, you're your own people with your own customs. But the promise that you'll rule all peoples from the promise land kind of contradicts anyone else who may not have the same opinion.And also what the fuck? You're Ashkenazi speaking gutter Yiddish (Hebrew). The fuck does some half-slavic Polack have to claim about the Levant? You're part of the tribes that fled and were condemned by those who stayed, even by your own culture you have no claim because you fucking left.That's not antisemetic, that's semetic from your own peoples' history.
>>18660680Can all you fuckers stop misspelling Semitic for one fucking moment please? Jesus fucking Christ.Sorry, I don't care about your larger points at all one way or the other, but just stop being an illiterate fuckface for one fucking second please.
>>18660708It was invented by a German to sound smart, it's already a stupid concept since it describes a region and not a people, who gives a shit if its misspelled. I'm typing with my thumbs on a phone.But sure, dodge the questions.
>>18660909Semitic describes a people, though. The sons of Shem. This quaint bible themed terminology is a holdover of 19th century philology/race sciece. And desu when it was coined it described something specific: being against Jews because they were racially alien semites perjudicial to the volk/nation/etc, as opposed to the traditional reasons to hate Jews (that they killed Christ), or the fairly unglamorous reasons (business competition, for example).
>>18654166>>18654415>>18657476Christians do not believe that Jesus is just a man but that Jesus is both fully God and fully man at the same time and because of this, and since he is the revealed person of God, this is why worshipping him does not count as 'man-worship' or idolatry breaking the first commandment.Question: do Jews believe that God is omnipotent and unbounded? If yes, then how can you say that God *would not be able* to manifest in a human form if he actually wanted to, and how do you know for certain that this didn't happen?second question: if, hypothetically, you were convinced that God had in fact manifested in the form of a human being, would you still refuse to worship said human form as God anyway?Final question: how do you make sense of the fact that the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and then, despite remaining steadfast as Jews and keeping the Torah for nearly 2000 years afterwards, haMashiach has supposedly still not come and restored everything?
>>18655084As I’ve said, we don’t just have a lack of evidence, but also contradictory evidence. Read what I said again. At best you can argue that the Exodus is based on a distorted memory of a real event whose details changed over time. But this is not proof of the Exodus but rather proof against it, especially when you consider what the historical basis might be. Just look up the Hyksos, they were a semitic peoples from the Levant who conquered Egypt in the 17th century BC and ruled over as their 15th dynasty before eventually getting expelled around 1550 BC. Many scholars believe that the Exodus is based on a cultural memory of the Hyksos’ expulsion (in-reverse) and that the Hyksos were one of the groups who contributed to the ethnogenesis of the Israelites. Similarly there’s also the “Shasu of Yahweh,” a nomadic tribe from Midian who apparently worshiped Yahweh. Around the 12th century BC, a Shasu warlord named Irsu invaded Egypt, plundered their temples, and “treated the gods as men” (i.e. forbidding their worship). Eventually the Shasu were expelled to the Levant and it’s thought that not only they also contributed to the ethnogenesis of the Israelites and imported the worship of Yahweh into the Levant, they were also eventually conflated with the Hyksos at some point.
>>18661561Tell me more. How does the Elephantine cult fit into this? How did Yahwism became the norm, and how did the sojourn of the Jews in Babylon and Persia result in the consolidation of Yahweh as the sole monotheistic entity? Finally, how did a religion that was focused on temples and priests and sacrifice transition into rabbis and synagogues by the time the New Testament rolls around?
Before YHWH was elevated to singularity, the supreme God of the West Semitic world was El. His name means simply "god" or "mighty one" in Northwest Semitic languages, and he was worshipped across Canaan, Ugarit, Phoenicia, and the broader Levant for at least a thousand years before any Hebrew scripture was composed.The Ugaritic texts, discovered at Ras Shamra in northern Syria beginning in 1928 and dated to the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BCE, provide the fullest portrait of El in his original form. He is depicted as an aged king with a white beard, seated on a throne, presiding over a divine council of sons and daughters. He is called ab adm, "father of humanity," and bny bnwt, "creator of created things." His consort is the goddess Athirat (the Ugaritic cognate of Hebrew Asherah), called qnyt ilm, "creatress of the gods." Their sons include Baal Hadad, Yam, Mot, and approximately seventy other divine beings. The Hebrew Bible preserves the name of El throughout, fossilized in theophoric names that every Jew carries without noticing. Every Isra-el, Samu-el, Dani-el, Micha-el, Gabri-el, Rapha-el, Nathan-el, Ishma-el bears within it the name of the Canaanite father god. The word Elohim, the standard Hebrew term for "God" throughout the Torah, is grammatically plural, a formal holdover from the period when the divine was understood as a council rather than a monad.The Bible itself preserves explicit memory of El as distinct from YHWH. The Patriarchs are repeatedly said to have worshipped El under titles such as El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Olam, El Bethel, and El Roi. Exodus 6:3 makes this distinction explicit: "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, but by my name YHWH I did not make myself known to them." The Priestly editor here admits that the God of the Patriarchs was known by a different name, reflecting the historical truth that YHWH was a later theological development onto which the older El traditions were retroactively projected.
El had a consort. Her name in Hebrew is Asherah, and she was worshipped in the Temple in Jerusalem for much of the monarchic period. This is not a hypothesis. It is attested by the Bible itself, by external inscriptions, and by the archaeological record. 2 Kings 23 describes the reforms of King Josiah in the late seventh century BCE. Among his acts of "cleansing," the biblical author records that Josiah removed the image of Asherah from the House of YHWH, where it had stood for generations, and burned it in the Kidron Valley. 2 Kings 21:7 informs us that Josiah's grandfather Manasseh had installed "the carved image of Asherah that he had made" inside the Temple itself. 1 Kings 15:13 records that even earlier, Queen Maacah, grandmother of Asa, had an "abominable image for Asherah" that Asa removed. The biblical authors condemn these acts, but their condemnation is itself the proof of long, institutional, temple-based Asherah worship in Jerusalem. The prophet Jeremiah, writing in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE, describes the women of Judah baking cakes for the Queen of Heaven (meleket ha-shamayim), pouring out libations to her, and burning incense in her honor. When Jeremiah denounces them, they answer him with extraordinary directness:"As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you. But we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the Queen of Heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we did, both we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no misfortune. But from the time we stopped making offerings to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have perished by the sword and by famine."
The archaeological record confirms this at every site. The inscriptions at Kuntillet Ajrud in the northeastern Sinai, dated to the ninth or eighth century BCE and published by Ze'ev Meshel of Tel Aviv University, repeatedly invoke "YHWH of Samaria and his Asherah" and "YHWH of Teman and his Asherah." Similar inscriptions appear at Khirbet el-Qom in the Judean hills. These were not the writings of heretics. They were the writings of ordinary Israelite scribes using the normal religious vocabulary of their time. YHWH had a consort. Her name was Asherah. The reform that erased her came centuries later. The same goddess appears across the ancient world under cognate names.In Phoenician she is Astart. In Akkadian she is Ishtar. In Sumerian she is Inanna. In Greek she is Astarte (Ἀστάρτη), the direct linguistic descendant of the Semitic form, and in her cosmic aspects she corresponds to Hera as queen of heaven, to Aphrodite Ourania as celestial goddess of love, and to Artemis in certain Levantine cults. In Egyptian she corresponds to Hathor and to Isis in her cosmic dimension.The Queen of Heaven was worshipped across the entire ancient Near East, from Mesopotamia to the Aegean, under names that linguists have demonstrated to be cognate forms of the same archetype. She was worshipped alongside El, until she was driven out of Jerusalem by violent reform.YHWH in his earliest textual form was not the supreme God. He was a storm deity, a warrior god, a son of El, a member of the divine council. The oldest manuscripts of the Torah preserve this directly. Deuteronomy 32:8-9 in the Qumran manuscript 4QDeutj, in the Septuagint translation made by Jewish scholars in Alexandria in the third century BCE, and in the Vetus Latina tradition, reads:"When Elyon apportioned the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, he established the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. And YHWH's portion was his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance."
>>18654206>>18654235Satan doesn’t exist
Elyon, the Most High, divides the nations. He distributes them according to the number of the sons of God (bene elohim). YHWH then receives Israel as his allotted portion. The text (Deuteronomy 32:8-9 in the Qumran manuscript 4QDeutj, in the Septuagint translation made by Jewish scholars in Alexandria in the third century BCE, and in the Vetus Latina tradition) describes two distinct figures: the high father (Elyon) who apportions, and a son (YHWH) who receives. This is the divine council of the ancient Near East operating exactly as it does in the Ugaritic texts, where El apportions territories to his sons.The Masoretic Text, the standardized Hebrew edition finalized between the seventh and tenth centuries CE, altered this passage. It reads "sons of Israel" (bene Yisrael) in place of "sons of God" (bene elohim), destroying the sense and producing a meaningless numerical reference (the number of Israelite tribes would be seventy, but the verse makes no sense in context). The Dead Sea Scroll fragment, a thousand years older than the Masoretic reading, preserves the authentic text. The Septuagint, produced by Jewish scholars during a period when the original theology was still remembered, preserves it too. The alteration is a theological censorship of memory. "The Qumran reading is certainly older than that of the Masoretic Text. It preserves the original polytheistic background of the passage, in which YHWH is one of the sons of El Elyon, assigned Israel as his inheritance when El divided the nations among his sons." - Michael S. Heiser, "Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God," Bibliotheca Sacra 158 (2001), pp. 52-74
>>18654206why America is a satanic country
Psalm 82 confirms the picture. The psalm opens: "God (Elohim) stands in the divine council (adat El), in the midst of the gods (elohim) he holds judgment." The psalm then has God rebuking the other gods for ruling the nations unjustly, and finally pronouncing a sentence upon them: "I said, you are gods (elohim), sons of the Most High, all of you. But you shall die like Adam, and fall like any prince." This is not metaphor. This is the divine council standing trial, with YHWH (here called Elohim) serving as judge among his fellow gods.The early portrait of YHWH draws directly from the storm-god type widespread in the Levant. He rides the clouds (Psalm 68:4), an epithet used of Baal Hadad in Ugaritic texts (KTU 1.2 IV.8, 29; 1.3 II.40; 1.3 IV.4). He battles the sea dragon Leviathan (Psalm 74:13-14; Isaiah 27:1; Job 26:12-13), a direct parallel to Baal's combat with Yam and Lotan in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle, and a descendant of the older Mesopotamian myth of Marduk and Tiamat (Enuma Elish, Tablet IV). He speaks in thunder. He dwells on a mountain. His theophanies are marked by storm, lightning, and earthquake. At some point during the late monarchic period, and especially during and after the Babylonian exile, a group of priestly reformers declared that YHWH alone should be worshipped, identified YHWH with El, demoted or demonized the other members of the divine council, and retroactively edited the sacred texts to obscure the earlier theology. This did not happen all at once. It was a process that extended across centuries. By the time the Tanakh reached its final form, the older divine council theology had been largely concealed, though enough of it remained visible for modern scholars to reconstruct.The YHWH your rabbis taught you to worship as the one and only is the reformed YHWH. The original YHWH was a son of El, standing in the divine council, assigned Israel as his territory by his father.
The father god with the divine council is not a peculiarity of one people. It is a universal archetype of ancient humanity. Comparative philologists have demonstrated, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the same figure appears across all major branches of the Indo-European language family, and that the Semitic El belongs to the same broad archetype. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European name is *Dyēus Phter, "Sky Father."The Semitic El, while not etymologically cognate with *Dyēus in the strict Indo-European sense, belongs to the same typological category: the father god of a divine council, associated with the heavens, presiding over apportioned territories, possessing a consort and divine children. The archetype is so widespread because it reflects a shared pattern of archaic human religion, with localized expressions in each linguistic family.When a Greek invoked Zeus, a Roman invoked Jupiter, an Indian invoked Dyaus, a Canaanite invoked El, a Hittite invoked Šiuš, and a Mycenaean scribe wrote di-we, they were all invoking local expressions of the same cosmic figure: the Sky Father, the head of the divine council, the source of cosmic order. The Abrahamic reform did not create a new God. It took one expression of this universal archetype, stripped it of its family, and declared the stripped version uniquely true. "The Indo-European sky-god *Dyēus Phter is one of the most securely reconstructed deities of Proto-Indo-European religion. His name, 'Sky Father,' is cognate across every major branch of the family. He is the head of the pantheon, associated with the bright sky, the father of gods and men." - J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World, Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 431-432
>>18654166>Christians spouting hatred and cursing others to Hell will be ignored.Your holy book says Jesus Christ is rotting in a barrel of shit in hell, and that his followers are inhuman beasts that should be the slaves of jews. Bit disengenuous then to tack on your disclaimer, isn't it?
>>18662157>>18662167>>18662180>>18662189>>18662191>>18662205prove that the polythiestic Israelite religion/culture existed before the timeframe in the Bible when it says that they fell into idolatry and started being influenced by surrounding nations (you can't)>crypto-LARPagan not-so-subtly manufacturing a 'historical' narrative to make it where le default state of humanity is worshipping some amorphous pantheon of other-dimensional superhuman beings with 'we must retvrn to worshipping the old gods/ecumenical universalist religion' undertones'secular' 'historians' and their fans are all like thisBiblical history is accurate, the counter-'evidence' is fragmentary and nebulous at best and the mainstream 'historical' narrative is cobbled together fanfiction
>>18662229>Biblical history is accurateYou're a cultist. There is no "proof" that would convince you. Prove me wrong! You admit to having a bias which you'll never not be seeking to reinforce. There is plenty of proof in the posts I made but you don't engage with anything that's written, instead you ad-hom because there's nothing else you can do. Your belief system is weak
>>18657131It’s a common misconception, but no, Zoroastrianism does not forbid conversions. The only Zoroastrians who do forbid conversions are the Parsis in India (descendants of Persian Zoroastrians who fled to India after the Arab conquest of Iran). Forbidding conversions is not practiced by any Zoroastrian outside India. It was not practiced when Zoroastrianism was a major religion and no Zoroastrian text forbids conversion.The only reason Parsis forbid conversions is because when they fled to India, local princes allowed them to keep practicing their faith under the condition that they don’t convert people and this has stuck with them.
>>18662229The Exodus never happened, full stop. Archeologists have excavated Egypt for a century and a half and have found zero proof for the Exodus happening. It’s peculiar since a lot of other things foreigners in antiquity said about Egypt got proven correct, even the insane stuff about Egypt claimed by Herodotus (a man known for making a lot of other stuff up btw) ended up being proven correct down to the last detail somehow. But not once have they found any real proof for the Exodus.The only response to any of this by apologetics is “Egypt didn’t record their losses,” but we don’t just rely on propaganda steles as Ancient Egypt left behind vast quantities of everyday administrative records, legal papyri, letters, and domestic receipts. Exodus describes the sudden death of all firstborn sons, the total collapse of the agrarian workforce, the loss of an entire chariot army, and the devastation of the economy via the Ten Plagues. If the Exodus did happen, the catastrophic fallout would inevitably ripple into day-to-day administrative paperwork, grain supplies, and military rosters. No such disruptions exist in the records around the time period the Exodus supposedly took place.Plus we don’t just have a lack of evidence for the Exodus, we have contradictory evidence as according to traditional biblical chronology, the Exodus happened during the later half of the New Kingdom period and archaeology shows this exact era was the absolute peak of Egyptian imperial power, economic power, and aggressive military expansion. The country shows no signs of a society recovering from total infrastructural collapse. If the Exodus really happened, it should leave behind a lot of physical evidence beyond records, but no such thing exists. The traditional dating of the Exodus is 1446 BC, but Egypt shows no sign of decline or collapse during this time and they even continued to militarily occupy the Levant for a few more centuries.(Cont)
>>18662229>>18662259The lack of evidence also extends into the Sinai which the Hebrew Bible claims 2 million Israelites wandered in for 40 years. An apologist might claim nomadic groups do not leave behind archaeological traces, but the Sinai peninsula has been surveyed extensively and they have found pottery shards, fire pits, and remnants from tiny, temporary campsites of nomads thousands of years before exodus would have happened. If archaeologists can find the trash of a few dozen ancient nomads, the total lack of any physical footprint for a population of over two million people is problematic.Archeological surveys across the Levant have also shown an entirely different origin for the Israelites. There was no mass migration of Israelites into Canaan, instead the Israelites were originally a Canaanite tribe who only later became a distinct group. Hebrew itself is a Canaanite language no different from Phoenician or Moabite and the “Paleo-Hebrew” alphabet is just the Phoenician one, an actual independent Hebrew alphabet didn’t emerge until the 2nd century BC. There’s even evidence to suggest that Judaism evolved out of Canaanite paganism and that the polytheism depicted in Judges, 1 and 2 Kings, and Chronicles was in reality the original religion of the Israelites, not some later apostasy. Monotheism didn’t exist at all prior to the Babylonian exile and even then, Israelite polytheism still survived in an official capacity well into the Persian period as evidenced by the Elephantine papyri.(Cont)
>>18662229>>18662259>>18662261Even within the Hebrew Bible itself, there are discrepancies. How could Pharaoh muster up an entire chariot army when the horses required for it would have died due to the 5th plague? Why would Pharaoh’s daughter bathe in the Nile when the Ancient Egyptians, especially royalty, didn’t actually bathe in the Nile due to the presence of crocodiles? Moreover if the Israelites really had spent centuries in Egypt, then Hebrew should be full of Egyptian loanwords, but it isn’t which disproves the traditional narrative that the Torah could have been written by Moses. In fact, the Torah as a whole is full of anachronisms as it mentions place-names and ethnic groups which did not yet exist in the time of Moses. Also, if the 10 Plagues really happened, then realistically the Ancient Egyptian religion should have died out shortly afterwards due to the Egyptian gods failing to protect Egypt. But there is no sign of decline during this time, the religion continued to function as normal and didn’t decline until the Christianization of Egypt in the 3rd to 4th centuries AD. The only religious crisis during the Late Bronze Age was Akhenaten’s attempt at creating a proto-monotheist religion centered around Aten, but this was an internal top-down affair that had nothing to do with Hebrew slaves or plagues from a foreign god.(Cont)
>>18662229>>18662259>>18662261>>18662264At best you can argue that the Exodus is based on a distorted memory of a real event whose details changed over time. But this is not proof of the Exodus but rather proof against it, especially when you consider what the historical basis might be. Just look up the Hyksos, they were a semitic peoples from the Levant who conquered Egypt in the 17th century BC and ruled over as their 15th dynasty before eventually getting expelled around 1550 BC. Many scholars believe that the Exodus is based on a cultural memory of the Hyksos’ expulsion (in-reverse) and that the Hyksos were one of the groups who contributed to the ethnogenesis of the Israelites. Similarly there’s also the “Shasu of Yahweh,” a nomadic tribe from Midian who apparently worshiped Yahweh. Around the 12th century BC, a Shasu warlord named Irsu invaded Egypt, plundered their temples, and “treated the gods as men” (i.e. forbidding their worship). Eventually the Shasu were expelled to the Levant and it’s thought that not only they also contributed to the ethnogenesis of the Israelites and imported the worship of Yahweh into the Levant, they were also eventually conflated with the Hyksos at some point.
>>18662229>>18662259>>18662261>>18662264There’s a lot of reasons to suggest that the Torah in its final edited form was written during the Persian period and I’m not even just talking about the flood which is very clearly derived from the Mesopotamian flood myth described in the Atrahasis and Gilgamesh epics. The Tower of Babel incident for instance makes perfect sense if you read it strictly as an anti-Babylonian polemic; the name Babel itself is also the Hebrew word for Babylon, the Tower of Babel itself is likely based on Mesopotamian Ziggurats (particularly one famous ziggurat in Babylon called the Etemenanki), and the scattering of languages mirrors the cultural and linguistic diversity of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Similarly, the creation account in Genesis reads as a reversal of the Babylonian creation myth (Enuma Elish) and even the Book of Job, though not part of the Torah, makes perfect sense if you consider the theory that it was written as a response against Zoroastrian dualism.
>>18654166Do you have regrets about cock mutilation?
>>18662268Keep going brother, thou art doing Elohim’s work (kek). How did the Persian-influenced Torah, now written by reform priests during the sojourn of the Jews in the Persian empire, eventually turn into the Second Temple Judaism we see in the New Testament? How did they get further influenced by Greek and later Roman conquerors and philosophy prior to 1 AD, say?And ignore the trolls, rarely do we get actual history on /his/.
