Etu Malku said:
Apparently the Christians didn't/don't see you to be that much of a threat . . . like all the others.
yes, that would certainly explain how we ended up with the tradition of nimrod as the first dictator, enslavement by the egyptians, the somewhat combative depiction of the seven nations of canaan, the midianites and so on in the Tanakh, the destruction of the first Temple by the assyrians, the babylonian exile, military domination by the persians, the greeks, the romans and then 1800-odd years of christian persecution. it seems sometimes that we were not seen so much as a threat as an inconvenient reminder that humanity had a story to tell that was greater than an endless succession of war and conquest.
Lunitik said:
You are part of a faith who's early history consisted of slashing the necks of women and children, I don't think you ought to be talking about being anti-human.
oh, really, so you accept the entirety of the Tanakh as historical fact? i thought you had described these texts as fabricated. you can't have it both ways; either it's true or not.
You have rejected a Messiah who's whole message is "love your neighbor as yourself"
because a) we already knew that perfectly well and b) he wasn't the messiah according to any of the criteria we have for messiahship. why is the messiah of the jews so important to you if we are such a bunch of unenlightened child-murdering primitives? one is bound to wonder what exactly it is about us that makes people so obsessed with our sacred books, history and practices.
WHY is it controversial though? It is because the old faiths have repressed and created an environment where people are against sex.
you see, this comes back to your determination to ignore what is actually in the text, let alone the actual beliefs and practices of what you call the "old faiths". you are clearly quite unaware of what judaism says about sex, although given that you 'don't see any enlightenment in the Torah' i suppose that shouldn't be surprising. clearly, your level of understanding of Torah is comparable to your level of understanding of music, but don't let it bother you.
I would suggest you stick to Judaism, because you have no willingness at all to understand others perspectives.
what, as opposed to telling other people what their perspectives ought to be and how they're wrong about everything compared to your spectacular insight?
labeling the box will cater to its want for organization.
you mean, as opposed to the superb organisation of your system of thought?
What have you genuinely accomplished though? No matter what purpose you attach, there is still no genuine purpose, you have just fabricated nonsense.
i do love the way you blithely dismiss any other form of knowledge other than your own and then act all surprised that people aren't exactly impressed.
He did absolutely nothing, his people took care of everything.
how admirable.
Thank you for stopping so quickly
hur hur hur. surely you shouldn't congratulate me for going against the flow?
and I am aware of each of these people, yet none of these people have provided so many people with freedom.
so osho has freed more people than moses did in egypt, or christianity or islam did for their own adherents? as carl sagan once said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, yet the sum total of what you have provided so far is "because i say so and i 'know' it to be true". what a crock.
Moses, for instance, prove he has talked to God or anything else he claims
judaism, alone of world religions to my knowledge, is the only one that rests on a *mass* Revelation as opposed to one special recipient; the traditional figure for the entire jewish people that stood at sinai was 600,000; this is generally taken to be a way of saying "everyone"; all of these people saw the "Voice of G!D" and responded, collectively that they would keep the Torah; this is the promise that we still keep, 3,000 years later. we kept the promise (not always terribly well) and, in return, G!D Has looked after us. no, we can't prove it, of course. but then again, you don't even have a century of history to back up your claims of "the most enlightened being the world has ever known". some might consider that, well, presumptuous.
What do you know about enlightenment? I see none in the Torah, that's for sure.
well, you don't know Torah very well, that's also for sure. i'm pretty sure enlightened people don't go around patronising people and displaying their ignorance like a showreel.
You are disrespecting Buddhism again, thinking you are disrespecting me.
firstly, i think it was you that started insulted the Torah regardless of your utter ignorance of it and, secondly, i think buddhism's rather beyond my ability to insult, even were it intended, given that buddha himself insists that we kill buddha if we run into him; a subtle and delightful piece of thinking.
what exactly am i ignorant of? i've provided evidence for why i think what i do about osho (and i haven't even mentioned the ex-osho people that i actually know in real life), whereas you have provided nothing but "because i say so" and evidence of your ignorance of both Torah and music - which, oddly enough, you seem rather proud of.
yet you keep trying to teach us about your faith, rather hypocritical if you ask me.
not really. there are more people in this conversation than you and i, who are rather more open to learning stuff they don't already know. all i have done is pointed out stuff that you have said that is both factually incorrect or philosophically ludicrous.
bob_x said:
Ah! Time for me to interrupt with some linguistics nerdiness...
that *is* why we keep you around here, bob.

i was hoping you'd chip in.
the Hebrew resh is also back at uvular position
i can see that in modern hebrew, they use the "french R", but sephardim use more of a spanish or in many cases arabic R;
But the 'ayin may even have been more "guttural" like the pharyngeal fricative (rasping against the walls of the throat) called ghayin in the Arabic alphabet (the most difficult sound in that language) as it sometimes got transliterated "g" in Greek translations ("Gomorrah" was actually 'Umorah).
that's why gaza has a "g" as well, actually it's "'aza". there is a difference however between the guttural 'ayeen and the "open gimel", which is a softer, more palatal fricative similar to the french R.
Lunitik said:
There is a Sufi concept called "the Seven Valleys"
from the way it is described, it sounds remarkably similar to the progression through the seven heavenly "heikhalot" in what is known as "merqabah mysticism"; no enlightenment in the Torah though. deary deary me.
b'shalom
bananabrain