Jewish belifes
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NoName,
welcome to the boards. Jews don't believe that humans need someone to save us, as there is nothing we need saving from, no all-corrupting Fall as there is in Christianity, and each person is capable of making good with God and man through his or her own actions. There's also no Hell to be condemned to.
There is a traditional Jewish belief in a coming messiah, but the job description is a bit different than that for the Christian one. According to the traditional belief the Jewish messiah will be completely human, will not die for the sins of mankind, will fulfill certain biblical prophecies such as the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and world peace.
More liberal streams of Judaism often hold that there will be no literal messiah, only perhaps a messianic age where there is world peace, while still other people have different understandings of what this could be taken to mean.
I hope that helps.
Dauer
welcome to the boards. Jews don't believe that humans need someone to save us, as there is nothing we need saving from, no all-corrupting Fall as there is in Christianity, and each person is capable of making good with God and man through his or her own actions. There's also no Hell to be condemned to.
There is a traditional Jewish belief in a coming messiah, but the job description is a bit different than that for the Christian one. According to the traditional belief the Jewish messiah will be completely human, will not die for the sins of mankind, will fulfill certain biblical prophecies such as the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and world peace.
More liberal streams of Judaism often hold that there will be no literal messiah, only perhaps a messianic age where there is world peace, while still other people have different understandings of what this could be taken to mean.
I hope that helps.
Dauer
Varry intrasting. So there is no good vs. evil? So out of curosity what happens to those who were bad if there is no hell? Do they get to go hevan or is there still some kind of punishment?
Thank you for answering and sorry for the bad spelling.
Thank you for answering and sorry for the bad spelling.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "there is no good vs. evil." There is no devil, no being that stands opposite to God. But certainly there are varying ideas within Judaism about evil and the nature of evil. For example, that evil is a result of man's free will.
Jewish beliefs about the afterlife vary quite a bit, are not written in stone. So there are a few possibilities for what might happen to someone after they died if they were not ready to go to gan eden, to heaven. They might be reincarnated and live another lifetime, they might go to a place called gehenna, which is a temporary place (no stay longer than 12 months), and their being there would prepare them to go to gan eden. This might happen by, for instance, them being confronted with all of the wrongs they had done in their lifetime in a way that would temper them so that they would be ready for gan eden. If someone was unable to be transformed in gehenna, then their soul would be extinguished. Odds are, according to this line of thinking, that the individual would not be extinguished, would eventually end up in Gan Eden. Of course, as I said before, these ideas are not written in stone. But these are some of the possibilities that show up in Jewish afterlife theology.
Dauer
Jewish beliefs about the afterlife vary quite a bit, are not written in stone. So there are a few possibilities for what might happen to someone after they died if they were not ready to go to gan eden, to heaven. They might be reincarnated and live another lifetime, they might go to a place called gehenna, which is a temporary place (no stay longer than 12 months), and their being there would prepare them to go to gan eden. This might happen by, for instance, them being confronted with all of the wrongs they had done in their lifetime in a way that would temper them so that they would be ready for gan eden. If someone was unable to be transformed in gehenna, then their soul would be extinguished. Odds are, according to this line of thinking, that the individual would not be extinguished, would eventually end up in Gan Eden. Of course, as I said before, these ideas are not written in stone. But these are some of the possibilities that show up in Jewish afterlife theology.
Dauer
Namaste and thank you to both noname and dauer!!
One simple little question opening a world of thought!
Seems a lot of old testament interpretation is what Christians use to identify with a devil and physical hell...I so enjoy the clarification.
One simple little question opening a world of thought!
Seems a lot of old testament interpretation is what Christians use to identify with a devil and physical hell...I so enjoy the clarification.
pohaikawahine
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Hi - just stepping in to mark the thread so that I will receive copies of responses .... aloha nui, poh
I'd like to put forth some of the Christian beliefs which have I believe stemmed from 'our' old testament which is actually a reconstruction of sorts of your scripture. I'd be so interested in comments...including if Judaic interpretations vary.
To start...are you aware other than the shuffling of the order of the books and the translation to English are there signifcant differences between the Torah and the King James Version of the Old Testament?
Genesis....Historical Fact, or largely allegory?
Creation 7 days?
Eve being created from Adam's rib?
A world wide flood and Noah getting two of everything on the ark?
The genaology indicating the world was established in concert with your calendar?
Hell?
Devil?
Fallen Anglels, Nephilim?
Original Sin?
Thank you so much for your time, look so forward to reading and contemplating the responses. This inquiry stems from two thoughts, wondering if the variety of thought and belief in the Judaic traditions is similar to the breadth of Christianity...and wondering if Christianity is based on Judaic traditions added to by the teachings of Jesus....How did the original thought get changed so much when Jesus in his words didn't seem to change that much...
peace and blessings...
To start...are you aware other than the shuffling of the order of the books and the translation to English are there signifcant differences between the Torah and the King James Version of the Old Testament?
Genesis....Historical Fact, or largely allegory?
Creation 7 days?
Eve being created from Adam's rib?
A world wide flood and Noah getting two of everything on the ark?
The genaology indicating the world was established in concert with your calendar?
Hell?
Devil?
Fallen Anglels, Nephilim?
Original Sin?
Thank you so much for your time, look so forward to reading and contemplating the responses. This inquiry stems from two thoughts, wondering if the variety of thought and belief in the Judaic traditions is similar to the breadth of Christianity...and wondering if Christianity is based on Judaic traditions added to by the teachings of Jesus....How did the original thought get changed so much when Jesus in his words didn't seem to change that much...
peace and blessings...
I can answer two, possibly three, of your questions but Daur and bb might have to correct me.
First, we don't have what Christians call "hell", just a place people go until their sins a "cleansed" before going to gan Eden.
Second, we don't have a "devil". ha-Satan (who you call "Satan") is just the Chief Prosecuting Attorney, nothing more. Just think of him as an aspect of the conscience.
Original Sin: we don't have. The "apple incident" was necessary to make us human. According to one set of folk tales, Adam and Eve originally were 600 ft. tall spiked hermaphrodites (please correct me if I'm wrong on this.)
Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine
First, we don't have what Christians call "hell", just a place people go until their sins a "cleansed" before going to gan Eden.
Second, we don't have a "devil". ha-Satan (who you call "Satan") is just the Chief Prosecuting Attorney, nothing more. Just think of him as an aspect of the conscience.
Original Sin: we don't have. The "apple incident" was necessary to make us human. According to one set of folk tales, Adam and Eve originally were 600 ft. tall spiked hermaphrodites (please correct me if I'm wrong on this.)
Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine
The Torah is only one of the three sections of the Tanach, which also includes Neviim/Prophets and Ketuvim/Writings. This forms the acronym TaNaCH. All of these together would more closely parallel the Old Testament. Besides shuffling the order, in some places numbering differs. Also, there are some translations in the KJV which are more theologically informed than informed by a knowledge of the language, usually concerning passages believed to be prophecies concerning Jesus.
Of course, Torah can also be used as a general term that includes Talmud, midrash, the codes, responsas, kabbalah, and the drash I heard the last time I went to shul.
It depends who you ask. And to some, it is neither. There is also the question of which part of Genesis we're talking about. The creation narrative is usually not taken literally, with rare exceptions, but other sections of Genesis will be taken as actual history by some Jews.
So it could be history, it could be allegory, or it could be a communal myth whose historical meaning and those meanings it has developed over the centuries are quite distinct.
I think the first question addressed this one. It is unusual to find a Jew who believes in 7 literal days of creation, although some Jews might believe in several periods of time in which creation occurred. Others might even see the entire creation narrative as a mystical text.
That's one possible interpretation, but Judaism is a religion of interpretations so there usually isn't just one answer. One possible answer would be to say that when Adam was created, he contained both male and female attributes, and there was only one of him, just as there is only one of God. But Adam saw all of the other creatures with their partners and wanted to be like them. So God made Eve out of his side.
Again, it's a possible interpretation. Some people accept that there was a historical flood. Some people don't. It's generally rare to find that idea outside of Orthodoxy.
I don't quite understand what you mean.
Copied from my post above yours:
"Jewish beliefs about the afterlife vary quite a bit, are not written in stone. So there are a few possibilities for what might happen to someone after they died if they were not ready to go to gan eden, to heaven. They might be reincarnated and live another lifetime, they might go to a place called gehenna, which is a temporary place (no stay longer than 12 months), and their being there would prepare them to go to gan eden. This might happen by, for instance, them being confronted with all of the wrongs they had done in their lifetime in a way that would temper them so that they would be ready for gan eden. If someone was unable to be transformed in gehenna, then their soul would be extinguished. Odds are, according to this line of thinking, that the individual would not be extinguished, would eventually end up in Gan Eden. Of course, as I said before, these ideas are not written in stone. But these are some of the possibilities that show up in Jewish afterlife theology."
There is no place of eternal suffering.
"Devil?"
No devil. What phyllis said on Ha-Satan. You could also think of this figure as running sting operations for God.
BB could answer this question better, I think. Afaik there are no fallen angels in Judaism, simply because they have no free will. Even if an angel has a job that to us seems to be "evil", it is still doing a job for God, just one that our subjectivity is offended by. The question of the nephilim is going to yield fairly different responses from different commentators, and I'm not that familiar with what any of them say on this issue, so I'm not going to touch that one.
There is no original sin. The sin in the garden is called a chayt which is the most minor of categories of sin. It is a missing-of-the-mark, like in archery. There are multiple views (I'm sure you saw that coming) as to what the tree of knowledge of good and evil was, what was going on, but the only clear punishments for getting booted out of the garden are those spelled out explicitly in the text, which appear to me to be what naturally happens in a non-utopian reality.
The Christian concept of Original Sin seems to me to facilitate a need for finding salvation in someone else. It removes a person's power to do it through their own work, which is what Judaism has the possibility for.
Hope that helps.
Dauer
Tremendouosly thank you both, and while I'd love to hear from more you've done spawned another question.dauer said:
Can you clarify here? What I am hearing is that there are prophetic references of future events which Jesus fulfilled, that are in the old testament KJV but whose translation differ from the original TNCH. Whether I'm down the right track or wrong can you expound on this please?dauer said:
bananabrain
awkward squadnik
yes. it's not that interesting except when people use it to try and make out that judaism and the "OT" are something they're not.
not really meaningful categories. what it is is a) sacred history (not to be confused with history history) and b) an attempt to explain how humans have come to be the way they are, e.g. free-will, sin, diverse, sexually dimorphic, etc. whereas science and history can help to explain the how, when and wherefore, Torah is about the why.
depending on what you mean by 7 and what you mean by day.
a hook to hang an entire theology on!
about why G!D decided to stick with the world we live in rather than start over.
all i can say is that it's not there to help you with history.
what the others said.
likewise about fallen angels. nephilim is an interesting area and one i don't really know about much, but angels are not considered to have free will.
like what dauer said - it's not sin exactly, but that which divides humanity from angels on one hand and animals on the other, namely the possibility of sin and repentance (without the necessity of salvation, incidentally) implicit in the exercise of free will.
seems to me that people decided for themselves what jesus meant and worked on that basis, rather than actually thinking about it. when you think about it like that, "upon this rock i shall build my church" comes across as rather a sad and resigned statement.
yeah, jews don't believe these prophetic references are to jesus or that he fulfils any of the criteria for them. i think the best example i can give you is that the "suffering servant" of isaiah, who is said to be jesus, is actually and very clearly not - look at 44:1-2, 44:21 and 45:4. we take a very dim view of the claim that jesus fulfilled the criteria for being the messiah, because it just doesn't stand up from our perspective.
b'shalom
bananabrain
Namaste BB, Thanks so much for the additional thought
Today is Iyar 6, 5766 * May 4, 2006, The 5766, is the date not based on the above?...on upto today...
Wil,
as with translations, there's a word, almah, that's translated as virgin in the kjv when it really means young woman. It's also on analysis most likely in reference to someone Isaiah knew personally. And there's another word which I think means wounds that's translated as stripes in Isaiah 53. It's little things like that. Or sometimes (I could be wrong) KJV will capitalize a He where another translation, not informed by Christianity, would not. In Hebrew, there is no similar way to identify a proper name, so that in itself is an interpretation.
Oh, and the Jewish calendar is based on a calculation of creation using the Torah. There were multiple such calculations. One of them one out. I forget who it's attributed to. It was, I think, somewhere between 200-500 CE that this happened, maybe closer to 200. Don't quite remember. Suffice it to say, you'd be hard pressed to find a Jew today who believes that the entire world was created 5766 years ago.
Dauer
as with translations, there's a word, almah, that's translated as virgin in the kjv when it really means young woman. It's also on analysis most likely in reference to someone Isaiah knew personally. And there's another word which I think means wounds that's translated as stripes in Isaiah 53. It's little things like that. Or sometimes (I could be wrong) KJV will capitalize a He where another translation, not informed by Christianity, would not. In Hebrew, there is no similar way to identify a proper name, so that in itself is an interpretation.
Oh, and the Jewish calendar is based on a calculation of creation using the Torah. There were multiple such calculations. One of them one out. I forget who it's attributed to. It was, I think, somewhere between 200-500 CE that this happened, maybe closer to 200. Don't quite remember. Suffice it to say, you'd be hard pressed to find a Jew today who believes that the entire world was created 5766 years ago.
Dauer
If the creation story is a creation story. And if the garden of eden is allegory, and original sin, hell, devil are not part of common Judaic thinking...Where the heck did Christianity get it all from when they utilize heavily your books to prove all this?
Which brings me to another question... the 10 commandments, the movie...originally with Charleton Heston, and the recent remake...popular shows, this religious piece has made ratings every year...But it is starting to become clear to me...that despite this is a Old testament story...This rendition of Moses is mostly watched by Christians and not Jews...
thoughts? if correct, reasons?
Which brings me to another question... the 10 commandments, the movie...originally with Charleton Heston, and the recent remake...popular shows, this religious piece has made ratings every year...But it is starting to become clear to me...that despite this is a Old testament story...This rendition of Moses is mostly watched by Christians and not Jews...
thoughts? if correct, reasons?
AletheiaRivers
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Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine said:
Hey, that's my view! Interesting.
Is that a common interpretation of the story within Judaism?
Neither hell, nor the devil, are ever mentioned in the Tanach. Nor is original sin. Now the question of whether to read the creation story as allegory or not is another matter. There is no reason it has to be read allegorically, except that what we know about the world clearly makes a literal reading very difficult. Of course, Jewish interpretations that take it non-literally predate knowledge that would make a literal reading unacceptable.
Your question may be better suited to another forum. It is my understanding that Christianity is influenced by Zoroastrianism and pagan religions. The mythical Jesus is in my opinion modelled after the familiar dying gods such as Mithras. The idea of a god who can offer salvation through belief seems to me like it would appeal much more to a people who believed in a chaotic world ruled by many fickle gods than it would to a people who believed in one god of a world with a clear orderliness to it, with clear and reasonable expectations.
The idea of a devil in opposition to god seems very Zoroastrian to me. As I said before, hell seems like a clear way to motivate people to think they need saving. It also has some parallels to Tartarus.
Perhaps what you should do is review the places that supposedly reference the devil, hell, etc, and see if that interpretation can be maintained without reading through the lens of later christian theology.
I would actually make the argument that most of the tanach, if not all of it, has ideas about the afterlife that are alien to us today, although also very familiar. But rabbinic Judaism as well went in a different direction regarding the afterlife.
I thought the Hallmark version was horrible. I can't tell you how many times I've seen the Heston version. I don't care about the inaccuracies. It's a classic.
Yes. If it happened, and it wasn't a horrible sin (which the text never hints at (quite the opposite)), then why did it happen?
It's like they were children in the garden, and they couldn't begin to grow up until they made a boo boo. And of course you have God saying, "Whatever you do, don't press the shiny, blinking button." What happens when you say that to a child?
AletheiaRivers
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dauer said:
What got me thinking down this road was actually a poem by EE Cummings, which has a line in it about "a tree called life" (which I do not think has anything to do with God, but could be wrong).
Anyway, it hit me that eating of the tree could be symbolic for life - being born, dealing with the dualities of this existence, etc. Life means knowing good and evil.
Here is some of the poem:
Here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life, which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) …
bananabrain
awkward squadnik
wil,
what dauer said about translation, capitalisation and emphasis - english works very differently from hebrew, so an understanding of how the language works (letters are consonants, modified by dotted vowels) will improve your appreciation of the issue.
as far as the calendar is concerned, i think we work it out by the ages of the people given at in genesis (all the "begats") by which we can calculate the traditional calendar date. note that we can only calculate traditionally to the creation of adam - time before that is in the six days of creation, which are not subject to the same rules (or indeed any that can be easily explained). in the artscroll 'stone edition' pentateuch (which is otherwise not my favourite version) the commentary includes a diagram of how the calendar is worked out. i think r. kaplan's "living Torah" (which i *do* recommend as the best translation i've ever seen) also includes this.
re hell and the devil, the term "sheol" is mentioned a seven times in the Torah, although the context is not made clear. by the time of the Talmud, the term "gehinnom" is in common usage. "ha-satan" is a character in the book of job and is mentioned twice in the book of zechariah. i encourage you to investigate the contexts (http://unbound.biola.edu is an excellent resource from an evangelist university which allows you to compare versions)
and, re the apple - yes, that big red shiny button. remember your "matrix" - "everything begins with choice".
b'shalom
bananabrain
what dauer said about translation, capitalisation and emphasis - english works very differently from hebrew, so an understanding of how the language works (letters are consonants, modified by dotted vowels) will improve your appreciation of the issue.
as far as the calendar is concerned, i think we work it out by the ages of the people given at in genesis (all the "begats") by which we can calculate the traditional calendar date. note that we can only calculate traditionally to the creation of adam - time before that is in the six days of creation, which are not subject to the same rules (or indeed any that can be easily explained). in the artscroll 'stone edition' pentateuch (which is otherwise not my favourite version) the commentary includes a diagram of how the calendar is worked out. i think r. kaplan's "living Torah" (which i *do* recommend as the best translation i've ever seen) also includes this.
re hell and the devil, the term "sheol" is mentioned a seven times in the Torah, although the context is not made clear. by the time of the Talmud, the term "gehinnom" is in common usage. "ha-satan" is a character in the book of job and is mentioned twice in the book of zechariah. i encourage you to investigate the contexts (http://unbound.biola.edu is an excellent resource from an evangelist university which allows you to compare versions)
that is my understanding as well - i was under the impression that the portrayal of jesus explicitly adopted these aspects because it helped with the marketing to the contemporary pagans, rather like him being identified with the jewish messiah - it was good for converts.
and, re the apple - yes, that big red shiny button. remember your "matrix" - "everything begins with choice".
b'shalom
bananabrain
Karimarie
Live without fear
Zaakir said:
God.