Jewish Voters May Be Wary Of Palin

Politico ^ | 9/2/08 | Ben Smith

[srweaver]

I don’t find your beliefs offensive, I greatly respect Jews who sincerely follow their (historical) beliefs. And I am blessed with a Savior because of Judaism and God’s fulfillment of His promises to the Hebrew nation through the prophets.

What I don’t understand, though, is your commitment to an everlasting covenant that “stops” at Mt. Sinai. It didn’t “start” at Mt Sinai with Moses, but with Abraham (per your prior assertion):

Genesis 17:7  And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.
8  And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.
9  And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations.
10  This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.
11  And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.
12  And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.
13  He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.
14  And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.

Before Abraham, and before this covenant, God had another “everlasting” covenants with Noah and all humanity:

Genesis 9:12  And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
13  I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
14  And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:
15  And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
16  And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.
17  And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

The prior “everlasting” covenant with Noah (and all flesh), and the “everlasting” covenant with Abraham, did not prohibit God from making another “everlasting” covenant with Israel and Moses, nor does the covenant at Mt. Sinai prohibit God from making another covenant in fulfillment of His promises through the prophets.

Are you saying that the everlasting covenant with Noah was not changed or expanded by the everlasting covenant with Abraham, which was not changed or expanded by the everlasting covenant at Mt. Sinai?

Or that God cannot change or expand His everlasting covenant of Mt. Sinai in a way which would include all of His creatures, even those who are not the literal, physical seed of Abraham, in a favorable life of faith toward God; a covenant that would actually address the shortcomings of fallen, sinful humanity by once for all by atoning for their sins...instead of constantly remembering them over and over again through continual sacrifice.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Thanks for your clarification, and thank you. And yes, I understand what you're saying. The idea of Moses is to Abraham what J*sus is to Moses is something I had to deal with as well.

But the thing is, the situation is not at all the same. Both of us agree that the True Religion is not in the form it was in at the time of Adam and Eve. There is a "fulcrum" in history, a peak high point of Revelation that in some way proves or disproves all that comes after, and even all that came before. The issue is, is that fulcrum Sinai or Cavalry? I maintain that it is Sinai.

For one thing, the Holy Torah was in its finished form and in the possession of Israel for a thousand years prior to chr*stianity. Chr*stianity has to claim that the Torah is temporary and preparatory--two attributes that cannot be gleaned from the Torah but only imposed from the outside by one who has already accepted the idea of a "greater" authority. In contrast, there was no Book of Genesis given to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. The Book of Genesis was dictated to Moses on Mt. Sinai along with the rest of the Torah shebikhtav and has never existed separately from Exodus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy. Unlike the composite chr*stian bible (TaNa"KH + "new testament") the Torah is an organic whole, written by G-d Himself. Even Moses didn't write it. He merely copied it down at G-d's dictation. G-d wrote the Torah, all five books, before the universe was even created (the Torah is the "logos" through which the world was created). This pre-creation Torah was exactly the Torah dictated to Moses on Mt. Sinai--all five books.

I'm surprised you didn't invoke the Prophets as a reason for accepting the "new testament." It was very observant of you to invoke the covenants with Adam, Noah, and the Patriarchs leading up to Sinai!

Be well.

[A CA Guy]

Jews that are so stupid as to vote for Obama are self hating people anyway IMO.
It's the same thing with the blacks sticking with this KKK party of the Democrats.

[srweaver]

Not at all. None of us MUST believe anything, we get to choose what we believe. It doesn’t even have to be plausible or logical, or fit into nice, neat, easily definable categories.

You choose to believe that God spoke to Moses and Israel at Mt. Sinai, as I also believe.

Neither of us believe that God spoke to or through Mohammed as recorded in the Koran.

I choose to believe that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and was resurrected, which you have chosen not to believe. And I also believe/receive what God did/said in the Old Covenant as historically accurate, and accept that Jesus is the promised Messiah who has already fulfilled many of the Old Covenant promises, with some remaining to be fulfilled at His second advent.

My beliefs explain both the blessing and benefit of Christianity to the world, our (yours and mine) beliefs explain the presence of Israel in the promised land after 2000 years (roughly) absence.

I simply believe that Christianity is the ongoing unfolding of God’s plan and purpose in human history, and that Christians who happen to also be Jews (offspring of Abraham), have no reason to disown their heritage, but many reasons to be thankful that through God’s grace they have come to a fuller knowledge of what it means to be the people of God. Therefore, it is not inappropriate for them to call themselves Jews for Jesus, if they so choose.

[Cinnamon Girl]

And likewise, muslims and Mormons believe that their faith is an even further “unfolding of G-d’s plan and purpose in human history,” and who are you to say they are wrong?

[srweaver]

Ultimately, the only opinion that matters is God’s.

When we stand before Him on judgment day, we will find out how accurate our faith was/is.

I am glad I live under a covenant where my sins are forgiven, and God will not remember my iniquities:

Jeremiah 31:31-34.

However, I will still be judged, at the judgment seat of Christ, according to the things I have done in this life:

2 Corinthians 5:10

You choose to hold (I think) to Jewish traditions that were formulated/formalized from the 3rd to 6th century (the Talmud) — after the New Testament writings were completed.

I choose to hold to my understandings of both the Old and New Covenants, and trust God for his mercy to cover me in my failings.

The Lord will sort it all out one day, won’t He?

That is, unless we’re both completely wrong!

[Cinnamon Girl]

You choose to hold (I think) to Jewish traditions that were formulated/formalized from the 3rd to 6th century (the Talmud) — after the New Testament writings were completed.

Wrong, Judaism is based on the Written (Torah) and Oral Law, all given at Mt. Sinai. So my concern right now is doing His will to the best of my ability every day. G-d made His will clear in the Torah. I have no doubt about it.

[Mashood]

Most Jews in this country would elect a Muslim terrorist with three grenades in his mouth.. as long as he was a Democrat.

[srweaver]

And, hopefully, you will respect the fact that others are also concerned about doing His will to the best of their ability every day. Including Messianic Jews, such as the Jews for Jesus, who have no doubt about Jesus being the Logos of God.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

[Cinnamon Girl]

I don’t have respect for Jews for Jesus. Sorry. This is where we began this conversation, I think. So here we are.

[srweaver]

You’re welcome. I appreciate your concept of the “fulcrum” and the discussion over whether it is at Sinai or Calvary. And your elucidation of why you believe it is at Sinai.

Understanding that no finite creature even remotely grasps all that God has said or done, but only to some extent what He has allowed us to see (Deuteronomy 29:29), I will explain why I believe the fulcrum is at Calvary.

1. I am not aware of anywhere in the Holy Torah where it claims to be “an organic whole, written by G-d Himself.” It does claim the Ten Commandments were written on two stone tablets by the “finger of God” (Exodus 31:18) which Christians also believe.

2. Though I have no problem with the Holy Torah, or the rest of the Old and New Covenants being the “Word of God,” I find no claim in the Torah itself that God wrote it word for word (ostensibly in Hebrew) and “mechanically” dictated it to Moses word for word, including the passages about his death (Deuteronomy 34:5-12). I do attribute its (the Torah) authorship to Moses, under the inspiration of God, hence it is the word of God, Holy Scripture, and cannot be broken. However, this same inspiration also applies to the rest of what you label TaNa”KH + “new testament”, for the same claims are made for them being the “word of the Lord”.

3. Did Moses write the law (scrolls), not the tablets (Ten Commandments), on Sinai, or in Moab near Mt. Nebo, per Deuteronomy 31-34?

4. The Old Covenant didn’t seem to “meet” the needs of the people, not because there was fault with it, but because there was fault with them, which God knew, and stated, in Deuteronomy 31.

5. The inadequacy of the people is also mentioned by Jeremiah, when he mentions the New Covenant, one that accommodates the people as they truly are, and provides for in internal (as opposed to external) knowledge of God. Note that I am not claiming that no Jew knows God, but that God has provided more for us in His New Covenant.

6. The New Covenant (Calvary) not only applies to the seed of Abraham, but to all men, whether they are Messianic Jews or “Christians”.

7. I am curious as to the source of your claims regarding the Torah, particularly that God used it to create the world.

G-d’s best to you.

[Zionist Conspirator]

You will forgive me if I do not wish to engage in a protracted argument with you at this time as I have spent part of last night and much of today arguing with your Catholic and Eastern Orthodox co-religionists. It seems they regard people like you as bad chr*stians, adherents of a modern heresy similar to islam (ie, Biblical inerrancy), and totally alienated from all of historical chr*stianity. Of course, they never admit amidst all this Protestant bashing that every anti-inerrantist theory they cherish so much (evolution, higher criticism, "demythologization," etc.) is the invention, not of Catholics or Eastern Orthodox, but of liberal Protestants (white ones at that!). You'd think they'd have the decency to express their thanks for discovering "truths" that they themselves apparently never had the mental acumen to come up with! At any rate, after defending people like yourself (despite not sharing your theology), please understand that I am worn to a frazzle and don't feel like immediately carrying on an argument with one of the people I've been defending.

However, I will answer your question briefly by noting that Judaism does not subscribe to the concept of "sola scriptura" and that these teachings are part of the Ancient Tradition handed on from Moses. I doubt you would claim that anyone could take a King James Version and build a Tabernacle exactly as the Israelites did based on only what is written. Furthermore, the Torah at times commands that some sacrifices be "heaved" and others (and even people at times) to be "waved" without explaining how this is to be done. It doesn't do this because the rituals of "heaving" and "waving" (amid others) was handed on Orally. The Israelites spent forty years studying G-d's commandments before Moses even wrote the twelve scrolls that were given to each tribe.

Furthermore, the Torah is not a printed book but a hand-written scroll. The scroll, in order to be kosher, must be written according to very strict laws. Yet none of the laws for writing a Torah Scroll are written in the Torah Scroll! But without these laws and regulations, handed down from the days of Moses, the Torah could never have been transmitted. There was no printing press in the west until about six hundred years ago, after all.

Furthermore, the written text of the Torah contains no vowels and no punctuation. These are preserved by the Oral Tradition. True, one may purchase printed Rabbinic Bibles which contain vowel marks and punctuation along with the consonants, but that is no different than including the commentary of Rashi. It is a printing of information from the Oral Tradition. And the Torah in the prayer service may not be read from a printed book. It must be read from a kosher scroll written according to all the ancient rules and with no punctuation or vowels.

You will, I hope, notice that this final argument (the written text contains only consonants while vowels and punctuation come from the Oral Tradition) is unknown to Catholic and Orthodox chr*stianity. It is an unfortunate fact that the Catholic/Orthodox arguments against "sola scriptura" are so terribly flawed that Protestants who hear them assume that those are "the" arguments against the doctrine and won't give Jewish Oral Tradition a hearing.

If you still want to argue, let us please do it some other time. In the meantime you might want to check out this thread and see what "real chr*stians" say about people like you.

[srweaver]

Thank you for your time.

[Ziva]

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