Posted on 12/30/2013 8:39:57 PM PST by Phinneous
If you've never heard of mass-revelation (it's not a realization of having gained weight nor an encounter with a creep in the old Combat Zone in Boston...)
Rabbi Kelemen's concise class on why Jews not only believe in G-d's revelation at Sinai, but why we KNOW this to be fact.
America is founded on the principle that God created man to be free and live by the 10 Commandments which as such provided a foundation for our system of laws. The way men treat each other and conduct business with each other in America is all based on the Old and New Testament. The American conscience is a product of the same.
And the funny thing about the American system is that it works (even though there are those who want to destroy it from within and without).
While we might say that muslims worship a different god, Christians and Jews worship the same God. And to the best of their ability they live as the same Creator would have them live (albeit by some different rules and rites).;-)
I have said nothing that indicates that the 12 were reneging on their commission. In fact, everything I have said supports their acceptance of Paul as the Will of Christ and in their acceptance of Paul they stand behind his testimony in such a way that to say Paul stands alone is to ignore them and what they did re: Paul.
Paul stands with the Gospel (and the 12 knew and acted on this)...he does not stand alone.
Gug g’zukt!!! (you said well!!...in Yiddish)
Maimonides in his work Mishnah Torah states that Islam and Christianity are “formatting” the world for Monotheism.
Did you know that you had so much in common with an 11th century Spanish Jew?
I am a great admirer of Rambam (or is it RaMBaM).;-)
Either is fine :) We say, From Moses to Moses, there never arose one like Moses (the Rambam.)
2Ki 17:19 Yehudah, also, did not guard the commands of יהוה their Elohim, but walked in the laws of Yisra’el which they made.
Deu 30:12 “It is not in the heavens, to say, ‘Who shall ascend into the heavens for us, and bring it to us, and cause us to hear it, so that we do it?’
The Talmud states that since Torah is no longer in heaven, that God has given Judah all authority to determine all halakhah concerning Torah. This is what was happening before Judah was taken into captivity into Babylon. Assuming to have authority where God gave us no authority causes us to removed from the presence of God.
My Mishna is now ashes is the ground, returned to dust where it will remain dust forever more as God told us to do with such man made things.
‘Torah. Torah. Torah....’
I really should find time somewhere to listen to both this talk and the one you posted the other day.
I have taught the material a good number of times, and follow the argument with regards to revelation to a whole versus revelation to a few as you present it in the post from Exodus 20:1-18—the problem being that in 20:19 the people chicken out (understandably, no doubt I would have done the same) and request that Moses act as an intermediary—and what Moses sees as an intermediary is more than what Moses is told to tell the people, which in turn is usually more than what Moses actually tells the people at the time.
But I imagine that the talk addresses this, at least in part.
Moses spent several lengthy periods in supernatural communion with God. He then spent forty years teaching what he had been taught.
The Children of Israel camped for long periods in relative isolation free of worry about food and water. How do we suppose they spent their time?
It was only until about a month before his death that Moses wrote the Cliffs Notes that became the Five Books of Moses. Torah is not a book, it is a set of teachings.
Well, they spent at least some of their time complaining, chasing after Moabite women, and waiting for the older guys to die. Given that Phineas’ action caused him to stand head and shoulder above everyone else, in the very least it seems that whatever was taught, it hadn’t sunk in very deeply in most cases, so even though the teaching on some level had been given to everyone, everyone doesn’t seem to have been that intent on preserving it. In short, they behaved like Catholics.
Moreover, the argument being advanced was that G-D had revealed the Torah at the nation as a whole in a way that is quite distinct from the way that Christian revelation is claimed to have been promulgated. After Exodus 20:18 if all that is advanced is your scenario—one individual in more direct supernatural communion teaching others, I think the distinction is largely lost, and if anything, ends up breaking the other way. Christianity holds that the seeds of revelation were entrusted not to just one (Moses) but to the twelve (working from Shem Tov’s text of Matthew the parallels seem quite clear—while in Christian tradition Christ has often been portrayed as a new Moses, it seems that actually the apostles are portrayed as the new Mosi (pardon the neo-logism). Over the next while, their understanding of what they have seen, heard, and handled deepens.
You understand the arguments. It is not a mistake that intellectual converts to Christianity mostly become Catholics.
The Catholic/Orthodox Tradition does indeed mimic the way Jewish mesorah is transmitted. Protestantism and its offshoots do not. Mimicry is not the real thing.
The Christian path does indeed lead to the Divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, the sinlessness of Mary, the authority of the Pope and the Church, and holidays like Christmas and Easter.
It seems to me that the only three defensible intellectual positions are Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, and a monotheistic Deism that is agnostic about revelation which would be a very depressing state.
I should mention that one of the two scriptural teachers that has influenced me most was a disciple of Cyrus Gordon, and I have, to the extent that I have been able, been shamelessly plundering the Rabbis for exegetical techniques.
I am of the opinion that the body of revelation is far too vast for anyone to begin to master it, and if an individual truly devotes himself to it, most of what he himself learns will not be passed on—for a majority of it to be passed on would require having extremely attentive disciples, and frankly disciples who spent to much time attending to their master and not enough time in meditation/contemplation. John of the Cross, insofar as articulation goes, is the deepest Catholic mystic, but he left behind ample indications that what he passed on was a lowly fragment of what he had experienced.
I personally hold that in the first four centuries, so many Christians were grazing in so many different directions over the rich fields that many of the Jewish exegetical techniques were lost within Christian circles. As the theological conclusions could generally be reached in many different ways, remembering all the ways of arriving at them was not so important (and for the individual, impossible), but they remain a rich field to be tapped. My screen name is quite deliberate, but I think that philosophically I borrow even more from the Rabbis than my namesake—or rather, as I think of it, reclaim a part of the apostolic heritage that has not been terribly well preserved by its heirs.
All is so very rich.
I conclude my posting for the year with a passage from St. Ephrem, a late third and very early fourth century scholar who is the only deacon and only Doctor of the Church who hails from the Persian regions. I have concluded my introductory Scripture course by reading this passage for about a decade now, as it sums up the happy futility of trying to lead anyone through sacred writings.
Lord, who can comprehend even one of your words? We lose more of it than we grasp, like those who drink from a living spring. For God’s word offers different facets according to the capacity of the listener, and the Lord has portrayed his message in many colors, so that whoever gazes upon it can see in it what suits him. Within it he has buried manifold treasures, so that each of us might grow rich in seeking them out.
The word of God is a tree of life that offers us blessed fruit from each of its branches. It is like that rock which was struck open in the wilderness, from which all were offered spiritual drink. As the Apostle says: They ate spiritual food and they drank spiritual drink.
And so whenever anyone discovers some part of the treasure, he should not think that he has exhausted God’s word. Instead he should feel that this is all that he was able to find of the wealth contained in it. Nor should he say that the word is weak and sterile or look down on it simply because this portion was all that he happened to find. But precisely because he could not capture it all he should give thanks for its riches.
Be glad then that you are overwhelmed, and do not be saddened because he has overcome you. A thirsty man is happy when he is drinking, and he is not depressed because he cannot exhaust the spring. So let this spring quench your thirst, and not your thirst the spring. For if you can satisfy your thirst without exhausting the spring, then when you thirst again you can drink from it once more; but if when your thirst is sated the spring is also dried up, then your victory would turn to harm.
Be thankful then for what you have received, and do not be saddened at all that such an abundance still remains. What you have received and attained is your present share, while what is left will be your heritage. For what you could not take at one time because of your weakness, you will be able to grasp at another if you only persevere. So do not foolishly try to drain in one draught what cannot be consumed all at once, and do not cease out of faintheartedness from what you will be able to absorb as time goes on.
I don’t have a list but I’ll try to remember...
Torah implies both the 5 Books of Moses and the most recent ruling of your local orthodox community rabbi on whether your chicken soup is kosher if a drop of milk fell in it.
But the Rabbi's gap theory is also completely applicable to Christianity.
There is no "gap" between the accounts of those who knew Yeshua and the present time. History is filled to the brim with those who heard His actual words and saw his miracles.
And the Apostle Paul is far from the only account on which Christianity is based. Paul's account was fully vetted by the Apostles who lived with Yeshua during his ministry.
BTW, Paul studied under Gamaliel. He was no slacker.
Oops. I think my enthusiasm for my faith might have swept me away on that statement. *slowly reeling the line back*
I would say that an account vetted by apostles is still able to be invented and corroborated and is infinitely different from Mt. Sinai’s revelation.
Anyway— here is a different series I started listening to tonight. This Rabbi I have posted before...another good speaker (especially for not having attended college...)
Paul (student of Gamliel!) is mentioned in the first one. It is a history of off-shoots of Judaism, and refutes the mentions of “Yeshu” in the Talmud as being Jesus. (note, it’s an unflattering abbreviation in Hebrew meaning “may his name be erased”...and does not refer to Jesus according to many Jewish, orthodox scholars.)
http://www.torahcafe.com/rabbi-mendel-kaplan/the-da-vinci-con-segment-1-video_ba67efa6e.html
http://www.torahcafe.com/rabbi-mendel-kaplan/the-da-vinci-con-segment-2-video_7745bca9e.html
This is what Moses said to God when the Israelites rebelled, Exodus 32:32: "But now, if Thou wilt, forgive their sin--and if not, please blot me out from Thy book which Thou hast written."
Yes, infinitely different.
But there was never accusation of Jesus being an invention of the Apostles. And many who saw and heard Jesus became believers and there is an unbroken chain of people from that time to now.
Christianity lives or dies on the word of Jesus, not Paul or the Apostles.
Either he is who he says he is or he is a bigger liar than Obama.;-)
It cannot "prove" that it is the fulfillment of Judaism by merely quoting its own sources and its own claims, but this is all it has ever done or all that it will ever do, for the simple reason that the Hebrew Bible says absolutely nothing about J*sus or chrstianity--unless one grants chrstianity the right to authoritatively interpret it. And one who does this believes in chrstianity already.
In short, forget and Paul, the Twelve, and even J*sus. Does the Hebrew Bible obviously and objectively authorize chrstianity apart from chrstianity's own interpretations? No it does not. So chrstianity must be rejected, whether J*sus was "born of a virgin," "rose from the dead," or anything else.
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