As for the first two paragraphs you wrote: The counter-claim is that this fantastic meticulousness which you describe originated as a response to exile. How should a non-believer know that this has always been the case, especially given the multiple variants?
>> The translation of the Hebrew Bible into a foreign language, which removed it from its true context and made all today's false interpretations possible, is actually mourned as a tragedy (on the fast day of `Asarah BeTevet). For the Catholic Church to vouch only for the Septuagint is really not much different from cultural Protestants who insist that only the King James Version is the "true Bible." <<
Actually, there is one sense in which this statement quite hits the nail on the head, but also important distinctions. And I certainly can see where the Hebrew people would mourn such a day; since the Septuagint became the basis for another religion.
The Protestants cannot claim the King James predates the Vulgate; and the Vulgate provided precisely the needed uniformity. Contrariwise, the Catholic position is that the Septuagint established a canon at a time when there was no agreement as to a Hebrew canon (The Pharisees v. The Saducees v. The Essenes v. the Diaspora), and a relative conformity of word usage at a time before the Masoretic text existed. (Obviously, you, most Jews, and even, ironically, the Vulgate's translator, believed otherwise; I also must note that such a conformity is lost to history. Nonetheless, it seems obvious to have existed at one time, since the Septuagint represents a single translation project.); contrariwise, the Council of Jamnia conceded the prevalence of the Septuagint's canon and usage among world Jewry.
The English do not, and never have, represented the bulk of Christianity, whereas Greek and Latin have each been the dominant language of Christendom.
Actually, as I consider it, the conflict between the Vulgate and the Septuagint/Greek bible would be a much better example, except the Catholic church concedes the superiority of the Greek bible.
Btw, I shall have to look up Dr. Gerald Schroeder; any degree to which literalism and science can be reconciled makes easier my purpose of shrinking the divide between Christianity and science. And, astonishingly, mitrochondrial DNA (which is genetic inheritance which does not get "reshuffled" [recombined] each generation) actually attests to the existence of a single woman who is mother to all humans whose estimated time of life was less than an order of magnitude different from the literal Eve. ("Time of life?" why does that sound like a euphemism for menopause?)
>> Second, what do you mean by "Talmudic Jews?" <<
It *is* my understanding that nearly all modern Jews are Talmudic, except for certain Messianic Jews who are Christian, and long-isolated sects of Jews. My memory is a little off; I would've guessed that they were some among the Ethiopian Jews, not Yemeni. However, historically, the Talmudic Jews were a conciliation between the two largest sects that excluded Hellenic, Essene, Christianized-but-still-Jewish, and Zealotic Jews. Most of these other Jews either died out or assimilated into mainstream Christianity or Talmudic Judaism.
I would consider most of whom you call "heretics" among modern Jews to still be Jews, as I would consider Protestants to still be Christians. However, when saying that all Jews are creationist, it creates circular reason to anathematize (OK, that's a Christian term, but at least it beats "excommunicated" :^D) all Jews who aren't creationist.
>> If you are assuming that the Orthodox Jews on this forum don't agree with the chronology I summarized, then that is merely an assumption. <<
It is my understanding that there is some disagreement among Orthodox Jews about the Chronology, but it's also my vague understanding that even the concept of "Orthodox" presumes a fairly literalist belief system. However, if I were brought up Orthodox, yet came to my conclusions about Creationism, I would like to think I wouldn't be regarded as a heretic.
>> yet when these same Orthodox Jews speak to the outside world it is always about prejudice, the Holocaust, or Israel, with the actual contents of Jewish teaching assumed by the outside world to be the invention of the Southern Baptist Convention. <<
Sadly, I think you may be answering your own question about why Jews are reluctant to promote hyper-literalism among Christians. As you know, There are many not-nice things said about Jews in the New Testament. In context, these things cannot mean all Jews, but rather refer strictly the leadership of the non-Christianized and non-Hellenic Jews, and were written when there were some fresh wounds among Christians, such as the expulsion of Christians from the synagogues which left them vulnerable to the draft and the encompanying mandatory pagan rituals. The founders of Christianity were Jewish however, so anti-semitism as a racial issue is absurd; and the days when the only non-professing-Christians a Christian typically ever met was Jewish are long past, and Jews must be seen as allies in todays geopolitical struggles, so religious-based hatred of Jews is absurd.
Nonetheless, anti-semites can still abuse selected quotes of New Testament scripture; and these bases for tolerance (and even love) of Jews are not in the scripture. For this reason, I think sola scriptura, and Christian hyper-literalism both kinda give many Jews the willies. (I certainly do NOT mean to make Christian anti-semitism to be a Protestant phenomenon!) I also think any rigid ideology, especially one wherein God seems OK with destroying billions of people (a la Left Behind) probably would freak me out if I were Jewish.
>> I hope that, however much you disagree with me, you find this response to be equally respectful. <<
Certainly, I did have to struggle to not be defensive from your initial posts (and I don't know how successful that would seem from an outsider's point of view, but this post has been extremely informative, and will spur much research on my part.
If I might ask, if you are not Jewish, what religion (or lack thereof*) are you? And how did you become so knowledgeable about Judaism, even to the point of being so protective of it?
(* You certainly seem to be a religious person, but I also would have presumed you to be, specifically, a Jewish religious person.)
I would consider most of whom you call "heretics" among modern Jews to still be Jews, as I would consider Protestants to still be Christians. However, when saying that all Jews are creationist, it creates circular reason to anathematize (OK, that's a Christian term, but at least it beats "excommunicated" :^D) all Jews who aren't creationist.
We seem to be having difficulty communicating due to a difference in how we define our terms. A "Jew" is anyone born to a Jewish mother (regardless of belief or lack thereof) or anyone who converts Halakhically to Judaism. If an atheist, a Qara'ite, a "Hebrew chr*stian," a self-hating renegade, ad nauseum, was born to a Jewish mother he is a Jew. Period.
However, not all Jews practice Talmudic Judaism. Only "Orthodox Judaism" is actually Talmudic Judaism. "Reform-," "Conservative-," and "Reconstructionist Judaism" are not Judaism at all. Their members, provided they were born to Jewish mothers, are all Jews but they are not "Talmudic Jews" (ie, practitioners of Talmudic Judaism). And how could anything else be the case? "Reform Judaism" began as a rejection of the Talmud and a retention only of the Written Torah (a heresy known as "Qara'ism"). Now they have rejected the Written and Oral Torahs even though they study the Talmud academically. They may be Jews (which depends on the Jewishness of their mothers), but they are not "Talmudic" or "Rabbinic Jews" because they do not practice genuine "Talmudic" or "Rabbinic Judaism." A Jew who rejects even a single word of the Holy Torah as being from Heaven remains a Jew, but he is a heretic. Unfortunately, Catholicism has so bought into the modernist academic mindset that they do not recognize that such beliefs are heresy for Judaism. Besides . . . do you really think any group that ordains women "rabbis" is "Talmudic???"
I hope this clarifies your questions on the point of the difference between Jewish identity and Jewish religion.
It is my understanding that there is some disagreement among Orthodox Jews about the Chronology, but it's also my vague understanding that even the concept of "Orthodox" presumes a fairly literalist belief system. However, if I were brought up Orthodox, yet came to my conclusions about Creationism, I would like to think I wouldn't be regarded as a heretic.
For some reason I am having difficulty making myself understood. My initial post was not about the Six Days of Creation at all but about the Jewish chronology of history which doesn't even begin until the Sixth Day! The arguments we have been having back and forth on this thread have not been about creation vs. evolution but whether or not this 5766-year chronology is true history or (G-d forbid!) mythology. I explicitly stated that Dr. Schroeder is an evolutionist (and there are Orthodox Jews, including Orthodox rabbis, who hold the same position). However (as I keep trying to point out) this is not really scientific evolutionism at all, since true scientific evolutionism rejects Noah's Flood and dismisses the entire first eleven chapters of Genesis as absolute mythology. Thus Orthodox Jewish evolutionists have a consistency problem shared by no other Theistic evolutionists on earth: they listen to science for only the first five days of creation and then stop doing so for purely dogmatic reasons. Now people like myself are consistently literal and consistently reject the words of "science" on the issue of how the universe and everything in it first came into existence. Scientific evolutionists (whether atheists or chr*stians) consistently accept the words of "science" on all these issues (the chr*stians merely reducing the disputed stories to didactic parables). Both these latter two positions are consistent. But there is something maddenlingly inconsistent about being open-minded for only one chapter and then switching to "fundamentalist dogmatist," which is what Orthodox Jewish evolutionists have to do in order to avoid heresy. The only reason I even brought up the issue of Darwin was as a qal vachomer argument: if we are going to stop our ears to science when it tells us the first twenty generations of the world are mythology and that there was no Flood, then what is the point of listening to science for a brief period then suddenly stopping?
I don't know if I finally got my point over, but I sure tried. I don't know what more I can say.
Now, if you want to agree with Dr. Schroeder, fine and dandy, but to agree with him you will have to become a literalist the moment Adam is created in the text, and you will certainly have to accept Noah's Flood!
I will briefly touch on two other issues you raised. With regard to the claim of Biblical criticism that the Torah was only formalized at a much later date I must once again urge you to read the approppriate article at Aish. However, this question also impinges on the question of "palaeo-Hebrew" (Ketav `Ivrit) vs. the supposedly Aramaic-derived alphabet used now (Ketav 'Ashurit). This latter issue is too complicated for me to explicate here. I suggest you either correspond with an Orthodox rabbi on this subject or else read the material in the back of Rabbi Munk's book The Wisdom of the Hebrew Alphabet, available at ArtScroll and perhaps from an Orthodox Jewish acquaintance.
As to my identity, I am a Ben Noach, as are you. HaShem has divided the human race into two groups: Benei Yisra'el (those born to Jewish mothers or who have converted Halakhically to Judaism) and Benei Noach (everyone else). Benei Yisra'el are mankind's priesthood ('Eretz Yisra'el being the "sacristy") and are bound by the entire Torah. Everyone else make up mankind's "laity" and are bound by the Seven Laws of the Sons of Noah. This is the one true religion for all non-Jews. However, be aware of one thing: to be a truly observant Noahide one must accept the Seven Commandments not on account of their rationality but explicitly on the authority of HaShem and the Torah He gave Israel at Sinai. Absent this belief one is not truly an observant Noachide. This point is important in our day because it is becoming fashionable for rationalist types like deists and eighteenth century style unitarians to call themselves "Noachides." They are only Noachides Halakhically because they are non-Jews but they are giving the world a terribly distorted picture of Noachism by conflating it with a purely rationalist "monotheistic" ethical system divorced from the Revelation at Sinai (which is often coupled with the "revelations" claimed by other religions).
I've done my dangdest these things, dangus. I apologize if I have not succeeded.