#judeo faith

[mrkilroi]

Watch "Judaism vs Christianity on Sin: Rabbi Tovia Singer Explains Why We Differ" on YouTube

[writethestory365]

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[disgruntledexplainer]

list of abrahamic terms and how they are used

monotheistic: describing a religion which believes in only one God. examples: judaism, islam, jehovah’s witness.

trinitarian monotheistic: describing a religion which believes in only one God, who also exists as three Persons, typically described as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. examples: Catholic Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, and most mainline and evangelical christian sects. some trinitarian monotheistic religions also believe in “Saints”, but these are merely particularly virtuous humans and are not worshiped (though they may be prayed to; there is a distinction between prayer and worship i may get to later).

monolatrous: belief in many gods, but only one that is worthy of worship. example: mormonism.

henotheistic: belief in many gods, but one is held up as more worthy of worship than others. example: early Yahweism (extinct for about 3200 years now).

Dualism: describing a religion that believes in two gods; usually a good God who is actively worshiped, and a weaker evil god who is rejected. All other “divinities” are typically emanations of these two gods, like rays of sunlight emanating from the sun. example: zoroastrianism

Polytheistic: describing a religion that believes in many gods that are all worthy of worship. there are no major polytheistic abrahamic groups, despite accusations that often fly this way or that between groups.

Abrahamic: describing a religion that shares a common cultural mythos with Yahweism, Judaism, Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, and Islam. Examples: All Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions.

Judeo-Christian: describing a religion that claims direct continuity with second-temple judaism, rahter than a separate revelation tangentially related to it. Examples: Judaism, Catholic Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, all mainline protestant christian sects, most other protestant sects.

Christian: Describing a religion which believes that Jesus is the actual Son of God and worships Him as such. Examples: All self-described Christian groups except Jehova’s Witnesses and Mormons.

High-Church Christian: Describing christian groups which retain the ritual practices and beliefs from the early church (circa 30 AD). Examples: Catholic Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, Coptic Christianity, Anglicanism, Episcopalianism, and Lutheranism.

Low-Church Christianity: Describing christian groups which reject all aspects of early christianity, instead opting to adopted a more free-form individualistic form of devotion more reminiscent of germanic or norse paganism. Examples: most other forms of christianity.

i may add to this post later.

[jameslmartello]

Corrie Ten Boom on Forgiveness

[ehzdesign]

Architecture CodeX #98 Museum of The Bible by Smithgroup

[fatherscurti]

FACING ADVERSITY.

[superectojazzmage]

#the two most surface-level readings of Christinity (at least in the anglosphere)#are noncommittal feelgood ''well Jesus' message was really just that He wanted us all to be good and care about each other''#and fire-and-brimstone ''everyone I don't like is going to Hell and they deserve it''#both of which kind of undercut the whole ''God Himself became a man and faced down painful death and damnation in your place#''accept Him into your life as your Lord and let your broken and dying heart and spirit be transformed'' bits

Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay is just such a deeply unserious movie. I get what they were going for but if you have the barest surface-level knowledge of theology the whole thing turns into a black comedy where you watch a bunch of idiots kill each other over a piece of cardboard.

[bobemajses]

Miniatures from a Judeo-Persian manuscript, Mashdad, Iran, 1853

According to the scribal inscription, the book was calligraphed by Eliyahu ben Nissan, known as "Gurgi" (the Georgian). The text is a transcription of the tale of Yusuf (Joseph) and Zulaikha (Potiphar’s wife), as told by the 15th-century Sufi poet and philosopher Nur ad-Din ‘Abd ar-Rahman al-Jami. The story of Joseph is the story of a Jew forced to live among non-Jewish Egyptians, who despite hardships and temptations never loses his faith or forgets his true heritage; and when the time came, he revealed himself to his brothers and rejoined his family. This story must have had deep resonance, and even comfort, to the Jadidis in Mashdad (Persian Jews who were forcibly converted to Islam in the 19th century but continued to practice Judaism in secret); perhaps they commissioned this story as a reminder that like Joseph in prison, if they could keep their faith they would one day be rewarded.

[jewish-vents]

Sometimes I can't help but mourn just how much of Judaism has been stolen and misinterpreted.

Like, there are two major world religious groups who have historically treated us like garbage after appropriating and twisting OUR faith and culture. But its the more subtle and insidious stuff too. Snarky culturally xtian atheists who recycle the same quips about shellfish and mixed fabrics to roast homophobic xtians who couldn't care less. People referring to things from the Torah as "old testament" or "xtian beliefs" and hosting whole courses about the history of the bible but not once mentioning what came before the xtian bible. And when they actually acknowledge us, it's always with shit like "Judeo-xtian" beliefs, acting like we're just xtians but somehow "more archaic."

I'm just so tired of it. I often wonder what the world would be like if we'd never been appropriated like that. People have tried to wipe us out more times than I can comprehend. There should be more of us. There should be so many more of us.

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[vivziepopcriticalconfessions]

"I am a Christian and aspiring theologist, and Hazbin’s portrayal of our mythos disappoints me. The show has a very shallow pop-culture understanding of Judeo-Christian mythology, and conflates Christianity with Judaism, and never tries to make clear where she’s taking from. “It’s the Bible! No, it’s Paradise Lost! Actually, it’s The Divine Comedy! Nope, it’s none of those because it’s the Torah!” I enjoy stories where Heaven IS portrayed as bad, despite my faith, but Hazbin fails at even that. The world building is lackluster, doing too much and too little. And the angels are quite disappointing, too."

[mrkilroi]

Watch ""Gog and Magog" - What's it All About? - Ask the Rabbi Live with Rabbi Mintz" on YouTube

[germiyahu]

Maybe an ethnostate is an inherently dangerous and immoral idea. What has happened when other people tried to establish ethnostates?

Well firstly, Israel is not an ethnostate. There is no equivalent policy of Israelification or Judaification as there was (tbh is) with Russification, or historic and contemporary Arabization, Modi's attempts at Hindutva, Erdogan's extreme backsliding into ethnonationalism, etc.

Israel is a liberal democratic state. Some Arabs rejected citizenship, as is their right to do so on principled grounds. But most other groups who are not Israeli Jews have implicitly accepted the Social Contract of a modern liberal democratic state. They receive equal rights under the Law (which is enforceable), and they're aware that they're not the majority and that not every aspect of their culture will cater to them or center them.

Most of the country coming to a standstill on Shabbat could be a sign of an ethnostate, but if municipalities don't want to observe Shabbat, there are no enforceable laws that allow anyone to stop them from ignoring Shabbat. And if there are/were, they were much more frequently levied against other Jews.

Israel has historically not cared if its non Jewish citizens practice their own faiths, speak their own languages, observe their own cultural traditions. Jews do not proselytize. If Israel truly were an ethnostate we'd see a repeat of the Edomites being forcibly converted by John Hyrcanus. The reason this hasn't happened is not because Jews are "disgusted" by Palestinians, for the record. A majority of Israeli Jews look identical to Palestinians and historically spoke Judeo-Arabic. It's simply not necessary for any government to function to pursue an assimilationist policy. It's not a priority among any stream of Judaism or any sub-cultural group of Jews.

People's discomfort with a Jewish majority state, that utterly and thoughtlessly centers Jewish culture (through symbols, the calendar, the weekly/monthly/yearly cycle, holidays, etc.) is rooted in antisemitism. Because it's abhorrent to see Jews running the show. It's new, it's weird, it's even a little insulting. It's not the Natural Order of things. It's unfair. This is a primal Judenhass gene being activated, and it applies to everything related to Jews. There's an inherent hypocrisy in most people when it comes to Jews.

Even in a country like Japan which is considered by fascists to be an Ethnostate, that belies the diversity of the country. An ethnostate is not a state with a majority or supermajority of one ethnicity, nor is it a state that has implicit biases toward that majority ethnic group. An ethnostate must legally uphold the supremacy of the ethnic group in question and at best make no attempt to extend equal rights to any minorities. At worst, it will attempt to assimilate them or exterminate them.

Secondly, what happens in real genuine ethnostates? Well to name a few examples: the Apartheid system of Imperial Russia, with the accompanying pogroms that led to the collapse of the Pale of Settlement which ushered in the largest Jewish migration in history. The effects of this system are still being felt today, not just by Jews. The whole reason Putin and most Russians feel entitled to Ukrainian land and feel threatened by a Ukrainian identity is because Russification considered Russians Belarussians and Ukrainians the same people (which meant Belarussians and Ukrainians were to be forcibly assimilated by Russians).

Here's another example: Kurds in Turkey are still not considered a legally recognized ethnic group. They can't even spell their own names correctly because they have letters in their alphabet that do not occur in Turkish, and Turkish is the only language of state (Turkey as a modern state was heavily influenced by France and it shows). Kurds are routinely suspected of being PKK members and whole towns were bulldozed to make room for Syrian refugees, as a collective punishment against the Kurdish insurgency (which restarted amid the war with ISIS).

Saudi Arabia is an ethnostate, as are most of the Gulf Monarchies. Citizenship is a privilege only enjoyed by the Khaleeji Arabs, even though they're a minority in most of their own countries. Palestine is also an ethnostate, citizenship and rights are only offered to those who are deemed Palestinians. Nobody else is allowed to live there. The Israelis who illegally live in the West Bank have to be propped up by a military occupation and have to have Israeli laws stretched over the border to encompass them, because they would not ever be allowed to even live in the West Bank, much less be afforded any rights or citizenship. This is not just Palestine's fault, this was a precedent set by Jordan. The oldest of all Jewish communities in Palestine were all cleansed by Jordanian troops, banished from their lands and never allowed to return.

I hope you can see that ethnostates are not very compatible with liberal democracies, as liberal democracies by definition and by tradition have universal human rights (at least in the West). It is authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that typically strive for an ethnostate. There are shades of ethnostatitude in democracies, such as France, which uses civic identity as the privileged "ethnicity," and that civic identity happens to be French, which means everyone must be culturally French and speak French. Though it's not violently enforced there is a state policy of ignoring all minorities and their cultures. And of course Turkey, which has always been a flawed democracy, but is increasingly becoming dictatorial and wouldn't you know, the more authoritarian it becomes, the more Turkishness is a central component of Erdogan's goals and policies.

Are there Israelis who want Israel to be an ethnostate? Why yes, but are they significant or relevant beyond appointing Ben-Gvir as a token gesture to this radical fringe? Not really, though there's an alarming capacity for them to increase their numbers. Is any of that relevant to the daily functions and moral "core" of Israel as a nation? Not at all. If you don't judge any other state by it's worst most obnoxious most supremacist actors, why judge Israel that way? Is it those Judenhass Genes again?

[blueiscoool]

Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE

The Ten Commandments: The earliest surviving inscribed tablet of the Ten Commandments, incised during the late Roman-Byzantine era, The Holy Land, (ca. 300–800 CE). The Only Complete Example Of A Ten Commandments Tablet From This Early Period.

White marble tablet, approximately 24 ⅞ x 22 ⅛ x 2 ⅜ inches (632 x 562 x 62 mm), weighing approximately 115 pounds (52 kg), neatly chisel-inscribed with the Mosaic Ten Commandments in their Israelite Samaritan version, 20 lines in a Paleo-Hebrew script, each line containing between eleven and fifteen characters, with margins of about 10 cm on either side; the letters have a width of between one and 2 cm and words are separated from one another with one or two dots; a few letters are confused for each other (especially ה and א) and a few characters on the right side of the first two lines are effaced and re-inscribed.

Sold for $5.04 Million Dollars at Auction.

The world’s oldest-known stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments surpassed expectations at a Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday. Expected to sell for an estimated $1 to $2 million, the tablet fetched a whopping $5 million.

“The result reflects the unparalleled importance of this artifact,” Richard Austin, Sotheby’s global head of books and manuscripts, told the New York Times. “To stand before this tablet is an experience unlike any other — it offers a direct connection to the shared roots of faith and culture that continue to shape our world today.”

The two-foot-long marble slab is inscribed with the commandments, which were written in Paleo-Hebrew script, and it dates back between 300 and 800 CE. Weighing in at 155-pounds, it is the only complete example of its kind from antiquity.

It was initially discovered during railroad excavations along the southern coast of what was then Palestine in 1913 and, according to Jacob Kaplan who discovered the tablet in 1943, it was used as a paving stone with the inscription facing upwards. In 1947, Kaplan had published his findings in the Bulletin of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society. The tablet came into the possession of an Israeli antiquities dealer in 1995 and then became part of the Living Torah Museum in Brooklyn. In 2016, it was purchased by collector Mitchell S. Cappell for $850,000, who just now put it up for auction. The authenticity of the work, however, not uncommon for such objects, has been widely contested.

The text is similar to known Biblical verses referenced in Judeo-Christian religions, but it does not include the third commandment against taking the name of God in vain. It also details the need to worship on Mount Gerizim (near the present-day Palestinian city Nablus and also known as the biblical city Shechem), which was considered a holy site among Samaritans.

“A tangible link to ancient beliefs that have profoundly shaped global religious and cultural traditions, it serves as a rare testament to history,” the auction house said in a statement.

After more than 10 minutes of intense bidding from interested parties around the world, the tablet was acquired by an anonymous buyer with intentions to donate it to an Israeli institution.

By Francesca Aton.

[creature-wizard]

If Judeo-Christian cannot be used as a term, then why do many people who start out hating Christianity become antisemetic? I mean no harm by asking this by the way. I just want to know why many people who start hating Christianity eventually become antisemetic. Could it be because people think the two faiths are similar or the same?

Basically, yeah. Most gentiles within culturally Christian societies learn that Judaism is basically just Christianity without Jesus. From this, they infer that everything they don't like about Christianity is the fault of Judaism, and Judaism alone - if they aren't told this outright by someone else. They generally don't really grasp how the modes of Christianity they know derive from Roman Catholicism, which was designed by the Romans for Roman political purposes. Nor do they really understand that Jews don't engage with their scriptures in the same way Christians engage with theirs.

And of course, leaders in Christian societies have been blaming Jews for anything and everything for centuries in order to deflect blame away from their own failings, and the systemic inadequacies of their governments more generally. So ironically, these people are engaging in an age-old Christian tradition, whether they realize it or not.

[beardedmrbean]

One hundred days.

It's been 100 days since terrorists invaded my homeland, the Jewish people's only home, Israel.

It's been 100 days since hundreds of Israelis were taken hostage.

It's been 100 days of war and sorrow and uncertainty.

But after these 100 days, the one thing I am certain about—that I've always been certain about, and have seen more than ever in the days since Oct. 7—is that the Jewish state and the Jewish people have true friends in Christians around the world.

That's why it has been so unsettling to see anti-Semitism being spread in the name of Christianity—by those on the fringes, and those in mainstream media. But you know who has notbeen fooled by these lies?

Israel has more than 700 million Christian friends worldwide. As people who value human life—in this fight against those who don't hold life sacred, we all—Christians and Jews—must take a stand now, before it's too late. The time to stand for Israel and the Jewish people in now,as hateful and dangerous anti-Semitism has risen by nearly 400 percent in the 100 days since Hamas' attacks on the Jewish people.

During these 100 days of war, I've been shocked to see centuries-old blood libels revived, which have always been intended to divide the Christian and Jewish communities and make them see one another as enemies: "The Jews killed Jesus..." (...no, the Romans did).

Over these past 100 days, I've also seen new anti-Semitic theories spread like wildfire, all of them, too, based on historical inaccuracies—including Munther Isaac in the New York Times and Father Edward Beck on CNN both saying that if Jesus were born today, he'd be a Palestinian (...no, Jesus was a Jew, born in what the Bible calls the Land of Israel, more than 100 years before Judea was named Palestine by the Romans).

As I've heard these dangerous, harmful, evil anti-Semitic tropes spewed, it makes me wonder why Jesus' own people—the Jewish people—are being attacked in his name.

Because today, Jesus would be a Jewish citizen of the Jewish state—the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population is growing, up 1.3 percent from the year before, with 187,900 Christians living in freedom. More than 20 percent of Israel's population is not Jewish and enjoys full legal equality.

Jesus today, would be proud to be an Israeli.

Today, the Jewish Jesus certainly wouldn't live in or even be allowed to visit biblical places like Gaza or Jericho or Bethlehem—these are places in which no Israelis are able to enter.

And like Israelis of all faiths—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—Jesus would be in the middle of this ongoing war, spending time in a bomb shelter as terrorist rockets have targeted nearly every city in the Holy Land, including Jesus' hometown of Nazareth, these past 100 days.

One reason I am shocked, terrified, and outraged that such antisemitism is spreading is because Jewish-Christian relations have come so far. Bridges built on faith and fellowship have ended what have been centuries of distrust and worse. For the first time in history, millions of Christians and Jews are standing shoulder-to-shoulder in shared Judeo-Christian values we hold sacred. I guess it makes sense that the terrorists and the forces of darkness are trying to destroy what we, as people of faith in a loving God who sanctifies life, have achieved.

But those evil forces will never win. Today more than ever, millions of Christian friends around the world do stand for Israel.

Millions of Christians have stood with Israel—with their prayers and their support—during this war. Instead of joining the trending calls for Israel's destruction, they're praying for our strength and our success in wiping out Hamas, the modern day Amalek.

Millions of Christian friends of the Jewish people act by boldly rejecting the anti-Semitic lies being spread and by speaking up and spreading the truth about Israel.

No longer will a huge portion of the Christian community be fooled by hatred and lies, nor will they be fooled into spreading them. Israel's Christian friends are too committed to spreading love and support for their Jewish brothers and sisters, as they fight for survival in the only Jewish homeland.

The rising anti-semitism across the globe, only serves as a stark reminder to us all, why the Jewish people need a safe haven.

In Israel, it has been a beacon of hope for all of us, to see how millions of Christians love, pray, and act for Israel during our fight for survival, as enemies on every side try to destroy the land of the Jewish people, the Promised Land of the Bible.

No longer will Christians and Jews be separated by lies and hatred. Today, we stand unified.

These past 100 days, as Israel's enemies have chanted, "from the river to the sea," Israel's millions of Christian friends continue the same chorus to which they've been committed for more than 75 years:

Never again.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Nils A. Haug

Sharia tenets – which have views of human rights, justice, mercy and compassion that differ from those of the West -- can appear alien to Judeo-Christian precepts. Sharia, in usage, often appears to contravene the basic humanistic values of the West.

The outcome is that, in application, the moral laws of each tradition -- that of the Torah as opposed to that of Sharia -- which prescribes harsh punishments, such as amputation for theft; death for leaving Islam (apostasy) or blasphemy, or being stoned to death for adultery, which can include having been raped -- are consequences inimical to Western ideas of justice, mercy and human rights.

By practicing a different faith, those who do not subscribe to Sharia are "disbelievers" (infidels), deemed to be in breach of "The Path" and consequently subject to a penalty of conversion, subjugation or death.

This is particularly true for Jews and Christians, who were offered opportunities to accept the gift of Islam but ungratefully declined.

"Slay the infidels wherever you find them..." — Qur'an, Sura 9:5.

The concept of universal human rights might seem quite strange to Islamists.

The intent of jihadi state actors .... in their own words, appears to be the imposition of Sharia law and Islamic dominance over the world.

That is why textual originalism in the interpretation of US Constitutional law is of particular concern to jurists. Emphasis on the original intent of the writers of the US Constitution rather than the fluctuating views of a succession of lawyers is of prime importance.

Reinterpreting the US Constitution can easily become like the children's game of "telephone": after a few migrations, the original intent of the founders could well become unrecognizable.

Western leaders find it difficult to regard religiously powered radicalism with the weight it deserves. "[I]t's precisely because it's religiously grounded that such radicalism is exceptionally dangerous." — George Weigel,��First Things, January 31, 2024.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, during World War II, said in the House of Commons on June 18, 1940: "If we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age."

Although Churchill's statement also applies to Western nations at this time, Israel has been largely alone in the fight to preserve the West's Judeo-Christian ideals. It would be to the West's advantage for other nations to join Israel in this noble task.