[MD] The SOM/MOQ discrepancy.

[Krimel]

Marsha,

Jewish culture does not need me to defend it. It has survived almost 3500
years on its own and it has done so in the face of conquest, Diaspora,
inquisitors and holocaust. One of the reasons for this is that as a meme it
adapts and changes with the times and in response to the cultures it has
encountered and outlasted. Your apparent outrage at the examples you provide
are no less jingoistic than Ham and Platt's moaning at the evils of Islamic
culture. 

Sexual equality is an artifact of the modern era. It exists solely because
of the advances in science that you are equally prone to condemn. Talk about
biting the hand that feeds you. You would be hard pressed to find examples
of enlightened marital practices anywhere in the ancient world. One might
also look at modern rates of divorce, single parent households and STDs as
examples of the sorts of culturally corrosive practices that the examples
you cite were designed to combat.

Krimel

------------------------------------------------------

Great tradition, "a serious and effective system of morality without 
bothering to provide it with a rational basis."

A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one 
man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)

B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines 
in  addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron
11:21)

C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is 
a  virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut
22:13-21)

D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be 
forbidden.  (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the 
constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be 
construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)

F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry 
the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately 
does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be 
otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen 38:6-10; 
Deut 25:5-10)

G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, 
it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him 
(even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young 
and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this 
rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)


----------------------------------------------------------------
> >[Ron]
> >The original christian movement was a Quality movement but it became
> >dominated by the universal good once again and once again western
> >civilazation became seperated.
>
>Marsha
>How do you know this?
>
>[Ron]
>Lots of reading Greek philosophy and tracing the historical origins
>of the early christian church, reading the new testament after reading
>greek philosophy  allows one to see the paralells. Because of how
>it is worded (translations kept in mind) I question if an actual Jesus
>did exist, It does say that he was the word made flesh. The universal
>made particular.
>But you are aware, that we "know" nothing, we derrive meaning from
patterns.
>
>[Krimel]
>I see no reason to doubt the existence of a historical Jesus. Our evidence
>for his existence is at least as compelling as our evidence for any other
>historical figure from that time period or before including Socrates and
>certainly any of the pre-Socratics.
>
>It may be true that the early Christian church was influenced by the
Greeks,
>but for Jesus himself and for his earliest followers the influence was
>almost entirely negative. Jesus was Jewish and his teachings are for and
>about Jews. Many of the Jews of Jesus time had been Hellenized; Paul is a
>good example of this. This point is well illustrated by the practice of
>epispasm. This was an operation or a technique for reversing circumcision.
>It was practiced because, "Hellenistic and Roman societies widely practiced
>public nakedness. But they abhorred baring the tip of the penis, called the
>glans. To expose the glans was considered vulgarly humorous, indecent or
>both." (http://www.cirp.org/library/restoration/hall1/) As a result, to
>preserve their social status, some Hellenistic Jews sought to reverse the
>process.
>
>For conservative Jews this kind of appeasement to the conquerors both Greek
>and Roman was blasphemy. The adoption of Hellenistic practices was to be
>condemned. An illustration for this point can be found in Jesus' famous
>saying, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the
>things that are God's" While most today hear this as a call for obedience,
>it is unlikely that the Jews of the day heard it that way. Jesus says this
>after noting that the face of Caesar is on a coin. Those Roman coins were
>bad news to the Jews. They could not be used as offerings in the Temple for
>instance, which let to a brisk trade in money exchange where roman coins
>were traded for Temple coinage to be used as sacrifice or tithes. The land
>and the fruits of the land on the other hand belonged to God. Jesus was not
>advocating accommodation to Roman occupation or Greek culture. Rather he
was
>saying quite the opposite. Furthermore, it was his violent encounter with
>the "money changers" at the Temple that ultimately led to his execution for
>sedition.
>
>The early Christian church on the other hand was quite a different story.
>The Church evolved out of the Gentile ministry of Paul. Here Paul was
>seeking to convert non-Jews into the faith. To do so he had to appeal to
the
>Hellenistic understanding and to reject certain specifically Jewish
>practices including Jewish dietary laws and especially circumcision. It is
>clear in the New Testament that Paul was at odds with Jesus disciples in
>this respect. In Galatians Paul basically cusses out James the Brother of
>Jesus, John and Peter for their adherence to Jewish law. In Acts those same
>disciples are the ones that threaten to execute Paul, forcing him to appeal
>to the Roman authorities.
>
>The real question for me has always been: what did those in the Hellenistic
>world see in Judiasm/Christianity that drew them to it. Elaine Pagels makes
>the case that it was the strict moral code of the Jews. In a time of
>promiscuity and excess there was an attraction to faithfulness both
>spiritual and sexual. I take this to indicate that while the Greeks had
>applied reason to science, mathematics and a host of other areas, they like
>later philosophers, including Pirsig, in my view, failed utterly to provide
>a reasoned underpinning for morality.
>
>The Jews on the other hand developed a serious and effective system of
>morality without bothering to provide it with a rational basis. It worked
>and it continues to work. Jewish morality works because it evolved over a
>period of more than 1000 years before Christ and has continued as an
organic
>living and lived system in the 2000 years since. It requires no
intellectual
>underpinning.
>
>This split between the orthodox Jewish followers of Jesus and what became
>the Christian church can be seen in layers throughout the New Testament.
The
>notion of a God/Man for instance was not just absent from the Jewish
>tradition it was regarded as blasphemy. In contrast the Greek gods were a
>randy bunch, mating with human women every chance they could.
>
>In short the relationship between Jewish and Hellenistic thought is very
>complex.
>
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.
.

Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
.
. 

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