Ancient Jewish God's Impact on Modern Religions, Study notes of World Religions

Download Ancient Jewish God's Impact on Modern Religions and more Study notes World Religions in PDF only on Docsity! REL 100 Lecture 16 1 In today’s session we’re gonna talk about the religion of Judaism, the oldest of the Western religions, the oldest of the monotheistic religions. Actually, Judaism could make the claim that it was the first monotheistic religion. Judaism is significant for not just contemporary Judaism, but all for Christianity and Islam. If you could picture a deep root system and that deep root system could be labeled ancient Judaism, and then rising up out of that root system of ancient Judaism we would have contemporary Judaism but you would also have Christianity and Islam. These three religions share a deep history. And as we talk about Christianity and Islam, we’ll connect in to that ancient Jewish history. But today our purpose is to talk about Judaism. So again, it’s the oldest of the monotheistic religions. Both Christianity and Islam are rooted in Judaism. Abraham is considered the father of Judaism. Abraham lived approximately 4,000 years ago and he’s considered the father of Judaism. He’s also considered the father of Islam, too, which we’ll talk about when we get to that. But when you start looking at Judaism, I want to look at it in regard to some key elements that you find in Judaism. We’re gonna look at four or those. One key element is God, called Yahweh traditionally in Judaism. The second is the land that’s important to the Jewish nation. Third is history and events, and fourth is the idea of the covenant. So we’re gonna talk about Judaism in regard to those four areas and then we’ll talk a little bit more about contemporary Judaism and how that looks as far as different expressions. But, first of all, as far as key elements in Judaism, God would be key, would be central. God, Yahweh. Another pronunciation of Yahweh would be Jehovah. In REL 100 Lecture 16 2 English that’s very different, but in the Hebrew it’s just two different — a soft pronunciation and a hard pronunciation of the same word. But in Judaism, God is central. Really no person is considered central, even though Abraham is considered the founder, considered the first one to heed God’s call and receive God’s invitation to establish a nation. But God is still central, Yahweh is central, in Judaism. When we start looking at the God of Judaism there’s some characteristics of the God of Judaism that possibly for many of us that are raised in the Judeo-Christian culture, we would take these characteristics for granted, but they were unique characteristics to be given to divinity when Judaism came on the scene as ancient Judaism. So we’re gonna look at some of those qualities of God that set Judaism apart from other spiritual paths at that time. First of all, the God of Judaism is one. Again, as I said at the beginning, Judaism is the oldest of the monotheistic religions and right now could probably stake the claim of being the first monotheistic religion. Up until that point, all other spiritual paths, if they had divinity as part of them, they tended to be polytheistic such as Hinduism. But Judaism was the first religion to come on the scene and say there’s one God that’s central in Judaism. There’s a section in the Jewish scriptures, in this book of Deuteronomy, and in Deuteronomy Chapter 6 there’s a section called the Shimah. It’s kind of a central declaration, a statement of faith more or less, for Judaism. And that Shimah begins with the phrase, “Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God is one.” That’s foundational. That there’s only one God, that there’s one ultimate God. That set Judaism apart from any other REL 100 Lecture 16 5 so I need to write you a ticket for that,” and so he gave him a ticket. And my cousin, I remember, made the statement, “I wanted to hug the police officer just because it was so refreshing to be stopped by a policeman, to know why you were stopped, and to be given the fair punishment for why you were stopped.” Because his situation in some of the areas he had been in, where he lives, is that he was often pulled over for no apparent reason. Often was never told why he was pulled over the police and sometimes even he or one time his wife were taken into jail for a time, and really never even knew why any of that happened. Not justice. But to be in a system where there’s justice is something that people were drawn to. That there’s this God with clear standards, clear blessings, clear curses and punishment — that there was something that people needed and wanted in that kind of a God. And so the God of Judaism is just. It’s an ethical God. Another characteristic that was radical for the idea of divinity was love, particularly love for humanity. Sure, there were up unto that point, gods that love might’ve been a part of their nature, but it was often love for other gods and goddesses, love for other spiritual beings. But the idea of a god entering into some sort of loving relationship with humanity was a new idea that came along with Judaism. In the Jewish scriptures, in the Hebrew Bible, there are several places that this is talked about. But it’s probably best illustrated from, again, one of the prophets, Hosea. Hosea is one of the shorter books — 11, 12, 13 chapters — in the Christianal Testament, Hebrew Bible, and Hosea is largely a reflection of God’s love for humanity. With this prophet, Hosea, rather than give Hosea a specific message to go out and REL 100 Lecture 16 6 preach in the streets, what God used Hosea for was more or less to be an object lesson to His people about His love for them and His commitment to them. And so God told Hosea, according to the story from the Hebrew Bible — God told Hosea to go and to marry this particular woman, a woman named Gomer, which he probably should’ve known he was in for a wild ride if he was gonna marry a woman named Gomer. But he married Gomer. Gomer had an interesting occupation. She was a prostitute. But God said, “Go. Marry Gomer, take her home, love her.” So that’s what Hosea did. So he brought her home and they had three children, but over time Gomer started kind of getting bored with Hosea and was ready to go back out on the streets. And so she went. She left Hosea and went back to the streets. Well, this time she’s older, she’s had three children, she couldn’t really sell herself as easily, so more or less she was owned by basically what we would call a pimp today. And so she worked out on the streets. Eventually, God came to Hosea and he said, “Okay. Now, Hosea, I want you to go, find Gomer, tell her that you still love her, and invite her to come back home if she wants to come.” So Hosea did that. He went, he found Gomer. By this time, Gomer — she’s decided this is not where she wants to be anyway, and so Hosea comes and unbelievably says, “I still love you. Would you come back home?” Gomer — of course, this is an amazing thing, that Hosea would love her and want this, but she says to Hosea, “I would love to come home but that guy owns me and so I can’t leave.” Hosea went and paid the price to have his wife be able to come back home with him. REL 100 Lecture 16 7 And there’s more to that story, but, you know, God talks about in that book about how His compassion for His people is aroused within him. That He has this kind of love as a loving husband would for his wife, even when the wife has not been faithful. And God is saying that to the children of Israel. “Even though you’ve made yourselves prostitutes, selling yourself to other gods, other belief systems, I still love you and I still want you to come back home to me.” It’s a novel idea. That there would be a god who would want to have that kind of loving relationship with humanity. So God is central in Judaism and this is a God of unique character and unique quality compared to other ideas of divinity up to that point. The land is significant in Judaism. Probably most of us are familiar with that. You can’t really even halfway listen to the news today without being made aware that land is significant. Israel is believed to be God’s land that He gave to the children of Israel, that this was land that was promised to Abraham, to this nation that has become Israel today, that this land is the land that God wants them to have. And eventually God established the building of a temple in the land. A temple is a place where God would dwell on earth. And that definitely made the land holy because now God’s dwelling place was on that land. So even today this land is important. There’s a movement that’s been around for several years called Zionism. Zionism is the belief that Israel should be fully restored to the Jewish nation as their homeland. Again, Zionism is the belief that Israel should be fully restored to the Jewish nation as their homeland. And that Zionist passion, that Zionist zeal, drives much of what goes on today from the Israeli perspective in the REL 100 Lecture 16 10 one that God chooses to have build a temple, his dwelling place in the land. And so again, now that God’s dwelling place is there, the temple, this is the holy land for the Jews. So they’re in the land, they’ve established themselves with strength in the land, but according to ancient Judaism, the teachings from the Jewish scriptures, the people — things got going good for them and so they forgot about God. And so then we come into a time from around the 8th century B.C.E. to around the 4th or 5th century B.C.E. where you have the prophets of Judaism. And again, that’s all those books in the last half of the Hebrew Bible or the last half of the Christianal testament. And basically the message of the prophets, over and over and over, is come back to God, get yourselves right with God, and generally one of the consequences of not doing that was related to the land. You have to leave the land. You’ll become slaves in your land. And so what you find from the 8th century B.C.E. to around the 4th or 5th century are these prophetic teachings, people not listening to the prophets, and so they end up being defeated by other nations. Other nations invade the land, some are taken from the land to slavery in other lands. Probably one of the worst events happened in 586 B.C.E. when the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem and Israel, destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, left some Jews there, took many Jews back as slaves into Babylon. And there’s a period of time there that now they not only don’t have their land but they don’t have their temple. Even if they got back there, there’s no place to worship. But eventually, as different Jewish leaders and Jewish priests appear to God, he allows them to go back in their land and REL 100 Lecture 16 11 to rebuild the temple. And so they rebuild a second temple. And — but really from around 586 B.C.E., with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, up until even today full occupation and full control of that land has not really ever been there for the Jews. They’ve had some periods of that, but not really. And they’ve always wanted that specific occupation and specific rule of the land that they believe that God’s given them. So you have the prophets of — there’s another event that’s not from the Scriptures. You would find this in some of the — like the Book of Maccabees and some of the inter- testamental writings, but this kind of gives the origin of another Jewish holiday. That in the 2nd century B.C.E., at this point the Jews living in their land but they did not have control of the land. They were allowed to occupy it but the Syrians were in control. Well, there were some Maccabeeians — these were Jewish people — and they raised up a revolt against the Syrian government. Because Syria was not only controlling the land, but they were beginning to do things against the religion of the people of Israel. Probably the major insult that happened was when a Syrian leader had a pig sacrificed on the altar there in the temple. And so these Maccabeeians rose up, had a revolt. They amazingly won the battle against the Syrian government and so now the Jews regained control of the temple. And in that, one of the things they had to do was purify the temple. So the story goes, from Jewish storytelling of their history, is that when they went in to purify the temple, to reconsecrate the temple after the pig being sacrificed and all the other REL 100 Lecture 16 12 ransacking of the temple that went on by the Syrians — when they went back to do that, they could only use things in the ceremony that were ceremonially pure. In the purification, they could only use things that were consecrated. And so the oil that they would burn in the lamps in the temple while they were doing all this purification had to be pure oil. Well, they only had a small vial of it, probably enough to burn for a very short period of time, but they decided to go ahead, begin the consecration, begin this festival of rededicating the temple, and when they ran out of oil they would just do the rest in the dark. Well, the story goes that this eight-day reconsecration, rededication of the temple, the oil burned the whole eight days — miraculously, they believed — and so there’s a holiday that Jews celebrate now, Hanukkah, an eight-day celebration where they light a candle each day that commemorates that event from the 2nd century B.C.E. Again, events are important to Jews and they believe that by remembering these events, by reenacting these events, they touch into their history. They remind themselves they’re part of a long legacy and they identify with this broader Jewish community, this broader Jewish belief system that they are part of historically. You move into late in the first century C.E. there in Jerusalem and now at this time the Jews are living there in Israel, living in Jerusalem. They have control of the temple but the Romans are ultimately in control. This is the time of the empire. And so the Jews are there, but the Romans are in control. And basically what the Romans have told them over this first century is, “You can live in the land as long as you don’t cause any trouble. But you start causing trouble, you start not getting along with each REL 100 Lecture 16 15 people, reflect this covenant largely. And you have ten of these commandments. The first four of those commands deal with people’s relationship to God, the central part of the covenant. That they should have no other gods before Him, they should make no other images, that they worship — they should only worship God, they should never use God’s name in vain, never use it inappropriately, and that they should remember the Sabbath as a time of rest and reflection and a time of worship of God. The last six of the Ten Commandments are about another part of the covenant. That it’s not just how people relate to God, but it’s also how people relate to one another. That people should honor their parents. That people shouldn’t kill or steal or commit adultery. They shouldn’t lie. They shouldn’t covet other people’s possessions. That in this covenant, there’s this vertical dimension of how people and God relate to one another and there’s a horizontal dimension of how people relate to one another. This is key in Judaism, this vertical and this horizontal dimension. That it’s both about how you relate to God and how you relate to people. And again, that was unique for religions of that time to enter into some sort of relational covenant with divinity. Where God would provide things for people but people also had things they could provide for God, that they could offer to God, a new idea for spirituality, for religion. So the covenant was important. The covenant was first established through Abraham. It was reestablished through Moses with the giving it a law and so again the law of Judaism reflects the covenant. And you find that in the Book of Exodus. You find the law Leviticus and then Deuteronomy is like a repetition of many of the standards of that law that God gave through Moses to the people. REL 100 Lecture 16 16 In Judaism there is the most sacred scriptures of Judaism, and so we’re gonna talk about those and then a supplemental scripture that’s — there’ll be many other supplemental texts in Judaism because knowledge and understanding of God and God’s laws and God’s teachings are important to Judaism. But two key texts, first of all, would be the Torah. The Torah is the most sacred scriptures in Judaism. The Torah is the equivalent of the first five books of the Christianal testament. The Christianal testament, those 39 books, are the equivalent of the Hebrew Bible. That’s their entire Bible. So when a Jewish person says, “Here’s my Bible,” what they would have is what Christians would call the Old Testament. But that’s the entire Bible for Jews because they don’t have a New Testament. So the Hebrew Bible is the Old Testament. But the first five books of that Hebrew Bible are the Torah, the most sacred of those books. When you go to visit a temple, there will be large scrolls kept in an ark in the temple. Each of those scrolls contains those first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, the most sacred scriptures. The Torah is what is believed to have been given by God through Moses to the people. Sometimes they’re called the books of the law, sometimes they’re called the books of Moses, but they are the most sacred scriptures for the Jewish people and for the Jewish religion. The books are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy that are contained in the Torah. And again, this is believed to have been given by God through Moses. The Torah is written in Hebrew. Hebrew looks a lot different than English. The characters are different than English characters as far as letters. Also Hebrew is written from right to left instead of left to right. And so if you would ever go to a temple service, REL 100 Lecture 16 17 if you’re not Jewish but you visit a temple service, and you would pick up a prayer book, what you would consider the back of the book is actually where probably things would begin if it was set up according to how Hebrew is arranged. And so things go from right to left, as far as how Hebrew is read and understood. So the Torah are the central scriptures believed to have been given by God. There’s a supplemental text — there are other supplemental texts but probably one of the most famous and oldest supplemental text is called the Talmud. The Talmud developed as teachings of the rabbi. And Jews would understand the Talmud is not something that God gave to somebody as he did the Torah to Moses, but rather the Talmud is the teachings of the rabbis. The Talmud, I think, largely developed because people would read the laws of the Torah and they didn’t really fully understand how to make sure they obeyed those laws. And so they would go to their rabbi, to their teacher, and they would say, you know, “So what about this law? How do I make sure that I follow this law the way that God intended?” So rabbis would have the responses that they would give, much like a priest or a pastor or somebody might give today if you’re of some religious affiliation. Well, eventually some of these responses of the rabbis kind of became their traditional responses, the responses that most all rabbis give, in explaining these laws. Eventually, then, those oral traditions, those oral interpretations of the law, were collected into a set of writings called the Talmud that developed over a several hundred year period. Theoretically, the Talmud could always be added to but it’s not been added to for several hundred years. Pretty much it’s in the state it’s in, I think, since REL 100 Lecture 16 20 to try to follow those closely. Typically, it is said that there are 613 laws in the Hebrew Bible, particularly in the Torah, and that these laws — some are ritual laws, ritual commandments, and some are ethical commandments. Some are about how we relate to God and some are about how we relate to one another. For Orthodox Jews, it’s important to follow all those laws as closely as possible and so they try to do that in the ways of worship. Generally if you go to an Orthodox service, men and women will sit on opposite sides or men will sit on the main seating area of the floor and women will sit like in a balcony at the back and behind. That’s how ancient Jews sat in their worship service. In Orthodox Judaism only men can be rabbi. There were no women rabbis in ancient Judaism. The law doesn’t talk about women rabbis so there are only men who are rabbis. If you go to an Orthodox temple service, the whole thing would probably be done in Hebrew because that’s what the ancient Jews did. They prayed, they sang, they read scripture, they spoke in Hebrew. So they try to maintain that. One thing that probably you’re familiar with socially is that Orthodox Jews, there’s an effort to follow what’s called kosher. Kosher really refers to a broad range of things about what is sacred to do, what is the right way to do things. But most of what we know of kosher revolves around food and in Judaism there are many kosher laws. Laws about food. And in Orthodox Judaism there’s an effort to try to follow those laws as closely as possible. Really there’s just two main Torah teachings about their food. One of those teachings says that you should not eat a kid goat that’s been cooked in its mother’s REL 100 Lecture 16 21 milk. Basic teaching of Torah. Well, in an effort to try to follow that teaching of the law as closely as possible today, what Orthodox Jews or what Jews who want to be very attentive to the law would say is — okay. So if God didn’t want them to eat meat cooked in milk, then we need to keep meat and dairy products separate from one another. And so you find Jews who practice that at various levels. There’s some Jews who just make sure they don’t eat anything where dairy and meat are mixed. So no cheeseburgers, no pizzas that have both cheese and meat on them. There are others who would say you should not eat meat and dairy at the same meal. So no Steak ‘n Shake. Or just go get a steak or get a shake, but you can’t have both. There are others who would say that you even need to serve and prepare meat and dairy in different utensils, and so there’s the meat utensils and there’s the dairy utensils, the meat pots and the dairy pots. There’s various ways that people take that law to say, “We want to follow that as closely as possible.” There’s another law that basically talks about if you’re gonna eat four-footed animals, that they need to be animals that have a split hoof and that chew their cud. Well, that wouldn’t include things like pigs. That’s why Jews don’t eat pork. Because pigs have a split hoof, but they don’t chew their cud. They don’t use their chewing procedure as a central part of the digestive process by chewing, swallowing, kind of spitting it back up and chewing it again. They don’t do that and so that’s why they can’t eat pork. They can eat sheep and cattle because they do that. They have split hooves and they chew their cud. So they take those laws and try to carry those over into contemporary Judaism as far as what’s okay, what’s kosher to eat and what’s not. REL 100 Lecture 16 22 That’s important especially to Orthodox Jews in being attentive to the law. So Orthodox Judaism would be the strictest and their desire is to follow the law and the traditions of Judaism as closely as possible. On the other far side of the fence would be Reform Judaism. Reform Judaism rose during the 18th century in Europe with the rise of the enlightenment. And out of Reform Judaism there became this drive to still be Jews, to still be attentive to the heart of Judaism and the intent of Judaism, but Reform Judaism says some things that were important back then but they’re not things that apply to us today. Like back in ancient Judaism, there were certain things that probably they shouldn’t eat. They didn’t know that if they didn’t cook pork thoroughly that it would make them ill or they didn’t know some things about the way that dairy should be preserved, especially when you’re mixing it with meat. But we have refrigeration today or we have preservation today that works, so those laws — they were important then, but they’re not important for us today. Reform Jews would say that some of those ritual commands that seem so important to Orthodox Jews in ancient Judaism don’t stand in the way of their Judaism today. And so for many Orthodox Jews — excuse me — Reform Jews, they don’t observe kosher. They don’t observe all the holidays of Judaism. They aren’t actively involved in the community of Judaism because they would say, “I can still be Jewish. It doesn’t hurt my relationship to God if I eat a cheeseburger now and then.” And so for Reform Jews, they try to advance with the times and accommodate to times, to scientific discovery. You know, you’d find many Reform Jews who would REL 100 Lecture 16 25 that the Messiah would bring. So the Messiah is central in Judaism. Let me say a little bit more about that. Many Jews still believe that a Messiah is an actual person, a man will come one day. There are other Jews that — and actually more and more Jews all the time — that talk more about a Messianic era. That there won’t necessarily be a person that comes as the Messiah, but rather there’s this era where God will establish spiritual freedom and earthly freedom through His people. There’s this phrase in Judaism, [inaudible] is the Hebrew terminology for that, and it just means to repair the world. And what many Jews, especially Reform and Conservative Jews today would say, is that that is what their goal in life is, their goal here on earth, is to repair the world. And in doing that, they can usher in this Messianic era where there’s peace and where there’s harmony, and where the Jews are not oppressed and where they’re able to live in their land. So the Messiah has a lot of doctrine, a lot of teaching of theology around that that varies within Judaism. Another one of your terms if anti-Semitism which simply means prejudicial acts and attitudes towards Jewish people. Anti-Semitism is prejudicial acts and attitudes towards Jewish people. It might be jokes about Jews. It might be something like the Holocaust. It might be burning a cross in the yard of a Jewish rabbi. Some would consider to be anti-Semitic if you’re in a workplace, you’re in an educational institution, where the Jewish religion or Jewish holidays or Jewish practices are not paid attention to. That that would be a prejudicial act against Jewish people. I know one time in speaking with a rabbi I asked what was the main way that they experienced anti-Semitism in the Midwest here in the U.S. and the response was that it REL 100 Lecture 16 26 was primarily through school systems. Because school systems were not attentive to Jewish holidays, and so it would be a major Jewish holiday, a time when the children should be with their families, it has the same significance that Christmas would to a lot of American Christians, but then they would schedule, you know, homecoming on that day, the homecoming game or the homecoming dance. And so the kids that were Jewish had to choose what they would do. And so she — this rabbi said that they spent a lot of time going to schools and helping them to be educated about and aware of that. That was an anti-Semitism by neglect, not by anything directly appositional. But still, it ended up being prejudicial against Jewish kids because they couldn’t participate in major activities because the calendar was not considered — the Jewish calendar was not considered in setting up the school calendar. So anti-Semitism, any sort of prejudicial act or attitude toward Jewish people. Another one of your terms is synagogue. It’s a coming together. A synagogue is a word that’s used today interchangeably with temple. It’s a place of worship for Jews. For many years a synagogue was seen as distinct from temple because there’s the understanding that the temple is in Jerusalem and these other places of worship were synagogues. But now many Jews are resigning themselves to the fact that there may never be a temple again in Jerusalem and now a log of synagogues are also being called temples as places of worship. So Judaism, the oldest of the monotheistic religions. It’s the religion that lays the roots, lays the foundation, for the next two religions that we’ll be discussing: Christianity REL 100 Lecture 16 27 and Islam.