Thursday, December 6, 2007

Misconceptions About Judaism Than Hinder Understanding Of Jesus' Teachings

I often find that evengelicals and other christians have made unwarranted assumptions about judaism. The broad outlines of christian belief are so pervasive in our society that even many jews assume they are part of judaism as well. This makes the unspoken jewish foundation of Jesus' beliefs and teachings, both the parts that he accepted as well as what he challenged, that much harder to see.

The outcome of Adam and Eve being exiled from the garden of eden is not the imposition of "original sin". Original Sin is a concept first described by St. Augustine many centuries after Jesus' death. If you read genesis, you will see clearly that man is condemned to earn his living by the sweat of his brow (or, in the original hebrew, the sweat of his nostrils), and womankind is condemned to have pain in childbirth, and also to have eternal emnity with serpents.

Judaism has only the very vaguest beliefs about what happens to people after they die. There is no damnation to hell for eternity, and, conversly, people are not "saved", and allowed to have eternal life in heaven. In fact, there is no real concept of being saved or damned by God. Only for a brief period of time around the time that Jesus lived, was there a sect, the Pharisees, that contended that there was a kind of resurrection of persons, although not in heaven. (Jesus, it seems, considered himself in that camp - more about that later...) This concept was never fully accepted, and died out. What orthodox rabbis teach is that good people, whatever their religious beliefs, might be closer to God after death, although this is really considered a vague speculation. Bad people, on the other hand, might be in disfavor with God for as much as a year after they die. One would have to be very evil indeed to be out of favor for more than that!

Following from the previous point, there is a terrible misconception that I often hear, that God requires jews to be perfect or be damned. I often hear evangelicals say that "the Old Covenant was too hard, so Jesus brought forgiveness in the New Covenant so that man could be saved". The whole notion is absolutely contrary to the way judaism has always been taught! The notion that there is an Old Testament God who is jealous, strict, and severe, so common in our society, is an invention, it seems, of reformation era christian theologians. In Judaism, one is taught to strive to be a good person, to be compassionate and kind, and, as is repeated over and over in jewish prayer services, to be thankful for our good fortune and mindful and compassionate to those who are less fortunate. Of course, people are not perfect and everbody makes mistakes, sometimes quite serious, but God will always forgive you if you are sincerely sorry and try to make amends. This is only natural, since nobody expects people to be perfect. Giving charity looms very large for us jews as a way to make amends for mistakes and sins that cannot easily be put right, and part of being a good person generally. Sometimes it is said that jews talk of sins, but christians talk of Sin. That should give you a good idea of the jewish attitude about this.

The messiah as jews in ancient judea conceived of him is very different than the Son of God described by christians. The words 'messiah', from the hebrew 'meshiakh', as well as the word 'christ', from the greek 'khristos', both mean the same thing, which is 'annointed'. This means to apply perfumed oil to someone in a ceremonial way, a very typical high honor in the ancient world. Now, the most likely meaning of someone being annointed in this way, from the ancient world up to only a few centuries ago, was that they were being annointed king - an earthly king. And indeed this is the description of the hoped for messiah that we read in Isaiah. (this is a work in progress - I hope to supply citations later...). Briefly, the jewish messiah was supposed to be an earthly king of the line of David (the kings of the jews in the period immediately before and during Jesus' life were not of the Davidic line, and some thought that that was one of the reasons that bad times had come.) This king was to miraculously overcome the pagans, and establish a kingdom in Israel of such righteousness that all the nations of the world would recognize this and pay homage (insert quotes from Isaiah). Some people believe that there were supposed to be two kings, a regular one as well as a spiritual leader. It has been suggested that perhaps Jesus was to be the secular king, and John the Baptist was to have been the spiritual leader. In any case, it is important to see the discussions about what Jesus thought was going to happen in this light.

Jews do not, in contradistinction from christians and muslims, believe that a person must be a jew to be in favor with God. Orthodox jews (but not reform or conservative jews) believe that jews should follow all laws for jews found in the bible, whether they make sense or not, in order to remain a jew. For all people in general, however, jews believe that to be a good person and follow the moral parts of the ten commandments is all that is required to be good in the eyes of the Lord.

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