(06-11-2023, 10:03 PM)Guest Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:What part of “on a regular basis” did you not understand? Orthodox Jews doing kapparot once yearly (which is controversial in the Jewish community and not something most non-Orthodox Jews do) is not the same as Jews engaging in sacrifice regularly (as they did in the past). Furthermore, some versions of kapparot don’t involve the sacrifice of a chicken, but rather the swinging of a bag of money around one’s head and the donation of said bag to charity.
Pedantic sophistry.
Quote:Can’t you come up with a more substantive critique of my point than focusing on a relatively unimportant part of my response to the comment about “Judeo-Christian” being an anti-concept?
Fine. I’ll read your post and deconstruct the Talmudic sophistry in a most aryan analytical fashion, not that it would produce anything when auguring against a Jew, but still.
Quote:The term Judeo-Christian is not an oxymoron, nor is it an "anti-concept", but rather a useful term for distinguishing two closely related branches of Abrahamic religion from Islam (which is quite unique as far as Abrahamic religions are concerned). It is a pretty accurate term, too, seeing as it ties Christianity to the Abrahamic tradition from which it arose.
Lol, “it’s good because it’s good.” This axiomatic tautology is commonly used by jews revealing its nature as nothing more then a slandering/complementing function. This also means that it purely exists as a invented rhetorical term and doesn’t exist as a concept in itself. Although now it is commonly being used as a concept which is an error given that it now is eclipsing the place of more proper classifications for the the idea trying to be exspressed. The terms usefulness is reminding you of its “dirty past” or maybe if your a Christian Zionist a brother struggle phraseology. Conservative reminding you that our civilization is based off Judeochristain values to claim we’re one struggle, one team guys. And even saying Abrahamic in this context is wrong, because the values are unique to Christianity, jews are parasites and not our backbone like the term implies. Which again is its only purpose, to conflate Christian and jew when you’re really just saying Christian.
Quote:There are a lot of similarities between Judaism and Christianity even today in terms of beliefs, namely regarding the identity of God, the nature of God, moral law, etc., and this was even more true in the days of Christ (this is not to say that there aren`t irreconcilable differences between them, such as belief in the Trinity, the identity and nature of the Messiah, etc.).
“They are both religions man, they both worship god so they must be the same.” Ever heard of Christ, Christianity? They are not similar on any of these things. Not even moral law.
Quote:In fact, the two were so similar at the time of Christ and in the first two centuries after his death that the Romans struggled to differentiate between Christians and Jews. It is also quite telling that although Christ disagreed with other Jews on certain theological matters - specifically on moral law, as his primary gripe with them was on their interpretation of the Law and the practices that arose therefrom - he agreed with them on a lot; interestingly, the Pharisees actually believed in resurrection, angels and demons (Paul, a Pharisee, actually had a mystical experience with the latter, which he discusses in 2 Corinthians), disliked the Sadducees for their legalistic view of the Law and their elitist nature, and believed divine revelation just as early Christians did. Similarly, many of the religious practices of the Jewish Essenes likely inspired early Christian ascetic practices. Not only that, but both Essenes and Christians had many of the same gripes with mainstream Jewish society and believed in "inspired exegesis" of Scripture.
No one’s debating that in fact Jews were not in the Bible. Were debating the validity of the term “Judeochristain,” which as you have stated is only important to remind you that Jews were in the Bible. You said that we should use Judeochristain instead of abrahamic because that also included Islam, but it’s only within the context you are speaking. They are all Abrahamic religions but have also diverged, thus when stating Abrahamic you are obliviously not specifics on a unique quality of one of its derivatives, you’re either talking about genealogical roots or a grouping classification which only in one do you include Islam. In the context that judeochristain is used it would again be best to use Abrahamic
Quote:Similarities between both modern Christians and Jews and their counterparts in antiquity aside,
What do you mean “aside”? When talking about the common root it’s best to use Abrahamic, but the term is mostly used to demonstrate some real modern day connect, which there isn’t thereof.
Quote:one would have to be a liar or an imbecile to deny the fact that the milieu from which Christianity emerged was uniquely Jewish - the early Christians were overwhelmingly ethnically Jewish, Christianity and Christ`s claims to being the Son of God were predicated on his alleged fulfillment of a Jewish prophecy (the Messiah prophecy in Isaiah and other OT prophecies), and Christian theology was initially rooted exclusively in Second Temple era Jewish theology (the majority of the Greek influence came in the 3rd-6th centuries).
This is important to show common roots once more. Did you know a lot of early Muslims were once Christian? Bet not. One struggle guys, our muslichristo values.
(06-10-2023, 01:45 PM)GraalChud Wrote: [ -> ]Oh, and inb4 any of the following sophistic (and quite frankly, retarded) arguments intended to distance Christianity from its parent religion:
1) Christianity isn`t an offshoot of Judaism because the religion of the Israelites in the Old Testament is different from modern Rabbinic Judaism (seeing as the latter is the result of the former evolving as the material circumstances of the Jews changed) and therefore isn`t Judaism, but rather a sort of proto-Christianity that was rendered obsolete when Christ showed up.
2) Christianity isn`t an offshoot of Judaism because of Hellenistic influence on Christianity (Almost 100% of which came after Christ`s death)
3) "Erm akshully Christianity can`t be tied to Judaism because Jews are Khazars/Edomites/*insert some other obscure and long-extinct ethnic group with no relation to Ashkenazi Jews* and Israelites were Aryan."
1) is pretty convincing, I would use it to counter you’re pedantic sophistry but maybe another time.
(06-11-2023, 12:22 PM)GraalChud Wrote: [ -> ]Even if we accept that Jews as a whole regularly engage in sacrifice (they don’t), this neither show the lack of a relationship between Judaism and Christianity nor that the two are antithetical to one another, it simply shows that there is a difference in their respective religious praxes and the metaphysical implications thereof - that Jews think that sacrificing animals is a valid religious practice, while Christians reject animal sacrifice wholesale. This is akin to arguing that Orthodoxy and Protestantism aren’t both Christian because they differ in regards to their beliefs re: scriptural exegesis, metaphysics, and practices (while ignoring the fact that in spite of these differences, both are branches of the same religious tradition).
“Things are like different but similar, where do we delineate? Guess they are pretty much the same thing.”
>Pedantic sophistry.
Your inability to read and comprehend the English language does not render what I said sophistic just because I called you out on it.
>Lol, “it’s good because it’s good.” This axiomatic tautology is commonly used by jews revealing its nature as nothing more then a slandering/complementing function. This also means that it purely exists as a invented rhetorical term and doesn’t exist as a concept in itself. Although now it is commonly being used as a concept which is an error given that it now is eclipsing the place of more proper classifications for the the idea trying to be exspressed. The terms usefulness is reminding you of its “dirty past” or maybe if your a Christian Zionist a brother struggle phraseology. Conservative reminding you that our civilization is based off Judeochristain values to claim we’re one struggle, one team guys. And even saying Abrahamic in this context is wrong, because the values are unique to Christianity, jews are parasites and not our backbone like the term implies. Which again is its only purpose, to conflate Christian and jew when you’re really just saying Christian.
You said a whole lot here without addressing my point. I argued that the concept is useful because it highlights the close relationship between two Abrahamic faiths that are closer to one another (genealogically, historically, and theologically) than either is to Islam, and you responded by talking about how Zionist Christians and Jews use and/or invented the term and is therefore bad. This entire rant can be boiled down to "I don`t like the term judeo-christian because I don`t want my faith to be associated with a faith I don`t like and because people I don`t like use it, commonalities and genealogical ties be damned!" In essence, your objection to the term has nothing to do with its conceptual invalidity, but rather the fact that the term is used by Evangelical Zionist retards, Jews, etc. Furthermore, many of the "uniquely Christian values" that you`re citing in an attempt to distance your faith from Judaism are not unique to Christianity. Charity in Judaism (Tzedakah) is not unlike Christian charity, Jews (especially Orthodox Jews) value chastity just as Christians do, both adhere to the 10 Commandments (or are supposed to, in theory), etc. I could go on and on with all of the similarities between Christian and Jewish values and morality, but there isn`t really a need to seeing as the few I pointed out here suffice to show that there are a number of major ones. I`d imagine your response to this will be "but Jews do bad things/things that run contrary to these values they supposedly hold", which would be a critique of Jews and their inability to live up to the moral standards that your God set for them rather than one of Judaism itself, not an argument distinguishing the morals and values of the Jewish religion from those of Christianity.
>No one’s debating that in fact Jews were not in the Bible. Were debating the validity of the term “Judeochristain,” which as you have stated is only important to remind you that Jews were in the Bible. You said that we should use Judeochristain instead of abrahamic because that also included Islam, but it’s only within the context you are speaking. They are all Abrahamic religions but have also diverged, thus when stating Abrahamic you are obliviously not specifics on a unique quality of one of its derivatives, you’re either talking about genealogical roots or a grouping classification which only in one do you include Islam. In the context that judeochristain is used it would again be best to use Abrahamic
Another non-response. You correctly noted that we are debating the conceptual validity of that term, but then went on to show that you either did not understand or are blatantly mischaracterizing the part of my response that you`re responding to here. What I did not do was argue "Jews were in the Bible, therefore Christianity and Judaism are basically the same thing and thus Judeo-Christian is a valid concept!" What I did was show that the separation of Islam from two more closely related religions within the Abrahamic tradition is warranted, and I did this by showing that there are a slew of extremely important similarities between Christianity and Judaism and that this was even more true in antiquity, so much so that Europeans struggled to differentiate the two. As far as divergence is concerned, obviously the Abrahamic traditions have diverged from one another with time, no one with a brain would contest this. This does not change the fact, however, that Christianity essentially began as a radical, schismatic offshoot of Judaism predicated on the fulfillment of the Jewish Messiah prophecy by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that shares a lot with Christianity theologically speaking (and shared far more with it prior to religious developments that both religions had between the 4th and 6th centuries, such as the writing of the Gemara portion of the Talmud in the early 6th century or so and the development of the doctrine of the Trinity); Islam, on the other hand, is centered around Muhammad and his divine revelation - its similarities with the other two major Abrahamic religions pretty much begin and end with believing that God is YHWH and some superficial similarities w.r.t. what Muslims believe when it comes to morals (one thing that seriously distinguishes Islam from Christianity and Judaism when it comes to morality is its viewpoint on war and violence).
>This is important to show common roots once more. Did you know a lot of early Muslims were once Christian?
Of course many early Muslims (particularly in the Levant and Syria) were Christian, but that doesn`t change the fact that Islam pretty much came out of left field. Mohammad was some sort of weird Semitic pagan prior to conjuring up Islam, and its ties to the other major Abrahamic religions are weak, as it is tenuously linked to them by claims that Mohammad`s spiritual predecessors are descended from Abraham`s bastard child (it was for this reason that Christian scholars who interacted with a young Islam, such as John of Damascus, rightly called Muslims out on their specious claims that Islam was an Abrahamic religion). This tenuous relationship to the Abrahamic tradition, as mentioned above, is why it is appropriate to use Judeo-Christian to denote a certain sub-tradition consisting of two more closely linked traditions within the broader Abrahamic one, as Islam is sort of an "outsider" in the Abrahamic tradition.
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“Things are like different but similar, where do we delineate? Guess they are pretty much the same thing.”
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The difference in the relationship between Christian sects and that of Judaism and Christianity are a matter of degree lmfao. Of course two sects of Christianity will be closer to one another than either is to Judaism, but this does not change the fact that Judaism is the closest extant religious tradition to Christianity and that one sprung from the other lol. You grossly mischaracterized my argument here, I never claimed that Judaism and Christianity were "pretty much the same thing" and explicitly noted that there were substantial differences between the two; as you noted, the issue is the concept of "Judeo-Christian" and its validity, and since the colloquial understanding of this concept does not involve a belief that Judaism and Christianity are the same thing, arguments involving whether or not the two are the same have no relevance to the conversation. Instead, the term/concept is intended to denote the close relationship of these two religious traditions, and is often used in reference to values or the West`s history - since you could not have Christianity without Judaism (no Messiah prophecy, no YHWH, no Davidic lineage, no Mosaic law, no spiritual or corporeal Israel, etc.), it is technically not wrong to shoehorn the "Judeo-" in front of "Christian", even if it is distasteful or upsetting to some.
(06-11-2023, 08:56 PM)Muskox Wrote: [ -> ] (06-11-2023, 04:20 PM)GraalChud Wrote: [ -> ]Anyway, rather than bickering about this stuff, I’m interested in knowing if anyone knows anything more about the mystical experience with demons that Paul had in 2 Corinthians that I briefly referenced earlier? From what I’ve heard, Paul might’ve been initiated into some sort of Pharaisical Merkabah/Hekhalot-adjacent mystical tradition, and it was this tradition that inspired his writings about that ordeal, but I’ve not seen too much on it aside from some video by a Jewish academic on YouTube (Esoterica). Would love to see if anyone knows anything more about this.
I was reading something interesting yesterday about some lesser-known works of Clement of Alexandria where he describes a sort of celestial hierarchy, which the saints can ascend after death, becoming angels and eventually gods (in whatever capacity). I don't know if the assertion made by Jean Daniélou, cited in the essay, that this was part of a mystical tradition that the Apostles were initiated into and passed on to early Christians has any merit, but it's an interesting thought.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20474764
Looks interesting, I`ll give it a read and get back to you.
Can`t help but wonder how similar Clement`s conception of a divine/celestial hierarchy is to Proclus` own in his commentaries on Timaeus (which came centuries later). Perhaps this is worth looking into, might illuminate the relationship between Christian and Pagan metaphysics in Roman antiquity, which from what I`ve read seems to have been unilateral (with Christians doing most/all of the borrowing from the Pagans) but might have actually been bilateral.