i don't see the relevance of this quote to the point i made about lurianic kabbalah and the origins of tikkun olam.  if your purpose was to demonstrate that kabbalah is and always has been a movement with very little influence on popular jewish theology, then the haggadah are not the best place to start, since they predate any writings which can properly be called kabbalah, nor are they writings which critically examine the history of jewish theology. 

then you should have no problem showing me where, chapter and verse, in genesis, exodus, leviticus, numbers, or deuteronomy, where it says actual animal sacrifices are not necessary.  chapter and verse.  not a talmudic quotation, not another part of the hebrew bible.  otherwise, don't get huffy when people say you don't use criticism with the text, because the first rule of higher criticism is take the text at face value.

well, in biblical criticism you can't have it both ways.  once again, if the rabbinic way is your way, that's fine, but don't expect anyone to take you seriously when you say you look at the text critically.

No, "Tikkun Olam", in the Kabbalistic "gathering up all these (metaphorical) Divine Sparks" sense, originates with Luria.  Look at the end of Isaiah where Isaiah very clearly states that once the Nations realize the error of their ways (and how do they do this?  By Israel's example), they turn to the Jews to learn about G-d.

You cannot understand Judaism in a 14 week college course, or even 128 semester hours of college courses.  In particular, you cannot understand Kabbalah, something that it is FORBIDDEN to teach to anyone other than a 40+ year old married man, schooled in Torah and Talmud, unless you have the underpinnings of a proper Jewish education.  Which you don't have.

I hate to quote Star Trek as an authoritative source, but "You cannot get a permit to do a damned illegal thing."

You ARE an idiot.

"Kabbalah" is just Jewish Mysticism.  It's just as forbidden to teach Kabbalah to someone like you as it is to have taught anything preceding Kabbalah in the same tradition.

And this isn't even a Christian "You have to have faith!" claim -- it's more along the lines of you cannot understand Synthetic Organic chemistry until you've had the prerequisites.  And while my professor was wrong, it's also like what one of my professors told me "Undergraduates don't have original thoughts".

And to quote another movie with strong Jewish influences, "There is no spoon."

99% of biological species on this planet are now extinct. What makes you think humans are special? Why do you think any human that has lived in the past, living now, or living in the future to the point of our extinction, will be remembered 1 billion years from now?

GET A CLUE, there is no such thing as a messiah. Muslims wont have one, Christians wont have one, and you wont have one. Our species will eventually die out like all biological life will. And our planet will die too.

Making up fictional super heros to ignore our finite existence is ignorant.

you're assuming that the writers understood this ban in the same way as you.  the text says GRAVEN images, i.e. scultures or pictures.  it's not clearly a ban on theological or theogonical speculation.  you might think it is, but you can't get that from the text.  once again, if you want to interpolate stuff that's not there you're not looking critically., so don't claim you are.

no, i want to argue that you are more interested in maintaining your present-day religious conceptions than critically examining the texts pertinent to the history of jewish thought.

yes, i did state that.  so did you.  i stated that to demonstrate that the common conception of tikkun olam runs contrary to the hebrew bible and thus, in order to reconcile this, you have to subvert either the meaning of tikkun olam or the meaning of the hebrew bible.  you chose the former course.  the lurianic kabbalists and their successors chose the latter course.  there's no shame: these are natural phenomena in any religion's evolution.  what they are not, however, is helpful to textual or historical criticism, which you claimed to have been engaging in since we were all in diapers.

yup, because i don't take the ban on reading hoo-hah any more seriously than i take the hoo-hah itself.

if by "torah" you mean modern jewish normative theology, then yes, my conclusions are in contradiction to it.  what my conclusions are not in contradiction to, however, is everything that modern biblical and historical criticism can teach us about the development of modern "normative" jewish theology.  and like it or not, this theology is heavily influenced by lurianic kabbalah and, like it or not, the safed kabbalists were not modern jews who took their teachings metaphorically.

but the way, "I" didn't reach these conclusions.  every conclusion i've stated here is directly out of either scholem or moshe idel.  scholem of course was the founder of the modern academic study of jewish mysticism and was the first to hold a chair in that department at the hebrew university of jerusalem, and it's in his lecture on lurianic kabbalah in major trends that i first learned of that school of mysticism's universal influence on modern jewish theology, theogony, and eschatology.  i even quoted you a passage.

incomprehensible if one has a vested interest in maintaining historical theological continuity, yes.  in essence, your reasoning seems to be "you can't understand these texts properly, nor can you interpret them properly, regardless of what training or education you've had, because it wasn't traditional rabbinic training or education."  this is no different from a christian pastor who says in the face of new testament criticism, "you don't understand these texts properly, nor can you interpret them properly, because you don't have the holy spirit in you."

no, i'm asserting that the intent of the original authors, i.e. the lurianic kabbalists and their successors, was not metaphorical but theosophical.  every other "detached, scholarly" treatment i've ever read of this "field of study," by jew or gentile, has asserted this as well.  YOU are free to take these "concepts" however you want, of course, but don't project it into the kabbalistic texts, or at least don't do that and claim to be critical. 

the only thing you have explained to me is why i'm dogmatically wrong.  you have made no effort to critically engage either the pertinent kabbalistic texts (safed and post-safed) or find methodological fault with the conclusions of the scholarship i've repeatedly cited.

also, i'm beginning to suspect you think i believe in kabbalah or have a vested interest in it.  i assure you i do not.  i do not take the dogmatic claims of any branch of your religion, fringe or mainstream, any more seriously than those of any other religion.  if you wish to prove to me that either the kabbalists or myself are mistaken in their conceptions of god, you're attacking a straw man.  i have no conceptions of god.  if, however, you wish to prove that lurianic kabbalah had no major influence on "normative" jewish theology and/or that i'm totally mistaken in my conception of what lurianic kabbalah is, i'm afraid that arguments like "you're wrong because it goes against this certain set of beliefs" or "you're wrong because you're not allowed to study it" will satisfy no one but yourself.  go to the kabbalistic texts and the subsequent conclusions drawn by scholars or don't go at all.  and that's not a rhetorical challenge: i honestly welcome serious, higher critical engagement that approaches a text with no modern preconceptions. 

ok, now we can see beyond a doubt who starts with this stuff.  i believe this was always martin luther's last refuge too.

and you define distortion as "thinking it could mean other than what tradition (or you) says it means"?  you have barely thrown out any texts for me to distort.  i'm the one quoting passages of detailed and respected scholarship.  so far you've only offered a very cursory treatment from a general knowledge website and a few bible verses that don't directly address lurianic theology (nor could they, since luria utilized the zohar and prevailing gnostical and theosophical ideas much more than he utilized the hebrew bible).  you even convoluted ex. 20.4 beyond its obvious, literal meaning.  if you want to prove that my conceptions of lurianic kabbalah are wrong (i.e., that they definitely took it metaphorically) then you're going to have to provide evidence from the lurianic texts.  i'm even willing to wait.  otherwise, don't tell me i'm distorting a text if you're not willing to point out precisely where.

there it is again.  "you can't read it right because you're not one of us."  once again, if that's the line you take, don't claim critical thinking.  if you went to science textbooks to prove your brother wrong, great: go to lurianic texts and prove me wrong.  go to scholem and demonstrate clearly why his assertions and conclusions are bunkum.  but a few quotes from texts that weren't even written in any time period near the period of the lurianic writers and don't even directly address the same concepts are not proof as far as historical criticism is concerned.

Which is no different than any god claim. When you make shit up, you can move the goal posts. That does nothing to prove one's own claim. It only proves that you will do anything to defend the claim.

Superstition has nothing to do with credibility and everything to do with marketing.

No, because in Judaism, "Two Jews, three opinions."

There isn't AN ANSWER.  There are only QUESTIONS and what you LEARN from the discussion.

Hi Furry,

On what basis do you question Saul studying under Gamaliel?

Making claims that contemporaries could disprove would seem a strange way to establish credentials. There was obviously opposition to Jesus within both the Sanhedrin (giving a person to be crucified does tend to show opposition...) and within the larger Jewish milieu (as evidenced by the references to the attempts to stone Jesus/Yeshua). There would obviously be other students of Gamiliel living, and to falsely claim to have studied under someone would hardly 'establish' credentials.

Besides there being no record of his doing so, or Gamaliel having "private" students, there are also enough gross inconsistencies in the entire Pauline story to discard it.

For example, Saul was supposedly "authorized" to run around harassing "Christians" and yet all the while the "Jesus Community" in Jerusalem thrived under the leadership of James.  The Sanhedrin itself was situated ON the Temple Mount, a place that "Ya'akov Ha'Tzedik" (James the Just, widely believed to have been Jesus's brother) frequented regularly.

That's not at all a problem -- first, Gamaliel died ca. 50CE, as I recall.  Secondly, none of the Pauline letters date to that era.  Thirdly, the destruction of the Temple in 70CE didn't exactly make Jerusalem a happy-fun-place to be hanging around.

As regards Jesus's execution by the Romans, it's important to understand that much of the Sanhedrin, as well as the Temple staff (as it were) were either appointed by, or under the control of, Rome.  Judea was not an independent sovereign nation.  Think "Vichy France" -- still French, but run by NAZI sympathizers.  NONE of the Passion Narrative would have been legal under Jewish law.  All four gospels are in complete agreement that the events happened =during= Passover.  Not only would the Sanhedrin NOT have met, but we know from records of that era that it definitely DIDN'T meet.  Crucifixion is not a legal form of punishment under Jewish law.  And the only offense that's recorded accurately enough to be analyzed is NOT a crime -- Jews routinely refer to G-d as "Our Father" (more typically, "Our Father, Our King, Our (lots of other things)" and the Torah contains references to various people as either a "Son of G-d" (including a "Begotten Son of G-d" -- thereby trashing the Christian claim that Jesus is the "only Begotten Son of G-d&quot, or "Sons of G-d".

A more likely situation is that Jesus's closest followers were political radicals -- there were two Zealots and one Sicarii (assassin, mercenary) among the twelve -- and that Jesus was executed by Rome as a threat to Roman rule.  They traveled armed, per the Transfiguration account in the gospels.  They were popular with the general public, and unpopular with the Roman-controlled political establishment.  The method of execution is perfectly consistent with Jesus being an anti-Roman rebel and completely inconsistent with anything Jesus is said to have done in any of the Gospel accounts.

We do know historically that there was a major schism between the Jewish community and what was most likely the early Christian church about the time Paul was exerting his greatest influence.  The conflict between the "Jewish Branch" of the "Jesus Movement" and the Pauline "Gentile Branch" arose about 50CE, and my recollection is that the two "branches" irrevocably broke sometime between 55 and 65CE (and for those of you who are following along, Paul supposedly died in 67CE).  It's worth noting that after James and Peter threw Paul out of Jerusalem that Paul didn't go back, so there would have been no opportunity for Paul to have been called out by any contemporaries of Gamaliel.  Indeed, considering that James would have seen (and heard) Gamaliel on an almost daily basis, James' rebuke of Paul =should= be counted as exactly what you're looking for: someone telling Paul he's full of cr@p.

wo-ho-ho, "binary" western!  generalize much?  jews aren't the only ones who don't think "binary."  there are even many people raised christian who don't think "binary": nietzsche, christmas humphreys, and alan watts immediately spring to mind.  look, jews are human beings like everybody else, and jews are no more capable of any type of thinking than any other human being.  regardless of what the dusty old books you claim for yourselves tell you, you're nothing special.  sorry. 

Slowly and using small words.

People disagree.

I'm a people, so I disagree with other people.

This doesn't mean anyone is bad.  Or wrong.

It's just people disagreeing.

You said I disagreed with some Jews.

You said that was some kind of bad thing.

I said it's a Jewish thing.

Because Jews disagree with other Jews all the time.

Now you want to back pedal and point out that people disagree.

Just like I said people do.

Hello Furry,

I'm afraid I have serious difficulty in how you are treating your sources. You are making rather sweeping negative allegations on very clear Biblical statements… yet you base your allegations on very weak (and sometimes incorrect) supporting evidence. Having strong opinions is great, and I thoroughly enjoy getting to understand the opinions of those that disagree with me... but our views need to treat evidence fairly. If I may, I'd like to go through some of your comments and discuss them.

Nowhere that I know of does Saul of Tarsus say he was a ‘private’ student of Gamaliel, and certainly no one here said so. Why do you add that quialifier? Rabban Gamaliel himself certainly had students. Your example of a ‘gross inconsistency’ also seems a little strange in how you're viewing it, but I'll leave that for another thread.

I think you’re missing the point here. Merely because Gamaliel had died, does not mean that his students had died. If Paul had not studied under him, there would be very clear condemnation of Saul of Tarsus for misrepresenting himself in this way. Gamaliel’s son Simeon and other teachers of the day would also be well able to disprove any false claims by Saul/Paul, which they certainly would have had desire to do.

Regarding some of your other comments, the Bible is also clear that the Jews did not and could not crucify Jesus.

Pilate said, "Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law."

"But we have no right to execute anyone," the Jews objected (John 18:31)

The Jews also sought to imply that Jesus was a threat to Roman authority, as evidenced by Pilate's questions to Jesus about whether he is 'king of the Jews', as well as the sign hung on Jesus, which labelled (or perhaps mocked) him as 'Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews' (Iesus Nazarenas Rex Iudaeorum). Thus it was the Romans who crucified Jesus, though under Jewish prompting.

I am thus a bit confused why you bring up crucifixion and the reason for Jesus' execution. If I have misunderstood your reasoning here, my apologies and please explain.

You state with great certainty that “two (of Jesus’ followers were Zealots and one Sicarii (assassin, mercenary) among the twelve” It is true that in the book of Luke, Simon Kananaios is referred to as Simon the Zealot. Why do you so quickly accept this statement as fact, even as you deny others? Even if you accept the statement, it MAY also mean that Simon was ‘zealous’ for the things of God, and not necessarily part of the Zealot movement.

‘Zelotes’ is used twice in the New Testament to describe people who are fanatical about God or the Law (one of these in reference to Saul of Tarsus), so it is definitely POSSIBLE that the reference to Simon being a ‘zelote’ may refer to his zeal for God or the Law.

“You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law” (Acts 21:11)

An even bigger problem is the person who MAY have been a Sicarii; Judas Iscariot.

• Firstly, it is supposition based upon ‘Iscariot’ as a corruption of ‘sicarii’ that classifies him as one of that group.
• Secondly, many historians believe the Sicarii only arose around 40+ AD (see John Meier or Raymond Brown) so even if the name meant ‘Sicarii’ it would be in reference to other things than his political affiliation
• Thirdly, Judas is referred to as the ‘son of Simon Iscariot’ (John 6:71) thus strongly implying that Iscariot does not apply to him but to his father… and thus is likely merely a family name
• Fourthly, it is also Judas that is considered as the 2nd possible Zealot. While many Zealots may have joined the Sicarii (though Flavius Josephus clearly identifies them as separate groups), you have a basic math problem. You cannot say that there were 2 Zealots and 1 Sicarii among the Twelve in reference to only TWO people. Bad math...

Your acceptance of the Zealot/Sicarii argument would thus appear to be based on rather poor grounds.

Your comment on the conflict between Saul of Tarsus and James is also interesting, not least because it seems rather vague about the actual conflict. Are you relying on the supposition by others that Paul is creating a 'new' religion in divergence from Jesus? Could you clearly state what you believe this conflict was, and how it weakens Paul as a reliable source?

My issue with you is not your viewpoint. We each should stand up for what we believe.

My issue is rather that you critique very clear textual sources, yet apply far weaker criteria to the sources you use to support your own views. Merely because someone agrees with our view does not make them 'correct'.

Please take your sicarii to my comments as well, and show me where my logic may be flawed I welcome the opportunity to clarify any fuzzy thinking on my part (no pun on your name intended).

A scale emerges. Elaboration? What's before jerk, and what's directly after idiot? Assuming potential rapist/axe murderer doesn't immediately follow.
Which is something I should comment on. Kevin's an idiot, and a fascist. How then does he have the intellect to become a serial anything? I think he'd do one or two before capture, which is hardly enough to fit the serial moniker.

Not that I think he'd try. I don't believe he's that stupid or insane. If he were, someone'd probably already have had to kill him in defence, or he'd be in prison.

Would Jews that are not christians say "He was the Christ" about Jesus? No where else does Josephus ever indicate being a christian, nor does anyone else.

Eusebius is the first to mention the testimonium. At all. Christian writers between Eusebius and Josephus all fail to mention it, even when it would have been clearly in their best interest to do so (arguing with Jews and whatnot). Best example of this omission is Origen, who definitely knows about the Antiquities of the Jews.

Origen doesn't omit Flavius Josephus though.

For in the 18th book of his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus bears witness to John as having been a Baptist, and as promising purification to those who underwent the rite. Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet, says nevertheless--being, although against his will, not far from the truth--that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus (called Christ),--the Jews having put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for his justice. ("Contra Celsus", Origin, I:XLVII)

What is in question is not whether Josephus mentions Jesus, but rather whether the phrase, "He was the Christ" is fully Josephus'. Origen clearly notes that Josephus writes about Jesus.

I think it's a dangerous game to argue things purely from ommision though. It may simply be that other writers did not consider whether Josephus thought Jesus was the Christ was important to the discussions they were having. The key question is not whether any man thinks that Jesus is the Christ, but whether the facts and the evidence support his being the Messiah promised in scripture.

In the big picture, Josephus is useful to show evidence that Jesus was a living historical personage (but there are many other evidences of this), but whether Josephus believed in Christ is beside he point. My accepting Jesus should not affect another person accepting Christ too heavily. In the end, the decision needs to be made based upon the evidence and best judgement of the individual.