"I am officially Jewish, but I’m Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant."
- AJ Jacobs
The other day when I was putting away books in the library I ran across a copy of "The Book of Mormon Movie." Having heard the reports on the quality of the movie I thought it'd be worth checking out simply because it sounded like one of those movies that was so bad it's funny (ie - Twilight).
As it turns out I was wrong. Entirely. It was so bad it wasn't funny.
It felt like a ward play that one is forced to go to that's written by a college age business major and all of the parts are played by people who have never acted before.
Ouch.
The worst part, however, was the apparent lack of consideration that the characters in the movie were supposed to be Jewish. Whoops? That's quite the mistake. The background looked nothing like Jerusalem. The dialog was painful. Nothing Jewish.
Within the last week I also was able to see a PBS series on Early Christianity. It was excellent although it didn't include all of the things I wanted in it. The series included a lot indirectly related to my qualm above. Namely: Christianity comes from Judaism, but Judaism is lost in the shuffle.
What a bizarre concept. The Jewish history is varied: angry, calm, murderous, barbaric, beautiful, odd, etc. But most importantly for Christianity: the Jews left a scholarly work. What is it called? The Hebrew Bible or, in Christian terms the Old Testament.
This leads me to a question that I really wonder about. That is: Why, if everything about Christianity is supposed to be started with the Jews, don't Christians study about Judaism?
Learning about the scholars putting together the bible in Seminary would've been far more important, useful, and interesting than the typical instances of the pushing of all the stories being literal, and wonderful tales of people being totally moral. Which they aren't.
I might've actually liked the Bible during that year if the class had been about Jewish traditions and the why, when, and how of it. If it had shown how the Jewish culture was changing, how the ideologies were becoming ones that would allow for many people to claim to be Jewish Messiahs (according to history a lot of men made the claim just before and after Jesus).
It seems that over time Christianity has forgotten it's roots. No one mentions the reasons for the Jewish authors of the gospels writing what they did. The influences of the Jewish systems and current events are left out of much of the modern version of Christianity and replaced with a saccharine combination of the gospels that don't really fit together (despite the stickiness of saccharine.)
It's rather odd. I can only see the traces of Judaism through scholarship in one modern religion. That is Catholicism. Catholics are ok with admitting that they were wrong. They can say that the pope merely interprets the bible and can be wrong about social issues. They've apologized for the crusades, etc.
As times have gone on, however, this essential piece of Christianity: the need to understand the history and culture behind the Bible. Has been lost. With each new religion since the early Christians we have lost much of what it really means to be a branch off of Judaism and have replaced Christian heritage with assumptions that Jews today are nothing like those in the past; the ones in the past were just like us. Until we reach today. The day where I sit it takes a TV documentary to remind me of a lost and important part of Christianity: Jewish history.
12 comments:
Why does it matter so much? Yes, ancient Judaism is an intriguing religion filled with interesting culture and tradition. However, religions do change over time, and while Christianity has some Jewish roots, it's NOT Judaism, it's quite different, particularly in the fact that Christianity is centered around CHRIST, you know, the one that the Jews crucified and completely rejected. So while it is interesting to look at Judaism and see all the cool little parts of their religion, I see no vital importance in revering it and holding onto it and giving it a thorough study when we're Latter-day Saints and Christians, and the focus of our religion is completely and totally different.
And on a second note, I do agree with you that Seminary might've been interesting and fun if we'd studied more of the scholars and culture from the Old Testament. However, the mission of Seminary is to help teenagers come closer to Christ and feel the Spirit through those "stories with morals," not make everyone into a religious scholar. That's what advanced religion classes in college are for, so that those who are interested in that kind of stuff can study it. Seminary is focused on the gospel, not the secular aspects of life in the scriptures.
It matters because without it you can't understand the bible.
Everyone does better with a text when they understand the context in which it was written.
You can't study Plato without knowing about Greek history. You can't study Frankenstein without some awareness of the Feminist movement. You can't study Arabian Nights without some knowledge of Islamic culture. You can't even read the children's series "A Series of Unfortunate Events" without knowing something about Humanism.
Without the context of the work the meaning loses significant value. You say that Seminary classes should focus on the gospel and I say that the gospel cannot be fully understood and appreciated when taken out of context.
Reading the Bible without the perspective of the Jewish culture that entirely pervades the Old Testament and heavily influences the New is like reading "The Crucible" and not knowing that the Salem Witch Trials ever happened.
I suppose, however, that I never gave an example of what I wish I'd known in High School. So here's an example: the flood story is told by plenty of the peoples around the Isrealites before it is claimed as Noah and his ark by the Isrealites.
This really ticked me off when I first found out about it.
But with an understanding of Jewish culture I know understand that what makes the story of Noah beautiful is that the Jewish scholars moralize the story. Many of the other groups around the Isrealites at the time had the flood story starting with something silly like the gods deciding that people were to loud and so they needed to be rid of them. The Jewish scholars saw an opportunity to take this story and mold it into one that people could actually use for the betterment of themselves and their people. They did not mean for the story to be taken literally, rather, they meant for it to be taken as a parable of a man following the One God.
On the other hand the Jewish scholars realize that they need to not glorify everyone in their history. They continually write history as it happens. David commits adultry. Solomon chooses to convert to Paganism. Job whines until the Lord gives in.
The Bible in context is much better than the Bible out of context and should be so recognized.
And, if I may point out, the Jews likely didn't act as the sole violent group against Christ and if they did it was likely a very, very, small group. Christianity was a tiny movement that most Jews of the time would not have encountered. The majority never heard of Jesus during his lifetime. They are not to blaim.
It was actually common for the Romans to kill people who claimed to be a Messiah at the time. They kill off a group of a thousand people who follow another man claiming to be a Messiah before Jesus that are doing nothing but sitting out in the desert waiting for god to save them. And it's likely that he was truly arrested for the cleansing of the temple as it would've caused a major social disruption and is included in the last week of Jesus' life in three out of the four gospels.
So, in point of fact, most of the Jews of the time did not reject Jesus as his movement was small and, at first, unnoticed. It would be years before they would've "rejected Jesus entirely" and by this point we may have reached the generation after Jesus died seeing as the first of the four gospels wasn't written until twenty years after Jesus and the last wasn't written for seventy years after Jesus.
And, since that reply wasn't long enough, I'd like to point out that the Jewish people write twice as much as the Christians in the Bible. Twelve hundred pages vs. five hundred pages. The Jewish appear to be just as, if not more, important to the editors of the Christian Bible and, thus, anyone who takes their version of the Bible.
Some early Christian groups did, in fact, throw out the Old Testament entirely. It being left in the Bible in most of the Christian sects has got to mean something to someone.
Don't you understand? The city will be destroyed!
I wasn't ever saying the Bible isn't important; it is an important historical work, and yes, it needs to be taken in context. However, I still don't think it affects anyone's understanding of the gospel whether they know that all the other peoples of the time wrote about the flood or not. The facts remain that God punished the people on the earth and Noah was a prophet and was saved. The Jewish scholars didn't "moralize" the story. They understood what really happened, whereas other groups of people tried to explain a phenomenal occurence. I believe an understanding of the gospel is far more effective in understanding the Bible and the account therein than an understanding of historical context and culture, though both certainly add meaning to the Bible.
And so why is there no evidence of the flood happening through any of geology? Why do the other culture's stories of the flood come YEARS BEFORE the Jewish account is recorded as having happened (when it was supposed to have happened, not when it was written)? Why does one of the stories before the Jewish version include the man sending the birds out and landing on a mountain top? How does one gather two, three, or seven of all of the animals on the planet including the ones on the other side of the Earth? How does one stop the animals from eating each other? What happens to the people that were too far away for Noah's prophecy to reach them? Why wouldn't an all-powerful God have simply destroyed the people without the flood? Why would an all-knowing God create people just to damn them? (Sounds like Puritan predetermined fates to me.) Wouldn't gathering all of the animals in one boat and then having them reproduce within a very small gene pool cause an enormous amount of genetic deformity among the animals? How does one have an entirely "evil" population? How does one save the fresh water fish from the flood when the entire Earth would become covered with salt water? How does one save all the subspecies of animals that would be necessary to save? Why didn't all of the mountains erode significantly from the rain? How did all of the animals get back to the other side of the world after the flood was over? If God says that he's opposed to incest why didn't he call for more than Noah's family to come on the boat?
Noah's flood never happened.
There is geological evidence of the flood. Fish and water plant fossils have been found at the tops of mountains, as well as evidence of water lines at the tops of mountains. The story of the flood was was recorded millenia ago, and it is more than likely that none of the historians got the time frame correct. It's no coincidence that one of the stories recorded before the Jewish version talked about the birds, considering everyone recording it is a descendant of Noah, since everyone else drowned. The earth at that time was one continent, of which there is geological evidence as well as scriptural evidence (search Peleg in the bible) and therefore it would not have been impossible to collect all the animals or redistribute them thereafter. There may also not have been as many species as we currently have, considering species adaptation and evolution, which applies to your fresh water fish question as well. Fish may have readapted to fresh water at a later time.
How do you know the mountains didn't significantly erode? You weren't there. How do you know how many species of animals there were, as well as subspecies? You weren't there. How do you know that Noah was the only prophet prophesying about the flood, and that there weren't others that reached all the people? How do you know how many people there were and how distributed they were? How do you know they weren't all evil? There was not a single righteous person found in Sodom and Gomorrah for the Lord to save.
As for your questioning why God would create people and then destroy them, and why He would have used the flood rather than some other flood, that's a basic gospel question right there, and considering what I know you know about the Plan of Salvation, agency, the entire purpose of life here on earth, and the rest of the gospel, I can't believe you'd actually ask that. Sure, there's lots of evidence that Noah's flood never happened. But there's no more evidence that it didn't happen. You can't prove every piece of scripture. Sometimes you have to take it with a grain of faith. And if you don't have that, it's never going to make sense.
I meant why he would use the flood rather than some other method, not some other flood. Lo siento.
I disagree on every point.
Just because there have been fish found on certain mountains does not mean that the flood happened. It means that the certain mountain once had a lake within it's range.
There no humans on the Earth at the time of the Pangaea (Peleg is the name of one of Noah's sons). The Earth was in this form 250 million years ago whereas humans have only existed as homo sapiens for 250 thousand years.
Unless, Noah is supposed to be some sort of degenerate land form.. that'd make sense.
If you check what you trust - being the LDS timeline - of the bible you'll find that Noah "lived" in the years 2900 - 1900 BCE which is FAR to late for the pangaea to still be in place.
The bible likely talks about the Earth being one land mass because that's what the people knew at the time. It's just like the measurement of pi being wrong in Kings. People can only do with what they know at the time.
The Earth has lost 99% of the species that once lived are now extinct.
If you study evolutionary biology you will find that it would take CENTURIES for a fish to adapt to fresh water if they were lucky enough to do so.
You can tell the amount of erosion of a mountain studying the rock formations. It'd be pretty dang obvious if the mountains had changed that drastically.
"How do you know that Noah was the only prophet prophesying about the flood, and that there weren't others that reached all the people?"
If everything you say is validified by the bible why isn't everything I say validified by the same book? The bible says that God saves Noah and his family. That's it. If you are going to choose biblical literalism you can't go back and forth.
And if Lot's righteous enough to be saved in the story of Sodom and Gammorrah why does he first offer his daughter to be raped by the people and then get drunk and have sex with her?
There is FAR more evidence that the flood never happened. Any good scientist will tell you that.
The only people who would tell you otherwise are the Young Earth Creationists.
You know what, I'm not even going to argue about it anymore. I believe the Bible as scripture, as far as it is translated correctly. You can go right ahead and take science classes and disprove everything you want to. There's plenty of evidence against it all. Have a party. Throw out the bible, and while you're at it, throw out the Book of Mormon because that entire civilization didn't actually exist, and there's no such thing as angels coming to fourteen year old boys, and gold plates wouldn't have survived undiscovered in a New York hillside, in fact, the hill wasn't even in the right place, it should've been in Central America. For that matter, throw out the entire restored gospel, because Joseph Smith taught polygamy and practiced it and that's horribly illegal and distasteful. I don't KNOW when or how the flood happened, I don't know how Jonah was swallowed by a whale, I don't know how the Israelites blew horns and the walls of the city fell down, and frankly, I'm not going to try and explain it all, because I believe that God can and will do anything He deems important, despite what the laws of science say, and that's enough for me. Maybe half those things didn't actually happen the way they're recorded; I don't know, and I really don't care. Because the truly important part is the moral, the gospel principle, and the message of the stories, and they help me as a reader see an example of how to be a better person. And that's why they're there, why the Bible is important, and what we're really supposed to be getting out of it.
...is this how the holy wars started?
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