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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (62974)	11/18/2014 10:29:17 PM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

Of Muhammad borrowing templates from Judaism & Christianity to mold his little art project of Islam ,should have also said men take their demons from each other as well as their angels & gods. In their quest for building shining ivory towered cities in the sun & holy empires populated by the righteous. Have to give that desert prophet kudos for having a same Alexander/Great vision, for his last orders to his uncle was to take the army & go attack the Romans, so larger expansion was definitely on his mind from the beginning. ( Pinky, tomorrow we conquere the world! Yes Brain, we'll subdue them & convert them all to the 'Truth'!) All those PBS documentaries are great aren't they? Here's the same professor from Harvard, Shaye Cohen tackling the 'Massada Myth' in the series 'Jesus to the Christ', do we look at these zealouts with approbation or approbrium? pbs.org What we see happening with the Romans entering Judae was to creat an order on a parallel to our attempts to bringing the culture of democracy to the ME today. And we're running into the same tribal mindset & culture, big surprise? One reads the history of the follow on Kitos & Bar Kokhba revolts, there were still messiahs springing up like weeds in these apocolyptic times. The Jews for the next 2000yrs cling to these hero myths but at the same time know they were also following messianic madmen & a bit mad themselves. (Why good heaping doses of Greek Philosophy always helped out everytime to tame & assuage that violent tendency for older messianic chosen people hallucinations , which got them into trouble over & over again. )

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (62974)	11/18/2014 10:55:41 PM
From: 2MAR$	Respond to of 69300

People tend to not think of the demons, they were always there though at every sickness that swept thru the village or when some mental illness overtook their chiefs or when livestock died or crops became infected with worms. And later we find that transition from seeing the play of divine forces in the animals or stars above us, to observing that moody world of the mind within with its highs & lows, supported by the frame of the corporeal body with its own humors & feints. Human beings start awakening to the reality of their own "Psyche" which is also a source of the world's reality. That is the great revelation of the Greeks, men themselves are the source of the Gods, the world & the Fates to some large extent. Here is that ever present 'Shaitan' devil demon, for as we have great glories & times of heavenly abundanvce so the world smites us down with plague, drought & mad rulers...or another invading army from who knows where. Can you imagine the skaking knees & nightmares some would have after gazing upon this? You would be making many crosses over your heart & literally clutching your cross in fear. Women would feint & cry out, 1240-1300 Mosaic Baptistry, Florence, here's what people feared, but it wasn't real.......

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (62974)	11/18/2014 11:26:41 PM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 69300

Yes, when Shaye Cohen covers the true emergence of "Judaism" really starting post Babylon 550BC, this is what i've been saying all along. You might as well call what happens before the dark ages only lit up by the Egyptians Phonecians Myceaneans, Assyrians etc. I think the professor forgets to really percieve how important that Babylon experience was, the origin stories, literature, laws, justice & their temple rites...all those templates these primitive tribes (by comparison) would have assimilated and did from Babylonians. Not from any 'god' whispering in their prophet's ears, but from cultural trasmission & assimilation.Here's his talk i find this conclusion weak & preachy though, the professor is partly right & partly dreaming again, i do not believe any major monarchy ever existed or civilization, they can't even find advanced pottery or metalurgical relics. Petty warring hill tribes maybe, Judaism takes its lessons from the Babylonians, Persians & the Greeks, they were clever in that way, monothesism is far far over rated. He gets the first sentence right, but what 'old days' is he referring? He is preaching here, not being an academic, which is always endemic to this whole tribal fantasy nonsense. The experience of the Babylonian Exile is the mother of Judaism. It is during this period that the Judeans realize that they can be loyal to God even far away from their homeland. Without a temple, without the priesthood, without kings, without all the institutional trappings they had enjoyed in the old days The emergence of Judaism Is there consensus among biblical scholars that the Exile was a critical time in the formation of Jewish identity?The Exile from Judah to Babylon was a major moment in the emergence of the Jewish religion. On this point, there can be no doubt. There is a great deal of discussion about the details, but the larger point stands beyond any doubt. The remarkable thing is that the Judeans return from the Exile. Not all of them. Most of them, in fact, didn't return. But some of them did. They rebuild their Temple. They try to recreate life as it had been before. We don't know of any other exiled people from this period who returned from exile to reestablish traditional institutions and modes of worship. But the Judeans did. So somehow, for 70 years or more, they managed to retain their identity, retain their religion and their values strongly enough to motivate them to return and try to start over. So was this the period when Judaism as we know it was established? We see the emergence of something we might begin to call Judaism. How so? We have the creation of diaspora Jewish communities, communities living outside the land of Israel with a clear Jewish identity. We have not seen that before. We have the emergence of the Torah and the idea that all Israelites are united by a single public book that all Israelites are to study and whose commandments all Israelites are to observe. We find the emergence of the ideology that we Israelites are to remain distinct from our non-Israelite neighbors. We may not intermarry with them. Many scholars argue that we have the beginnings of public prayer during this period, the earliest versions of the synagogue. I'm not convinced that this is so, but if it is so, it's yet another sign that we have the beginnings of Judaism. In exile, far from Jerusalem, the Israelites found ways to reinforce their beliefs and pass them down to future generations. Enlarge Photo credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation The experience of the Babylonian Exile is the mother of Judaism. It is during this period that the Judeans realize that they can be loyal to God even far away from their homeland. Without a temple, without the priesthood, without kings, without all the institutional trappings they had enjoyed in the old days—without any of that—they are still able to worship God, be loyal to God and to follow God's commandments. This is the foundation of Judaism.