Jesus' miracles ... contesting a core assumption of Judaic Law - 'the unclean'

[Penelope]

Miracles are never miraculous - never supernatural.

Miracles are either ...
1. Something natural, but misunderstood.
2. A fraud - magician's trickery. Or ...
3. Sheer coincidence.

& & &

A male member of my family on my mother's line, 200-some years ago, was laid out in church at his funeral service. He was just an infant.

Midway thru the service, the infant sat up.

Had this happened two hours later, the kid would have been buried. And I and my maternal ancestors would never have existed.

Should my daughter grow up to become President of the United States, there may be some who would look back to that 18th century funeral and call what happened "a miracle." But they would be fools.

It was a piece of good luck.

Archeologists have disinterred a coffin, here and there, from all eras where the occupant clawed at their wooden prison. The person obviously died an agonizing death, deep underground. It was not out of superstition that many 19th century graveyards set a bell above a recent cemetery burial site, with attached string reaching into the buried casket. These things happened.

"He is not dead, but sleeping," Jesus said to relatives of a person assumed-dead. A person destined to became one of Jesus' three resurrection miracles. No signs of rigor mortis are mentioned in the Biblical texts. So I, personally, choose to take Jesus' words literally. Or, more precisely, that the person was in a coma with weak (indiscernible) heartbeat. No stethoscopes or EKG machines were around, as a double-check, back then in the first century ce. Jesus had the art to draw them out of their coma. For the three fortunate individuals, that was miracle enough.

& & &

Snake-oil salesmen have a long, dishonorable history in American culture. While a few might have been honest herbalists (predecessors of contemporary healthfood stores), most were con-men. They'd take a few foul-tasting but harmless ingredients and spike them with alcohol, and sell them by the jarful. They'd usually have some ringer in each audience, with palsy or a twisted spine. He or she would put down their dollar and take a sip. Suddenly their jitters would end or their back would straighten.

On the American TV program Law & Order: Criminal Intent, this scenario was updated - based upon an actual case. An in-home nurse to terminal cancer patients talked her patients off their meds and onto her "cure." Each patient appeared to vastly improve. She milked these terminally ill patients for every penny - leaving them no legacy for their children, when they died ... Which each patient soon did. They had terminal cancer.

The nurse's magic elixir was spiked with a narcotic which induced euphoria - a sense of energy and well-being. Between that and going off of the cancer drugs, with those drugs' mind-numbing side-effects, the nurse gave these patients a very palpable sense of hope.

False hope, of the cruelest and most cynical kind.

I'm sure many 'healers' are self-deluded into believing their 'healing' actually helps. Medical studies have shown temporary improvements to people taking placebos. So, yes ... 'hope' may be more beneficial than despair - to the desperate.

But there is no miracle here. Just Biochemistry, a natural science - one where there is still a lot to be learned.

& & &

One of the broadest medical complaint, which 19th century doctors in Europe and America were asked to treat, was called 'neurasthenia.' It afflicted mostly members of the middle-class, most of these being women. It was a psychosomatic illness, where the patient magnified every little itch and twitch in their body into some kind of melodramatic suffering. The smart doctors prescribed exercise and doing works outside the home, like volunteering for charity kitchens. Give the patient something worthwhile to occupy their time and the sense of ennui and purposeless would evaporate. Most who took their doctor's advice would 'miraculously' recover. They would stop inventing pain in their body just to pinch themselves into believing they were alive.

But sometimes the inner pain - though not physical pain - proved deep and very real. Sigmund Freud - treating mostly middle-class Jewish women - helped these individuals uncover and come to terms with deep personal traumas, buried in their psyche from childhood. These patients often felt overburdened with a sense 'guilt' where there was no objective reason to feel that way. Freud's practice of Psychoanalysis unburdened these individuals - freed them - from their needless guilt. (It would be silly to call Psychoanalysis a 'miracle cure' - but for many it, indeed, proved to be so.)

& & &

Rewind 19 centuries from Freud and neurasthenia, to Jewish Palestine in the time of Jesus. Under Judaic Law of that era, if you did not feel 'guilt' you were somehow less than human. 'Guilt' is an anchor that God has tied to you - and which, in turn, ties you to God.

If you lived amongst the Jews but were not a Jew (thus a 'Gentile') you were considered unclean under Judaic Law. If you were a Jew/Gentile half-breed (a 'Samaritan'), you were considered very unclean. If you were blind, you or your parents must have done something despicable in God's eyes, thus you were unclean. Same, if you had a disease or physical affliction of any kind. It was God's punishment. You were unclean.

Even a Jew, in the most perfect health, was always under a cloud. If you eat the wrong food, or eat at the wrong time of day in the wrong season - you are unclean. Or if you do not wear your clothes just so, or your hair just so, or your beard just so - you were unclean. There were several hundred rules you might break under Judaic Law - and be guilty. Just touch someone (accidentally or intentionally) who is considered unclean, and there is a whole bank of rituals you must go thru to cleanse yourself, to become clean again. Jesus' world is a world consumed by guilt.

& & &

In a world overwrought with 'guilt,' the proportion of individuals with psychosomatic illnesses and physical afflictions must have been far higher than it is today, probably higher than the 19th century with its neurasthenia. Healers, in Jesus day, had the odds in their favor. Say, one in a 100 blind or crippled persons that a healer approached were psychosomatically blind or crippled? Maybe one in ten ... so wracked with unwarranted guilt, with their self-sense of uncleanness ... ? 'Healers' in Palestine were as numerous as 'snake-oil salesmen' in 19th century America. Why not? It was a good con.

In a few cases, with a few 'healers,' it might have been a noble con-job (pre-Psychoanalysis 'miracle cure'). But con-job - it certainly was.

& & &

These 'healers' went after the symptoms, and gave temporary solutions.

Jesus was different.
Like Freud, Jesus went after the root-cause.

& & &

When Jesus healed someone, he said:

"From this moment - backwards in time all the way to your birth, and beyond - you are sinless." There is no guilt, you are clean, you are a clean slate. "Go and sin no more." Everything you do - from this moment forward - is morally on you. But the past is gone. You are not responsible for it.

DISABILITY (imperfection - being physically or mentally challenged) DOES NOT EQUAL SIN.

You are not responsible for the parts of your past you could not control. You are also not unclean just because you do not obeying every detail of Judaic Law. Look around you. Are these Greeks evil and unclean because they labor on the Sabbath or dress and groom differently than we do? Judaic Law is not God's Law. It is the law of one tribe of people. All tribes have different laws. What makes their laws bad and ours good? Nothing. Each are just customs.

YOU HAVE A WORTHY PLACE IN THIS WORLD.

There is only one Law that God recognizes. It is how one person on this planet acts toward another person on this planet. It is a Moral Law.

Behave well toward others, and you will shine in the eyes of God.

& & &

That ... is the miracle that Jesus performed.

He touched the unclean. Jesus touched the 'dead,' Jesus touched the 'diseased,' Jesus touched the 'blind,' touched 'prostitutes and adulteresses.' And he did not perform purification rituals upon himself, afterwards. And he performed these acts (these acts of kindness, these acts of uncleanness), intentionally. Earning him the rage and contempt of Jewish religious authorities. He shoved it in their faces. Shoved in their face the big lie. No. God is not in the 'punishment' business. It is not how God operates.

Look at this Roman world we live in. There are no nations. Everyone trades with everyone else. There is no person and no thing which is inherently unclean. There is no guilt for things beyond your control. All 'sins' of demeanor and diet are forgiven. There is no good blood and bad blood - only human blood. God does not favor one genotype over another. There are no Samaritans and Gentiles and Jews. There are only people.

There are only individual persons.

& & &

One person to another person.

This is where you find God.

 

[Avi]

There are only individual persons.

& & &

One person to another person.

This is where you find God.

Penelope, although I don't exactly agree with the path that you follow, I do agree with your conclusion. You are pretty cool !!

 

[bananabrain]

Miracles are never miraculous - never supernatural.

er... what? if they're not supernatural, they're not miracles. the definition of a miracle is that it is a suspension of natural laws to allow for a different outcome. if it is any one of the three things you mentioned, it's just not a miracle. miracles are, consequently, pretty rare.

Should my daughter grow up to become President of the United States, there may be some who would look back to that 18th century funeral and call what happened "a miracle." But they would be fools. It was a piece of good luck.

i agree.

Under Judaic Law of that era, if you did not feel 'guilt' you were somehow less than human.

isn't that the definition of a sociopath? i don't see the issue here - someone who doesn't feel guilt over bad actions is surely not to be admired, but rather requires either medical attention, re-education or sanction, isn't that right?

'Guilt' is an anchor that God has tied to you - and which, in turn, ties you to God.

that's an interesting way of putting it - i would go to a more fundamental level. guilt arises from action, which comes about through responsibility for this action, which in turn comes about through choice to take the action, which comes about through the mechanism of free will to act or not act upon a desire. now, desire is built into all living, breathing creatures, whether in the form of instinct or something more sophisticated. but the choice to obey that desire or not is that which makes us human. that is the significance of the story of the garden of eden - lack of free-will makes you less than human. thus, G!D "Hardened pharaoh's heart", but pharaoh was still free to decide not to obey his less praiseworthy drives. that he was aware, but still did not so do is what made him responsible, just as if you know you can't afford to pay the bill for a pair of shoes, but you stick it on the credit card nonetheless.

If you lived amongst the Jews but were not a Jew (thus a 'Gentile') you were considered unclean under Judaic Law.

gosh, where to start with this? ok, the word "unclean". to quote myself from here:

http://www.interfaith.org/forum/leviticus-9097.html

one thing you need to basically understand in terms of what the Torah is concerned with is the concept generally translated as "clean" or "unclean", which is in fact a completely misleading mistranslation and has *nothing* to do with hygiene, nor does it attach a value-judgement to these states - in fact, the best comparison would be with "positive" and "negative" terminals in batteries or electrical engineering; obviously, there is nothing intrinsically "positive" or "negative" about this stuff. however, if the system is "connected up" incorrectly, the energy can't flow. the Torah concepts of "tuma" and "tahara", which are the words we are talking about, are best compared to two incompatible types of energy which flow through a conceptual system of pipes (like meridians) which relate to the different systems of the human body. non-permitted foods will "block" the "pipes". in the same way, these "pipes" are also time-coded, in other words, there are times when you can put certain energy through the pipes and times when they need downtime, reverse energy or rest.

i am by no means an expert on the tuma-tahara system, as i agree it is immensely complex. its purpose is primarily concerned with avoiding the tuma state associated with the body of a dead human or piece thereof, which in the system is called a "primary source". something which has been touched by a dead human has secondary tuma, or a temporary or permanent structure in which a primary source has been and something touched by a secondary source, tertiary tuma. other sources of equivalent levels of tuma include seminal emissions, menstruation, large carcasses and so on. i think that's as far as it goes, but don't quote me on it. by the same token, in order to engage in certain activities, e.g. sex, Temple worship or other ritual interactions, you would need to be "tahor", which was generally achieved by a combination of time-expiry and immersion into a ritual pool or MiQWeH ("mikvah"). water enables time-expired tuma to be replaced by tahara.

If you were a Jew/Gentile half-breed (a 'Samaritan'), you were considered very unclean.

i've never heard this. what's your source? jews can marry samaritans and, in any case, that's not what samaritans are.

If you were blind, you or your parents must have done something despicable in God's eyes, thus you were unclean. Same, if you had a disease or physical affliction of any kind. It was God's punishment. You were unclean.

i've never heard this either - what's your source?

Even a Jew, in the most perfect health, was always under a cloud.

and not just because of tuma! we had other things to worry about too, like the romans.

If you eat the wrong food, or eat at the wrong time of day in the wrong season - you are unclean. Or if you do not wear your clothes just so, or your hair just so, or your beard just so - you were unclean.

sorry, penelope, but that's just plain wrong. if i eat a big pork sausage on Shabbat, i'm *wrong* - but i don't acquire tuma.

There were several hundred rules you might break under Judaic Law - and be guilty.

i think it might be a bit more than several hundred! 613 is the basic number...

Just touch someone (accidentally or intentionally) who is considered unclean, and there is a whole bank of rituals you must go thru to cleanse yourself, to become clean again.

only if you want to perform certain actions. for example, if someone smacks a levite with a bacon sarnie, they're going to need to dunk before turning up for their shift at the Temple, but they're not going to do as much as, say, the high priest on, say, yom kippur.

In a world overwrought with 'guilt,' the proportion of individuals with psychosomatic illnesses and physical afflictions must have been far higher than it is today, probably higher than the 19th century with its neurasthenia.

fair enough, but apart from tzara'at-type leprosy, there were/are no actual physical, mental or emotional manifestations of tuma - the entire thing is about your ritual fitness to engage in certain spiritual activities. a "healer" can't make you tahor - only time and a miqweh can do that.

Healers, in Jesus day, had the odds in their favor. Say, one in a 100 blind or crippled persons that a healer approached were psychosomatically blind or crippled? Maybe one in ten ... so wracked with unwarranted guilt, with their self-sense of uncleanness ... ? 'Healers' in Palestine were as numerous as 'snake-oil salesmen' in 19th century America. Why not? It was a good con.

i think i'm starting to see your point here, basically it seems as if you're saying that jesus was addressing the psychological, emotional issues that presumably went along with considering one's state as tuma. except, of course, you are in fact presuming that these existed. i'm not aware of jewish sources that talk about people feeling guilty about being tuma. if you're talking about blind, diseased or crippled people being treated as if they were being punished by G!D, fair enough, i am sure that was a widespread issue back then just as it is now and equally reprehensible. however, i can't see where the system of tuma and tahara becomes a cause of such things, unless it is through sloppy thinking and simple, human prejudice.

"From this moment - backwards in time all the way to your birth, and beyond - you are sinless." There is no guilt, you are clean, you are a clean slate. "Go and sin no more." Everything you do - from this moment forward - is morally on you. But the past is gone. You are not responsible for it.

ah, but here we're talking about moral guilt and, in what jesus is saying, he is in complete agreement with the Torah and the rabbis - he is talking about "teshuvah", our word for repentance/atonement/changing your ways. he is saying, if you ask me, that there's no such thing as birth-guilt, or inherited sin, but, rather we are each responsible for our own actions and, in this, he agrees with us. i don't see what's so controversial here.

Judaic Law is not God's Law. It is the law of one tribe of people.

the two are not mutually exclusive.

He touched the unclean. Jesus touched the 'dead,' Jesus touched the 'diseased,' Jesus touched the 'blind,' touched 'prostitutes and adulteresses.' And he did not perform purification rituals upon himself, afterwards.

oh, i see what you mean. but how do you know he didn't? does it specifically say "but afterwards, he did not purify himself"? besides, the Law did not require these people to be touched by anyone for them to become tahor, only that they change their ways, repent and follow the Torah - which would of course have required immersion.

what do you think baptism is? jesus himself immersed in the jordan, didn't he?

And he performed these acts (these acts of kindness, these acts of uncleanness), intentionally. Earning him the rage and contempt of Jewish religious authorities. He shoved it in their faces. Shoved in their face the big lie. No. God is not in the 'punishment' business. It is not how God operates.

er, what? no, he deliberately broke Torah law in public, deliberately provoked the roman military occupation and deliberately allowed himself to be held up as the messiah when he in no way met the criteria. if he shoved anything in anyone's faces, it was the corruption of the political sanhedrin (not the religious one) by collaboration with the roman authorities and that got him executed for his trouble. besides, if he wanted to show that G!D wasn't "in the punishment business", getting executed wasn't a great way of doing it if you knew that society at large saw any disadvantage as ultimately coming from G!D. i don't see that it did, as it happens, so your conclusion doesn't really stack up.

Look at this Roman world we live in. There are no nations. Everyone trades with everyone else.

that's not the definition of a "nation". jewish law allows trading with anyone (apart from for the purposes of idolatry).

There is no person and no thing which is inherently unclean.

didn't he heal a dead guy at one point? lazarus? that would be a far better illustration of this point.

There is no guilt for things beyond your control.

that is what we say as well.

All 'sins' of demeanor and diet are forgiven.

provided you stop indulging in them! "go - and sin no more", ain't it?

There is no good blood and bad blood - only human blood. God does not favor one genotype over another. There are no Samaritans and Gentiles and Jews. There are only people.

Are you not as the people of Ethiopia to Me, O children of Israel?" declares G!D. "Have I not Brought up Israel from the land of Egypt and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir? - amos 9:7

There are only individual persons.

i believe jesus still retained the notion of the "kingdom of G!D", though, rather than being some sort of individualist.

i admire what you're trying to do here, i think, but i think you're using judaism as a straw man.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Penelope]

Primitive Christianity - in its contemporary setting (1956) by Rudolph Bultmann (section on "Judaism").

Various writings by John Shelby Spong on "the Jewish Jesus" (e.g. Jesus for the Non-Religious).

Bananabrain,
These are both liberal, tolerant Christian thinkers. Not Jew-bashers. Uncomfortable as I sometimes am with their core beliefs, I do trust their scholarship.

& & &

I sometimes picture you in my mind, Bananabrain, as living in a tall house with little furniture and almost no windows. A few 2m-high windows, but the width of each window measures less than a nose.

I feel like you see the Jewish community now as largely unchanged from what it was in the Middle Ages. And the community of that era, little different than that of the 1st century ce. And that hardly changed from the 6th century bce. And that community little different from ...

When I look at history, I personally don't see that kind of continuity anywhere I look. All I see is change.

Jewish Palestine during Jesus' lifetime - there was a lot happening there. It was an exciting time. But my take on that world, is that the Jewish community there was a pretty divided - a pretty messed-up - community. A lot of intrigue, a lot of hostility between religious authorities. And a lot of anxiety amongst the average folk. Mixed messages. No clear leadership.

Jews living outside Palestine in this era, I get the impression, half-preferred their exile. They would make pilgrimages to Jerusalem at festival times of year, but were otherwise glad to be out of the fray. Return home to Antioch, or Turkey, or Egypt. Speak Greek (not Hebrew or Aramaic), mix with non-Jews, lead a cosmopolitan life, perform a more relaxed version of the Religious rituals. Pay Roman taxes and obey Roman laws. Get on with life.

In Palestine, the social/political/religious situation was too knotted in complexities for people to just "get on with life." And it was a bit like the House of Bananabrain I described, above. The Jewish community in Palestine looked mostly inward. Turned in on itself. Could not see the world it lived in, beyond its borders, except in the narrowest of scope. Then ...

Two generations after Jesus' death, the community in Palestine rises up in a disastrous rebellion. Tunnel vision. I'm sure most of the Jews living abroad were worldly-wise enough to realize that this war was doomed from the get-go. They grieved, and worried about Roman retaliation around the Empire, but glad they were well out of it.

66ce profoundly changed early Christianity, and more profoundly changed Judaism. In the decades after 70ce, each community begins to seriously 'get its act together.' Nothing like a deep trauma to bring the squabbling to a stop and get everyone pulling in the same direction. Looking to the future, not bickering over petty proprieties. But these were two entirely separate religions, now.

This is my impression - what I surmise about Palestine and about the Jewish Diaspora in the time of Jesus - from what little history of this era I can claim to know or can guess from my knowledge of historical patterns, generally.

I seriously doubt very many Jews - in Palestine or elsewhere in the Empire - were practicing their rituals and parsing their thinking about their daily actions as meticulously as you do, Bananabrain, today in 2009. I'd be surprised if 2 in a 100 were just so conscientious. But this does not stop the vast majority of 30bce Jews from feeling guilty about their negligence. Most of whom were not scholars or rabbis. Most ... likely had little clue (short of committing an out-and-out crime) regarding what they needed to feel guilty about and what they need not. They JUST ... FELT ... GUILTY.

& & &

Rules here were good - regarding personal sanitation, hygiene, and diet - at a time and place where it was often inconvenient for people to wash their hands, bath, and wash their clothes regularly and scrupulously. Wash dishes, cook foods thoroughly to rid them of bacteria. Some mushrooms are poisonous, some are not. Some wild berries are nutritious and healthy, some are poisonous. A regimen of rules is good here. Keeps the individual (and family members) healthy.

But putting yeast and milk in bread-products, or not doing so ... Not eating pork, or eating pork. These are arbitrary rules, which have nothing to do with sanitation, hygiene, or a healthy diet. (Unless, say, you are allergic to milk or are lactose-intolerant ... ) There is no necessary logic for a person to be required to follow these rules. And certainly no reason to feel guilty for not adhering to these rules. Just peer-pressure, outmoded custom. (Though there is something to be said for setting arbitrary limits upon one's behavior ... as a matter of personal discipline.)

There might be a danger to your health by touching a person with an active disease (leprosy to the common cold). But no danger in touching a blind, deaf, dumb or crippled person, nor someone in moral disrepute. Sickness was little understood then (and less so 4-6 centuries earlier, when the rules were written down), but there is a point at which common-sense should have prevailed. This is where Jesus stepped in.

There was likely a kind of moral snobbery going on, too, I'd guess. Shut it out. Shut not just 'the immoral' - but shut the visually 'disgusting' - out of sight and out of mind. 'Moral snobbery' ... which is not the least bit moral, by any stretch. This is where Jesus stepped in.

& & &

This interests me.
I am dubious about Jesus' divinity (no matter how you define this word).
But it interests me how Jesus had the chutzpah to step into the breach.

Jesus did not have tunnel vision.

 

[Tao_Equus]

Sometimes the obvious needs said. Well done again Penelope....two great thread starters in one day...you are spoiling us!!

 

[bananabrain]

[bultmann and spong] are both liberal, tolerant Christian thinkers. Not Jew-bashers. Uncomfortable as I sometimes am with their core beliefs, I do trust their scholarship.

i'm sure neither are jew-bashers, but that doesn't mean i am obliged to accept their axioms, analysis or conclusions. you are entitled to do so if you wish. i've not read much by either, but it didn't take me too long to locate this objection to the position of bultmann:

The problem, as Protestants see it, is that the ladder is unclimbable (or rather that all climbers are incapable). No one can merit salvation by measuring up to G!D’s demands. In short, justification is by faith, not works. Law, in this view, has a negative and heuristic function.

[...]

Their “misuse” of the Law constitutes arrogance -- storming the gates of heaven with self-righteousness as a battering ram, they thereby violate God’s sovereignty. The very effort to attain righteousness under the Law, according to Rudolf Bultmann, “is already sin” (all quotations from The Theology of the New Testament [Scribner’s, 1955]). Furthermore, it leads to shallow and inferior religiosity. For Bultmann, Jews appear interested only in “minutely fulfilling the law’s stipulation,” with fulfilling the “letter of the law” without “asking the reason, the meaning of the demand.” This orientation concerns itself only with externals. The Law is obeyed only for the sake of reward. Jewish obedience is always “purely formal,” a kind of grudging compliance to an external demand which is inevitably described as a “burden.”

Jewish obedience is also episodic, lasting only as long as one’s confrontation with the burdensome commandment endures. Or as Bultmann puts it, “obedience, obedience again and again in the concrete case.” In contrast, Protestantism is presented as the superior religion of internal transformation, which replaces intermittent compliance to external demands with ‘‘radical obedience,’’ a surrender of ‘‘the whole will’’ to the sovereignty of God. For Protestants, then, Judaism is legalistic, and consequently arrogant, deludedly self-righteous, shallow and hopelessly trapped under the burden of trivial externals.

Some of these judgments result from sheer misunderstanding, others from radically different fundamental assumptions about the human relationship with G!D.

Protestants, Jews and the Law by Denis E. Owen and Barry Mesch (1984, uni of florida)

Protestants, Jews and the Law

there's a lot more, but obviously it's clear that one can identify a number of fundamental misunderstandings of judaism in the writings of bultmann at least without having to resort to accusations of "jew-bashing".

I sometimes picture you in my mind, Bananabrain, as living in a tall house with little furniture and almost no windows. A few 2m-high windows, but the width of each window measures less than a nose.

with all due respect, that is your perception rather than the reality. it is hardly my fault if you are determined to present fundamentally misconceived critiques of jewish texts, beliefs and practices and then get all bent out of shape when someone points out that you've got things wrong. if you want to understand judaism, ask a jew - not a protestant theologian, however liberal he may be. it seems to me that you are determined to deny the possibility that your arguments may be less than convincing by trying to paint me (to whom? yourself?) as someone who sits here with my fingers in my ears and my eyes closed. if you are going to say "judaism is X", thereby telling me you know better than me what my religion tells me, then you'd better be ready to produce evidence to show that you can back it up. so far, you have produced nothing but straw-manning.

I feel like you see the Jewish community now as largely unchanged from what it was in the Middle Ages.

in some ways it isn't - and many of those ways are ways i think it needs to change. however, this is a generalisation. could you be more specific?

And the community of that era, little different than that of the 1st century ce. And that hardly changed from the 6th century bce.

the thing is, penelope, is that we have a way of eavesdropping on the conversations of those times, via the oral law and the halakhic literature. it is astonishing - actually astounding - how similar the personalities, concerns and speech patterns are. but then again, you wouldn't know that unless you actually studied them. these people are very real, for all the mythology that surrounds them, because we can see not only their legends, but their actual legal opinions. via treasure troves like the cairo genizah, via the tools of historians, we can gain an insight into the real personalities of figures like maimonides and nachmanides and, d'ye know what? they're real, recognisable humans. archaeologists have found miqwehs, tefillin and other finds from these periods - and they're *exactly the same*. now, obviously the community has changed massively in many ways, but unless you're living in it, you're really not going to *see* any kind of continuity.

But my take on that world, is that the Jewish community there was a pretty divided - a pretty messed-up - community. A lot of intrigue, a lot of hostility between religious authorities. And a lot of anxiety amongst the average folk. Mixed messages. No clear leadership.

i absolutely agree.

Jews living outside Palestine in this era, I get the impression, half-preferred their exile. They would make pilgrimages to Jerusalem at festival times of year, but were otherwise glad to be out of the fray. Return home to Antioch, or Turkey, or Egypt. Speak Greek (not Hebrew or Aramaic), mix with non-Jews, lead a cosmopolitan life, perform a more relaxed version of the Religious rituals. Pay Roman taxes and obey Roman laws. Get on with life.

indeed - it was these sort of jews, mostly, that became christians when it became politically expedient to do so - how do you think christianity took over so fast? because it had a willing seed-bed.

In Palestine, the social/political/religious situation was too knotted in complexities for people to just "get on with life."

religious complexity *is* how we "just get on with life". why can't you understand this?

The Jewish community in Palestine looked mostly inward. Turned in on itself. Could not see the world it lived in, beyond its borders, except in the narrowest of scope.

i'm sorry, but this is pure sophistry and assertion, based on what evidence?

In the decades after 70ce, each community begins to seriously 'get its act together.' Nothing like a deep trauma to bring the squabbling to a stop and get everyone pulling in the same direction. Looking to the future, not bickering over petty proprieties. But these were two entirely separate religions, now.

in fact, christianity did not properly split from judaism for quite a long time after that. the trauma of 70CE was not the death of jesus - a minor matter of local interest to most jews - but the destruction of the Temple by the romans. read josephus' "the jewish war" - a contemporary account, even if he did suck up to the romans rather more than he should have.

what little history of this era I can claim to know or can guess from my knowledge of historical patterns, generally.

perhaps if you actually *read* some of this history or understood the jewish context of the C1st-C2nd you might come to more informed conclusions!

I seriously doubt very many Jews - in Palestine or elsewhere in the Empire - were practicing their rituals and parsing their thinking about their daily actions as meticulously as you do, Bananabrain, today in 2009.

well, perhaps if you were studying the texts you might have a different view on that - i will of course grant that the tannaitic and amoraic rabbis regarded most of their co-religionists as somewhat lax, of course, considering most "'amei ha-aretz" or "bumpkins" but then again, most jews nowadays are pretty ignorant and/or unobservant about their judaism, if not other things. so, there, i'd say not much has changed there, either.

Rules here were good - regarding personal sanitation, hygiene, and diet - at a time and place where it was often inconvenient for people to wash their hands, bath, and wash their clothes regularly and scrupulously.

except that these were not the reasons given for the rules, neither at that time, nor at present.

But putting yeast and milk in bread-products, or not doing so ... Not eating pork, or eating pork. These are arbitrary rules, which have nothing to do with sanitation, hygiene, or a healthy diet.

we've never said they did have anything to do with any of those things - but that isn't the same as being arbitrary. where you are going wrong is in assuming that these are the only two options.

Just peer-pressure, outmoded custom.

so what, penelope, do you do with someone like me, who was not subject to peer-pressure and actually made the choice as an adult to opt in? surely you do not regard me as so unfeasibly stupid as to wake up one morning and think "oh, i know, what daft old customs can i take on to ruin my life with?" no - there's something completely different going on, something deeper - which you are failing to get, because you're not interested in asking the right questions.

There was likely a kind of moral snobbery going on, too, I'd guess.

just as there is here in this thread, i suspect.

b'shalom

bananabrain