(November 25, 2021 at 10:57 pm)Foxaire Wrote: Following this line of reasoning, Judaism is paganism 2.0.
It was indeed once.
Jews as a people did not exist before the Exodus.
There were proto Israelites in pre history. They worshipped El, a Sumerian storm and a war god, plus his wife, Asherath who was part of the Canaanite pantheon.
Israeli archaeologists, Siberman and Finklestein discovered hundreds of small statues of a female deity in Israel, dating to ca 3rd century bce. The Israelites did not become monotheists until after the Exodus. Judaism reckons the Exodus as having occurred during the reign of Ramses The Great. (1303-1213 bce) In any case, the Torah was actually written down sometime between the Fourth and Sixth Centuries bce.
The findings of the female goddesses in Israel dating to the fourth century bce suggests that although monotheism may have become the state religion centuries before, that people held on to at least some of their old gods for some time.
Judaism is the first of the three Abrahamic faiths. The other two being Christianity and Islam. The Prophet Abraham is revered in all three faiths. The three faiths all worship the same one god.
Yes, there were Jewish sects at the time of Jesus. The Pharisees and the Saducees were not among them(see below). Essenes seem to have been a different sect .The only one of which I am sure was a sect was the Samaritans. Although they called (and still call) themselves Jews, they were not/are not recognised by mainstream Jewry
Of course, you are free to consider Christianity to be anything you like. However, to simply declare that Christianity is just another Jewish sect is a no true Scotsman fallacy and demonstrably untrue. Perhaps take the time to actually read up about the history of Christianity. Perhaps begin with Bart Ehrman.
Minor point: A person's "Jewishness" has always been traced through the maternal line. If one's mother is a Jew, one is also a Jew. Of course this is moot today as the Jews have been not been an identifiable people for centuries.
From the death of Jesus, until the first Nicene Council in the fourth century, there was no such religion as christianity. There were dozens of sects teaching "The Way' of Jesus throughout the Roman world. The sect which became the religion we call christianity was declared the state religion of the Roman empire in the Fourth century. They became literally the last sect extant by the simple expedient of murdering all opposition and burning their books. That practice was continued with gay abandon fort the next 1000 years.
With the references, this is getting a bit long. Think I'll stop here
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The Pharisees (/ˈfærəsiːz/; Hebrew: פְּרוּשִׁים Pərūšīm) were a social movement and a school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis for .
Pharisees - Wikipedia
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The Sadducees (/ˈsædjəsiːz/; Hebrew: צְדוּקִים Ṣĕdûqîm) were a sect or group of Jews who were active in Judea during the Second Temple period, starting from the second century BCE through the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The Sadducees are often compared to other contemporaneous sects, including the Pharisees and the .
Sadducees - Wikipedia
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Samaritans (/səˈmærɪtənz/; Samaritan Hebrew: ࠔࠠࠌࠝࠓࠩࠉࠌ,[2] romanized: [i]Shamerim[/i], transl. Guardians/Keepers [of the Torah]; Hebrew: שומרונים, romanized: Shomronim; Arabic: السامريون, romanized: as-Sāmiriyyūn) or Samaritan people are members of an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites of historical Israel and Judah. They are native to the Levant and adhere to Samaritanism, an Abrahamic, monotheistic and ethnic religion in the Holy Land.[3] Some Samaritan groups exist elsewhere in Brazil, Cuba, Spain, Catania, Sicily, Thailand, United States, Canada, and all around the world who call themselves "Shomrey HaTorah" also known as "Keepers of the Torah" who keep and observe most of the practices and rituals such as the Sabbath, ritual purity, and keeping of the festivals of Samaritanism outside the Holy Land with some exceptions in regards to the Passover sacrificial lamb which can only be observed at Mount Gerizim[4] with members being of Abrahamic faiths, Bnei Anusim, Lost Tribes of Israel, ethnically Jewish, and former-Jewish in origin.[5][6][7]
Samaritans - Wikipedia
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My references for proto Judaism:
Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel, (Eerdmans, ISBN 0-8028-2852-3, 2005),[1] is a book by Syro-Palestinian archaeologist William G. Dever, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Did God Have a Wife? was intended as a popular work making available to the general public the evidence long known to archaeologists regarding ancient Israelite religion: namely that the Israelite god of antiquity (before 600 BCE), Yahweh, had a consort, that her name was Asherah, and that she was part of the .
Did God Have a Wife? - Wikipedia
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, a book published in 2001, discusses the archaeology of Israel and its relationship to the origins and content of the Hebrew Bible. The authors are Israel Finkelstein, Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and Neil Asher Silberman, an archaeologist, historian and contributing editor to Archaeology Magazine.
The Bible Unearthed - Wikipedia
