When Did the Jews Become Jres?

[Rhondazvous]

According to what I've read, the Torah was written four centuries after King David died.

1. How can he talk about the law (the law is contained in the Torah or Pentateuch) and commandments of god when the law hadn't been written yet?

2. How could Moses have written the law when he was born (as a character in ancient mythology not a historical figure) before David?

3. What did the Jews read before the Torah?

4. The Torah was wiritten a during the Babylonian Exile. Could it be said then that Judaism was created to solidify the Jews as a people and the Torah is a rewrite of Jewish history?

[Mr Greene]

1 & 2 never existed.

3 Sumerian Epics including Gilgamesh and Sargon which they blatantly plagiarised for the OT.

4 Well to justify Ezra's seizure of power if that's what you mean.

[brewer]

Hi Rhonda, very nice to hear from you.

I don't care about the jews. Their false entitlement pisses me off.

[Rhondazvous]

Hi Rhonda, very nice to hear from you.

I don't care about the jews. Their false entitlement pisses me off.

Hey Brew,

Well, it's not about the Jews, per se. I was at first curious about the myth of Lilith and that led me to look up the dates of the Torah. Since Christianity is based on Judaism, any discrepancy in ancient Jewish textual history brings the whole thing into question.

I've always wondered why we have a forum for Christianity and Islam but none for Judaism?

[Mr Greene]

Lack of missionaries seeking converts perhaps?

[Rhondazvous]

Lack of missionaries seeking converts perhaps?

True. Judaism isn't an evangelical religion. They used to kill everybody who didn't convert. But that was all about them stealing land.

My neighbor told me the creation of the Jewish state in the middle east is a fulfillment of prophecy. That's crazy. If god gave them that land why are they still fighting for it after more than 70 years?

[Brian37]

According to what I've read, the Torah was written four centuries after King David died.

1. How can he talk about the law (the law is contained in the Torah or Pentateuch) and commandments of god when the law hadn't been written yet?

2. How could Moses have written the law when he was born  (as a character in ancient mythology not a historical figure) before David?

3. What did the Jews read before the Torah?

4. The Torah was wiritten a during the Babylonian Exile. Could it be said then that Judaism was created to solidify the Jews as a people and the Torah is a rewrite of Jewish history?

When did any upstart religion in human history take hold? Worldwide in all of our species history, and especially back in antiquity, we did not have sudden mass media like we do now. But competition of resources and ideas took place, even back then. 

The mythology of Buddha is a perfect example of why all religions are simply a matter of long term, not one single event, but long term social competition of ideas. If you ask one sect of Buddhist where he was born, they will say one thing. Ask another sect of Buddhist and they will give you another location. But funny how Hinduism is far older, but share some of the same motifs such as reincarnation and Karma.  And even the earliest mythologies of Buddha had his Queen mother Maya being told by the divine world she would give birth to a child who would bring wisdom to the world, and even he avoided standard birth in that mythology and was born out of her side.

There is no one mythology that lead to Jews or Christians or Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus.

The reality of all religions is that they only take hold out of story telling, competition with others and mythology. 

If our species had never concocted any of the major popular religions we know today, we would have made up something else.

Think about all the other dead religions in the world that nobody believes in. And then ponder what life will look like in 10,000 years if humans don't kill ourselves off. In the future we can expect to see current religions morph into something unrecognizable, or completely die out and be seen as the mythologies we accept as such today.

BUT, in regards to the Hebrew religion, my take on it is that it is nothing more than a long term result of competing Canaanite polytheistic tribes in which "Yahweh" was a lesser god in the divine family under the head god "El".  The first known Hebrews simply won the PR battle between tribes and replaced "El" with "Yahweh" and those winners ended up writing the earliest Jewish holy writings long term.

You cant pinpoint the exact moment any religion in human history starts. You can only observe marketing, and competition and popularity that arises over time.

[Mr Greene]

Lack of missionaries seeking converts perhaps?

True. Judaism isn't an evangelical religion. They used to kill everybody who didn't convert. But that was  all about them stealing land.

My neighbor told me the creation of the Jewish state in the middle east  is a fulfillment of prophecy. That's crazy. If god gave them that land why are they still fighting for it after  more than 70 years?

Well the prophet never existed and prophesy is false.
Simple fact is they took the land by armed force, and thus need to hold it by armed force.
There can be no peace in that place.

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You cant pinpoint the exact moment any religion in human history starts. You can only observe marketing, and competition and popularity that arises over time.

Actually with regards to Judaism we can.
It didn't exist prior to the Macedonian conquest, before that we find the polytheistic shrines and temples.
They are all desecrated and burnt at the time of the Macedonian conquest, and we know it wasn't the Macedonians, (Alexander went to considerable lengths to show regard for local beliefs eg; Pilgrimage to the Oracle at Siwa, Daily sacrifice of a ram and readings of omens by soothsayers.)
Ezra goes to some length to describe and promote the desecration of polytheistic shrines and murder of those performing polytheistic rites.
Ezra was the Joseph Smith of Judaism.

[Rev. Rye]

I have two words that can explain all your questions: oral transmission.

[The Grand Nudger]

Not only that, but the OT appears to be a reliable source of information on things like period warfare and armaments...just not in the centuries that the story is said to take place in.