THST 1080 LMU Abrahamic Religion and Philosophy & Judaism Religion Discussion Attached I have a set of 5 questions that need to be answered in one’s own wo

THST 1080 LMU Abrahamic Religion and Philosophy & Judaism Religion Discussion Attached I have a set of 5 questions that need to be answered in one’s own words. I have reading attached also that the answers are in and just need to be put into one’s own words. The readings are the only things that are necessary for finding the answers to the questionsJust has to be enough to answer the questions in detail.Also just no online internet sources please just the reading i have attached will be good for the questions. Abrahamic Homework Questions (85 points possible)
a. From our study of Judaism, in what ways could we say that the God of Judaism is
a deity that acts in human history? That is, how are Jewish history, beliefs, and
practices informed by God? Explain this Jewish conception of God and provide
concrete examples from the class materials to support your response. (15 points)
b. In our study of Christianities past and present, we discovered that the religion
includes a wide diversity of beliefs and practices, even including sometimes
conflicting understandings of Jesus. How might we account for all the differences
across the Christianities? After completing our studies of Christian history and
beliefs/practices, what have you observed, which might help explain how such a
phenomenon came to be? (15 points)
c. Based on our study of Islam, what appear to you to be major enduring themes in
Islamic theology? Point to at least three distinct concepts/beliefs that you found
prevalent in Islam and explain them. (15 points)
d. In what ways might we say that the Abrahamic religions are similar? That is,
where did you find overlap between all three traditions? Identify and explain!
(20 points)
e. What seem to you to be the primary distinctions or differences between each of
the three Abrahamic religions? That is, what is it about each of them that makes
it unique or distinct from the other two Abrahamic traditions? (20 points)
246 JUDAISM
CHAPTER 8
JUDAISM
A covenant with God
Listen to the Chapter Audio on myreligionlab
KEY TOPICS
• A history of the
Jewish people
246
• Torah
278
• Sacred
practices
283
• Holy days
286
• Contemporary
Judaism 290
Judaism, which has no single founder and no central leader or group making theological decisions, is the diverse tradition associated with the Jewish
people, who may be defined either as a religious group or as an ethnic group.
In religious terms, Jews are those who experience their long and often difficult history as a continuing dialogue with God. In a religious sense, “Israel”
refers to all those who answer the call of God and who acknowledge and strive
to obey the one God, through the Torah, or “teaching,” given to the patriarchs,
Moses, and the prophets.
As a nation, the Jews preserved memories both of being nomads and of
having a homeland in the land of Israel. Both memories contributed to their
survival through millennia of dispersion and oppression. After the horrors of
the Holocaust in the twentieth century, some Jews successfully promoted the
idea of a state for a concentration of Jews in the land of Israel as the only safe
way for Jews to resist anti-Semitism and to survive. Other Jews continued to
believe that they could seek safety in communities around the world. Many
who consider themselves Jews have been born into a Jewish ethnic identity
but do not feel or practice a strong connection to Jewish religious traditions.
Given the persecution, dispersion, and even lack of religiosity among
many Jews, how have they survived as anything more than fossils? Their
survival, and that of Judaism as a whole, has required constant accommodation to changing circumstances. Nonetheless, they have managed to sustain a
remarkable degree of cohesiveness and similar practices and beliefs.
In this chapter we will focus on Judaism as an evolving tradition, first by
taking an overview of the history of the Jewish people and then by examining
the religious concepts and practices that generally characterize the followers
of the Torah today.
A history of the Jewish people
Living Religions, Ninth Edition, by Mary Pat Fisher. Published by Pearson. Copyright © 2014 by Pearson Education, Inc.
ISBN 1-269-46236-9
The Jewish sense of history begins with the stories recounted in the Hebrew
Bible or Tanakh. Biblical history begins with the creation of the world by a
supreme deity, or God, and progresses through the patriarchs, matriarchs, and
Moses who spoke with God and led the people according to God’s commandments, and the prophets who heard God’s warnings to those who strayed from
the commandments. But Jewish history does not end where the stories of the
Tanakh end, about the second century BCE. After the holy center of Judaism,
JUDAISM
TIMELINE
Judaism
BCE
c.1900–1700
Abraham, the first patriarch
c.1300–1200
Moses leads the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt
1207
c.1010–970
961–931
722
586
c.535
515
c.430
167
30
BCE–10 CE
David, king of Judah and Israel
King Solomon builds the first Temple of Jerusalem
Fall of northern kingdom of Israel to Assyria
Fall of southern kingdom of Judah to Babylon; first temple
destroyed; Jews exiled to Babylon
Jews return to Jerusalem and Judaea
Second Temple of Jerusalem built
Torah read to the public by Ezra the Scribe
Maccabean Revolt
Hillel the Elder
70
Jerusalem falls to the Romans and second temple destroyed
c.90
Jewish Canon of Tanakh set, under Rabbi Akiva’s leadership
CE
132–135
Bar Kokhba revolt
c.200
Mishnah compiled
c.500
1095
Babylonian Talmud completed
Crusaders begin massacring Jews in Europe en route to the
Holy Land
1135–1204
Life of Maimonides
1478
The Spanish Inquisition begins
1492
Mass expulsion of Jews from Spain
1555 onward
1654
1700–1760
c.1720–1780
1881
1933–1945
Ghettos of Italy and Germany
Jews begin to settle in North America
The Baal Shem Tov begins Hasidism
The Enlightenment in Europe
Large-scale Jewish migrations to North America begin
The Holocaust, reaching its climax in World War II
1935
Nuremberg Laws
1947
Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls
1950
Law of Return
1948
Israel declared an independent state
1967
The Six-Day War
1972
First woman rabbi ordained
1982
ISBN 1-269-46236-9
Israelites present in Canaan
1990 onward
United Nations supports independent Palestinian state
Israeli–Palestinian conflicts and peace initiatives
2003
Security wall under construction by Israel
2009
First black female rabbi ordained
Living Religions, Ninth Edition, by Mary Pat Fisher. Published by Pearson. Copyright © 2014 by Pearson Education, Inc.
247
248 JUDAISM
the Temple of Jerusalem, was captured and destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE,
Jewish history is that of a dispersed people, finding unity in their evolving
teachings and traditional practices. These were eventually codified in the great
compendium of Jewish law and lore, the Talmud.
Biblical stories
Although knowledge of the early history of the Children of Israel is based
largely on the narratives of the Tanakh, scholars are uncertain of the historical accuracy of the accounts. Some of the people, events, and genealogies set
forth cannot be verified by other evidence. It may be that the Israelites were
too small and loosely organized a group to be noted by historians of other
cultures. No mention of Israel appears in other sources until about 1230 BCE,
but biblical narratives and genealogies place Abraham, said to be the first
patriarch of the Israelites, at about 1700 to 1900 BCE.
Jews hold the Pentateuch, the “five books of Moses” that appear at
the beginning of the Tanakh, as the most sacred part of the scriptures.
Traditionalists believe that these books were divinely revealed to Moses and
written down by him as a single document. Some contemporary biblical
researchers disagree. On the basis of clues such as the use of variant names
for God, they speculate that these books were oral traditions reworked and set
down later by several different sources with the intent of interpreting the formation of Israel from a religious point of view, as the results of God’s actions
in human history. The Pentateuch seems to have assumed its final form in the
days of Ezra the Scribe (fifth century BCE).
The Jewish scriptures
consist of the Torah (or
Pentateuch), the Prophets,
and the Writings. These
books date roughly from the
10th to the 2nd century bce,
and were written mostly in
classical Hebrew. They are
often referred to as Tanakh,
an acronym from the first
syllables of each division—
Torah, Nev’im, Kethuvim.
ISBN 1-269-46236-9
Living Religions, Ninth Edition, by Mary Pat Fisher. Published by Pearson. Copyright © 2014 by Pearson Education, Inc.
JUDAISM
249
ISBN 1-269-46236-9
Some stories in the Pentateuch, such as the Creation, the Garden of Eden,
the Great Flood, and the Tower of Babel, are similar to earlier Mesopotamian
legends. Only the last four books of Israelite history (I and II Samuel and I
and II Kings) are thought to be edited directly from contemporary sources.
Although the accuracy of many of the stories has not yet been independently
documented, they are of great spiritual significance in Christianity and Islam
as well as in Judaism. They are also politically important, for along with the
Talmud they later gave a scattered people a special sense of group identity and
of God’s active role in Jewish history.
From creation to the God of Abraham The Hebrew scriptures begin with
a sweeping poetic account of the creation of heaven and earth by God in six
days, from the time of “the earth being unformed and void, with darkness
over the surface of the deep and a wind from (or: the spirit of) God sweeping over the water.”1 After creating the material universe, God created man
and woman in the divine “image” or “likeness,” placing them as masters of
the earth, rulers of “the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living
things that creep on the earth.”2 In this account, God is portrayed as a transcendent Creator, without origins, gender, or form, a being utterly different
from what has been created. Since Hebrew has no gender-neutral pronouns,
God is generally—though not always—described in male singular terms. This
creation story (in Genesis 1 and 2:1–4) is attributed by scholars to the “priestly
source,” thought to be editors writing immediately before or after the exile of
the Jews to Babylon in 586 BCE.
A second, probably earlier, version of the creation story follows, beginning in Genesis 2:4. It is thought to be a
contribution to the scriptures from the “Yahwist
source,” which used the word transliterated as
“Yahweh” for the supreme deity. Instead of
presenting woman as the equal of man, the
second account of creation portrays her
as an offshoot of Adam, the first man,
formed to keep him company. This version
has commonly been interpreted as blaming woman for the troubles of humanity,
although this reading is not supported in
the Hebrew manuscripts. According to the
legend of Adam and Eve, originally God
placed the first two humans in a garden
paradise. The woman Eve (“mother of all
the living”) was promised wisdom by a
serpent (later often interpreted as a symbol of Satan) to encourage her to taste the
fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and
evil, against God’s command. She gave
some to Adam as well. According to the
legend, this ended their innocence. God
cursed the serpent and the land, and banished Adam and Eve from their garden;
their lives were no longer paradisical nor
were they immortal, for they no longer
had access to the “tree of life.”
Living Religions, Ninth Edition, by Mary Pat Fisher. Published by Pearson. Copyright © 2014 by Pearson Education, Inc.
After eating the fruit of
knowledge, Adam and Eve
are exiled from paradise.
( The Wandering of Adam
and Eve, Abel Pann,
c.1925, Jerusalem. Colored
lithograph.)
250 JUDAISM
The Israelites identified
themselves as a people
whose ancestors, Abraham
and Sarah, moved from Ur
and Haran in Mesopotamia
to Canaan; Abraham’s
grandson, Jacob, called
“Israel,” resettled his large
family in Egypt, where the
Israelites were eventually
treated as slaves.
The theme of exile reappears continually in the Hebrew Bible, and in later
Jewish history the people are rendered homeless again and again. The biblical
narratives emphasize that the people risk God’s displeasure every time they
stray from God’s commands. They are repeatedly exiled from their spiritual
home and continually seek to return to it.
A more optimistic interpretation developed later, however. This was the
feeling that the Jewish people were spread throughout the world by God’s
will, for a sacred purpose: to be good citizens of whatever land they reside
in, and to help raise the imperfect world again to the condition of perfection in which God had created it. The rabbinic tradition, which began in the
first century CE and has shaped Jewish theology into the modern period,
emphasized that the way out of exile was through study and righteous living.
Commandments have their origin in God and, if followed, will lead humanity
back to a life in harmony with God.
ris
Tig
Haran
MESOPOTAMIA
Eu
ph
ra
te
NIC
IA
s
AKKAD
PH
OE
Mediterranean Sea
SUMER
Ur
LOWER EGYPT
CANAAN
IA
ISRAEL
Jordan
Nil
e
Sea of Galilee
Traditional
location of
Mount Sinai
PH
I
U P P E R E G YP T
Dead
Sea
Red Sea
JUDAH
Living Religions, Ninth Edition, by Mary Pat Fisher. Published by Pearson. Copyright © 2014 by Pearson Education, Inc.
ISBN 1-269-46236-9
LI
ST
Jericho
Jerusalem
ISBN 1-269-46236-9
JUDAISM
Covenant A unique belief introduced into Jewish theology was the idea
of a special covenantal relationship between the Jewish people and God. In
this contract both are accountable. On the people’s side, obedience to God
is expected. On the divine side, God grants special favors and is also bound
by his own ethical agreements to the people. The paradigm for this special
relationship is the covenant between God and Abraham on behalf of the
Jewish people. A more universal covenant with humanity as a whole is portrayed in the story of Noah, who was said to be the sole righteous man of his
time.
According to the biblical narrator, who attributes thoughts and emotions
to God, God despairs of the general wickedness of humans, regrets having
created them, and sends a great flood “to destroy all flesh under the sky.”3
The belief that a great flood did occur in Mesopotamia is now supported by
nonbiblical evidence from archaeology, geology, and legends of other peoples,
grounding at least part of the narrative in historical fact. In the biblical story,
God establishes a covenant with Noah and gives directions for the building
of an ark, which saves Noah’s family and two of each of God’s creatures.
God promises never again to destroy the created world or to interfere with
the established natural order, with the rainbow as a sign of this covenant
“between me and all flesh that is on earth.”4
God does, however, continue to intervene in history, according to the
narrators. Ten generations after the legend of Noah, the narrative focuses on
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (the “patriarchs”), and their wives, Sarah, Rebecca,
Leah, and Rachel (the “matriarchs”). According to the biblical narratives,
Abraham was born in Ur (now in Iraq), migrated to Haran (now in Turkey),
and then was called by God to journey to Canaan. With his wife Sarah and
his household, he left the land of his father and also the religion of his father,
a worshiper of the old gods.
Abraham is held up as an example of obedience to God’s commands.
Without hesitation, he is said to undergo circumcision (cutting away of the
foreskin of the penis) as an initiatory rite, a sign of the covenant in which
God agrees to be the divine protector of Abraham and his descendants, with
all males to be likewise circumcised on the eighth day after birth.
Abraham and his wife Sarah were childless for many years. Sarah offered
her servant, the Egyptian woman Hagar, as Abraham’s concubine. According
to social tradition, any child who was born of this relationship was considered
to be the offspring of Abraham and Sarah, and if Sarah herself were to give
birth to a child, it would carry the inheritance rights of the firstborn. After
Hagar conceived a son by Abraham—Ishmael—God blessed Sarah at the age
of ninety, saying that she will become the “mother of nations: the kings of
many people shall spring from her” (Genesis 17:16). According to the biblical
account, Sarah does indeed give birth to a son, Isaac, and then insists that
Ishmael and Hagar be banished to the wilderness. God supports this demand,
assuring Abraham that he will be father of two nations—one line through
Isaac (to become the Israelites) and one through Ishmael (whom Arabs consider their ancestor).
According to the biblical narrative, God tested Abraham by demanding that
he sacrifice his most precious possession, which was his beloved son Isaac (see
Box). Thinkers have struggled to explain this demand, for human sacrifice
was deemed to be very loathsome, but the point of the story seems to be the
merit of Abraham’s great obedience to God. When Abraham prepares to sacrifice Isaac, the Lord stops him, satisfied that “now I know that you fear God.”5
Living Religions, Ninth Edition, by Mary Pat Fisher. Published by Pearson. Copyright © 2014 by Pearson Education, Inc.
251
Abraham’s descendants are
said to have given birth to
the twelve tribes of Israel.
They are symbolically
depicted here as sitting
in the patriarch’s lap.
(Souvigny Bible, 12th
century, France.)
252 JUDAISM
TEACHING STORY
Abraham’s Willingness to Sacrifice Isaac
God put Abraham to the test. He said to him,
“Abraham,” and he answered, “Here I am.” And
He said, “Take your son, your favored one, Isaac,
whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and
offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the
heights that I will point out to you.” So early next
morning, Abraham saddled his ass and took with
him two of his servants and his son Isaac. He split
the wood for the burnt offering, and he set out for
the place of which God had told him. On the third
day Abraham looked up and saw the place from afar.
Then Abraham said to his servants, “You stay here
with the ass. The boy and I will go up there; we will
worship and we will return to you.”
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering
and put it on his son Isaac. He himself took the
firestone and the knife; and the two walked off
together. Then Isaac said to his father Abraham,
“Father!” And he answered, “Yes, my son.” And
he said, “Here are the firestone and the wood, but
where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” And
Abraham said, “God will see to the sheep for His
burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them
walked on together.
They arrived at the place of which God had told
him. Abraham built an altar there; he laid out the
wood; he bound his son Isaac; he laid him on the
altar, on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up
the knife to slay his son. Then an angel of the LORD
called to him from heaven: “Abraham! Abraham!”
And he answered, “Here I am.” And he said, “Do not
raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to
him. For now I know that you fear God, since you
have not withheld your son, your favored one, from
Me.” When Abraham looked up, his eye fell upon a
ram, caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham
went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt
offering in place of his son. …
The angel of the LORD called to Abraham a
second time from heaven, and said, “By Myself I
swear, the LORD declares: Because you have done
this and have not withheld your son, your favored
one, I will bestow My blessing upon you and make
your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven
and the sands on the seashore; and your descendants
shall seize the gates of their foes. All the nations of
the earth shall bless themselves by your descendants,
because you have obeyed My command.”
Genesis 22:1–18
The Hebrew word yirah, usually translated as “fear” of God, also implies “awe
of God’s greatness,” or what Rabbi Lawrence Kushner calls “trembling in the
presence of ultimate holiness.”6
Living Religions, Ninth Edition, by Mary Pat Fisher. Published by Pea…
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