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Are there any absolutes at all then? Surely there must be a few things that vast majority of Jewish sects agree on, right? I'll certainly have to do some reading up on things as you say.
I do come from a Christian background, but I choose to keep an open mind avoid inflicting my notions of absolute truth on others. I've come to doubt many of the absolute truths that the Roman and Medieval Europeans decided were requirements for a person to be a "real" Christian. I also cannot for the life of me get my head around how horribly Christians have treated Jews through the centuries.
If you want to know more, I refer you to the sources mentioned above. Start with Maimonides, who is considered a top interpreter of the Torah.
Jewish "sects" is a term belonging more to the time of Jesus (first century AD). Today, there are Jewish movements, but I am not aware of deep differences in regard to the nature of the Messiah. If such differences exist, they are below surface. The differences between Jewish movements (and rabbis) are dealing more with the timing of the appearance, and the conditions that must be met before.
Lashen hara does not apply to non Jews. But to the point here, you should see that I make a distinction between my distaste of Chrstianity and Chrstians. The Chrstian people are like all other people - some good and some bad. My anger is towards Paul himself. It angers me that a non Jew came to create a unique and new religion, and he successfully gave it authority and "standing" by grafting these Gnostic/Hellinistic beliefs to the Torah, while at the same time abrogating everything contained in that Torah. And in the process, the church later stained the good names of Peter, James and possibly even Jesus by linking them to these Pauline beliefs, when they were no longer around to say "hey, leave me out of this new religion."
I often have wondered about that myself...Where Peter states that it was good with HaRuach HaKodesh that the nations should hear the Gospel from his lips, but then Paul comes along and claims that HE is the Apostle to the nations...What gives?...And it seems that many miss or ignore the statement that Yeshua made regarding the Law not passing away til heaven and earth pass away...Well tbey're both still here...
Honest scholarship has shown that Paul invented the Eucharist and that Jesus likely never heard of this gnostic/occult practice. Clearly Jesus as a normative Pharissee would have been disgusted beyond belief if this had been practiced in his time.
And to a Pharisee (who were essentially no different than todays Orthodox Jews), its clear that Paul's writings and belief system in general prove him of being too low a caliber to have ever studied with the great Rabban Gamliel, who was perhaps one of the five most learned Jews to have ever lived. Paul was likely a convert, who converted under the authority of the same Sadduccees who employed him as a thug and kidnapper for the priests of the Beis Hamigdosh, who by the way were complicit with the Romans and all Hellinists. It's anti semitism for the church to claim the Pharisees were corrupt when truth shows that the Sadducees who Paul was connected to we're the corrupt ones. No small cooncidence that the Sadducees died out and disappeared over the next several centuries, and the world is filled with millions of Pharisees to this very day - mostly still being persecuted by anti Semites.
It is interesting that Yeshua told people to do what the Pharasee told them...But then again Yeshua was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel...
The concept of Jesus as messiah or the Christos evolved into a completely different concept than that of the Jewish moshiach.
Consequently, comparing Jesus, the Christian messiah; "man made god;" or "god made man;" to Jewish concepts such as moshiach ben Dovid or moshiach ben Yosef or Eliyahu Hanavi, etc., is not possible.
It really is more than "apples and oranges..." It's more like apples and cruise ships. There is no comparison.
And, I have read and, in my humble opinion, it sounds plausible, that Saul of Taurus was a learned Jew who had a "Damascus Road experience" where he believed that Jesus was moshiach.
As a learned Jew, he knew that one of his duties was to TELL this "good news" to the gentiles. He was supposed to make the world aware that the Days of Redemption were here at hand.
It appears that non Jews had difficulties with this message of Judaism, especially the "being Jewish" part, so Paul truncated it to the essentials, adopting non Jewish beliefs in order to "save the world."
It appears (to me) that this was the argument between Peter and Paul until Peter had his non kosher animal dream, at which point, Peter also got on board and agreed that Christians did not need to be Jewish.
And thus, Christianity was born.
Then they started breaking each other's heads until Rome adopted Christianity as the State Religion and put the warring sects in their respective places, creating a beautiful theology of Man and G-d and Redemption....
It is interesting that it is written that a wolf would emerge from the tribe of Benjamin and Paul claims to be from that particular tribe...Did somebody miss something here?...
Our liturgy tells us we are hoping for the day that is totally Shabbos, which Rashi tells us means the arrival of moschiach and a life, seven days a week, that looks and feels like Shabbos.
You see, on Shabbos, we Jews don't drive, don't turn on tv or radio, use no cell phones and don't post on the C-D forum. Instead, we spend the day immersed in praying, Torah study, eating and spending time with our family and community. That's what we expect moschiach will help usher in.
Pauline Chrstianty and their "messiah" has bastardized belief in messiah to an unrecognizable concept to us Jews, which is why we are so deeply disgusted by those lies and distortions.
So you blame Paul for leading that Jewish sect astray?...
One belief is that this time of the world being totally Shabbos will last for 1,000 years. This will be the "messianic age." The peacefulness and Shabbos like environment will get more and more profound as the messianic age progresses. Then poof, the next phase will begin, existence as we know it will change, souls will be restored to dead bodies, and I can't tell you the rest.
Lashen hara does not apply to non Jews. But to the point here, you should see that I make a distinction between my distaste of Chrstianity and Chrstians. The Chrstian people are like all other people - some good and some bad. My anger is towards Paul himself. It angers me that a non Jew came to create a unique and new religion, and he successfully gave it authority and "standing" by grafting these Gnostic/Hellinistic beliefs to the Torah, while at the same time abrogating everything contained in that Torah. And in the process, the church later stained the good names of Peter, James and possibly even Jesus by linking them to these Pauline beliefs, when they were no longer around to say "hey, leave me out of this new religion."
So, you believe the sect started out Jewish, but Paul hijacked it?...
Nor was he a deity or a Rabbi or a King or whatever else Christians claim he was. In fact, even Christians can't agree on who or what he was, yet nobody thinks that's odd, considering belief in his superpowers is fundamental to the faith.
That's the problem...It's not belief in His superpowers that are fundamental to the faith, it is what He said and taught that should be...He never told anyone not to follow Torah, that was Paul that did that...
I'm guessing Nanos is a non-Jew? I suppose what made Maccoby's book so easy to read, is that it takes ideas that only Jews properly understand, and uses those ideas to show how improbable it was that Paul was a Jew, and how entirely impossible it was that he studied "at the foot of Rabben Gamliel." If Paul lied about this critical "fact," what else did he lie about in order to further his own personal agenda? If one strips away the Pauline dogma and views the facts that sit underneath those lies, the picture becomes much clearer of Paul inventing the religion from his Hellenistic and Gnostic roots, and then he brilliantly finds a way to connect those beliefs to an already established and respected system of beliefs - Judaism - which in Paul's lifetime was at a peak hardly seen before or since.
It is interesting in light of the scriptures regarding a Benjamite Wolf reaking havoc, that, seeing Paul created a lot of controversy, no one notices that he states that he is of the tribe of Benjamin...
You might also peruse James the Brother of Jesus by Robert Eisenman and The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception by Michael Baigent & Richard Leigh.
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where he believed that Jesus was moshiach.
