Slashdot Mirror

To be fair, when the Bible speaks of Mary and Joseph as being betrothed, at the time it meant they were married (Erusin), but not yet cohabiting (Nissuin).

a betrothed couple is regarded as husband and wife. Similarly, the union can only be ended by the same divorce process as for married couples. However, betrothal does not oblige the couple to behave towards each other in the manner that a married couple is required to, nor does it permit[16] the couple to have a sexual relationship with each other. Erusin

The practice of arranged/forced marriage or betrothal of pre-pubescent girls is still wide spread in Islamic Countries.

Are you joking? Polygamy is *allowed* in the Torah, see http://www.jewishencyclopedia.... and http://www.chabad.org/library/....

  Living among monogamous pagans is a much more relevant factor.

Just FYI:

http://www.biblica.com/bibles/faq/11/

Quote:
  Almost the entire Old Testament was written in Hebrew during the thousand years of its composition. But a few chapters in the prophecies of Ezra and Daniel and one verse in Jeremiah were written in a language called Aramaic. This language became very popular in the ancient world and actually displaced many other languages. Aramaic even became the common language spoken in Israel in Jesus' time, and it was likely the language He spoke day by day. Some Aramaic words were even used by the Gospel writers in the New Testament.

The New Testament, however, was written in Greek. This seems strange, since you might think it would be either Hebrew or Aramaic. However, Greek was the language of scholarship during the years of the composition of the New Testament from 50 to 100 AD.

---

And of course, the new testament isn't part of Judaism. Per that faith jesus was a false messiah.

Their position on the new testament is too complex for me to summarize.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11498-new-testament

You read JihadWatch too much.

Constantinople was never Roman in any meaningful sense of the term. It was ethnically Greek. At the time that wasn't a big distinction, but today everyone makes it. Apparently you didn't know which seems to indicate you don't learn any history you haven't read on an anti-Islam site.

By bringing it up you're actually making the argument that Islam is better for freedom of religion then secular democracy. Why? Because for all the centuries after the Byzantine Empire finally fell the theocratic Ottoman Caliphs allowed Greek Christians to freely practice their faith. The region was so mixed that it's virtually impossible to figure out where the majority Greek area stopped and the majority Turkish area started. It wasn't until the Caliphate fell, was replaced by secularist nationalists, and the Greek Kingdom tried to conquer the region that the ethnic Greeks were expelled.

The Egyptians are another problematic one for you. Did you know that the entire reason Egypt was conquered by the Muslims was that the Greek Christians who ran the place refused to stop feeding Egyptian Christians to the Lions? This pissed the Egyptian Christians off, so they stabbed the Greeks in the back. Early on it was actually illegal to convert from one religion to the other, but eventually more fundamentalist Islamic forces took over and 250 or so years after the original conquest Egypt was majority Islamic. So you basically just proved that Islam can live in perfect harmony with Christianity.

You'd have been best-off going with the Persians Zoroastorian religion, which went from major world religion to minority religion believed by a couple thousand Parsis in Gujarat when they lost a war. But if you'd done that I just would have brought the many, many civilizations destroyed by Christians over the years. The Spanish alone probably destroyed more religions then all of Islam in the century or two after Columbus. We'll never know because the Spanish weren't very good about keeping track of heathen religions.

As for Jewish law, you're just wrong. Under the letter of Jewish law you are supposed to be married at puberty:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10435-marriage-laws
There is no minimum age for marriage, there is a maximum age for not being married, which is below the Age of Consent in several states (16 seems to be consensus, but 14 and 18 are also mentioned; at 20 you're "cursed by God Himself").
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/marriage.html
Is somewhat less draconian, but they still say "The minimum age for marriage under Jewish law is 13 for boys, 12 for girls; however, the kiddushin can take place before that, and often did in medieval times. The Talmud recommends that a man marry at age 18, or somewhere between 16 and 24."

What happens on these Anti-Islam sites is simple:
Over the years every religion has done things we don't approve of now. Most of them find ways to change those attitudes (for example, it would be virtually impossible to find a Rabbi who says a 12-year-old is a valid marriage partner, despite the Talmud). As a religion believed by living people, Islam is no different.

But the anti-Islam forces assume that every word of the Koran is believed literally. Every Sura, every Hadith. They are all as evil as they sound when translated to English, removed totally from the context of the rest of the religion, and every Muslim who has ever lived will always follow each and every single one. None of them acknowledge each branch of Islam acknowledges different Hadiths as authoritative, or that context matters.

It gets even weirder when those guys get at history books. Anyone with a vaguely Islamic name who does anything bad to Christians is evidence that Islam itself is anti-Christian, even when the Christians of the day preferred Islamic rule (Egypt), or the I

It's occasionally helpful to pop a wiki page before ranting mindlessly

Most scholars believe[26] that key concepts of Zoroastrian eschatology and demonology influenced the Abrahamic religions.

i visited that Wiki page, and here is what I found. The phrase you quote is sourced (26) to:

  "ZOROASTRIANISM - JewishEncyclopedia.com". jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 23 February 2012

I then went to the page linked and found this:

Most scholars, Jewish as well as non-Jewish, are of the opinion that Judaism was strongly influenced by Zoroastrianism in views relating to angelology and demonology, and probably also in the doctrine of the resurrection, as well as in eschatological ideas in general, and also that the monotheistic conception of Yhwh may have been quickened and strengthened by being opposed to the dualism or quasi-monotheism of the Persians. But, on the other hand, the late James Darmesteter advocated exactly the opposite view, maintaining that early Persian thought was strongly influenced by Jewish ideas. He insisted that the Avesta, as we have it, is of late origin and is much tinctured by foreign elements, especially those derived from Judaism, and also those taken from Neoplatonism through the writings of Philo Judæus.

Now, here is the interesting thing: Note the source - The unedited full-text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia

Here are the dates from the Bibliography: 1904, 1897, 1905, 1899, 1902, 1803, 1866, 1881, 1878, 1893, 1891, 1897, 1898, 1901, 1902, 1902, 1904, 1903.

Radio carbon dating was invented in 1949. Computers for use in textual analysis probably weren't used until the 70s.

The scholarship is about 110 years out of date, and was conducted without two of the key tools of modern investigation into the past, at least one of which would be almost certain to have a major impact on the work.

Although there are no doubt people today who hold to that view, even at the time it was written the view expressed wasn't universal as you see in the fuller passage I quote above. I'm inclined to stick with more current scholarship on this question: ZOROASTRIANISM AND BIBLICAL RELIGION

It's occasionally helpful to pop a wiki page before ranting mindlessly

Most scholars believe[26] that key concepts of Zoroastrian eschatology and demonology influenced the Abrahamic religions.

i visited that Wiki page, and here is what I found. The phrase you quote is sourced (26) to:

  "ZOROASTRIANISM - JewishEncyclopedia.com". jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 23 February 2012

I then went to the page linked and found this:

Most scholars, Jewish as well as non-Jewish, are of the opinion that Judaism was strongly influenced by Zoroastrianism in views relating to angelology and demonology, and probably also in the doctrine of the resurrection, as well as in eschatological ideas in general, and also that the monotheistic conception of Yhwh may have been quickened and strengthened by being opposed to the dualism or quasi-monotheism of the Persians. But, on the other hand, the late James Darmesteter advocated exactly the opposite view, maintaining that early Persian thought was strongly influenced by Jewish ideas. He insisted that the Avesta, as we have it, is of late origin and is much tinctured by foreign elements, especially those derived from Judaism, and also those taken from Neoplatonism through the writings of Philo Judæus.

Now, here is the interesting thing: Note the source - The unedited full-text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia

Here are the dates from the Bibliography: 1904, 1897, 1905, 1899, 1902, 1803, 1866, 1881, 1878, 1893, 1891, 1897, 1898, 1901, 1902, 1902, 1904, 1903.

Radio carbon dating was invented in 1949. Computers for use in textual analysis probably weren't used until the 70s.

The scholarship is about 110 years out of date, and was conducted without two of the key tools of modern investigation into the past, at least one of which would be almost certain to have a major impact on the work.

Although there are no doubt people today who hold to that view, even at the time it was written the view expressed wasn't universal as you see in the fuller passage I quote above. I'm inclined to stick with more current scholarship on this question: ZOROASTRIANISM AND BIBLICAL RELIGION

The company that performed the test claimed that they could completely rule out the possibility that the MP had a Jewish ancestor, so no, this is not a "straw man," it is exactly what was claimed in TFA.

I haven't seen seen the company's claim of 100% accuracy. In the article it says

Nagy Gén scanned 18 positions in the MP’s genome for variants that it says are characteristic of Roma and Jewish ethnic groups; its report concludes that Roma and Jewish ancestry can be ruled out.

You are taking a journalist's analysis of the report as authoritative, but I've read plenty of news articles that poorly summarize scientific and medical research. I'm going on the assumption that, like every other scientific or medical test I've seen, the actual result reported by the company is a statistical result, not a black and white answer.

Your hair color example is equally flawed; unless you are claiming that dark hair is more common among Jews than it is among other populations (which is almost certainly false, since the proportion of dark hair is highest in Asia), it is a poor way to guess whether or not a person is Jewish.

Based on what I know, the proportion of Jews who are Asian is much lower than the proportion of humans who are Asian... so bringing up Asian hair color makes no sense. Also you specified a lineup of white men.

It took a lot more work than I expected looking up hair color statistics -- not for Jews, but for others. Too many hits for hair coloring products. This site has some actual numbers:

These figures show in a striking manner that in the provinces of Germany where the percentage of brunettes is smallest among the Christian population—in Prussia, for instance, only 14.05 per cent—the Jews have 42.34 per cent of brunettes; while in Alsace-Lorraine and Bavaria, where the Christians show 25.21 and 21.1 per cent of brunettes respectively, the Jews have only 34.59 and 39.45 per cent respectively of such.

It's under a section about blond hair, showing that in populations with more blonds, Jews are also more blond. But you can still see the sizable difference in the prevalence of darker hair among Jews in those populations.

Does that satisfy you? I thought it was common knowledge that Jews had darker hair on average.

So you basically throw away any counterexamples to your theory that there is a "Jewish race."

You bring up people who are religiously Jewish but not genetically Jewish and think that's a counterexample? No, because I have already admitted there are people in the Jewish religion who are not in the traditional Jewish race. As for Ethiopian Jews in particular, I just don't know. I don't think they have been studied as much as white Jewish groups. Like I said before I *bet* they would also have distinguishing genetic features, but I don't know.

It's not my fault there's a racial term that is also a religious term. I didn't come up with them. Can't you see the difference in intended usage though, and not use examples of one as a counterexample to the other just because they use the same word?

For the purposes of applying an anti-discrimination law.

Of course. I wouldn't expect the Supreme Court to rule on a scientific matter, would you? It stands that many people consider "the Jewish race" to be a legitimate concept.

What a compelling example to point to...

It's not at all compelling to dismiss a point because it mentions Nazis.

Many people think that the Earth is flat, but their views have just as little merit as the views of people who think that there is a "Jewish race."

You're just making stuff up. Many people think the Earth is flat, but their views have just as little merit as the views of pe

So I'd venture the hypothesis that these are all thoroughly and pervasively informed by Paul's theology too. So I'm curious: what is left once you remove the Pauline shell?

Most likely, hard-line orthodox Judaism of the sort that the Essenes practiced. The biblical depiction of John the Baptist seems to describe him quite clearly as an Essene, from the way Josephus and other contemporary historians have described the sect and its practices. There has been much scholarly debate on the possibility that Jesus was a member himself as well, or at the very least served a stint as one for a time, and that Christianity as it existed before Paul of Tarsus was an outgrowth of Essene religious teaching.

Not correct. The whole hell of fire concept also known as Ghenna is of Jewish Origin. See The article on this in the Jewish Encyclopedia.

See here and here for details.

If you want Christian terrorists, I recommend the People's Crusade.

The larger point about terrorism in the Middle East -- it seems awfully short-sighted to limit it to the last 75 years. After all, Al Qaeda repeatedly drags up the Crusades as the reason to attack America...as if America were somehow European or Catholic.

I'm not really sure that it's possible to assign a "cause" in that region anymore. Everyone's behaving badly; end of story.

Palestine was not a country/state/kingdom or any sovereign entity.

And so were all other countries in the region, and many others in the Third World, due to the colonial activities of the West.

Palestine was under Ottoman rule for centuries, just like Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, and others, and under various Muslim rule before that.

The fact that it was put under a British mandate is just a blip in time for a few decades, and were not done with the consent of the inhabitants at the time, whether they be Arabs or Jews.

When was it founded? Who was one of its Kings/Dictators/PMs/Presidents?

Irrelevant. As I said it was taken by colonial rulers by military force.

(There are Jewish kings buried all over "Palestine.")

So? And there are no Jews as well. Before the Jews settled it into Palestine, and after then were taken into the Babylonian exile, and after the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 C.E.

Where are its ancient ruins? (There are Jewish ruins all over "Palestine.") Where are its ancient artifacts from the land? What was its currency?

There are Philistines mentioned in your bible, as well as Cannanites, Amalekites, Jebusites and others. It is even mentioned in your bible that David bought the site of the temple from one of these people. Whom did Joshua conquer then? Whom did Samson fight? Which people did Goliath belong to? There are archeological ruins of those as well all over the place, from Jericho to Jerusalem. Who were all these people? Ghosts? Or are you in denial? This kills the argument of "we were here first". Go and read the Jewish Encyclopedia 1912 edition, which biased as it is, provides a glimpse of how matters were like a century ago.

• Palestine, where they avoided completely the Arab and Turkish rule.
• And the one on Zionism

Tell me anything about it. It is fantasy. You have no credibility to discuss Israel until you admit that.

And you have no credibility to discuss anything until you accept facts that go contrary to your biases dogmatic beliefs.

You want to freeze history at just one point in time, and everything before it and after it is rendered irrelevant. If you have the right to that, then certainly others have the right to choose which point they freeze history at, and it will not be to your liking.

Here is one more argument: How about total time of inhabitance? If we assume Jews had a state for about 5 centuries (from David's time to Nebuchadnezzar), then a hiatus of about one century (Babylonian exile), then about 5.5 centuries more before the Roman destruction of the temple, then that makes 10.5 centuries approximately. Muslims have a claim of 13+ centuries (let us make that 12 if we consider the Crusaders' take over of Jerusalem), so they have more of a claim on Palestine than the Jews. How about that?

There is no end to rhetorical games if you want to play by them.

Should we extend the argument farther to other places? How about we start with Asia Minor? Should we throw the Turks out and resettle the Greek in there? They were there first you know! How about Australia and New Zealand? Should we remove all the Europeans and give back the land to the Aboriginies and the Mauris? How about England then? Should we take the Celts from the North and kick out the Angles and the Saxons? How about the USA? There are parts were the Spaniards were there first? Hell, what about the American Indians! All Whites should go back to the sea they came from and Indians should get it all again!

Happy now?

Palestine as an Arab state is a myth. Yassir Arafat was born in Cairo. He's no more Palestinian than you are. Ariel Sharon, on the other hand, was born in "Palestine" in the 1920s.

Irrelevant. Where was

Palestine was not a country/state/kingdom or any sovereign entity.

And so were all other countries in the region, and many others in the Third World, due to the colonial activities of the West.

Palestine was under Ottoman rule for centuries, just like Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, and others, and under various Muslim rule before that.

The fact that it was put under a British mandate is just a blip in time for a few decades, and were not done with the consent of the inhabitants at the time, whether they be Arabs or Jews.

When was it founded? Who was one of its Kings/Dictators/PMs/Presidents?

Irrelevant. As I said it was taken by colonial rulers by military force.

(There are Jewish kings buried all over "Palestine.")

So? And there are no Jews as well. Before the Jews settled it into Palestine, and after then were taken into the Babylonian exile, and after the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 C.E.

Where are its ancient ruins? (There are Jewish ruins all over "Palestine.") Where are its ancient artifacts from the land? What was its currency?

There are Philistines mentioned in your bible, as well as Cannanites, Amalekites, Jebusites and others. It is even mentioned in your bible that David bought the site of the temple from one of these people. Whom did Joshua conquer then? Whom did Samson fight? Which people did Goliath belong to? There are archeological ruins of those as well all over the place, from Jericho to Jerusalem. Who were all these people? Ghosts? Or are you in denial? This kills the argument of "we were here first". Go and read the Jewish Encyclopedia 1912 edition, which biased as it is, provides a glimpse of how matters were like a century ago.

• Palestine, where they avoided completely the Arab and Turkish rule.
• And the one on Zionism

Tell me anything about it. It is fantasy. You have no credibility to discuss Israel until you admit that.

And you have no credibility to discuss anything until you accept facts that go contrary to your biases dogmatic beliefs.

You want to freeze history at just one point in time, and everything before it and after it is rendered irrelevant. If you have the right to that, then certainly others have the right to choose which point they freeze history at, and it will not be to your liking.

Here is one more argument: How about total time of inhabitance? If we assume Jews had a state for about 5 centuries (from David's time to Nebuchadnezzar), then a hiatus of about one century (Babylonian exile), then about 5.5 centuries more before the Roman destruction of the temple, then that makes 10.5 centuries approximately. Muslims have a claim of 13+ centuries (let us make that 12 if we consider the Crusaders' take over of Jerusalem), so they have more of a claim on Palestine than the Jews. How about that?

There is no end to rhetorical games if you want to play by them.

Should we extend the argument farther to other places? How about we start with Asia Minor? Should we throw the Turks out and resettle the Greek in there? They were there first you know! How about Australia and New Zealand? Should we remove all the Europeans and give back the land to the Aboriginies and the Mauris? How about England then? Should we take the Celts from the North and kick out the Angles and the Saxons? How about the USA? There are parts were the Spaniards were there first? Hell, what about the American Indians! All Whites should go back to the sea they came from and Indians should get it all again!

Happy now?

Palestine as an Arab state is a myth. Yassir Arafat was born in Cairo. He's no more Palestinian than you are. Ariel Sharon, on the other hand, was born in "Palestine" in the 1920s.

Irrelevant. Where was

Well, for example, here's The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible", from the Vatican. I can dig up other similar things from other religions, if you're interested.

You mentioned the way it's been for millenia. There's a reasonable historic overview in Christianity in its relation to Judaism, which also talks about the Islamic point of view. Islam considers the Jewish and Christian prophets to be true prophets, and recognizes the high moral qualities of Christians. It's amazingly small-minded to simply close yourself off to a thousand-year history of tolerance and understanding between the deepest thinkers and framers of the faiths of the major religions, and simply say "everyone is wrong but me and my religion". You place yourself squarely amongst the ignorant majority by doing so.

Why is it we eat lots of herbivores (chickens, pigs, cows, etc), but we don't eat carnivores (dogs, cats, tigers, lions)? Is it because it doesn't seem "right", or because carnivores being higher up the food chain concentrate toxins?

The anti-carnivore taboo isn't nearly as universal as you think it is. Dogs are a part of many Asian cuisines, and there doesn't seem to be any associated health problem -- other than PETA death threats. Some popular food animals (inlcuding a couple you cite) are thought of as herbivores but are actually carnivores or ominvores -- Salmon, pigs.

Many Asian cultures seem to have a taboo, or at least some aversion, to eating draft animals. No obvious answer for that one. Then there's horsemeat -- popular in continental Europe, gross in English-speaking countries. Cuteness factor?

Health issues are often cited as a source of taboo, but that's hard to justify. The usual example is the tricinosis spread by pigs. But there are easier ways to prevent this disease -- like cooking thoroughly. Every animal food, even eggs, spreads diseases that can be controlled by cooking.

(Incidentally, the fact that pigs spread trich has more to do with the similarity between human and porcine physiology. It's quite striking. Pig embryoes are sometimes used in human anatomy classes. One 16th century scientist even though that humans evolved from pigs. I'd tell you his name, but I'd stand accused of a gratuitous pun.)

Taboos have a lot more to do with defining your cultural identity, and separating your own culture from others. Jewish culture (my own heritage) is full of bizarre prohibitions. No mixing meat and milk -- you even have to have separate containers and utensils for them. (Though somehow fish is not considered a meat!) No flicking a light switch on the sabbath. (Electricity is a kind of fire, and you can't light or douse a fire on the sabbath.) No consumption of any non-scaly aquatic life. (Salmon is OK, even though they're carnivores, but sturgeon is not.) It goes on and on.

My own pet theory about the pork taboo goes like this: many, many years ago, the ancestors of todays Jews and Arabs were nomadic peoples who had a free open life in the deserts and hills. They looked down upon (and occassionally conquered or pillaged) the agricultural peoples who spent their life mucking out a living in the various river basins. Clean noble nomads raise herd animals. Filthy peasants raise disgusting dirty pigs. And a taboo is born. Just a theory!