Re: Racism and YEC (WAS:Four items of possible controversy)

In a message dated 11/27/03 4:44:51 AM Eastern Standard Time,
dfwinterstein@msn.com writes:
Rich wrote:

"What Don does not realize is that destroying other religions is the essence
of Judaism. It is the core of the Old Covenant. You just have to read it,
you don't even have to interpret it."

Anyone who's at all familiar with the OT knows about those genocidal
directives, and we deal with them in our various ways. We also know that the
Israelites often did not follow through on directives to drive out the nations with
their abominable religions even at the beginning. The book of Judges gives
ample evidence (e.g., Judges 1:25-2:3). We know further that Israelites pursued
such policies weakly if at all in their later history, especially if
"destroying other religions" applies to religions outside their borders (which doesn't
seem to be the case). Furthermore, nothing in my experience suggests that
contemporary Jews around the world are suddenly trying to revive those directives
and destroy Christianity. Theories about how Jews are conspiring to run the
US government and control the world, etc., have been cropping up from time to
time for as long as I can remember, but I dismiss them all as hate-based.

Rich: "If the Jews were to lead us away from the Levitical prohibitions
like the Pied Piper via the media, and that led to our demise as a
distinct people (as you say the Jews are right to strive to remain!) would that
qualify for you as an example of Judaism destroying of our religion?"

Well, I've kinda gotten away from some of those Levitical prohibitions on my
own; it wasn't because of any Jews. Furthermore, Jews don't have that kind of
power over me and I can't imagine they ever will. I don't buy every time I
see a commercial.

Don

Dear Don,
In response to your remarks:
Your careless mention of the Book of Judges just proves my point. Joshua
calls those conquests of the Canaanite peoples dramatic and decisive, but scholars
today tend toward the gradualist sequence found in Judges which you
mistakenly conclude does NOT represent a conquest. What the Israelites did in Judges
was to destroy the altars of the indigenous Canaanites, precisely destroying
their religion. An angel of the Lord berates them for their failure to destroy
the Canaanites immediately:

“I said, I will never break my covenant with you, and you in turn must make
no covenant with the inhabitants of the country; you must pull down their
altars. But you did not obey me and look what you have done! So I said, I will not
drive them out before you; they will decoy you, and their gods will shut you
fast in the trap.” Judges 2

What the Book of Judges gives ample evidence of is the Israelites failure to
follow God's directive (above) for which they are punished (shut fast in the
trap).
However, even with their failure to massacre the indigenous and/or pull
down their altars immediately, the Israelites eventually "reduce them to forced
labor."

Don wrote:
"Nothing in my experience suggests that contemporary Jews around the world
are suddenly trying to revive those directives and destroy Christianity."

But Don is not demonstrating a facility with history, either religious or
secular in his responses. From the Ad Diognetum to Jewish scholars
themselves, Judaism has always attacked Christianity.

From the Ad Diognetum:

"By the Jews they [the Christians] are attacked as aliens, and by the Greeks
persecuted; and the cause of the enmity their enemies cannot tell."

From the Culture of Critique, An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement
in Twentieth Century Intellectual and Political Movements:
  
"In the ancient world through the Middle Ages negative views of gentile
institutions were relatively confined to internal consumption within the Jewish
community. However, beginning with the Converso turmoil in fifteenth century
Spain these negative views often appeared in the most prestigious intellectual
circles and in the mass media. These views generally subjected the institutions
of gentile society to radical criticism or they led to the development of
intellectual structures that rationalized Jewish identification in a post religious
intellectual environment.
Faur (1992,31ff) shows that Conversos in fifteenth and sixteenth century
Spain were vastly overrepresented among the humanist thinkers who opposed the
corporate nature of Spanish society centered around Christianity. In describing
the general thrust of these writers, Faur (1992, 31) notes that:
"Although the strategy varied -- from the creation of highly sophisticated
literary works to the writing of scholarly and philosophical compositions -- the
goal was one: to present ideas and methodologies that would displace the
values and institutions of the "old Christian."
Don, the neo-conservative movement is largely Jewish. Do a search on
"neo-conservatives" on the internet and see who were the hawks in the Bush
administration pushing for war with Iraq.
Please, you can argue and that's fine, but don't impugn my motives. You do
an injustice to assume they are hate based simply because you are not familiar
with the history and insist on reading the Bible in "various ways" rather
than just reading what it says. Scholars tend to believe it as it reads:
"Given their inferiority in armor and chariotry, they had to rely on
superior strategy or other devices to gain the upper hand over the indigenous
population. Nor was this population rooted out; rather it was gradually absorbed
into the emerging Israelite majority. The archeological record can better be
reconciled with the realistic version of the conquest in Judges 1 than with
the idealized one in Joshua."
Heritage: Civilization and the Jews: A Study Guide William Hallo, David
Ruderman, Michael Stanislawski, Praeger 1984, page 21
It wasn't a conquest of weaponry. The Lord told the Israelites to pull down
the altars of the indigenous people - to destroy their religion. Your
passage supports my argument and not yours, for which you offer no other authority
but your own, a self elevated authority from which you declare (with faulty
evidence of your own) my arguments "hate based."
Try scripturally and historically based...
Thanks
rich faussette
Received on Thu, 27 Nov 2003 11:51:56 EST