The Opinion of a Jew

[Guest guest]

According to Judaism, discussing the form or shape of G-d is not the most important issue in religion. The most important topic is to comply with the Will of G-d. The Will of G-d is that human beings live in harmony, peace and happiness in this Earth that we share.

 

To ascertain the Will of G-d, one may refer oneself to the Gift that G-d himself offered the human race in Mount Sinai: the Law as a mean serving justice and equality, in order to protect the hapiness and the rights of every human being.

 

That what remains difficult is to comply with the Will of G-d: edicting laws that are really just for every human being. The Law of Nature is the Law of the Fittest: the stronger, the most powerful abuses the weaker, the poorer, the younger. This is the law of animals.

 

To counter the Law of the Fittest, G-d gave us as a gift the concepts of justice and equality, and concern for others, to help us turn from animals into human beings. He gave us a purpose, to create Paradise on Earth, a Planet where the lamb and the lion would live peacefully.

 

All we need to do is edict laws that will help us achieve this purpose. Of course, it is difficult to detach oneself from one's interests and edict laws that are favourable to the majority, but this is the challenge of being a human being. We also must denounce and neutralize all the laws and customs that allow some to take advantage of others and to exercice power.

 

Discussing the form or shape of G-d is not that important to G-d. Worshipping G-d is not that important either, G-d does not need our sacrifice nor our flattery. We can indulge in these activities once, and ONLY ONCE we have learnt to respect other human beings, fed all our children and provided a peaceful environment for our family (hint: wife) and our community. Then, once all the work of the week is done, it is healthy to rest and to talk about G-d.

[Guest guest]

In response to the topic entitled Sincerity:

 

I my opinion, sincerity refers to the agreement of the different internal entities that constitute the human spirit, the alignment of the seven spirits.

 

You are sincere when you do something from the bottom of your heart. For example:

 

When someone teaches you a rule like "Do not cheat on your wife", obviously, a part of your spirit disagrees. There is an instinctive part of your spirit that WANTS to cheat on your wife, for instinctive reasons.

 

If you don't UNDERSTAND the reasons of the law, called the "spirit of the law" you may force yourself to comply with the rule, but a part of yourself will be against your reasoning part, and you may experience difficulties complying with the rule. This is why a lot of us cheat, because we cannot control this instinctive part of ourselves.

 

When the sexual instinct is repressed through physical abuse (fear of violence) or psychological abuse (fear of punishment, fear of G-d) there is a part of ourselves that will rebel, creating frustration and hatred. Of course, we will control this hatred, and hide it from ourselves and lie to ourselves. But there is a part of ourselves that we will not be capable to control and that might explode, creating guilt and depression and self-hatred.

 

This is why it is important to be true to oneself. In order to be true to oneself, one must be capable to communicate with all the parts of oneself. This is possible when one understands the "spirit of the law". I UNDERSTAND that, if I cheat my wife, I will feel guilty for so many months or years, is it worth it? I UNDERSTAND that if I cheat on my wife, she may hate me forever and she will probably never forgive me (would YOU forgive her?); I UNDERSTAND that if I cheat on my wife, my children will hate me forever (do you hate your dad for cheating on your mom); I UNDERSTAND that when I am eighty years old, old and ugly, without the love of my wife, without the love of my children, I will curse myself for my lack of self-control; etc.

 

Once people understand the "spirit of the law" and all your internal spirits agree with your consciousness, then you have INTERNALIZED this moral principle. You are not acting by coercion, oppression, obligation anymore. You are true to yourself.

 

G-d does not want slaves, G-d does not want his children to act properly because they are afraid of His Name. G-d wants you to be good with sincerity, from the bottom of your heart. There is no other way to comply with the Law of G-d, with the divine rules he gave us to respect each other, than to UNDERSTAND THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW.

 

In Judaism, if you do a good action without understanding WHY your are doing it, it is not considered a good action by G-d. If you do not cheat on your wife because you are submissive to authority or to G-d, it is as if you would cheat on your wife, because you did not do it by your own choice. G-d does not want us to be slaves, nor his soldiers, G-d wants us to be sincerely good, from the bottom of our heart. This is the only way to save Humanity.

[rudraksha]

that is nice description of your deity, though i have to disagree with you by the laws of the Torah which your god describes, to me those arent peaceful loving laws, but kinda cruel, mind explaining the harsh laws of moses to us?

 

and btw, how could u say praising and devotion is not important? everything has its end, but divine bliss is eternal and is the culmination of life's goal. When u are loving others, some are tainted, and some are cruel, which means your love is limited. that is like saying we should treat the demons equally as the gods even when they do evil they will only use it to their advantage and screw u over.

 

We must all respect and love one another that is true, its part of our divine qualities and attributes, but you are hankering after selfish rewards when ur doing this inapropriately, because karmic actions whether good or evil are tainted by material energy, and it is only through devotion can selfless service (true goodness to all) without taint be acheived.

 

Devotion is most important in life because it is falling in love with God, therefore all the beings associated with you are blessed everywhere u go to receive the same gift, the gift of eternal love.....our love is limited alone and cannot reach its end by itself, but when we reach out to God our love becomes endless and tears of compassion compell us to love deepest everything, the eternal becomes wide open to all creatures who hear us, and all benefit from associating with us..

 

...we love others as a service to the Supreme, not desiring the rewards of goodness as u see it but because ultimately we want to bring everyone to the divine so in essence our love for others this way is much more transcendant than to just merely help others, in what way are we helping others just by being peaceful and good to them? what of eternal joy with us in the Supreme bliss always? something for u to think about next time u go out to help others /images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

Devotionalists dont seek the limited goodness of the world, we seek loving the Lord, because in the Lord all creatures are blessed, therefore we are caring for all, and when we go out to help, we know it is to help them much more than merely "being good"......I care endlessly for all the souls, i ultimately help others to bring them to the ultimate bliss, i stay out of association with those who would cause me harm and say blasphemy about my beliefs.....

[yasodanandana]

the fact is that if we love god, it is natural to follow his laws and precepts

 

and love means conscoiusness.. or loving means knowing

 

so. for me, the form of god, his world, his associates, his character, his "variety" is very important exactly like one who meet a new friend or lover and he wants to know everything and to find any possible people to speak about the new friend or lover

 

so, starting from hebrews, chistians, hindu, muslims and whatever... let us develope love for god...

 

following laws depends from respect (for the other citizens) or fear (for the punishment of the government).... love contains all these things

 

ignorance is not at all good and does not helps to follow the ten commandments, bible or the torah

[Guest guest]

When you talk about the "harsh Law of Moses", I believe you are referring to the part : "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". Please correct me if I am wrong.

 

This law was edicted in a time where there was significant inequality among the different members of the society. Some were extremely rich, some were extremely poor, some were enslaved (when a free person owed another person a certain amount of money and was not capable to reimburse, then this person was enslaved to the other person, and had to work for him until his debt was paid).

 

Those who were richer and more powerful used to abuse others (as in any other society); particularly, they felt they could harm others in irreversible way: they would hire someone to break their legs, or render the person blind, and then, when prosecuted by the tribunal, they would pay the compensation corresponding to the harm done.

 

An eye would have a price, two eyes would have a price, a leg, an arm, a hand, everything had a 'legal ' price. Nowadays, you may find a similar correspondence in civil law books: an eye is worth $ ..., a finger is worth $...

 

When the tribunal felt that people were injuring each other too much, they imposed the payment of a compensation. But this type of sanction was not appropriate for rich people, who kept harming others, and had no difficulty paying the compensation. This is why the law-makers decided that, every time someone would harm another person in an irreversible way, then they would have to undergo the same harm,an eye for an eye...

 

Obviously this rule, in spite of being effectively harsh, has brought up appropriate results. Now, people are revolted by that primitive behaviour.

 

G-d sends rules and laws to human beings to protect the weaker from the stronger, to counterbalance the animal and primitive Law of the Fittest that prevails in human societies, to help us live better with one another, to make us human beings, to make us divine. When we are capable to grasp the Will of G-d, then we edict rules which hava a positive long term effect. G-d knows what will be good on a long term basis.

 

I am not against the rule in Islam providing that the hand of a thief be cut, or that one prescribing the death penalty for adulterers. The problem is that the Quran must be followed in its entirety in order to provide a social environment where its members do not need to steal to survive, and where women are married according to the Quran (permission of previous wives, equality among wives). If all the rules of the Quran were followed, then probably they would be able to better their society. (This is also the case for all cultures and religions, of course!).

[Guest guest]

GOD JEHOVAH GOD JEHOVAH GOD JEHOVAH

[theist]

Now you have got it. Please keep chanting the name.

[Guest guest]

IS LOVE SUFFICIENT? DO WE NEED LAWS?

 

This is an old polemic of Judaism. There are two schools of thought:

 

1. We must follow the Law step by step,

 

2. Rules are not necessary. The love of G-d is enough. All the Law (the Torah) may be resumed in one sentence : DON'T DO UNTO OTHERS THAT WHAT YOU WOULDN'T WANT DONE UNTO YOURSELF, all in the name of G-d.

 

Let me give you an example: If you take a street intersection, two roads that cross each other, and you ASSUME that all the drivers involved love G-d with all their heart, and consequently, respect others.

 

Do you need crossing lights at that intersection? Do you actually need traffic rules at all?

 

Do you believe that all these G-d loving and law-abiding citizens will cross the intersection without problems or misunderstandings, or do you believe that it would still be more efficient to install crossing lights?

 

Unfortunately, the love of G-d is not enough. We are not perfect, we make mistakes and may hurt others without having a bad intention: Rules (that respect the Will of G-d) teach us how to respect others.

 

In fact, this anti-rules movement within Judaism is the main reason for the separation of Christianism from Judaism.

 

At the beginning, Christianism was just a branch of Judaism which introduced a very interesting legal concept: the concept of pardon and forgiveness to all the people of good will. Christ said himself: ''I did not come to abolish the Law, but to complete it'' and most Jews did not have a problems with this new Jewish sect. Another characteristic of this new sect was that its members had the obligation to 'bring the good news' to all the peoples of the Earth.

 

The problems begun much later, when the Christians tried to convert Europeans to Christianism (a modified Judaism that still followed the Torah). They found it rather difficult to teach the Europeans how to follow the Torah. There were too many laws for these people who at that time indulged significantly in homosexuality, and all types of abuse; they were rather primitive.

 

Then St. Paul, the actual foundator of modern Christianism, received an illumination from G-d. G-d told him in a vision that "The love of G-d is sufficient" for the newly converted Europeans who were unable to follow any law. However, Christians born Jewish, had to follow the Torah as any other Jew. (Christianism was a sect of Judaism) This approach worked very well and masses of Europeans converted to Christianism (Jewish sect) and enjoyed all the advantages of belonging to the Jewish faith.

 

Understandably, the Jews were not very happy with this state of facts: They had obligations towards these newly converted Christian Jews, they had to consider them as their own blood, help them, etc... but the latter were not obliged to follow the strict rules of the Torah, they had no obligation to their fellow Jews, and, on top of that, they behaved as savages, because they were very primitive at that time.

 

The Jews did not accept this, and rejected the Christians from the Jewish fellowship. Christianism was born as an independent daughter of Judaism, a Judaism without rules, where only the love of G-d was necessary.

 

This state of fact did not last very long in Christianism. The religious leaders understood that they could not remain without rules any longer, and reinstate the Ten Commandments, a minimal part of the Torah.

 

From our humanly limited point of view, it is very difficult to determine what is right or wrong. We must open ourselves to the advice of G-d. G-d will guide our actions, step by step.

 

At that particular point in time, G-d enlightened St. Paul and showed him how to convert primitive Europeans to Christianism. Europeans adopted easily the concept of love of G-d, but were reluctant to adopt the Jewish laws. G-d ordered St Paul to skip the rules temporarily, and everything worked out properly. Now Europeans are beutifully civilized (although not perfect).

 

We must open ourselves to the guidance of G-d, but let's remember that laws and rules ARE the means to comply with the Will of God.

 

I have the feeling that a very large number of people perceive rules and laws as negative, perhaps because they have to submit to abusive rules and laws. Any abusive law is not the work of G-d. Rules that dictate self-sacrifice, self-debasing are not the work of G-d.

[yasodanandana]

i have not doubts that we have to follow the god laws...

 

you were criticizing the fact that in Krsna Consciousness we love to know all the personal features of God

 

so the point n2..... the "anti rule" is not for me or krisna conscious people or hindus

 

in another words... i am not negating your experience, you are negating mine saying that knowing the form of god is not important..

 

so thatnks for your long explanation, but it was not required, i am not against rules, true love do not came out from nothing or from material sentiment, otherwise we call it "sahajia"... "imitation"....

 

so rules, respect and sometimes fear of god is required, but the ultimate goal is love, and love means that i want to know also the trascendental form of the lord

 

so love and laws perfectly fit together

 

....

 

as christian born, i find your theories very funny... but there's no problem, the main discussion is on the importance to know god and his laws

[Guest guest]

I am sorry I gave the impression that ascertaining the Nature of G-d is not important. I am saying that in Judaisme it is a secondary issue, discussed only by the learned, those who have established a contact with Him.

 

For us, teaching the young and the less young to understand and respect the Law is far more important. We believe that the primary Will of G-d is that human beings live in harmony. Instruction, knowledge, know-how, understanding abstract concepts, are not essential, although desirable.

 

I find there are too many people arguing about the essence of G-d, while they are not complying with his Will. The Will of G-d is not easy to ascertain, but usually a father wants his children to be lawful and respecful of each other. A non-egotistic father would prefer that his children live in harmony, rather than having them flattering and serving him, while they are fighting and trespassing against each other.

 

Now, if you have established contact with G-d that is even better. But, according to Judaism, one must be capable of respecting others first.

 

In Judaism, behaviour is far more important than ideas. Judaism accepts freedom of ideas and feelings, but is rather strict as to behaviour towards others.

 

The reason is the following, in Judaism and Christianism, there are two types of sins: Sins against G-d and sins against others. G-d always forgives sins against Himself, but G-d is not capacitated to forgive sins against others, only the victims have the right to forgive sins committed against them. This is because G-d abhorres sins committed against others and wants us to repent and apologize.

 

One may conclude that G-d gives a priority to our behaviour, before adoring and praising Him.

 

I will soon write an essay about Love.

[gHari]

G-d could have arranged it that we could never disobey His laws. But He didn't. Seems He wants something more than just obedience.

 

Jesus said he would write the laws in our hearts.

 

People who follow laws get hung up in their minds where the laws are stored and processed. Life is more than right and wrong.

 

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.

 

[Guest guest]

 

 

what is the authority of the torah ?

 

why should we accept that as God's words any better

then anything else anyone says or writes ?

 

a case can be made that the torah(old testament)

is not Godly at all.

 

14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army--the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds--who returned from the battle.

 

15 "Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them.

 

16 "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD's people.

 

17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,

 

18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."

(Numbers 31)

 

Ezekiel 9: 4-6

 

And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem....let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women...."

 

 

I Samuel 15:2-3

Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.

Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy [1] everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, childrem and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'"

 

 

"The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open."

(Hosea 13:16)

18 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him,

19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town.

20 They shall say to the elders, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate* and a drunkard."

21 Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

*completely given up to dissipation and licentiousness; wildly extravagant.(Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary) (Deuteronomy 21:18-21 NIV

 

 

25 Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies.

26 So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, "Whoever is for the LORD, come to me." And all the Levites rallied to him.

27 Then he said to them, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: `Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.'"

28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died.

29 Then Moses said, "You have been set apart to the LORD today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day."

(Exodus 32:25-29 NIV)

 

 

"If anyone secretly entices you--even if it is your brother, your father's son or your mother's son, or your own son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your most intimate friend-- saying, "Let us go worship other gods" you must not yield to or heed any such persons. Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them. But you shall surely KILL them; your own hand shall be first against them to execute them, and then the hand of all the people. Stone them to death for trying to turn you away from the Lord your God." Deut 13:6-10

 

 

i could go on all day,

 

hear is the bible on women

http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/darkbible7.htm#burn-the-daughter

 

 

so should a book that has God and His prophets advocating

all kinds of extreme violence,extreme cruelty,and extreme

intolerance, should that Book be taken as Gods word ?

Gods Holy teaching ?

 

[I_love_krishna_]

Where do you get this stuff man! thats horrible!

 

I don't think any one should write a book like that and call it "Holy".

 

Its not true... Some one find a logical explanation for this and say its not true! please!!!!

 

 

[yasodanandana]

let us make more simple... if i love god automatically i love also his sons, if i know the nature of god, i know that creatures are his parts and parcels.. so it is not possible to worship the lord and hate others

 

i do not see how is possible to separate god consciousness from loving and knowing him... everything goes together

[yasodanandana]

you have to consider a religion in his complete picture,,, if anyone should want to do a similar operation with the vedas or itihasas and puranas, it could be very simple to obtain a lot of controversial or "horrible" phrases and statements

 

hebraism is a very nice and philosophical religion full with happiness and love for god

[Guest guest]

The Law is not static, both the Law and the image of G-d have evolved with time, according to the experience of human beings.

 

Some laws were necessary at some point in time, and they have become old and primitive. When Christianism expanded in Europe, it was initially extremely lax, to allow Europeans to adopt the beliefs of Christians. Later, the Church reinstated laws that had been disregarded during the early Christianization of Europe, all following the guidance of G-d.

 

Christianism has also been extremely violent and intolerant in the past, when all Europe was adopting its beliefs. This was not an easy step for all. There have been forced and violent conversions, particularly at the time of the Crusades, the Inquisition and the conversion of colonies such as Africa and South-America. Hundreds of thousands of people died.

 

For centuries and centuries, Christians invaded Jewish neighbourhoods, raped their women and killed their men. Equally, for many centuries, there were witchhunts, where men and women were killed for not conforming exactly to the precepts of Christianism.

 

However, contemporary Christianism is extremely tolerant and compassionate. I would say the same thing about Judaism. In fact, there is little difference nowadays between these two branches, both are very toleran and put a strong emphasis on charity. Judaism has adopted centuries ago the concept of forgiveness, which was already present before the birth of Christ.

 

Judaism and Christianism are not static, they have evolved with time and will continue to do so. The Law is not perfect, but perfectible. Moreover, I really do not feel competent to judge or evaluate history. However, if G-d had not ordered those who venerated the golden calves killed, perhaps you would not have been a Christian. G-d is perfect, but He is forced to work through us imperfect beings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have no competence to say whether this was the Will of G-d or not. All I know

[Guest guest]

the vedic concept is Dharma,loosely translated

as duty to God and humanity.

 

this is not subject to time, it is eternal, what is

Godly ,forever.

 

 

 

A Short History of the Bible

 

The stories of the Bible evolved slowly over centuries before the existence of orthodox religions. Many belief cults spread stories and myths probably handed down by oral tradition from generation to generation before people wrote them down. Many of the stories originally came from Egyptian and Sumerian cults. Most of these cults practiced polytheism, including the early Hebrews. Some of the oldest records of the stories of the Old Testament came from excavations in Mesopotamia which includes small cylinder seals depicting creation stories. These early artifacts and artworks (dated at about 2500 B.C.E.) established the basis for the Garden of Eden stories.

 

Virtually all human societies, before the advent of the northern invaders, practiced female goddess worship. Archeologists have confirmed that the earliest law, government, medicine, agriculture, architecture, metallurgy, wheeled vehicles, ceramics, textiles and written language had initially developed in societies that worshiped the Goddess. Later the goddesses became more war-like with the influence of the invaders who slowly replaced the goddesses with their mountain male war gods. So why doesn't the Bible mention anything about the Goddess? In fact it does, but in disguise from converting the name of the goddesses to masculine terms. Many times "Gods" in the Bible refers to goddesses. Ashtoreth, or Asherah, named of masculine gender, for example, actually refers to Astarte- the Great Goddess. The Old Testament doesn't even have a word for Goddess. The goddesses, sometimes, refers to the Hebrew word "Elohim" (masculine plural form) which later religionists mistranslated into the singular "God." The Bible authors converted the ancient goddess symbols into icons of evil. As such, the snake, serpents, tree of knowledge, horns (of the bull), became associated with Satan. The end result gave women the status of inferiority, a result which we still see to this day.

 

The Old Testament consists of a body of literature spread over a period from approximately 1200 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E. There exists no original writings of the Old Testament. There does exist, however, hundreds of fragments from copies that became the old testament. These fragments consist of Cuneiform tablets, papyrus paper, leather etchings and the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. The scribes of the old testament wrote in classical Hebrew except for some portions written in Aramaic. The traditional Hebrew scribes wrote the texts with consonants but the Rabbis later added vowels for verbal pronouncing. Of course the Rabbis did their best in choosing the vowels that they thought gave the words their proper meaning and pronouncement. In the second century C.E., or even earlier, the Rabbis compiled a text from manuscripts as had survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. and on this basis they established the traditional or massoretic text, so called from the Hebrew word massorah. This text incorporated the mistakes of generations of copyists, and in spite of the care bestowed on it, many errors of later copyists also found their way into it. The earliest surviving manuscripts of this text date from the ninth to eleventh centuries C.E. It comes mostly from these texts which religionists have used for the present Old Testament translations.

 

The New Testament has even fewer surviving texts. Scholars think that not until years after Jesus' alleged death that its authors wrote the Gospels. There exists no evidence that the New Testament came from original apostles or anyone else that had seen an alleged Jesus. Although the oldest surviving Christian texts came from Paul, he had never seen the earthly Jesus. There occurs nothing in Paul's letters that either hints at the existence of the Gospels or even of a need for such memoirs of Jesus Christ. The oldest fragment of the New Testament yet known consists of a tiny snippet from a Gospel of John. Scholars dated the little flake of papyrus from the period style of its handwriting to about 130 C.E. The language of most of the new testament consists of old Greek.

 

There has existed over a hundred different versions of the Bible, written in most of the languages of the time; Greek, Latin, German, etc. Some versions left out certain biblical stories and others contained added stories. The complete compiled version of the old and new testament probably got finished at around 200-300 C.E. Not until 1611 C.E. did a committee of translators and interpreters complete the most popular Bible of all time, the King James Version.

 

Interestingly, there existed many competing Christian cults in the early years after Jesus' alleged death. Some sects saw the universe in dualisms of goodness and sin, of light and darkness, God and the Devil. Other Christian sects performed odd rituals, some of which involved the swallowing of semen, thought of as a sacred substance. Many other Christians also wrote mystical stories and by the second century there existed more than a dozen Gospels, along with a whole library of other texts. These include letters of Jesus to foreign kings, letters of Paul to Aristotle, and histories of the disciples. In one of these secret Gospels, it describes Jesus taking naked young men off to secret initiation rites in the Garden of Gethsemene. There lived Christian Gnostics (knowers) who believed that the church itself derived from the Devil to keep man from God and from realizing his true nature. In those first centuries of Christianity orthodoxy did not exist and when an organized orthodox church finally came, it got defined, almost inadvertently, in argument against many of the Gnostic sects.

 

So the idea of the Bible as a single, sacred unalterable corpus of texts began in heresy and later extended and used by churchmen in their efforts to define orthodoxy. One of the Bible's most influential editors, Irenaeus of Lyon, decided that there should only exist four Gospels like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures - the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, and the eagle of John. In a single stroke, Irenaeus had delineated the sacred book of the Christian church and left out the other Gospels. Irenaeus also wrote what Christianity did not include, and in this way Christianity became an orthodox faith. A work of Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, became the starting point for later inquisitions.

 

The salvation doctrines of Christianity survived and flourished because they afforded the priesthood considerable power. The priests alone held the keys to salvation and could threaten the unbelievers with eternal punishment. Hence, in the evolution of Christianity in the last two thousand years with priests preying on human fears, the religion has demonstrated extraordinary powers of survival. Even without the priests, the various versions of the Bible have had more influence on the history of the world, in the minds of men than any other literature.

 

Unfortunately, the beliefs in Scripture has been the trigger for the most violent actions against man in the history of humanity. The burning of competing Christian cults (called heretics) by early Christian churches acted as the seeds of violent atrocities against man. There later followed the destruction of Rome by the Christian Goths, and the secret pagan sacrifices consented by the Pope, the Vandals that had the Bible with them as they destroyed imperial North Africa, the crusades in the eleventh century fighting in the lands around the eastern Mediterranean, Palestine and Syria, capturing Jerusalem and setting kingdoms from Anatolia to the Egyptian border. In 1204 the Fourth Crusade plundered Constantinople the most holy city at that time, with Christians fighting Christians. And the slaughters continued (and continues to this day).

 

According to Romer, "More heretics and scholars were burned in the Middle Ages than were ever killed in Carolingian times. For at this time the Inquisition came into its own, and torture, largely unused as an instrument of government since Roman days, was reintroduced."

 

In the early 1500's the German heretic, Martin Luther, almost single handedly caused the split from the Roman Catholic church and created the beginnings of the Protestant church. This split still influences violence to this day. Luther also helped spread anti-Semitism with his preaching and books such as his "The Jews and their lies." One should not forget that Hitler's holocaust could not have occurred without the support of German Christian beliefs.

 

We have little reason to think that violence inspired by the Bibles and religious texts will ever cease. One only has to look at the religious wars around the world to see belief's everlasting destructive potential. One only has to look at the Protestant-Catholic uprising in Ireland, the conflicts in the middle east with Jews fighting Moslems & Christians, the Iran-Iraq war, Sudan's civil war between Christians and Islamics and the Bosnia conflicts. The desperate acts of fanatical individuals who have killed for their beliefs of Jesus, Mohammed, God or Satan would create a death list unmatched by any other method in history. The "Holy" Bible supports the notion of war and destruction, not only as a prophesy but as a moral necessity. If we wish to become a peaceful species, it may well serve us to understand the forces of belief that keep us in continual conflict and why the Bible has such a stronghold on the minds of people around the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

the old testament,

 

http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/darkbible3.htm

 

another thing you can find things in the vedic literature

that may appear to be questionable , but upon furthur

examination we learn that those things are not what you may think, like slavery,only acceptable for prisoners rather

then prison, there was a standard of treatment,

and it wasn't for life, Sati, never forced,

what else ?

 

where as the bible is full to the brim of horrible stuff,

by "prophets" God and Kings, why ?

 

 

If i wanted to start a religion and have my past abusive

actions overlooked, I would say that these are God's

ways, God also is like that, God told me to do it,

etc.

[Guest guest]

is this an article written by a pure devotee of the lord?

 

why a materialist give opinion on a religion?

 

why one is giving advices on a matter or an activity that he's not practicing?

[Guest guest]

clarify your question please .

[Guest guest]

this "A Short History of the Bible" is written by a materialist with the intention to discredit it and the religion in general

 

i do not think that this writer would change approach examinating vedas, buddhist sutras, koran or whatever

 

so, you are a spiritualist, why use such thing to discuss with brothers that are sincerely practicing a religious path exactly like you?

 

[Guest guest]

Thank-you very much for your beautiful and informative contribution.

[I_love_krishna_]

So by your perspective, Hinduism is basically all pure and totally good while the rest of the religions are nothing but perverted ways of living and were written by idiots? but if you say that is that logical?

 

Every religion today has some darkness within its past. I can get all the dirt on hinduism too.

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

http://www.universalway.org/Foreign/origins.html

 

 

http://www.viewzone.com/abraham.html

 

 

the origins of the torah and judaism is

thought to be a mix of older religions.

 

[I_love_krishna_]

Is the creator of the universe as we see today, he is one of the pawns of Krishna.

 

He is not a living entity who came to suffer in this universe like us.

 

So, he is not abraham...