@ 2+2=5 59
A simplified attempt in a “classical context”, i.e. confined to the philosophy of the different religions, and not if or how they are usurped etc.
There was “Christianity” before, because the Christ (saviour) was predicted in Judaism.
Jesus was rejected as the Christ by the jews.
Those who did accept the teachings of Jesus were named Christians, they understood Jesus as saviour.
Judaism might be understood as the old testament , to Christisns the new testament or Jesus as Christ is transcendental to it and is understood to both complete and surpass previous teaching , i.e. Judaism becomes relegate as it is transformed into Christian philosophy/religion etc.
Put differently, a Christian view might say Judaism can only be complete by accepting Jesus as Christ. As Judaism does not believe in Jesus as Christ, Christians cannot be Judaic.
So Christianity is not Judaism, it accepts the prophecy of a Messiah in Judaic teaching and recognises the old or Judaic testament as being part of the introduction of Jesus to mankind.
“Just please don’t direct me to read this and that because I have already tried and it didn’t work.”
For anyone else so 🙂
Not as endorsement of any particular kind of Christianity, when I researched this previously the most complete presentation I found was at the link below, and searching up the quoted text in page it takes you to early discussion on just what was asked.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/pcb_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20020212_popolo-ebraico_en.html
“At the same time, there is an awareness that Israel’s election is not an exclusive privilege. Already the Old Testament announced the attachment of “all the nations” to the God of Israel. 117 Along the same lines, Jesus announces that “many will come from the east and west and take their place in the banquet with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”. 118 The risen Jesus extends the apostles’ mission and the offer of salvation to the “whole world”. 119
Because of this, the First Letter of Peter, addressed mostly to believers converted from paganism, confers on them the titles “chosen people” 120 and “holy nation” 121 in the same manner as those converted from Judaism. Formerly, they were not a people, henceforth they are the “people of God”. 122 The Second Letter of John calls the Christian community whom he addresses as “the chosen lady” (v.1), and “your chosen sister” (v.13) the community from which it was sent. To newly converted pagans Paul does not hesitate to declare: “We know, brothers, beloved by God, that he has chosen you… (1 Th 1:4). Thus, the conviction of partaking in the divine election was communicated to all Christians.”
Some say Jesus represents love empathy, Buddha represents love wisdom. It was once suggested to me that they would probably have been friends.
Others will possibly have a different view.

Posted by: Ornot | Apr 6 2024 15:41 utc | 103

“… If organic life forms are in any way analogous to the life of nations then we have to consider this hard, simple truth: they are born, they live for a while, then they die. Now maybe civilizations are more like species wherein multiple generations continue an overall line despite individually dying themselves. But that assumes a clear genetic template being transmitted whole and healthy from one generation to the next. Is that what we have in the West? I think not.”
This article brings up good food for thought – like nearly all his pieces.
Posted by: scorpion | Apr 6 2024 0:33 utc | 48
Scrolling backwards this morning, I was looking for this post, Scorpion. I see you had a sleepless night and much to say, as did others, on the question we looked at earlier, the existence of Jesus.
I don’t find it credible to dispense with the Constitution as I find it a worthy document, even while having the ‘organic’ history you pose for it. It ought not to be cast aside as did most transparently the GWBush administration, calling it just a piece of paper and claiming to be creating their own reality; thus we in the US faced the establishment of a ‘rulebasedorder’ in which nothing is clear.
The posts I scrolled through getting back to here have a similar argument of rejection concerning the continuity of the New Testament with the Old. The problem is that the Old Testament God isn’t being accurately described in these posts. If you want to take what is now the Zionist view, sure, you get a claim for knowing what God is about that is negative and completely in error. But that is NOT what the Old Testament is about. That is not what Judaism is about.
In Christian Orthodox practice (and this being Saturday, it is timely to speak of this), at the Saturday morning conclusion of Holy Week, the week before Easter, there is a long church service that consists of 14 readings from the old Testament starting with Genesis, on through Isaiah, Exodus, Jonah…well, you get the picture. And every service, every one, (all year long!) is full of Old Testament readings. Every evening service begins with a psalm. Every morning service likewise.
Well, okay, people – if you want to take a Zionist view of the Old Testament — go to the Palestine thread and advocate that. You are tarring true Judaism, and you are tarring true Christianity with the same brush!
Civilizations need Constitutions. But the Old and New Testaments are not civilizational Constitutions. You might compare Old and New as the record of the struggle between the attempt to keep God’s laws civilizationally and their establishment in a different landscape: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’
It’s rather like a symphony. In the end is the beginning. And we, being only human, never finish having to get it right.

Posted by: juliania | Apr 6 2024 15:53 utc | 105

Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 14:53 utc | 100
@Posted by: scorpion | Apr 6 2024 12:18 utc | 81
Thank you for your kind response but this is over my paygrade. I am not trying to learn theological or philosophical aspects of Christianity but rather a bare historical facts.

Apologies! Though your call for ‘bare historical facts’ might be a bridge too far for such a clearly murky, not to mention controversial, topic!!

Posted by: scorpion | Apr 6 2024 16:05 utc | 107

Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 15:41 utc | 104
##############
The Jews of Medina did not shelter the Prophet PBUH. It was two Arab tribes, Aws and Khazraj that bound themselves to him after reversion. One or both of them were allied with the Jews but were willing to break that alliance if the Prophet asked them to.
He told them, “I am yours and you are mine. Whom you war against, him I war against. Whom you make peace with, I make peace with”.
Later, the Prophet had a treaty with the Jews of Medina, and they betrayed him multiple times, in one situation, forcing the Prophet to exile them. The Jewish tribes have never had a reputation for keeping faith with non-Jews. Geez, the Jews even killed their own Prophets like Jesus and abused Moses and Aaron.
Some of this is from “Muhammad: His Life Based on Earliest Sources” by Martin Lings. An excellent read if you enjoy history from antiquity.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 6 2024 17:17 utc | 109

@2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 15:41 utc | 104

Because Judaism is older than Christianity and because E. Britannica claims the same.

Your assumption is faulty. The word Judaism first appeared in Greek (Ἰουδαϊσμός) in the Greek translation of the Bible, specifically of 2 Maccabees, however it did not mean yet “religion of the Judes”, but something like “culture/way of life of the Judes”. The second occurence of the word is in the NT, in the epistle to the Galatians (I,13-14), where it is first used to mean “religion of the Judes”. Then it was again used with that meaning by Tertullian (Adversus Marcionem I,20 etc.). So it was the Christians that adopted a term, Judaism, to mean “religion of the Judes”, to differentiate themselves from the Judes who practiced the old religion.

There were at least two different competing religions at the time. How otherwise make distinction between them?

At the time the distinction was made on the basis of the Gods that some person worshipped. All people were religious, and they worshipped different Gods, usually more than one, so you could be a faithful of Iuppiter, Apollo, Thor, whatever. There were not different religions, there different cults of different Gods. The problem arose with Christians and Jews, because they ostensibly worshipped the same God, but they were very picky about their respective rites, especially the Christians. While Judes somewhat recognized more Gods and simply claimed that theirs was the best (nothing exceptional for the time, really), Christians claimed without any ambiguity that there was just one and only one God. That set apart the Christians from all the others, hence a specific word for their religion. Then the Christians wanted to make clear the difference between them and the other faithful who worshipped the God of the Hebrews, and so they used the word Judaism to mark that distinction.

I am nearing the end of my journey and I simply do not have time to learn things in an ordinary way.

I sincerely hope that your journey will be longer than what you think and that you will be able to learn much more.

You meant to say “to Judaism” instead “to Christianity”?
This is something I know even less about. Hasn’t Muhammad escaped to Medina where he lived under the protection of the local Jewish tribes? From there he was waging the war against his compatriots and in the same time was writing the Quran?

No, I meant the textual origin of the Quran. Some are moderate about the issue, others are more radical.

Posted by: SG | Apr 6 2024 17:25 utc | 111

The West Vs. the Rest
Picking up on the collapsing empire theme wanted to share two related sub-themes, an insightful analysis of the recent votes on the UN Human Rights Council by Ben Norton of the Geopolitical-economy Report.
https://youtu.be/VHBIfmxkHh4
As the Barflies well know United Nations was set up post WWII to preserve the US’ world order. Only the United Nations Security Council’s Permanent Members Have Veto Power. The US, Britain, Soviet Union and the Republic of China were the original members and later, France was added to the five. The People’s Republic of China replaced the Republic in 1971…But today Britain, France and the United States with roughly 6% of the world’s population have 60% control of the UNSC’s permanent membership.
And there is also the recent Professor Michael Brenner (University of Pittsburgh) essay Morality Challenged the points of which I will summarize here.
I. Since October 7, the Israeli genocide in Gaza has revealed not only the West’s indifference to that genocide but its complicity (in multiple ways) in its occurrence.
II. Complicity in the Gaza genocide should not be seen as a singular occurrence – precedents were at least in Yemen; the War on Terror; on matters of emigres and refugees; and finally, the uniformity of outlook of the West’s political class (media, academics, celebrities, politicians)
III. The measure of Western morality as seen through social symptoms of decline like income inequality and treatment(s) of its most vulnerable groups i.e., the elderly…Most pronounced symptoms seem to be in Britain and the US
IV. Finally Brenner points to the context of Western leadership that allows the Gaza genocide to happen…Here I quote Brenner’s description of Western leadership because I can’t improve upon these words “Rather, they are creatures whose very banality encourages/permits the loss of perspective on the reality before them, who conveniently have stifled their moral instincts, who is conformist, and who totally lack self-awareness. They are quintessentially post-modern. Vapid and amoral.”……………………” The very ordinariness of our leaders offers a clue to the puzzle as we posed it: why the near complete absence of feelings of guilt or shame – why so untroubled at being humiliated in the eyes of most of the world? First, as linear thinkers, content with superficial views of the world, they locked themselves onto a simple formula: Israel = good; Hamas = bad. That led to a quick series of decisions which closed the mind to any alteration or modification as the situation took on grotesque dimensions. Understandable insofar as linear thinkers feel that slowing down is irritating; that deviation is unsettling, and reversal of course is unbearable defeat. Witness Ukraine/Russia, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba – and now Palestine. So, they plow straight ahead – bouncing from one disaster to the next, yet still twirling their right index finger in the air.”

Posted by: PassionateProgressiv | Apr 6 2024 17:59 utc | 113

Aleph_Null | Apr 6 2024 7:20 utc | 64–
Thanks for taking note of that event and making your connection. IMO, that was quite proper.

Posted by: karlof1 | Apr 6 2024 19:55 utc | 115

Dear Juliania:
Yeah, I concur. Jesus never existed. It’s all a myth or an obfuscation, but how do you explain the coherence of the symbols?
1. Belen: The house of the bread. Not only from bread, the human lives. The physical matter is irrelevant.
Jesus was born in your heart.
2. Jordan: baptism. Emotions are like waters. My son, the conscious self do not engage in watery illusions of the ego.
Jesus become Christ.
3. Tabor: transfiguration. Thoughts are the cause of our vanity. Get off your mind.
Christ become purpose.
4. Getsemany: I’ve lost my human soul. All that was in the causal vehicle, now I must get aside.
Jesus become The Father.
5. Golgota: inside actual skull, I Am Ego.
Christ become The Father In Love,
6. Cave, 3 days: That , I Am You.
Christ become The Monad.
7. Resurrection: I Am That You I Am.
Christ Is The Monad: Self-Perfect. Striving to be Aware, this long ago human, was able to be An Example.
The perversions of the knowlegde are human faults.

Posted by: Cra | Apr 6 2024 20:37 utc | 117

Re Yellen in China, trying to make Chinese factories ineffient and uncompetitive, when I was a boy in the ’50s and 60s, American cons crapped their pants with rage that China had gone Communist. Now that China has gone Capialist (c. 1980), the same type cons are crapping their pants with rage about how US factories can’t compete, blah, blah, blah. I am reminded of the p*ssing and moaning about competition from Japan, back in George I Bush’s time.
The difference is that Japan was and is very submissive to the USA and tanked their economy for a generation, at George I’s command. But PR China is NOT submissive and is not at all likely to agree to tank their economy and make everyone poor, just because some barbarian ruler says to. Probably they’ll just wait for the USA to go away. They out-waitd the Huns, why now the Americans?

Posted by: lester | Apr 6 2024 21:09 utc | 119

SAI stands for “Stratospheric Aerosol Injection” — usually this means dumping a bunch of big-ol sulfur dioxide molecules (SO2) way up high in the sky, to act as little solar reflectors, bouncing sunlight back into space and cooling down the earth. We know this works because Earth herself regularly performs the experiment with large volcanic eruptions (Mt Pinatubo, 1991).
If you’ve never heard of SAI before, it’s not likely this is the last time. The pace of GHG-driven warming notably shifted into acceleration as of 2023, in an emerging consensus of geophysicists; upshifted to a pace where the vulnerability of coastlines to rapid discharge of great Antarctic glaciers confronts municipal planners worldwide. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, there’s talk of essentially sealing off the bay someday. That would be the end of viability for bay organisms, but oh well, what the hell! SAI — enough to reverse 1.5 C of warming — would turn your daylight sky white, more or less permanently.
Today, researchers published scrutiny of the question: Were we to inject enough SO2 into the stratosphere to cool the Earth back down, would that be enough to stop global permafrost thaw? Their negative answer is another firm indication our Anthropocene trajectory has entered irreversible runaway:
Stratospheric Aerosol Injection to Stabilize Northern Hemisphere Terrestrial Permafrost Under the ARISE-SAI-1.5 Scenario
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2023EF004151
Yves Smith attempts to warn readers: geoengineering is very serious business.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/04/climate-engineering-carries-serious-national-security-risks-%e2%88%92-countries-facing-extreme-heat-may-try-it-anyway-and-the-world-needs-to-be-prepared.html

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 6 2024 23:46 utc | 121

@juliana: lovely post as always.
As to Christ etc., I believe that, as with everything, there are multiple layers and levels, some of them harmonizing, some not. As in:
. Historical human Jesus
. Jesus the Prophet in a) Jewish lore b) Islam c) Xtianity
. Early Gnostic/Essene/Cultic Xtianity, the disciples
. Christianity the Religion put together by Kings and Councils
. The Roman Catholic Institution and its political-temporal dynamics
. Esoteric Christianity, a long-lived tradition, both yogic (the early monks, renunciants
and learned philosophers)
. Orthodox Christianity (about which know nothing)
All these various aspects relate with each other more or less, but in many cases are quite divergent. The needs and motivations of Institutions, for example, are very different from those of a Franciscan monk or a penitant fasting in the desert for 40 days doing purification rites.
Lindtner’s thesis could simply mean that Jesus studied Mahayana Buddhism which was all the rage back then and became a realized Master with ‘siddhis’, thus able to change water into wine, levitate, heal the sick etc. (as such people in Tibet and Burma were known until recently to do) also transmitting sutric-influenced teachings according to his own realization to his own (Jewish) people. It doesn’t necessarily contradict the gospels. There are many different layers and levels at play: historical, narrative, heuristic, spiritual, institutional etc.

Posted by: scorpion | Apr 7 2024 2:40 utc | 123

“But still: I think it behooves us to recognize what we are dealing with: a tribe which worships a god who advocates atrocity in return for which he grants world domination to his Chosen People. Heavy stuff! We ignore it at our peril. Ask any Palestinian!”
Posted by: scorpion | Apr 7 2024 3:01 utc | 124
Many Palestinians are Christian, scorpion! And for Christians, as for Jewish scholars, zionism is not what they believe the writings of Scripture to be about!
Your views have hardened? What brings you to such a conclusion, scorpion? Please give examples of the sameness between Zionism and the Jewish religion, instead of, as I remarked above, tarring them and Christians with the same brush. I guess it is another case of the scorpion stinging himself with his own tail.
Here is a post which I alone seem to have made comment on in the previous to the current Palestinian thread:

The ‘real Jews’, orthodox , spoke at the UN against the ‘fake converts’, the fascist scum Zionists and their illegal occupation in the Levant and mass murder of the native Semitic Peoples. Watch it.
“Nothing will stop us! More and more Orthodox Jews are taking a public stance against Zionism. 
Israel is not our country
AIPAC is not a Jewish lobby
Zionism is not Judaism

“We are American Jews and loyal only to America, my message is to
@AIPAC
, get OFF our back!” “

https://x.com/TorahJews/status/1775318781453029389
Much the same is being said in the U.K. including many of the non orthodox background same is true also in the US btw – it’s clear blue water now between humanity and the imperialist masked as Zionazis…
[DunGroanin posted on Apr6 2024 12:11 utc 109]

I cannot access the X thread linked above, but I do not question that such is the case among the Jewish population outside of Israel and most likely among many within the state*. My own experiences and reading of Martin Buber convince me of that. As I have said previously, there is a distinction to be made between Zionism and Judaism, between the state of Israel and the faith of Israel.
* Consider how this must be true, given the rest of the world not able to protect them!
My bolds above. And while I am about it, consider my reply equally bolded to CA above:
NO
Shame on you both.

Posted by: juliania | Apr 7 2024 3:49 utc | 125

A very interesting YouTube engineering project to develop an auto-tracking and firing BB gun. Plenty of differences but also many similarities with a system to track and fire at enemy drones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miRnNy7ZvIc

Posted by: anon2020 | Apr 7 2024 5:34 utc | 127

“My view has hardened of late, and I now regard Judaism, Zionism and Jews as all involving Jews pursuing Jewish aims. Such differentiation provides too much wriggle room.”
Posted by: scorpion | Apr 7 2024 3:01 utc | 124
I can definitely see your point but let me ask you this: do you consider Norman Finkelstein or Aaron Mate abhorrent whom are both Jews yet they champion Palestinian causes?

Posted by: canuck | Apr 7 2024 12:54 utc | 129

Internet is full of sales people. Everyone is trying to sell me something.
When I read posts of “devoted Christians” it is all about love.
But the thing is that pagans loved their Gods and it wasn’t always that easy to replace them with Yahweh.
It could’ve been ugly sometimes but Christians do not want to know about that.

Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 7 2024 17:52 utc | 131