Michael Bauman on FACEBOOK responded to my post saying that Pentecost is a pagan Holiday. I also said that the diea that Judaism and Christianity are one religon is offensive to Jews.
Michael Bauman
Stephen, not a single thing you’ve said so far is true. Not one.
Who decides what is “pagan?” Leaving aside the dictionary, the term seems to me to be an epithet Christians have used to define polytheistic religions other than their own.
Pentecost is not a pagan holiday.
No, not everything we know about such things and such people comes from the Romans. Not even close. There are thousands and thousands of ancient non-Roman documents upon which we rely for information — some Christian and some Jewish, some even Syriac. The Roman documents are among the least significant of the lot.
You say there are “thousands of ancient non-Roman documents.” Unless you have some other bible, the Christian bibles I know about are all derived from the collection authorized by the pagan Roman emperor when he adopted Christianity to control the empire. Other documents were burned by the Roman church because they were seen as blasphemous.
Christianity is monotheistic. It doesn’t believe in three gods. It believes in three personalities in ONE God.
Neither the Jews nor the Muslims had to fight for survival from
“Christianity is monotheistic.” Does 1+1+1=1? Have you read the Iliad? So tell me, what religions do you consider not pagan? Hinduism?
Christian dominance. Islam conquered the entire Middle East and made Judaism and Christianity illegal and persecuted those who held to them. So Christian forces liberated the Holy Land. By liberating it, they liberated the Jews there from Islamic persecution. The Crusades were a Western counterpart to prior Islamic dominance. Christians had to fight for survival from Islamic dominance in Western Europe — Charles Martel and all that. Tours and Vienna, remember? Not to mention the entire Iberian Peninsula.
Christianity considers the Jewish Scriptures as inspired and authoritative. That Testament has law in it, which Christians see as binding. The New Testament too has law. Look up Luther on the point and he will explain how both Testaments contain both law and grace. From Jesus onward, Christians have had both their own hallakah and haggadah. They are neither law-free nor lawless. They have a strong law tradition, but not one like sharia. That is the good news.
TChristian dominance ? Islam liberated the entire Roman Empire from the corrupt rule of what you call Byzantium. The Romans outlawed Judaism, the caliph Umar invited the Jews back to Jerusalem where Christianity had made Judaism illegal.
“Christians have had both their own …haggadah.” Don’t you thieves have any conscience. Do you even know what the Haggadah is?
Because Christianity has Jewish roots, it shares with Judaism a common worldview, a common ancient history, and a common set of values and heroes of the faith. Christians, too, speak of their “father Abraham,” and Paul, a former Pharisee, forms arguments in many of his letters that presuppose that agreement with Abraham is a clinching argument in theological polemics.
Thus, the notion of a Judeo-Christian heritage is not an insult to either religion. It acknowledges our commonalities, which are old and significant. That’s why there are so many parallels between Christian theology and the Bavli and Yerushalmi (but notZohar, which seems a it aberrant in comparison to the rest of the tradition). When two sides start from the same or similar bases, and if they work reasonably, then their conclusions and applications will be very close.
You ask if I rmember “Charles Martel and all that.” Yes I do but MY ANCESTORS were rooting for the Muslims because we hadso much more freedom under the Caliphs than under the Popes. I am especially offended by your reference to “the entire Iberian Peninsula.” I would hope you owuld ralize that there was never a “reconquesta.” The Visigoth Christians conquered Andalusia. My ancestors fled the Christians.
The entire picture of the Pharisees in your Roman Bible demeans Judaism. Why? Because they, under Hillel, l;ed the resistance against Rome.
Christianity has a long and venerable tradition of natural law theory. It was there and dominant before Jefferson ever considered it. It comes from well before Thomas Aquinas, who simply codified it and systematized it for use in dogmatics. For me, I agree with Heschel and Barth that natural theology is not a reliable guide to righteousness. I do so because the world is fallen and cursed. We have never seen a natural nature, so we do not know what it “teaches,” if anything. The Edenic world might be remarkably different from the current world order, and in ways we cannot imagine. We do not know.