#Tanakh is OT

[yhebrew]

Priority of Authority

Wednesday, July 27, 2022 Copied in full text from Ministries of New Life Website December 30, 2022 It is written by Marilyn Griffin in the volume of the Book I delight to do Your will, O My Elohim. Yes, Your Torah [Teaching] is within My heart. Psa. 40:7b-8 Born to Reveal the Father  In the natural and spiritual realms, submission to authority is fundamental to advancement. No one modeled…

[magical-musings-of-morgan]

tbh nothing has helped me overcome my culturally christian mindset more than learning about antisemitism. Those roots run so, so deep in everything, ESPECIALLY Christianity. Learning more about Judaism as a faith and Jews as a people also has helped me unpack so much.

It’s calling it the Tanakh and not the Old Testemant. It’s learning that there are other ways to interpret these old stories than the mindset of “everything points towards Jesus.” It’s really stopping to question WHY we don’t see these interpretations as “valid” or more worth considering than the more prevalent Christian ones. It’s raising an eyebrow and calling into question people who say the “old testament god” was a bloodthirsty misogynistic tyrant (because yeah that’s dogwhistle-y to me)

Anyways any jewish ppl who come across my blog I am blowing you a kiss and handing you a cool sword to kill nazis with <3

[transmascpetewentz]

Unpopular opinion: it is easier to get through 3 chapters of Orchot Tzadikim than it is to understand one verse in the Tanakh

[tamamita]

Watching a debate between a Jewish and Christian scholar is fascinating, because there is as stark difference in how the Christian and Jewish person will conduct themselves when they stand at the podium. Obviously, there is a sense of professionalism, but there will also be a manner of articulating your points and arguments from boths sdies.

The Jewish scholar tends to be academical and often refer to sources to debuke any Christological and ecclesial supposition about the Tanakh/OT, whereas the Christian often appeals to emotion and will speak in a charismatic way to reinforce his belief in Christ rather than to substantiate their argument. The other issue I find with the Christian debater is that they attempt to substantiate their belief through the New Testament, a scripture which holds no weight to a Jewish person; it is as useful as a brick.

The challenge in debating a Jewish scholar is the fact that a Jewish scholar studies Hebrew and Aramaic and are often fluent in respective language, thus possessing an advantage in textual and hermeneutical analysis of the Masoretic text, whereas a Christian often make use of an already translated Bible, which has been prone to corruption, distortion and christological alterations throughout centuries.

[jessicalprice]

something will always fill a vacuum

(reposted, with edits, from Twitter)

Okay, let's talk about why attempts to critique (or hell, straight up stick it to) Christianity in SFF often end up being more anti-Jewish than they are anti-Christian.

This was inspired by Jay Kristoff's work, which manages to evoke a whole bunch of antisemitic medieval tropes AND, as a bonus, even shits on the name "Ashkenazi", which is the Jewish term for most European Jews. But the thing is, Kristoff's SO antisemitic that I don't think it's accidental. I'm more interested in how it happens out of ignorance rather than malice.

So, negative evocations of Christianity in SFF usually fall into one or more of three categories: 

allegories for/evocations of the Inquisition 

allegories for/evocations of witch hunts 

Christianity without Jesus

I suspect there are also plenty of evocations of the Crusades out there, especially in SFF by non-Western authors, but I haven't seen it nearly as much. I want to be clear that these aren't usually discrete uses of these tropes. They usually blend together. Evocations of the Inquisition usually have evocations of later witch-hunts as well, and it's almost always Christianity Without Jesus.

I'm generally fine with using the Inquisition and the witch hunts as models for fictionalized versions of the church as a force for evil. They were Christianity as a force for evil in real life.

But they're often clearly written by people who haven't actually studied the periods in question before using them as a model--the Salem "witches," for example, were Christians, and not just women, and targeted more for financial reasons than religious ones. (Also, they weren’t burned at the stake, for crying out loud. You’re not the granddaughters of the witches they couldn’t burn. Like every word of that slogan is wrong.) But honestly, whatever. I’m not interested in holding fantasy to historical accuracy.

It's the way Evil Christianity Analogues are generally missing a Jesus figure that starts to make them problematic.

Much of the world's perception of Jews and Judaism is basically "it's like Christianity but without Jesus." 

Attempts to portray Christianity Analogues as bloodthirsty and primitive generally assume that what's "primitive" is what's older.

They tend to distrust ritual, and portray ritual either as primitive superstition, or as a facade that the Evil Priests use to manipulate the Naive Villagers.

And you may think you're sticking it to Christianity by doing your fic with evil Inquisitors who burn witches, but when a hallmark of its evil is that there's no Jesus analogue, you're actually not sticking it to Christianity. You're reinforcing its supremacy.

Or put another way, the idea that if you remove Jesus, Christianity becomes evil is just the flipside of "REAL Christianity is inherently good."

If you're going to have masses and priests and Inquisitors and witch burnings and all the other specific trappings of actual Christianity, put a fucking Jesus analogue in there. Because it's not "religion", it's SPECIFICALLY THE RELIGION THAT WORSHIPS JESUS, that did all these things.

Cultural practices are not an equation

A lot of this comes from a very old anti-Jewish trope: the OT God=vengeful, NT God=loving rubric.

Now, I'm not going to spend a lot of time debunking that trope in this thread, other than to say that every single loving- or compassionate-sounding thing Jesus ever said is literally a quote or paraphrase from the Tanakh. 

Yet there's a long-standing idea in pop culture Christianity that the problem with Christianity is the “Old Testament.” You hear it ALL THE FUCKING TIME on TV. Some bigoted Christian character quotes something from the OT and the hero says something like, "we've had a whole other testament since then."

So, the idea that if you do Christianity without Jesus, you get Bloodthirsty Old Testament Religion is a huge trope in... 

<drum roll>

...Christian depictions of Satanism.

You know what I'm talking about, yes? Satanism as portrayed by Christians is missing Jesus, and usually involves a lot of animal sacrifice, and then human sacrifice, and often a smattering of Hebrew, that Ancient And Alien Language. Or sometimes Aramaic. (I could do a whole post about how weird Christians are about Hebrew and Aramaic.) So Satanism as imagined by Christians is intended to be a dark mirror of Christianity, and there are elements of that, in that there's usually elements from Catholic mass, usually some Latin. 

But in essence, what they're creating is Ancient Evil Religion Without Jesus, which ends up looking a lot like what they tend to think Judaism looks like, or looked like back in the day. (Without the "Evil", of course, or at least without saying it out loud.)

animal sacrifice, which Jesus negated the need for 

Hebrew as an ancient powerful magical alien language, rather than as, I dunno, the language of real people? 

a vengeful and bloodthirsty deity figure, without a mediating savior

(BTW, I and plenty of other Jews I know have been asked, by apparently well-meaning Christians, how we handle sacrificing animals in contemporary America. I’m sure that if this post gets any traction, a bunch of Christians are going to respond that they know we don’t actually practice animal sacrifice and let me just go ahead and give you your gold star and your cookie and please note the giant eye roll accompanying said cookie and star.)

A little detour into the Satanic Panic

The attitude toward imagined Satanism, with its ritual and its sacrifice and its churchiness, looks a little different whether you're getting it from Catholics or Protestants. 

With Catholics, it's "this is a mockery of the mass, which is why it's ritualized"

With Protestants, With Protestants, you get something a lot uglier. It’s “our Christianity is fresh and organic and flexible and real and just about a genuine relationship with God,” opposed to ancient, heartless, primitive, ignorant ritual like that in Satanism and Judaism and Catholicism

And of course, when actual Satanism as a practice became a thing, and not just a bogeyman in the fevered imaginings of paranoid Christians, it was primarily as a way to troll Christians. But it also pulled in a lot of really ugly white supremacist Victorian ideas about the occult.

It didn't start from what could we do to create a practice that actually highlights everything that's wrong with Christianity. You know, an actual satire of it. It mostly started with performing what Christians thought Satanism would look like. Trolling, as opposed to critique. It’s evolved since then and developed more into its own thing, and the point of this post has nothing to do with practicing Satanists, so I’m going to leave it there--this is just to point out that Satanism, full stop, both imagined and real, has always been something that exists inside Christianity, and is nonsensical outside/without Christianity. 

So again, and I can't emphasize this enough: What Christians think actual Satanism would look like isn't a critique of Christianity. It's a reification of it. It's self-congratulatory. The Christian idea of Satanism exists only to enforce the “correctness” of Christianity.

You can see this because--edgelordery among heavy metal artists and edgy teenagers notwithstanding--there's nothing actually attractive about Christian depictions of Satanism. No one seems to be having any fun. There's no there there. I mean, Michelle Remembers, The Satan Seller, Rosemary’s Baby, Go Ask Alice, Satan’s Underground, The Omen, Eye of the Devil--in all the famous texts of the Satanic Panic, it’s remarkable how unpleasant and dreary Satanic practices seem to be. It’s hard to imagine anyone finding these practices enjoyable or rewarding. There’s a typical authoritarian Christian lack of curiosity about humans’ inner lives in these portrayals: no one’s asking why anyone would want to engage in these practices. It’s just some people are evil, end of story. 

The entire point of Satanism in the Satanic Panic is to make Christianity look good. 

It exists, in their imaginings, solely to mock Christian ritual, but like, no one actually wants to eat a host made of feces? No one wants to have unpleasant and ungratifying sex? It's just misery for misery's sake, which is what Christians panicking about Satanism apparently imagine non-Christianity to be.

Back to fictional Evil Churches

So when SFF authors/game devs/whoever want to worldbuild a fictional evil church, somehow it usually ends up being Christianity with a very conspicuously missing Jesus.

Obviously, a comprehensive survey is beyond the scope of this Tumblr post, but here are a few examples:

Shin Megami Tensei literally has a church that worships “YHVH,” an explicitly evil god. There’s no Jesus analogue. 

The Church of Tal in Magic: The Gathering is full of hypocritical inquisitors who persecute magic users while using magic themselves. This is pretty obviously a dig at evangelicals who claimed M:TG was satanic in the 80s and 90s, but again, weirdly, no Jesus.

Final Fantasy X has the Church of Yu-Yevon, which of course turns out to be Bad. No Jesus. 

Dishonored is an interesting example, since the Abbey of the Everyman doesn’t have a god--or rather, it’s designed to protect people from its god, the Outsider. But it’s got all the tropes of churchiness and the Inquisition, and of course, no Jesus.

The Deep Church in Dark Souls. 

The Chantry in Dragon Age isn’t straight-up evil--they’re a positive force in some ways, but they're also Inquisition-y toward mages and straight-up evil toward the Dalish elves. No Jesus. 

Mercedes Lackey’s various fantasy worlds usually have some analogue to Christianity (in the first of the Heralds novels, Talia, the main character, comes from a background that clearly draws from both evangelical Christianity and Amish/Mennonite/etc. tropes). There’s no Jesus analogue.

Hell, in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, the church is literally a Christian church. Like, it’s not a completely different world; it’s our world but a little different. And yet somehow Jesus is very absent. 

David Eddings’ Church in the Elenium and Tamuli series isn’t terrible, exactly, but it bounces back and forth between corrupt and hapless. It’s pretty clearly Fantasy Christianity, right down to the scriptures and the clerical titles and the Vatican infighting and yet, no Jesus. 

Terry Pratchett’s Church of Om isn’t wholly evil, but it’s a satire of overly “ritualistic” Christianity--ritual is sterile, ritual is a substitute for true belief--and causes a lot of war. No Jesus, of course.

Brandon Sanderson’s Vorinism arguably rushes right past the accidental antisemitism of “no Jesus makes you evil” into straight-up antisemitism, but that’s a whole other post.

I mean, look, I could make this list really long, especially if I wanted to get into “Evil Religions that do very Christian Inquisition things, but have a pantheon that’s loosely based on the Greeks or whatever,” and how they’re still very much cast in a Christian mold, but never have a Jesus analogue, but we’d be here all day.

If you’re not Christian, why do you think Jesus saved the world?

The point is, a lot of people doing worldbuilding want authoritarian priests and witch-hunting inquisitors and Women Wrecked The World patriarchy and abusive exorcisms of people who aren’t possessed and conversion therapy and all that. Some of them are Big Mad at Christianity, some aren’t, but either way, they believe they have something to say about the harm Christianity has done.

But the real-world people who did all the horrible things Christianity has done weren't practicing Christianity-but-without-Jesus. They were practicing Christianity full stop.

And yes, actual Judaism as practiced by actual alive Jews isn't actually anything that resembles Christianity, with or without Jesus. But the problem is, for most of the world, their understanding of what Judaism is is "basically Christianity, but without Jesus."

When you decide to do an analogue of Christianity to be the evil religion in your SFF/game, but you neglect to include *the central element of Christianity*, which is, you know, Jesus, what you're actually suggesting is that Jesus is the thing that redeems "Abrahamic religion." (BTW, stop using that term since y’all seem to use it to try to blame Jews and Muslims (and by extension, all the other Abrahamic religions that you don’t even seem aware exist) for stuff that is specifically and uniquely Christian.)

So if you think that Jesus is the thing that makes Christianity good, so much that you can’t imagine a Fantasy Evil Christianity Analogue that has a Jesus figure, what does that say about what you think about Jews? 

If you're pissed at Christianity, and if you want to create an SFF setting that contains Evil Religion, why can’t you seem to bear to actually include a Jesus figure in your portrayal?

You’re actually reifying the idea that Christianity (”true” Christianity that actually worships Jesus) is uniquely and inherently good, and all the things you see as trappings of it (belief in a single God, ritual, tradition, sacred texts) are bad without Jesus.

So again, unfriendly reminder that the main Abrahamic religion in which Jesus has no place isn’t the one that did all the colonialism and inquisitioning and witch-hunts and swordpoint conversions and Crusades, and isn’t the one currently taking away your reproductive rights and putting torture of LGBTQ kids into law and trying to make it impossible to exist comfortably if you don’t believe as they do.

That’s all been the Jesus-people, not us.

Maybe think about that next time you’re worldbuilding.

[deservedgrace]

Hey! Regarding your last post that you reblogged Id highly suggest learning more about Christian appropriation and bastardization of Jewish texts and the accidentally antisemitic implications of talking about how cruel the Christian god is and then going to only quote examples of bastardized Jewish texts. Judaism has an extremely long and very rich history of arguing, debating, and struggling with our texts and the potentially problematic material within them as well as there being many many Jews who do not believe in the "bible" (Tanakh) being a literal account of of events that literally happened. And while as an extremely traumatized exvangelical myself I do understand where posts like this come from and the place of hurt they come from I think it's also extremely important to unpack the amount of Christian supersessionism, Christian Supremacy, and Antisemitism that's embedded in what we were taught and how we were taught to view the world and ensure we aren't further perpetuating that.

hi there,

i appreciate your message and the reminder. i agree, antisemitism is an issue with the ex christian community and we all, myself included, need to work at dismantling it. i'm very aware that what we know as the old testament was stolen, and that the christian interpretation and even the way that christians go about interpreting and implementing that text is incredibly different to how Judaism does it.

but i'm also really hesitant to say that the solution is to not discuss the christian interpretation and implementation and talk about the harm it does.

admittedly, if i had written that post myself i would have either taken out the old testament things altogether or worded it to be more clear, but the context of the post and my blog is an ex christian criticizing the christian interpretation and the harm that it has caused. it is a criticism OF that bastardization. it is a criticism of claiming that an all perfect, all knowing, all loving god exists in the first place, criticism that he would say and command these things, criticism that christians accept and perpetuate that, and criticism that christians expect blind faith regarding that and refuse any debate about it, which are completely antithetical to Judaism as i understand it.

in addition, much of the post you're talking about references the new testament (luke 14:26, matthew 8:22, matthew 10:34) as well, but you may have been hyperbolic and/or referencing other posts.

i can empathize that seeing a post referencing those texts might feel uneasy but, for myself at least, any criticism of the OT i have is very much criticizing the way christians use it to harm and does not speak on Judaism. it is not something i'm familiar enough with to feel comfortable making comments on.

maybe that's not enough. idk. feel free to send another message. but i think unpacking and calling out harmful christian narratives is important, and some of those narratives come from the christian interpretation of those texts.

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

Reading the English translation the other day at church really just reminded me how much content and context is missing in a standard OT English language version of the Tanakh.

Without the Hebrew alongside the English translation and the commentary, it really feels like trying to study idk, Beowulf or the Illiad using just the cliffnotes and maybe Wikipedia but never once touching the actual source text yourself.

It reminded me of just how acutely I felt that absence growing up.

[yhebrew]

JESUS-YESHUA THE LIVING TORAH

The Word (Jesus / Torah) was made flesh. Yeshua is Living today. Torah is among us confirming Fathers words.

Tuesday, May 11, 2021 by Ministries of New Life Copied in its entirety from Ministries of New Life December 30 2022 Teaches & observes the written Torah (Article excerpt from 2016 Teshuvah Prayer Guide,pg. 62) Think not that I have come to destroy the Torah/Teachings, or the Prophets/Tanakh:  I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill.  For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass…

[thenewdeadseascrolls]

Judges 11: 23-28. "The Armaments."

The Shoftim, like the Torah follows a Course designed to teach Jewish freedmen about the Jewish Identity. It is a finishing school that prepared the Jewish Self for a position in the Court of the Assembly of the Kingdom of Israel. Along with the Septuagint, the Talmud and the other volumes in the Tanakh, the more one shops for the Jewish Self the more one will find that will bring Glory to God through the polishing of the Self.

King Solomon added the study of the Vedas and the Upanishads to the mixture. These documents emphasize asceticism as the path to freedom from oppression and delusion. They are in opposition to the primary tenet of Judaism called Shabbos, "satisfaction." The Vedas state the performance of duty is enough. The Torah, however, states this is not enough. There must be peace, love, romance, food, prosperity, all the aspects of full enlightenment if the Self is to be known.

In the previous frame, God says "to expose the future is not enough." We are all fugitive wild asses running from the consequences of the failure of duties of the past. We shall not observe Shabbos because we have not earned it. So if we take a walk for a moment through the sister philosophy we will see God has some advice as ot how to redirect ourselves along a duty driven path back towards the heart furnace of our real faith of Judaism. It starts with a question- "What right have to be Jewish?"

Talking about it, as an Amorite is not enough. Chemosh "armaments" are also not a will to power for the Jew. Balak, son of Zippor, "The black bird", "magic" is also not the right reason.

Heshbon Aroer, Arnon, and Ammon, are the Jephthah, the "keys to the words for the right to be Jewish."

They are : "The account of the oppressed who want to be cheerful. Let the Lord judge between the hand wringers and those who want to be happy." :

23 “Now since the Lord, the God of Israel, has driven the Amorites out before his people Israel, what right have you to take it over? 

24 Will you not take what your god Chemosh gives you? Likewise, whatever the Lord our God has given us, we will possess. 

25 Are you any better than Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever quarrel with Israel or fight with them? 

26 For three hundred years Israel occupied Heshbon, Aroer, the surrounding settlements and all the towns along the Arnon. Why didn’t you retake them during that time? 

27 I have not wronged you, but you are doing me wrong by waging war against me. Let the Lord, the Judge, decide the dispute this day between the Israelites and the Ammonites.”

28 The king of Ammon, however, paid no attention to the message Jephthah sent him.

The Values in Gematria are:

v. 23: What right have you? The Value in Gematria is 8051, חאֶפֶסהא‎, hafesah, "the fool."

v. 24: Whatever the Lord our God has given us, we will possess. The Value in Gematria is 12344, יבגדד‎, will betray bedad, "armaments in the hands of idle priests are empty of meaning."

The verb בדד (badad) means to isolate or be separate, but significantly not severed from the maternal medium but rather identified as an individual part of that maternal medium. Its derived nouns בדד (badad) and בד (bad) describe isolation for whatever reason but frequently describe how God isolates (but not severs) his people from the world or makes them notably special or recognizable within it.

Hence the noun בד (bad) also describes the signature linen ephods of priests. More negatively, this noun בד (bad) may also describe speech that is disjointed, idle or empty. The verb בדא (bada') means to invent or connive.

v. 25: Are you any better? The Value in Gematria is 6770, ו‎זזאֶפֶס‎ ‎, "and moved zazapes", "moving as piece at a time?"

v. 26: For three hundred years Israel occupied Heshbon, Aroer, the surrounding settlements and all the towns along the Arnon. Why didn’t you retake them during that time?  The Value in Gematria is 8680, חו‎חאֶפֶס‎‎, "A thistle huhafes," "He and she that follow the rail to the thistle."

Thistles are sacred plants and flowers that feed bees on the slopes of Horeb and Hermon. To go in search of the thistle like a bee in search of pollen is the mission of the Jew. The etymology for Hermon, where the rare yellow thistle grows is similar to the Quranic idea of the Haram:

The verb חרם (haram) describes to separate something from its natural economy and consign it to the afterlife. In practice this may either mean to grab hold of something and utterly obliterate it forever, or else set it aside for its forever keeping or some special sacred service (hence the word "harem").

The noun חרם (herem) may either refer to the act of designating something to the afterlife, or the item so designated. Perhaps a second but identical noun (or else this same noun) describes a fishing net. Such a net is of course an item with which fish are extracted from their natural economy and designated their afterlife.

To seek the thistle is to meditate upon Ha Shem whose visage one cannnot forget once it is found.

v. 27: I have not wronged you, but you are doing me wrong. The Value in Gematria is 12175, יבאזה‎ ‎ , yabaza, "the plunder of Yah."

v. 28: The king of Ammon, however, paid no attention to the message Jephthah sent him. The Value in Gematria is 4306, דג‎אֶפֶסו‎, degepso, "A fish who has zeroed in."

Jews are the only persons named by the Torah as having a right to zero in on what is called the Shabbos, "the return of the bosses trust."

This is done by the passing of the ideals found in the Torah, which God gave to Moses on Horeb. "Do not become enslaved again." It is the right to be born and live free for so long as this earth shall turn that gives the Jew his faith in God and should he pursue it and never to be or tolerate an oppressor, God's trust is justified.

Once the Jewish people agree to earn this trust pursue the Shabbos, they are required by God to teach the process to others and create a just, peaceful, and prosperous world.

The right to Jewishness therefore belongs to all mankind, but as the Shoftim says, all mankind must earn the right.

[mariespeaksg-dsgrace]

Hebrew and Jewish Terminology Word of the Week

While studying to this weeks Terminology Words of the Week Environment seveev|ah/-ot and Environmental (peegoor) seveevatee ; I was also studying Tehillim 38, of which we shall be going over G'W, later this week. In this Psalms King David is pleading for Almighty G-d's presence and deliverance in His life and current situation or troubles despite His imperfections and transgressions. I asked myself…….

-What is the definition of environment?

-Are environments able to be changed?

-Are there examples in the Torah or Tanakh about different types or kinds or categories of environments?

- Are environments and environmental retardation generation?

Click for more.... with love, MarieSpeaks GdsGrace

[ancestorsofjudah]

2 Kings 20: 8-11. "The Bed."

Passages in the Tanakh tend to cluster in groups of 7 and 4, consistent with the 7 Days and Four Directions. We just covered how to turn a boil into a fig, by proper acceptance of the rules named in the Torah. Notice I said proper, meaning all efforts must press the wine. This means all that does not work in life is discarded, all that is happy and glorious comes forth. Human beings do not like to do this, but it is a must for one who wants to attain to Ha Shem.

The final stage of such acceptance requires a dividend, which requires proper implementation of the new lifetime that emerges from the press. Hezekiah, the towering example in the Melachim so far asks the prophet what he is to do next after he agrees to accept the yokes of responsibility he learned about in the prior section:

8 Hezekiah had asked Isaiah, “What will be the sign that the Lord will heal me and that I will go up to the temple of the Lord on the third day from now?”

9 Isaiah answered, “This is the Lord’s sign to you that the Lord will do what he has promised: Shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or shall it go back ten steps?”

10 “It is a simple matter for the shadow to go forward ten steps,” said Hezekiah. “Rather, have it go back ten steps.”

11 Then the prophet Isaiah called on the Lord, and the Lord made the shadow go back the ten steps it had gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.

The verb אחז (ahaz) means to seize, grasp, take hold of or be (mechanically) attached to. We are to be attached to Ten Stairs of Light and Ten Stairs of Darkness. One might assume this means the Ten Decrees and Ten Plagues, but the answer lay in the Numbers. The former refers to a Shift to the Left or a Shift to the Right. To Shift Right is desirable, to Shift Left is not. Even still God says we must go both ways. :(

v. 8: The Value in Gematria is 8805, חחאֶפֶסה,‎ ‎khafesa, "as a pack."

v. 9: The Value in Gematria is 9694, טוטד‎ ‎, toted, "the tooth."

v. 10: The Value in Gematria is 6169, ואו‎‎ט‎, and ot, "and letter."

v. 11: The Value in Gematria is 6919, ו‎טאט‎, "and tat", "and sub."

We must periodically go into the unknown, the North, the chaotic subtratum of existence in order to understand why man is using his tooth, his brain to consume life in a manner that is not becoming or befitting him. It is the job of the King of Israel to lead the rest in and out, Left to Right and if need be, Right to Left when the Halachah, the history threatens to publish another volume of heat, hate, and tragedy.

How the religion is taught is as much the bed or subfloor of the religion itself. We are caught up in a lethal Left Shift. We are either teaching or are interested in the wrong things.

[tamamita]

I wonder if the Egyptian polytheistic religion (at the time) had an explanation or reasoning for the plagues and Moses

If one were to accept this mythology as a real historical event then keep in mind that religion back then was henotheistic, polytheistic and monolastic; the Egyptians didn't exactly deny the existence of other gods, but exclusively worshiped the pantheons of ancient Egypt as their national gods. Each god/goddess were responsible for certain elements and aspects within their respective domains. The Egyptians simply saw the God of Israel as a national god belonging to the Israelites at that time, they didn't deny His existence, but they obviously saw their own gods being superior. It's not unusual for gods to be fighting each other in this way. The ten commandments don't even deny the existence of other gods, it is simply concerned with the exclusive worship of Yahweh. In fact, the Canaanites mainly worshiped El and saw Yahweh as a rival god that the Israelites worshiped and vice-versa. You'll find plenty of incidents within the Tanakh/OT where the God of Israel is pitted against the pantheons of various tribes in the Levant.

It was only until during and after the Babylonian exile that monotheism became a central tenant within Judaism. The God of Israel became the sovereign God of the universe, and the Israelites denied the existence of other gods.

Anyways, the Egyptians probably felt very humiliated about being defeated by the national god of the people they had enslaved and prolly thought that they had fallen out of favour by their gods. When bad fortune hits your nation, you usually see it as a divine punishment. But Egypt was probably in a state of panic since their king had died, so I think they had more important matters to tend to.

[givemearmstopraywith]

What do I tell people, when asked why God killed so many people in the OT? I really don't know what to answer to that

there's two answers to this. the first is that huge portions of the old testament- the ones we're talking about- are either historical record or mythological record. at times the old testament. i think there's a danger in both taking scripture at its greatest literality and at shifting to another extreme and reading it as allegorically. but we have to bear two things in mind. the old testament is, actually, the jewish scriptures called the tanakh: it's not christian at all, it's borrowed (stolen.) from judaism to provide a backdrop for the new testament and the stories of jesus. if the old testament is the tanakh, this means two things. first, it is the record of a longstanding metaphysical covenant between the hebrews and hashem. this is reiterated through- from adam, through the patriarchs, before being established as a written contract with moshe (moses). this "contract" became the basis for jewish law and living, which are inseparable from each other: moreover it is a law specifically for jewish people, with hashem. like any verbal covenant of its time, it carried enormous weight. frequently the instances of hashem killing people are instances where that covenant has explicitly been broken- where someone has directly contravened the established agreement betwene hashem and his people and, in doing so, endangered not only themselves but all of the people. we see this in stories like that of korah or the sons of aaron. it wasn't so much that hashem is a bloodthirsty god waiting to catch people contravening his laws- it's that the laws are there for a specific purpose, not only to show the faith of the people in hashem but as a show of hashem's love for them. hashem choosing the jews as "his" people isn't favouritism or special treatments: its the entrustment of something very grave. if we take religion as a delicately interconnected family, judaism is the eldest daughter.

another thing to remember is that there are elements of historiography in the OT, since it is above all a history of the jewish people. as much as it is a history of the relationship between man and God, it is also the history of a people who is historically deeply oppressed, that is constantly subject to invasion, exile, and attack. much of the tanakh is an individual grappling with national trauma. thus in a cultural context much of what we read as God being cruel and killing people in the OT is actually an author's attempt to attribute a rational cause to an irrational event. this, too, is faith: faith in the propensity of hashem to take care of his people. to love his people. often people die because of their choices and how those choices exist in the natural order of the world, not because God points his finger and kills off people who upset him. otherwise, in instances of tragedy, people die because although God is in the love of this world, he is not in its interminable cruelty, which came into existence after he created it.

tl;dr: people die when they violate their covenant with God, but you can also take a completely secular argument and assert that the OT is part myth, part historical record, and attributions of mass death to God can be read of the author's way of attempting to understand national trauma. this doesn't undermine the existence of God, but it does place the writing of the OT in an important cultural context with empirical truth as its foundation. extricating it too far from empiricism simply undermines its veracity.

[ruffboijuliaburnsides]

It makes me happy that I can email my (Catholic) history advisor, say “hey when you’re including historical documents in the class reader for context of ancient judaism, it’s probably better to use a Jewish translation of the tanakh rather than a Christian translation of the “old testament”, here’s one that is about the same level of modern english ease-of-comprehension as the OT translation you’re currently using”

and he responds with “that’s a good idea, I will do that, thank you!”

He’s good people and I love him dearly.

[carlmccolman]

Far too many Christians fall into the trap of thinking that the Old Testament presents God as wrathful, angry, judgmental and violent, while the God of the New Testament is merciful, forgiving, compassionate and joyful. This is actually echoes of an ancient heresy (Marcionism), plus, it’s a very subtle (but real) form of anti-Semitism. If you have it in your mind that the OT God is a meanie but the NT God is benevolent, read the works of Amy-Jill Levine, or check out this book by Matthew Curtis Fleischer: “The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence.” It’s so helpful to read good commentaries that offer a balanced and positive view of the Jewish scriptures, this can be a big help not only in promoting a better understanding between the religions, but even in helping Christians to learn how to interpret the Bible in a more honest and accurate way. #OldTestament #Bible #God #nonviolence #faith #Christianity #Judaism #HebrewScriptures #Tanakh #books #bookstagram #spirituality (at Clarkston, Georgia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CePBNAouKSj/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[entanglingbriars]

My initial exposure to the Bible was primarily through secular academic study, so this is a question for people who were initially exposed to the OT/Tanakh and/or NT in a religious context and later studied it academically:

What did you think would be in the Bible and what did you actually find there?