god's chosen people, the jews
Accepted by all religions is the fact that the first humans created had no religion, and as such any godly plans for humanity were meant for a unified family, not just limited to a chosen few.
Abraham's revolutionary notion of monotheism, a belief in one God, meant that God was not just a God of the Israelites but of all people. God revealed to Abraham that his people were to be messengers chosen to bring universal moral instructions to all humanity, not just the Jews.
The Torah was the revelation and the Mitzvot are the divine commandments defining a godly life, and God chose the landless and powerless Jews as messengers because humans would be free to accept or reject the message on its merits. It was a message delivered without political and economic coercion (unlike Christianity after the Roman Emperor Constantine embraced it).
In return for fulfilling their divine mission, God promised his chosen people that he would make them a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
However, most Talmudic Rabbis do not interpret 'a kingdom of priests' as having universal implications. They believe that the covenant given by God not only provided the core religious content of the message the Jewish people were to convey to humanity but also a separate and distinct content designed to force Jews to maintain a separate culture. Being chosen to convey the message implied, to them, a superior position.
By superiority, the Talmudic Rabbis meant that Jews as a separate people were to be a 'light' unto the other nations. In offering the message, they cannot mandate its acceptance. Those who accepted the message choose to become chosen.
The Talmudic Rabbis saw the Jewish mission to convey the message of God, not to convert everyone to Judaism. They did not call for the annihilation of gentile or non-Jewish religions. They saw salvation as dependent on moral behavior not on accepting Judaism, and accepted that the righteous of all faiths have an equal chance to be saved.
In this sense, the Talmudic Rabbis maintained a separate 'superiority'. They were into delivering the message to all but most certainly did not believe in wholesale conversions.
However, in the early days of Judaism missionary activity was necessary for the growth of this revolutionary notion of monotheism to take place. In his journey from Haran to Canaan Abraham made many converts. In Deuteronomy 32:10, Abraham is described as so successful a missionary that God became known as King of the earth as well as King of heaven.
However, the word 'convert' is used loosely when referring to Abraham's missionary zeal. The formal notion of religious conversion did not emerge until much later in history. Abraham invited non-Israelites to join the Israelites, as did Isaac and Jacob.
By the time of Moses, the Torah was being expounded in seventy languages, and it provides numerous injunctions to the Jewish people to welcome strangers. It is believed, too, that God exiled Jews from their homeland for only one reason, to increase the number of converts!
Conversions came about through synagogues inviting guests and visitors -- there were thousands of houses of instruction in all towns serving as learning centers for gentiles; Jews were exhorted to personally approach potential converts; gentiles living among Jewish people were invited to assimilate; abandoned gentile children were adopted; and many gentiles converted to Judaism through marriage with a Jew.
The Jewish mission of conversion was also codified in laws. It is not clear when these legal rules developed, but they most certainly existed after the destruction of the Second Temple when there was a need for clear religious rules to maintain the Jewish identity. So, from 400- 500 AD the existence of these laws indicates that converts were allowed, welcomed and had specific rites to undergo in their conversion.
As expected, conversions were increased during important periods of Jewish history. The Jews grew from 150,000 in 586 BC to more than eight million by the first century of the common era and, only in the case of the conversion of the Idumaeans and the Ituraeans, was force used in an uncharacteristic manner.
So widespread was Jewish missionary activity that Greek, Roman, and Christian authors wrote disparagingly about it. In Rome, for example, Tacitus, a rhetorical historian, Cicero, a lawyer, and Juvenal, a satirist, are bitter and serious about denouncing Jewish proselytizing activities, and Horace makes fun of them.
The most famous Christian comment came from Matthew 23:15 in which competition for converts became nasty: "Alas for you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over sea and land to make a single proselyte and anyone who becomes one you make twice as fit for hell as you are."
By the onset of the Christian era, 10% of the Roman Empire was Jewish and had the Romans and Jews not fought -- the Romans destroying the Temple in 70 AD, crushing the Bar Kochba rebellion in 135 AD and ultimately expelling the Jews from Jerusalem -- the Jews would have succeeded in winning more converts than the Christians and history would have followed a different path.
While Jewish conversion efforts continued, the stateless and powerless Jews dispersed throughout the Roman Empire and beyond were heavily restricted by Roman, and later Christian and Muslim laws regarding proselytism.
In 131 AD, Hadrian prohibited circumcision and public instruction in the Jewish religion. In 198 and 199 the Emperor Severus passed laws forbidding gentiles from embracing Judaism, and in 335 Constantine re-enacted Hadrian's law, forbidding Jews to circumcise non-Jewish slaves.
Cumulatively, these restrictions not only reversed the general Jewish attitude toward welcoming converts but also produced deep psychological change in the Jewish psyche.
From Constantine's time onwards -- when Christianity became the state religion -- many Jews would have converted to Christianity and those who remained faithful to Judaism became insular and messianic -- waiting for a messiah to raise them from a miserable existence made more miserable by the triumphant Christians accusing the Jews of Deicide -- killing Jesus -- and setting them up for mockery and persecution.
The Christians who laid the basis of early western civilization were mostly converted Jews and, in taking over the Jewish mission to welcome converts, they transformed its meaning.
Salvation was no longer dependent on moral behavior but on accepting Christ. The faiths of others were belittled, eternal rewards were promised for converting and eternal damnation was threatened for refusing to convert. Bribery, threats, and ultimately violence and murder were used to expand the Christian faith. However, Christians did make it easier for pagans to convert by relaxing the Jewish need for male circumcision and the obligation to obey Jewish law.
Persecution and fear led, over time, to the transformation of the Jewish understanding of its mission. Spreading God's word came to be seen as being against Jewish law.
Abraham's revolutionary notion of monotheism, a belief in one God, meant that God was not just a God of the Israelites but of all people. God revealed to Abraham that his people were to be messengers chosen to bring universal moral instructions to all humanity, not just the Jews.
The Torah was the revelation and the Mitzvot are the divine commandments defining a godly life, and God chose the landless and powerless Jews as messengers because humans would be free to accept or reject the message on its merits. It was a message delivered without political and economic coercion (unlike Christianity after the Roman Emperor Constantine embraced it).
In return for fulfilling their divine mission, God promised his chosen people that he would make them a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
However, most Talmudic Rabbis do not interpret 'a kingdom of priests' as having universal implications. They believe that the covenant given by God not only provided the core religious content of the message the Jewish people were to convey to humanity but also a separate and distinct content designed to force Jews to maintain a separate culture. Being chosen to convey the message implied, to them, a superior position.
By superiority, the Talmudic Rabbis meant that Jews as a separate people were to be a 'light' unto the other nations. In offering the message, they cannot mandate its acceptance. Those who accepted the message choose to become chosen.
The Talmudic Rabbis saw the Jewish mission to convey the message of God, not to convert everyone to Judaism. They did not call for the annihilation of gentile or non-Jewish religions. They saw salvation as dependent on moral behavior not on accepting Judaism, and accepted that the righteous of all faiths have an equal chance to be saved.
In this sense, the Talmudic Rabbis maintained a separate 'superiority'. They were into delivering the message to all but most certainly did not believe in wholesale conversions.
However, in the early days of Judaism missionary activity was necessary for the growth of this revolutionary notion of monotheism to take place. In his journey from Haran to Canaan Abraham made many converts. In Deuteronomy 32:10, Abraham is described as so successful a missionary that God became known as King of the earth as well as King of heaven.
However, the word 'convert' is used loosely when referring to Abraham's missionary zeal. The formal notion of religious conversion did not emerge until much later in history. Abraham invited non-Israelites to join the Israelites, as did Isaac and Jacob.
By the time of Moses, the Torah was being expounded in seventy languages, and it provides numerous injunctions to the Jewish people to welcome strangers. It is believed, too, that God exiled Jews from their homeland for only one reason, to increase the number of converts!
Conversions came about through synagogues inviting guests and visitors -- there were thousands of houses of instruction in all towns serving as learning centers for gentiles; Jews were exhorted to personally approach potential converts; gentiles living among Jewish people were invited to assimilate; abandoned gentile children were adopted; and many gentiles converted to Judaism through marriage with a Jew.
The Jewish mission of conversion was also codified in laws. It is not clear when these legal rules developed, but they most certainly existed after the destruction of the Second Temple when there was a need for clear religious rules to maintain the Jewish identity. So, from 400- 500 AD the existence of these laws indicates that converts were allowed, welcomed and had specific rites to undergo in their conversion.
As expected, conversions were increased during important periods of Jewish history. The Jews grew from 150,000 in 586 BC to more than eight million by the first century of the common era and, only in the case of the conversion of the Idumaeans and the Ituraeans, was force used in an uncharacteristic manner.
So widespread was Jewish missionary activity that Greek, Roman, and Christian authors wrote disparagingly about it. In Rome, for example, Tacitus, a rhetorical historian, Cicero, a lawyer, and Juvenal, a satirist, are bitter and serious about denouncing Jewish proselytizing activities, and Horace makes fun of them.
The most famous Christian comment came from Matthew 23:15 in which competition for converts became nasty: "Alas for you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over sea and land to make a single proselyte and anyone who becomes one you make twice as fit for hell as you are."
By the onset of the Christian era, 10% of the Roman Empire was Jewish and had the Romans and Jews not fought -- the Romans destroying the Temple in 70 AD, crushing the Bar Kochba rebellion in 135 AD and ultimately expelling the Jews from Jerusalem -- the Jews would have succeeded in winning more converts than the Christians and history would have followed a different path.
While Jewish conversion efforts continued, the stateless and powerless Jews dispersed throughout the Roman Empire and beyond were heavily restricted by Roman, and later Christian and Muslim laws regarding proselytism.
In 131 AD, Hadrian prohibited circumcision and public instruction in the Jewish religion. In 198 and 199 the Emperor Severus passed laws forbidding gentiles from embracing Judaism, and in 335 Constantine re-enacted Hadrian's law, forbidding Jews to circumcise non-Jewish slaves.
Cumulatively, these restrictions not only reversed the general Jewish attitude toward welcoming converts but also produced deep psychological change in the Jewish psyche.
From Constantine's time onwards -- when Christianity became the state religion -- many Jews would have converted to Christianity and those who remained faithful to Judaism became insular and messianic -- waiting for a messiah to raise them from a miserable existence made more miserable by the triumphant Christians accusing the Jews of Deicide -- killing Jesus -- and setting them up for mockery and persecution.
The Christians who laid the basis of early western civilization were mostly converted Jews and, in taking over the Jewish mission to welcome converts, they transformed its meaning.
Salvation was no longer dependent on moral behavior but on accepting Christ. The faiths of others were belittled, eternal rewards were promised for converting and eternal damnation was threatened for refusing to convert. Bribery, threats, and ultimately violence and murder were used to expand the Christian faith. However, Christians did make it easier for pagans to convert by relaxing the Jewish need for male circumcision and the obligation to obey Jewish law.
Persecution and fear led, over time, to the transformation of the Jewish understanding of its mission. Spreading God's word came to be seen as being against Jewish law.
Labels: abraham, bar kochba, christianity, conversion, god, israelites, jews, judaism, messengers, missionary, mitzvot, religion, roman empire, salvation, talmudic rabbis, torah, western civilization
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