So, the Jewish leadership interpreted the Ten Commandments in a way that put the power into the hands of the Jewish leadership.
First of all, there are 613 commandments.
Second of all, I think you missed Deuteronomy 17:8-11, where GOD put the power in the hands of the Jewish leadership.
8. If a matter eludes you in judgment, between blood and blood, between judgment and judgment, or between lesion and lesion, words of dispute in your cities, then you shall rise and go up to the place the Lord, your God, chooses.
9. And you shall come to the Levitic kohanim and to the judge who will be in those days, and you shall inquire, and they will tell you the words of judgment.
10. And you shall do according to the word they tell you, from the place the Lord will choose, and you shall observe to do according to all they instruct you.
11. According to the law they instruct you and according to the judgment they say to you, you shall do; you shall not divert from the word they tell you, either right or left.
If YOU believe that Deuteronomy was Divinely given, then you would be missing something if you left these verses out, to say that Jewish teachers decided to take all that power for themselves.
If you don't believe in Tanach, then it doesn't matter.
But since you seem to be Christian, it occurs to me that you DO believe that at least some of this once had meaning. Unless you believe that God lied when He instructed these verses.
I don't think God commanded mob rule, I think those laws are Moses Jewish version of Hammurabi's laws. One of Hammurabi's laws was an eye for an eye, sound familiar?
Yup.
But you know... The Torah is pretty comprehensive. I believe that God actually gave all of it to the Jews.
If you like to think that Moses played "cut and paste" with Hammurabil's law code, that is entirely up to you.
So, you've interpreted one of God's rules so you don't have to pay the temple tax? How convenient for you?
Pay the temple tax to who? There is no Temple to pay it to.
You know... God commanded Jews to LIVE by the laws, not to commit the impossible.
If a commandment is impossible to follow, we are exempt from it. Or, are you so into your beliefs that "the Torah is impossible, so we need Jesus to save us from ourselves" that you can't believe that when God gave the Law in the first place, it was actually possible to be lived by?
Do I think that God has so little mercy as to have the Jews go for thousands of years before "correcting" such behavior? What I think is that human's have been trying to figure out God since our beginning. We've received revelation throughout and we're still receiving it. The men who wrote the bible were ignorant of the world, by today's standards. They were afraid of comets.
Perhaps many ancient people were. Where do you get the idea that people of the Bible were?
They knew not the cause of earthquakes, disease, floods, storms, drought, so they naturally blamed every unknown event on God.
God IS the source of all things, including physics and geological patterns. So, I'm not sure what your beef is.
They wrote temple policy books that were never meant to become the "Word of God".
Interesting.
You get your information from Dan Brown? He has that kind of historical accuracy about the Temple, too.
Too many religious people think their religion is the peak when it's simply one step on an infinite ladder.
Possible. We get a lot of those around here.
Oh, so I'm not stating what my belief is, I'm foisting, while you are only "stating".
Yup.
See, you have probably figured out by now that I am Jewish, and not Christian.
I would not simply come from left field and tell you that Jesus was an evil apostate who was arrogant and cruel to his followers, and worse to everyone else.
Even if I believed it, I don't feel the need to antagonize Christians, as I am secure enough in my beliefs that I don't have to put anyone down to acknowledge my own beliefs in my heart and mind.
So yes, you are preaching anti-Judaism, while I am only stating my beliefs.