okay so I did some study to verify all that you had said.
Hi. Cool
The Torah in the basic sense is the first 5 books of the bible that we all know and love/hate. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Yep. the names are very different in Hebrew
your claim is that these rules are perfect and should be followed for a better life.
Nope. I said that God's rules (in their original form) are perfect. I Also explained down the chain of posts, that the humans that lived in that time had a lot of restrictions that were gradually added to them in order to help them "ease" into those rules of God.
I Also claimed these are not really rules rather suggestions. God doesn't demand anything.
you said if one studies it critically then one should come to the same conclusion that the torah is true and good.
Yep.
Assuming when you say critically, you mean with the correct understanding of the Hebrew words and the meaning of the characters and numbers.
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I pointed out many of the rules that are, to say the least, bad.
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Yep. yet those aren't the actual rules. they are ways to lower the amount of monstrosities humans did back then.
You effectively denied that these rules were intended by the one true god.
Nope. I said they are rules that were a "compromise" to allow humans to slowly adjust and understand the real rules.
So i looked them up and, as i suspected, they are all there in the Torah.
Of course they are! i never said they are not there!
not only did i find what i had stated but also others as well.
Yep. There are many crazy things. for example, it is allowed to eat animals!
This is a fact.... full stop.
It is, yet you are not taking into account the texts prioir to each such rule you encountered.
The other idea that you put forth is that these laws were made in light of the current culture however i have some issues with that idea.
Ok. But just as an example to explain what i've meant:
God never gave permission for humans to eat animals (let alone abuse them).
When humans, again and again, screamed and begged for meat, God gave them (while clearly stating it is a vile thing, and they should pay attention that each time they eat meat its due to their worst treats) permission to eat meat ONLY when it is blessed by specific people and ONLY specific animals that we today know are the ONLY animals (from cattle and such) that suffer the least while being slaughters (according to the kosher way of slaughter)
So here, the rule is you are allowed to eat meat, but it is not the actual rule rather a compromise that humans can handle.
Remember the main character in the bible (torah) is the one true god that created every thing.
Not really a character, but more of a thing
He then made laws for one set of people to follow.
Not quite.
He made laws for all people to follow. only few chose to do that.
I saw no where that he gave these laws to any one else in so far as the Torah says.
If you'll follow the stories, you'll see that the cycle is rather simple.
God gives life and instructs how to live correct.
Humans become more and more rebellious.
God tries to teach again.
Humans act the other way around and face the consequences.
This is pretty much the cycle from then till today
You can see in many places that people knew God and knew what his laws are yet they chose not to follow them.
Even Egyptians all knew God and simply believed they have stronger gods.
This is what i mean that you need to study correctly. you can't understand things without understanding what came before them.
It seems unlikely that the people would not follow these laws IF all of the stories in the bible are generally true.
Of course it is.
It cannot be the other way around.
This is also that is explained.
You can find the first reference to this in the first book:
הֲלוֹא אִם-תֵּיטִיב, שְׂאֵת, וְאִם לֹא תֵיטִיב, לַפֶּתַח חַטָּאת רֹבֵץ; וְאֵלֶיךָ, תְּשׁוּקָתוֹ, וְאַתָּה, תִּמְשָׁל-בּוֹ
Genesis: Chapter 4, verse 7.
This verse alone explains a great deal about why humans act against God.
In a nut shell, it means (and this is a very very very very loose explanation) that God explain to Kain, that if he will not act with good and pure intentions, his selfishness will take over and cause harm to himself.
It is also explaining that the human will always have the will to fulfill his own selfish desires yet he have the ability to rule and control it.
This goes into a much more detailed and deep subject that is referenced in many place throughout the bible.
If you'll think about it, you'll discover that you are driven by your selfishness (all of us) which is fine. but if you cannot control it, it will have a great (and bad) impact on you.
If you cannot control your desire to eat, you'll get too fat.
If you can't control your desire to get angry, you'll hurt people.
If you can't control your selfish desires, you will not be able to follow God's rules.
such as..... God killed every thing and every one on earth except one family due to the world being "wicked " although wicked is not very well defined at that time.
Indeed wicked is a very bad word to describe.
The more fitting description is that humans (all of them) were so out of control that they couldn't maintain a life sustaining environment for themselves and for the animals.
Everything became corrupt and contaminated.
He nuked sodom and gamora because the people wanted to have some angle cakes with out the angle's permission.
That's not the reason.
He opened up the earth to swallow up some folks that wanted to talk to god with out having Moses intervene.
Again, not the reason.
And soprry to break your thought
God didn't actually did it, it was the consequences of the actions. its kind of hard to explain in short, but i will gladly explain it to you if you really are interested in knowing.
(what is the protestant base for getting rid of the pope now?)
What?
If the Lord they god said "thou shalt not own other people whether jewish or not" I would certainly listen.
There is a very important thing you need to know when it comes to Gods rules.
As i stated before (in the Kain issue), which is only a small tiny part of the entire issue, God explains that ANYTHING you do that is not in order to make other feel better, is not the right way.
It is like so from the begging and it was never allowed to hurt any living creature!
Only when humans did hurt people, it was restricted to rules that will make the abuse and hurt much less.
The torah is nice to the jewish "servants" but only marginally better to the foriegn slaves as compared to other countries.
The bible is not nice to any form of slavery.
No where in the Torah does is say not to own slaves or not to rape any one at any time for any reason.
Not specifically maybe.
It is also not saying not to eat children, or kick people in the head.
It is not saying not to have sex with animals or not to to hang people.
there are many things that are not specifically mentioned as they all fall under the rule of treating others with kindness and good.
If the latter writings of the bible became more gentle it could be due to a developing sense of empathy in our species.
We are indeed slowly learning how we should behave
too slow if you ask me.
It could also be that the jews had been conquered enough times to understand that empathy might be a good thing to show others.
Yep. agreed.
If there was a verse (in the torah) that said some thing like "I gave you this rule because you needed it at the time. now that rule is no longer needed here is the new rule". Then maybe you would have a point. Even so it may just be that empathy and hard lessons took hold of an all too human set of people.
It actually does say that in the prophecies. it is explained that humans will learn that love and peaceful life are what they need to follow and that they will all learn the true ways of God.
I looked into meditaion in the bible. Yes surprisingly it is there but for the most part is tells you to focus on the torah law.
Yes. indeed.
The Torah laws are all about self control, self observation and "love the other".
It might sound weird to you, but all the bible deals with this issue. it is hard to understand it without learning it. I still struggle with a lot of things and have a long way to learn. but as i mentioned, the more i learn, the more i understand how little i understood.
I wouldn't call that really looking inward compared to buhdist meditation and yoga.
These methods are amazing, but are too extreme.
Still i will admit that it is there. As i said however, this (eastern yoga and meditaion)came about at the same time or earlier.
Obviously. it is also mentioned in the bible
You are, of course, welcome to what ever interpretation of the torah that you want.
I do not invent anything. i simply follow the given texts and follow the "rules" of the Hebrew language.
For myself, however, I cannot come to the same conclusion that you do in light of the evidence.
I think that without knowing (based on the way you write), you are educated enough to know how one should behave.
This is the important thing. it doesn't matter (In my pov) how you came to that conclusion, rather that you did
