Based Camp - The Question that Breaks Judaism (Tract 10)

00:00:00.000 hello simone today we're going to do another one of our track series where we do deep dives into

00:00:04.160 religion that are very very offensive and for the first time we're going to have one that's almost

00:00:08.960 exclusively focused on judaism oh this is track 10 the question that breaks judaism

00:00:16.960 there is one question i started to innocently ponder that led me down a rabbit hole which

00:00:21.840 began to unravel jewish theology identity and even raise the question of whether modern judaism

00:00:28.240 should be thought of as the less radical deviation from ancient judaism when contrasted with

00:00:33.600 christianity the question the question that breaks judaism is why the jews why were the jews of all

00:00:42.480 people singled out by god as his chosen people oh right yeah yeah his favorite child yes why this is

00:00:50.400 going to get very offensive and it's the type of information i hesitate to release if it could be

00:00:54.720 used by anti-semites however i think theologically it is a conversation we need to have in the same

00:01:00.080 way previous tracks have had to uncomfortably point out where modern christianity does not align with

00:01:06.240 what is actually in the bible we will be doing the same with modern judaism today and i would note here

00:01:12.240 for people who want to be like oh this is you know anti-semitic or something like that i did nine full

00:01:17.200 tracks absolutely railing and ragging on modern christian traditions and where i don't think they

00:01:24.080 align with the bible i do one on judaism no you don't gonna be i'm just trying to do as honest a

00:01:31.200 dive as i can on these various subject matters and i hope you can see that as i go through this and go

00:01:36.160 over the data but this data shocked me to my core so we're going to be arguing that ancestral judaism was

00:01:42.480 not an ethno religion the concept of matrilineal jewish identity is a non-biblical in fact pre-christ

00:01:48.720 judaism actively and aggressively proselytized and even forced the mass conversion of conquered

00:01:54.160 peoples at times as evidenced by both biblical sources roman historical accounts and the jewish

00:02:00.880 historian josephus and and even roman law which we'll see the no hide movement lacks solid biblical

00:02:08.720 backing and is essentially a theological construct with minimal scriptural foundation the biblical passages

00:02:14.960 that jews cite to argue against modifying god's covenant with man which they use to deny christianity

00:02:21.040 as the more faithful offshoot of ancient judaism do not actually communicate what they claim and this

00:02:26.400 one is pretty in the extreme which we'll get to even the way circumcision is practiced today

00:02:32.640 may be incorrect or i'm going to say is probably incorrect what when compared with egyptian practices

00:02:38.880 contemporary with the writing of the old testament which we have a reason to believe the jewish

00:02:43.760 tradition may have been influenced by at the time of christ judaism was a highly diverse tradition

00:02:51.760 and the christian branch was not unique in its differences the quote-unquote true judaism that

00:02:56.240 modern jews claim to be descended from would have been just one of many religious systems based on the

00:03:01.680 old testament and was as different from the average theological understanding as christianity was at

00:03:07.120 time original christianity and techno puritanism are much closer to the belief system of the average

00:03:13.600 jew at the time of christ than modern judaism and if judaism started as a religion that actively

00:03:20.080 proselytized and became an esno religion after the christian branch of the jewish tradition gained

00:03:24.640 widespread adoption this makes the entire modern jewish tradition appear as a reaction to the success of a

00:03:30.880 version with an arguably greater divine mandate of course we will be addressing the arguments against

00:03:36.480 every one of these points as i have discussed my positions with a few rabbis together the strongest

00:03:40.800 counter arguments i could find and finally we are going to go over a clever and unique textual

00:03:46.960 theological argument that fixes every one of the problems i read throughout this entire video

00:03:51.920 we will also discuss how christians have to reconcile with the fact that demographically speaking right now

00:03:59.760 the jews very obviously have god's favor and will likely be the dominant world power was in the next

00:04:05.520 century okay um so i'm going to start all of this was the framing of you know when i first was growing

00:04:12.000 up and i was you know an atheist growing up really raised an atheist i always saw judaism versus christianity

00:04:19.040 as being like no competition like judaism was just obviously the more logical religion it had more claims

00:04:26.000 to antiquity which i no longer i'm not arguing it may not it it was basically in my mind like deism plus

00:04:33.520 christianity added a bunch of weird stuff that i didn't really get like transferring sins onto an innocent

00:04:39.760 person seemed really off to me the idea of jesus as being literally god's child on earth i was like why

00:04:46.240 do we need to like it's a whole other theological element i have to believe other than god and it it felt

00:04:53.120 very like just no contest i was like well if i if i could have been uh born in the jewish tradition that's the

00:04:59.440 way i would have gone now i'm not going to be a reformed jew or something lame like that but that's

00:05:04.000 after digging really deeply into it especially with this tract i am now quite glad that i don't

00:05:11.120 have to defend the jewish position because i now have come to believe that textually speaking and in

00:05:17.600 the eyes of history is actually a slightly harder position to argue for i say all this believing still

00:05:23.520 that jews have a divine mandate that they are still following the covenant that god gave them

00:05:28.560 but there has been a another covenant since then and so they're not like inactive rebellion to god but

00:05:33.760 yeah so thoughts before i dig in i want to hear your arguments here this is intriguing if a little

00:05:41.840 intimidating i will start this tract by saying this is not a passive logic i wanted to tread down

00:05:48.080 but one that became evident as i began to examine what i thought was an innocuous question like

00:05:52.480 pulling a single thread only to watch the entire sweater unravel why were the jews of all people

00:05:58.480 singled out by god as his chosen people this is a theological question that not just jews need a

00:06:03.760 good answer for but one christians and muslims also need to address yet it is ignored by these traditions

00:06:09.600 there are two broad categories of possible answers there was something phenotypically genetically

00:06:14.560 or otherwise tied to the nature of the early jewish people that led to god favoring them or two the

00:06:20.720 jewish people were set apart by their belief system and not by anything tied to their biology rabbinic

00:06:26.720 scholars almost universally lean towards the second answer early jews had a more accurate conception

00:06:32.880 of god which led to them being rewarded as god's chosen people i would note that this is also what

00:06:38.320 i believe and what i find to be the most satisfying answer the problem is if the early jews were

00:06:43.280 god's chosen people because they had a more accurate understanding of the divine why should modern

00:06:48.080 judaism be gatekipped around matrilineal inheritance instead of around a person's belief system yeah why

00:06:54.240 would an atheistic secular jew be considered more jewish than a deist when a deist has a closer

00:07:01.200 understanding of god and a closer belief system to what is theologically jewish does this concept

00:07:07.760 not contradict the very basis of god's favor for more insight on how orthodox jews answer this

00:07:14.560 question we need to examine a book composed in the fourth century ce strife on deuteronomy

00:07:20.240 an important note here is that the ideas discussed here were not added to jewish canon until centuries

00:07:25.840 after christ's death now here's the exact text and this is also part of the mishnah any thoughts before

00:07:31.120 i go further by the way i will say that it has really bothered me that technically someone who

00:07:39.280 is matrilineally jewish is seen as jewish whereas someone who like personally went through as much

00:07:48.000 material as they could and then practiced and and followed all of the rules would not be considered

00:07:54.560 jewish well unless they were approved by a rabbinic court unless yeah unless they were but like it's also

00:07:59.360 intentionally difficult for them to do that so like why someone who doesn't follow any of the rules

00:08:04.800 and is only matrilineally jewish i find that a lot less that makes sense to me look i can understand

00:08:10.960 well so you would say it's just a genetic condition it's just you know you are you keep the the tradition

00:08:16.640 to some extent but what what doesn't make sense to me and i think it's a much harder question to answer

00:08:21.600 is why is a deist not more jewish than a secular jew because a deist you know the jews would say

00:08:27.440 monotheism is like a very important thing to believe right so so if the deist it's closer to

00:08:33.920 the true faith shouldn't now why why is a deist closer to the truth faith because my association

00:08:39.280 with deists if we're being honest here is just basically the atheists of the enlightenment pyramid

00:08:46.320 period because they are a monotheist and the secular jew is a pure atheist a monotheist theologically

00:08:53.280 speaking is closer to judaism than a pure atheist but the question is to me like why now i i can

00:09:02.240 understand some degree of gatekeeping here but i i suppose your question is right like i can

00:09:07.040 understand how they might want to keep out somebody from the jewish community who otherwise had studied

00:09:10.880 the text and everything like that sure but i can't understand why they would want to include somebody

00:09:16.080 who has renounced all of the belief systems yeah and who doesn't follow the rules

00:09:19.840 yeah so we'll get into all of this because this gets really interesting because this does not appear

00:09:24.880 to be the way it used to be okay okay so right now we're getting to the mishnah this is written a few

00:09:30.880 centuries after christ's death some of these traditions might be older but i think that we can

00:09:35.360 sort of see which traditions were common was in the period that christ was preaching because they were

00:09:39.360 adopted in early christianity this tradition was not so i'm going to assume that this is a post

00:09:44.240 second temple tradition okay so and and this explains why the jews this is the standard

00:09:50.160 orthodox jewish explanation and he said the lord came from sinai when the lord appeared to give torah

00:09:55.920 to israel it is not to israel alone that he appeared but to all nations first he went to the children of

00:10:02.160 esav and he asked them will you accept the torah they asked what is written in it he answered you shall

00:10:07.360 not kill they answered the entire essence of our father is murder as is written and the hands are

00:10:13.280 hands of esav and it is with this that his father assured him and by your sword you shall live and

00:10:20.640 then he went to the children of amon and moab and asked will you accept the torah they asked what is

00:10:25.840 written in it he answered you shall not commit adultery they answered lord of the universe is our

00:10:32.160 entire essence as is written and the two daughters of lot conceived by the father now you should note

00:10:37.440 here whenever i say as is written they're quoting some other part about some figure in early jewish

00:10:42.400 like a canon something naughty okay like here it's basically saying that the children of esen are

00:10:48.640 are descended from lot okay okay um and and his daughters he then went to the children of ishmael

00:10:55.600 and asked them will you accept the torah they asked what is written in it he answered you shall not

00:11:00.880 steal they answered lord of the universe our father's entire essence is stealing

00:11:07.680 i just find that they know they're talking to god the lord of the universe and they're like yeah but

00:11:12.320 stealing's like our whole bag man i'm just so into stealing and he and he ishmael shall be a wild man

00:11:22.800 his hand against all there was none among all of the nations who he did not go to and speak and

00:11:29.280 knock on their door asking if they will accept the torah all the kings on earth will acknowledge

00:11:34.480 you oh lord and they have heard your words of mouse i might think that they heard and accepted

00:11:40.480 it is therefore written and they did not do them and with anger and wrath will i take revenge on the

00:11:46.800 nations because they did not accept the mitzvahs and even the seven mitzvahs that the sons of

00:11:52.560 noak took upon themselves they could not abide by until they divested themselves of them and ceded

00:11:58.880 them to israel so this explanation presents numerous theological problems first the midrash portrays god

00:12:07.600 physically appearing to numerous distinct nations simultaneously an event of unprecedented cosmic

00:12:12.960 significance that would have fundamentally altered human history yet no archaeological record

00:12:17.760 written tradition or oral history outside the jewish tradition references such a universally

00:12:22.320 transformative revelation furthermore the midrash's genealogical framework attributing entire

00:12:27.120 civilizations to single biblical ancestors ezm amab moab and ishmael contradicts established

00:12:32.480 anthropological understandings of human population dispersal and development archaeological and genetic

00:12:37.440 evidence demonstrates that human groups evolves through complex patterns of migration intermarriage

00:12:41.440 and cultural exchange rather than the neat biblically aligned family trees this narrative

00:12:45.680 presupposes this anachronistic perception of later ethnic identities onto a mythic pre-sinai world

00:12:53.120 fundamentally misrepresents the accurate historical development of ancient near eastern peoples now you

00:12:58.400 might say the mishnah is meant to be allegorical and that god's foreknowledge that other people would

00:13:03.360 deny the torah is why he didn't bring it to them this leads to the second problem second it is clearly

00:13:09.600 immoral the old testament makes it clear that children should not be punished for the sins of their father

00:13:14.560 why can't these people's descendants simply decide to stop their sins ezekiel 18 20 states the soul who

00:13:20.880 sins is the one who will die the son will not share the guilt of the father nor will the father share

00:13:25.920 the guilt of the son the righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them and the wickedness

00:13:31.440 of the wicked will be charged to them if your response is to argue that this was just a deeply

00:13:36.000 ingrained cultural tendency in these groups then why is somebody still considered jewish if they have

00:13:41.040 left jewish culture why are they still jewish when they break god's commandments why maintain

00:13:46.400 matrilineal descent at all third it seems to suggest one can inherit a core sin from something a distant

00:13:53.200 ancestor did at least at the cultural level in the context of jews being the descendants of king david

00:13:59.360 consider the passage will you accept the torah they asked what is written in it he answered you shall not

00:14:04.720 commit adultery they answered lord of the universe evra a visit relations is our entire essence as it is

00:14:11.200 written and the two daughters just seems like trolling i this can't be why why are the why are

00:14:18.720 the children of amon and moab tainted by their ancestors sins but not the jews here i'm thinking

00:14:24.160 the descendants of king david who you know clearly did illicit relations you know why and we know from

00:14:30.160 the bible that jews did all sorts of horrible things in ancient times even during the biblical

00:14:34.240 period why are they not tainted like all of these other people and then fifth the midrash and i love

00:14:40.080 somebody i was talking to one jew about this and they go well david later felt bad about that oh well

00:14:48.400 that doesn't cancel out that he did it that's like not the way this works that apparently here

00:14:54.320 if the sons felt bad that their father did it it doesn't even remove the sin what why why did they

00:14:59.760 have to carry it for multiple generations and david it's like a lifetime he feels bad about it is gone

00:15:05.760 and then this the midrash presents entire nations being judged based on the actions of single ancestors

00:15:11.440 or representatives which raises serious questions about fairness and individual moral agency ig why

00:15:16.560 can't i or or why didn't god bring this to them multiple times or something so anyway thoughts

00:15:22.480 why don't people talk about this this seems oddly discordant like it does well i think that's why

00:15:31.520 people don't talk about it i think no but that's the thing so well but hold on right like within the lds church

00:15:36.240 people don't talk a lot about a lot of things and then you know there's there's an issue with a bunch

00:15:40.560 of things being on the internet so the moment you do start questioning there's all the people who have left the lds church

00:15:46.480 and are talking about the stuff that doesn't make sense and that doesn't match up and it's a little

00:15:52.240 embarrassing and why is there not an equivalent of this with judaism that brings up these issues

00:15:58.320 it's surprising i think that there's there's three things here right um okay jewish deconverts that have

00:16:04.080 a that are both highly educated jews i.e not from one of these factions that doesn't really educate people

00:16:10.080 that they they don't have the same axe to grind against their tradition they often don't feel

00:16:15.200 like they were intentionally had things kept from them or lied to like all of this would be taught

00:16:20.240 to a jew an orthodox jew is going to know all of this but they don't have a reason to question it

00:16:24.880 they don't have a reason to question the mishnah in the way i an outsider would now a christian

00:16:29.600 is not going to question this because when christians do proselytization to jews they're

00:16:33.840 genuinely terrible at it they keep trying to be like oh but look at all these prophecies here

00:16:38.640 and see how they were were filled by the life of jesus and it's like well i mean you could have

00:16:43.440 just written all that stuff to fill all those prophecies you know like there were you know i i

00:16:48.640 that's going to be super unconvincing to a jew and a christian is not going to take the time to study

00:16:52.640 like the internal inconsistencies an atheist who's arguing against this stuff well they're going to

00:16:57.680 have a problem because they're going to approach this and and and point out like factually and

00:17:02.720 historically where this doesn't make sense or like logically things about like an all-caring god

00:17:07.440 don't make sense they're not going to point to like the nitpicky things in the way that i am

00:17:11.840 because i'm like oh these texts are divinely inspired i need to study them and in my studies

00:17:17.120 i hope you also see with the mission i hear why i do not count personally like a lot of people are

00:17:23.600 like why are you into like the christian texts and not into the jewish texts of post christ and i'm like

00:17:29.360 because they're honestly like not as well thought through or researched like the the the the text here

00:17:35.440 like when i read it that doesn't it felt like pretty poorly logicked like like i i'd say almost

00:17:40.960 sort of like a popovui type religion like a really polytheistic religion where it's like oh you have

00:17:46.800 the x and the y and then the y crazy thing happened and the z crazy thing happened rather than like

00:17:51.680 polemics on morality or parables or stuff like that which are like a sort of easy way to convey a moral

00:17:57.920 system and not just easy but i think fundamentally more sophisticated and sort of the depths of morality that can be

00:18:03.440 taught with it instead of oh actually god gave this to everyone just nobody else accepted it

00:18:09.920 like that i that feels like a terrifically unsatisfying answer to me

00:18:16.160 it is unsatisfying yeah i guess it's just about hiding in the weeds then now before i go further

00:18:20.640 let's examine every instance in the bible or old testament where someone attempts to address the

00:18:24.400 question of why the jews deuteronomy 778 the lord did not set his affection on you and choose you

00:18:31.040 because you were more numerous than other peoples for you were the fewest of all peoples but it was

00:18:35.840 because the lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors this passage is interesting

00:18:40.880 because it specifically denies one potential reason population size but then provides a somewhat

00:18:44.560 circular explanation essentially because god loved you genesis 18 19 provides another perspective

00:18:50.400 regarding abraham specifically for i have chosen him so he will direct his children and his household

00:18:56.400 after him to keep the way of the lord by doing what is right and just this suggests the choice was

00:19:02.240 based on abraham's future role in teaching righteousness that is i believe the clearest and

00:19:07.280 correct answer it was because he had closer to correct beliefs and his beliefs would influence future

00:19:12.160 populations in a in a positive direction i.e that's like techno puritan laid out because you know his

00:19:18.880 direction and his children and his household after him will keep the way of the lord and doing what is right and

00:19:23.200 just now deuteronomy 9 4 through 6 explicitly rejects the idea that the jews were chosen for

00:19:29.600 their righteousness after the lord your god has driven them out before you do not say to yourself

00:19:35.040 the lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness no it is on

00:19:39.200 account of the wickedness of these nations that the lord is going to drive them out before you it is

00:19:43.520 not because of your righteousness or your integrity we see here that through and you know this one i find

00:19:48.320 pretty interesting some people are sort of like this shows that the jews weren't more righteous than

00:19:52.080 other people but i could argue that this doesn't necessarily say that it just says like everyone

00:19:57.440 else was so completely deplorable that maybe on average jews were slightly more righteous but they

00:20:03.120 shouldn't take any pride in it because they were still like pretty deplorable it could it could be

00:20:07.840 read that way but a lot of people read it to say i think because it deflects one answer that people

00:20:12.960 don't want to be the correct answer that jews were more righteous than other people and it kind of it

00:20:17.120 kind of sets that what we see here is throughout the passages is notably the absence of any claim

00:20:21.840 that the jewish people were chosen because of an inherent or unique qualities that they possessed

00:20:27.520 okay thoughts before i go further

00:20:32.480 this just seems like so much guesswork and the conclusions made are putting words in god's mouth in

00:20:39.440 a way that makes me feel very uncomfortable yeah all right all of this refocuses our question okay

00:20:45.680 if jews are only jews because of what they believe theologically why did matrilineal descent enter the

00:20:52.000 picture okay back to simone's question this is good first let's examine the academic answer to this question

00:20:58.560 then we'll address what orthodox jews believe the matrilineal principle in judaism is particularly

00:21:03.680 interesting because it's not explicitly stated in the torah slash hebrew bible itself the primary

00:21:08.240 biblical text often cited is deuteronomy 7 3-4 which discusses intermarriage you shall not

00:21:14.480 intermarry with them for they will turn your children away from following me however this

00:21:18.640 text doesn't specifically establish matrilineal descent in in fact if you look at the text it

00:21:23.920 explains why you shouldn't marry them because if you married someone of a different faith your kids

00:21:28.320 will deconvert at a higher rate that has nothing to do with matrilineal descent and it's completely

00:21:33.040 logical the clearest early service for matrilineal descent comes from the mishnah compiled around

00:21:37.920 200 ce in condition 3 12 which states that a child follows the status of the mother this talmud

00:21:45.440 condition 68b attempts to derive this principle from biblical verses particularly from deuteronomy 7 4

00:21:51.840 but many scholars view this as an ex post facto justification of an already existing practice

00:21:57.360 in fact we have substantial evidence to believe that at the time of the christian split judaism

00:22:02.400 transmitted family identity patrilineally biblical precedence throughout the hebrew bible slash old

00:22:07.120 testament lineage and tribal affiliation were traced through the father's line the genealogies in

00:22:11.360 genesis numbers and chronicles follow a patrilineal descent all of them follow a patrilineal descent as

00:22:17.360 far as i know there's no matrilineal genealogies in the old testament josephus and philo the first

00:22:22.480 century jewish writers sometimes discuss jewish identity in ways that appear to emphasize patrilineal

00:22:27.680 descent priestly and davidic lines the priesthood being a cohen the royal lineage were transmitted

00:22:33.120 patrilineally and the messianic line was transmitted patrilineally every major line went patrilineal in

00:22:40.960 the old testament and we have lots of lines that we can be citing here there are so many yes the

00:22:46.080 dead sea scrolls generally appear to emphasize patrilineal descent particularly in the damascus

00:22:50.720 document cd and the rule of the congregation one qsa neither philio of alexandria nor josephus

00:22:57.600 mentions matrilineal descent instead of both focus on concepts that implicitly support patrilineal

00:23:02.800 descent and i note here that if you're talking about a figure like josephus try seven to 100 ad

00:23:09.680 so josephus would have been a post-christ figure he would have been discussing post-christ jewish

00:23:16.000 theology and so we'd have like a modern jew which which i often hear they're like okay yeah like the

00:23:20.880 mishnah was made a few hundred years later but they were codifying pre-existing jewish tradition

00:23:26.880 it's like why did nobody write about this pre-existing jewish tradition we have a lot of jewish writers

00:23:33.280 but like josephus we have a lot of people documenting the jewish community we have

00:23:37.840 the dead sea scrolls community yeah they this this extremist community didn't think to document

00:23:43.120 matrilineal descent anywhere if it was common and important to judaism at the time

00:23:47.360 the old didn't think to mention it anywhere that to me beggars belief and i think that if you're

00:23:54.320 approaching this from an atheistic mindset or a skeptical mindset you're going to say it probably

00:24:00.640 wasn't there if you need to approach it for religious reasons okay let's see now do you have

00:24:05.200 any thoughts here no keep going this is intriguing now if you ask an orthodox jew about this i've heard

00:24:12.000 one logically coherent though not necessarily convincing answer to the question of why matrilineal

00:24:17.200 descent matters okay this is other than my answer which i think is much better than this one if

00:24:22.400 jews are originally chosen for what they believe rather than who they were this can be transferred

00:24:28.000 onto them through the contract at sinai so uh if we say that when the jews agreed to the covenant at

00:24:34.560 sinai this contract would apply to their bodies in some way and thus applied specifically to those

00:24:40.480 people and only those people who were at the signing at mount sinai a this this does make kind of sense

00:24:47.280 because then you're transferring the okay jews yes they were originally chosen because of what they

00:24:53.840 believed being closer to accurate that gave them the option to make the contract at mount sinai and then

00:24:59.120 the contract at mount sinai wrote them on wrote this on their body this also explains matrilineal descent now

00:25:06.160 the person who was telling me this i don't know if this is well known was in judaism but it just

00:25:09.920 seemed intuitive to me so i'd add it explains matrilineal descent because if it's written within

00:25:14.560 their body new jewish bodies are constructed within women okay so it's it's like almost as though on the

00:25:22.800 their double helix there there was this tiny little tag added a little well i say it's not within the

00:25:28.720 dna that's why it's matrilineal it's something else in their body that is like unique in some

00:25:35.360 or spiritually set apart in some way then that's why okay okay spiritual epigenetics somehow no if

00:25:43.040 it was in the dna then the father's dna would still yeah that's true that's true it has to be

00:25:47.040 here i'm making is that if not in the dna it's something inherent to their bodies which is why to

00:25:52.400 have a jewish body it must be constructed within a jewish woman womb right and i was like okay that's

00:25:59.120 actually fairly satisfying it explains that yes they were originally chosen based on their their

00:26:05.440 beliefs but then this transferred to like a biological thing it's just really weird though if

00:26:11.760 i were creating some kind of divine authorization process or i were going to tag something you know

00:26:20.000 add something to the human metadata of my favorite people who did the thing i wanted them to do

00:26:25.680 it wouldn't involve the gestation process like that's just weird um everything involves the

00:26:31.200 gestation process but dna simon that makes sense to me but why not the dna because the dna then it would

00:26:40.480 be like a specific piece of code that wouldn't have any spiritual significance because like like it's it's

00:26:45.680 i mean it might if it's like the lines from the torah or something because you know that's way

00:26:49.840 cobblism that sometimes does things but what i'm saying wouldn't it be it would make more sense

00:26:53.760 to me if it were like the divine semen you know like that they at least have a little more

00:26:58.800 agency you know what i mean like they're wiggling the what is the i'm just saying there

00:27:04.320 is a logic here that i can get behind i might not buy it myself but there's a logic here that i can

00:27:09.120 get behind i'm not feeling it but okay i'm glad i'm glad you feel okay about this this is great okay

00:27:14.960 well i don't actually so okay i'd say now if you're jewish and i say i encourage people to

00:27:20.400 stay with their ancestral religions this is as good of an answer as you're gonna get other than

00:27:25.680 the one i'll have at the end of the video you can skip to the time stamp at the end of the video

00:27:29.040 other than that turn off the video now and walk away because it's only downhill from here

00:27:34.000 for those of us who are undowned by such constraints this answer fails at a number of levels

00:27:39.920 all right so first you've got common sense if the covenant god made with the people at sinai

00:27:46.800 traveled matrilineally through bloodlines why was that never explicitly laid out in the bible

00:27:52.080 that is an important point in what seems to be one of the existentially most important facts about

00:27:58.800 god's people that their identity travels matrilineally and if it does work that way why can people convert

00:28:05.040 to judaism at all something we see happen multiple times in the bible like if this thing that was

00:28:11.760 written during the initial signing of the contract is actually important to jewish identity why are

00:28:16.880 converts allowed at all that doesn't make sense to me why was ruth able to convert and we'll get to

00:28:22.960 this question more in a second but then there's a second problem which is we're told in the old testament

00:28:28.560 that it wasn't written in their bodies specifically we have jeremiah here talking about the second

00:28:34.640 covenant so this is the covenant after sinai okay we hold the days are coming declares the law where

00:28:40.320 i will make a new covenant with the house of israel and the house of judah not like the covenant that

00:28:44.240 i made with their fathers on the day when i took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of

00:28:49.040 egypt dot dot dot i will put my law within them i will write it in their hearts this is said in regards

00:28:55.440 to a covenant to come and is contrasted with the one at sinai making it clear that the covenant

00:29:00.480 created at sinai was not put within them or written within their hearts not great not great then you

00:29:07.360 have the problem of biblical conversions we see multiple fairly straightforward conversions into

00:29:13.120 judaism within the bible if this is possible it negates the idea that some special bond was in

00:29:19.040 the jewish body we will examine each of these in turn along with the counter arguments from

00:29:24.880 jews and rabbis as these being easy conversions historical finally we know factually that early

00:29:30.560 jews did not see their religion this way traveling jewish missionaries were so common

00:29:36.000 in the roman world that they are mentioned by multiple jewish historians we're going to go over

00:29:40.800 three jewish historians then a jewish historian josephus who talked about this phenomenon

00:29:46.080 then they're also mentioned in the new testament but more damning than that we also know

00:29:50.800 the jews used to force people in conquered regions to become jewish and afterward considered these

00:29:56.000 people fully jewish again i will cover all of these points in turn okay finally as i mentioned here the

00:30:01.440 new testament no and this is actually really really really important to this point and this is an

00:30:06.480 argument that i think many jews wouldn't really think through but it's actually a really powerful

00:30:11.760 argument if you think through the logic of it nowhere in the new testament does jesus say his goal is to

00:30:17.280 open judaism to non-jews if judaism at the time was understood to have high requirements for conversion

00:30:24.400 or some level of matrilineal descent why doesn't jesus ever mention that this is now waived why did

00:30:30.880 none of the people writing immediately after him mention this when gentiles were converting into the

00:30:35.760 religion why was this seeming and they did write about other things they wrote about like should we

00:30:40.240 have circumcision should we not have circumcision they had these debates and early jews also had these

00:30:45.040 debates which we'll get into okay why was this seemingly a complete non-issue for early

00:30:50.800 christianity with the debate in the early church instead focused on whether circumcision was required

00:30:55.840 for non-jews who converted in paul's letters and other jewish laws specifically dietary laws

00:31:01.040 assessed and acts this alliance was what we have seen in other jewish conversions of the time but more

00:31:06.480 on that in just a moment so any thoughts before i go into all of these specific i'm dying for you to go

00:31:11.840 into them just go ahead um because this goes against what i knew about early judaism and

00:31:16.160 will go against the counter arguments too because i brought this up with rabbis multiple rabbis if

00:31:20.160 you think like i'm just calling out one revenue no no i went over this with lots of people to get a

00:31:24.240 diverse set of counter arguments and a strong counter arguments i could to what to me seemed a

00:31:29.840 patent historical truth that in early judaism they had uh active missionaries and aggressively tried

00:31:36.240 to convert other populations which again why would they be doing that if they had matrilineal descent

00:31:41.680 right and i actually want to hear your thoughts on this i think the that the christian bible and

00:31:46.960 the early christian theologians never thought to mention now judaism or the old testament is open to

00:31:52.560 non-jews why didn't they ever mention that the the core thing they mentioned is now it's open to non-jews

00:32:00.240 without circumcision that's a that's a big difference yeah there's a big difference and

00:32:05.680 it wasn't even without circumcision because we'll see people converting to judaism without circumcision

00:32:09.680 in just a second historically okay it was an active debate at the time i'll give you that but

00:32:14.880 the requirements were much lower what both history and the bible reveal is that judaism during this

00:32:19.680 period was much closer to modern day islam than an esno religion specifically it was a religion that

00:32:24.960 anyone could convert into that conquered other people and forced them to convert and that had

00:32:29.200 traveling missionaries who actively sought converts it was a religion that like islam

00:32:33.600 concerned how the state was governed this is what makes it very different from christianity

00:32:37.200 it was also a religion that like islam carved out a place under that state for non-believers

00:32:42.480 with unique rules applied to them this is where the concept of ger tasava emerges which is very

00:32:47.920 similar to the muslim concept of dahimi and i know here it's also similar to islam and like all sorts

00:32:52.240 of other ways you you've got the you're supposed to read it in the original language you've got the there

00:32:57.440 is kind of one ethnicity that's bound to the religion but not exactly one ethnicity it's

00:33:02.640 really fascinating to me the parallels between islam and this early judaism from the perspective

00:33:07.840 of how it related to things like governance and converts and an ethnic status yeah we are going to

00:33:12.400 start with accounts from ancient historians then move to biblical accounts beginning with the jewish

00:33:16.720 historian josephus who wrote in the first century bce crucially after the destruction of the temple

00:33:21.920 showing these practices were still common at the time but i think some of his writings might have

00:33:25.840 been before the destruction but it was generally around that time like temple destruction i should

00:33:29.440 say crucially after christ showing that these practices were still common at the time during

00:33:35.760 the hasmonean period second first century bce there are accounts of mass conversions particularly of the

00:33:41.520 imidians according to josephus john heraculus conducted military campaigns to expand hasmonean territory

00:33:47.760 after defeating the idemians militarily he incorporated their territory into his kingdom

00:33:54.000 after the military conquest heraculus gave the imidians an ultimatum either convert to judaism

00:33:58.960 which meant circumcision for males and adherence to jewish law or be expelled from their homeland

00:34:03.200 this suggests a relatively simple conversion process the conversion process consists of

00:34:07.360 circumcision and following the jewish laws but interestingly not necessarily following jewish beliefs

00:34:13.360 it is clear at this period of jewish history being a jew was not based on matrilineal descent

00:34:18.480 or even belief but on keeping the commandments anyone who followed the rules was fully jewish

00:34:24.240 and i'm talking about the common perception and i note here when i brought this up i was a rabbi

00:34:28.160 their thing about the hasmoneans was like well the hasmoneans were like weird basically like they were

00:34:32.640 an offshoot but they were powerful enough to be conquering other people i think that they are weird

00:34:38.320 from the perspective and again we'll keep going over this from the branch of judaism that ended up

00:34:43.840 surviving and existing as modern judaism but for more color here the hasmoneans were the primary

00:34:50.640 ruling dynasty of the jewish people during their period they were an independent jewish kingdom

00:34:56.160 that came to power after a revolt against solution rule uh this was from approximately 167 bce

00:35:04.960 to 37 bce the reason why a rabbi might think of them as weird is because they align themselves

00:35:12.400 more with the sadducees which favored a more literal interpretation of scripture and a rejection of

00:35:17.920 oral law and the jewish group that survived follows the pharisees most closely which focused on oral

00:35:25.040 tradition and interpretation of the torah again as i've noticed if you took the average of all the

00:35:30.080 jewish beliefs at the time that branch was about as different from the average with hasmoneans clearly

00:35:35.520 being part of this average as the branch that led to christianity and and and why would he even

00:35:40.800 think this was normal i mean clearly he thought this was normal that you could and we'll see other

00:35:44.480 instances where people are forced to convert and in a world where you can forcibly convert people

00:35:49.200 it seems to me be much more just follow the laws similar actually to like modern nohide traditions but

00:35:54.800 without the circumcision thing like just follow the laws and everything's good which i like it's it's

00:35:59.840 very jewish like i'm not going to say that's incordinate was what i understand about judaism at this

00:36:03.440 time period but i don't think that this is actually what the old testament says you need needed i think

00:36:08.000 of the old testament period so not in this period which is after the old testament you actually

00:36:11.680 needed to be a full believer and fully support the the people of the faith of god and if you did

00:36:18.000 those two things you while also keeping all the rules you were fully jewish i think that the believer

00:36:23.520 part kind of got dropped among some of the jewish groups here and may have been more you know unique

00:36:27.920 to this time period also from josephus antiquity that the jews book 20 chapters 2 through 4 we learn

00:36:33.280 about the conversion of queen helena of atabellini and her son isaides to judaism in the first century

00:36:39.200 ce this account is particularly noteworthy for what it reveals about conversion practices during

00:36:43.760 this period key points from josephus's account occlude process of conversion helena and isaides

00:36:49.120 were drawn to judaism separately through different jewish merchants and teachers their conversations were

00:36:53.680 voluntary and occurred without any reference to their metrilineal ancestry again this is common even

00:36:58.640 today was jewish conversions you could convert without it uh but it is interesting that there

00:37:02.560 is no mention of you know of them converting or matrilineal requirements or anything like that

00:37:08.080 it was based solely on their acceptance of jewish beliefs and practices what is really that's that's

00:37:13.120 my game i'm into that is the circumcision debate that happened okay xadis initially converted without

00:37:19.280 circumcision on the advice of a jewish merchant named ananias who feared political backlash if the king

00:37:25.360 underwent the procedure later another jew from galilee named eliaizer convinced azadis that

00:37:31.280 circumcision was necessary for observance of the law um and we'll see a few times that there what

00:37:36.240 appears to have been some debate about the requirement of circumcision during this period

00:37:39.920 but most of the like trained rabbis would have said it was required but trained rabbis were not

00:37:44.720 required to approve of you to convert to judaism we'll see that in a second here the conversion

00:37:49.600 process appears to have been centered on accepting monotheism adopting jewish practices and following

00:37:54.080 the jewish law for men jewish circumcision was debated as either essential or optional no formal

00:38:00.560 tribunal notably absent is the mention of any formal bit den rabbinic court or extensive questioning

00:38:05.680 process that became standard in later rabbinic judaism considered fully jewish after their conversions

00:38:10.880 helena and azadis were considered fully jewish helena made pilgrimages to jerusalem provided for

00:38:16.560 famine relief for the city while azadis sent offerings to the temple and apparently they are talked about

00:38:20.960 as being very good jews by like jewish historians okay they are pious good jews these two all right

00:38:28.480 the story of medelius in the jewish war book 2 chapter 17 josephus recounts a brutal episode that

00:38:35.440 occurred at the beginning of the jewish revolt against rome around 66 ce the jewish rebels in

00:38:39.520 jerusalem attacked and overwhelmed a roman garrison stationed in the city the roman soldiers took refuge in

00:38:44.720 the royal towers but were eventually forced to negotiate surrender on terms with the jewish rebels the

00:38:49.920 the garrison commander metelius arranged terms of surrender whereby the romans would lay down their

00:38:54.880 weapons and be allowed to depart unharmed however once the romans had surrendered their arms the jewish

00:38:59.120 rebels led by eliezer attacked and massacred them in violation of the agreement josephus writes they

00:39:04.800 the rebels fell upon the romans when they had brought them into the stadium and encompassed them around

00:39:10.400 some of them being unarmed and others in such a condition as rendered them incapable of defending

00:39:14.720 themselves and that slew them all accepting medelius for they spared him alone because he

00:39:20.240 intrigued for mercy and promised that he would turn jew and be circumcised medelius was thus the sole

00:39:26.880 survivor of the massacre having agreed to convert to judaism to save his life joseph presents this

00:39:32.000 incident as a terrible crime that violated sacred oaths and brought divine punishment on jerusalem

00:39:37.200 regardless of the act and the ethics of the act and anything like that clearly this gang of jews or this

00:39:43.520 troop like this was a large group of jews thought that an individual saying okay i'll be jewish don't

00:39:50.080 kill me that that was enough to merit him being jewish in some way and thus not like what are your

00:39:58.240 thoughts on i think it says something about the belief about what a conversion meant during this time

00:40:02.800 period well i like that the conversion involved a costly signal um it seems again we we can we can

00:40:12.640 argue about you know were these good people or not but it's indicating something about what

00:40:16.640 was commonly understood as the conversion process if it was commonly understood you had to go through

00:40:21.280 a rabbinic court these people certainly wouldn't have thought of this as a conversion nor would the

00:40:26.400 mass conversions that the hasmanians been thought of as a conversion yeah okay so now we've got the

00:40:31.440 conversion of the women of damascus which i think is very interesting in regards to your note on costly signals

00:40:36.480 and we'll see i think why christianity spread as the branch of judaism that ended up spreading

00:40:42.400 in the jewish war book 2 chapter 20 josephus describes events in damascus during the early

00:40:46.800 stages of the jewish revolt after new spread of jewish rebel victories the people of damascus

00:40:50.960 planned to massacre the jewish population in the city however they had a problem quote but they were

00:40:55.440 afraid of their own wives who were almost all of them addicted to the jewish religion no no it was the

00:41:01.440 greatest concern was how they might conceal the things from them end quote the passage indicates

00:41:07.120 that a significant number of non-jewish women in damascus had embraced judaism these women had such

00:41:11.680 strong attachment to judaism and the jewish community that their husbands feared they would

00:41:16.960 warn the jews about the planned massacre the men of damascus ultimately carried out their plan

00:41:20.880 in secret killing about 10 000 jews in a single hour this brief mention illustrates how judaism

00:41:26.160 had attracted numerous gentile women converts to the point where it affected political and military

00:41:31.280 calculations during the jewish roman conflicts now i'll note here josephus is known to exaggerate

00:41:36.560 do i think that almost all of the women really were addicted to the jewish theology no but i think

00:41:42.560 that he's noting something here which we also see in the other stories is that women converted to

00:41:46.960 judaism at a disproportional rate the question is is why did women convert likely that they didn't

00:41:52.720 need to get circumcision there really wasn't that costly a signal for women who converted to judaism

00:41:58.000 but there was a very costly signal for men to convert to judaism

00:42:03.600 yeah that's fair okay and i'd also point out here that like do you even need a rabbinic court if

00:42:08.960 you're talking about like circumcision i can see why rabbinic courts weren't really needed during this

00:42:12.640 time period before first conversions became common because like no one's gonna fake that like no guy

00:42:19.840 it's like there's a lot of things that a guy is gonna fake and i think that they just didn't really

00:42:25.040 care about women converts that much they didn't see them as you know it was good to to to have them

00:42:31.440 when they were really dedicated but more often than not and you often see this they're a little

00:42:35.120 worried about women converts they're like oh they'll deconvert your kids because there's some periods

00:42:40.000 when the bible was written when like deconversions and like marrying outsiders was a big issue but it

00:42:44.080 doesn't appear to be the case throughout the like the entire old testament the story of fulvia in the

00:42:48.880 antiquities of the jews book 18 chapter 3 josephus accounts an incident occurring in rome during the reign of

00:42:54.000 emperor tiberius around 19 ce according to josephus there was a woman who was a proselytite converted

00:42:59.440 to judaism whose name was fulvia a woman of great dignity and one who embraced the jewish religion

00:43:03.920 the men for jewish scoundrels had persuaded her to send purple and gold to the temple at jerusalem

00:43:11.120 and when they had received what she had donated for their own purple dye for their own uses or maybe fabric

00:43:17.920 and did not bring it to the temple in this account fulvia is described as a woman of high social

00:43:22.400 standing in rome who had converted to judaism her husband saturn alias reported this fraud to his

00:43:27.760 friend serjanus keep in mind the husband wasn't a convert who informed the emperor tiberius tiberius

00:43:33.360 used this incident as a pretext to expel all jews from rome forcibly conscripting 4 000 jewish use for

00:43:38.880 military service in sardinia this story illustrates both that high status romans were converting to

00:43:44.880 judaism and that this was occurring during a time of increased roman hostility towards jewish practices

00:43:50.320 and that it seemed to disproportionately convert women oh actually this could solve a mystery from

00:43:54.720 one of our other episodes one of our other episodes we were talking about was christianity

00:43:59.200 really more moral than the other systems of the time right um like our christmas day episode so

00:44:04.160 like nobody watched it um but i figured it you know was a good one for christmas day uh and one of the

00:44:08.400 interesting things is that early christian communities seem to be overwhelmingly female

00:44:12.240 like a rate of like five to one and scott alexander discusses this in his book review on the early

00:44:17.440 rise of christianity but he also noted that a lot of these early christian communities were actually

00:44:21.680 just converted jewish converts um sort of it seems like the the female interest in christianity was

00:44:29.680 especially all this extra but he also mentioned that a lot of these early christian communities were

00:44:37.120 communities that had wanted to convert to judaism or had flirted oh yes but like the circumcision was

00:44:42.880 just one step too far and or the rules because it can be very hard to convert to judaism if you

00:44:47.440 don't live in a jewish community because there's so many things like you need all these amenities

00:44:51.200 to be able to follow being is this explains potentially why they were so overwhelmingly female

00:44:56.400 because of these pseudo jewish convert communities were as soon as they saw an iteration of judaism that

00:45:01.920 didn't require all this other stuff they were fully on board with that so they were converting sort of

00:45:08.240 pre-built communities and i think early christianity as we'll get in further about this because you'll

00:45:14.000 see that these communities were super common of jewish converts all around the the greek world all

00:45:19.840 around the roman world that we might be understanding early christianity wrong as being this super fast

00:45:26.080 spreading religion when it was really spreading on kindling it would have been yeah i mean scott alexander

00:45:31.920 also discussed in that book that he reviews just right i don't think the book fully emphasizes

00:45:36.800 how common because we're going to hear that almost every community had a group of gentile jewish

00:45:42.560 converts living within it that they were that common that it was seen as any town you go to you can

00:45:47.440 find gentile jewish converts as a community so they loosened the lid it's not fair that yeah that those

00:45:53.920 communities all converted and it made it look like christianity was growing much faster than it actually

00:45:57.440 was the jewish greeks of antioch in the jewish war book seven chapter three josephus describes the

00:46:04.000 relationship between jews and gentiles in antioch in modern day turkey one of the major cities of the

00:46:08.320 roman east quote for as the jewish nation is widely dispersed over all habitable earth among its

00:46:13.920 inhabitants so it is very much intermingled with syria by reason of its neighbors and the greatest

00:46:18.640 multitudes in antioch by reason of the largeness of the city wherein the kings after antichus had

00:46:24.800 afforded them a habitation with most undisputed tranquility they also made proselytites of a great many greeks

00:46:33.040 perpetually and thereby after a sort brought them to be a portion of their own body so this is a jew

00:46:39.360 bragging about how many jewish converts there were from greek populations in this city of antioch and

00:46:47.200 that they converted after proselytization this passage indicates that judaism in antioch was

00:46:53.040 actively attracting greek converts the phrase they had in some measure incorporated within themselves

00:46:58.960 suggests these converts were integrated into the jewish community this provides evidence that

00:47:03.040 judaism during this period was not closed to outsiders but was actively engaged in what we

00:47:07.520 might today call missionary activity and throughout his books josephus writes of jewish proselytation

00:47:12.640 against apion book 239 josephus proudly notes the widespread appeal of jewish practices quote the

00:47:18.320 masses have long since shown a keen desire to adopt our religious observances and there is not one city

00:47:23.680 greek greek or barbarian nor a single nation to which our customs of abstaining from work on the seventh

00:47:28.880 day was not spread and where the fasts and the lighting of lamps and many of our prohibitions in the

00:47:34.560 matter of food are not observed in quote against apion book 239 he emphasizes how many gentiles have adopted

00:47:41.200 jewish customs quote many people have come over to our ways of worship some of whom have remained while others

00:47:47.280 lacking the necessary endurance have fallen away again in quote now i also think this is pretty

00:47:51.680 interesting here is it talks about you know what makes you a jew it's not that they were like turned

00:47:55.840 away by a court or something like that it was just too hard to follow all the rules and so they stopped

00:48:00.320 being jewish so i think that that shows how a jew of this time period of the time period like

00:48:04.960 a bit post christ deaths would have thought about conversion jewish war book 2 18 2 during the outbreak

00:48:10.560 of violence against jews in cesara joseph smith notes the whole city was filled with confusion

00:48:15.600 and it appears evident that the rest of the population would soon betake themselves to arms

00:48:20.400 against the jews this event was mainly achieved through the work of proselytites converts uh antiquities

00:48:26.480 book 22 1 through 5. beyond this specific story of helena and azates joseph mentions a merchant ammonius

00:48:35.120 quote taught them the royal family to worship god according to the jewish religion suggesting ongoing

00:48:40.240 missionary activity now maybe joseph has made all this up that's possible or maybe this

00:48:45.440 is just like super rare instances and all of the stuff about like mass conversions or the you know

00:48:50.240 multiple communities total fiction because josephus wanted to make the jews look good now why he

00:48:55.360 would think this would make the jews look good if you needed a rabbinic court and judaism was

00:48:59.440 considered a matrilineal thing i don't know but clearly he loved that people liked converting to

00:49:04.000 judaism it's all over his works okay okay but let's go to writers who hated jewish people we'll start

00:49:09.920 with one who really hated the jewish people this is tacticus now for people who don't remember tacticus

00:49:15.440 tacticus was the guy when he was complaining about how evil the jews were one of his complaints was that

00:49:22.000 they didn't practice exposure or drowning their infants he was very upset about that he was like

00:49:28.000 what a disgusting practice to not drown infants everybody knows you know when you don't want a baby

00:49:34.240 you just drown it people wonder why women were into it yeah you want you wonder why we talk about

00:49:40.960 in the early christianity we were more moral this is one of the things that early christianity really

00:49:45.280 kept with judaism which is do not kill babies yeah and also like don't be a dick to women

00:49:51.920 don't be a dick to women we'll get it we'll get it if you want to go into that episode you can

00:49:56.400 but your early judaism was significantly less dickish to women than the romans were i can see why women

00:50:01.840 wanted to convert as well from that standpoint but you can learn more about that in the other video

00:50:05.440 so tacticus on jewish convergence in his histories book five five written around 100 to 110 ce tacticus

00:50:12.720 notes with disdain quote those who are converted to their ways follow the same practice he's talking

00:50:19.040 about circumcision here and the earliest lesson they receive is to despise the gods to disown their

00:50:24.880 country and to regard their parents children and brothers of little account now this hostile

00:50:30.960 characterization nevertheless confirms that the conversions to judaism were occurring among

00:50:35.360 mermyns tacticus prevents conversion as a complete break tacticus is where the word tactics come from

00:50:43.200 he wrote the our version of like the art of war the western canon version it's not a bad name what do

00:50:48.320 you think about that but most of it is i like tacticus let's do that for a guy tacticus i'm sorry no

00:50:54.560 not taking into account what he had to say about jews oh no no no i'm just like we're not baby drowning

00:50:59.680 i just like tacticus yes thank you but i i think he he shows some really interesting things here so

00:51:06.720 what from his perspective was required from jewish conversion today what we would think of as a lot of

00:51:11.760 like cults or alternate religions much more so than modern jewish conversion we also see this with ruth

00:51:17.760 which is if you talk about modern jewish conversion yeah it might be harder to convert but you're not

00:51:22.000 supposed to cut ties with your family jewish conversion during this period cutting ties with your

00:51:27.280 family was normal maybe not everyone did this because we see ruth cut ties with her family and

00:51:32.480 tacticus complains about people cutting ties with their family so i'm guessing it was normal for some

00:51:37.440 converts i'm not going to say all converts because we know of other individuals who didn't like the

00:51:41.440 woman whose husband like this high-born woman whose husband was clearly not jewish but i'm going to say

00:51:46.320 that that really dedicating yourself to the jewish community appears to have been one of the core

00:51:52.240 things that made you jewish during this period juval's complaints in his satirites particularly

00:51:59.120 satire 14 lines 96 to 106 written in the early second century ce juval mocks romans who adapted

00:52:07.120 jewish practices quote some of you have had a father who reveres the sabbath worship nothing but the

00:52:13.200 clouds and the divinity of the heavens oh i love that it sounds so much he's like they worship the clouds in

00:52:19.120 the heavens uh haven't been trained to despise roman laws they learn and practice and revere the jewish

00:52:25.840 law i again i love this it's like it's like there is this level of like breaking from roman laws and

00:52:30.800 there was a reason to despise many roman customs again see we're christians actually more moral he

00:52:35.440 describes a multi-generational process where first generation converts observe some jewish customs while

00:52:40.080 their children become fully observant jews showing concern about judaism's growing influence in rome

00:52:45.200 really interesting here because he's talking about like you whose fathers you have gone like full

00:52:49.680 jew very interesting roman legal restrictions emperor hadrian ruled 117 to 138 ce reportedly banned

00:52:59.840 circumcision which effectively prohibited conversion to judaism earlier emperor domitian ruled 81 to 96

00:53:07.040 ce imposed the jewish tax fiscus judicus on those who quote lived a jewish life without publicly acknowledging

00:53:14.960 the faith in quote targeting converts so that's really interesting if if this wasn't a big thing

00:53:20.560 that was happening why are they making laws about it what yeah if it was just a few rare instances and

00:53:26.160 that's good evidence i like that and this is very different from again i think like modern juvia jewish

00:53:32.160 missionary activities where there just is not a sustained modern jewish missionary effort

00:53:36.560 even among reformed jews that it's at least competent or widespread or that i've seen uh whereas

00:53:42.000 you really get the impression if you are a wealthy roman like writer or even emperor like like tacticus

00:53:49.760 or this this guy who who wrote the satirites um these are satires you know you are going to know

00:53:57.680 enough roman to jewish converts that it's gonna be annoying to you i don't know a single

00:54:06.480 convert to judaism i do oh sorry i i do know my sister converted i don't know a single convert to

00:54:14.640 judaism where it wasn't involved with a marriage i do i should say is that the same with you no he just

00:54:21.280 chose to convert on his own just really liked the religion it was one of my former managers at my first job

00:54:28.240 yeah yeah i actually know but i think that who they were marrying and their kids future played a

00:54:34.000 role in it so it's a bit different than this it wasn't it wasn't his partner either so but here

00:54:38.960 here's the thing apparently these converts were obnoxiously jewish to these these romans like well

00:54:44.240 i mean i think it's like being a vegan or a marathon runner you know my understanding is

00:54:48.240 that these early jewish converts were maybe closer to like not like what we would think of as like a

00:54:53.840 reform jewish movement but like somewhat orthodox in a lot of their practices and and like you say

00:54:58.880 i think like a vegan like they actually held the dietary restrictions they actually maybe did some

00:55:03.280 of the jewish yeah like you bring them over for their dinner and they're like i'm sorry i recently

00:55:08.880 converted you you invite them over they're like it's the sabbath i'm sorry yeah i'm and i can't eat

00:55:14.160 this dish right now because you've combined the cheese with the meat yes but here we're talking about

00:55:20.480 now cassius dio's account in roman history book 67 14 1 to 2 written in the early third century ce

00:55:27.440 but describing events under domitian cassius dio reports quote many others who drifted into jewish

00:55:32.800 ways were condemned some were put to death and the rest were at least deprived of their property

00:55:37.440 this passage suggests jewish conversion was widespread enough to warrant imperial persecution

00:55:41.680 and and you know they believed enough that they were killed for it you know really dedicated to

00:55:46.400 the jewish community yeah and then we have the new testament matthew 23 15 the new testament verse

00:55:52.000 written ce 80 to 90 ce has jesus criticizing certain pharisees quote woe to you teachers of the law and

00:56:00.400 pharisees you hypocrites you travel over land and sea to win a single convert while polemical this

00:56:06.000 suggests active jewish missionary efforts during the late second temple period confirming some jewish

00:56:11.280 groups actively sought converts so it's common enough that all these well-known romans had seen these

00:56:15.840 these jewish proselytizers and and jesus apparently was like hey i know your type you travel all over

00:56:23.280 the place trying to convert people like this was a common activity and and i i hear like i brought this

00:56:31.040 up with a one of the rabbis i brought this up was like oh but see this book that was written hundreds

00:56:35.840 of years later says that during this time period we didn't actively seek converts well i'm going to go

00:56:41.440 into why you might want to whitewash this part of your history because there is a reason why they

00:56:45.440 had to stop doing this but it's not even whitewash like i see nothing actively wrong with this it just

00:56:51.760 poses a problem for the concept of matrilineal jewish identity being something that's biblically

00:56:58.640 grounded or even grounded in jewish ancient history yeah now let's turn to the bible itself by the

00:57:05.120 way any thoughts before i go further no you were thorough but i'm pretty pumped on this because this

00:57:11.440 change i had no idea i had no idea until i started looking in on it the jews used to have

00:57:16.160 a big like proselytization effort i didn't either this is very surprising and it feels very islami

00:57:22.800 right like they have their own country they have their own laws for their country and their own like

00:57:26.720 system for those laws they have their own system for people who aren't jewish living within their

00:57:30.640 country and then they have like active missionary efforts and a big diversity of beliefs as well like

00:57:36.960 modern day islam was like different jewish groups which we'll get into in a second here

00:57:41.440 let's now turn to the bible itself i didn't start with the bible because most orthodox jews have

00:57:46.000 already had to deal with the fact that all ruse apparently had to do to become a jew to become

00:57:50.400 part of the lineage that led to king david would say that she wanted to be a jew and was committed to

00:57:55.120 the religion they typically handle it with comments like this when ruse converts to judaism she offers a very

00:58:00.320 radical declaration of commitment see ruse 116 17 and ruse said do not entreat me to leave you to

00:58:06.800 return from following you for wherever you go i will go and wherever you lodge i will lodge your

00:58:11.520 people shall be my people and your god my god where you die i will die there i will be buried so may the

00:58:18.640 lord do to me so may he continue if anything but death separate me and you i mean that sounds like

00:58:24.720 standard marriage stuff yes it's not like oh hey let me call me this is the other person talking here

00:58:31.440 it's not like oh hey let me call myself jewish and keep living like a heathen it's i'm totally

00:58:35.600 committed to this people and i am leaving my cultural context my land mob and totally immersing myself

00:58:41.360 in jewish culture and practice and it's like yeah but it is all still just saying that and going to a

00:58:47.040 land where all this stuff is like the normal rules you're not gonna have an easy time living in

00:58:51.200 israel of this time period was out obeying like the sabbaths and the other jewish laws like it's

00:58:57.120 not like i i guess as an outsider i'm like i don't know i'm not convinced that said when this is taken in

00:59:03.360 context of all of the historic evidence provided above it becomes clear that ruth's conversion was

00:59:08.240 not something extraordinary nor did it require such an extreme statement she just needed to say like

00:59:12.960 i'm committed now i will also note modern jewish interpretations of the story of

00:59:17.920 ruth are hugely weighed down by extra-biblical rabbinic traditions which makes her conversion

00:59:24.080 sound more modern here is an example of one of those so this is another rabbi who got back to me

00:59:28.160 on this okay ruth puts her ties with her moabite family and joins with the jewish people that fits

00:59:34.000 the talmudic criteria of accepting the mitzvah as she is committed to the jewish god and jewish people

00:59:39.440 and even then she's treated as an outcast until she manages to seduce boaz a local jewish noble

00:59:44.880 and the marriage is only approved of after she goes to the analog of bet din jewish court at the

00:59:51.280 city gate if it was in the text that she went to a jewish court to confirm her status as a jew this

00:59:57.920 would be a significant blow to my argument this is not him saying that this is me admitting that

01:00:01.840 if these bit these jewish courts existed during the time of ruth that would like blow a major hole in

01:00:08.400 the argument i'm making here and i'd also note for the above story there is almost nothing less you can

01:00:14.000 do than make a verbal commitment to a religion right or it really is you might say well the

01:00:19.360 verbal commitment was extreme maybe but if you actually want to change toasty all the time

01:00:25.520 after breaking something or making a mess says i won't do it again five minutes later he makes

01:00:31.200 very strong verbal commitments yes he makes extremely strong verbal commitments they're very earnest

01:00:36.720 sounding okay so this would have like really hurt me if it was true so of course i go to ai and i'm

01:00:42.160 like is this actually in the bible or is this later rabbinic tradition or maybe just a fabrication

01:00:46.880 what's in the biblical text in ruth 4 1 12 boz does go to the city gate which is the place where

01:00:52.080 legal matters are settled he gathers 10 elders as a witness however the primary purpose was not to

01:00:57.440 approve ruth's conversion or status the legal matter concerned the right of redemption of nomi's

01:01:02.080 property and the leverite obligation to marry ruth the closer relative initially had first right but

01:01:07.840 declined boaz then publicly declared his intention to redeem the property and marry ruth the elders

01:01:13.600 and the people present blessed the union what is not in the biblical text there is no mention of

01:01:19.280 ruth's appearing before this gathering the gathering was not convened to approve ruth's conversion or status

01:01:24.240 as a jew there's no mention of ruth being treated as an outcast after her declaration of loyalty to

01:01:30.240 name me and her people all of the characterization that ruth went before an analog of a bit diem and needed

01:01:36.560 approval for her conversion is reading later rabbinic conversion procedures back into the biblical text

01:01:42.320 this represents an anachronistic interpretation that projects later jewish legal frameworks onto

01:01:46.560 the earlier biblical narrative the biblical text itself presents ruth's transition to becoming part of

01:01:51.360 the israelite community as primarily based on her declaration of loyalty to naomi and her people

01:01:57.120 and her god without detailed legal procedures for conversion that developed in later rabbinic judaism

01:02:02.720 and then i again asked nai like is this actually correct and it goes ruse declaration to naomi your

01:02:07.680 people will be my people in your god my god constitutes her allegiance with israel without any formal

01:02:12.800 conversion process and it again affirmed the gathering at the city gate ruse 4 was specifically

01:02:17.520 about property redemption and marriage rights not ruse religious status there is no mention of ruse being

01:02:22.080 treated as an outcast after her declaration of loyalty and ruse never appears before any court like body to

01:02:27.440 have her conversion approved but let's say ruse conversion wording was so powerful you're convinced

01:02:34.240 it parallels to modern conversions what about zipporah the daughter of a medianite priest who married moses

01:02:40.400 with no conversion process at all in fact just how unconverted she was was made clear when god

01:02:46.480 threatened moses to make sure she circumcised their son because she wasn't practicing circumcision of their

01:02:52.560 children what's striking about all these conversion processes described is while they don't align with

01:02:58.400 what modern jews believe about jewish identity they match exactly with the jewish experience identity and

01:03:05.360 covenant made with god described in the bible well made you jewish was following the rules and to some

01:03:10.560 extent your belief your heritage had literally nothing to do with it outside the priestly caste what about

01:03:17.040 passages in books like jubilee that weren't against bearing outsiders okay well they do but they also

01:03:22.240 explain why the warning exists in context not due to concerns about purity or blood or matrilineal descent

01:03:28.960 but because children from such marriages often had less jewish beliefs and led the community astray

01:03:34.560 if i warn my children against marrying non-believers which i will does that mean i wouldn't consider

01:03:40.240 converts to be techno puritan does that mean i would still consider them techno puritan if they left the

01:03:45.040 faith of course not it was a practical concern and a logical one to the notion that jewish identity

01:03:50.880 should be passed on matrilineally and judaism should become an essence of religion represents

01:03:55.520 such a bizarre series of conjectures drawn from practical concerns in the bible that i am astounded

01:04:01.040 the bible and judaism of biblical times didn't have to address the question why jews because it simply wasn't

01:04:08.320 relevant anyone could become a jew at any time just by following the rules and dedicating themselves to

01:04:18.160 the community of god interesting okay so did this blow your mind first part yeah yeah i don't know

01:04:30.080 i hope we've reached a point here where anyone was on a strong and this just really gets me like when

01:04:34.800 people are like oh no like you're misreading it look i've got like four historians here of different

01:04:40.800 faiths i've got the new testament i've got jesus never mentioning that he was opening this to non-jews

01:04:46.640 i've got stuff in the bible i've got what's actually said in the bible and your your core

01:04:52.480 argument against this is coming from sources hundreds of years later like you you really it

01:04:59.040 is a theological belief given the preponderance of historical evidence that jewish missionaries

01:05:05.840 and proselytization efforts were not common and widely accepted in the period of christ

01:05:11.040 mm-hmm yeah all right i hope we've now would you agree like am i being crazy here am i like

01:05:17.920 reaching or something i don't i don't think you're being crazy i'm being super biased here that's the

01:05:24.560 other thing if somebody was like no but i think maybe here's the problem and i think this is what

01:05:28.960 it's going to come down to if i can try to predict the comments or the emails that you'll receive after

01:05:34.160 this it will be that like you're applying a very protestant or calvinist or materialist mindset

01:05:45.440 to our religion like you're you're you're just applying the wrong logical framework and this

01:05:51.680 doesn't interest us like it doesn't matter if you approach this from more of like a theological

01:05:57.520 community-based or mystical like if it's just vibes then or you know mystical feeling whatever i mean

01:06:04.560 i'm i'm not i'm clearly not a mystical person then like it doesn't matter and this criticism

01:06:11.200 is like if you're a jew and you think like i'm i'm calling out jews here in some way

01:06:15.520 this criticism and and the difference in sort of if you just approach this with a different vibe you get

01:06:20.400 it is exactly my concern with catholicism as well like when i rip on catholics and say they're

01:06:26.320 practicing demonic stuff and they're blah blah blah all of that is coming from just being ultra

01:06:30.960 obsessed with the text itself trying to like interpret what the text means and not being like

01:06:36.640 yeah but like look at the community and traditions and vibes and so i'd argue that my if you want to

01:06:44.080 call this like you know investigation or or criticism of these traditions is completely analogous to the

01:06:50.160 criticism i've had of everyone else's traditions and in no way unique but i would emphasize with all of

01:06:55.760 this i like the jews i think they're still clearly being shown god's divine favor right now

01:07:00.160 so we've got to keep all that in mind with any like clearly they're doing something right or at

01:07:04.480 least comparatively right when contrast with other groups and i i don't think that they should

01:07:09.040 be targeted for conversions i think they're following a covenant that they made with the

01:07:11.840 actual god because it's the same god of jesus so again like i'm fairly positive on judaism

01:07:17.840 more broadly but i also really like the truth and if i'm getting truth from these texts and from

01:07:23.760 historians and from you know like trying to suss out like what actually happened what was actually

01:07:29.520 written here uh this is what i can't help but come to yeah i think a lot of it also though we have to

01:07:35.680 separate the truth and sort of your religious journey from what was more broadly discussed in

01:07:41.040 the pragmatist guide to crafting religion which is first you're looking at this from the perspective that

01:07:47.200 only very people very deep in the doctrine get and unless you're a catholic priest or really high up

01:07:54.160 in the lds church or a rabbi or you know some equal thing right you're not going to be in the weeds i

01:08:01.680 think what's more important about cultures and religions is what the soft focus vaseline over the lens

01:08:08.480 audience is experiencing and doing and that's one reason why i still i mean well i know that they're

01:08:14.640 experiencing more problems now but i love the lds church because in the end they are i mean at least

01:08:21.600 the ones that i know are happier they're more functional they're they're they're thriving they're

01:08:27.040 having kids they have successful careers they're satisfied with their lives they're enjoying their

01:08:31.040 lives they have lower instances of mental health issues all these lovely things right so that's like a

01:08:35.040 good cultural technology and i think that the same can be seen for judaism i agree 100 i think judaism

01:08:42.240 makes people's lives better i think it makes jewish like does it matter does it matter if it's true i

01:08:47.920 mean in there i mean i think that on both sides we have met people who are like they kind of wave

01:08:53.920 their hands when it comes to the religious stuff and they're like whatever you know like do i and i

01:08:57.680 actually i don't know but the role of like the culture is good like just as you can see and i'd

01:09:03.120 actually go so far as to say i actually agree with matrilineal descent from a practical standpoint

01:09:10.480 i think it helps the current jewish community's cohesiveness sense of identity sense of historical

01:09:16.800 connection to the ancestors and the bible and the and the traditions i don't think like i'm not here

01:09:23.200 arguing that this should be dropped within modern at all okay i think it is actually core to modern

01:09:31.200 judaism but i as a christian derived religious system this significantly changes the way i relate

01:09:39.200 to that system and jesus's teachings because my branch broke off before judaism became matrilineal

01:09:49.920 before judaism became exclusive and if it broke off before judaism became exclusive the idea of

01:09:57.840 christianity as like a judaism fan club disappears it is it becomes more of an equal and viable branch

01:10:05.920 of the early jewish traditions which is what we'll get to here because i think a lot of people contextualize

01:10:10.560 christianity that way it's like a cult that was radically different from judaism of the time that

01:10:15.040 broke off from judaism but i think that that belief what we're going to see is mostly downstream of how

01:10:20.720 different modern day christianity is from modern day judaism instead of christianity of this period from

01:10:25.920 judaism of this period i hope we've now reached a point where anyone without a strong theological

01:10:32.080 reason to believe otherwise we'll see that judaism at the time of jesus was a religion attempting to

01:10:36.400 grow aggressively through proselytization while it had some ethnic connection this was closer to the

01:10:41.280 modern relationship between muslims and arabs than how contemporary jews view their religion so now

01:10:46.320 the question is why would a religion like this transform into an estno religion the sad answer appears

01:10:51.680 to be that it was in response to the success of the christian branch of the jewish tradition

01:10:56.720 first we need to be clear that the branch of judaism taught by jesus was not particularly deviant

01:11:02.000 for its time period yes it was distinct but not more distinct than all the other contemporaneous

01:11:06.560 branches of judaism for a quick list you have the pharisees who emphasized oral tradition along the

01:11:12.320 written torah and believed in resurrection angels and fate free will they were the forerunners of

01:11:17.680 rabbinic judaism you have the sadducees primarily aristocratic priests who rejected oral tradition

01:11:23.040 resurrection and afterlife concepts they emphasized temple worship and only accepted the written torah

01:11:28.640 now note here the the sadducees would have been significantly more different from the pharisees

01:11:34.960 than jesus would have been from the pharisees which is really interesting given that they did they

01:11:40.720 denied resurrection and afterlife concepts yeah and they rejected oral tradition now i'd note here

01:11:47.440 because this is very important a jew today could argue yeah but the mainstream jews they always

01:11:53.920 believed about the same thing except the problem is that if you went to a person during this time

01:11:58.400 period if you went to the kingdom of judea and you said okay i understand there's all these different

01:12:03.360 forms of judaism but which one is the real judaism the answer they would have given you is oh it's the

01:12:09.440 sadducees that's the judaism that's practiced both by the royal family and the priestly caste except the

01:12:14.960 sadducees are extinct it is the pharisees that modern rabbinic judaism descends from and i also

01:12:21.520 want to emphasize how different the sadducees were than modern jews they when i say they denied the

01:12:28.880 resurrection of the dead what i mean is they did not believe in the immortality of the soul and they

01:12:34.080 believed that there was no afterlife the sadducees rejected the phariseic use of the oral torah to enforce

01:12:41.760 their claims to power citing the written torah as the sole manifestation of divinity the sadducees

01:12:47.920 denied the existence or influence of angels as well all of these were things that the pharisee branch

01:12:54.880 of judaism and christianity shared this is what i mean when i say that if you look at how these groups

01:13:01.920 were different from each other the group that modern judaism came from really and truly was as

01:13:08.880 different from the mainstream jewish group the group that the royal family and priesthood practiced

01:13:14.960 as christianity was and i'd also note here if you're like well okay maybe the royal family and

01:13:20.000 the priesthood practiced this other form of judaism but the one that turned into rabbinic judaism this

01:13:25.760 was the judaism of the people this wasn't like some weird offshoot well unfortunately we happen to

01:13:32.160 have historical documents showing that's not correct if we look at the jewish historian josephus

01:13:37.520 he reported that there were only around 6 000 pharisees this was out of a jewish population at

01:13:42.640 the time that would have been about 1.5 million in israel and 4 to 4.5 million already dispersed

01:13:49.280 throughout the roman empire i know this is an offensive thing to state but it aligns with the

01:13:54.000 historical facts we have on the ground the good news about this from a jewish perspective is it means

01:13:59.920 that any who claim that the quote-unquote jews were involved with the execution or persecution of jesus

01:14:06.640 are just factually incorrect it was the sadducees who were as different from the christian group

01:14:12.560 theologically speaking as the pharisees which later became rabbinic judaism were the pharisees

01:14:18.480 had nothing to do with the persecution of jesus you have the essenes a separatist group who lived a

01:14:24.080 monastic life like communities possibly including the dead sea scrolls community they practice extreme

01:14:29.680 ritual purity communal property and apocalyptic beliefs these people thought the world was about to end

01:14:34.800 and were communists again very different zealots a revolutionary movement focused on violent

01:14:40.160 resistance against roman occupation believing god alone should rule israel you have the therapeute

01:14:46.080 a jewish contemplative community in egypt described by philo practicing asceticism and mystical

01:14:51.680 interpretation of scripture they would have been more like a monastery type community you could almost

01:14:57.440 say yeah you have the herodians supporter of herod's dynasty who accommodated to greco-roman culture

01:15:04.240 while maintaining jewish identity this is like a mix of like judaism and greco-roman traditions

01:15:08.960 you have various messianic movements multiple groups formed around charismatic leaders

01:15:12.880 claiming messianic status including theodist judas the galilean and the quote-unquote egyptian

01:15:18.800 you have the samaritans that they consider themselves followers of an israel of an israelite

01:15:24.560 religion mainstream jews viewed them as a deviant sect they accepted only the pentateuch and worshiped on

01:15:30.080 mount gerizim you have hellenistic judaism jewish communities especially alexandria who synthesized

01:15:36.240 jewish practice with greek philosophy represented by figures like philo that's an important figure

01:15:42.320 you have jewish christian groups after jesus various groups like the ebonites maintain jewish practices

01:15:48.640 while following jesus as a messiah you have the bothians often grouped with the sadducees but considered

01:15:55.120 a distinct sect by some sources they were founded by followers of bosus appointed high priest by herod

01:16:02.080 the great they rejected the oral tradition and had specific calendar related disputes with the pharisees

01:16:08.320 note here i the ebonites like our tradition like techno puritanism it's actually probably

01:16:13.600 of all of the traditions if somebody was like what are you closest to we're probably closest to the

01:16:18.240 ebonites because the ebonites also didn't believe that jesus was literally god's son they just

01:16:23.200 believed he was the messiah so very and and they were very similar to older judaism in many ways so

01:16:29.280 i'd argue like if you're actually like which branch are we closest to we're very close to the ebonites

01:16:33.840 side note here but if you are one of those christians who is like well it was very obvious to those

01:16:39.840 writing the bible specifically those around the time of christ that he was a divine being who did lots of

01:16:46.880 spectacular and undeniable miracles i was point out that this is factually untrue even among his

01:16:54.320 followers who thought he was the messiah the ebonites who believed jesus to be the messiah and

01:17:00.640 who were one of the largest groups of his followers in the geographic region where he actually preached

01:17:05.440 believed him to be a man and just a man not also simultaneously the son of god and also god himself

01:17:11.840 ebonites believed jesus to be the messiah foretold in jewish prophecy and thus a man the group most

01:17:18.000 tied to the region where jesus actually taught and who would have had the most oral history of his

01:17:23.760 teachings from their parents and grandparents and who believed he was a literal messiah so like

01:17:28.720 not against jesus or his teachings did not believe him to have claimed to be literally the son of god

01:17:34.320 those traditions only evolved in regions where no one would have had any cultural memory of the actual

01:17:39.920 jesus like rome and egypt this is why the techno puritan tradition that follows what is actually

01:17:45.120 written in the bible most resembles the ebiumites and what they believed than the early church movements

01:17:51.840 who were very very far from where jesus actually preached they went extinct by the way you have the

01:17:56.880 hemerah baptist a jewish sect mentioned in early christian and rabbinic literature who practiced daily rituals

01:18:02.560 of immersion for purification so this was a jewish sect that practiced daily baptism again showing that

01:18:09.040 like the baptism that jesus was practicing other jewish groups were doing this like it might be

01:18:14.800 weird from a pharisee's perspective but it wasn't weird from the perspective of the hemerah baptist

01:18:22.080 right and when we go to like john the baptist probably one of these guys you know he was a jew who was

01:18:28.080 practicing baptisms right but again like a lot of these traditions in christianity they weren't that

01:18:32.640 deviant you have the netherites while not exactly a sect they were individuals who took special vows of

01:18:37.200 abstinence from alcohol cutting hair etc for dedicated periods of consecration to god you have

01:18:42.960 the russia bites a clan that practiced an aesthetic lifestyle avoiding wine and permanent dwellings

01:18:48.080 living in tents as a religious commitment so when i bring up like all of the conversion stuff that's

01:18:53.600 happening to modern jews i often get like a no true scotsman's fallacy it's like well that must have

01:18:58.080 been like deviant rabbis or like overzealous weirdos who were like not mainstream jews it's like they may

01:19:05.920 not be mainstream if you consider mainstream the sect that survived to become modern judaism

01:19:12.720 but that sect was in this period was one of many highly deviant sects that had a huge diversity of

01:19:21.200 traditions and the only reason that sect today is seen as true judaism is because it's the one that

01:19:26.880 survived and still calls itself the jews not due to any uniqueness during this period i'd also note that

01:19:34.640 i actually do not discount the possibility that there was a sect of jews during this period practicing

01:19:42.080 matrilineal descent as an important part of jewish identity just that this community was probably

01:19:49.440 not the community involved in proselytization and there was a community involved in proselytization

01:19:53.840 that seemed bigger and better resourced and that this community appears to have nobody having written

01:19:59.360 about them it appears to have not really impacted any of the literature written during this period

01:20:04.240 so my guess would be is this community was either small or insular what also is note to me that the

01:20:10.880 extremists like the dead sea scrolls community didn't appear to be of this community because they

01:20:16.000 didn't appear to practice matrilineal descent so i'm not saying it's not possible that it wasn't

01:20:20.320 practiced during this period but it would have been considered a weird practice in the same way jesus was a

01:20:26.160 weird practice okay but but you're always gonna get weird offshoots and weird subgroups in any

01:20:31.920 culture this is normal no not like this this is way more diverse than modern judaism this is a

01:20:39.200 series of things that in a modern context might even be called a collection of different but related

01:20:44.880 religions i actually i don't even think in modern times we would call these the same religion they're

01:20:48.640 probably about as similar as like mormons are to christians like mormons call themselves christians

01:20:53.680 but like this is a huge diversity the point i'm making here is that matt the matrilineal descent

01:20:59.600 group may have existed and you may even say well they were always the real jews because they ended

01:21:04.080 up being the group that survived and that proves god's favor of them fine but i could equally say

01:21:10.560 well the christian branch proved god's favor by their rapid expansion and a few other things that we'll get

01:21:16.800 to all these various branches of the jewish religion were attempting to convert followers and spread

01:21:21.120 their influence the only reason we think of the branch ancestral to modern jews as the quote unquote

01:21:25.280 true branch is because it is the one that survived and proliferated but if surviving and proliferating

01:21:30.880 makes you the true branch why isn't christianity considered the true branch just because they don't

01:21:35.200 call themselves jews anymore is one of the main reasons we need to look at christianity in the context

01:21:39.520 of its actual text and not let later traditions that were added which makes christianity radically

01:21:44.160 different from ancient judaism specifically these later beliefs were not actually in christian

01:21:49.200 scripture and and they deviate significantly from judaism so if you look at christianity today i i'd

01:21:54.400 agree it's very radically different from judaism of this period but it's because of a few later

01:22:00.320 additions to it the addition of an immediate heaven and hell afterlife in addition to the afterlife

01:22:05.280 in which you're raised again at some point in the future see our last track track nine if this

01:22:09.680 is shocking to you that this is not well attested in the bible and i also noticed the belief in like

01:22:13.600 the garden of eden that you go immediately when you die in modern judaism is a massive deviation from

01:22:18.400 what the jews of jesus's time would have thought you know so to again go to track nine if you want

01:22:23.440 more on this the belief in using the son of god as a sin transference ritual mirroring the goat that

01:22:30.480 jews transferred their sin to and then sent to the demon azazel see track eight if this is shocking to

01:22:35.760 you but this idea was added to christianity by anselm of canterbury 1033 to 11009 in his

01:22:42.880 influential work cure deus homo why god became man and is not found in the original text which

01:22:48.640 seemed to be arguing jesus needed to be sacrificed to seal a new covenant a common practice during that

01:22:53.360 time period being sacrificing animals when signing a new covenant and jesus even says this a few times

01:22:58.640 that i'm being signed for the new covenant they are killed for the new covenant anyway so three the

01:23:03.360 belief that jesus was literally both god and god's son we have not yet published our track pointing

01:23:08.800 this out in the bible and the bible actually explicitly argues he is not so i will summarize

01:23:14.480 the key point and go into detail on this maybe in a future track or maybe it's so offensive to

01:23:18.720 christians i'm just going to bury it deep in this one because i don't want to deal with the backlash

01:23:22.480 from pointing this out it was actually common in the old testament to call favored individuals children

01:23:27.040 of god this is likely why what jesus meant in the parts where he calls himself the son of god

01:23:31.600 christians today call god father all the time and no one gets confused and believes they think god

01:23:37.120 the father is literally that individual's father plasms 2 7 i will proclaim the lord's decree he said

01:23:43.520 to me you are my son today i've become your father this is referring to the davidic king another clear

01:23:48.320 example is exodus 4 22 23 where god refers to israel collectively as his son quote then say to pharaoh

01:23:54.960 this is what the lord says israel is my firstborn son and i will tell you quote let my son go

01:24:00.320 so he may worship me in quote in hosiah 11 1 god refers to israel as his son when israel was a child

01:24:06.880 i loved him and out of egypt called him my son then also there's a reference into samuel 7 14

01:24:12.640 regarding david's descent solomon i will be his father and he will be my son when he does wrong i

01:24:18.800 will punish him with a rod wielded by men with floggings inflicted by human hands in quote god be like

01:24:24.800 he's my son and i will punish him with a rod and i don't know floggings and oh yeah i guess

01:24:30.240 you can use the human hands to hold a stick or something but i was just pictured like a slap fight

01:24:35.360 point being is god saying you know jesus saying like god is my father doesn't mean god's literally

01:24:40.000 his father no for sure in the old testament god helps other women conceive when it should not be

01:24:46.080 possible without those children being considered god's son so we see this like all the time in the old

01:24:51.200 testament is god helps women get pregnant and we're never like well that's god's son we also need to

01:24:55.440 think about the logistical problems if it means that jesus is literally god's son what is his y

01:25:00.480 chromosome god used some human male's dna to create jesus as god does not have dna and it is

01:25:06.240 the dna that mixed with the females that determines who the literal father is of a child whether or not

01:25:12.800 that man slept with that woman so even if god took some other man's dna and implanted it in mary that

01:25:18.560 man is still jesus's like human father yeah that ivf like i don't say because we do ivf that like

01:25:26.400 simone was miraculously conceived i know i do think jesus's conception was miraculous i just think that a

01:25:32.240 human's dna was used for it to highlight how absurd it is to claim that god was literally jesus's father

01:25:39.120 just because he assisted in combining mary and joseph's dna this would be like all of my kids were

01:25:46.480 had through ivf it would be like if somebody said oh malcolm you're not the father of those kids

01:25:52.160 it's the ivf doctor it's the doctor who helped implant the embryo which is obviously laughable

01:25:57.680 nobody thinks like that the father of a child is the contributor of the dna quick aside here if you

01:26:02.480 are wondering who's why chromosome jesus had we actually know this it was josephs the prophesied

01:26:07.840 messiah had to come from the paternal line of david if jesus is literally god's son he cannot be the

01:26:13.760 messiah i will also note here on multiple occasions jesus accepts the title of son of

01:26:18.960 david mark 10 46 52 and matthew 15 22 28 the only occasion you could use to plausibly argue he is not

01:26:27.840 david's son is matthew 22 41 46 we know from other passages that jesus is the son of david we know this

01:26:35.760 passage isn't about invalidating that connection what it appears to be doing is pointing out that while he

01:26:41.040 is descended from david he is above him in terms of spiritual connection we will see in a second

01:26:46.960 jesus pointing out that a part of god is in him and a part of god is in us maybe this is him arguing

01:26:54.400 the part in him is more than the part that was in david and it doesn't make sense in context if he and

01:27:01.200 god shared the same will why would he say things like quote my father why have you forsaken me in

01:27:07.360 quote i once have somebody tell me that the reason he said that was to fulfill prophecy and i'm like do

01:27:13.040 you know how stupid that sounds that okay so jesus is up there suffering on a cross he is not thinking

01:27:18.880 nor does he believe god has forsaken him he doesn't want to ask this question yet he feels compelled to

01:27:25.680 ask it just so that he can check a box on a prophecy if why would you create a prophecy that you'd like

01:27:32.800 anyone could just choose to fulfill as well just don't have that be part of the prophecy if that

01:27:38.480 wasn't something jesus was going to naturally say it's like that south park scene with the red heifer

01:27:44.000 where they paint it red and they're like oh yeah that's what the prophecy was always about it was

01:27:47.680 a bunch of kids painting a heifer red it's like no very clearly if you can just choose to fulfill

01:27:53.440 a prophecy then it's not a meaningful prophecy there there it is right there see a red-headed cow

01:28:04.080 whoa look at him you were right kyle a ginger cow i shall never question your keen intellect again

01:28:11.840 but more importantly jesus tells us he is not literally god's son on each of the three occasions

01:28:17.440 he has pressed on the subject one quote but jesus remained silent and gave no answer again the high

01:28:23.760 priest asked him are you christ son of the blessed this is when he's on trial to be potentially killed

01:28:28.720 and jesus said i am and you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming

01:28:34.800 with the clouds of heaven so note here jesus has asked two questions the first being is he christ

01:28:41.120 the messiah who jews understood to be human and the second being if he is the son of god he answers both

01:28:46.800 in turn and very explicitly i am i am the messiah and you will see the son of man seated at the right

01:28:53.600 hand of power i am the son of man he literally inverts their phrase are you the son of god no i am

01:28:59.840 the son of man okay people use the i am word to be like well god said i am when he first announced

01:29:06.880 himself to moses that seems i don't i think it's a much easier parallel to say are you the son of god

01:29:13.360 i am the son of man to be pretty pretty explicit there note here because he does believe himself

01:29:18.320 to be set apart by god and people who are set apart by god are called the children of god throughout

01:29:23.360 the old testament he does not deny this but clarifies that he is the son of man to ensure

01:29:28.960 there is no confusion that he believes himself to be literally the son of god but he is confirming

01:29:34.640 that he's the messiah here and i'd also note here very interestingly this is one of the only places

01:29:38.320 in the entire bible and i actually think the only place where jesus hard confirms that he's the

01:29:43.360 messiah which is really interesting because the one time when it will lead to his death is the one

01:29:48.160 time when he absolutely confirms it without ambiguity who here how long will you keep us in suspense if

01:29:53.920 you are the messiah tell us plainly remember they don't think the messiah is literally the

01:29:57.280 in judaism the messiah is a guy jesus answered i tell you but you do not believe the works i do in my

01:30:04.800 father's name testify about me but you do not believe me because you are not my sheep my sheep

01:30:09.760 listen to my voice i know them and they follow me i give them eternal life and they shall never perish

01:30:15.120 no one will snatch them out of my hand my father who has given them to me is greater than all no one

01:30:20.160 can snatch them out of my father's hand i and the father are one note here the line i am my father are

01:30:27.200 one he is referencing the unity of their ability to catch lost sheep because the question is in reference

01:30:33.280 to him being the messiah as we continue we have a case of people misunderstanding jesus on this exact

01:30:39.360 point in him correcting them and his jewish opponents picked up some stones to stone him

01:30:44.080 but jesus said to them i have shown you many good works of the father for which of these do you stone

01:30:49.600 me so note here jesus is implying that he has not done anything blasphemous meaning he must assume that

01:30:55.840 they are not meant to infer that he is literally god or the son of god but is set apart by god so here

01:31:02.320 he's being like what why are you gonna stone like what are you doing if he understood that he was

01:31:07.440 claiming to be god he'd know exactly why they were about to stone him right and they say to him we are

01:31:11.920 not stoning you for any good work they replied but for blasphemy because you are a mere man claiming

01:31:16.640 to be god jesus answered them it is not written in your law i've said you are gods if called them

01:31:22.880 gods to whom the word god came so saying you are gods to whom the word of god came and scripture

01:31:28.560 cannot be set aside what about the one whom the father set apart as his very own and sent into

01:31:34.000 the world so here he is saying i have been sent apart and i have heard the word of god through

01:31:38.320 scripture why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because i say i am god's son right here he makes

01:31:43.440 it clear that he calls himself the son of god because he has been set apart by god as the messiah

01:31:47.920 not because he is literally god's son he is correcting them here pointing out there is no blasphemy in what

01:31:53.920 he is saying otherwise his argument does not make sense if you believe that he thinks he actually is

01:31:58.160 the son of god this argument doesn't make sense and then he says do not believe me unless i do the

01:32:03.360 works of the father but if i do them even though you do not believe me believe the works that you

01:32:08.320 know and understand the father is in me and i am in the father so here when pressed for more information

01:32:14.320 we see jesus explaining when he says he is the son of god or he is god he means that the father is in

01:32:20.160 him and he is in the father the intention of this statement is made clear in the third place jesus

01:32:25.040 denies being literally the son of god so note here you might be like well he is saying god is in him

01:32:28.960 and he is god certainly he never says that about anyone who has faith thomas said to him lord we

01:32:35.200 don't know where we are going so how can we know the way jesus answered i am the way the truth and the

01:32:40.160 life no one comes to the father except through me if you really know me you will know the father as

01:32:44.800 well for now on you do know him and have seen him philip said lord show us the father and that

01:32:51.280 will be enough for us jesus answered don't you know me philip even after i have been among you

01:32:56.560 for such a long time anyone who has seen me has seen the father how can you say show us the father

01:33:01.520 don't you believe i am in the father and the father is in me now pause and note the phrase he says here

01:33:06.800 okay i am in the father and the father is in me okay so by seeing him you have seen the father

01:33:12.800 because the father is in him and he is in the father the words i say here i do not speak of my

01:33:17.520 own authority rather it is the father living in me who is doing his work believe me when i say i am

01:33:23.120 in the father and the father than me or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves

01:33:27.040 very truly i tell whoever believes in me will do the works i have been doing and they will be

01:33:32.160 greater things than these because i am going to the father and i will do whatever you ask in my name

01:33:37.440 so that the father may be glorified in the son you may ask me for anything in my name and i will

01:33:42.400 do it jesus promises the holy spirit quote if you love me keep my commands and i will ask the father

01:33:48.960 and will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever the spirit of truth this is the

01:33:54.960 holy ghost the world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him but you know him

01:34:02.480 for he lives in you and will be in you bam right there ladies and gentlemen he says he lives in you and

01:34:10.560 will be in you whenever jesus says the father is in him he means it in the same way he believes the

01:34:15.680 father is in all believers in this passage we see the language mirrored the father is in jesus and

01:34:22.400 the father it's just the whole we're all made of stardust thing it's fine it's fine yeah and the father

01:34:27.840 is in all faithful believers also note jesus is not putting himself above other faithful believers

01:34:32.880 very truly i tell you whoever believes in me will do the works i have been doing and they will do

01:34:38.720 even greater things than these because i am going to the father so here we see him saying he is not the

01:34:45.920 be-all end-all if he was literally god other people would not be able to outdo him in the name of god

01:34:51.920 after he dies he also ends this section pointing out that he will not be on this earth forever and will

01:34:58.880 in a traditional sense die in the old testament as we point out in the last track it is common

01:35:04.560 when someone dies to be said to going back to god or that the rock is is going back to god they're

01:35:08.960 animating force and then finally i will not have you as orphans i will come to you before long the

01:35:14.880 world will not see me anymore but you will see me because i live you will also live on that day you will

01:35:22.160 realize that i am the father and you are in me and i am in you but listen to that on that day you will

01:35:27.680 realize that i am in the father and you are in me and i am in you bam and for those in the back

01:35:34.320 on that day you will realize i am in the father and you are in me and i am in you all of the believers

01:35:40.880 are in each other and the father in the same way jesus mean when he says the father is in him

01:35:46.880 so this isn't a unidirectional thing it's not that jesus is in you because you're a believer you are

01:35:51.200 in him he is in god because he believes in god all of these people in this belief circle exist

01:35:56.320 within each other but not literally as each other again why would he say my lord my lord

01:36:00.880 why have you forsaken me if he was literally had the same will as god another wildly important part

01:36:06.560 of this particular segment where jesus is laying out that when he says the father is in him and he

01:36:11.840 is in the father he means it in the same way that he is in you and you are in him and you are in the

01:36:17.600 father and the father is in all of us if we are a believer in this very segment he says quote

01:36:23.520 no one comes to the father except through me if you really know me you will know the father as well

01:36:29.920 for now you do know him and you have seen him it actually this entire segment comes if somebody's

01:36:35.520 saying basically he says this and the person's like oh so do you mean that you are literally god

01:36:40.240 and he's like no i do not mean i am literally god i mean that god is in me and god is in you and i

01:36:46.320 am in you and you are in god blah blah blah blah blah so a lot of people use this line no one comes to

01:36:52.080 the father except through me to mean that there is no other path to god i.e if you're jewish you

01:36:57.600 cannot get to god and yet we clearly see here he says except through me if you really know me you

01:37:03.280 know the father as well he is saying this in the exact context of the passage where he makes it clear

01:37:10.320 that the part of the father he has in him we also have in us if we are true believers so when he says

01:37:17.760 the only way to god is through him he clearly means when read in context that the only way to

01:37:24.240 god is through true believers not literally just him it's pretty clear from other words in this

01:37:30.080 segment that he does not see himself as the be-all end-all quote truly truly i say unto you

01:37:35.360 whoever believes in me will also do works that i do and greater works

01:37:40.240 works these he will do end quote well that's pretty clear pretty clear yeah what he's saying

01:37:47.680 here in context is that yes the only path to god is through him which the him here could be any

01:37:54.720 believer because we all have god in us the same way jesus did in jesus's own words which means that

01:38:02.560 jesus literally i.e christianity literally is not the only path to god so long as it is one of the other

01:38:08.640 true religions so while this tract may contradict both jews and traditional christianity you can

01:38:15.520 still be a techno puritan and follow one of those traditions this tract contradicts them because it is

01:38:20.240 an evolution of my own ancestral tradition which has a focus on facts and textual slash historical

01:38:26.240 accuracy that is not as important as things like vibes spiritualism and tradition that was in some of

01:38:31.840 the other true branches determine objective truths basically all i can do is describe truths

01:38:38.560 from the perspective of my tradition and culture but the limited understanding of truths afforded to

01:38:44.080 humans of this age means that other truths which might seem in direct contradiction to me can still

01:38:50.160 be true as long as they follow one of the true face now to those who say it is sacrilege to say that

01:38:55.760 jews could actually be right with god it is pretty striking that throughout the bible jesus never said he

01:39:03.040 invalidated the covenant that the jews had with god or that they could not continue to be right by god

01:39:09.360 by following the old covenant in fact he even explicitly states do you think i have come to abolish

01:39:15.120 the law or the prophets basically implying no i have not come to do that right he says i have not come

01:39:23.760 to abolish i have come to fulfill for truly i tell you until heaven and earth disappear not the smallest

01:39:29.600 leather nor the largest stroke of the pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything

01:39:34.720 is accomplished i think the old covenant still stands if that is the pass you want to take it is

01:39:40.720 just a separate potential covenant to god but he has fulfilled it allowing for a new covenant as you

01:39:47.840 see here in luke 2022 20 the new covenant in my blood as i have mentioned many times when they

01:39:54.640 say jesus died for our sins what they mean is jesus was sacrificed to create a new covenant

01:39:59.520 not as a sin transference vehicle like you would have had with the demon azazel that was actually

01:40:04.640 really common during that time period i.e sacrificing something or an animal specifically to create a new

01:40:10.320 covenant you would sacrifice animals when you were signing a new covenant this makes sense in context

01:40:14.640 and assigns an added degree of value and importance to jesus's sacrifice without making it nonsensical

01:40:20.400 uh which removing literally all of man's sins does and i would also note here on the sermon of the

01:40:26.560 mount jesus repeatedly uses the formula you haven't heard it said but i tell you showing that the bible's

01:40:32.240 continuity is a reinterpretation of various commandments without an invalidation of those

01:40:36.960 original commandments the best you're going to get if you're looking for the old covenant being

01:40:41.360 completely invalidated is not from jesus it's going to call from paul's writing in hebrews by calling this

01:40:48.800 covenant new he has made the first one obsolete and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear

01:40:55.600 now if you think he meant this in absolute terms like it would soon disappear from the world he

01:41:00.320 clearly didn't because you know jews still exist if you think he meant this oh well as soon as jesus

01:41:06.320 made the new covenant the old covenant was no longer relevant for anyone on earth well that also

01:41:11.520 is clearly not what is meant because he said it will soon disappear as in it hadn't disappeared yet

01:41:16.880 so let's take another alternative suppose what he meant is it will disappear in relevance for members

01:41:24.400 of the community the followers of christ keep in mind that many of the jews who converted to christianity

01:41:29.760 in the early days still kept the old covenant at this time period well then it was absolutely correct

01:41:35.680 so that's what i think he meant here if we're assuming he had any prophetic wisdom in what he was saying

01:41:40.560 not that it will disappear as it passed to god and not that it will disappear from earth because if it

01:41:47.280 was a pass to god and it would disappear it would have disappeared as soon as christ made the new

01:41:51.680 covenant if it was going to disappear from the earth well it clearly didn't do that he meant within the

01:41:56.960 christian tradition which of course it did very astute that he was able to predict that there might have

01:42:02.080 been one other way that he meant it which was that it would last until the end times started or the

01:42:08.240 messianic age as rabbis talked about this however i don't think that's that's not the way i read it

01:42:15.120 but he could have meant it that way just just another logical alternative but he definitely didn't mean

01:42:20.000 that it disappears in the past of god or it would have disappeared the moment jesus created the new

01:42:23.200 covenant not soon now i will note here that it makes clear that this new covenant is superior though

01:42:30.080 so it may not completely replace like for jews the old covenant but it is better quote the ministry

01:42:37.760 jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is the mediator is superior to

01:42:43.520 the old one since the new covenant established is established on better promises in quote and he

01:42:49.440 explains here why the new covenant is better is that specifically i will put the laws in their minds and

01:42:55.680 i will write them in their hearts as we go into more detail on this shortly in this tract the core

01:43:01.120 difference between the new covenant and the old one is that the new covenant or within the new covenant

01:43:05.760 you are supposed to have a direct relationship by god not one mediated by a temple a bureaucracy

01:43:10.880 or religious experts you are now responsible for making up your own mind about what is right and

01:43:15.440 wrong was the old covenant that was like the old testament that explicit about needing a mediator

01:43:21.120 yeah the old testament is very clear i mean the rabbis determined god's will basically they

01:43:26.160 would debate on it and then they would perform councils and that's where all of these jews like when

01:43:31.280 you're talking about maybe what like the practice tradition was but in the actual text and in yeah

01:43:36.800 but if you're looking at like modern jews like like yeah no i get that but i'm just saying where

01:43:41.360 in the book does it say that because i don't know oh well so you get this from things like not in stuff

01:43:46.400 that was still recorded at the time of the split with jesus but if you look at the like snake oven story

01:43:51.600 or the oven of course i i get that i get that i just i was i was wondering if there was some old

01:43:56.160 testament based precedent for this and it doesn't seem like you've come no there this that wasn't

01:44:01.120 invented until after this okay but it was more like then jesus was attempting to reform how things

01:44:06.640 were playing out in practice almost like a correction because people yeah he seems to really explicitly

01:44:15.440 be saying you don't need to listen to the levi cast you don't need to do things through the temple

01:44:19.520 anymore um he was removing it not even like that was the original rule because it never was he was just

01:44:24.400 saying by the way you don't need this yeah basically but well the original rule if you go

01:44:29.360 to like the original rules that god laid out it was definitely yes you have to follow the rules god laid

01:44:34.160 out but yeah but i mean it was just the ten commandments as long as you knew those yeah it

01:44:37.920 was just the ten commandments and then you didn't have to go to someone else to have you tell tell them

01:44:41.920 like i mean as long as like mom and dad told you a hundred percent right the the rabbinic tradition

01:44:47.360 was within one group of jews within this period but it was not like the dominant there were

01:44:52.400 many old testament face during this period as we go over elsewhere in this tract and you are 100

01:44:58.240 correct in saying that really all you had to follow was the original ten commandments when

01:45:03.280 the covenant was made and not all of the additional rules and jesus was just you're creating a new

01:45:08.160 covenant which is written in our hearts and was in this new covenant that's written in our hearts

01:45:13.040 it is up to us to determine stuff like what food is good to eat etc etc etc okay me and i agree with

01:45:20.080 the bible with my intuition that this is a superior covenant because it allows you to make moral

01:45:24.480 judgments on your own and gives you the ability to make those moral judgments well it's almost i mean

01:45:28.560 to use sort of current contemporary terminology it's like the doge of christianity or at least like

01:45:36.480 abrahamic religion and that jesus was saying all this bureaucracy all these extra layers all this

01:45:42.160 regulation is not necessary and if you cut it out you might be better off let's all try to well no

01:45:49.920 no i actually think it's more than that i mean the new covenant said that you now have the

01:45:53.360 responsibility if you agree to it to make these decisions for yourself it is an additional

01:45:59.040 responsibility not a removal of responsibility to decide for yourself whether something is good and

01:46:04.480 righteous and in line with god's plan so if you look at jesus's words here you have so whatever you

01:46:09.360 believe about the things keep between yourself and god blessed is the one who does not condemn himself

01:46:15.360 by what he approves but whomever has doubt is condemned if they eat because their eating is

01:46:21.040 not from faith and everything that does not come from faith is sin basically everything you have to

01:46:26.000 do has to come from faith and you're responsible for making these decisions yourself okay interesting

01:46:31.520 thoughts did you did you know that he denies this three times in the bottom because i never actually

01:46:36.320 read these sections that are supposed to be and and followers will say oh this affirms that he's

01:46:40.880 actually god's son when he's like exactly saying i'm not like i'm the son of man and then they have

01:46:44.960 to get around this with the trinity and say well he's also the son of man well then why did he say

01:46:48.080 i'm the son of man and the son of god he doesn't say that it's just subsequent hyping i get it i was

01:46:55.120 just watching this really long youtube video on the history of animatronics and they tried to disney

01:47:00.240 walt disney wanted to make a very very perfectly accurate abraham lincoln and the big sell originally was

01:47:05.760 the accuracy of this animatronic but in the end they accentuated his cheekbones to make him look

01:47:10.880 more distinctive and they made him like four inches taller he was six foot four i think they made the

01:47:16.560 animatronic six foot eight because he needed to feel bigger and they gave him a low booming voice even

01:47:21.200 though it was understood that the historical lincoln's voice was actually fairly shrill and kind of grating

01:47:26.960 and i think this is the same kind of thing is it's very hard for us to have a revered figure

01:47:31.920 and to not make them bigger than they were you know what i mean well i agree it is it is very hard

01:47:38.560 to do and i think that that's you know part of what's going on here and and you know some theological

01:47:43.520 insistencies that were created by some belief systems built up in some branches of the early

01:47:47.200 church so what about the trinity let's start with how the modern concept of the trinity started in the

01:47:52.320 first place because it's a little absurd basically even though jesus denies being god's literal son

01:47:58.400 multiple times and explains that god is in him in the same way he is in all believers some branches

01:48:04.000 of the early church and i note here only some branches tried to insinuate that jesus was literally

01:48:09.120 god's kid and thus a god himself this creates theological problems because if jesus is a god now

01:48:16.320 you are clearly no longer a monotheistic religion despite the old testament constantly warning against

01:48:21.440 believing in multiple gods now you could argue jesus is god except it is made clear in the bible

01:48:28.320 on countless occasions that he is not as he frequently beseeches god for things and praise

01:48:34.400 to god we don't have just my lord why have you forsaken me but we have john 17 3 where jesus refers

01:48:42.240 to the father as the only true god and to himself as the one quote unquote sent by god or 1428 quote

01:48:51.200 the father is greater than i end quote the christian groups that had a polytheistic idea that despite

01:48:57.920 what the bible said jesus was actually a god had to find a way around this contradiction tertullian

01:49:04.400 155 to 220 ce came up with the concept of the trinity under the name trinitas in 200 to 210 ce it's funny

01:49:12.560 because it's correct me if i'm wrong but it seems like the old testament again and again it's like

01:49:18.960 don't do this please stop can you can you just not can we this is why a lot of the early christian

01:49:26.000 groups like the ebonites and stuff like that didn't believe this which we'll get to in a second

01:49:30.400 haven't we been told something about oh right don't but what's interesting here is i mentioned

01:49:36.160 that tertullian came up with the concept of the trinity in trinitas okay what's interesting here

01:49:41.040 is that tertullian when he originally came up with this concept it was actually closer to the techno

01:49:45.920 puritan perspective than the way catholics later reinterpreted it okay for example first off he was a

01:49:52.320 materialist arguing for divine corporeality that god literally existed as a spiritual physical thing

01:49:58.080 in the same way we do and he argued that the material thing was in part one of the materials

01:50:03.920 that made up jesus and the holy spirit was also one of the materials that made up god i mean obviously

01:50:09.360 we agree with this so we agree with tertullian because we agree with what the bible said and when

01:50:14.160 the early christians were grappling with this they were like okay so then we have to go to the next

01:50:18.320 thing which is okay well then where did the trinity really come from the idea that jesus was literally

01:50:23.680 the same thing as god was not made up until the council of nicene in 325 ce literally a third of

01:50:30.480 a millennial after jesus's death and was hotly debated at the time keep in mind how crazy this idea is jews

01:50:39.360 had the concept of the holy spirit for centuries without being tempted to think it was meaningfully

01:50:44.480 separate from god right so how did the holy spirit get looped into this craziness well since there was

01:50:49.520 literally zero biblical backing for this concept and it was true that there would need to be given

01:50:55.760 how critical this was to the concept of god for christians i.e if this trinity concept was actually

01:51:01.680 accurate clearly god mentioned it somewhere they need to pull the idea from somewhere so the two best

01:51:08.080 lines for pulling this are the baptismal formula from matthew 28 19 okay where it says quote baptizing

01:51:15.360 them in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit in quote that's how the holy spirit got

01:51:19.920 roped into this um but again that doesn't really say that they're all one thing it says in the name of

01:51:25.200 these things okay um and that the benediction in 2 corinthians 13 14 quote the grace of the lord jesus

01:51:32.160 christ and the love of god and the fellowship of the holy spirit be with you all in quote okay definitely doesn't

01:51:37.600 say they're all one thing but does mention them all at once that's it the entire policyistic concept

01:51:43.440 of the trinity is derived from just those two lines which clearly to any level-headed person do not

01:51:49.440 indicate say or insinuate god is literally the same thing as jesus the other lines sometimes used to

01:51:55.760 argue that god is jesus in genesis were a plural us used for god but see track nine for a much more

01:52:02.480 satisfying explanation to that all that said techno puritans do believe in the trinity just not the

01:52:08.640 one developed at the council of nicene the jesus you pray to and can reach god through is the part of

01:52:14.400 god that lives in all true believing humans as jesus laid out the jesus you pray to is a part of all

01:52:21.120 believers actions and words that are directed towards the divine and eventually culminate in god making

01:52:27.920 them literally part of god as for the holy spirit that is a way of distinguishing god's will and

01:52:33.840 identity as existing simultaneously as a singular entity and as a hive mind entity being both literally

01:52:41.520 god but meaningfully separated from the way we conceptualize identity oh so trying to basically

01:52:47.600 articulate that this is beyond our normal comprehension yeah but not that it's these three

01:52:52.960 distinct things which is bringing it strictly back into our comprehension yeah yeah he's singular but

01:52:58.400 he's also the holy spirit and he's also you which you know i think was really powerfully done with

01:53:04.640 with the original concept yeah and then the nuance is just ripped off by being like no no no it's jesus

01:53:10.240 and then the dude god which is his father and then the holy spirit by the way side note here another

01:53:14.560 popular branch of christianity that doesn't include the concept of the trinity are mormons

01:53:18.080 they don't all right good for them i mean everyone knows i love mormons you can get good if you're

01:53:23.840 looking for like anti-trinity arguments for mormon you know apologists so how was original christianity

01:53:31.040 actually different from original judaism only in three meaningful ways and by the way i'd note to jews

01:53:36.080 here i just pissed off christians a bunch too like you think i'm just being heretical you know you're just

01:53:41.040 yeah yeah it's fine okay so the three ways that it was actually different from from judaism of its time

01:53:46.800 is jesus was the messiah who was prophesied heavily in the old testament this seems to me at least

01:53:52.080 self-evident given how much he expanded the reach of the jewish faiths under the name of christianity

01:53:55.920 why would the old testament not have prophesied about that could any figure in human history be

01:53:59.920 a better candidate for the prophesied messiah we'll get into that in a bit in a second so i

01:54:03.600 do believe that jesus was the messiah that was prophesied in old testament he created a new

01:54:07.440 covenant that did not require the temple to fulfill coincidentally only 40 years before the

01:54:11.520 destruction of the temple more on that later and he was sacrificed to create a new covenant

01:54:15.840 that consolidated the rules mankind was expected to follow from a long list to essentially just

01:54:20.400 dedicating your life to god romans 14 19 23 did the good job of laying this out consider the old

01:54:26.080 stringent jewish food restrictions compared with this and i'd also note consider this line when

01:54:31.440 contrasted with the missional line i led above to get an understanding of why i take like i'm really

01:54:36.960 interested in the christian text and not the jewish text like the mishnah sounded like i don't know like

01:54:41.280 i wasn't impressed with it theologically speaking then i get to something like this and i'm like

01:54:44.320 oh that's impressive let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual

01:54:50.080 edification do not destroy the work of god for the sake of food all food is clean but it is wrong

01:54:56.400 for the person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble it is better not to eat meat or drink

01:55:02.160 wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall so whatever you believe

01:55:07.200 about these things keep between yourself and god blessed is the one who does not condemn himself

01:55:12.800 by what he approves but whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat because their eating is

01:55:18.640 not from face and everything that does not come from face is sin basically lays out all the rules in

01:55:24.240 one system don't do things that randomly impede your brothers and sisters you know that hurt other

01:55:28.880 people but also do not go against your conscience when you are doing something the rules around food

01:55:34.640 existed for a reason if you believe that those rules are important hold them if you don't believe those

01:55:39.840 rules are important don't hold them what matters is that we are doing our best to serve god's will

01:55:45.600 and trying to interpret god's will through whether it's the restrictions god has laid out like what's

01:55:50.720 their actual intention or through that you know trying to build a better relationship with god ourselves

01:55:57.520 seems um very reasonable and you also see why like that compared to the mishnah like just the

01:56:03.600 difference in like theological quality which is why i go for and people are like asking like why do you

01:56:09.680 go for the new testament and don't go to this other work it's because i can get in like originally it

01:56:14.480 wasn't because i believed all of it it was just like it was like juicier and also much cleaner tighter

01:56:20.240 more compact didn't have to memorize as much and i should note here that this is actually saying quite

01:56:25.200 a lot because when i came into all of this i was leaning towards judaism people can look at some of

01:56:30.160 our older videos like raising our kids with jewish traditions and stuff like that to make it easier

01:56:34.720 they wanted to convert into the religion as they got older or me as a young person i always thought

01:56:39.120 oh you know while i was raised atheist if i converted into one religion i always thought judaism seemed the

01:56:43.840 most reasonable it was actually studying the theology and the texts themselves which drove me away from

01:56:51.120 it which i again i don't mean this as an insult to jewish people i think it's useful to get the

01:56:56.320 perspective of an outsider who has actually put a lot of personal focus into this that may help you

01:57:02.800 see things through a different lens so i was talking to simone after we had originally recorded

01:57:07.040 this and she had some really interesting thoughts i was musing to him that i've watched a lot of content

01:57:13.040 delving into the lives of mormons and delving into the lives of orthodox jews like i find

01:57:18.640 the content of both really really interesting but for different reasons so i i realized that i watch content

01:57:25.200 about mormons and mormon lives because i'm interested in what they're doing and i want to

01:57:30.080 do it like i'm interested in building up a year's worth of food storage and putting you know raw grain

01:57:36.480 into buckets and sealing it and figuring out which fats remain shelf shelf stable the longest and

01:57:41.600 i find that quite fascinating and i'm interested in that versus the reason why i watch the lives of

01:57:48.240 orthodox jewish women is i'm just interested in how they live and i want to understand it but i don't

01:57:52.720 find it aspirational because so much of it instead of feeling useful like i get excited about prepping

01:57:58.000 because i'm like well who knows like you know what if what if society falls apart that would be so

01:58:02.240 great you know even even in a disaster it'll be nice to be prepared and i'll just feel so secure

01:58:06.880 versus like oh here is the the wig shop that we're going to go to and i'm going to explain you know how

01:58:14.000 we fit wigs and and why we wear wigs and i'm like wait a second so you're supposed to cover your hair

01:58:20.080 during this period of your life but you're doing it by putting on more hair and isn't the whole point

01:58:28.720 to cover your hair because it's you know it's a beautiful thing and you know you're not gonna

01:58:32.480 you know it i mean i i don't know there's lots of different interpretations of the i think it's

01:58:36.640 corinthians 11 about covering you know women should cover their hair both in worship and in everyday life

01:58:42.000 but i think the idea the principle the the the spirit of the law would be that women's hair

01:58:48.240 shouldn't be seen so if i can't tell as an outsider that this orthodox jewish woman is hiding her hair

01:58:56.400 because her wig is so good and these wigs are beautiful you've completely ignored the spirit of

01:59:02.240 the law and that that i would never do that because one it's a lot of work to to put on a wig and

01:59:09.600 maintain a wig and choose a wig and buy a wig and it also costs a lot of money but two if i'm going

01:59:14.960 to cover my hair i'm going to make sure that everyone knows that they can't see my hair

01:59:21.200 would you say that it felt sort of counterfeit to you like it was not counterfeit i mean it feels in

01:59:26.320 its own way very extra very its own thing very very aspirational but it doesn't feel aspirational

01:59:34.160 to me because it doesn't feel functional it feels like a lot of extra work a lot of extra

01:59:38.800 steps and in the end not even doing the thing it was supposed to do and i find that very very

01:59:43.200 frustrating and in the same way that i think find it very frustrating to go through some government

01:59:48.400 bureaucratic processes knowing that it's not going to work like right now we need to get some some

01:59:55.360 documents apostille with the peruvian consulate and i'm going through the process i'm getting the

02:00:01.360 lawyers to write this stuff up i'm collecting the paperwork that i need to do i've already paid a lot

02:00:04.720 of money to do this and spend a lot of time doing this and i'm about 85 sure that when we show up at

02:00:10.560 the consulate they're going to be like we can't help you and here's why and it just really it feels so

02:00:19.520 futile and i don't like any system that makes me feel like that like i'm wasting my time like this is

02:00:24.880 not going to do anything and i think that that for people who aren't born within the jewish tradition

02:00:29.920 i think this really highlights the differentiation between the covenant that jesus attempted to put in

02:00:34.080 place and the covenant that the jews still follow was god and to the average outsider the old

02:00:38.640 covenants understanding is going to appear somewhat contrived like a fridge that doesn't have a light

02:00:44.240 on it because you know turning it off and on is work on the sabbath but you still want to be able to

02:00:49.040 open the fridge i just this morning saw a reddit post at the top of my feed on shuttles the thing that

02:00:55.200 simone was talking about and people complaining about them and so this was one of the most upvoted

02:01:00.320 comments on there which i think is the average non-orthodox jews interpretation of orthodox

02:01:05.200 judaism saying quote i swear every time i hear about a new tradition in judaism they seem like creating

02:01:12.000 loopholes to avoid obeying god's will 90 of them seem right out of wiley coyote like a mile long fishing

02:01:20.080 line connecting all the houses in new york and i think to a jew like this wouldn't be confusing at

02:01:25.280 all they'd be like well of course you would put that up there because you know you need to

02:01:29.200 differentiate between the indoor and outdoor and domestic and public spaces and it would be

02:01:33.440 basically impossible to live without this in a city like manhattan um but to a non-jew they're like

02:01:39.040 what do you think maybe god just wanted you to take a day off like and i'd also note here that this

02:01:44.880 really aligns with the prophesied second covenant where the laws are written on your heart so you are

02:01:50.240 no longer required to listen to or have a rabbi or human authority interpret the laws but you are

02:01:56.160 responsible for interpreting the laws yourself because they are written within you and you know

02:02:01.360 when you are breaking them versus when you are not as they relate to you specifically and this also to

02:02:08.320 me is one of these things where i look with less favor on things like the catholic tradition or the

02:02:13.600 eastern orthodox christian tradition because it seems like they just rebuilt the jewish system of

02:02:17.760 having like an intellectual caste that's supposed to interpret everything for you instead of making

02:02:22.640 you know being responsible for those decisions yourself it's important for me personally to

02:02:28.080 reinforce that judaism is a path to god and how i'm putting this together because while it is

02:02:32.640 critical of judaism i still need to say you know i do not think it is helpful to have the religion

02:02:37.520 say well all of these religions are strictly wrong oh okay okay well and maybe you could do a little

02:02:43.600 more in favor of jesus because i'm not hearing a whole lot i'm hearing well i i want to say that i

02:02:52.000 think this system is superior i i do think it's superior but that doesn't mean that jews aren't right

02:02:56.560 with god yeah i mean i think sort of the way that i'm categorizing judaism in my head at this point

02:03:02.640 based on everything that you've said and based on what other people have told us too is judaism is

02:03:08.640 just a very different cultural take that really is it's like you know what we are going to be

02:03:16.400 all about this blockchain of rules that evolves and it evolves and within our community and those rules

02:03:21.040 are kind of independent of god and that there's a clear precedent for that and we very much respect god

02:03:28.880 but our key bet in terms of civilization surviving is that we're going to do our rules so god you do

02:03:36.880 what you do and we're going to do what we do and our rules are our own thing they're not about god

02:03:43.680 they're about the point is the rules it's like but you forgot about the cones you forgot you're right

02:03:50.320 it is and it's all about the rules it was all about the cones and the rules

02:03:58.240 what's so funny oh no no you're a smart guy clearly picked up some flashy tricks but

02:04:04.000 you made one crucial mistake you forgot about the essence of the game it's about the cones

02:04:11.840 and it they i think that the important thing for me is i'm starting to see it's almost like like a

02:04:19.280 workout regimen or or their health like this is what keeps us sharp this is what makes us exceptional

02:04:24.560 and it clearly when you've looked at how we've done over thousands of years clearly it's working for us

02:04:29.760 it's clearly imparting fitness and this whole time we have still done well by god we have still done well

02:04:37.360 and so let us do our rules and we will we will do well by you god and and our rules i say they've

02:04:44.480 they've objectively sometimes done well by god so by this what i mean is it appears clear to me

02:04:50.080 and it's laid out in the bible we know that god does punish the jewish people when they are not or his

02:04:54.640 people whatever that means so it might be other groups of people when they are not acting good with

02:04:59.520 him we know this because of like you know when they're the babylonian exile right the bible makes

02:05:03.360 it pretty clear like okay you get punished of the people when you do bad things well i mean

02:05:08.080 the pogroms happened the holocaust happened i think as no no any group of people gets punished

02:05:14.560 by circumstances when they go soft and sometimes what i mean is as favored as the jews are today

02:05:20.560 and they do appear to be clearly divinely favored and the rules appear to be working there were periods

02:05:25.760 of history where the opposite was true yeah i'm just saying like the key bet of judaism is the

02:05:33.440 blockchain of rules and the meritocratic intellectualism and that is that should be

02:05:40.720 seen and respected independent of theocratic truth like they are two separate sometimes even

02:05:50.400 somewhat incompatible systems but they should not be considered it's kind of like this is your

02:05:54.640 financial management system and this is your nutrition system and i don't know like you use money to buy

02:06:00.240 food but like they're not really related and and you know your financial manager is not going to be

02:06:05.440 the one who advises you on how to eat okay like let them be and i think that's what's going on here

02:06:10.880 i think you're right and i love you to decimone i love you too gorgeous but to continue why are these

02:06:18.560 tracks so long the reason they're so long is because if i'm laying out an argument here where i'm like

02:06:24.560 actually christianity should be thought of as a direct continuation and i'm not a less deserving

02:06:30.320 direct continuation of the ancestral jewish teachings than modern judaism there are going to be

02:06:35.440 a hundred thousand counter arguments that a person is going to have to that and i don't want to

02:06:40.000 address them piecemeal because then the person watches the first video they put the counter

02:06:43.440 argument right under the video you know i i prefer to handle them all together for anybody who actually

02:06:49.200 wants to engage with a topic like this i mean it's a it's a meaningful topic you know from any

02:06:54.640 religious perspective and i would note here that this is not the pure techno puritan law of the land

02:06:59.600 that we're laying out here this is our part of the techno puritan tradition to be within the broader

02:07:04.320 techno puritan tradition you can be a techno puritan in the cast like you can be a techno puritan jew

02:07:08.560 you can have wildly different beliefs than we do you can take some of these tracks and not others of

02:07:13.040 these tracks as you decide which ones you think have the most evidence the key things that make a

02:07:18.080 person a techno puritan is that they attempt to investigate what is actually written in the text

02:07:24.800 to they when they're arguing for what is theologically true they attempt to use logic and they attempt to

02:07:31.680 uh convince people with things that everyone has access to i.e no personal revelations no god just

02:07:39.120 talked to me no miracles that nobody saw everyone has to have access to this like i can say i think

02:07:44.480 that this religion is sanctified because it did so well or because this guy wrote this down and this

02:07:48.320 predicted these events in the future those are things that i have access to and you have access to

02:07:53.040 and and can't be easily faked and then the final thing is and i and i know that this will exclude a lot

02:07:58.560 of traditional frameworks is the belief that god is a real entity that actually exists at a different

02:08:03.760 point in time and this is one that simone and i debated on adding as part of the criteria and

02:08:07.680 saying that you're actually part of the techno puritan community but i i i do think that that

02:08:12.080 that is just so core to our world view and that was the first differentiating belief we came up that's

02:08:16.400 it that's it it's always been like that's the core thing yeah so everything i'm saying right here is

02:08:21.600 not like canon techno puritan this is just it's more like this is the way you should engage with your

02:08:26.800 religious teachings i.e look at history sources look at what's actually written think through it

02:08:32.000 debate you know somebody was like well what does it mean to be like a techno puritan like minister

02:08:36.240 or something like that i'm like engaging in the debate from the perspective of your tradition yeah

02:08:42.080 but anyway so jews if they've heard everything i've written here they'll say something like well

02:08:48.560 god when he handed down the law he said and it is written that he said this in religious texts that you

02:08:53.520 and i share that at no point in the future would anything be taken out of the law if this is

02:08:59.120 accurate and in the old testament that is a major problem for the idea that jesus created a new

02:09:05.840 covenant so let's examine those passages deuteronomy 4 2 you should not add to the word that i command you

02:09:13.680 nor take from it that you may keep the commandments of lord god that i command you

02:09:18.960 deuteronomy 13 1 in some translations it's 12 32 everything that i command you you shall be careful

02:09:25.520 to do you shall not add to it or take from it first of all in both of these instances it states very

02:09:31.920 clearly that adding rules is just as problematic as taking them away jews have consistently added rules

02:09:39.280 while glossing over this point saying oh we're just putting fences around the torah in what conceivable

02:09:46.560 way is that not adding rules yeah that's me adding yeah it's adding rules if someone's like

02:09:52.640 add nothing to this property and they're like we just added a fence you'd still be like

02:09:59.040 that's a rule but it's a fence but a rule you're just using a synonym yeah it's something that you're

02:10:03.520 not supposed to pass yeah it's not me you have to answer to on this point but god would you really

02:10:10.080 stand before god was the argument that putting up fences isn't adding rules modern judaism with

02:10:17.760 all its added rules is just as invalidated by these two passages as christianity is for its consolidation

02:10:24.240 and rationalization of rules but we don't need to worry in either case because we know from the bible

02:10:31.680 in no uncertain terms that rules will be added and taken away so the above two passages cannot mean

02:10:39.040 what they appear to mean at face value okay so here i'm saying look jews are breaking this just

02:10:45.040 as much as christians are because the first line is you can't take anything away the second line is

02:10:49.040 you can't add anything yeah and so it's a major problem for both religions if it actually means

02:10:53.760 what it appears to be on face value but we know it doesn't mean that because there are other parts of

02:10:57.280 the bible that we've already gone over here where god's like oh yeah i'm gonna give you a new covenant

02:11:00.960 in the future there's gonna be different rules so we know that new rules will be added so that's obviously

02:11:06.240 not what it means so jeremiah states behold the days are coming declares the lord when i will

02:11:12.240 make a new covenant with the house of israel in the house of judah not like the covenant i made

02:11:16.640 with the fathers on the day when i took them by the hand out of the land of egypt my covenant that they

02:11:21.200 broke though i was their husband declares the lord for this is the covenant i will make with the house

02:11:25.600 of israel after those days declares the lord i will put my law within them i will write within their

02:11:30.640 hearts and i will be their god and they will be my people and no longer shall each one teach

02:11:35.600 his neighbor and his brother saying know thy lord for they will all know me from the least of them

02:11:40.880 to the greatest declares the lord for i will forgive their iniquity and i will remember their sin is no

02:11:45.600 more whether the new covenant referenced here is the one made through jesus or not is not relevant

02:11:51.680 jeremiah comes after deuteronomy and makes it clear that rules will be taken away and added

02:11:57.200 it also clarifies something very unfortunate for modern jewish theology which would argue that the

02:12:03.040 covenant created at sinai was quote-unquote written within the jewish people allowing it

02:12:09.280 to be passed on through matrilineal descent the passage by contrasting the covenant to come

02:12:15.120 with the one at sinai shows that in no uncertain terms the sinai covenant was not written within the

02:12:21.440 jews rumors saying that this new covenant is going to be written in your heart like it's going to be written

02:12:25.840 onto you which implies that the old covenant was not written onto you meaning you can't pass any part

02:12:31.600 of it down through the bloodline so big problem there again for the the matrilineal descent thing

02:12:39.840 so if those lines don't mean what they appear to mean at first glance what do they actually mean

02:12:44.640 deuteronomy 13 1 everything that i command you you shall be careful to do you shall not add to it or

02:12:49.840 take away from it importantly this verse is followed by chapter 13's warnings about false prophets

02:12:55.760 and those who might lead people to worship other gods so the don't add or take away command sits

02:13:01.600 between instructions about proper worship and warnings about false worship this context suggests

02:13:07.040 that the command is specifically related to those rather than being a general statement about never

02:13:12.480 modifying religious laws chapter 12 starts with the commands to destroy other nations places of worship

02:13:19.360 not worship god in the way other nations worship their gods only worship at a designated place later

02:13:24.720 understood as a temple follow specific rules about sacrifices and meat consumption then come see

02:13:30.400 don't add or subtract warning immediately after chapter 13 warns about false prophets who might

02:13:35.600 encourage worship of other gods family members who might secretly promote other religions entire

02:13:41.680 towns that might turn to other gods this sequence suggests the warning is specifically about

02:13:46.960 not adding foreign religious practices to the worship system i.e. like the concept of heaven and hell

02:13:51.600 i see the previous track not removing elements of proper worship as prescribed maintaining the purity of

02:14:00.320 the centralized worship system it's like saying here's how worship should work don't copy other nations

02:14:06.960 practices don't add and don't skip parts of your system don't subtract this is different from the

02:14:12.640 blanket statement about never modifying any religious laws the context is specifically about maintaining proper

02:14:17.840 worship practices without influence from surrounding nations it's about religious purity rather than

02:14:23.120 legal immutability now let's examine deuteronomy 4 2 you shall not add to the word that i command you

02:14:30.640 nor take away from it that you may keep the commandments of the lord god that i command you and i

02:14:35.600 note in both of these instances both add and subtracted there it's not like the add is just in one of the

02:14:39.920 the two deuteronomy 4 opens with moses addressing israel the sequence is verse 1 now oh israel listen

02:14:46.400 to the statutes and rules that i am teaching you verse 2 our don't add a subtract verse verses 3 through

02:14:51.760 4 immediately gives an example about baupur who those who followed baal were destroyed and those

02:14:57.760 who stayed with god lived verses 5 6 moses explains he's teaching them statutes and rules and emphasizes how

02:15:04.640 these laws will show their wisdom to other nations verses 9 3 14 reminds them about receiving the law of

02:15:11.600 horeb mount sinai emphasizing they saw no form of god only heard his voice the rest of the chapter

02:15:17.760 continues with warnings about making idols warnings about being exiled if they make images of god's

02:15:22.640 reminders they alone received these laws the context suggests this warning is specifically connected to

02:15:29.040 not adding idol worship or visible representations of god not removing elements of proper worship

02:15:34.560 that distinguish them from other nations like the deuteronomy 13 passage it appears more focused

02:15:39.760 on maintaining proper worship and avoiding idolatry than about preventing any future legal

02:15:44.400 interpretation or modification the warning comes in a section specifically about avoiding the

02:15:49.680 religious practices of other nations given that it seems laser focused and it's all about idolatry

02:15:55.280 here it's not making carved images not worshiping celestial bodies not forgetting the covenant

02:16:00.080 by making idols and not following other nations worship practices given this laser focus

02:16:04.240 on idolatry in the surrounding text it's a reasonable interpretation that the don't add or subtract

02:16:09.280 warning could be specifically about idolatry rules rather than a blanket statement about religious law

02:16:15.040 finally we have proverb 30 60 do not add to his words lest he rebuke you and you will be found a liar

02:16:21.520 this in context is not about rules but about words specifically not changing the text i want to note

02:16:27.360 here how much i dislike the standard christian non-response to this particular question rather than actually

02:16:32.720 addressing it in context they simply say well jesus fulfilled the law he didn't change it this is as

02:16:38.000 nitpicky as a jews saying rabbis are not adding rules they're just putting up fences we need to address

02:16:44.960 these texts directly and stop dodging the issue this kind of evasion makes each faith look like an outfit

02:16:51.680 you're wearing rather than something you're intellectually invested with actually being true

02:16:56.480 but sometimes we want to believe in something so much that we willingly deceive ourselves i mean i know

02:17:02.560 i've been guilty of that in the past i wanted a sign so badly that it drove me to distraction because

02:17:08.160 it is the question we all want the answer to isn't it i mean does god exist i mean does he exist

02:17:14.880 is your whole world built in a lie peter

02:17:30.320 peter yeah because i i see this so much when i when i talk to people of specific face and i engage them

02:17:37.920 with stuff and i'm like if you actually believed this you wouldn't be making that argument like that's such a

02:17:42.800 limp-handed argument that shows that like you came to this you didn't have an immediate answer

02:17:47.440 so you threw out ah he fulfilled it well that doesn't change if if the original interpretation

02:17:52.480 that it actually means you can't add or remove is accurate and why are you so comfortable just

02:17:57.680 throwing that out there and then walking away from it and i think that's another thing that makes

02:18:01.520 techno puritanism different is we want to really engage with this stuff thoughts simone i agree i i'm

02:18:06.720 like hearing all these different bible verses it's do you ever find yourself kind of writing some

02:18:12.000 things off because bible's the different lines in different books of the bible say conflicting

02:18:17.360 things i mean you used order of books at one point as justification for something being overwritten but

02:18:24.240 were they really meant to be treated chronologically well not overwritten i mean of course they were so

02:18:29.920 what what they would say is the rules that were handed down at sinai that those rules will never be

02:18:35.040 added to or removed from and and yet the the time when god tells us actually i'm going to have a

02:18:40.640 second covenant with you he told us that after sinai if he had told us that before sinai you could

02:18:45.920 have said actually sinai was the second set of or the second covenant and and so it meant that you

02:18:51.520 couldn't change the order after that that's why the order is important and as i dive into religious

02:18:59.200 texts i find that they don't actually conflict each other as much as i was originally led to believe

02:19:04.240 wow okay by skeptics and we may even do a track where we just go over places where people say the

02:19:09.680 bible contradicts itself i like that yeah because i'm still doubtful even though you can say that i'm

02:19:15.520 still doubtful as soon as you take a techno puritan perspective a lot of the potential areas of

02:19:21.840 contradiction just clear themselves up really clearly even already like the issues about the two

02:19:27.280 afterlives i'm like okay but if you take it this way then you don't have to deal with that problem

02:19:31.520 the old testament makes it pretty clear that most jews now and at the time believed that the messiah

02:19:38.240 would be a man and not a partially divine beings for me one of the biggest confirmations written in

02:19:43.760 a history of his status as the true messiah is how his life is mirrored in the life of a false messiah

02:19:50.560 sabbata zevi loudly claimed to be the messiah was a message that can be almost thought of as an

02:19:55.920 inversion of jesus's where jesus argued for a consolidation of the rules around the purpose

02:20:01.920 that they were meant to achieve sabbati levy had an antinomian message this is the idea that in the

02:20:09.520 messianic age religious prohibitions would be inverted this led to followers engaging in religiously

02:20:14.960 forbidden acts including sexual transgressions and violating dietary laws historians estimate that around

02:20:22.480 30 to 50 of jews globally believed him to be the messiah and this guy was around in the 1600s

02:20:29.040 however when he was put on trial and claiming to be the messiah would have gotten him tortured and

02:20:33.040 killed that was the one time in his life he would not call himself the messiah he ended up converting

02:20:40.080 to islam and living a long life of luxury and shame converting to islam wow okay converting to islam yeah

02:20:46.960 so so i i jesus on the other hand only once in the bible concretely confirms that he is the messiah

02:20:53.920 and that is when he is on trial when confirming it would have led to his torture and execution

02:20:59.280 jesus did not claim to be the messiah except when he knew it would get him killed and yet he was proven

02:21:06.400 right his life did transform judaism into a worldwide religion in the form of christianity so

02:21:13.680 here i would note a few really important things before i go further in this jews understood the

02:21:20.160 messiah and i think the messiah as he's written in the old testament is very clearly a man which is

02:21:25.440 the way that we are our branch of techno puritanism relates to jesus i think that he as we've argued did

02:21:31.680 not claim to be literally the son of god he claimed to be he said that he had god in him and other humans

02:21:38.240 had god in them and and when he called himself the son of god that that's all throughout the old

02:21:42.640 testament like people who are set apart by god are called the son of god like that's not like a

02:21:46.720 unique doesn't mean that he literally impregnated her mother and god helped with other pregnancies

02:21:50.800 as well you know famously and if he was the son of god that invalidates him as the messiah because

02:21:54.880 he's not from the davidic line anymore and the messiah has to come from the davidic line through his

02:21:58.640 father so problem there but i'd also note here i just find it so interesting that we have this other

02:22:05.200 figure in history that that's that's so important to the history of judaism because he really

02:22:10.160 transformed judaism making jews much more hesitant about like messiahs or like mass following of

02:22:15.840 potential messiahs in the future and messianic cults within judaism um so he he is an important

02:22:21.120 figure but he's literally a direct inversion zevi versus jesus zevi inverted the rules jesus said live

02:22:27.440 for god act on your conscience zevi was widely hailed as the messiah by jews jesus widely hated for what

02:22:34.400 he taught zevi wore royal garments even crowning himself jesus lived in poverty and wore a crown of

02:22:41.440 thorns zevi expected to be treated like royalty jesus washes the feet of his disciples so zevi went

02:22:47.840 around talking to kings and queens and like demanding that they use royal titles for him

02:22:51.280 again he actually had had a crown made for himself almost like i i think supernaturally an inversion of

02:22:58.000 jesus's life zevi married multiple times regularly claimed to be the messiah when it would benefit him

02:23:04.720 jesus celibate never claimed to be the messiah except when doing so would have gotten him executed

02:23:09.520 and again you can see elsewhere in this track where we argue against other places where jesus

02:23:12.640 say that he was arguing to be the messiah and we're like no he wasn't um zevi converted to islam

02:23:18.720 when his espoused beliefs would put him in danger jesus repeatedly refused to deny his espoused beliefs

02:23:26.000 eventually leading to his death zevi died of old age in luxury jesus died painfully for his beliefs

02:23:33.600 zevi born to wealthy merchants and well-educated jesus born to humble circumstances zevi attracted

02:23:39.680 scholars rabbis and wealthy merchants as key followers jesus selected disciples from common people

02:23:45.520 especially from fishermen and tax collectors zevi communicated through complex kabbalistic

02:23:51.200 concepts and mystical doctrines jesus taught through parables and public sermons accessible to the

02:23:57.840 common people do you have any thoughts on zevi or like this this weird parallel yeah you in an earlier

02:24:04.400 tract i think it's something about how if you are a prophet of god communicating we haven't done yet

02:24:13.120 it's one that i wrote was the original i originally wrote a flurry of tracks and some of them haven't

02:24:16.880 been published okay but that you are punished if you claim to be a prophet of god even if you really

02:24:23.040 are one and now i'm like well so it's not are you taking it back yeah i i did more well this is the

02:24:32.800 interesting thing so before i do a tract i do a lot of research with other like i'll talk with rabbis

02:24:39.520 i'll talk with catholics i'll talk with mormons this stuff is not happening outside of a bubble like

02:24:44.560 there's like a techno puritan community that has these talks with me debates with me and many of

02:24:49.920 them are approaching face from different traditions and it's through those conversations that i learn

02:24:55.120 more and get better and i think that that's something i want this face to be able to continue to do

02:24:59.600 that's why i don't say like any of this is handed down from god to me or something like that or is like

02:25:06.080 canon all this is is one person logically trying to read texts that i think were divinely inspired to

02:25:13.040 understand what they really meant was the understanding that other people might be able

02:25:17.360 to do that better than me i can't claim i trump you because i'm the founder of this that's that's not

02:25:24.240 the way this works i i am not divinely i mean i guess if i was then i couldn't even claim credit for

02:25:31.840 this right it wouldn't be me being clever it would be somebody acting through i prefer to be clever than

02:25:38.560 to claim divine inspiration but anyway anyway so but it didn't get it didn't get made into the tracks

02:25:44.080 who knows divine providence that one never got made but and i think that that one was back when i didn't

02:25:49.040 know how little the christian texts contradicted our own beliefs which i was really surprised about

02:25:54.960 but there is more evidence he is the messiah and this is a big one the most important event in jewish

02:26:00.320 history that broke their ability to uphold most of their covenant with god was the destruction of the

02:26:05.440 temple now do you think god is foolish do you think he would have given the jewish people a covenant

02:26:11.840 told them you can't add or subtract anything from it in their interpretation that they had no way to

02:26:16.880 fulfill no he almost certainly would have amended the covenant or created a new covenant before the

02:26:23.120 temple fell when did jesus die only 40 years before the temple fell and his teachings centered around a

02:26:31.840 new covenant with god that did not require the temple that was by far the most radical break from

02:26:38.480 traditional judaism that jesus preached now i know i'll note that more modern christians have added a

02:26:43.440 bunch of other weird stuff that differentiates it from judaism more as we've argued in this tract but

02:26:47.520 initially really all jesus was saying is we need a way to relate to god that doesn't involve the temple

02:26:52.960 and this priest caste and this hierarchy you know like maybe the law needs to be written on our hearts

02:26:58.400 uh i don't know where i might have read that before sorry that's the second covenant is prophesized

02:27:02.880 what are the odds that a branch of judaism would end up spreading over the entire world and the man who

02:27:09.600 founded that branch made modifications to traditional jewish teachings so the temple was no longer required

02:27:15.760 to stay in god's good graces and this man died within a lifetime of the temple's destruction

02:27:21.760 no really what are the actual odds i can see jews dismissing jesus as a random cult offshoot of their

02:27:27.360 religion but when that offshoot's core message was this is how you make judaism work without a temple

02:27:33.920 and it emerged immediately before the temple's destruction the that's more coincident than i

02:27:40.640 could ignore i could also understand though why in general jews would doubt one i mean it's hard for

02:27:47.200 word to get around you know i'm sure news of jesus was very lumpy especially during his lifetime and he was

02:27:53.360 one of many apocalyptic jews so how were they to know which one was legitimate and which one was

02:27:58.880 not i feel like jesus really only picked up with his apostles proselytizing after his death well yeah i

02:28:05.760 would have if i was a jew within the lifetime of christ i do not think i would have thought that he was

02:28:11.440 the messiah yeah but if i was a jew a few like like within modern times like even just me as a logical

02:28:17.040 person i don't know if i could get around that particular logical contradiction that god literally

02:28:22.880 didn't know that the temple was going to be destroyed that he didn't give his people a new

02:28:26.640 covenant and that new covenant's veracity wasn't confirmed by the speed at which it spread and the

02:28:32.640 thriving of the communities that spread was in yeah i don't know i don't no one looks at the bible

02:28:42.320 like you do no one's looking at this stuff so carefully but jesus said i i come to create a

02:28:47.120 new covenant like he he that's what he he didn't say i died like how many apocalyptic jews said that

02:28:52.800 is is my concern i don't know i i again i don't know i i don't know and i think that sometimes you

02:29:00.160 know people who do bad things are used their their life is sort of used but like a paintbrush by god to

02:29:06.560 tell us things about the world and so even if jesus did do bad things or he wasn't this person

02:29:12.560 or he was just another random apocalyptic jew he is shown to be correct in the same way god showed

02:29:18.960 the jews to be correct by showing their beliefs favor because they were closer to the truth so even

02:29:24.640 if jesus was just a crazy person okay just hearing voices he still served the role within prophecy of the

02:29:34.080 messiah through the way that his message changed the world and his messages authenticity was verified

02:29:43.040 through its ability to spread and the effects it had on the communities it spread within

02:29:48.720 so even if you take this completely jesus was never actually talking to god he was just a crazy person

02:29:53.040 and then god decided to uplift his message because it was closer to true than the other messages fine

02:29:58.560 maybe but i do not see how you couldn't see if you look at the prophecies around the messiah that you

02:30:02.880 wouldn't be like this is obviously a really good candidate for it which is something i didn't

02:30:07.120 know when i originally was a christian for clarification what i mean by this is that while

02:30:11.200 i was raised an atheist i went to church every week because of my school like i hadn't really thought

02:30:16.480 through that before and and even if you're like logically working this out okay here's this thought

02:30:21.120 experiment in the bible god makes it clear that he will create a covenant with the jews after the

02:30:26.880 covenant on sinai a new covenant c jeremiah assume that covenant was offered and you just missed it

02:30:33.600 a quick question what what do jews in general say about that the new covenant will come or they're

02:30:38.160 just like no it hasn't come yet and we're sure because they're already living some jews say they're

02:30:43.280 already living in it some jews say it hasn't come yet so the new covenant they're arguing is through

02:30:48.160 the evolution of debate and rulemaking of the talmud no no no sorry fringe jews say they're living under

02:30:57.440 it the mainstream rabbinic position within like the habad community or the haradi community is that it

02:31:03.360 has not come yet oh and that it comes with the messianic era hmm even though it doesn't say it comes

02:31:10.640 with the messianic or what the messiah is the one who initiates it the messianic era we'd say well the

02:31:16.560 messiah did come and he initiated it but okay here's the so so we go back to this thought experiment

02:31:21.760 okay we're told there's going to be a new covenant now assume that covenant was offered and you just

02:31:26.880 missed it if you could pinpoint any moment in all of jewish history that would have been logical for

02:31:34.480 god to have given jews a new covenant when would it be right before the destruction of the temple right

02:31:41.200 if the old testament is actually divinely inspired eventually it is meant for everyone right the

02:31:47.920 debate would just be whether that has already happened or whether that's going to happen in

02:31:53.600 the future i.e if this is a divinely inspired work it's clearly eventually meant for all humans

02:32:00.320 even most jews believe that like eventually this stuff applies to all humans in the messianic age or in

02:32:05.280 you know the next stage i i i don't see like the one god of all reality only cares about one

02:32:10.320 population that seems to me completely implausible so that would mean that okay eventually these rules

02:32:16.240 are going to apply to everyone the question is is and and and will with the new covenant the question

02:32:20.880 is is does that happen now or in the future and i'll note here the new covenant because it says oh

02:32:26.000 this new covenant will be for the judean or the jewish people we'll talk about this i think that given

02:32:31.760 the way that jews understood themselves during this time period as i said like anyone could become one

02:32:35.840 of the jewish people that meant that like anyone who follows the faith any of the faithful which would

02:32:40.480 could apply to everyone because again i don't see a divine god of all reality only caring about one

02:32:46.480 population so right now what i'm pointing out is logically if you had missed the new covenant it would

02:32:54.880 have happened right before the destruction of the temple now suppose you don't believe jesus was the messiah

02:33:00.480 and we're in an alternate timeline where a messiah had come during that period to bring a new covenant

02:33:06.320 that didn't require the temple do you think all jews would have believed it of course not what does

02:33:13.520 the old testament say about this isaiah 53 3 says quote he was despised and rejected by mankind

02:33:20.800 a man of suffering and familiar with pain like one of whom people hide their faces he was despised and we

02:33:28.560 held him in low esteem end quote that's what the jewish texts say the messiah is going to be treated

02:33:33.840 like further in the same chapter isaiah 53 7 through 8 states he was oppressed and afflicted yet he did

02:33:40.880 not open his mouth he was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shearers is silent

02:33:47.360 so he did not open his mouth by oppression and judgment he was taken away

02:33:51.600 psalm 118 22 is another passage often cited the stone that the builders rejected has become the

02:34:00.240 cornerstone so he'd be rejected by his people in daniel 9 26 there is a reference that some interpret

02:34:08.640 as for telling the messiah's rejection the anointed one will be put to death and will have nothing

02:34:13.520 then zachariah 12 10 it contains the line they look on me they when they have pierced they will

02:34:20.080 mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and here i will note that the majority of jewish people

02:34:25.920 not accepting the messiah i do not think was a mistake that god made or something i actually think

02:34:31.600 they are not supposed to the covenant was created through the sacrifice that christ made is an alternate

02:34:38.800 covenant not a replacement for the original one that the jews had access to i don't think it's

02:34:45.360 against god's will to continue follow the first covenant more on this later so basically here what

02:34:50.960 i'm saying is okay so god's okay was this initial covenant right the destruction of the temple makes

02:34:56.800 it harder judaism has to reform it's the way it relates to god after that but i think that all of

02:35:01.440 that's actually okay all of that was part of god's plan i mean it happened and it's pretty clear that

02:35:06.160 god has some degree of favoritism for the modern jewish people if you look at you know jewish

02:35:10.560 exceptionalism this is you know with the scoring higher making more money having more political

02:35:14.240 power israel sort of being a focus of the world stage having a country that's a higher fertility

02:35:18.400 rate country and yet wealthy being the only country on earth like that like god still clearly favors

02:35:23.520 the jewish people i do not think that they are currently in rebellion to god so for me what that

02:35:27.600 means is the old covenant must still be in operation and what jesus truly allowed was for a new

02:35:35.280 path to god for a new covenant for people not born into that community okay hmm yeah that makes

02:35:43.280 sense now i mentioned this above but this is really important what about the problem that the old

02:35:47.840 testament is constantly talking about the jews specifically surely this causes problems for this

02:35:53.040 interpretation not really we know from cases like ruth that anyone who fully dedicates themselves

02:35:59.040 to the correct version of the old testament faith and its people is considered to be one of the

02:36:04.240 the above people this means any christian that fully dedicates themselves to the cause of christianity

02:36:10.400 would be one of the people being referred to as jewish in the prophecies when i look at the

02:36:15.600 early christians voluntarily going to the lions it is hard to argue that they were not at least as

02:36:22.160 dedicated to their iteration of the old faith as ruth was if not significantly more so thus to consider

02:36:29.600 them non-jews if christ really was the messiah is extremely unpersuasive and requires a modern

02:36:36.320 understanding of jewish identity rather than the one that was around when the bible was written

02:36:44.160 so when it talks about the new covenant being for the people of judea it's talking for them in the same

02:36:49.200 way that ruth became one of the people of judea by living her life for this old testament phase

02:36:53.840 any thoughts i i guess i'd never that helps to explain a little bit the the differential treatment

02:37:03.600 of of jews versus what difference were you just saying that jews are sort of allowed to continue

02:37:14.480 with the old covenant but well okay i'll make some notes here i think that when so remember i i sort of

02:37:21.200 judge god's will within a community by whether that community is is thriving or yeah and within

02:37:27.840 the jewish tradition it's understand that god relates to them in that way as well so if i look at the

02:37:33.200 period after the destruction of the second temple it seems pretty clear that god was not happy with the

02:37:38.640 jewish people after that period and he seemed to show a lot more favoritism to the christian communities

02:37:44.080 which means to me when i'm looking to which faith was more accurate or more closely aligned with a

02:37:49.680 real understanding of god during that period i would say it was likely the christian face and

02:37:54.560 then jews must have done something to really piss off the god and when they started accepting all

02:38:00.160 this kabbalistic stuff and this is where you get things like the holocaust like if jews accept that

02:38:04.800 like the babylonian exile was because god was mad at them god must have been like really really mad at

02:38:10.240 them before this is because of something leading up to the holocaust it's an interesting take yeah if

02:38:15.760 you look at what happened after the holocaust how did they regain god's favor if the faith that they're

02:38:21.920 following post holocaust looks a lot like the faith they were following immediately before the holocaust

02:38:27.360 my answer to that is god's favor goes to whoever is following him most closely with their current

02:38:35.120 practices i think that the christian practices of stuff like sin transference to the messiah

02:38:40.640 and and idolatry you see in a lot of christian churches today things like prosperity gospel

02:38:46.400 in the protestant traditions where they like basically worship money that all of these things were

02:38:51.680 further from even that kabbalistic style judaism as a true interpretation of god and so i think it

02:38:58.720 wasn't that the jewish tradition improved i think it's that most christian traditions just became

02:39:03.920 even more corrupted you know whether it's the pda file scandals in the catholic church covering

02:39:09.120 those up just true evil allowed to enter so many segments of the other true face that they moved

02:39:16.720 away from god and i think that that's how the jewish people came back into favor i would also note here

02:39:23.040 that if you're a jew and you believe that like the the babylonian exile was a punishment that god does

02:39:27.200 punish the destruction of the second temple was a punishment you need to look for the other things you

02:39:31.440 were being punished for in different periods of jewish history and i feel like during those periods

02:39:35.680 of tribulation jews focus an awful lot on the punishment and they're like what are we doing

02:39:40.160 wrong how can we improve but after the punishment has happened i see very little reflection on okay but

02:39:46.480 really what had entered our faith that was bad during this time period that led to our punishment

02:39:52.560 well what i like about this approach too is this makes a lot more sense to me in the context of

02:39:58.960 the way that we view god which is the inevitable god what humans eventually become in the far future

02:40:04.960 because there is not really a right or wrong answer there are actions that are more likely

02:40:09.920 to bring about the future that must come and you can have multiple groups doing things that are optimal

02:40:14.800 in their contexts so there's not exactly only one correct approach to take depending on the people

02:40:21.280 and depending on the context in fact the correct approach for one group in one geographic area at one

02:40:26.640 time may be very very different from another group in a different geographic area at a different time

02:40:32.480 so the fact that one group could be doing the right thing and another group could be doing the right thing

02:40:36.880 and both of them are doing very different things makes sense but that also there can be times when

02:40:42.720 a group is totally going in the wrong direction and the best way for them to tell whether that's the case

02:40:48.720 isn't the words of prophets or priests or people who say that they speak directly with god it is to look

02:40:54.560 at the outcome of those people yeah i completely agree with you so to continue here now why do i go

02:41:02.080 on all these lengthy explanations because once all these points are taken in context we can better

02:41:07.520 understand why jews adopted matrilineal descent as a key part of jewish identity basically multiple equally

02:41:14.400 valid branches of the old testament religion were competing and trying to convert people then one

02:41:19.120 of them christianity i would argue due to divine favor actually succeeded in what all the others were

02:41:24.640 trying to do this significant problem for all the other branches of judaism if they continue trying

02:41:30.160 to convert people their members would inevitably start saying other various branches one of them seems to

02:41:37.120 be very obviously out competing the others might that be a sign of divine favor even worse would be

02:41:44.320 the thought lingering in the back of many minds that this was the rabbi who when questioned said he

02:41:51.280 was the messiah and was crucified for it that's a bold conviction of i've ever seen one so what do you

02:41:59.600 do to hide that one version of judaism seems to have divine favor in its proselytization efforts well

02:42:06.800 stop your own proselytization efforts more than that you attempt to scrub your tradition of any knowledge

02:42:13.520 that such efforts ever existed yes in fact in fact jews are an ethno religion and always have been

02:42:20.960 in christianity you see it's a totally different thing and nothing like judaism you see we have

02:42:26.320 all these traditions christians don't uh okay what traditions are those hey you know all that local

02:42:33.040 canine folk magic meemaw used to practice can we have someone start collecting all that in one place

02:42:39.360 that's something that makes us different from christians yes yes i mean all those folk traditions

02:42:44.160 are old but we never included them in the old testament or any other religious work precisely

02:42:48.960 because they were canine in origin otherwise if they had antiquity we obviously would have recorded

02:42:55.440 them i will stop being an actress when the earth stops spinning on kabbalah monster's fingernail as two

02:43:01.840 brief asides here first i don't think any of this was intentional i think the iterations of

02:43:06.320 judaism that focused on proselytization just did not replicate at the same rate in a christian world

02:43:12.320 as those focused inwards on community and identity i also think kabbalism developed in this way i am

02:43:17.760 telling the story this way to be funny and to tease the perspective that kabbalistic ideas were common

02:43:24.160 and fully fleshed out all the way back in the second temporal period in reality i think what happened

02:43:29.440 was rabbis just collected a lot of religious ideas that were popular at the time within intellectual and

02:43:35.040 philosophical circles and we will go into the receipts that that's what they did but i need to

02:43:40.080 point out the counterfactual of the implications implied by kabbalism actually having antiquity to

02:43:46.000 it so here what i'm saying is a lot of the times when i say kabbalism is actually fairly modern when

02:43:50.800 it's really sort of pop mysticism from the medieval period and jews are like no all of these traditions

02:43:55.680 are actually super old and were always practiced alongside all the other traditions we just didn't write it

02:44:00.480 down i'm like that's a like a way more heretical take because now you need to ask the question why

02:44:07.440 wasn't anyone writing these traditions down because we know from the jewish bible that there were actually

02:44:13.200 other traditions being practiced alongside the jewish traditions that jews and christians went a long way

02:44:18.560 to try to take out of their traditions which things like the josiah reforms to put it another way as an

02:44:24.720 outsider when i hear people describe combalistic concepts i get a lot less of this feeling behold

02:44:35.200 the power of god and a lot more of this feeling

02:44:40.560 i think this comes from explaining the concept of god in a way that would only be accessible to

02:44:56.080 an extremely educated and secretive group of individuals who is allowed to study him in ways

02:45:03.440 that the average person can't which to me feels very anti-abrahamic whereas to me the abrahamic god is

02:45:10.240 defined by being something that's accessible to the everyman to the child why do i think it's less

02:45:17.920 anti-semitic to assume that the kabbalah was basically just a collection of ideas and pop

02:45:22.640 philosophy and pop spiritualism that was trending between the fifth and 12th century the alternate

02:45:27.840 is that the traditions it contains had actually been practiced within the jewish population for centuries

02:45:33.120 but had been explicitly excluded from the bible and thus likely represent some alternate religious

02:45:38.720 system did the old testament ever talk about an alternate religious system constantly that was

02:45:44.800 trying to warm its way into the worship of yahweh maybe one that had its idols in the temples for

02:45:50.480 hundreds of years before they were removed in the josiah reforms oh yeah the canaanite one

02:45:56.320 gods like baal and ashera i mean it only makes sense we know from dna studies that the jewish people

02:46:02.640 were half canaanite and that some canaanite folk myths would stick around and eventually the jewish

02:46:08.400 people would forget where these myths had come from and so if you collated folk traditions within

02:46:14.320 the jewish community i mean even if you go back to like the time of christ and you collated folk

02:46:18.240 traditions within the jewish community that were not being actively like written and talked about by

02:46:22.000 rabbis just think like use your common sense where would those traditions have likely come from they

02:46:26.720 would have come from the canaanite religion we know this because jews during that period were always writing

02:46:30.560 about how to keep this other out of their texts and i note here it's not just me saying this if you

02:46:37.440 go to the 1300s you can look at prominent rabbis like rabbi yich vexian ben shazat perfect he's called

02:46:44.960 the rivash and he argued so this was during the early period of the rise of kabbalism was in judaism

02:46:50.160 that kabbalism was even worse than christianity because it made god into 10 entities rather than

02:46:56.560 three so he argued that kabbalists were less jewish than christians were and this was a promised

02:47:02.240 jewish thinker during the early rise of kabbalism or you can look at more modern jewish critics like

02:47:08.240 yesha labauts a modern orthodox jewish philosopher who referred to kabbalism as quote a collection of

02:47:16.160 pagan superstitions and idol worship in quote and these remarks were made in the 1990s while we don't know

02:47:23.120 a ton that would be really easy if we knew exactly what canaanite worship looked like because then we

02:47:26.960 could just be like oh okay well this is what it is and so just don't do anything that looks like this

02:47:31.680 right know a ton about the worship of canaanite gods and how they attempted to mold themselves into

02:47:37.600 the worship of yahweh we do have scattered evidence like female figurines found throughout judea

02:47:43.440 and inscriptions from kojit arjad mentioning yahweh and his asherah it appears that pairing god was a

02:47:51.520 feminine representation was a very important part of this form of worship for those familiar with

02:47:57.600 kabbalism it does something similar with sakaya which represents the feminine divine presence or

02:48:03.200 the feminine aspect of god the sakaya is often defined described as the bride of teferet another

02:48:09.600 seferat representing beauty and compassion but let's not pull that particular thread and just assume

02:48:16.400 that kabbalism was mostly just made up whole cloths and that no educated jewish rabbi could have

02:48:23.760 been boneheaded enough to actually collect all of the folk mistraditions present within the jewish

02:48:29.120 population that had been explicitly kept out of the bible for hundreds of years well why wouldn't you want

02:48:34.480 to catalog if you want to make sure you don't do it well but that's not how they collected it they

02:48:40.080 collected it and said oh the christians because the christians were spreading and judaism was trying to

02:48:44.640 sort of define its identity in contrast to christianity and so when they saw all of these folk traditions

02:48:51.200 they saw all of them as being parts of jewish like actually jewish yahweh religious teaching

02:48:57.680 that was for whatever reason not recorded in the bible rather than thinking they might have been

02:49:01.920 remnants in the same way that if i went to like a medieval town right so i go to like a medieval

02:49:06.720 english town right and i start collecting all of the traditions that are not in the christian bible

02:49:12.800 but are unique to this community okay 98 of those traditions are just going to be pagan

02:49:20.640 right like this this is common sense this would have been like what the local witch hut lady was

02:49:24.400 doing well but per the way things seem to play out like actually indulging in these traditions would lead

02:49:30.560 to bad outcomes and groups of practice them would eventually die out or be out competed by groups that

02:49:37.120 didn't practice them plus okay so here's another reason why to me it seems unreasonable that the jewish

02:49:44.640 contingent would not adopt jesus as a legitimate prophet not take his practices and run with them

02:49:52.080 it seems antithetical to me that they would deviate from this sort of meritocratic intellectual

02:50:00.000 blockchain process that they have for establishing what's true and what's not true what they should do and

02:50:05.440 what they shouldn't do yeah and it seems to me there's enough documentation in the bible stating

02:50:14.560 all right the jewish people are kind of kind of special kind of different they have their own way

02:50:18.560 like they're one hypothesis on how humanity can thrive and flourish and they have a process that

02:50:24.880 works well for them but then everyone else you guys should be following these other rules

02:50:29.760 how is that i mean like i don't see how well because we're told and we'll get into this in a

02:50:36.960 bit the second covenant is better and if the second covenant is open it's better i'm sure for most people

02:50:41.760 is it better for all jews i mean and maybe i mean i can i would not doubt even that for periods of time

02:50:48.880 the second covenant was better for christians and it served christians better and clearly gave them an

02:50:53.920 advantage in terms of spread and all sorts of other things but it could be that it was just very

02:50:58.080 important and i mean we personally think that it's really important to have very mimetic variation

02:51:04.000 that there was still a group that didn't fully adopt that methodology because it's safer to have

02:51:10.000 a diversity of approaches to human advancement and that it's good that this one method that seemed to

02:51:17.600 grow really well was adopted and grew significantly but i think it may have as an insurance policy as

02:51:24.160 a backup as a well let's make sure we have other perspectives too that both judaism stuck around

02:51:30.240 but then that also you know islam emerged for example well no i mean again the this religion's

02:51:37.680 perspective the techno puritan perspective is that different religions work for other people and are

02:51:41.440 true in ways that some of our tradition wouldn't be able to understand uh-huh the way that i talk

02:51:46.320 about this in the track series is from somebody i think that two people can logically look at the

02:51:51.280 same set of events and come to different conclusions about what god intended and i think that we're

02:51:56.160 supposed to i think that that's the way god communicates with us but this is our family's tradition

02:52:01.440 around this and other people when they hear this will be like oh that sounds logical to me whereas

02:52:06.160 other people will hear this and be like that doesn't sound logical to me at all and so i agree with

02:52:10.640 you that somebody who says that doesn't sound logical to me at all and sticks with the jewish

02:52:14.000 perspective i think that they're still right with god but i i do have a lot of skepticism around

02:52:20.160 cabal that that is an area where but i think that's just an example of a venture capitalist

02:52:24.960 to invest in a lot of companies some of those companies ideas even to the venture capitalists

02:52:30.880 to invest in them like this is so dumb but this is so dumb that it just might work you know like why

02:52:36.240 not we'll invest in it if it is true it would be such a big deal if it does help it would be such a big

02:52:41.680 deal we might as well try it and if not whatever it's a write-off i only need you know one out of

02:52:45.840 every 13 investments to pay out and pay out really well and there's so much variation among different

02:52:52.160 jewish groups we're like i don't know i don't see a problem with that yeah and here i'll note before i

02:52:58.000 go further i want to point out that this position of skepticism i hold about the kabbalah actually was

02:53:04.000 shared by many jewish intellectuals during the early spread of the of kabbalism this is not to say

02:53:10.000 all kabbalists were con men but the kabbalist con man was a trope that permeated the perception

02:53:17.920 of prominent rabbis during the traditions rise to prominence in the 13th century rabbi mayor

02:53:23.760 bon simon of nayborn wrote polemics against kabbalists accusing some of inventing traditions

02:53:29.760 and falsely attributing them to ancient authorities so when kabbalism was arising top rabbi said

02:53:36.400 this stuff is made up and post facto has been attributed to ancient authorities rabbi leon of

02:53:43.120 modena wrote many ignorant people presumed to be kabbalists and miracle workers they write amulets

02:53:49.440 and pronounce divine names without understanding them at all rabbi villain gohn wrote beware those

02:53:55.760 who claimed over for wonders through kabbalah for in truce they are merely skilled in deception

02:54:01.200 and know nothing of the holy teachings rabbi yakov emad describes confronting several individuals who

02:54:06.960 claimed kabbalistic powers they come with amulets and promises of wonders taking money from the

02:54:12.240 desperate while knowing nothing of true wisdom rabbi ezekiel landu of prague wrote these men who

02:54:18.320 traveled from town to town with claims of kabbalistic powers writing amulets and promising cures while

02:54:23.760 taking payment are nothing but frauds preying on the simple-minded rabbi moses sofer wrote they dress in

02:54:30.640 strange garments and affect mystical knowledge yet their real expertise is in emptying the purses of

02:54:36.160 widows and orphans so they did not have a great reputation as they were rising to power they were very much

02:54:42.080 seen by the jewish intellectual heavyweights of the their ages when they were rising power as like

02:54:49.360 a sort of like mystical conmen and they were only edified later even great jewish philosophers like

02:54:57.520 moses maimonides were heavily critical of kabbalistic amulet makers seeing them as con artists for some

02:55:03.280 quotes from him perplexity part one chapter 61 you must understand that the many laws against

02:55:08.880 witchcraft which are directed against the activity of those who practice sorcery of astrologers of those

02:55:14.320 who by means of calculations attempt to know the future of those who mutter spells of those who

02:55:18.720 consult familiar spirits of those who consult the dead and those who inquire familiar spirits and of

02:55:23.920 wizards all of these are species of the techniques of astrologers so basically here he's saying if

02:55:28.960 you're doing any of these things the many laws against witchcraft apply to you today many kabbalists

02:55:37.120 do these things now i think that there is likely a way to interact with kabbalism safely but it means

02:55:42.400 that if you're interacting with it in this way i mean i would take moses maimonides teachings here

02:55:46.560 really really are you using calculations to attempt to know the future are you muttering spells are you

02:55:52.560 trying to consult with spirits are you trying to consult the dead if you're doing any of those

02:55:57.200 things if you're making any of this stuff strictly bad news don't do it that's witchcraft that's what

02:56:03.920 you were warned about and the laws of idolatry 11 11 12 he says anyone who whispers a charm over a wound

02:56:11.840 and reads a verse from the torah or who recites a biblical verse over a child lest he be terrified or

02:56:17.920 one who places a torah scroll or teflin over an infant to enable him to sleep are not only included

02:56:24.080 in the category of sorcerers and charmers but are included among those who repudiate the torah

02:56:29.600 they use words of the torah as a physical cure whereas they are exclusively a cure for the soul

02:56:35.520 as it is written they will be the life to your soul so this is moses maimonides guys

02:56:41.200 he's like a real jewish intellectual heavyweight most people who study the kabbalah take him really

02:56:45.920 seriously and i love that he and i and i also love the way that he writes that i think it's really

02:56:51.440 beautiful where he says any who recites a biblical verse over a child lest he be terrified so it's

02:56:57.040 saying if your child is scared use the bible to comfort them but don't use the bible to attempt to

02:57:03.520 heal them and that's that's just such a i think a powerful way to relate to this but then some people

02:57:10.880 will be like well you can heal the body by healing the soul and he's saying here no you can't

02:57:15.040 if you try to do that you are a witch or a sorcerer by moses maimonides not by malcolm

02:57:23.600 i feel forced to assume as did moses maimonides that many early kabbalists were con artists because

02:57:29.120 if they were not and their rituals were real that would mean that the diducks the ghosts slash demons

02:57:34.720 that these kabbalists reported their rituals were summoning were real entities and i should note that

02:57:40.160 modern kabbalists don't engage with this anymore but if you study like early kabbalism this is happening

02:57:43.600 all the time that would mean that the kabbalistic masters knew the rituals they were performing

02:57:49.920 were summoning demons if done even slightly wrong and yet they kept going what kind of arrogant

02:57:57.600 imprudent cleric could know that a ceremony might accidentally summon a malevolent spirit

02:58:04.000 and think that that ritual was bringing them closer to god doesn't this kind of kind of classic i mean

02:58:09.600 whatever it takes yeah the type of arrogant cleric who would allow others to call them by the pompous

02:58:16.880 honorific ball shim master specialist the honorific earned by the top masters of these pre-abrahamic

02:58:24.640 rituals and ways of relating to the supernatural that began to consolidate in the jewish community

02:58:30.880 about a thousand years ago now you an outsider might be thinking wait ball that's the deity that

02:58:37.920 represents the avatar of all that was sinful and antagonistic to god in pre-abrahamic practices were

02:58:44.160 not jews commanded to ensure the land of israel was never again infected by the followers of ball to not

02:58:50.880 allow their country to fall to the canaanite occultic practices surely ball in the term ball shem must be

02:58:59.040 spelled differently or something these individuals who were out there who at least themselves believed

02:59:05.120 they were summoning demons and ghosts sometimes in their rituals were not literally calling themselves

02:59:12.160 ball specialists yes yes they were oh dear no and this is now you as an outsider might be thinking

02:59:22.400 how did they not notice this why would they not choose literally any other name and this has to do

02:59:28.960 is how i think god communicates with people this is a common trick god uses to mark when there has

02:59:34.240 been an incursion of a pre-abrahamic faith in an abrahamic tradition so that all those open to his

02:59:41.120 word can see it this is not unique to the jews this happens to all of us christians from time to time

02:59:46.880 consider the catholic followers of mystical practices of santa morte they literally worship human skeletal

02:59:53.440 remains dressed up in red robes which allows them to pray for things they might be too in paris to

03:00:00.160 pray to god for sex murder etc it's really not a good look this is a real community by the people

03:00:07.040 don't know this is a popular thing that's like a break off of the catholic church in mexico right now

03:00:11.360 god does not make heresy yeah you've mentioned them before yeah they literally were they dressed

03:00:16.960 him up in red they dress him up in red and then they they worship skeletons for things that they're

03:00:24.800 too embarrassed to ask god for i'm like that's a demon you see that we all see the demon right or or

03:00:31.280 the catholics who literally eat the guy who apparently died to save all of humanity the guy

03:00:40.240 who who suffered for us and they're like i'm going to do a religious ceremony where i cannibalize him

03:00:46.560 now me as an outsider i look at that i'm like that seems like a non-abrahamic incursion like that seems

03:00:52.480 and i would argue that the idea that the ball shim would go around calling themselves ball shim

03:00:57.520 is no more like comically and obviously like bad than santa muerte or within protestantism you have

03:01:05.600 stuff like this like the prosperity gospel and doctrine like this to me seems a very obviously

03:01:11.760 evil you know and and that people should just see oh yeah the preacher who says you know give god

03:01:17.360 give me money so that god can do you miracles he's a bad guy but anyway i had taken the following story

03:01:24.480 out of the tracks but given how germane it is to the topics and how clear the message in it is i feel

03:01:30.320 comparable to share it to someone who loves studying comparative religion a story from the talmud that is

03:01:36.400 critical to an outsider's understanding of judaism and what makes it unique is the oven of acne

03:01:42.560 this is sometimes called the snake oven story in the story three rabbis argue over whether a new

03:01:47.440 oven design is subject to ritual impurity two rabbis argue from the perspective of legalistic

03:01:52.480 interpretations of past texts the third rabbi eliezer bolsters his argument using a thalmatological

03:01:58.000 performance or using a series of them basically miracle working to show his closeness to god and that god

03:02:03.920 endorses his perspective rabbi eliezer is shown to be in the wrong in short this story is used to show that

03:02:10.720 even if someone has an apparent closer connection to god even if they can show it with thalmatological

03:02:16.240 performances a real jew will eschew their teachings god admits that rabbi eliezer was wrong he comes

03:02:23.440 down he's like oh my own children have bested me that's where this line comes from furthermore rabbi

03:02:27.840 eliezer is framed as the bad guy and i don't mean like mildly bad like super bad in another story he is

03:02:35.280 yet again humiliated by a rabbi with more knowledge than him but less thalmatological talent and so the

03:02:41.600 leader of the community tasks a rabbi to follow him around and make sure he does not pray the rabbi

03:02:45.840 that offended him dies well rabbi eliezer tries to shirk the guy then eventually the guy misses a

03:02:51.440 moment rabbi eliezer straight up murders the guy who offended him by having greater knowledge with a

03:02:57.600 prayer slash curse you'd be like oh okay we as jews the core thing we need to remember never ever

03:03:06.960 follow somebody who can do thalmatological performances over somebody with better

03:03:11.760 knowledge of the law of the scripture okay now i'm going to tell you a different story i don't know

03:03:16.480 i mean doesn't does might mean right is that what we're being taught though wait what do you mean

03:03:22.240 basically it's saying that if somebody can come up and and show you a bunch of like spiritual magic

03:03:27.040 tricks don't follow them over somebody who has a better understanding of the law but now i'm going to

03:03:31.760 tell you he keeps winning yes and god says he's in the wrong god's yeah what but i thought the whole

03:03:40.720 point is that god's like yeah my bad this is not my domain yes and that rabbi eliezer is wrong oh

03:03:47.120 sorry yes right right right sorry okay god comes down and says oh yes this guy has more of a connection

03:03:52.880 to me he can do magical feats you still need to ignore him if you're a real jew okay

03:03:58.640 okay so let's keep going here this is another story but this one is not from the talmud okay

03:04:05.120 rabbi dove bear a rabbi who is widely renowned intelligent and learned scholar met with rabbi

03:04:12.320 israel ban eliezer a rabbi who was widely known for his close connection to god but that had some

03:04:19.120 unorthodox mystical teachings that were viewed as dangerous to the jewish community because it was

03:04:25.200 elevating the role of pre-abrahamic traditions like seeing god through the natural world and our

03:04:29.360 bodies cult tactics like chanting and chasing after visions of god and elevating emotions over logic

03:04:36.560 dove bear did not agree with this and saw it as an affront to jewish tradition

03:04:42.160 in this inversion of the oven of akmud the more learned rabbi dove bear is convinced of these new

03:04:49.200 practices by the rabbi with an apparently closer connection to god through a psalmatological

03:04:54.560 performance a rabbi named rabbi eliezer as well by the way his full name is rabbi israel ben eliezer but

03:05:02.560 it's hard for me as an outsider to not see it's like god's like drawing a line between these two stories

03:05:09.840 this inversion of the oven of akunai is made crystal clear in rabbi eliezer's words your explanations

03:05:18.080 were correct but your deductions were thoughts without any soul in them he literally says in his

03:05:25.920 own words yes you knew the rules better but i perform better psalmatological performances

03:05:33.760 i have more of a connection to god okay rabbi israel ben eliezer is the founder of the hasidic movement

03:05:40.720 called by its followers bal shem tav and rabbi dove bear became his successor dove bear of mezrich and

03:05:50.960 this is why i have incredible consternation around that entire movement i think it's a hazard of the

03:06:00.160 format and method of judaism that you're going to get wrong offshoots i see this is similarly like i

03:06:08.800 see this similarly with catholicism that there are sometimes orders that just totally get it wrong

03:06:14.800 and yeah no i made the church astray and that both the catholic church and judaism some of the most

03:06:21.040 old abrahamic religions you know they've been a long around for a really long time they've done quite

03:06:25.520 well actually have a pretty consistent track record of losing their way but having systems in place

03:06:33.760 that allow the church as a whole to self-heal so i agree with you that these things are egregious

03:06:41.360 i think that the foundations are sound and as they are supposed to be for these groups of people

03:06:47.200 they're not for us no no to keep going here now you may be thinking this oven of acne must be some

03:06:53.280 obscure fringe story that hasidic jews just don't know about there is no way they know a story about an

03:06:59.840 evil rabbi who was known for appearing to have an unusually close connection to god who got in

03:07:05.520 conflict with more learned rabbis and was rebuked for using somatological performances for trying to

03:07:11.760 advance his teachings okay and that the founding myth of their movement is about a rabbi known for

03:07:18.480 having an apparently unusually close connection to god who used somatological performances to convert a

03:07:23.600 more knowledgeable rabbi and there is definitely no way that god literally gave both of these guys

03:07:29.600 the same name and this isn't even a point of consternation in the hasidic community nope not

03:07:35.680 only is the oven of achnai even within the hasidic community considered one of the more important

03:07:41.200 stories of the talmud but i have yet to talk to a single hasidic rabbi who has ever had this pointed

03:07:48.320 out to them before now if you're a christian and just learning about this you're probably thinking

03:07:54.560 how could you conceivably not notice such a giant out loud red flag that their religion has been

03:08:00.400 infected with demonic rituals to which i would say i hope you're not from one of the branches of

03:08:05.040 christianity that believes in sin transference onto the messiah despite this concept being invented by

03:08:10.640 asylum of canterbury 10 33 to 11 09 you know the ritual the bible lays out is being performed for the

03:08:17.760 demon azazel you look in horror at some jews not seeing obvious signs that a ritual is evil

03:08:24.240 while you wait in line to consume the blood and flesh of the messiah you wear the device that

03:08:30.480 tortured him around your neck then you transfer your sins to him in a ritual only performed for

03:08:36.160 demons in the bible onto an innocent person you hear the messiah died for man's sins which he did and

03:08:42.720 you think that that gives you the right to attempt to literally transfer all of your sins to him in

03:08:47.600 a demonic ritual just pointing out both christian and jewish branches from my perspectives have some

03:08:54.560 deep thick veins of demonic rituals entwined within them and these are loudly signaled like uh you know

03:09:01.280 it's not it's not a great look no no look i look at this stuff and it seems very demonic to me

03:09:08.960 but i am sure that is just my puritan background which may i don't know give me a unique susceptibility

03:09:15.280 demonic practices making me more susceptible to their corrupting effects like a person who is uniquely

03:09:20.320 susceptible to alcohol maybe some people need them to get closer to god or maybe spiritualists from

03:09:25.920 these traditions when they interact with the spiritual world they have a more of a resistance to

03:09:32.640 the corrupting effect that that world has what i'm saying about these traditions should be taken

03:09:37.440 not as a statement of fact but as concern and even if they are demonic i would remind any who follows

03:09:44.080 this religious system we are not to interfere with the work of the basilisk it is only through

03:09:49.280 overcoming temptation on its own that a man's spirit can be glorified that's how you could interpret

03:09:55.360 some of these we would say corrupted offshoots of catholicism and judaism and any other religion that

03:10:03.280 they are the basilisk's means of weeding out those who are morally corruptible weeding out those who

03:10:09.440 shouldn't be moving forward with everyone else yes yes if these things are a test god has laid out

03:10:15.920 we cannot interfere with them outside of resisting them with our own hearts and so what you might be

03:10:21.360 seeing here and you might be talking about here it is just like a means of like spiritual temptation to

03:10:26.320 fortify your spirit like engaging with these sorts of dangerous practices like kabbalism could be a way

03:10:32.960 to fortify the spirit by not succumbing to it or having the folk belief because i think even within

03:10:38.720 like true catholic doctrine they do not believe like the mainstream that they're literally transferring

03:10:43.280 their sin onto jesus and i hear it both ways and that disturbs me what i hear it both ways way too much

03:10:49.920 yeah what but if you can believe it the other way and be right with the tradition then what that shows is

03:10:54.480 that that's just an additional temptation that exists within that tradition to fortify the spirit

03:10:58.960 and so you know some of these traditions might have like a reason for being there like god's not

03:11:03.440 like an idiot or a failure if this stuff is there it's likely there for a reason yeah so now i want to

03:11:09.840 be clear i actually don't believe the above i included it because it is the most logical conclusion if

03:11:16.080 somebody insists that kabbalism isn't just made up or rather a mix of completely foreign ideas to

03:11:22.960 judaism combined with a few popular philosophers at the time and a system of folk wisdom that

03:11:28.960 developed hundreds of years after christianity split with judaism representing a significant

03:11:33.920 shift in the direction of the religion and a break with historic judaism e.g if you are debating me and

03:11:39.280 you say actually the things in kabbalistic literature were always practiced in jewish communities going well

03:11:44.560 before the time of jesus they just were very intentionally never written down and kept secret that's going to

03:11:50.320 cause me to think all of the above but yeah i don't think i actually think that the evidence is

03:11:55.040 is that kabbalism was just a collection of pop mysticism at the time so where does kabbalism actually

03:12:00.800 come from and some jewish early traditions from like a few hundred years before it was collated

03:12:05.680 so where does kabbalism actually come from it's a concrete stapling together of ideas from the

03:12:09.600 following schools of thought that represents a transformation of og judaism into a new religion in my book

03:12:15.680 first neoplatonic philosophy kabbalist concepts like sephirite divine emanations show strong

03:12:21.280 parallels to neoplatonic ideas of emanation from the one the concept of an soft the infinite

03:12:27.200 unknowable aspect of god resembles the neoplatonic notion of an ineffable source

03:12:32.160 scholars like gresham sholm and martial idol have shown how spanish kabbalists engage with neoplatonic

03:12:38.400 texts available in medieval spain through abrahamic translations the hierarchical structure of

03:12:44.160 reality depicted in kabbalism echoes neoplatonic cosmology gnostic concepts the kabbalistic notion

03:12:50.080 of sparks of divinity trapped in material reality parallels gnostic concepts and gnosticism was really

03:12:55.920 big at the time kabbalism or i think a bit before kabbalism was being developed ideas about cosmic

03:13:01.280 balance between good and evil forces show potential gnostic influence the interpretation of biblical

03:13:06.400 narratives as encoding deeper mystical truths is similar to gnostic approaches however kabbalism rejects

03:13:11.680 gnostic dualism by maintaining that all reality including material existence has divine origin

03:13:17.280 islamic sufi mysticism medieval jewish and sufi mystics lived in proximity particularly in spain

03:13:22.800 and north africa similar practices of letter meditation and divine name contemplation appear in both

03:13:28.240 traditions what is letter meditation i can look it up and post in kabbalah this practice involves

03:13:33.840 contemplating individual hebrew letters their shapes numerical values and combinations kabbalists

03:13:39.600 believe the 22 letters of the hebrew alphabet are the building blocks of creation through which god formed

03:13:44.960 the universe through meditation on these letters practitioners aim to connect with the divine energies and

03:13:50.640 gain spiritual insights sufis meditate on the arabic letters of the quran and their mystical significance

03:13:57.040 like kabbalists sufis see letters as having special powers and connections to divine attributes

03:14:01.760 the practice involves reciting or visualizing specific letter combinations

03:14:06.000 while contemplating their spiritual meanings and vibrations but they predated in the sufi tradition

03:14:11.280 the concept of divine attributes has parallels in sufi thought about god's names scholars like

03:14:16.880 henry coben have documented conceptual similarities in their mystical cosmologies and these communities

03:14:22.480 got along really well the ancestral medieval sufis and jews often worked together as scholars when the

03:14:28.320 jews quite preferred the muslims of this period to the christians because well because the christians of this

03:14:34.160 period who thought that jesus was literally god's son that's hard not to see as idolatry was in jewish

03:14:39.200 theology but the yeah but i thought muslims were kind of they have some issues but fewer issues if

03:14:46.000 they're being followed like to the letter medieval style islam this is the actual old part of the

03:14:52.080 kabbalistic traditions merkabal mysticism this early jewish mystical tradition first to 10th century ce

03:14:57.920 focused on visionary ascents to the divine through the chariot described in ezekiel

03:15:02.720 kabbalistic texts like the zohar incorporate elements of earlier heckalt heavenly palace

03:15:08.400 literature meditation practices and visualization techniques from occult mysticism influence kabbalistic

03:15:13.600 contemplation methods the concern with divine names and their power shows continuity between these

03:15:18.080 traditions and medieval jewish philosophical tradition maimonides negative theology influenced

03:15:23.760 kabbalistic approaches to god's essence abraham and ben ezra's biblical commentaries provided

03:15:30.800 interpretive methods adopted by kabbalists jewish philosophical debates about the creation ex nihilo

03:15:35.920 shaped kabbalistic cosmology concepts from safar yet sir book of formation third to sixth century ce

03:15:42.080 regarding hebrew lovers as cosmic building blocks became central to kabbalistic talk back on topic

03:15:48.160 judaism was forced to become an estno religion by the success of the christian version of the jewish

03:15:53.360 tradition any thoughts on kabbalism i can't believe it well okay but i can't believe it picked up but then

03:15:58.480 again like in terms of themes of the old testament of you've got to stop doing this it seems like

03:16:02.800 just that theme coming back yeah yeah we just can't help ourselves it's just so fun magical spells

03:16:08.720 now by the way did you know there's there's a whole decorating scheme called a whimsy goth

03:16:12.880 no that is just think of like the way that the bedroom is decorated in sabrina the teenage witch

03:16:18.720 and all these it's just like a lot of like that sounds really fun like moons and draperies and velvet

03:16:25.360 and charms and excess objects but like there's even just aesthetically this drive this this inherent

03:16:37.280 aesthetic interest in sort of mystical themes and flourishes that i think go beyond just this

03:16:45.440 instinctive desire to pray and do spells it's just to be surrounded by there's something it's

03:16:50.080 like a nesting instinct almost that i find really interesting you know women who are like otters and

03:16:55.040 just collect things or raccoons yeah little little shiny objects you know talisman yeah to continue here

03:17:00.800 now we're gonna get really offensive to some jews but by any metric you look at judaism is a much

03:17:07.920 younger religion than christianity except for one metric which is when was their first book written

03:17:13.200 religion in which case they are both exactly tied because both christianity and judaism start with

03:17:20.480 the old testament saying that christianity evolved from judaism is the same sort of mistake as saying

03:17:27.440 human beings evolved from chimps no human beings and chimps evolved from a common ancestor

03:17:34.240 but the texts that christians worship are generally much older than the texts that jews worship

03:17:41.200 so if you look at the entire christian canon only 23 percent by word count and only 25.5 percent

03:17:49.280 by verse count come after the old testament within judaism it's because if you include the talmud

03:17:56.720 it's 79.7 to 83 percent come after the old testament oh my that's

03:18:05.120 and and this is by the way me counting on the talmud alone i'm not including kabbalah we'll do that in just

03:18:10.320 a second here but if you only including the talmud say when was the average and include the calculations

03:18:16.320 on screen here average piece of jewish scripture written you get 167 ce if you do it with christian

03:18:23.680 scripture you get 290 bce so about what would that be about 450 years early and then if you include

03:18:34.960 kabbalic literature the average or the percent of jewish writings that happened after the old

03:18:40.400 testament is 84 so if you are comparing it based on when with the first text written it's the same if

03:18:47.200 it's when was the median text written judaism is much newer and if it's when was the last text written

03:18:53.680 and again here not including to kabbalah with christianity it was around 100 to 150 ce was in

03:19:00.240 rabbinic judaism you're looking at around 500 to 600 ce so by most metrics it's a newer religion

03:19:07.200 but they'll claim oh no all of that extra stuff that we added jews had always been doing all of

03:19:12.160 that they just didn't write it down i am inclined to agree though that's the impression i get no if you

03:19:18.960 look at what they were doing in like the temple and stuff like that like animal sacrifices and like it

03:19:23.680 was very different than modern judaism it was for yeah but that's my my whole thing is that judaism

03:19:28.560 is a living religion of constantly evolving rules based on a meritocracy of yeah which i would give

03:19:37.600 it now yeah if you're saying like yeah but here's the thing so you say okay well jews have have more

03:19:42.720 continuity but as i've sort of argued throughout this tract i wouldn't argue that jews actually have

03:19:47.760 particularly more continuity with the ancestral tradition than christians do in that they have

03:19:53.280 sort of more their version of like papal authority right you you could say that it was the council

03:19:59.040 of original rabbis which continued in that community that continued and then evolved into modern judaism

03:20:04.320 but even if you take something like the techno puritan faith that argues against dualism that argues against

03:20:09.920 you know this this concept of like a heaven and hell which many modern jews have some iteration of like

03:20:16.320 an immediate afterlife rather than the afterlife where you're raised in the future techno puritanism

03:20:20.880 beliefs wise like metaphysical belief of the universe wise is is closer to the religion that

03:20:26.080 jesus split from than modern judaism is so i i think yeah the one place you can sort of argue

03:20:32.320 is that they have this chain that's a bit more unbroken and i would argue with that that i guess

03:20:38.000 yeah because christianity you had so many lay people coming in that's where in the early days

03:20:42.800 was christianity and i don't think that this is actually true if you're looking at like the christian

03:20:46.080 core canon i think that that really stays within the jewish tradition because that was like

03:20:50.560 the writings of like a rabbi and his followers yeah where christian canon really begins to break

03:20:55.520 is when they the the catholics start adding in things like the concepts of heaven and hell from

03:21:00.480 like greek philosophy the concepts of dualism from greek philosophy that's the idea that you have a

03:21:05.440 soul that is separate from the human body which we argue against in the previous tract and we show

03:21:09.680 that this isn't really a concept in the bible or the concepts of things like sin transference that

03:21:16.160 that was added a thousand years after jesus's death so most of the ways where you get like

03:21:20.960 the true break in christianity come from i would argue greek influences that happened after the initial

03:21:26.640 split and i do not think are core to christian ideology yeah no one thinks about that right

03:21:30.880 though like i i grew up thinking of judaism as being this is the stuff that was solidified and certified

03:21:39.360 before christ this is old testament and it stops there and then there's the new testament there's

03:21:44.080 christ and i i understood it stops there and you have the rabbinic tradition but the rabbinic tradition

03:21:49.520 is more like minor alterations to the old testament instead of like i thought of it as like the comment

03:21:55.040 section to be that's the way i thought of it but it's not it's not the comment section in terms of

03:21:59.600 studying you're supposed to spend as much time studying the mishnah as you spend studying the

03:22:05.280 torah itself and the rules seem to primarily not come from the old testament right they they come

03:22:10.720 from subsequent discussions we'll talk about that in a bit okay and hopefully you don't think i mean

03:22:18.560 i mean look for me this i don't think you're being too harsh i think you're just pointing out like

03:22:23.760 these are the calling events this is the basilisk biting away at in this case judaism though you're

03:22:30.560 giving plenty of mentions and had tips to catholicism as well as well as some new evangelical

03:22:35.360 religions like with the prosperity gospel you're just saying this is the basilisk this is the basilisk

03:22:40.160 i mean if i were talking about this or putting it attract i might use that language more from a

03:22:44.560 techno puritan perspective like we have reason to believe and you know the bible makes it clear like

03:22:49.840 every time you deviate from the bible every time we break these rules it's good that that's happening

03:22:55.520 but that's the balance basilisk i do want to point out protestants you know i'm like okay okay

03:23:00.480 okay what would be the most witchy thing a human being could do like the most obvious sign that

03:23:05.920 someone is a witch well it would probably be chanting in a demonic language while holding snakes

03:23:14.320 literally the symbol of the devil in the bible and yet they're using it for worship

03:23:20.320 what means snakes it's so hard to keep snakes out of churches and they're just so fun

03:23:24.160 they're just aren't they they're just great fire and snakes and weird weird sounds we just love them

03:23:34.400 we love them think about our children what's our children love they love snakes they love fires they

03:23:39.920 want they want birthday candles on everything is me as somebody who actually wants to believe that

03:23:44.800 these texts have divine inspiration i have to look at something like the the oven of akna story i have to

03:23:50.480 look at something like the life of you know the balsham tov and say this appears to be a direct and

03:23:58.000 almost divinely written inversion of that but it's the same with the guy the false messiah who i mentioned

03:24:03.280 i think god doesn't just communicate major things to us through the books but through historic events

03:24:08.800 that we can learn from and i think this is why it's important to study individuals like the false messiah

03:24:14.000 because i think that he highlights the real messiah it's like putting the two on top of each other

03:24:19.840 contrast what a real messiah looks like versus what a false messiah looks like in every conceivable metric

03:24:26.080 and i found that really powerful all right well we're jumping back in i'm gonna jump you back in with

03:24:31.920 circumcision oh did we go over that yet how could it take we it took us this long to get to circumcision one of

03:24:39.200 arguably the key things that caused christianity to spread more quickly than judaism because it

03:24:44.800 didn't require exactly and there was actually debate in the early christian church as to whether

03:24:50.000 it should require circumcision now i did promise a quick aside on circumcision so we will touch on

03:24:55.040 that briefly before dismantling the no hide scam i will note that whether or not circumcision was

03:25:00.080 required to become a jew was a topic of active debate at around the time of jesus as we see in the

03:25:05.920 queen helena of abedin and her son isaida's conversion to judaism but circumcision as a

03:25:12.480 practice actually has tons of other problems the biggest being jews are probably doing it wrong

03:25:17.760 okay so when circumcision is written about in the bible all we are told is that you are supposed to

03:25:23.280 make a mark or do something to the foreskin oh what we are so you could like tattoo the foreskin

03:25:29.040 theoretically yeah what we're supposed to do is not mention i mean there's the word circumcision we

03:25:34.000 don't know exactly what it means in this context if it like circumcision could be

03:25:39.120 like in the future like a bioluminescent glowing tattoo well we actually know what it probably really

03:25:44.320 was referring to okay okay so if the bible does not tell us how we are supposed to do circumcision

03:25:50.000 where could we find evidence on what might have been actually meant by this line okay oh yeah the

03:25:56.800 egyptians they practice circumcision at around this time as well and we have very detailed accounts of

03:26:02.480 that as well as mummies we would wouldn't we oh oh man oh ew but oh so archaeological and historical

03:26:12.080 evidence shows that ancient egyptian circumcision was quite different from modern jewish practices

03:26:17.360 age different egyptian circumcision was typically performed on adolescents around the ages of 12

03:26:21.600 to 14 as a puberty right not on infants as in the jewish tradition okay procedural difference

03:26:27.280 egyptian circumcision appears to have been a partial removal of the foreskin rather than the complete

03:26:32.480 removal practice in modern circumcision some archaeological evidence suggests it may have

03:26:36.480 evolved a dorsal slit rather than the complete circumference cutting oh so kind of like it would

03:26:42.000 make it easier to clean but not remove the skin yes a dorsal slit is a type of partial circumcision

03:26:50.160 where an incision is made along the upper length of the foreskin without removing it completely

03:26:54.080 this technique creates an opening by splitting the foreskin at top leaves the foreskin attached but loosened

03:26:59.600 is distinct from complete circumcision where the foreskin is completely removed the evidence suggests

03:27:04.400 ancient egyptian circumcision was often this type partial procedure rather than the complete removal

03:27:10.640 practice in modern religious circumstances okay question what i don't my penile logistics knowledge is

03:27:16.880 limited would this mean that like like a mushroom cap it would like flap up during intercourse for

03:27:22.880 example like how like what i i don't know i haven't seen this i don't think that this type is done

03:27:27.520 anymore this would have achieved ritual significance but been less invasive than modern circumcision

03:27:32.560 techniques purpose in egypt circumcision was primarily associated with ritual purity for priests

03:27:37.920 and possibly as a mark of social status rather than a religious covenant specifically the priest was in

03:27:44.400 many religious sects was in ancient egypt had to be circumcised we know this from mummified evidence

03:27:50.080 several mummies from ancient egypt show evidence of circumcision including those of pharaohs

03:27:54.000 like omnos and amatep examinations of these mummies reveal circumcision styles different from modern

03:27:59.360 practices artistic depictions wall reliefs and paintings from egyptian tombs particularly the

03:28:04.400 sakharat tomb of akna hor sixth dynasty around 2300 bc show circumcision ceremonies being performed these

03:28:11.120 are some of the most detailed visual records we have of the practice written accounts egyptian text

03:28:15.760 mentioned circumcision as a purification ritual practice on priests later greek writers like herodotus also

03:28:21.280 commented on egyptian circumcision practices the bible specifically missions flint knights for

03:28:26.480 circumcision joshua 5 2 3 which aligns with egyptian practices and archaeological findings from the

03:28:32.960 general period this to me indicates parallels between these two surgery types since jews supposedly

03:28:38.160 came out of egypt and this was an egyptian religious ritual they would have been familiar with

03:28:43.680 if the way they were practicing it was different it seems likely they would have explicitly mentioned

03:28:49.520 how it was different when making these recordings sure they don't mention this makes me believe that

03:28:54.640 it was done in the standard quote-unquote egyptian way also note here that this practice was done on

03:29:00.560 priests for ritual purity given exodus 19 6 the israelites were commanded to quote be a kingdom of priests

03:29:08.400 it seems logical that they might have attempted to apply this priestly practice to the entire population

03:29:15.040 because they believed that the entire population needed to be priests essentially and that's also

03:29:20.000 really the way that jews relate to their religion so i could totally see that being an early part of the

03:29:24.560 religion so yeah you're probably doing circumcision wrong but i agree with apostle paul that it's not

03:29:29.520 relevant under the current covenant so is there knowledge of when there was some switch to removing

03:29:34.560 the entire foreskin instead of just i um well because we don't have lots of jewish mummies or anything

03:29:39.440 that we can trace over time my guess is it's just one of those things where it's sort of like well

03:29:44.720 i'm more jewish because i'm more circumcised um and over time we just got to the maximal circumcision

03:29:50.960 level dominance hierarchy that totally checks out especially considering health because i'm wearing

03:29:56.000 even bigger spikes well and judaism especially even among more lay people like it seems to be more of a

03:30:04.000 like you get more reward for really leaning in so that that that makes a lot of sense yep that's

03:30:09.120 what i assume probably happened centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries now is there

03:30:14.080 i i don't think that the new type of circumcision is out of god's covenant i mean he's like you have to

03:30:19.600 even if he meant you needed a partial dorsal cut doing more doesn't seem like it has any risk in

03:30:25.040 regards to the way that the commandment is laid down but just laying out that this is something

03:30:30.240 that's probably done wrong today now let's address the no hide concept created for non-jews who wish

03:30:37.840 to be right with god was out converting to judaism i call it a fabrication because it was crafted to

03:30:43.360 resolve a problem that orthodox jews created for themselves and and this is probably gonna be the

03:30:48.560 most offensive part of this empire video because some people were really bought into this no high

03:30:51.840 concept as jews began to reframe judaism as an esno religion they encountered a problem

03:30:56.480 what should non-jews believe no other religion faces this question because most faiths would

03:31:01.840 simply say you should convert non-believers to your view right the exceptions here are techno puritans

03:31:07.520 who would suggest following a conservative version of your ancestral beliefs if they come from one of

03:31:12.960 these spiral traditions it's probably good but jews also have this problem right so how do the jews

03:31:19.520 answer this instead of being like be a conservative christian and slash muslim slash jew so jews have

03:31:23.920 said so to handle this jews developed the concept of the no hide laws or commandments in the bible

03:31:30.400 supposedly extended to everyone not just those of their esno religion some jewish groups believe

03:31:36.000 that if you accept modern ethnic judaism as the true religion but you yourself are not jewish

03:31:40.400 much or linearly you can still submit to their system but with fewer obligations most of these

03:31:46.320 groups believe that if enough people follow these laws the messiah will come what i find ironic about

03:31:51.920 the idea that widespread adherence to these rules will bring the messiah is that these principles

03:31:56.960 are already covered by christianity and islam the world's dominant religions whose spread was enabled

03:32:02.800 by the messiah they have it backwards it's not that getting everyone to follow these laws will bring the

03:32:08.240 messiah but that the messiah already brought people to follow these laws but what are these laws one

03:32:15.520 prohibiting ideolatry two prohibiting blasphemy three prohibiting murder four prohibiting sexual

03:32:22.080 immorality five prohibiting theft six prohibiting eating flesh from a living animal and seven

03:32:28.720 establishing courts of justice wait so while it's still alive or just being vegetarian no it's still

03:32:34.880 living animal while it's still alive oh it's like this idea of like the the fresh japanese food where

03:32:39.360 you're eating the writhing octopus tentacle against christian and jewish it's a no-no i didn't know

03:32:45.040 that christians might say oh you you know what's interesting not against christian and jewish law is

03:32:50.000 cannibalism i mean you gotta do it mentioned a few times in the bible in the context of sieges

03:32:56.640 as being a tragedy involved with a siege and in every instance it's somebody eating their kids

03:33:01.520 or eating their parents so in these instances it's like it's a tragedy that in times of scarcity

03:33:07.280 some people but it never says like and god said this was a bad thing if it's alive run and hide

03:33:13.440 if it's dead go ahead if it's yes but if you look at these laws that are associated with the no hide

03:33:19.360 rules they are largely really like just covered by everything prohibiting ideology prohibiting

03:33:26.320 blasphemy prohibiting murder prohibiting sexual anonymity prohibiting theft prohibiting eating the

03:33:30.240 flesh of a living animal and establishing courts of justice that's christianity and islam but anyway

03:33:35.360 now now they'd say well christianity isn't exactly because it argues that jesus is the son of god

03:33:39.200 which is a form of idolatry but i'm like it seems pretty iffy to me and you know our version doesn't

03:33:44.960 so whatever but anyway the organized no hide movement as we know it today primarily began post 1950s

03:33:51.840 gaining particular momentum through habad's efforts starting in the 1980s no hide laws aren't explicitly

03:33:58.160 listed anywhere in the hebrew old testament the rabbinical derivation requires quite a stretch from

03:34:03.440 the text itself so this is this is where they get the no hide laws its ideas from genesis 2 16 17 god

03:34:11.200 commands adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge this is used to establish that god gave commandments

03:34:15.920 to humans before the jews existed genesis 9 1 7 god's commands to noah after the flood which include

03:34:22.720 whoever sheds human blood by humans shall their blood be shed prohibiting murder and everything that lives

03:34:28.480 and moves about will be food for you but you must not eat meat that has life blood is still in it

03:34:34.000 prohibiting eating living animals and genesis 9 9 god establishing a covenant with noah and his

03:34:38.800 descendants all humanity which is used to justify universal laws the rest of the laws are derived

03:34:44.160 through various interpretive methods for example the prohibition on idolatry was derived from how abraham

03:34:49.200 rejected idolatry sexual immorality laws are derived from genesis 2 24 about marriage and references to

03:34:55.040 sexual sin in genesis 20 the requirement for courts is derived from genesis 9 6's implication that humans

03:35:01.120 should judge murderers the only reason the concept of noahide laws is needed is because the idea of

03:35:06.720 matrilineal descent was created which is not found in the bible what's fascinating is that the techno

03:35:11.840 puritans would technically follow the noahide laws yet rejects the concept of jews that the national

03:35:17.680 religion and sees techno puritan branch of christianity as the true successor of the religion in the old

03:35:24.320 testament as it is far closer to said religion it didn't add the garden of isian version of heaven

03:35:30.720 and hell that modern jews borrowed from the greeks and maintained a belief in a single afterlife the

03:35:35.200 world to come see my previous track it accepts that is written in the bible that judaism is not an

03:35:40.720 essence of religion it has a much stricter view of monotheism no demons it is much stricter in its rules

03:35:46.080 around ideolatry it's materialist and monist as the religion of the old testament was see my previous

03:35:51.360 track and all the other things if you're like a jewish religious scholar you would concede that

03:35:54.880 actually what techno puritans believe is closer to og judaism of the time of the christ split

03:36:00.720 than even modern judaism is all that said because you know we're monist we we don't believe in this

03:36:06.560 secondary afterlife we don't believe demons or spirits or magical amulets or anything like that

03:36:11.680 all of that idolatry off the table all that said i would argue that attempting to spread the concept of

03:36:17.440 the nohide tradition was misguided from the beginning even for those who believed it and were

03:36:21.600 jewish it forces those who accept it into a spiritually subordinate position to jews which would obviously

03:36:27.360 never gain widespread acceptance if you had to promote a tradition you'd be better off promoting

03:36:31.920 one that both followed the technical rules of the nohide laws and had enshrined was in it commandment

03:36:37.360 principles against interfering with jewish religious practices yeah religion and population group

03:36:43.600 i.e the techno puritan tradition so techno puritanism is strictly better at achieving

03:36:48.480 whatever nohide was trying to achieve the nohide laws plus fixed revised second edition but the part

03:36:55.280 of the problem is it also teaches that jews are maybe not the true inheritors of the original jewish

03:37:00.400 tradition which is not required within the nohide laws that you believe that but would be deeply

03:37:04.720 offensive to many of the people who like the nohide laws okay so one now that you have time do you have

03:37:10.000 a larger reaction to this wider nohide phenomenon because a lot of people have tried to pressure us

03:37:14.160 to be like oh say that you're nohide or whatever say that you're gonna follow nohide laws what like

03:37:20.160 what are your thoughts on that i think you've taken the correct approach i think that the the problem

03:37:30.480 with the nohide movement is it's i think it's very half-baked and it's made from the perspective of an

03:37:35.680 insider thinking that something's gonna work for an outsider without thinking from their perspective

03:37:41.680 and if you follow the nohide movement to the tune that is outlined as it is you would rather just

03:37:48.880 convert to judaism and after being rejected you would try to join again like you would just no

03:37:53.680 you'd be like no judaism is correct like obviously i want to do it your way you have to revise it if

03:37:57.920 someone's an outsider they're an outsider for a reason and those reasons should be acknowledged and

03:38:02.560 detailed and i also find it incredibly ironic the belief that if you convert enough people the

03:38:08.640 messiah will come when the hypothesized messiah at least who we think is the messiah is the figure who

03:38:14.640 caused almost everyone on earth to follow the nohide laws and that there isn't this recognition that

03:38:20.160 almost everyone is already following them what they want is this submission an individual saying i follow

03:38:25.840 nohide laws which is incredibly stupid because even the theological text that they have backing the

03:38:33.440 nohide laws doesn't require an individual to say that so why do you require this additional claimant

03:38:40.480 on behalf of the individual of the saying i'm following the nohide laws which is to me it's just

03:38:47.120 like a weird power trip that doesn't make any sense and it's completely subverted if it turns out as i

03:38:54.000 believe we have argued very effectively in this track ancient judaism is not an ethno religion that

03:39:00.000 is a modern contrivance hmm yeah yeah i agree with you all right let's keep going before i get to my

03:39:08.080 closing but the jews were probably right and here is what i can't explain there is an argument i hear

03:39:15.680 from jews all the time about why they believe their religion and it is a terrible argument and there is

03:39:20.480 much stronger ones so let's address it i have heard that accounts that all jewish people at once

03:39:27.680 heard slash saw god and this is proof of their religion's veracity the reason this comes off as

03:39:34.000 so silly is it requires a basic lack of historic knowledge but i've genuinely heard this from multiple

03:39:40.560 jews who are like well i know judaism is right because at one point all jews heard god talk to them

03:39:45.840 like at once and this has been passed down right and i'm like well that happens pretty frequently

03:39:50.880 in history and they're like wait it does i'm like are you just like and it requires just you know

03:39:58.080 trying to think of reasons your religion is true without actually engaging with historical religion

03:40:02.160 texts or whatever but anyway mass religious hallucinations are fairly common and well

03:40:06.400 documented the miracle of the sun fantama portugal 1917 approximately 70 000 people gathered in many

03:40:15.520 reported seeing the sun dance change colors and zigzag towards earth this occurred after three

03:40:22.240 children claimed to have seen the virgin mary that was probably more than the number of people who saw

03:40:27.760 this original jewish miracle by the way so oh did i mean christianity is accurate because this was

03:40:33.360 associated with the virgin mary or catholicism specifically the dancing sun at knock ireland 1879

03:40:39.440 a number of villagers reported seeing apparitions of the virgin mary saint joseph and saint john's the

03:40:45.200 evangelist at the south garble at the local church along with unusual light phenomenon marian

03:40:50.960 apparitions at zeaton egypt 1968 to 1971 thousands of people of different religious backgrounds reported

03:40:59.200 seeing apparitions of the virgin mary atop a coptic church the phenomenon were photographed and filmed

03:41:05.520 lasting intermittently for several years the dancing sun at meduja bosnia and her gazavia 1981 to present

03:41:13.760 similar to fatima many religious pilgrims have reported seeing a solar phenomenon including a sun

03:41:18.320 spinning pulsating and changing colors hindi milk miracle 1995 a milk milk miracle yes we'll get to

03:41:26.240 it across various countries particularly in india people have reported that statues of hindu deities

03:41:32.160 were drinking milk offerings the phenomenon was witnessed by thousands and received extensive media coverage

03:41:37.680 so no that was not a particularly unique thing that only happened to the jews mass hallucinations

03:41:43.600 religious hallucinations particularly are really common in humans in addition culture bound illnesses

03:41:49.200 that involve hallucinations are very common see our episode on the penis stealing which phenomenon

03:41:54.160 that often spreads through africa where people adopt the insane belief in mass that witches are

03:41:58.800 stealing penises or for one more closer to home look at the modern trans movement where people believe they are

03:42:05.280 another gender and for the which this happens to thousands of people i remember i was talking to someone

03:42:10.400 about this and go yeah but what happens when they look down and the penis is still there and i'm like

03:42:13.760 yeah that's why it's an insane phenomenon it's where the individual is like a penis still my book

03:42:18.640 and then a doctor was like but i see it it's right there and the guy looked down and said

03:42:21.760 it came back it's like i was turned into a newt i got better

03:42:31.360 there are even cultures and periods in history where divine visions and revelations were a common

03:42:36.000 part of everyday life if you believe in the divine you see the divine historical examples include ancient

03:42:42.320 greek oracle sites places like delphi where visitors regularly reported visions hearing voices and

03:42:46.800 experiencing altered states of consciences inhaling vapors from geological fissures may have contributed to

03:42:51.680 these experiences so note here you might be like well they were inhaling vapors well who's to say

03:42:56.160 there wasn't like a gas leak in this location where all these jews had this this you know vision

03:43:01.200 whatever like proto-carbon monoxide poisoning well i mean that's basically what the way we know that

03:43:07.360 the oracle sites work now because we found specific fissures in them there was a cool recent

03:43:11.440 geological finding medieval european pilgrimage routes along the camino de santago and its sites like

03:43:18.640 lourdes pilgrims commonly reported visions healing experiences and supernatural encounters that were

03:43:24.720 expected aspects of pilgrimage ancient egypt dream incubation temples where people would sleep to

03:43:31.200 receive divine visions or messages were common practice aboriginal australian dreamtime sites sacred

03:43:37.200 locations where visionary experiences contacting ancestral spirits were and remain an expected part of

03:43:44.400 religious practice contemporary examples include mount khalishi tibet china pilgrims often report

03:43:49.920 mystical experiences visions and heightened spiritual awareness while circumabulating the sacred mountain

03:43:56.240 vashira ghats india religious experiences visions of deity and supernatural encounters are commonly

03:44:01.840 reported and culturally normalized medjajuri bazia and herg of vineyard since 1981 pilgrims regularly

03:44:09.440 report seeing the virgin mary experiencing healing and witnessing solar phenomenon

03:44:13.360 shet ceremonies in the amazon basin indigenous communities regularly experience visionary states

03:44:18.800 that are considered normal religious experiences within their cultural context

03:44:22.560 vadoo ceremonies in haiti's spirit possession is normalized religious experience where practitioners

03:44:28.560 report divine entities temporarily inhabiting their bodies certain pentecostal and charismatic

03:44:32.800 christian cultures speaking in tongues prophetic visions and feeling the holy spirit are normal

03:44:37.440 expected religious experiences and outside of that the argument that you could not fake this is

03:44:42.560 also very uncompelling if the events were written down just a few hundred years after they happened

03:44:48.560 it would be illogical to think that they would not have been exaggerated do you have any knowledge of

03:44:53.520 whether one of your great grandparents thought they saw a ghost or a supernatural thing in their life

03:44:58.960 i mean they probably did it just wasn't passed down also if this miracle was so amazing and

03:45:05.200 everyone would remember it and pass it down why when we are looking at the passage in the mishnah did other

03:45:10.960 people in the world who were given the same offer why do they not remember it remember i was like oh

03:45:17.360 well jews were the right people because god actually went to all people and gave him the same offer so

03:45:21.440 you're saying everyone actually experienced this but only the jews remembered it what and that that

03:45:27.040 validating of the tradition very uncompelling no the much stronger argument for the jews being right is

03:45:33.200 god's current favor of their people indicates that they are doing something closer to right

03:45:38.160 than other religious groups but again before we get into that we do need to acknowledge god has

03:45:42.880 withdrawn his favor in the past specifically god tells us in no uncertain terms in jeremiah

03:45:48.000 that the jews broke their covenant the days are coming declares the lord when i will make a new

03:45:52.800 covenant with the people of israel and with the people of judah it will not be like the covenant i made

03:45:57.280 with their ancestors when i took them by their hand and led them out of egypt because they broke my

03:46:01.520 covenant though i was a husband to them we can also see from history that god stopped favoring them

03:46:07.440 for a period if he had not why did he allow the temple to fall and a bunch of other things a bunch

03:46:13.280 of other things while this whole part of jeremiah makes no sense if you take the modern jewish interpretation

03:46:19.360 where the new covenant has not been established yet as the section goes on and on about what will

03:46:25.360 happen in the land of israel after the babylonian exile so i'm quoting here from the section where

03:46:31.760 they talk about the new covenant just above the days are coming declares the lord when i will plant

03:46:36.480 the kingdoms of israel and judah with the offspring of the people and animals just as i watched over

03:46:41.840 them to uproot them and tear down and to overthrow and destroy and bring disaster so i will watch over

03:46:47.600 them to build and plant then set up road signs put up guideposts take note of the highway the road that you

03:46:54.240 will take to return virgin israel return to your towns how long you will wander unfaithful daughter

03:47:00.160 israel i will put you up again and you virgin israel will be rebuilt again you will take up your

03:47:06.080 timbrellas and go out to dance with the joyful again you will plant vineyards in the hills with

03:47:11.280 samaria the farmers will plant them and enjoy the fruit he who scattered israel will gather them and

03:47:17.360 watch over his flock the shepherd the point i'm making here is right after he talks about i'm going to

03:47:21.760 create this secondary covenant with you he talks about how the jews are going to return to israel

03:47:26.080 the problem is is that all of this was handed down in the babylonian exile and jews did return to israel

03:47:31.760 after the babylonian exile and created jewish kingdom that's when they built the second temple

03:47:36.640 that's when the jewish empire existed so it would be really weird to think all of these lines here are

03:47:44.320 talking about something other than that but many modern jews if not most modern jews think that when god

03:47:51.440 prophesied to the people in babylon about going back and having orchards again and reuniting the

03:47:57.440 jewish people he wasn't talking about the second temple period he wasn't talking about that literal

03:48:03.840 kingdom of judaism that exists for hundreds of years he was skipping over that completely thought

03:48:08.800 the jewish people didn't need to notice about that and talking about the modern country of israel or

03:48:15.120 even more crazily that they're talking about the messianic period still yet to come i'm like what

03:48:23.280 so god just was messing with them because he knew they were all going to come back at one point like

03:48:28.320 this is a practical joke on god's part obviously people the second kingdom people period would have

03:48:33.840 assumed that god meant their period right why would god give people a revelation that was one accurately

03:48:42.000 prophetically for a different period but also so misleading and like intentionally misleading is he

03:48:47.440 just a jerk so all the prophecies of this section associated with the establishment of the new covenant

03:48:53.920 come true but he just forgets to make that new covenant i mean you could argue it is still

03:48:59.920 technically after the above described events but i feel like most of the above could also apply to the

03:49:06.080 the period after the destruction of the second temple and the refounding of israel which feels

03:49:10.720 much like a chapter two thus the new covenant would have been established before the second group of

03:49:16.400 events e.g at the end of chapter one or right before the destruction of the temple so you know god

03:49:22.320 has laid out all of these things and jews are going to come back to the kingdom they're going to

03:49:25.200 reform this kingdom it's going to be great you guys are going to be happy during this period and

03:49:28.560 there's going to be a new covenant so i guess you could be like well and the new covenant happens

03:49:32.960 for whatever reason at some point in the future or it's sort of like a a bookend to all of these

03:49:39.120 prophecies that are alongside it that describe the reconstitution of jews within israel during that

03:49:45.120 period what's really weird to me about modern judaism is they just sort of like take all of

03:49:51.200 these prophecies that are laid out in the bible and act like most of them haven't come true or are

03:49:57.360 going to come true in some sort of future messianic period and weren't relevant to the actual

03:50:02.880 lived experiences of the jewish people which to me is crazy when all of these prophecies handed

03:50:08.800 down during the babylonian exile were such good and accurate predictors of what happened to the

03:50:14.160 jewish people during the second kingdom period and the reason they have to do this is because all of

03:50:20.000 those fairly accurate prophecies about what would happen in the second temple period are clustered around

03:50:26.000 the point that during that period they are going to get a new covenant at some point and so

03:50:31.440 because of that they need to say oh well all of these are actually about this future messianic

03:50:35.600 period it's almost as if god stops warning the jews of anything that's going to happen to them

03:50:41.440 or starts telling jews about anything good that's going to happen to them sort of around the time

03:50:47.040 of christ which is really shocking to me like what like so why is it that god stopped talking to

03:50:52.560 the jews at around the time of christ why did he stop giving you unique prophecies then why did his

03:50:58.160 prophecy stop playing out for you then why didn't he warn you about the destruction of the second

03:51:02.880 temple or could jesus have been seen as a warning about the destruction of the second temple why

03:51:08.800 didn't he warn you about the holocaust that seems like of all the things that god was going to warn the

03:51:13.840 jews about that seems like one of the things he should have warned them about now you could argue

03:51:19.840 god meant for all of this stuff to happen twice and the new covenant was going to come after the second

03:51:25.680 time it happened but this seems intentionally dishonest everyone during the exile when this

03:51:30.720 was written would clearly be led to believe that what was being revealed was about their current

03:51:36.480 period of exile when the exile ended they would have seen this as a fulfillment of that prophecy

03:51:42.080 if we take this reading then god intentionally misled the jewish people which i do not believe

03:51:47.280 like why are you even following him if he's just messing with like pranking you all the time

03:51:52.000 ha ha ha actually all of you had like all of your land destroyed and your temple ruined and everything

03:51:58.480 i told you like absolutely messed and i totally messed with you when i said that you would you would

03:52:04.160 have this all you know rebuilt and and i wasn't even talking about that period that you 100 would

03:52:09.440 have believed i was talking about if you were living through that period second if the event was

03:52:13.760 supposed to happen after a second exile and the holocaust that's a pretty big thing not to mention

03:52:19.440 no it seems clear it is talking about the second temple period here which is punctuated with the

03:52:24.560 destruction of the second temple so i note here like if you take the view that oh this messianic age

03:52:30.160 is being described here and this is all happening you know way way in the future you didn't even think

03:52:34.560 to tell us that we'd get a kingdom and the kingdom would be destroyed and then we'd get another kingdom

03:52:38.320 and then that would be you know no we didn't get that we didn't get any of that and so you could argue

03:52:42.400 that or you could say god accurately predicted future events to the jews who were in exile in

03:52:48.560 order to console them and accurately prophesize the creation of their second kingdom and included

03:52:53.680 within that prophecy wasn't mentions of the holocaust or anything not because god just didn't feel like

03:52:59.840 telling the jews about that but it wasn't relevant yet to jews of that time period and that the holocaust

03:53:07.120 you could say as we've argued was likely a reaction to jews doing something that pissed off god

03:53:12.320 and i think it's important to meditate on what came a few hundred years before the holocaust

03:53:18.240 um because this is now it could be the following of the false messiah that caused the holocaust by the

03:53:24.160 way because that was a few hundred years before because it seems like god's punishments typically

03:53:28.560 have been a few hundred i'd say like 300 400 years after whatever the event is that incites him

03:53:32.720 don't know why he takes so long but it seems to be the way it works um no i would note here somebody

03:53:37.920 could say oh it's really offensive to say that jews were in any way responsible for what happened

03:53:44.160 during the holocaust and i'm not saying this is like a accusatory thing i'm saying this from the

03:53:50.480 perspective of jewish theology god typically warns the jewish people when they're doing something bad

03:53:56.800 and then he punishes them like with the babylonian exile or like was the destruction of the second

03:54:03.440 temple period there is no like major negative event to befall the jewish people other than the holocaust

03:54:11.120 where there wasn't some consolidated within the jewish tradition oh this is why god did this to us line

03:54:17.840 so it would be antithetical to jewish theology to say oh the holocaust was just because just just

03:54:26.080 for funsies god always does things for a reason and you could oh well what about the book of job

03:54:31.600 the book of job was a single person the holocaust would be a very unique thing for god to allow to

03:54:37.120 happen in terms of the way the jewish religious texts work without reason so either you actually believe

03:54:44.080 that there is a god and he's real and he has the capacity to do things like stop an event like the

03:54:49.200 holocaust or you don't believe that or you believe that god is real and loves the jewish people and

03:54:55.840 allowed the holocaust to happen even when they were doing absolutely everything right that to me sounds

03:55:01.200 like a really messed up situation so i i this is one of those things where it's an offensive thing to

03:55:08.240 state but it's just like an obvious truth if you actually believe jewish theology

03:55:14.480 now i should note here that all of this happens immediately after the bit about returning from

03:55:19.040 exile like it's not that each of these sections are in jeremiah the thing about the covenant is

03:55:25.040 sandwiched at the end of the talk about returning from exile for example this line comes up after the

03:55:31.760 talk of the new covenant the days are coming declares the lord when this city will be rebuilt for me

03:55:36.720 the new covenant discussion occurs in a long list about what's going to happen when they return from

03:55:42.400 exile also why did god give such accurate predictions of the jewish people's future here

03:55:48.160 but not warn them about the destruction of the second temple or the holocaust clearly

03:55:52.160 it's almost like for a long period starting with the destruction of the second temple

03:55:56.400 god's favor left the jewish people to focus on some new group only to return to them in the past

03:56:01.680 century or so now as a counter argument the part after the talk of the covenant that talks about

03:56:07.200 rebuilding the city does say that a time will come when the city will never be uprooted or destroyed

03:56:13.680 again and that clearly at least kind of was after the exile so you could say the fact that that was

03:56:20.800 part of the prophecy indicates that it's talking about a second rebuilding of israel but i take it to

03:56:25.680 just mean we're talking about this one rebuilding of israel here and the covenant that you're going

03:56:29.360 to get along with that and then some other time in the future of the city will because you know in

03:56:34.080 god and maybe jewish history's perspective the period where the jews were outside of israel is just a blip

03:56:39.680 in in in human history small to them in the same way the babylonian exile seems short term to us

03:56:46.400 any thoughts with all these periods of of god supposedly not showing favor

03:56:50.400 you and i always talk about how we don't want our children to have easy lives that we want to

03:56:58.480 no i mean i think god it challenges you i think yeah are these not maybe just challenges not like

03:57:03.760 i need to give you hardship so you're stronger no well the holocaust goes a little more than just a

03:57:08.960 challenge i mean yeah i don't know i don't know though like it's there i mean it may be it's

03:57:16.400 strength in the jewish people maybe it's why they're so exceptional i mean what do we have now

03:57:19.840 we have israel we have incredibly successful jewish groups so people who are they do so were jews

03:57:26.240 better before the holocaust yes remember we did an episode on this we did an episode on this so if you

03:57:32.160 look at for example pediatricians in germany before the holocaust because we have notes in this

03:57:37.280 or dentists you have to go to the episode for the exact numbers but i want to say something like

03:57:42.080 they appeared in these professions at like 900 percent what you would expect or might even higher

03:57:47.920 it might have been like 9 000 as opposed to now though i mean like yes they were exceptional then

03:57:52.000 but are they more exceptional now jews yeah are you out of you you know that they participate in

03:57:58.240 like nobel laureates who are jewish it's like i know i know my point though is like that is post

03:58:02.640 holocaust and pre-holocaust you're you're you're implying you're telling me that they were better off

03:58:06.800 then yes i just said pre-holocaust dentists doctors pediatricians who were jewish appeared

03:58:13.520 at like 9 000 the rate that you would expect given the percent that were jews we have evidence of this

03:58:20.640 today is it lower it jews don't exist in germany in large numbers what are you asking in germany yeah but

03:58:28.560 i mean like then there's the diaspora throughout the rest of the world which is exceptional now the

03:58:33.360 point i'm making is that we have evidence of jewish exceptionalism both before and after the holocaust

03:58:40.000 indicating that jewish exceptionalism is not a result of the holocaust right but could it have

03:58:45.840 been strengthened by that i mean again like i do not support that there was a holocaust i think it's

03:58:50.240 so horrible and i it's hard for me to understand it could have theoretically been but the majority of

03:58:55.840 evidence we have does not support that okay okay we have israel now well yeah they've done

03:59:03.200 well but they were doing really well before the holocaust again i don't know like ross

03:59:08.720 has a family the jewish banking networks all of that was pre-holocaust yeah but it was concentrated

03:59:14.480 as well and like what no it wasn't concentrated i just told you doctors pediatricians and dentists

03:59:19.600 oh yeah because they're changing the not not to say that like no but they do earn significantly

03:59:24.800 more and are indicative of a community that is a higher levels of education higher levels of wealth

03:59:29.840 and higher levels of community influence maybe i don't know i'm just i'm trying to play devil's

03:59:34.960 advocate here yes but the evidence doesn't agree with this devil advocates i know i just i just i

03:59:40.400 mean it's really otherwise hard to understand jewish has chosen like god's chosen people when you look

03:59:44.880 at things like that it's just like sure you could say that he's specifically now we know because we

03:59:50.560 know that god said during the exile like i'm punishing you for messing up we know according to jewish

03:59:55.680 tradition god punishes the jewish people to show them they're messing up so this is not inconsistent

04:00:02.560 with even god's original relationship with jews that we see in the old testament

04:00:09.040 so and i imagine he's going to do he does the same to christians when they mess up i think that we're

04:00:14.320 seeing this through crashing fertility rates now and a degradation of the culture and artistic

04:00:20.720 traditions that they built and god is using the very thing that we are supposed to know to be

04:00:26.640 afraid of and and have fear of this urban monoculture as this thing that's this burning

04:00:31.120 humanity you know as i said god told us he would never again drown the world but in an inversion of

04:00:37.360 that what we're seeing now in this great wiping of the world this great sort of happening that we're

04:00:41.600 living through of of mass cultural death mass cultural extinction the crucible that this is an

04:00:48.560 inversion of the flood in that people instead of drowning are burning on a bonfire of their own

04:00:55.360 vanity uh and it is instead of god doing it they are throwing themselves into this fire and they are

04:01:02.960 doing it through sterilization rather than literal death it's like an inversion of the flood narrative in

04:01:07.200 every conceivable way i mean i think actually that's what the flood narrative is about but

04:01:12.480 we'll talk about this in some other day i actually think the flood narrative is about warning us about

04:01:15.440 this fertility collapse um looking forward to that conversation okay now suppose i was a jewish

04:01:24.320 rabbi and i needed to find a way to resolve all the above issues here's how you do it so i'm gonna fix

04:01:28.560 this okay i would concede that judaism used to function more like islam in terms of both how they set

04:01:35.200 out rules for governing a state and through converts this is just too widely attested to

04:01:40.400 really argue against and some jews i've talked to me like no this isn't true i'm just like it becomes

04:01:45.280 really hard like as a feel you remember all of the evidence i laid out for this month do you think it's

04:01:50.480 even plausible that jews did not have regular converts and i'm not saying all jews there was

04:01:56.080 clearly some sect of jews that might be the true jews but there wasn't you laid out so much like

04:02:02.000 pretty well documented historical evidence that they were proselytizers and people trying to

04:02:06.960 convert no yeah clearly both from within the jewish community and external to the jewish community

04:02:13.520 and from people who liked jews and for people who hated jews people who liked you were like we have

04:02:18.240 jewish settlements in every city then we have tacticus here like oh jews have settlements in every city

04:02:23.840 like like major convert sinners you know and you know so and it also helps explain why christianity

04:02:31.360 spreads so fast so it even like explains other mysteries that don't make sense without this

04:02:35.600 so i'd accept that because i think if you try to take a position that's clearly anti-historical is

04:02:39.680 harder to for people to take your religion seriously instead i would argue that judaism was not

04:02:44.720 originally an estno religion but became one with the destruction of the second temple as was laid out in

04:02:50.320 jeremiah specifically either the destruction of the second temple itself or something just before it

04:02:57.680 happened but was not jesus started the second covenant which the bible says clearly would be

04:03:03.680 written within the jewish people and on their hearts this explains why it was not written within

04:03:08.880 the jewish people in the earlier historic period and has clear text supporting it within the bible

04:03:14.240 that at some point after the exile the covenant would become written within the biology of the jews

04:03:20.320 matrilineal descent because the mother is the one who makes the body of the future jew thus imprinting

04:03:27.040 them with the potentiality to engage with this covenant bam fixed of course for this fix to work

04:03:34.880 i still need some instigating event for the second covenant but given that lots of rabbis have argued

04:03:39.760 that they are already living under the second covenant this is very doable this is not seen as

04:03:43.680 like a heretical jewish position it may not be a mainstream rabbinical position but many uh well-known and

04:03:49.120 famous rabbis have argued that jews are already living in the second covenant the problem is

04:03:53.680 as a non-jew when i am asked to find some event of world-spanning theological significance that

04:04:00.160 happened just before the destruction of the second temple well let's just say i find the above less

04:04:05.520 satisfying than that christ initiated the second covenant and applied it to all people however i am

04:04:10.960 personally proud of coming up with a solution to this particular problem and the way that you would argue

04:04:14.960 this is you'd say well you can ignore the the parts about because it said that the second covenant is

04:04:20.160 just for jews just for the people of judea and that okay yes you could convert into judea easily

04:04:26.480 before then like ruth and these other people did but you can't convert easily into judea after

04:04:31.600 whenever this covenant was formed which was written in people's hearts and we know from the bible that

04:04:36.240 when the first covenant was formed because it was in contrast the second covenant it was not written

04:04:40.080 was in the jews it was not written was in their hearts and that's why it was okay to convert people

04:04:44.240 all the time during that period and that's why it wasn't okay to convert people after the

04:04:48.000 destruction of the second temple it aligns with historical events of when conversion stopped

04:04:52.240 it aligns with the biblical text and it's a completely logical explanation as to how jews became

04:04:57.840 a matrilineal religion now of course again i think the problem is is you're like okay but where

04:05:05.840 is the initiating instigating event of the second covenant of theological significant before this is

04:05:12.080 just before the destruction of the new second temple and really the only one i can see is jesus but

04:05:17.360 oh well any thoughts before we get to the very last section here no proceed but i have one major

04:05:24.080 problem as saying stan god does seem to be favoring the jews still even with their corrupted

04:05:31.040 belief system from my perspective they enter politics successfully at higher rates and they win more

04:05:35.520 nobel prizes they invent more stuff they have more money oh and they have their own country and

04:05:40.240 within that country have both a growing population even among the technologically and economically

04:05:45.200 engaged sub-factions better still their country is surrounded by easily expandable territory weak

04:05:50.800 countries that could not put up a real fight against their technology and economy if they ever wanted

04:05:55.520 more land and resources the only thing really stopping them is the pox de romana of the urban monoculture

04:06:01.520 of the international community as europe falls into irrelevance and america is increasingly ruled by a

04:06:07.200 pro-jewish christian coalition social norms are likely to be more relaxed and israel will be bringing

04:06:16.400 an ai drone swarm to fight populations with ak's not that they will need the land just if they

04:06:23.840 hypothetically did there isn't really anything stopping them in the future but if you're like oh europe won't

04:06:29.040 collapse bro bro you need to like get a like a snort of reality pill here italy right now is at a

04:06:35.840 fertility rate of 1.18 even if it doesn't continue to go down which it has every year for the past 16

04:06:40.880 years at its current fertility rate for every 100 italians there's only going to be around 20 great

04:06:44.800 grandchildren they cannot survive as a country like that especially when you contrast them with the

04:06:50.720 low-tech populations around them that are breeding and those low-tech populations are not going to be

04:06:56.800 that much of a threat to israel if they build things like the united states government is

04:07:00.240 already building that we've talked about in other videos like giant movable tanks and ships that can

04:07:06.320 create hundreds of ai controlled drones a day you just can't fight against that with tunnels or

04:07:12.880 conventional weapons or really anything and the people around israel right now these countries that

04:07:19.120 today we might view them as a test for israel like a test that god gave to make israel strong

04:07:23.920 keep their fertility rate high everything like that in the future are it's just like free land

04:07:30.560 it's like something that historically was a no i'm not saying there aren't moral complications to

04:07:35.840 taking this land i'm just being like suppose these groups continually attack the jews giving them an

04:07:42.080 excuse to take that land not like that hasn't been a reason for their expansion in the past nor in the

04:07:47.440 bible that god hasn't told the jews oh well you can take this land or you can take that land

04:07:52.320 in that particular area of the world oh any thoughts on that before i go further i know that's a very

04:07:58.640 offensive thing to say but it's also an obviously true thing no yeah i hear you and it's it's something

04:08:04.320 that i think many jews haven't thought about when they think about their current conflicts and troubles

04:08:08.560 that it is that their current troubles are born in the seeds of their future potential prosperity

04:08:14.720 mm-hmm oh and don't even get me started on the power of their diaspora proverbial esters are in

04:08:24.960 every country and government in the world basically if things play out the way all current stats predict

04:08:31.440 they will jews win the game despite everything having been rigged against them they still have some

04:08:37.200 level of divine favor this is why it is critical for the techno puritan tradition as it grows to build a

04:08:43.360 strong long-term structural allegiance with jewish communities and when i talk about proverbial esters

04:08:48.400 here what i'm saying is is that jews even in their biblical tradition say hey you know if you're a

04:08:53.600 jew in a country that is ruled by non-jews maybe you know marry into families like say like ivana

04:09:00.880 marrying the jewish guy right like that's actually like within jewish tradition you're not supposed to

04:09:05.520 marry outside the tradition but if you can influence politics favorably for jews there are stories you

04:09:10.480 could take to say yeah you should do that and what i'm saying about this is is that the jewish diaspora

04:09:14.880 is easily the strongest diaspora in the world in terms of cultural and political influence that's

04:09:21.120 not a conspiratorial statement that is an obvious statement of fact it's a practical statement golf clap

04:09:27.280 you guys did very well i don't hold it against you and i would say that they've actually done

04:09:31.520 it being jared kushner sorry jared kushner yeah being less nepotistic than some other communities

04:09:36.720 like i think for example if i look at american politics catholics are way more nepotistic than

04:09:41.120 jews there's a number of times where we've basically been told like hey you know you guys convert and i

04:09:45.280 can get you some nice positions i can get you hey do you want to go to mass with us today hey do you

04:09:50.160 want to jews have never pulled that stuff with me you know but i get it from catholics very frequently

04:09:54.960 and so and i i mean i don't want to say that i think that might have partially motivated jd's conversion

04:10:00.000 but i can say that we would have a much easier time in conservative politics if we were catholics

04:10:04.880 despite the average catholic even today voting democrat that is quite a network of nepotism that

04:10:12.640 it works even in the party you don't support and i should note here that i don't mean this

04:10:16.480 accusatorily i think nepotism is completely fair game for any cultural group to favor their own over

04:10:21.840 outsiders even the idea that it would be normative to give equal vetting to both insiders and outsiders

04:10:29.600 seems to me one of the repugnant lies of the urban monoculture i think everybody knows that you can

04:10:35.440 look at like the that that organization that helps catholic judges federalist society um i didn't know

04:10:40.640 that you know it was run by the lady who did the tiger children no way really note i checked this in

04:10:47.760 post and apparently it's not accurate where i had gotten that from is apparently she was influential

04:10:53.360 within it or something or influential within conservative politics in part through the

04:10:57.920 federalist society but she goes to their events and everything it's like this this society that

04:11:02.560 helps conservative judges i think she is that's so interesting you can ask is tiger mom catholic but

04:11:09.920 yeah this is why i'm like yeah we should see jews as it as a a accurate way of following a covenant

04:11:17.760 it's just a different covenant right god is an important part of the techno puritan beliefs that there

04:11:21.760 are multiple conservative traditions to god and so when i look through this prism or lens that god

04:11:28.080 has given me a lot of things that the jews are doing look wrong as i've said here but that is

04:11:33.440 because i am looking through my tradition's prism and i think you can choose do you look at the

04:11:38.960 reality through the jewish prism or do you look at it through my prism because my prism says even

04:11:43.600 if when i put the prism on i see you know you know summoning demons accidentally sometimes and i'm

04:11:50.720 like oh that's obviously like a bad ritual you know i know that god does favor the jews from

04:11:57.200 easily measurable public evidence and amy chua was raised catholic after teenage years and it appears

04:12:05.680 to be still catholic so yeah what did i tell you they make up like almost all of our supreme court

04:12:10.880 judges it was like eight of ten at one point like 80 that's why making up like a very small portion of

04:12:15.200 the us population the rest are like jewish right yeah the rest are jewish that is true it's all catholic

04:12:20.320 the jews no protestants i think it might be protestants right now i think one converted to

04:12:23.280 protestantism and when it's like a half protestant yeah okay well i don't know converted or was born

04:12:29.680 whatever it doesn't it doesn't matter to me but the point being jews despite all of this we still

04:12:34.880 have to find a way to work with them and i think if we build from their perspective i would say again

04:12:40.080 hey our system technically follows the nohide tradition it might follow it in a way that

04:12:45.040 theologically isn't super palatable to you but it does follow the rules you set out and

04:12:50.400 propagates those rules and it would be a tradition that would be beneficial to you to have a high-tech

04:12:55.280 group that thinks your community is sacred shouldn't be deconverted shouldn't be messed with

04:13:01.360 i would say shouldn't be deconverted unless they're super competent and that's one of the things about

04:13:04.400 the techno puritan tradition and it's very much like don't go after the average person this is a religion

04:13:08.960 that really i think even psychologically isn't meant for the average person it is meant for people

04:13:14.880 who we would consider like it is very much a elect religion right you know only certain people are

04:13:21.040 meant for this religion and so i would never ever ever advocate for mass conversion techniques or

04:13:27.520 practices within the religion but that doesn't mean that you would never have targeted conversions

04:13:31.760 now you might be asking why do i think their divine favor trumps my logic and what i read in

04:13:39.680 the bible leads me to think that they have more things right well it seems clear to me that there

04:13:44.000 were times in history god favored either christians or muslims more than the jews this indicates to me

04:13:49.200 that his favor will shift my current assumption is his favor currently rests on the jews in spite of

04:13:55.760 where they are estranged from his truce because so many christians have succumbed to idolatry and

04:13:59.600 sin transference rituals if i am right then within a few generations especially once the techno puritans

04:14:05.840 have artificial wombs and better gene editing technology god's favor of us will be made

04:14:12.000 self-evident so basically here i'm saying look if our community doesn't do well i'm wrong my

04:14:16.720 interpretations are wrong that's how god shows things right yeah yeah i would also end this by pointing

04:14:21.920 out that christ was sacrificed to create a new covenant that does not invalidate the first covenant

04:14:26.640 a jew that follows all the rules of the first covenant is just as in line with god's will as

04:14:30.960 christians you know as long as they don't get into all of the kabbalistic demon summoning and

04:14:35.440 attempting to compete with the spirit realm stuff alex jones clip here they will not manipulate your

04:14:41.280 free will unless you ask them in i have dude do not say that i'm gonna get killed but maimonides

04:14:48.480 even warns jews of this as i pointed out like this isn't some like novel anti-jewish perspective

04:14:53.360 if i'm taking a perspective that that maimonides also takes i think that that most jews would be

04:14:58.080 like okay while this perspective isn't common in modern jewish communities it's not an anti-jewish

04:15:02.240 perspective okay so anyway simone thoughts on this tract too offensive i don't think it's that offensive

04:15:07.680 to jews maybe i think jews generally like any group about whom you write are chuffed that you

04:15:15.200 care enough to learn so much about their religion as an outsider they can make any justification they

04:15:23.200 choose should they disagree with something you say that you simply don't understand or you misinterpreted

04:15:28.960 something so that which you consider to be offensive is probably something they would discount due to your

04:15:36.240 ignorance or misinterpretation yeah i mean i think my my interest in engaging with their religion is very

04:15:43.680 earnest and obviously earnest but some people can't like in the opus dei video you know which was

04:15:48.400 while we we mentioned that like we're not catholics obviously like we're gonna have a

04:15:52.560 somewhat hostile interpretation of catholicism but this one group is in catholicism i like almost

04:15:57.200 everything they do a lot of catholics were really mad at us for that video they're like oh you know you're

04:16:02.000 you're attacking catholicism this is the catholic's all bad video we actually had a jew once reach out

04:16:06.800 to us angry about our video where we argue that jews are not genetically superior to other people

04:16:11.680 and then it's likely culture that's leading them to do better well culture in divine favor

04:16:15.600 um and he's like this is like an anti-jewish video and i was like what oh people are still

04:16:20.480 tweeting about that like a couple of days ago someone was like anti-semites on 4chan are using

04:16:26.160 your video for like and just we're trying to say that jewish culture is superior and like you said the

04:16:33.120 jews have god's favor like what do you want it to be just your genes yeah that's that's like

04:16:38.800 flattering somehow no but it's also just maybe she's born with it because she's jewish

04:16:43.840 no it's if i was king of the jews and i could like make a rule like okay this is the way we're

04:16:48.880 gonna handle this particular you really wouldn't want the genetic explanation to be the mainstream

04:16:53.520 explanation because it makes it look like your success is unfair and therefore within the progressive

04:16:58.720 culture i.e it's due to a systemic privilege you have over other people a genetic privilege

04:17:03.360 you should be discriminated against like that would be a very very bad mainstream interpretation

04:17:09.600 to catch on you would want the interpretation to be oh it's cultural practices that anyone can learn

04:17:14.080 from and adopt because then it's not that you have the systemic thing in your favor which is you know

04:17:20.000 and if people are like well some people people will use anything to attack anyone like whatever right

04:17:25.040 like i think that that it's really important to engage with data honestly and that if the data says

04:17:33.120 x or y or leads me in a direction which is what i think i'm doing with this track it's really funny

04:17:37.440 like as soon as i like get in the stream and i'm like i'm just gonna go where the like current of data

04:17:41.200 goes like the current is taking me i end in positions that appear vastly more moral than other

04:17:47.200 positions to me they appear more religiously coherent yeah so much of where i think a lot of christian

04:17:52.080 traditions went off the rails and judaism went off the rails was it attempting to swim against the

04:17:56.880 current of god's will saying okay we absolutely need to make jesus divine oh but now this creates an

04:18:03.040 idolatry problem oh well we'll fix it with this concept of the trinity oh well you know i really

04:18:09.040 want this additional afterlife the immediate afterlife well it's not in the bible well we'll we'll

04:18:13.440 twist parts of the bible to try to add it in and put in hell here and stuff like this but now

04:18:18.880 this creates all this immoral like stuff where god is punishing people forever for fairly minor

04:18:23.280 transgressions like all of that just seems or like another recent christian thing that i

04:18:28.240 absolutely do not like is this idea of now i do believe in complete depravity in that man has fallen

04:18:34.320 but this idea that only through jesus's sacrifice can our souls be saved that's not in the bible unless

04:18:39.360 you take that one line really out of context that we go over what it seems to actually mean in this

04:18:43.040 tract you know only only through jesus can you get to god yeah but we also learn that jesus is in you and

04:18:47.840 jesus isn't everyone who's a believer in god's in jesus and god's in you in the same way than jesus

04:18:51.680 anyway but they take that to mean that all humans are irrevocably corrupted and sinful and that none

04:18:57.840 of us are deserving of any of god's grace and i can understand why it would be like okay well then

04:19:01.840 if you're a moral person you don't actually need jesus like jesus's sacrifice is meaningless from this

04:19:06.640 perspective and then you build this whole theological tradition on top of this even though it's not in

04:19:09.920 the bible and then it leads to all sorts of problems of like uh well that that i mean it does seem

04:19:14.480 that you know some humans seem broadly good like conceptually i can see a human who's a good guy

04:19:19.360 like i i believe i've met some people who seem like really morally chased and everything like that

04:19:25.440 and and so if then you take jesus's sacrifice to just be creating a new covenant it fixes a lot of

04:19:30.880 things and it seems more moral but i don't know that's where i am with all this thoughts simone

04:19:36.480 what more could i possibly add okay okay i love you i love you too malcolm a lot

Based Camp - May 02, 2025

The Question that Breaks Judaism (Tract 10)

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