Podcasts about israelite religion

Mystic-Skeptic Media presents Jesus The Israelite: A Jewish Commentary on the New Testament. In part 2 of our pilot episode we apply our own fail or pass criteria to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's book Kosher Jesus https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/kosher-... A good review and discussion of this is available on this blog: https://www.torahmusings.com/2012/01/...Mystic-Skeptic Media produces podcasts such as Uncensored Radio Show, Raiders of the Unknown and Jesus The Israelite. In the past 7 years we have featured academics (Amy Jill Levine) , presidential candidates( Howie Hawkins), Commentators (Jay Michaelson) , Advocates (Vanessa Guillen), Scholars(John Dominic Crossan) and Holistic Healers (Rosemary Gladstar). We have taken deep dives on the topics of human trafficking, ancient civilizations, demonology and the occult, social movements, controversial topics and many of the current affairs affecting our society. Join us as as we explore the mystic-skeptic mind space…

Canaanite mythology sheds light on the roots and motives behind much of Israelite theology and law.  In this episode we look at the story of the golden calf, as told in Exodus, and see how it relates to Canaanite culture as we continue to delve into the roots of Judaism. Holistic Life NavigationThis podcast explores how to heal stress & trauma holistically.Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

The Ugaritic Texts provide us with the internal world of the Canaanite worshippers of Baal and Asherah. The faith we are often warned against in the Tanakh. But their mythology contains the roots of the Israelite faith, which would eventually become Judaism. In this episode we look at the warrior/seductress Anat, who holds the key to the connection. 

In this week's show our guest is Rabbi Dr. Juan Marcos Bejarano Gutierrez  author of Reimagining Boundaries: Jewish and Christian Identity in Late Antiquity.In the eighth century, a debate between Sergius the Stylite and a Jew occurred. The discussion was conveniently titled, Debate against a Jew. It records arguments about the relevance of biblical texts to Christians and the Jewish people. The anti-Jewish perspectives of Sergius are not surprising. The response given by his Jewish interlocutor is, however. The Jew noted that he was surprised by the number of Christians who attended his synagogue, contributed to it, and celebrated various Jewish holidays alongside Jews.What does this tell us? It shows us that the boundaries between Jews and Christians even as late as the 8th century were permeable at the very least and ill-defined at the most extreme. The anti-Jewish polemics of Melito of Sardis in the second century or John Chrysostom in the fourth century are heartfelt. Regardless of how vile they are, they reflect something very significant.The Church's consistent attack on Jewish practices and theology was reflective of a simple fact. The Jewish tradition was sufficiently strong to interest curious Christians who were most certainly familiar with the anti-Jewish sentiments of medieval Christianity but saw in the living presence of Jews among them a very different portrait of the people of the Bible and their continued appeal.Judaism and Christianity as we know them today, and this is the crucial point, i.e., today did not exist in the first centuries of the Common Era in the same form. This is not to say that people did not recognize near-universal Jewish observances, i.e., the Sabbath, the lighting of candles, beliefs, i.e., the election of Israel, etc., or even nascent Christian rituals. But the fully developed theological systems and the boundaries of these entities did not exist in the same way they did in later periods of history.With that being said, this work seeks to address the problem of Jewish and Christian identity from various perspectives. What follows are a series of what I call semi-independent essays discussing the nexus between these two evolving religious systems. These essays seek to challenge the reader to consider alternative approaches to identity and consider that beliefs and the impositions of later views partly formulate our assumptions about groups on either side of the supposed divide. That is not to say that Jews and Christians were nebulous entities characterized by “open borders” to use a contentious modern-day term. Instead, there were groups whose responses to each other were partly formed by theological, regional, cultural, and perhaps even economic considerations.A major focus of this work is the Clementine Literature as a reflective of a community that found itself in between the communities we now recognize as Judaism and Christianity. 

In this episode Gusto and Dr. Michael Heiser discuss why strange passages matter, psalms 91, GOD’S human family, the hidden Pslams, Genesis chapter 3, and much more. Dr. Heiser received his Ph.D. (2004), University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI; Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies; minor in Classical Studies. His dissertation was entitled, “The Divine Council in Late Canonical and Non-Canonical Second Temple Jewish Literature.” The dissertation involved exegesis primarily in the Pentateuch, Wisdom Literature, and Isaiah, but also dealt at length with Israelite Religion (all stages) and Second Temple texts. Supervisor: Michael V. Fox M.A. (1998), University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI; Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies M.A. (1992), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Department of Ancient History. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/augustine-madiebo/support

Dr. Stavrakopoulou is professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at Exeter University, and star of the BBC's "Bible's Buried Secrets". Hear about her research into what ancient Israelite religion was actually like, and how it's (mis)represented in the Bible!Dr. Stavrakopoulou on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProfFrancescaOriginally recorded May 23 2020.

    Sanhedrin 63b: § Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: The Jewish people knew that idol worship is of no substance; they did not actually believe in it. And they worshipped idols only in order to permit themselves to engage in forbidden sexual relations in public, since most rituals of idol worship would include public displays of forbidden sexual intercourse.     Rav Mesharshiyya raises an objection to this statement from the following verse: “Like the memory of their sons are their altars, and their Asherim are by the leafy trees, upon the high hills” (Jeremiah 17:2). And Rabbi Elazar says that this means that the Jewish people would recall their idol worship like a person who misses his child. This interpretation indicates that they were truly attached to idol worship.   The Gemara continues to relate the story of the prayer in the days of Nehemiah: The people fasted for three days and prayed for mercy. In response to their prayer a note fell for them from the heavens in which was written: Truth, indicating that God accepted their request.   The form of a fiery lion cub came forth from the chamber of the Holy of Holies. Zechariah, the prophet, said to the Jewish people: This is the evil inclination for idol worship. When they caught hold of it one of its hairs fell out, and it let out a shriek of pain that was heard for four hundred parasangs [parsei]. They said: What should we do to kill it? Perhaps Heaven will have mercy upon it if we attempt to kill it, as it will certainly scream even more.   The prophet said to them: Throw it into a container made of lead and cover it with lead, as lead absorbs sound. As it is written: “And he said: This is the evil one. And he cast it down into the midst of the measure, and he cast a stone of lead upon its opening” (Zechariah 5:8). They followed this advice and were freed of the evil inclination for idol worship   סנהדרין ס״ג ב:י״ט אמר רב יהודה אמר רב יודעין היו ישראל בעבודת כוכבים שאין בה ממש ולא עבדו עבודת כוכבים אלא להתיר להם עריות בפרהסיא                   מתיב רב משרשיא (ירמיהו יז, ב) כזכור בניהם מזבחותם וגו' וא"ר אלעזר כאדם שיש לו געגועין על בנו                 יתבו תלתא יומא בתעניתא בעו רחמי נפל להו פיתקא מרקיעא דהוה כתיב בה אמת             נפק כגוריא דנורא מבית קדשי הקדשים אמר להו נביא לישראל היינו יצרא דע"ז בהדי דקתפסי ליה אישתמיט ביניתא מיניה ואזל קליה בארבע מאה פרסי אמרו היכי ניעבד דילמא משמיא מרחמי עליה                 א"ל נביא שדיוהו בדודא דאברא וכסיוה באברא דשייף קליה דכתיב (זכריה ה, ח) ויאמר זאת הרשעה וישלך אותה אל תוך האיפה וישלך את האבן העופרת אל פיה     Unity and Incorporeality 2.   The question of the emergence of Israelite religion is a sui generis problem in the history of the human spirit first of all because of the popular character of Israelite monotheism. To our way of thinking, the idea of God’s unity is one of the most abstract ideas in human thought. We regard this idea as bound up with abstraction (hafshatah) from the multitude of phenomena manifested in our world and with grounding all reality on an invisible unity beyond our comprehension. The one God is the cause of causes, eternal substance, the being of all beings, transcending everything sensible and conceivable, beyond all conception of time and space, a supreme idea. The question is: How could such a faith come into being in ancient Israel? Israelite culture was a culture of shepherds and farmers. Moreover, even in a later period the creative genius of the Israelite people did not find embodiment in the creation of a conceptual culture (nor, for that matter, in the creation of a technological culture). Israel did not create conceptual science, logic, philosophy, or natural science. Its strength was in poetry, narrative, ethics, religious vision, and the like, far from theoretical abstraction. Nor was its language rich in abstract concepts. The Hebrew of the biblical period was a pictorial and poetic language, unfitted for expressing philosophical views. How, then, was the monotheistic idea conceived in ancient Israel within such a cultural rubric?  Moreover, biblical monotheism did not arrive at abstract expression. The Bible innocently resorts to tangible descriptions of God. It does not sense any defect in depicting God through imagery. At any rate, there would be place here for gropings and hesitations. However, in the prophetic books there are no gropings or hesitations. Monotheism is visibly present and self-evident, and there is no hint that it is a new idea. The General Character of Israelite Religion, Yehezkel KAUFMANN in Toledot ha-emunah ha-yisre’elit, translated by Lenny Levin Where Israelite Religion differed 3.   Israelite monotheism could not comprehend idolatry or magic. At best, idols and various forms of polytheistic worship were treated as fetishes, things used in rituals that were not associated with any meaningful mythology or theology. On a popular worship of objects that was not genuinely polytheistic (because it is unrelated to any specific foreign deity) but was “a magical, fetishistic, non-mythological worship of images”, a worship that was fundamentally unfamiliar with the realities of polytheistic worship and the icons that played a role therein: “Worship of ‘dumb idols’ is, in the biblical view, arrant, sinful foolishness”, for the idols, unlike the lower ranking gods, are not real; they have no power, not even the derivative power that, say, Chemosh or Marduk enjoy in the view of biblical monotheism. The ancient lore knows of no war between YHWH and other divine powers, No mythology surrounds God. He is not born; he does not die; he is not sexed; he is not part of the natural world. This God has no “genealogy,” no lust, no birth, no progeny, no growing up, no death, and so forth. Israelite lore does not know how to tell anything about the life of this God, the events (This is very different from many known ancient Near Eastern stories about gods.) Israelite Religion was exoteric. The bible reflects common, public, shared knowledge. Moreover, all teaching is official and authoritative. Priests are the public educators. The popular belief conceived of this God the same way. This means that the basic idea of Israelite religion was bound up from its inception in a radical division between God and the world. “Fate” has no power over him. Sanctity is not “natural” closeness to divinity or belonging to the divine in a property relation ... It knows of no material object that is sacred in its own right. ..it does not know of any category of holy objects in nature. It concentrated all sanctity in God, who rules the world, in the God who transcends the cosmos. Objects can only possess “historical” sanctity by virtue of God’s will or as a result of God’s deeds and commandment. No mythological drama in Ancient Israel 4.   The basic idea of Israelite religion—the supremacy of the divine will, raising God over every nature and fate—left no room for the tension of divine forces fighting each other, for a divine mythological drama. Is there any place for drama, for activity, for striving for living embodiment where there is one supreme decisive will? Israelite religion transferred the divine world drama from the domain of nature and its forces to the domain of the human will. The divine will rules over all. But it has one “limitation”: the will of the human, to whom God has granted free choice and the power to sin. By human sin, the supreme divine will has become, as it were, impaired. This is the opening for evil in the world. Opposite the divine will is set the human will; in place of the mythological tension between divine forces comes the moral tension between God’s will and man’s will. This is the special sphere of the divine drama in Israelite religion. To the absolute will belongs an aspiration that remains to be fulfilled. God commands, and the human can either fulfill God’s command or disobey Him. In place of mythological tension comes historical tension. This religion was interested not in the events of the god and his life, his desires, his wars, and his victories among the other gods but in the events of God’s commandment, His teaching, His activity among human beings. Human society, human history, man’s religious and ethical dedication—these were the campaigns of the “war” of the supreme God. [Conversely] He was not a restful and serene God of the heights (such as the contemplating God of Aristotle/Maimonides.  There is no Nirvana here), happy in self-satisfaction, who had nothing to do with the lower worlds and with human fate. He was a “zealous God,” commanding and demanding, keeping track of sins and performing kindnesses, a redeeming God, doing good and creating evil. He was close to man’s life and destiny.  This faith was intrinsically connected with revelation and prophecy. Prohibition against Fetish Worship 5.   The Bible never specifically addresses the worship of representations of YHWH but lumps it together with idol worship in general. The Bible never distinguishes between graven images of YHWH and graven images of pagan gods but includes them all in the category of “other gods.” The Bible does not at all conceive of the graven images as representations of divinity but as fetishes. Neither the Torah nor the prophets devote one kind of utterance against graven images of YHWH and another against graven images of other gods. In the classic prohibition of graven images in the Ten Commandments (in both versions), graven images and pictures are forbidden after the prohibition of other gods (Exod. 20:3–4, Deut. 5:7–8). The text does not say, “I am YHWH your God… Do not make for Me any graven image or picture… Do not have any other gods… Do not make a graven image or picture of them, etc.” ... they chastise the people for worshipping graven images in general and only give one reason to this prohibition: it is the ignorant worship of “wood and stone.” Unity of God 6.   In both the song of Deborah and the creation legends, YHWH rules the world alone, and there is no other god with him (or against him!). God’s unity is the primal idea, not God’s ethical character or historical activity. In biblical  monotheism, the cosmic element is fundamental. Anthropomorphism 7.     For we should not think that the concrete depictions of God (anthropomorphisms) in the Bible are only remnants of folk legend or poetic figures of speech with only a symbolic intention, as later philosophers interpreted them. The entire biblical literature, without distinction of source or stratum, envisages a visage of God and does not regard this as a defect. The Bible has no abstract God-concept, nor does it have any drive to abstraction. Moreover, one can say that throughout Jewish literature, up to the point that Greek influence started to operate in it, there is no sense of defect in envisaging a visage of God. Israelite religion vanquished the corporeal depiction of God in [only] one basic and decisive respect: it depicted God as outside every connection with the material of the world. ...  Moreover, it depicted Him as above all connection to the laws of the world, to nature, to the stars, to fate. This is the point of departure between Israelite religion and paganism; from this point, it ascended to its own unique sphere. Its God is above mythology and above nature; that is its fundamental idea. ... this idea is imprinted in the entire being of Israelite religion and woven into its entire tapestry. God was regarded as sublime but not incorporeal. The question of the divine image was in fact raised only in the border zone where Judaism came into contact with Greek thought. .... the whole problem of whether God has a visible form is outside the purview of original Judaism. Faith 8.   Israelite faith thus originated not from one or another historical event, not from sealing a national covenant, not from political prosperity, not from the trauma of destruction, and so forth, but from the revelation of a new religious-metaphysical idea. In the course of the generations this idea would generate an entire worldview and life regimen, even though at the time it came into the world enveloped in a national garb and intertwined with the events of the day. It was steeped in transcendence unequalled since in the world. But it could be grasped in vision and likeness. It was born through visionary intuition and could be grasped through symbols. Therefore, it could be made into a popular faith. A God whose rule knew no bounds, who was all-capable, from whom everything originated, who was holy, sublime, zealous, ruling over good and evil, sending the word of His rule by way of prophets, one with no equal—all these could be grasped by popular religious feeling. This idea could be born among the people of the desert and could arouse passion among the people of the desert. A similar idea aroused passion at a later time among the Arab tribes at the time of Mohammed.[i] Paradigm Shift - Incommensurability - Thomas Kuhn   9.   Paradigm Shift - "This is the idea that, in the course of a revolution and paradigm shift, the new ideas and assertions cannot be strictly compared to the old ones. Even if the same words are in use, their very meaning has changed. That in turn led to the idea that a new theory was not chosen to replace an old one, because it was true but more because of a change in world view” Incommensurability. - "This is the idea that, in the course of a revolution and paradigm shift, the new ideas and assertions cannot be strictly compared to the old ones. Even if the same words are in use, their very meaning has changed. That in turn led to the idea that a new theory was not chosen to replace an old one, because it was true but more because of a change in world view” — The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition by Thomas S. Kuhn When a paradigm shift occurs, in some sense the world changes. Or to put it another way, scientists working under different paradigms are studying different worlds. For example, if Aristotle watched a stone swinging like a pendulum on the end of a rope, he would see the stone trying to reach its natural state: at rest, on the ground. But Newton wouldn’t see this; he’d see a stone obeying the laws of gravity and energy transference. Or to take another example: Before Darwin, anyone comparing a human face and a monkey’s face would be struck by the differences; after Darwin, they would be struck by the similarities. A consequence of Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts is that science does not progress in an even way, gradually accumulating knowledge and deepening its explanations. Rather, disciplines alternate between periods of normal science conducted within a dominant paradigm, and periods of revolutionary science when an emerging crisis requires a new paradigm. That is what "paradigm shift" originally meant, and what it still means in the philosophy of science. When used outside philosophy, though, it often just means a significant change in theory or practice. So events like the introduction of high definition TVs, or the acceptance of gay marriage, might be described as involving a paradigm shift. see here Source Sheet created on Sefaria by Geoffrey Stern [i] Aharon Kaminka says that the Bible’s war on paganism is “a riddle still seeking a solution.” Apparently, he did not find in my words even an attempt to solve this riddle. But in truth, I did propose a solution, and I do not see the possibility of any other solution. The solution is this: the decisive battle with paganism in ancient Israel occurred at the beginning of the dawn of the new idea, in Moses’s day. The battle was short. Israelite paganism was smashed to smithereens, and the new faith was implanted in the Israelite nation. Something like this battle also occurred in Arabia in the days of Muhammad. Paganism disappeared once and for all from the horizon of the Arab nation, and was perceived as from behind a cloud. Only fossilized remnants of paganism remained among the Arab people. Likewise, the influence of foreign paganism on ancient Israel was fossilized from that time on and consisted of worship of idols. The cultural legacy that Israel received from paganism—legends, laws, poems—was the legacy of Israel’s pagan past, which in the previous period had been connected to the pagan cultural world. There is nothing in that legacy to compel us to assume contact in the later period. For this reason, the entire Bible perceives paganism through a cloud and conceives it to consist only of idol worship. We should recall that paganism was forgotten by the writers of Islam, too, in a relatively short time, and they knew it as little more than idol worship.  Yehezkel Kaufman, THE SECRET OF NATIONAL CREATIVITY

On Thursday, November 14, 2019, Kerry M. Sonia, WSRP Research Associate and Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Hebrew Bible, gave the lecture, “Like a Woman in Labor: The Ritual and Social Dimensions of Childbirth in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel.” Video and full transcript here: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/11/14/video-making-babies-childbirth-and-ceramic-production-hebrew-bible-and-israelite Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at https://hds.harvard.edu/.

In this episode we examine the complexities of ancient Israelite religion by placing it within the historical context. We put forth theories about the origins of the religions while situating it within the broader ancient near east and Mediterranean religious traditions. We talk about the establishment of temple religion and the historical experience of empires...

Many books have been written about Jesus' heritage, but a few about his followers background. In this narration of Dr. Juan Marcos Bejarano Gutierrez' book Forgotten Origins: The Jewish history of Early Christianity, I lend my voice to produce an audiobook of the introduction and first chapter. This audiobook discusses important aspects of the search for the historical Jesus and different sources which describe his followers' membership in the Israelite community of that time.

In this episode we discuss the normative theological views found among ancient Israel. God is Open, a blog on Open Theism: https://godisopen.com/ Podcast RSS Feed: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:56085845/sounds.rss God is Open book: https://www.amazon.com/God-Open-Examining-Biblical-Authors/dp/1544141424

The major festivals of Judaism are created, the Tent of Meeting is designed, and the priesthood under Aaron established. God is outraged when the feckless Aaron makes two idols, but in an astonishing display of nepotism, Moses lets Aaron off the hook and instead consigns 3,000 Israelites to death. We also find the real Ten Commandments: they are not what you think.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Matthew Suriano, University of Maryland, speaking as part of the "Matter of Israelite Religion" lecture series, January 18, 2012: "Death in the Kingdom of Judah: The social process of dying and the ritual context of the dead."

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Nili Sacher Fox, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio, speaking as part of the “Matter of Israelite Religion” lecture series: “Fashion vs. Ideology: Biblical Laws Pertaining to Israelite Dress.”

I interview Bible scholar Jaco Gericke about the philosophy of Ancient Israelite religion, as revealed in the Hebrew Bible.

I interview Bible scholar Jaco Gericke about the philosophy of Ancient Israelite religion, as revealed in the Hebrew Bible.