All Comments (25)

possibly you are referring to the many times ive posted anti-terrorist material by muslims?

believe me- if there were muslims that stole land from jewish people (or any people) and abused the indigenous population while being giving 100s of billions of dollars by the united states- i would scream bloody murder about it-

but there isnt- so what am i supposed to criticize?

how disingenuous that the issue of israel and its political apartheid practices somehow become an obscurant excuse for islamophobia-

Greg

Canaanite religions and their relationship to the people of Judah and Israel is sort of a hobby of mine. I read whatever I can about it. When I retire from being a scientist I think I will make it a second career. It provides a whole new perspective on the Old Testament, that is for sure.

BA'AL,

Isn't being dry a prerequisite for books of that nature? LOL I think books like that try to present information and cure insomnia at the same time...

Victoria, you write "when have i criticized Islam?"

My point exactly.

Victoria,

You asked: "when have i criticized islam?" You have made a few "wishy-wash" attempts at it but fail to do the right thing by renouncing and condemning the militaristic and demeaning passages of the Koran. Until you do, all of your commentary and copying/pasting are whistling in the winds of denial.

when have i criticized islam?

Victoria

I am not trying to be offensive, but I find that exact same tendency in all of your comments where Islam is concerned. It is natural I think.

i found the criticism of Israel by the independent jewish voices to be incredibly mild and lenient-

if you criticize yourself first in the mildest of terms- i guess you can circumvent any further deep criticism.

Mel, Concerned the Christian

Genesis 9:18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.

The Canaanites are therefore not the decendents of Cain according to that part of the Old Testament.

But against that there is a long section in 1 Kings 18:20-40, where Cain clearly is the archetype for the Ba'al worshiping Canaanites whose sacrifices are not accepted. Abel is the archetype for all of Israel since Elijah's sacrifice is accepted gladly (after which they slay all of the prophets of Ba'al in their midst).

All very confusing, and Bible literalist's attempts to deal with this torture logic.

Of course, in the real world, the one attested by archaeology, the peoples of Judah and neighboring Canaan are essentially the same people who had very similar cults with slight local differences. This may explain the continuous griping Old Testament references about the bad behavior of the Israelites with respect to their worship of Ba'al and the other Canaanite deities -- YHWH originally being just one of many, and one who was a bit more popular in the hill country that eventually became Judah. Two of many excellent books about this are The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher, and Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel by Beth Alpert Nakhai (although the latter is intended for scholars and can be a bit dry).

For those interested in genealogy and not the myths of the OT, NT and Koran, see the recent DNA trails of our ancestors at https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html

"Adam" is the common male ancestor of every living man. He lived in Africa some 60,000 years ago, which means that all humans lived in Africa at least at that time.
Unlike his Biblical namesake, this Adam was not the only man alive in his era. Rather, he is unique because his descendents are the only ones to survive.
It is important to note that Adam does not literally represent the first human. He is the coalescence point of all the genetic diversity."

See also the explanation of the carriers of the M172 chromosome at the Genetics Marker listing i.e. the ancestors of the Palestinian region and their journey from 8500 to 10,000 BC. Click on the interactive maps to follow how your ancestors got where they are.

Ashfaq,

You noted: "Those who are unjust usually do end up suffering the consequences by incurring Allah's wrath as continues to happen repeatedly to the disobedient Jewish peoples."

As per a recent On Faith commentary about your militaristic, demeaning and outdated Koran written in the name of the illiterate "prophet" Muhammed which produces such significantly stupid commentary as your note:

"After reading the Quran for the first time, I had this bizarre vision....
I saw Muhammed sitting in a room, whispering these words to another man, "I need a drink of water". Then THAT man whispered words to the next person...and so on and so on....out the door, down the street, up the hill.....
the person sitting on top of the hill was scribbling furiously. He jumps up and yells:
"ALLAH NEEDS TO DRINK THE OCEAN FOR US TO SURVIVE!"
It's an old game, called "Gossip".

i.e. you use the "gossip" of the Koran to preach death to unbelievers and the "disobedient" ones.

And you make Islam a sham religion by doing so!!!!!!!!

Assalam Alaikum,
It's quite sad to see that the same people who were once being oppressed have now turned into the oppressors. I can recall the torture that the Pharoah of Egypt inflicted upon the Children of Israel during the time of Prophet Moses (Peace be upon him) and I can recall a more recent event collectively known as "the holocaust" in which according to textbooks the Jewish peoples were inflicted with oppression. Even after this it's amazing that most of the leaders of the unjust events which are occuring throughout the world are Jewish and as are the supporters. Allah has commanded the believers to be just. Those who are unjust usually do end up suffering the consequences by incurring Allah's wrath as continues to happen repeatedly to the disobedient Jewish peoples.

Cainites
From the Catholic Encyclopedia

A name used for (1) the descendants of Cain.

The Canaanites were Cain's descendants.

i.e. Cainites = Canaanites in the Bible

Concerned: As such Abraham, Moses, Jericho and other people and places did not exist as the story is told but they did exist with different names and without all that help from God. The Torah is fiction to the extent it's the warped version of a real story with God added.

Isaac was the son of Amenophis III that was actually a bastard, son of the "other" woman. Ishmael was the daughter of the queen, Tiye and named as though she was male, Amenophis IV that is also the basis in fact for Moses and Jesus.

The key to understanding how the Torah and Bible came into being is the fact that the story was piece meal, taken from "memorials" by many different people with just as many interpretations, same way the Bible is interpreted today with many different versions of what different passages mean.

The story outline at http://www.hoax-buster.org page 2 is probably the closest to the actual facts as they took place so far. We can expect others to take the que and refine that story, a 50 year patch of Egyptian history.

Where did the Torah come from? Who collected up the stories and made them into a book? What sources were given for the information?

First amongst these is whether you believe Israel has a 'right to exist'.
Those who totally deny that 'right' have some explaining to do.

I do not think that a fascist, nor an apartheid state has a right to exist as a fascist or an apartheid state. Is that clear enough Rabbi?

Criticizing Israel does not make one anti-Semetic. As former President Carter recently said, there is more robust debate about Israeli policies in the Israeli press than there is in the American press. I have nothing against Israel, but it is just another country, we should not treat it as though it is our 51st state.

The Jews invented religious nationalism and have suffered from it ever since.

Israel was not settled by the "Cainites." I think you mean the Canaanites.

The Canaanites, the Edomites, the Philistines and the Moabites all settled the lands in and around modern Israel today centuries before the birth of the Christ.

Cain's bloodline contiuned through Noah, his wife and his three sons and their wives. It is through those eight people that the rest of us come from.

Canaan, the grandson of Noah, was cursed by the patriarch, likely for an unnatural sex act. Canaan's offspring would eventually come to be humbled by that of his brothers.

Which happened when Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian King, tore through the region, destroying Moab, Edom, Canaan, Philistine and of course, the two-tribe Israelite kingdom of Judah.

King Zedekiah was the last Israelite to sit on the throne in Jerusalem. After his sons were slaughtered in front of him, Nebuchadnezzar blinded Zedekiah and he was taken in chains to Babylon.

Conservative Judaism was noted as being one version of the Jewish religion. The Conservative "take" on the Torah could help settle many of the Palestine historical issues.
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/ConservativeTorah.htm

"Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses. The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho. And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation.

Such startling propositions -- the product of findings by archaeologists digging in Israel and its environs over the last 25 years -- have gained wide acceptance among non-Orthodox rabbis. But there has been no attempt to disseminate these ideas or to discuss them with the laity -- until now.

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents the 1.5 million Conservative Jews in the United States, has just issued a new Torah and commentary, the first for Conservatives in more than 60 years. Called ''Etz Hayim'' (''Tree of Life'' in Hebrew), it offers an interpretation that incorporates the latest findings from archaeology, philology, anthropology and the study of ancient cultures. To the editors who worked on the book, it represents one of the boldest efforts ever to introduce into the religious mainstream a view of the Bible as a human rather than divine document."

Also was not Israel first settled by Cainites? Which brings up the questions, was Cain and his parents Jewish? Or did Noah's offspring start the Jewish race?

At a gloance, taking the last thousands years of history as an abstraction, remove the emotion, the country of Israel looks an awfully lot like an Indian reservation. It's like there was a continuation of the Nazi attempted genocied of Jews, Israel being one giant concentration camp. Is Israel the "real" final solution?

Don't ya wonder what the diplomats that approved the idea of a Jewish homeland were thinking, big gheto? Can we say that at least one felt like it was a good idea because Europe was "getting rid" of Jews? Did that include a few Jews that did not intend to immigrate, peraonally go to the new-old homeland?

If we follow the logic of a Jewis homeland then all but native Americans need to start packing.

Greg: You're hinting at a phenomena known as critical mass. When the size of the atom gets large enough it naturally splits. The split comes not from the whole thing getting involved by just one "wild" (crazy or insane equall well to wild) particle that amounts to a small percentage of the whole. Population, the total number of people is the clue. Only a few need get involved to cause the split. The easiest prediction to make is, planet earth is about to split. Not having witnessed that before what it means is unknown.

Norrie: Thanks for the insight, "right to exist." Every deed in America goes back to "by right of arms" with some rare exceptions, Long Island for example. A significant percentage of the gold in the hands of religions and used in religious services goes back to the same thing. It always boils down to that it seems. Did people have the right to throw other people off land they had occupied since their birth? The answer is, "by right of arms." Maybe the history books were written by the winners?

Does Israel have "a right to exist"?

A "right" is a legal concept that has meaning only within an applicable legal syatem. There is no legal system that applies to the creation and destruction of states. As the old legal maxim goes, "In arms the law is silent."

It's therefore meaningless to talk about a state's having or not having a "right to exist".

That said, I'm very happy and thankful to history and the fates that Israel does exist.

BA'AL, especially in Europe. Do you think the huge influx of Muslims has anything to do with it, especially considering how secular most of Europe has become?

And no for those about to reach for their napalm I don't mean ALL or even SOME Muslims hate Jews. But if say 2% of Muslims hate jews then if the general population of Muslims grow then the number of extremists also grow as a result.

I do not know if Israel has a right to exist or not. One thing is for sure: If that right is based solely or primarily on 2600 year old "holy" texts, than the claim is bogus. At the very least, people who take that position have a lot more explaining to do than people on the other side. I also think that Israel has the potential to become a uniquely pluralistic, free, and inspiring nation, and they are squandering that potential with every passing day.

The other thing that the Baroness undoubtedly knows is that true anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe and the US as well as in the middle-east. Not the casual kind, but the really ugly dangerous kind. People should be on the vigil for that, not for the trivial stuff.

No one is more critical of Israel than some Semites. I looked up the word in the dictionary. Semites includes all Arabs, Jewish peoples, ancient Assyrians, Babylonians, Carthegenians, Etheopians, and Phoenicians. Anti Semites should be more careful not to hate themselves.