OT -- Re: random cover of a range

[Christopher Wright]

Don wrote:
> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> "Yigal Chripun"<yigal100 at gmail.com>  wrote in message
>>> news:gn9qp7$apa$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>> A millennium ago, Europe was in the midst of the dark ages while all
>>>> scientific advances were made by Islamic scholars (know Algebra?), 
>>>> and the
>>>> christian world went on holy crusades to fight the evil 
>>>> "barbarians", now
>>>> a millennium later the wheel had turned and the Islamic world is in its
>>>> own dark-age (Iran is prime example of that) and the Islamic extremists
>>>> are calling for Jihad against the corrupt and evil heretics of the 
>>>> west.
>>>> Non of that is present in Judaism.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I'm no theology expert, but from what I understand, the Islamic 
>>> concept of
>>> Jihad really refers to a person's internal good-vs-evil struggle, not an
>>> external struggle. The so-called "Muslims" that take Jihad to mean 
>>> actually
>>> committing violence against other people are bastardizing thier own 
>>> religion
>>> in the same way that some people bastardize Christianity into allegedly
>>> being pro-"white power".
>>>
>>
>> Not quite so. Jihad is one of the pillars of Islam, and has about 4 
>> sub-categories one of which is _Jihad_by_sword_
>> here's a quote for example from 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_of_Islamic_scholars_on_Jihad :
>> <quote>
>> Ibn Rushd, in his Muqaddimāt, divides Jihad into four kinds:
>>
>>     "Jihad by the heart; Jihad by the tongue; Jihad by the hand and 
>> Jihad by the sword." He defines "Jihad by the tongue" as "to commend 
>> good conduct and forbid the wrong, like the type of Jihad Allah (swt) 
>> ordered us to fulfill against the hypocrites in His Words, “O Prophet! 
>> Strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites” (Qur'an 
>> [Qur'an 9:73]). Thus, Seraj and Ahmad Hendricks have expressed a view 
>> that Muhammad strove against the unbelievers by sword and against the 
>> hypocrites by tongue
>> </quote>
>>
>>>> the only link between Judaism to Christianity is that supposedly 
>>>> Jesus was
>>>> Jewish.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Umm...Judaism and Christianity share an entire Bible. Of course,
>>> Christianity adds another Bible (the "New Testament") but they equally
>>> revere what they call the "Old Testament", which *is* the Jewish 
>>> Bible. As
>>> part of that Bible, both religions contain The Ten Commandments, Moses,
>>> Abraham (this particular part also being shared by Islam), Adam and Eve,
>>> Noah's Ark, and probably some other things. I'm not sure where you 
>>> get the
>>> idea that Jesus's religion is the only connection between Judaism and
>>> Christianity.
>>>
>> Christianity has mostly redefined out of existence most of the Jewish 
>> concepts if not all of them as they appear in the bible (the old 
>> testament), and the new testament which overrides the old one defines 
>> different, and contradicting new concepts.
>> Christians use different interpretations of the bible and the 
>> christian faith basically broke backwards compatibility (to borrow a 
>> software concept) with Judaism.
> 
> You seem to be assuming that modern Judaism is identical to 
> first-century Judaism. It clearly isn't. In particular, (1) the 
> destruction of the temple required significant "breaking of backward 
> compatibility" (not to anywhere near the same extent as Christianity, of 
> course), and (2) Orthodox Judaism recognizes the Talmud, which was 
> written down later than the New Testament.
> 
> Also Christianity retains the Tanakh(Old Testament) word-for-word and 
> regards it as authoritative. This put strict limits on the extent of 
> possible divergence.

Divergence of belief in the historical content of the text, yes. (I know 
that Christianity has some divergence on whether the text is completely 
and literally accurate in all aspects. I don't know whether there are 
any young-earth creationists among non-Christian Jews, or anything like 
that.)

However, there are a lot of commandments given down regarding what is 
clean and unclean, and how to distinguish, and treatment for being 
unclean in various ways. That is universally ignored. Doctors do better 
at healing people than priests who follow the Torah exactly. In case of 
an infestation of mold in your house, you are going to call someone who 
specializes in that issue, and they're not going to follow the Torah, 
even if they are the strictest of orthodox Jews. And I haven't seen any 
Christian who felt compelled to avoid eating shellfish due to biblical 
restrictions.

I don't know many ultra-Orthodox Jews; do any of you know a Jew who 
would go to his priest regarding a rash before he would go to a doctor?