World Religions Report (1)

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Arts Humanities

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Apr 3, 2024

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1 HUM/130 Judaism Mitch Lewis Judaism Mitch Lewis University of Phoenix HUM/130 3/1/2015 Andrew Tatusko

2 HUM/130 Judaism Mitch Lewis Judaism has been a religion for five to six thousand years and is one of the oldest religions in the world. Jewish traditions date back to BCE C. 3915. Jewish people believe the earth was created by one supreme God. The main text for Jews is the Torah. The Torah contains the Ten Commandments, Pentateuch, and the 613 Mitzvot. The story of Moses and many others can be found in the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh. There is a part of the Tanakh that is very sacred to the Jews. The most sacred writings are the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. These are called, “the five books of Moses”, or the Pentateuch. The Jewish people have a unique belief that they have a special covenant with God. The special covenant that God established with Abraham was on behalf of all the Jews. There is a well-known Bible story about a Noah and the great flood. God chose Noah because he was a very righteous person. Noah took his family and two of every creature on the earth and went on a massive boat as God flooded the whole Earth. God made a covenant with Noah that he would never destroy the created world again. The rainbow that we see today is a sign of God's covenant. This event took place because God was saddened by how wicked men were and he wanted to destroy all of them. He wanted Noah to start freshly with his family and two of each creature. God looks at Abraham as an example because he lives by the commandments. God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham went through with what God asked of him. God sent an Angel to tell Abraham to not kill his son. The test God put Abraham through proved that Abraham is trustworthy. After Abraham had passed the test, God told him he would be the father of many nations. Let’s look at a brief history of the Jewish people.

3 HUM/130 Judaism Mitch Lewis Jacob, who is a son of Abraham, had twelve sons and one daughter. The twelve sons are said to be the start of the twelve tribes of Israel. The number of descendants became so great that the Pharaoh ordered that every baby boy be killed. Moses was the only baby that was not killed. The Pharaoh had a daughter, and she was the one that raised Moses. According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was chosen to defy the Pharaoh and lead the people out of bondage, out of Egypt (Fisher 2014 pg. 253). The Pharaoh was very reluctant to let the Israelites out of bondage. God killed the entire population of the first-born children. So, the Lord would pass over the houses of the Israelites, they placed the blood from a lamb over their door. The Passover is celebrated today as a Jewish holiday. After the deaths of the children, Moses was able to lead the Israelites into the wilderness to worship God. After they all made it into the desert that is when Moses went back to Mount Sinai to make a new covenant with God. When God talked to Moses, The Ten Commandments were given to him at that time. After they had received The Ten Commandments, the Israelites set out for the land of Canaan. There was an immense temple built to place the Ark of the Covenant into for the Jews to worship (Fisher 2014 pg.254). During this time, the worshipping of idols became very frequent. God allowed the robust nation of Assyria to carry off what is known as the “Ten Lost Tribes of Israel” (Fisher 2014 pg. 257). They were taken into exile into the land called Babylon. A group of devout Jews returned to Jerusalem after fifty years of exile in Babylon. At the time of their return, the Torah became the spiritual foundation of the dispersed people of Israel. Three sects of Judaism formed in Judaea as well. The Sadducees were priests and the wealthy businessmen. The second sect called the Pharisees were the liberal Jews that

4 HUM/130 Judaism Mitch Lewis used the Torah as a guide to everyday living. Lastly were the Essenes who avoided a life of any luxuries and practiced ritual purity while dressed in all white clothes (Fisher 2014 pg. 259). The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. The Jews dispersed at this time into Asia and the Mediterranean. Judaism was at risk of becoming extinct. There was one group that survived the destruction of Judaea, and they were the Rabbis. The Rabbis became the founders of Rabbinic Judaism (Fisher 2014 pg. 261). Now that the temple had been destroyed the people met in synagogues. The Mishnah or oral Torah was developed by the Rabbis. The Mishnah became organized into what is known as the Talmud (Fisher 2014 pg. 263). The Talmud is a vast amount of Jewish law. Talmudic scholar Adin Steinsaltz refers to the Talmud as “a book of holy intellectualism” (Fisher 2014 pg. 263). Judaism is very complex with all of the laws and commandments they have. Judaism in the Middle Ages or the Common Era, the number of the Jews from the land of Israel declined. During this time, some of the Jews were under Islamic rule in Baghdad. They were allowed to practice their religion without condemnation as long as they paid a high tax rate (Fisher 2014 pg. 265). Many Jewish People began to prosper in different areas. Many Jews were well-known Physicians (Fisher 2014 pg. 265). Unfortunately, Jews were being blamed for many things that were never verified. The innocent killing of many Jewish people occurred in the twelfth century. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jews were forced to live in ghettos. The ghetto was a particular place that only Jews were allowed to live (Fisher 2014 pg. 267). They were locked in against their will. Later in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a vast majority of Jewish people resided in Poland and Russia. In 1789, the French Revolution created equality for Jews (Fisher 2014 pg. 269). The European nations followed suit and started tearing

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