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Judaism: Summary

Decent Essays

In this excerpt from his chapter on Judaism, the writer introduces us to the Jewish religion by giving us an overview of Jewish history. He points out to the importance of the destruction of the second temple of Jerusalem by the Romans, as an event that led to a distinction between biblical Judaism and rabbinical Judaism. This allowed Jews to pray and practice their religion anywhere in the world, from their homes or synagogues. In most of this chapter, the author gives us an extensive overview of the Hebrew bible. We learn that the Hebrew Bible is divided into three sections: Torah, Nevi’im and Ketuvim. Torah is the most sacred one since it contains stories of creation and others about Hebrew ancestors. Nevi’im focuses on the stories of different prophets during the Israelite Kingdom. Ketuvim contains short stories and reflections about life. …show more content…

These commandments are carving the way to Monotheism in general and obedience to Yahweh in particular. They are also ensuring the prosperity of the Hebrew population by defining property rights and ethics. Maybe The Ten commandments had a short term function of keeping people together during their major Exodus, which later became a long term function to keep the Jewish religion together. Finally, I wanted to address a general issue which has to do with the myths in religious scriptures. Some rational minds may dismiss religious texts due to the myths they contain, leading them to believe that none of the text is historically accurate. However, I believe that maybe, whoever wrote them had to include myths, more than often derived from previous religions, in order to attract the attention of the people. How else would people take prophets seriously? This may explain why religious texts start with creation myths and tend to become historically accurate

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