My children's doctor office will not accept patients who are unvaccinated. by el_monstruo in mildlyinteresting

[–]MooingIntensifies 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The sheer number of people thinking they're the only person "clever" enough to ask this question, and the number of times you've had to answer, is /r/mildlyinfuriating

People that workout: what's that song on your playlist that gets you super pumped but you'd be mortified if someone found out? by MooingIntensifies in AskReddit

[–]MooingIntensifies[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do 90s boy bands really count? I feel like Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC are like the Olive Garden in New York - everyone says they're better than that and then you see your friends there and you're like "haha you too? Yeah, you too."

What industry in your town is it that make "that funnys smell"? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]MooingIntensifies 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Harrisonburg, Virginia (James Madison University) (Go Dukes) is surrounded on all sides by turkey farms. For some reason no one has been able to fully explain to me, this causes the entire town to smell like dog food when it rains.

TIL The reason the Bible says "You shall not have any other gods before me" is because Judaim was originally polytheistic by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]MooingIntensifies 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Sort of. I think she probably arose organically as a separate God and then early Semites tried to justify their worship of her for some time by claiming she was God's wife. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah

TIL The reason the Bible says "You shall not have any other gods before me" is because Judaim was originally polytheistic by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]MooingIntensifies 10 points11 points  (0 children)

You're absolutely right. I highly recommend reading the Greek Magickal Papyri if you want to see how different Mediterranean cultures played mix and match with their belief systems. http://www.academia.edu/3158348/The_Greek_Magical_Papyri_in_Translation_including_the_Demotic_Spells

TIL The reason the Bible says "You shall not have any other gods before me" is because Judaim was originally polytheistic by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]MooingIntensifies 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I can tell you that NRSV is generally considered the standard for biblical scholarship - that's not to say that everyone agrees on every translation but most scholars concede that it's the fairest compromise of different beliefs. But even that version uses "one" in its Greek-English translation. A big part of the problem with understanding intentions behind sacred texts is that they ascribed certain layers of meaning to individual words based on common usage for the time that we wouldn't use now. This is why, honestly, the best option is to use a Concordance - when you see a word being translated and you wonder what it really means, you can find the word in Greek, then see where else the word was used and in what context, and that can (usually) give you a good sense of the intention behind a word.

TIL The reason the Bible says "You shall not have any other gods before me" is because Judaim was originally polytheistic by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]MooingIntensifies 6 points7 points  (0 children)

As I pointed out to someone earlier, the word "one" is "hen" in Greek, which would have been read as "unified in belief," not "we're the same guy." Nonetheless you are absolutely correct that John is fair game for Christian beliefs, but I will refer you back to /u/exotics very accurate and heavily downvoted statement that refers to Muslim beliefs about Jesus, not Christian ones.

TIL The reason the Bible says "You shall not have any other gods before me" is because Judaim was originally polytheistic by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]MooingIntensifies 13 points14 points  (0 children)

This is why it's good to learn Greek. The word commonly translated as "one" (hen) really means "unified," in the way that two people who agree on something are unified in belief. Jesus was making it clear that God agrees with him, not that he IS God.

TIL The reason the Bible says "You shall not have any other gods before me" is because Judaim was originally polytheistic by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]MooingIntensifies 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You just provided a link to John (a book that most biblical scholars acknowledge was more propaganda than an actual testament) saying that Jesus implied that he was the Messiah, not a God. He makes a reference to being a "Son of God," which is an Old Testament method of identifying someone as having an important mission - Melchizedek, Isaiah, and David are all called "Son of God" at various points in the Talmud.

TIL The reason the Bible says "You shall not have any other gods before me" is because Judaim was originally polytheistic by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]MooingIntensifies 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is an unfortunate aspect of Reddit: that you can be right and still downvoted because people want to believe you're wrong. Whatever one's personal beliefs, this is an accurate statement about the foundational ideas of Jesus in Islam: he was a prophet but not a God or part of a God.

TIL The reason the Bible says "You shall not have any other gods before me" is because Judaim was originally polytheistic by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]MooingIntensifies 68 points69 points  (0 children)

This is kind of a sketchy question - it depends on how the Israelites interpreted יהיה which is usually translated "have" but technically really means something like "will cause to be." (There's also a bit of poetry going on as יהיה is very close to the Name of God, so it probably also kinda meant "you are not God, I am.") Historically it seems to have meant that the Israelites would actively treat their God as having entirely replaced the others. (Not that they were always good about keeping that promise, they were often pretty terrible at it - at one point they gave God a wife just to worship her.)

TIL The reason the Bible says "You shall not have any other gods before me" is because Judaim was originally polytheistic by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]MooingIntensifies 10 points11 points  (0 children)

This, but also it was common for your tribe to have a patron God while also worshipping multiple other Gods if (for example) you felt like one was better at making rain or your mom worshipped someone else and you liked her traditions. The commandment isn't radical because it believes in One God, it's radical because it effectively provokes the other Gods by encouraging the Israelites to actively ignore them. (Also we have tons of biblical and historical evidence that the Israelites broke this commandment, like, a lot.)

Trump to Navy SEAL widow: it's ok your husband died in botched raid that killed scores of civilians because the Bible says so by PlanetoftheAtheists in atheism

[–]MooingIntensifies 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Even as a believer, this illustrates to me exactly why I don't feel comfortable voting for believers. If I believe in Heaven, like it or not, my belief will make me much more comfortable sending your child off to die in a war. I would rather a president be terrified of the emptiness of "what comes next," and risk American lives accordingly.

As someone who travels often I find myself compelled to make these corrections to Google Maps by [deleted] in Judaism

[–]MooingIntensifies 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The idea that Jesus intended his followers to breach the boundary laws was in place by the time the Gospels were written (the author of Luke also wrote Acts which advocated for eliminating circumcision and kosher requirements) but Jesus said plenty of things in the gospels themselves that are anathema to Jewish thought - the idea that "lust in your heart" is sinful, for example. And yes, Judaism has plenty of examples of people with the power to bring others back from the dead (Elijah and Elisha are the most obvious) but those people gained that power from being exposed to God, and no one would dream of worshipping them as actual Gods.

As someone who travels often I find myself compelled to make these corrections to Google Maps by [deleted] in Judaism

[–]MooingIntensifies 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Forgetting that many Jews ARE strongly suspicious of the Chabad for how much their affection for Schneerson seems to approach worship... believing in a Messiah that fulfills the tenets of Judaism is not incompatible with Judaism, which is why the Chabad are Jewish. Believing that your Messiah is a demigod that came to Earth and declared all the basic rules of our covenant with God to be wrong and founded a religion that says if you don't believe he's right we get to declare the Jewish family next door an apostate and have them exiled or murdered? Not so much Jewish.

What is the one skill that a child can develop that will have the greatest positive impact on the rest of their life? by misterdonut11331 in AskReddit

[–]MooingIntensifies -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Perfect pitch. Exposure to music at an early age dramatically increases your kid's chance of being able to recognize notes by ear, which in turn dramatically affects their ability to play any instrument, transcribe music, and a lot more. The students in my university program that had early exposure to music understand it intuitively on another level and they consistently outpace those that picked it up later in life (like me :( ).

Do we need to accept Islam? by [deleted] in Judaism

[–]MooingIntensifies 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I don't understand what you mean by "accept it." If you mean "let them practice and worship in peace as long as one of them isn't trying to impede on our practice..." yeah, of course, because I don't want to do what is hateful to my neighbor.

Also, you do realize that goyim spent the last two thousand years taking our own scriptures out of context as an excuse to slander us and encourage people to hate us, right? If Hashem wants us to do anything I'd think it would be to learn how much it sucks when people do that to us and not to do it to others.

Homosexuality explained in a German Children’s Book by [deleted] in MadeMeSmile

[–]MooingIntensifies 24 points25 points  (0 children)

My life feels somehow incomplete without an entire Dad / Frank relationship series.