Street Juice
Platinum Member
Here's another internal inconsistency within Judaism that is so objectionable I don't see how modern Jews can still adhere to it.
Literal Judaism is ultimately based on terror and fear and the list of curses set out in chapter 28 of The Second Law shows the importance which the priesthood attached to this practice of cursing (which literal Judaists to this day hold to be effective in use). These curses, be it remembered, are the penalties for non-observance, not for moral transgressions! "If thou will not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and statutes … all these curses shall come upon thee …"
The city and the dwelling, the children, crops and cattle, are to be cursed "until thou be destroyed and until thou perish utterly." Plague, wasting, inflammation, mildew, botch, emerods, scab, itch, madness, blindness, famine, cannibalism and drought are specified. Men’s wives are to lie with other men; their children are to be lost into slavery; any that remain at home are to be eaten by their parents, the father and mother contesting for the flesh and denying any to the children still alive. (These curses were included in the Great Ban when it was pronounced on apostates down to relatively recent times, and in the fastnesses of Talmudic Jewry are probably in use today).
The diseases and disasters were to be visited on the people "if thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, the Lord Thy God. I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live for ever."
Such was the life and the blessing which the Judahites, gathered in the Temple in 621 BC, were exhorted in the name of Jehovah and Moses to choose by their tribal chieftain Josiah, the mouthpiece of the priesthood. The purpose and meaning of existence, under this "Mosaic Law," was the destruction and enslavement of others for the sake of plunder and power. Israel might from that moment have counted itself happy to have been pronounced dead and to have been excluded from such a world to come. The Israelites had mingled in the living bloodstream of mankind; on its banks the Judahites were left stranded in the power of a fanatical priesthood which commanded them, on pain of "all these curses," to destroy.
To the terror inspired by "all these curses" the Levites added also an allurement. If "the people" should "return and obey the voice of the Lord, and do all his commandments …," then "all these curses" would be transferred to their "enemies" (not because these had sinned, but simply to swell the measure of the blessing conferred on the rehabilitated Judahites!)
In this tenet Deuteronomy most clearly revealed the status allotted to the heathen by The Second Law. In the last analysis, "the heathen" have no legal existence under this Law; how could they have, when Jehovah only "knows" his "holy people"? Insofar as their actual existence is admitted, it is only for such purposes as those stated in verse 65, chapter 28 and verse 7, chapter 30: namely, to receive the Judahites when they are dispersed for their transgressions and then, when their guests repent and are forgiven, to inherit curses lifted from the regenerate Judahites. True, the second verse quoted gives the pretext that "all these curses" will be transferred to the heathen because they "hated" and "persecuted" the judahites, but how could they be held culpable of this when the very presence of the Judahites among them was merely the result of punitive "curses" inflicted by Jehovah? For Jehovah himself, according to another verse (64, chapter 28) took credit for putting the curse of exile on the Judahites:
Deuteronomy employs this doublespeak throughout: the Lord makes the special people homeless among the heathen for their transgressions; the heathen, who have no blame either for their exile or for those transgressions, are their "persecutors "; ergo, the heathen will be destroyed.
The Judaist attitude towards other mankind, creation, and the universe in general, is better understood when these and related passages have been pondered, and especially the constant plaint that Jews are "persecuted" everywhere, which in one tone or another runs through nearly all Jewish literature. To any who accept this book as The Law, the mere existence of others is in fact persecution; Deuteronomy plainly implies that.
The most nationalist Jew and the most enlightened Jew often agree in one thing: they cannot truly consider the world and its affairs from any but a Jewish angle, and from that angle "the stranger" seems insignificant. Thinking makes it so, and this is the legacy of twenty-five centuries of Jewish thinking; even those Jews who see the heresy or fallacy cannot always divest themselves entirely of the incubus on their minds and spirits.
The passage from Deuteronomy last quoted shows that the ruling sect depicted homelessness at one and the same time as the act of the special people’s god and as persecution by the special people’s enemies, deserving of "all these curses." To minds of such extreme egotism a political outrage in which 95 Gentiles and 5 Jews lose their lives or property is simply an anti-Jewish disaster, and they are not consciously hypocritical in this. Today, this standard of judgment has been projected into the lives of other peoples and applied to all major events in the ordeal of the West. Thus we live in the century of the Levitical fallacy.
Literal Judaism is ultimately based on terror and fear and the list of curses set out in chapter 28 of The Second Law shows the importance which the priesthood attached to this practice of cursing (which literal Judaists to this day hold to be effective in use). These curses, be it remembered, are the penalties for non-observance, not for moral transgressions! "If thou will not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and statutes … all these curses shall come upon thee …"
The city and the dwelling, the children, crops and cattle, are to be cursed "until thou be destroyed and until thou perish utterly." Plague, wasting, inflammation, mildew, botch, emerods, scab, itch, madness, blindness, famine, cannibalism and drought are specified. Men’s wives are to lie with other men; their children are to be lost into slavery; any that remain at home are to be eaten by their parents, the father and mother contesting for the flesh and denying any to the children still alive. (These curses were included in the Great Ban when it was pronounced on apostates down to relatively recent times, and in the fastnesses of Talmudic Jewry are probably in use today).
The diseases and disasters were to be visited on the people "if thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, the Lord Thy God. I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live for ever."
Such was the life and the blessing which the Judahites, gathered in the Temple in 621 BC, were exhorted in the name of Jehovah and Moses to choose by their tribal chieftain Josiah, the mouthpiece of the priesthood. The purpose and meaning of existence, under this "Mosaic Law," was the destruction and enslavement of others for the sake of plunder and power. Israel might from that moment have counted itself happy to have been pronounced dead and to have been excluded from such a world to come. The Israelites had mingled in the living bloodstream of mankind; on its banks the Judahites were left stranded in the power of a fanatical priesthood which commanded them, on pain of "all these curses," to destroy.
To the terror inspired by "all these curses" the Levites added also an allurement. If "the people" should "return and obey the voice of the Lord, and do all his commandments …," then "all these curses" would be transferred to their "enemies" (not because these had sinned, but simply to swell the measure of the blessing conferred on the rehabilitated Judahites!)
In this tenet Deuteronomy most clearly revealed the status allotted to the heathen by The Second Law. In the last analysis, "the heathen" have no legal existence under this Law; how could they have, when Jehovah only "knows" his "holy people"? Insofar as their actual existence is admitted, it is only for such purposes as those stated in verse 65, chapter 28 and verse 7, chapter 30: namely, to receive the Judahites when they are dispersed for their transgressions and then, when their guests repent and are forgiven, to inherit curses lifted from the regenerate Judahites. True, the second verse quoted gives the pretext that "all these curses" will be transferred to the heathen because they "hated" and "persecuted" the judahites, but how could they be held culpable of this when the very presence of the Judahites among them was merely the result of punitive "curses" inflicted by Jehovah? For Jehovah himself, according to another verse (64, chapter 28) took credit for putting the curse of exile on the Judahites:
Deuteronomy employs this doublespeak throughout: the Lord makes the special people homeless among the heathen for their transgressions; the heathen, who have no blame either for their exile or for those transgressions, are their "persecutors "; ergo, the heathen will be destroyed.
The Judaist attitude towards other mankind, creation, and the universe in general, is better understood when these and related passages have been pondered, and especially the constant plaint that Jews are "persecuted" everywhere, which in one tone or another runs through nearly all Jewish literature. To any who accept this book as The Law, the mere existence of others is in fact persecution; Deuteronomy plainly implies that.
The most nationalist Jew and the most enlightened Jew often agree in one thing: they cannot truly consider the world and its affairs from any but a Jewish angle, and from that angle "the stranger" seems insignificant. Thinking makes it so, and this is the legacy of twenty-five centuries of Jewish thinking; even those Jews who see the heresy or fallacy cannot always divest themselves entirely of the incubus on their minds and spirits.
The passage from Deuteronomy last quoted shows that the ruling sect depicted homelessness at one and the same time as the act of the special people’s god and as persecution by the special people’s enemies, deserving of "all these curses." To minds of such extreme egotism a political outrage in which 95 Gentiles and 5 Jews lose their lives or property is simply an anti-Jewish disaster, and they are not consciously hypocritical in this. Today, this standard of judgment has been projected into the lives of other peoples and applied to all major events in the ordeal of the West. Thus we live in the century of the Levitical fallacy.
