Is there a commandment or law from God that the Jews have that states this is wrong or is it just tradition? Hezekiah was trying to keep Jews from using all the pagan sites, but other than that is there actual God law on this? Also the lack of any actual priesthood or for that matter any actual lineage knowledge is the reason priestly sacrifices are off the table.agricola wrote:... it became 'wrong' to conduct a sacrifice at any other location.
Agricola
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Isn't the world wonderful...I am all for rational optimism and I am staying positive.
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Israel's Messiah.SolaDude wrote:Teresa,
How would NT Wright see Jesus in terms of the prophesied Mesiah? Did he see him as Israel's Messiah?...or perhaps more of a "pre-Messiah"??....
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KLP wrote:Is there a commandment or law from God that the Jews have that states this is wrong or is it just tradition? Hezekiah was trying to keep Jews from using all the pagan sites, but other than that is there actual God law on this? Also the lack of any actual priesthood or for that matter any actual lineage knowledge is the reason priestly sacrifices are off the table.agricola wrote:... it became 'wrong' to conduct a sacrifice at any other location.
Leviticus 17 orders the sacrifical meat to at least be killed at the tabernacle so the people would stop offering sacrifices to goat demons.
Also, considering the nature of some sacrifices and how they are to be made it is implied they had to be offered at the tabernacle or the temple because they had to be ritually performed by a priest.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.----Karl Marx
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Actually, priestly lineages are the one genealogical lineage which we DO keep, reasonably well. I know half a dozen hereditary priests - it is an elevated position within Judaism therefore, priests (and levites) have been acknowledged continually - they are the only Jewish families which actually have HEBREW family names. Everybody else goes by X son/daughter of Y, but priests are X son of Y the priest and levites are X son of Y the Levite. Non priests and levites had to take 'family names' in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, and chose names or were assigned them by the local authorities, but priests and levites often kept their original 'the priest' and 'the levite' surnames.
Often (though not always) someone named Cohen is an hereditary priest. Other ways to spell it are Kahane, Kohn or Cohn. Katz is also a priestly last name (it is 'Holy Priest: Kahan ha Tzaddi). A Levite may often have the surname Levy or Levine, or (for some reason or other) Shapiro.
So no, the priestly and levitical families are not lost. The only thing missing is the Temple, and a completely red heifer. People keep their eyes open for a completely red heifer, and every few years there is news (among the local Jewish communities at least) that one may have been found. The heifer has to be totally and completely red, and that's rare.
My husband's maternal great-grandfather was a Levite. The mere fact that we know that is an indication of how well that kind of information is preserved through time. My husband's mother was the granddaughter of a Levite. Status points.
Interestingly, DNA studies have shown that a very high percentage of the men who say they are Cohen's actually do share a paternal ancestor on the order of 2500 to 3000 years in the past. It is called the Cohen Modal haplotype, and roughly 10% of Jewish men carry it, most of them acknowledged priests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Aaron
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Often (though not always) someone named Cohen is an hereditary priest. Other ways to spell it are Kahane, Kohn or Cohn. Katz is also a priestly last name (it is 'Holy Priest: Kahan ha Tzaddi). A Levite may often have the surname Levy or Levine, or (for some reason or other) Shapiro.
So no, the priestly and levitical families are not lost. The only thing missing is the Temple, and a completely red heifer. People keep their eyes open for a completely red heifer, and every few years there is news (among the local Jewish communities at least) that one may have been found. The heifer has to be totally and completely red, and that's rare.
My husband's maternal great-grandfather was a Levite. The mere fact that we know that is an indication of how well that kind of information is preserved through time. My husband's mother was the granddaughter of a Levite. Status points.
Interestingly, DNA studies have shown that a very high percentage of the men who say they are Cohen's actually do share a paternal ancestor on the order of 2500 to 3000 years in the past. It is called the Cohen Modal haplotype, and roughly 10% of Jewish men carry it, most of them acknowledged priests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Aaron
.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
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So your husband can actually trace his family generation by generation back to Levi...that is pretty cool. I guess it is the same now as it was back in the day...folks could actually document themselves back to their tribe. So do you have a count on the generations between Levi and your husband and then have it in a book or web app?
Isn't the world wonderful...I am all for rational optimism and I am staying positive.
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Alas, it is through the maternal line - my husband's mother's mother's father - which doesn't 'count' for tribal membership. At this point, very very few Jews who are not of the tribe of Levi (priests and levites are both tribe of Levi) know their ancestral tribes, but there are always a few who have maintained a family tradition.
(I know a guy who says he's from Judah for sure, with reasonable records to a certain medieval rabbi, who was known to be tribe of Judah then).
Almost nobody - I should say 'nobody' but it might be possible there is someone out there - actually has valid documentation to show - who can really accurately trace their genealogy back over two thousand years, after all? Even the Cohens and Levites - they know what they are because their parents told them, and THEIR parents were recorded as being Cohens or Levites - back as far as records exist - and from that time back it is all family lore and synagogue records (which amount to 'everybody in Pshvorsk knows that Abe is a Cohen'). There are things like gravestones - priestly families often have certain symbols on their gravestones which are exclusively for priests, even if no written records still exist, if there is a carving on a gravestone, it is persuasive evidence that the dead person buried there was a Cohen.
The more recent DNA studies have been super interesting - the information doesn't PROVE someone is a Cohen/Levite, but it is certainly persuasive evidence that two millenia of oral (mostly) transmission of ancestry is valid after all.
Today's Jews identify themselves as either Cohen, Levy or 'Israel' where 'Israel' includes all the other tribes. There's no difference in Jewish life between being, say, a Danite, a Reubenite, or a Judahite, so nobody (or hardly anybody) has tried to keep track. Only Cohens and Levites have different 'rules' and different synagogue honorable positions or tasks.
Given the historical domination of the tribe of Judah in the Southern Kingdom, however, it is HIGHLY likely that the majority of Jews who are not of the tribe of Levi, are from the tribe of Judah, with the rest being mostly Benjamin and Reuben, with a trace number from the other tribes - but that is mere historical probabilities, not information about particular families. The tribal knowledge has simply been lost over time, but even as late as the 15th century, tribal memberships were still remembered in some families - there are journals and other written sources where people signed themselves 'so and so son of so and so of the tribe of Dan' for instance. That's rare, but it exists.
Converts of course, don't have a tribe, and all converts are merely 'Israel' anyway - along with everybody else. You can convert to Judaism; you can't convert to a specific family line (become a priest or levite).
(I know a guy who says he's from Judah for sure, with reasonable records to a certain medieval rabbi, who was known to be tribe of Judah then).
Almost nobody - I should say 'nobody' but it might be possible there is someone out there - actually has valid documentation to show - who can really accurately trace their genealogy back over two thousand years, after all? Even the Cohens and Levites - they know what they are because their parents told them, and THEIR parents were recorded as being Cohens or Levites - back as far as records exist - and from that time back it is all family lore and synagogue records (which amount to 'everybody in Pshvorsk knows that Abe is a Cohen'). There are things like gravestones - priestly families often have certain symbols on their gravestones which are exclusively for priests, even if no written records still exist, if there is a carving on a gravestone, it is persuasive evidence that the dead person buried there was a Cohen.
The more recent DNA studies have been super interesting - the information doesn't PROVE someone is a Cohen/Levite, but it is certainly persuasive evidence that two millenia of oral (mostly) transmission of ancestry is valid after all.
Today's Jews identify themselves as either Cohen, Levy or 'Israel' where 'Israel' includes all the other tribes. There's no difference in Jewish life between being, say, a Danite, a Reubenite, or a Judahite, so nobody (or hardly anybody) has tried to keep track. Only Cohens and Levites have different 'rules' and different synagogue honorable positions or tasks.
Given the historical domination of the tribe of Judah in the Southern Kingdom, however, it is HIGHLY likely that the majority of Jews who are not of the tribe of Levi, are from the tribe of Judah, with the rest being mostly Benjamin and Reuben, with a trace number from the other tribes - but that is mere historical probabilities, not information about particular families. The tribal knowledge has simply been lost over time, but even as late as the 15th century, tribal memberships were still remembered in some families - there are journals and other written sources where people signed themselves 'so and so son of so and so of the tribe of Dan' for instance. That's rare, but it exists.
Converts of course, don't have a tribe, and all converts are merely 'Israel' anyway - along with everybody else. You can convert to Judaism; you can't convert to a specific family line (become a priest or levite).
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
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So when the coc preachers say Jews can't practice the Old Law because the temple is destroyed and the priestly lineage is lost, they're lying. Big surprise there... Very interesting information, Agricola!
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On this sort of thing, I would prefer to say 'mistaken'. People in Jesus' day certainly knew their tribal identities and certainly knew who were priests and who were levites. They saw no good reason to stop maintaining that information simply because the temple was gone. After all, the Temple had been destroyed before.
But scattering the Jews throughout the Roman Empire after the Bar Kochba rebellion definitely cut some links, and it isn't at all surprising that - after 1700 years - most Jews haven't bothered to keep track of tribes - when it is ONLY the priests and levites who have any sort of distinction from the other eleven tribes.
Still - it is surely true that MOST Jews of the first century were from Judah if they weren't from Levi - and therefore, quite reasonably - most Jews today are probably Judahites, whether they know it or not.
Not a surprise - after all, it has been shown that around 70 or 80% of all Mongolians are descendants of Genghis Khan - and that's only 800 years ago!
Major leaders tend to have a lot of surviving children, after all. Plus the tribe of Judah as a whole was large and powerful, never mind the direct descendants of David and his dynastic line.
What's lacking are WRITTEN records of genealogies going back over 2000 years - not the information itself, the documentation of the information.
The Priests and Levites kept that sort of record, in the Temple - which was burned down...
But scattering the Jews throughout the Roman Empire after the Bar Kochba rebellion definitely cut some links, and it isn't at all surprising that - after 1700 years - most Jews haven't bothered to keep track of tribes - when it is ONLY the priests and levites who have any sort of distinction from the other eleven tribes.
Still - it is surely true that MOST Jews of the first century were from Judah if they weren't from Levi - and therefore, quite reasonably - most Jews today are probably Judahites, whether they know it or not.
Not a surprise - after all, it has been shown that around 70 or 80% of all Mongolians are descendants of Genghis Khan - and that's only 800 years ago!
Major leaders tend to have a lot of surviving children, after all. Plus the tribe of Judah as a whole was large and powerful, never mind the direct descendants of David and his dynastic line.
What's lacking are WRITTEN records of genealogies going back over 2000 years - not the information itself, the documentation of the information.
The Priests and Levites kept that sort of record, in the Temple - which was burned down...
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
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So then there is no actual recorded or known ancestral links...only probabilities, DNA, and family representations. So no one knows for sure if they are a descendent of any specific tribe. Seems like it would take a lot of chutzpah to claim that one is 100% sure they are a priest and to just trust them on offering sacrifices for the people.
Last edited by KLP on Thu Mar 01, 2018 6:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Isn't the world wonderful...I am all for rational optimism and I am staying positive.
Re: Agricola
You're right, "lying" is too strong a word there. I do think the preachers believe the Jews have no record of their lineage and thus can't practice the Old Law. They also believe this was done on purpose by God because they're all supposed to be Christians now. So that's not a lie. They're just wrong.agricola wrote:On this sort of thing, I would prefer to say 'mistaken'. People in Jesus' day certainly knew their tribal identities and certainly knew who were priests and who were levites. They saw no good reason to stop maintaining that information simply because the temple was gone. After all, the Temple had been destroyed before.
And I hadn't thought about the destruction of the temple having happened before... the preachers only mention the one in 70 AD, not the earlier destruction. If destruction of the temple is on purpose to stop Jewishness and turn everyone to Christianity, why wasn't the first destruction for stopping Jewishness? Hmmmm...