I used to attend a Torah study group. Once a week thing, mostly to humor a friend of mine who is religious. It mostly devolved around reading from a Siddur, a professional Jew telling me what's what, me ruthlessly disagreeing or providing an alternative perspective, and him saying "Nope." just because. Also the baked goods. By god do Jews know how to bake.

The biggest problem I have with Judaism is the idea that the main text was written by God. More specifically, spoken by God to a group of people, passed down a few generations, and then finally written down while preserving verbatim was what spoken. Whether or not God wrote the damn book himself, or it was transcribed is largely immaterial to what I'm looking to discover.

So I asked my Torah Bro for proof that God wrote the Toy-ruh.

And he looked at me and said,

"We are in God's brain."

And then his pupils dilated, and I got the **** out of there for good.

Religious Jews are so certain that the Torah is divine, but none of them have provided a convincing argument for so. They say it is not something a human is capable of writing, that there are "codes", that the grammatical errors are divine lessons, that I need to talk to someone else and go to Shul more.

I don't care if you believe in God or not. But can someone please explain to me what is so Divine about the Old Testament?

What is divine about it:

The word-of-mouth marketing hype it produced. Also the baked goods, and a communal weekly gathering to compare clothes and perfumes. God damn the perfumes.

They're indoctrinated by a millenia old cult - one that shuns outsiders and teaches that the Jews are special - God's chosen creatures. You'd have about as much luck turning a Scientologist, or convincing them that Hubbard was just a scifi writer who started his own religion for profit.

That said, arguments for the divine inspiration of the Old Testament

- The creation of the world is described in a way that seems to be least contradicted by science. No giant snakes or elephant trunks. Light splitting from dark. Firmament. Creation of sea creatures first, then land, then humans. An explanation of morality.

To an idiot, this seems remarkably prescient for the time (since science has later confirmed).

- The moral lessons in the Old Testament, however vicious and weird and lol they are, are a cut above the Paganism of the time.

- Some of the rules about how to act, what to eat, what to avoid, how to be clean, fit with germ theory and avoidance of disease vectors. Of course, every culture managed to figure out what to eat and not in every part of the world, but to an idiot this might seem like a divine power has given them very good rules from on high.

I find the Jews interesting because many of them are intelligent and learned, and yet they believe utter nonsense because social pressure is so strong. Jewish women are held up as God's creatures, which, combined with a common neuroticism, makes them uniquely influential over their boys, who then grow up to revere utter nonsense because mommy told them to. Fascinating study in oedipal psychology. Islam is cruder ("we'll kill you and disown you and you're not a human any more if you leave the religion"), so the fact that that also has such sticking power is less interesting.

Well, the question (or rather most questions) of divinity (in Abrahamic religions) mostly comes to trusting clergymen telling you stuff you have little or no way to test or fact-check in a reasonable manner.

Of course this argument can boil down to hundreds of hours of discussion and bickering regarding epistemology and "who can know what" and "can you know anything at all" and so fort and so forth.

Buuuuuuut, at the end of the day it's a book where animals talk.

"The errors have meaning" just sounds like "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" voodoo garbage.

I think what makes it so divine is that it is about divinity

Would it be blue if it was about blueness?

Cool, thanks for the bullet points.

Any theories how the OT came to be? Mine is that a group of Rabbi-types sat around writing what at the time was a really good book, and uh delivered it to some lower tiered Rabbi-types who loved it and made everyone else seek it out, or something.

This is a good summary of how the The Old Testament (especially the Torah) was written. Pay especially close attention to video# 9 of the playlist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6Ij...6A9759DB690FF0

You may really want to jump to number 9 before starting at 1.

Probably a lot like the New Testament, put together a long time after the fact from legend and oral histories.

I'm guessing it originated in a similar way to Scientology - someone decided to write down some stories and a creation myths, drawing on tribal knowledge and beliefs, and it kind of stuck with a tribe or two and spread. Generations later (before printing presses or widespread writing), it became a book of divine origin among some people (mocked by others) and then spread and spread. The mockery and commentary fell away without a written record, and it became the religious book and written history of the Jewish people, with more recent stories added as they happened.

The fact that Scientology (or Mormonism - see Book of Mormon for a fascinating and instructive analogy) can spread how they have from one person to millions, even in the modern age with writing and detailed historical records and detailed negative commentary, just goes to show how powerful a well written myth can be. Imagine that same effect thousands of years ago.

The Book of Mormon is actually an excellent counterpoint to the Old Testament (or the new). It's completely fabricated bull****, yet millions of people believe it's holy. For example, it gives the detailed history of non-Indian prophets who supposedly lived in America thousands of years ago. It recounts an angel giving golden plates to Joseph Smith in America in the 1800s.

Yet it managed to gain 15 million devout followers in 200 years, who believe in it absolutely, even in the modern age with modern minds, skepticism, education, awareness, written records.

You can see how similar pure inventions could easily overtake the Jewish tribes and others thousands of years ago.

kinda dumb. i dont think people are debating whether the actually physical books binding and pages are divine. Its contents are obv in reference to divinity tho. obv yes when people talked about blueness they would first prob look to your book. the book doesn;t need to be blue. it in itself isnt blue, its just the path or information towards that thing obv thats what books are.

Yes, it was dumb and that was the point.

Noone in this thread (or forum for that matter) is disputing or questioning that the old testament is about divinity. OP is obviously not asking "if OT is about divinity", he is asking if "OT is divine". Which in this case probably means something ala "worded by God" or "inspired by God".

In that context your statement was (and is) meaningless. If something "is divine" because it is "about divinity", then this post is divine.

I'm glad we agree.

Of course it was made as an illustration. So what is your reflection on your original reply, now? Do you still think it is apt? Is something "divine" because "it is about divinity"? If yes, is this post divine? If yes to the first and no to the second, why isn't a generalized claim general?

Yes i think your post can be divine if it is about/referring to god

Back then there was theology ascending over mythology: So, God. Pissed off patriarch was probably a bad model but hey muscles and Archimedes. /shrug.

Round the turn of the 20th there was light: Einstein.

Imagine picking up a textbook in the (never mind) and laughing at that whole Princeton gang and its infantile views of the Universe.

But nah. Give each era its proper perspective. Is there little morally aberrant about the OT given the context of a still-brutal era?

You see wistful divinity, I've never picked up a Torah but I know the inherent, sustained violence for survival during that era was...

It makes the current situation in roughly the same geographical area look like so much hopscotch.

So certain sects of Jews subscribe to a certain representation of pantheism. So do Eastern religions.

There is no absolutism in anybody today judging history using current mores. It's just as lame as making jokes about pinpoint pupils.

Maybe Yahweh rewarded him with some adrendaline kickapoo. Who are you to judge?

Christianity and Judaism were amply mocked and philosophized over in their own time as well.

Your point being?

Nietzsche's seminal statment came later but... It applies to collective concepts too.

Because it says so in the Old Testament.

Relatively speak, the New Testament writings were made a very short time after the supposed events, some being no more than a couple generations afterward. This does not conform to the pattern of legend and oral histories.

The Mormons withdrew from society to form their own community, and there were (and are) pretty strict penalties for questioning it. There's also a much more formal indoctrination pattern that is more controlled than what you would see in other Christian churches.

None of these actually fit the development of the Old or New Testaments.

Spoken as someone who has no idea what he's talking about.

She does, actually.

You make me laugh, Aaron W. If only because I know your future. A grim one, featureless and devoid of any real intelligence.

Wait, the present is the future arriving. Just so I don't induce Zeno to do some actual work, I'll spare you the rest.

What about the "fabricated bull****"-part?