The Oven of Akhnai and the Talmud

[DrZoidberg]

Listening to the Litterature and history podcast and the episode on the Talmud there's a section which I really like.

It's an episode regarding the oven of Akhnai. The debate is whether or not the oven is kosher. Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus claimed it was. The other rabbis claimed it wasn't. To back up his claim Eliezer asked God to send a miracle to prove him right. and God did. They other rabbis weren't convinced. Then Eliezer asked for another miracle and it came. The other rabbis weren't convinced. Then came a third miracle and the other rabbis still weren't convinced. Exasperated Eliezer asked what would supernatural act of God would convince them. They said that nothing would.

There's a longer theological argument following this. But the message is this, people can easily be fooled by stage magician parlor tricks and supersticious nonsense. According to Jewish belief God has backed off from telling humans how to run their business. So any evidence of God getting directly involved is a red flag.

It's theological argument for science, or scientific type inquiry.

What's remarkable is that this was written sometime between 600 AD and 1000 AD.

It's also important to keep in mind that the Talmud is a record of theological debates. Every reasonable position is recorded and given space. With one caveat. The Talmud and writing the Talmud was a Jewish reaction against Jewish mysticism (the stuff that became the Kabbalah). So they have little patience for that brance of Judaism. Otherwise it's a remarkably balanced piece of theology.

There's no real discussion here. I'm just sharing my thoughts.

My favourite text in the Talmud (and a very different part) is this

"Rabbi Yirmeya raises a dilemma: If one leg of the chick was within fifty cubits of the dovecote, and one leg was beyond fifty cubits, what is the halakha? The Gemara
comments: And it was for his question about this far-fetched scenario that they removed Rabbi Yirmeya from the study hall, as he was apparently wasting the Sages' time:"

I also also like that the Talmud is seeminly unedited. It's like it's all in there. With no attempt to create a singular monolithic message or interpretation.

 

[No Robots]

The Talmud and writing the Talmud was a Jewish reaction against Jewish mysticism (the stuff that became the Kabbalah). So they have little patience for that brance of Judaism.

Source? Jewish Encyclopedia shows a complex relationship between Kabbalah and Talmud.

 

[Janice Rael]

The debate is whether or not the oven is kosher.

I thought you were making a Holocaust joke!

A Holocaust survivor died and went to Heaven. When he got there, he told God a Holocaust joke. God said, "Hmm, I don't get it." The man said "I guess you had to have been there."

(it's okay, in between the osteoarthritis and the pinched nerve, I'm already burning in some sort of hell)

 

[DrZoidberg]

The Talmud and writing the Talmud was a Jewish reaction against Jewish mysticism (the stuff that became the Kabbalah). So they have little patience for that brance of Judaism.

Source? Jewish Encyclopedia shows a complex relationship between Kabbalah and Talmud.

My source is in the first sentence of the first post

Yeah, who would have thought Jews could complicate matters?

Fun Jewish saying, "two Jews, three opinions"

Yes, once the Kabbalah was created non-Jewish mystics had to respond. The nature of Judaism is that it's open to dissent. Judaism isn't a pronouncement from upon high. Judaism is an ongoing conversation that never stopped. They never stopped adding sacred texts.

Seen with a Christian lens the Torah is the only thing that really matters. But that's not how Judaism works

 

[No Robots]

Yes, once the Kabbalah was created non-Jewish mystics had to respond.

Do you mean here "non-mystic Jews"?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Yes, once the Kabbalah was created non-Jewish mystics had to respond.

Do you mean here "non-mystic Jews"?

Ha ha. Yes. Exactly.

There's more to than that they were non mystics. What had happened within Judaism was that the Gnostic mystics had started to posit that Jehova was a false God and the real God was hidden. It's all the talk of Demiurge and Yaldabaoth. It was getting really really weird. Christians at the same time was also distancing them from Christian mystics.

As usual there's a context. So Jews might have been sympathetic to mystic ideas, but feeling the need to strongly draw the line somewhere. Which the Talmud certainly does

 

[No Robots]

^I'm a devotee of Constantin Brunner and Harry Waton. Both argue that there has always been antagonism between the mystical/prophetic stream and the priestly/rabbinic stream. Brunner rejects Kabbalah, whereas Waton embraces it. I'm on Waton's side on this. I would say to Brunner that geniuses may be able to do without Kabbalah, but the rest of us need it to reach the heights of the spirit and intellect and then to reconnect with the lowlands of everyday life.

 

[No Robots]

The Talmud and writing the Talmud was a Jewish reaction against Jewish mysticism (the stuff that became the Kabbalah). So they have little patience for that brance of Judaism. Otherwise it's a remarkably balanced piece of theology.

Kabbalah is not mysticism. It is philosophy. Prophetism is mysticism. Philosophy and mysticism have the same objective, to proclaim the Shema: Hear, Israel, Being is your god. Being is one! Philosophy operates within the realm of reason, whereas mysticism operates in the realm of intuition. Both are generally rejected by official religion, which operates essentially as superstition.

 

[DrZoidberg]

^I'm a devotee of Constantin Brunner and Harry Waton. Both argue that there has always been antagonism between the mystical/prophetic stream and the priestly/rabbinic stream. Brunner rejects Kabbalah, whereas Waton embraces it. I'm on Waton's side on this. I would say to Brunner that geniuses may be able to do without Kabbalah, but the rest of us need it to reach the heights of the spirit and intellect and then to reconnect with the lowlands of everyday life.

Both of them are missing the point. There's no one correct interpretation. The Talmud contains a variety of interpretations.

Judaism is not Christianity. Christians keep going on about the one correct interpretation, ad fontes and all that. That's not Judaism. Fun fact. Orthodox Judaism is a type of Judaism that developed after contact with Evangelical Christians. Orthodox Judaism is a fundie Christian type Judaism. A type of Judaism without tradition within Judaism.

Jews are a pragmatic lot. That's the religions most prominent feature. A kind of feature developed after finding themselves under the thumb of so many foreign rulers.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The Talmud and writing the Talmud was a Jewish reaction against Jewish mysticism (the stuff that became the Kabbalah). So they have little patience for that brance of Judaism. Otherwise it's a remarkably balanced piece of theology.

Kabbalah is not mysticism. It is philosophy. Prophetism is mysticism. Philosophy and mysticism have the same objective, to proclaim the Shema: Hear, Israel, Being is your god. Being is one! Philosophy operates within the realm of reason, whereas mysticism operates in the realm of intuition. Both are generally rejected by official religion, which operates essentially as superstition.

Word sallad. None of that made any sense IMHO.

I think you have tried to reformulate big words in your own words and it didn't work out.

Edit: What's interesting about the Kabbalah isn't the model of it or the original idea. Any moron can make a schematic of our inner life. And many have. (for example Arild Rosenkrantz, Hilma af Klint). What makes the Kabbalah interesting is the tens of thousands of rabbis, mystics and occultists who have interpretted it and written about it. It's been an evolving group effort to make the Kabbalah meaningful. That's it's strength. What the originators thought... who gives a shit!?! That's the least interesting part of studying Kabblah.

Here's another interesting fact. The originators of the Kabbalah were gnostic. Ie the spiritual world is the real world and good, and the material (real) world is evil and false. The Tree of Life is a hierarchy. Which is retarded. Aleister Crowley re-intreted the Tree of Life and elevated the material to be on the same level as the spiritual/divine. And now, instead of a hierarchy, there's a dynamic interplay. Suddenly, the works of all these tens of thousands jewish mystics made sense, and allows us for a much richer experience of life. Crowley also dug deep into Yoga and Hindu mysticsm. A completely different tradition, that never had the "material world is evil" dichotomy. Putting them side by side is super cool.

The best insight I have gotten studying Jewish, Hindu and Aztec mysticism is that knowing the name of something doesn't mean you understand it. Life needs to be experienced and felt.

 

[No Robots]

^Kabbalah is monist. Good and evil are correlatives: one cannot exist without the other.

 

[DrZoidberg]

^Kabbalah is monist. Good and evil are correlatives: one cannot exist without the other.

Yes. But then you need to solve the theodicy problem. Which monists always have had to struggle with.

Not to point out the obvious but the Old Testament is not monist. The old testament is henotheist. Jehova is just a standard storm god, (Zeus, Jupiter, Baal, Thor etc). The monotheism has been retrofitted on afterwards (or rather, "El" the Israelite God, got merged with Jehova, the Judaite God and they needed to somehow explain away how these theologies are radically different, without removing any of the sacred texts from either). This has been rich fodder for Jewish and Christian mystics ever since.

 

[No Robots]

^Kabbalah is monist. Good and evil are correlatives: one cannot exist without the other.

Yes. But then you need to solve the theodicy problem. Which monists always have had to struggle with.

God is the source of all things, including evil. Without evil, there can be no good.

Not to point out the obvious but the Old Testament is not monist. The old testament is henotheist. Jehova is just a standard storm god, (Zeus, Jupiter, Baal, Thor etc). The monotheism has been retrofitted on afterwards (or rather, "El" the Israelite God, got merged with Jehova, the Judaite God and they needed to somehow explain away how these theologies are radically different, without removing any of the sacred texts from either). This has been rich fodder for Jewish and Christian mystics ever since.

The Bible is indeed monist. Jehovah is existence itself. Hear, Israel, Being is your god, Being is one!

 

[DrZoidberg]

^Kabbalah is monist. Good and evil are correlatives: one cannot exist without the other.

Yes. But then you need to solve the theodicy problem. Which monists always have had to struggle with.

God is the source of all things, including evil. Without evil, there can be no good.

Yes, the Montaigne solution. Not a particularly good one. The logic of, unless someone at your dinner party is an asshole the rest of you aren't able to be pleasant to eachother. It exploits the fact that we have a strong tendency to think in dichotomies. But just because we have a habit of thinking like this, doesn't mean it accurately represents reality. No, we don't need evil for there to be good. We are fully able to paint a wall with just one colour. Not only are we able to do it. It's what we prefer.

But that's the problem with all of the theodicy solutions. None of them are particularly good.

Not to point out the obvious but the Old Testament is not monist. The old testament is henotheist. Jehova is just a standard storm god, (Zeus, Jupiter, Baal, Thor etc). The monotheism has been retrofitted on afterwards (or rather, "El" the Israelite God, got merged with Jehova, the Judaite God and they needed to somehow explain away how these theologies are radically different, without removing any of the sacred texts from either). This has been rich fodder for Jewish and Christian mystics ever since.

The Bible is indeed monist. Jehovah is existence itself. Hear, Israel, Being is your god, Being is one!

Yahwism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I find it a bit sad that you have so little respect for the Bible. It's a lot cooler and profound than you give it credit for. The problem with your assertion is that Jews just keep adding to their sacred text. They don't take stuff out. Even when the religion changed in a fundamental way. Yes, Judaism became monist. But the Torah isn't. It's both monotheist and henotheist. We can track the evolution of Judaism toward monotheism in the Bible. Which is cool. There's no other sacred text that does this. The scope and immense content of the Torah is awesome and amazing. Whatever sacred text you compare it to, it has no equal.

 

[No Robots]

Yes, the Montaigne solution. Not a particularly good one. The logic of, unless someone at your dinner party is an asshole the rest of you aren't able to be pleasant to eachother. It exploits the fact that we have a strong tendency to think in dichotomies. But just because we have a habit of thinking like this, doesn't mean it accurately represents reality. No, we don't need evil for there to be good. We are fully able to paint a wall with just one colour. Not only are we able to do it. It's what we prefer.

Here is Harry Waton:

Existence rests on the eternal and infinite law of equivalents. There must be a quid pro quo; for everything we get from existence or we expect to get we must pay an equivalent, and this equivalent is paid in coins of work, struggle, suffering and death. We: must work for the material means of life, we must struggle for intellectual attainments, we must suffer for spiritual excellence, and we must die to live. This is the absolute, eternal and infinite law of existence, this law is the soul of existence, of God, of the Absolute.

Those who reject this are simply trying to get something from existence without paying for it.

I find it a bit sad that you have so little respect for the Bible. It's a lot cooler and profound than you give it credit for. The problem with your assertion is that Jews just keep adding to their sacred text. They don't take stuff out. Even when the religion changed in a fundamental way. Yes, Judaism became monist. But the Torah isn't. It's both monotheist and henotheist. We can track the evolution of Judaism toward monotheism in the Bible. Which is cool. There's no other sacred text that does this. The scope and immense content of the Torah is awesome and amazing. Whatever sacred text you compare it to, it has no equal.

It is you who underestimate the clarity and depth of the thought that is developed in the Bible. Judaism is not theism at all. Here is Constantin Brunner:

Jahveh ehad, cried Moses: “Hear O Israel, Being is our God, Being is One” (Deut. 6:4).

Yet this quotation provides precisely the historically monstrous example of how Israel hears and how the truth is straightway transformed into superstition in Israel’s ears. For this magnificent saying is at once a hymn of exultation and a wrathful protest against idol worship of any kind; but despite this protest, it now signifies — in the conception of Israel, the Jewish, Christian and Mohammedan Israel — the well-enough known, imbecilically wrong translation: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is the only God!” (Brunner, Spinoza gegen Kant, page 43). Moses said that thou shalt not make unto thee any image of this Jahveh, no imagination of it, ie, it is that which cannot be thought as things are thought, as if it had the same sort of being as things — I am that I am (Ex. 3:14)! Jahveh, Being, is the term for the wholly abstract spiritual; it has no relation to the relative world. By Jahveh, the wholly great is meant. It means the same thing as Spinoza does in his greater — his absolutely great expression, Ens constans infinitis attributis [Absolute being with infinite attributes]. And Jahveh Tsebaot, Jahveh of infinite powers, is nothing but the mystical expression of the same thing as is expressed philosophically by Ens constans infinitis attributis. The whole tremendous concern of Judaism lies in this phrase Jahveh ehad, in that single word Jahveh, which was ultimately forbidden even to be pronounced, and to pronounce which was a deadly sin. The mystical primordial character of Judaism —so naturally mystical that the Jews, in spite of their having made Jahvism into religion, never established a mythology, even while their Jahveh always remained exalted as God over every god of other religions, so that other ancient civilizations did not recognize him as a god, and said that the Jews were without religion and atheistic — the mystical primordial character of Judaism expressed itself in this, its ineffable holy word.

The original insights in the Bible have been obscured, obscured to the point where Jahveh is now seen by some as originally a storm god. This is the sad denigration of the Bible by a degraded humanity.

 

[No Robots]

^As for the referenced Wikipedia article "Yahwism", this is further evidence of the degraded thought of scholars. Here is something vastly superior:

Let us call our religion YAHVISM. It is no new-fangled name, it is simply the name by which our faith was called and cherished by our forefathers, who designated it as YIRATH YAHVE, the religion of Yahve. It is the fittest of all possible names for our religion. It is the expression of our cardinal beliefs and the profoundest ideas of our faith. Under this name we adore God as Eternal and Infinite Existence, as the source of all being.--"Yahvism" / Adolph Moses.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

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