Posted by:
Tevai
(
)
Date: June 25, 2017 11:40PM
pollythinks Wrote:
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> Posted by angela: pollythinks Wrote: "Jesus was
> the son of Mary, who was not a Jew" ???????????
First of all: Your post is an excellent example of "When you ask for something, remember that, although it may indeed come to you, it may come dressed quite differently than you imagined it might be before you got it. The living skill required is to recognize what you wanted dressed as is IS, not necessarily the way you thought it might be dressed before it appeared."
I have had many questions (increasingly so over the past couple of years, because of major events on the U.S. national scene), about issues which your post (inadvertently, I am almost certain) is leading me to answers. I thank you!
> This relative's husband was a priest, and as such was
> not a Jew (as Jews came from a different
> genealogical line of the house of Israel, than did
> priests).
The priesthood biological line in Judaism is Jewish, and Jewish priests (of this line, called cohanim in Hebrew), are an integral part of Judaism. In modern times, their priesthood duties are restricted to basically giving a [scripted] blessing, on certain occasions, to assembled congregations, but (if they are observant Jews) they are restricted in many practical ways in modern life: if observant, they cannot marry converts to Judaism, nor those (or their descendants) who come under the archaic Jewish legal definition of "mamzer"...they have restrictions over their potential physical nearness to dead people (which means certain restrictions on observant rabbis, etc.; as well as restrictions on professions which are allowed for observant cohanim)...and so on.
There is some kind of DNA configuration that evidently does go through the Jewish priesthood line, and is reliable enough that this becomes of great import to those Jews who are biologically members of the cohanim, and who decide at some point in their lives to become observant, depending on the Jewish group that they decide to affiliate with (starting with a Jewish group called Chabad, but this is true for all the ultra-right Jewish groups that I am aware of).
Most Jews don't pay any attention to any of this (except that a cohain-descended person may be asked to give the cohain's blessing at some synagogue service), but it does exist, and if someone "returns" to observant Judaism, it can be important to that person, and that person's spouse, and their offspring.
To assert that Jewish "priests" [meaning: of the Jewish priesthood line] are not Jews is absurd.
Your reference to "a different genealogical line": Jewish priesthood line aside, all the rest of Judaism is a conglomeration of just about "everyone" on the planet! (All of whom are in the homo sapiens sapiens genealogical line, but I don't think this is what you were referring to. ;)
There are Jews of all of the major races, and countless ethnic groups within those races. Entire communities have, in Jewish history, joined the Jewish tribe as a whole...and individual converts to Judaism have always existed.
This is actually one of the defining features of the Jewish people: converts, and descendants of once-upon-a-time converts, have existed since literally biblical times ("beginning," for the written record anyway, with Ruth, in the OT). Genealogy in ancient/biblical times has probably NOTHING to do with "Who Is A Jew"---so if your argument about "Who WAS A Jew" in ancient times is based on genealogy, it is very likely going to fail.
> Thus, so was Mary's genealogical line
> of the priesthood, versus from the tribe of
> Judah).
Here you seem to be saying that Mary is a female in the priesthood line, so her getting pregnant by God would not be kosher? Or is your argument that her husband, Joseph, was not a cohain? The "tribe of Judah" was undoubtedly like all the other Jewish tribes (again: cohainim aside), meaning: people (such as the geographical neighbors of Jews, people passing through lands owned at that time by Jews, etc.), did sometimes decide to join with the Jews, so they "converted in" through whatever means was considered acceptable at that time. (Again: reread the part of the Book of Ruth where she becomes the [for literary purposes] "first Jewish convert." To Ruth, it was a simple declaration to her mother-in-law: "Your people shall be my people," (etc.), which comprised Ruth's conversion "ceremony," and at that moment she became a Jew like any other Jew.
> Prior to Mary's being predesignated by the Holy
> Spirit of God (that is, God in spirit form) to be
> the mother of Jesus, an angle had come to her to
> ask her permission for this to be done. She
> responded with, 'Be it unto me as thou has said'.
[I have no Jewish problem with this.]
> This same angle also appeared to Joseph, and told
> him not to 'Put Mary away' due to her condition,
> as that 'what had occurred to her was of God'.
[I have no Jewish problem with this, either.]
> So it was that the couple married, and were
> required to 'be counted' in the national census of
> the people--which is how they ended up in a
> 'barn', (with the animals), 'as there was no room
> for them in the inn'.
To my knowledge, there has been no historical or archaeological verification of this, and it does not make practical sense. The area was under Roman occupation, and it was in the Romans' best interest to keep the economy perking along and the taxes rolling in. If a census was to be taken, it would have made a lot more sense to assign the task to Roman soldiers (take a few Roman soldiers from each military unit, or assign an entire military unit to this particular task) so that the numbers could be collected, but the economy would not be disrupted. There would also be written records which would still exist (at least some of them, for sure, would have been sent to Rome), or would have been copied by others in succeeding years and archived. To my knowledge, nothing like this exists in any museum or archive.
> And so,it was there that Mary gave birth to her
> baby (during which process, I believe, she was
> aided by a mid-wive from among their traveling
> group, who could therefore testify to the fact of
> Mary still being, technically, a 'virgin' before
> her child was born).
This has to be a later Christian construct. Jewish marriages are timed, in advance, SPECIFICALLY to the bride's menstrual period so that sex (which, in Jewish law, is a WOMAN's right, and a man's DUTY) may occur on the wedding night (assuming it has not occurred prior, which is common). Other than when dealing with the aftermath of rape (which would, anciently, be considered, legally, more of a property crime against the "guardian" of the woman/girl).
There are no "brownie points" given to a Jewish bride who remains a virgin after (as an ENDING point), her marriage---this is a specifically Christian value.
To Jews, abstaining from sex (except during a woman's menstrual period, or directly after childbirth), is just considered daft, so long as both parties are healthy and normal.
Also: as we all know now, the anatomical "signs" of virginity are greatly overrated, and frequently misleading. A midwife in ancient times who encountered a genuinely virginal pregnant mother giving birth would not willingly be attesting to that apparent "fact" because it would cast doubt on the marriage itself. (What had Joseph been doing, or NOT doing, all those months, when his wife over these same months has been LEGALLY owed no less than a minimum of sex once every week, and maybe more than that depending on what Joseph's JEWISHLY LEGAL obligation to her was as it was written down, specifically for carpenters?)
If there was any "note" of this made by ANYONE, it would have been for the purpose of testifying before a Bet Din (rabbinical court) that Mary was owed a "get" (legal divorce) because her husband was PLAINLY not meeting his LEGAL OBLIGATION of sex to her as his wife.)
> Again, priest spent extensive time in the temple,
> as was true of Mary's uncle (when his turn came to
> do so). Hence, his position--being a priest in the
> temple--shows that he was not Jewish (as Jews came
> from Judah, and nnever possessed the priesthood).
Again: this is just incorrect. "Jews" and "Judah" are not synonymous, and never were.
> So, Jesus was born of Mary, and Jesus' real father
> was not Joseph (who was much older man than Mary
> herself, who was only around 14-15 yrs. of age),
> but who nonetheless had been betrothed to Joseph.
IMPORTANT POINT: In Jewish law, there is a betrothal (where both people give their consent to the marriage, and an economic deal is set which will be written into their marriage contract), and then (during that particular historical time, at sometime in the future) marriage.
During betrothal (which can only be opted out of by a legal DIVORCE!), it is expected that many couples WILL have sex (and, in fact, it is a way of legally "getting married" if the couple assigns two Jewishly-legal witnesses to witness them, a betrothed couple, going into a closed room together and emerging from that room after maybe a half-hour or an hour or so. Those witnesses can then attest, before a Bet Din, that they personally observed the circumstances which were required to establish that a betrothed couple had married (in other words: they had sex together), and that a marriage---therefore---existed.
Once a Jewishly-legal marriage existed, Mary would have been OWED sex a minimum of once a week (maybe more; as I said above, I don't know what the minimum sex quota is for carpenters). So none of this Christian take on Mary and Joseph makes any kind of sense Jewishly. For Mary to have remained a virgin not only after her betrothal, but after her MARRIAGE, would have been (Jewishly) bizarre.
(At some point after these ancient times, the betrothal and marriage ceremonies began happening at the "same" time: marriage directly after betrothal, both of them right under the chuppah (Jewish wedding canopy). This evidently began in order to save family resources (one celebration required instead of two, an obligation which had been increasingy financially burdensome to Jewish families), and this betrothal-followed-immediately-by-the-marriage ceremony continues to this day. If you go to a Jewish wedding (and this has been true for centuries, at this point), you are actually seeing two different ceremonies, one right after the other, before the couple comes out from under the wedding canopy.)
> Then, because of her condition (being pg prior to
> their wedding), Joseph decided it would be best
> (in order to save Mary from shame), if he 'put her
> away' until after she gave birth.
This makes no Jewish sense at all, either anciently or in our time. If they were BETROTHED, they had the "right" to have sex AND for Mary to get pregnant. She would NOT have been "shamed," because she was BETROTHED (and a betrothal, as I said, can ONLY be dissolved by a LEGAL DIVORCE---which means that "betrothal" is a form of quasi-MARRIAGE).
> I believe a hand-maid was with them for this birth
> (from among the party they traveled with), who
> could also, therefore, note that Mary was, truly,
> still a virgin---even though she gave birth to her
> baby.
Again, Mary was betrothed. No one EXPECTED her, as a betrothed woman, to be a virgin, so no one would have been particularly surprised when she became pregnant (except to note that she was, obviously, now legally married)...
...and, if she WAS a virgin, it would have been considered fairly bizarre---to the point where the community would have been inquiring if a legal divorce wasn't the best way to handle her husband's obvious disregard of his betrothed wife's legal rights regarding sex.
As to the things I was referring to at the beginning of this post, I Googled "Jesus not a Jew" as well as "Jesus was not a Jew" (with somewhat different results coming up when the word "was" was entered).
What I learned was why certain things, opaque and mysterious to me, were happening within our U.S. national life now, and some of the results which came up had the actual answers...
...as well as why some (to me) fairly bizarre suggestions have been coming up when I searched YouTube for certain subjects.
I'm sure I don't yet understand completely, but at least I know what the general answer is now...however, since these new (to me) "revelations" are all about American politics, this is where I will end this post.
Thank you, polly, for providing the bridge to me understanding some things about current American life that are important, and that I really did want to understand.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2017 12:39AM by Tevai.