@F_alk:
Do modern jews still resemble the ancient ones that much? If they do, then they must have a pretty crapy gene-pool, after these millenia.
And if i understand you right: the Canaanites were the natives in Judea, which was then conquered by the Hebrews?
And if so, why does the hebrew language have these close similarities to arab, even today, after 1000 years of exile, especially when their roots are Sumerian?
Anotehr question: Did Sumer still exist when Babylon controlled much of the Two-Rivers area? Did they adopt the babylonian alphabet? (Sorry, i could look that up myself, but i am too lazy)
Yes, i know. But that has nothing to do with the muslim ruled countries. My question was: What time of the middle ages do you talk of, that christians were “shot on sight” there?
Many of the ideas in Christianity come from Judaism. And if you claim that Islam developed not from Christianity, why is it that Jesus Christ is the only prophet to come back from the dead and judge on the “end of days”?
Why is J.C. given the title of prophet, just as Abraham and Mohammed?
Because Islam developed not from Christianity?
To make my point: I don’t it was only this or that monotheistic religion, i say it was both, out of which Islam emerged.
Ask a muslim, and he will answer that Islam is kind of “True Faith Version 3.0”, with Christianity being V2.0 and Judaism V1.0.
Do modern Jews resemble anceint ones? In terms of religion, yes, very much so. The only major difference is the loss of sacrificies with the temple and some customs. But Jewish law and the basics of the religion have not changed. In Judaism, the law cannot be changed, but rather adapted to fit modern times. You can’t start fiddling with the religious laws. So that is the asnwer to that question.
As for Jesus versus Mohammed, you forgot a MAJOR difference between the two. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah by his actions, while Mohammed only said he was a prophet. The two are very different and both led to the respectives religions to be very different.
About not many people entering Judaism, this is because Judaism is very different from other religions such as Christianity regarding conversion. Judaism has no beliefs that one must be Jewish in order to go to heaven and it has no desire to see the world convert, quite the opposite from Christinaity’s missionary work. There is no such thing as Jewish missionaries, they are against the Jewish religion. To convert to Judaism, one must go through a long 3 year process that requires lost of learning and tests.
About similarities between Hebrew and Arabic, that’s very much because Jews lived in the Arabian Peninsula for centuries, some say since Biblical times, which is over 1600 years before Mohammed and Islam.
About Sumer, it is considered to have been the first civilization by some, so it’s very hard to know but my guess is no. The Jews lived in Babylon for a long time, as they were exiled there after the destruction of the first temple. Even when some returned, there was still a large Jewish community there.
On the issue of African tribes, that is a very hard thing to look at, especially because these tribes have been lost through the Assyrian exiles, just as many nations such as the remainder of the Canaanites and the Philistines were lost. It is hard to know whether to consider them Jews or nto, because they have not practiced and lost the entire religion over many years. There is much debate over the issue.
Maranos of the Spanish Inquisition are another question. These were Jews who converted to Christianity but practiced Judaism in secret in Spain after the exile of the Jews in 1492. Are these people still Jews, as they went against Jewish law and lost the religion, or are they still Jewish? It’s still a hot issue, and only time will tell.
