Talk:Seven Laws of Noah/Archive 2

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Recent developments

Judaism does not usually promote conversion but does, on the other hand, believe that Jewish people have some duty to help establish the Noahide Laws. Some Jewish groups have been particularly active in promoting the Seven Laws, notably the Chabad Lubavitch movement and certain ones affiliated with Dor Daim and strict students of Maimonidies. Chabad Lubavitch even succeeded in having a reference to these laws enshrined in law. In Presidential Proclamation 5956 [1], President George H. W. Bush, recalling Joint House Resolution 173, and recalling that the ethical and moral principles of all civilizations come in part from the Seven Noachide Laws, proclaimed April 16, 1989 and April 6, 1989 as "Education Day, U.S.A." Subsequently, Public Law 102-14, formally designated the Lubavitcher Rebbe's birthday as "Education Day, U.S.A.", with Congress recalling that "without these ethical values and principles the edifice of civilization stands in serious peril of returning to chaos", and that "society is profoundly concerned with the recent weakening of these principles that has resulted in crises that beleaguer and threaten the fabric of civilized society".[2]

Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, many Orthodox Jews and Noahides have been trying to take the Seven Laws into the general public and turn them into a broad-based international ideological movement to introduce values of Jewish origin.

In more general Jewish thinking, David Novak, among others, has proposed that Noahide Law could serve as the basis for a more universal Jewish ethics and for cross-cultural moral reasoning (at least with Christians and Muslims).

The Noahide movement was greeted with the unexpected formation of the High Council of B'nei Noah. [3] The High Council of B'nei Noah was formed by mostly unknown Noahides at the request of the group which is currently attempting to revive the Sanhedrin. These Noahides came to Israel to be formally recognized by twenty-seven Rabbis from the nascent Sanhedrin.

Other religions as Noahide

From the Jewish perspective, if a non-Jew keeps all of the laws entailed in the categories covered by the Seven Noahide commandments, then he or she is considered a Ger Toshav "Sojourning Alien" amid the people of Israel. In fact, this is considered the ideal level for all humanity by Jewish theology. A Ger Tzedek is a person who prefers to proceed to religious conversion, a procedure that is generally discouraged by all sects of Judaism and allowed only after much thought and deliberation over the conversion has taken place.

The term Noahide is not the name of any specific religion but a term used to describe religions and cultures compliant with the Noahide Laws outside of Israel.

Islam

Islam has a different tradition on Noah and his descendants; the Qur'an mentions additional narrative on Noah. As stated before, the Jewish authority Maimonides has maintained that Islam is a Noahide religion, although the Medieval sage Nissim of Gerona disagrees.

In January 2004, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel, Sheikh Mowafak Tarif, signed a declaration calling on all non-Jews in Israel to observe the Noahide Laws as laid down in the Bible and expounded upon in Jewish tradition. The mayor of the Galilean city of Shefa-'Amr (Shfaram) - where Muslim, Christian and Druze communities live side by side - also signed the document. The declaration includes the commitment to make a better, more humane world based on the Seven Noachide Commandments and the values they represent commanded by the Creator to all mankind through Moses on Mount Sinai.

Support for the spread of the Seven Noahide Commandments by the Druze leaders reflects the Biblical narrative itself. The Druze community reveres the non-Jewish father-in-law of Moses, Jethro, whom Muslim Arabs call Shuˤayb. According to the Biblical narrative, Jethro joined and assisted the Jewish people in the desert during the Exodus, accepted monotheism, but ultimately rejoined his own people. In fact, the tomb of Jethro in Tiberias is the most important religious site for the Druze community. [4]

Christianity

Within Judaism it is a matter of debate whether all Christians should be considered Noahides. The strict view is that Christian theology is considered avodah zarah (loosely translated as "idolatry") for all people, both Jew and gentile, as it subscribes to the Trinity. Therefore most Christians could not be considered Noahides. However, Unitarian Christians and other followers of Jesus who do not believe that Jesus is a deity would still be considered Noahides.

The liberal orthodox view is that Christian theology is only considered avodah zarah for Jews, but it is permissible for gentiles. The Tosafist (early Talmud commentators) Rabbi Jacob Tam (Rashi's grandson), in Bekhorot 2b and Sanhedrin 63b, ruled that trinitarianism could be permitted to gentiles as a form of shittuf ("association"). This view was echoed by Rabbi Isaac ben Sheshet (Rivash, responsa 119) and accepted by Rabbi Moses Isserles (Rema, Orah Hayyim 156:1.). However, no Jewish source allows the worship through any form of shittuf; rather, all worship must be directed to the one and only Creator.

Harvey Falk, in his book Jesus the Pharisee proposes that the spread of the Noahide laws may have been an important part of Jesus' intentions, as well as those of his early followers (see also Council of Jerusalem).

Christian criticism

Some Christian critics of the Noahide laws contend that insisting upon a basic set of moral laws is contrary to religious pluralism. Some believe that their existence implies that Jews may set up a legal system that would effectively outlaw Christianity. The Jewish community responds by noting that it makes laws and customs for its own members (like all faiths) and does not set up governments to force Jewish beliefs on non-Jews; in contrast, some non-Jewish faiths have carried out such actions in practice. In addition, with their minimal threshold of morality, the Noahide law may be compared to Catholic social teachings, especially natural law theory.

The major Christian bodies (e.g. the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Protestant Churches) believe the Ten Commandments to be binding on them and would regard the Noahide laws as essentially a subset of these (though the requirement to set up courts, and the dietary regulation, are not explicit in the Ten Commandments). By contrast, most Jewish thinkers consider the Seven Noahide Laws a parallel system of general categories of commandments, each containing many components and details. Some Jewish thinkers regard the determination of the details of the Noahide Law as something to be left to Jewish rabbis. This, in addition to the teaching of the Jewish law that punishment for violating one of the seven Noahide Laws includes a theoretical death penalty (Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 57a), is a factor in modern opposition to the notion of a Noahide legal system. The Jewish community responds by noting that Jews today no longer carry out the death penalty, even within the Jewish community. Jewish law, in contemporary practice, sees the death penalty as an indicator of the seriousness of an offense; violators are not actually put to death. Some Jewish thinkers believe that penalties are a detail of the Noahide Laws and that Noahides themselves must determine the details of their own laws for themselves. According to this school of thought - see N. Rakover, Law and the Noahides (1998); M. Dallen, The Rainbow Covenant (2003)- the Noahide Laws offer mankind a set of absolute values and a framework for righteousness and justice, while the detailed laws that are currently on the books of the world's states and nations are presumptively valid.

Christian adherence

Some Christian writers [5], particularly those affiliated with Primitive Apostolic Christianity see the verses in Acts 15:19-21 as a directive from the first Council of Jerusalem to observe the basic understanding of the Noahide Laws in order to be considered righteous Gentiles, and not be required to live completely as Jews. According to Acts 15, the Council of Jerusalem determined that circumcision was not required of new converts, only avoidance of "pollution of idols, fornication, things strangled, and blood" (KJV, Acts 15:20). The basis for these prohibitions as found in Acts 15:21 states only: "For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day". The evidence of these Noachian inclusions to primitive Christian observance were in addition to the moral Ten Commandments given to Moses at Sinai, which covers the most essential requirements of the Noachian covenant. The additions of the four cited above were to complete the requirements of the new Gentile converts to primitive Christianity.

Several Christian congregations have abandoned traditional Christianity (rejecting the Nicene Creed) and adopted the First Covenant or Noahism in recent years.[citation needed] In the United States a few organized movements of non-Jews (primarily of Christian origin) have either chosen to reject mainstream religious affiliation and live by the Apostolic Decree, which they view as the original Christian observance of Noahide Laws, or, under the influence of Orthodox Judaism, adhere to the Talmud's listing of the Laws (without converting to Judaism).

Jubilees, part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible, generally considered to be a 2nd century BCE Jewish apocrypha, Chapter 7, verses 20-33 states: "And in the twenty-eighth jubilee [1324-1372 A.M.] Noah began to enjoin upon his sons' sons the ordinances and commandments, and all the judgments that he knew, and he exhorted his sons to observe righteousness, and to cover the shame of their flesh, and to bless their Creator, and honour father and mother, and love their neighbour, and guard their souls from fornication and uncleanness and all iniquity. For owing to these three things came the flood upon the earth ... For whoso sheddeth man's blood, and whoso eateth the blood of any flesh, shall all be destroyed from the earth."

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